Life is overflowing with adventure these days - at least for the
blokes in advertising.
Take Richard Genardini. The man was readying his yacht in Hong Kong for
a voyage through the South China Sea in search of fair winds and
adventure. And it came to him even before he could even yell anchors
away.
The day before Genardini was due to cast off, a fax arrived from J.
Walter Thompson, asking him to set sail in another direction - to Seoul
to helm Adventure Worldwide, Korea's 11th largest agency and the latest
acquisition by the voracious WPP group.
True to form, Genardini jumped on this latest adventure without a second
thought.
Then there's Chris Walton moving for his second stint in China as
MindShare's chief executive, who is heading for his adventure of sorts.
"It will be my 13th house hunt in 12 years," Walton said, clearly not
relishing the idea of looking for a new home while making sense of the
bureaucratic muddle that China can sometimes be.
There in lies Walton's adventure. To move his stuff into China, he'll
need to get his residency papers sorted out, and this will depend on his
work visa being sorted out, which then depends on something else being
sorted out first. It's one big cycle, but Walton, who promises to learn
Mandarin this time around, looks game for it.
