昨天，备受我尊敬的独立广告公司 Droga5（ 在我心目中排名仅次于 w+k ），被 Accenture（埃森哲）收购。
在我看来，不管 Droga5 未来还能不能继续牛逼下去，它都不再是一家具有「独立精神」的广告公司了。至此，我的信仰里，我的精神世界里，只剩下了唯一一家广告公司 - w+k，这家公司仿佛一座丰碑，就这么笔直地，矗立在我内心深处一块广场上。
今天是清明节。为了「悼念」独立精神已死的 Droga5，我特邀本号首席英文翻译指导 - 蒋老师（另，本号首席日文翻译指导是 - 兴爷）翻译了一篇文章《 Dan Wieden on why Wieden+Kennedy will never sell out 》，文章来自 Design Indaba 网站，内容是 Dan Wieden 某年受 Design Indaba 邀请做的一次公开演讲。
话说，我一开始只是让蒋老师帮我草翻一下，然后我自己会润色，但是拿到她翻译之后，我发现她用了操翻世界的力量。
好了，没那么多废话。看文章吧。
标题：Dan Wieden 谈为什么永远不会卖掉 Wieden+Kennedy
You wouldn’t know it from his affable demeanour that Dan Wieden is a legendary figure in advertising, known to virtually every junior art director and copywriter worldwide. The “Wieden” in Wieden+Kennedy, one of the world’s largest independent ad agencies, he is responsible for Nike’s “Just Do It” tagline. Here, the advertising veteran shares his feelings on his company’s success and the importance of breeding a culture of chaos.
从 Dan Wieden 和蔼可亲的举止中，你很难看出他是一个广告业的传奇人物，即使是刚入行的美术指导和文案，也几乎没有不知道他的。 Wieden+Kennedy 这家公司是世界上最大的独立广告代理商之一，这家公司名字中的「Wieden」这个人，是Nike 「Just Do It」广告标语之父。在此，这位广告业泰斗分享了他对于自己公司的成功和培养紊乱文化的重要性的一些想法。
From a small basement room in Portland, Oregon to a network of offices worldwide, Wieden+Kennedy can now boast 33 years of independence and a portfolio of work with an irreverent approach to branding. How have they done it?
Wieden+Kennedy 从一家在俄勒冈州波特兰市地下室诞生的小作坊，到如今创意网络遍布全球，这家公司以 33 年来始终以保持独立为傲，并用无数作品演绎了如何用离经叛道的方式来为品牌服务。他们是如何做到的？
Wieden puts it down to the culture he and his partner, David Kennedy, first created to retain the talented people working at the company in its early days. When shareholders in the agency stopped dishing out fat salaries, the young founders had to come up with a reason to make everyone stay. Wieden tells the audience that their solution was to “create a culture that’s so damn weird, so wild, so sticky that it would hurt your very soul to leave the place”.
Wieden 把一切归功于他和他的合伙人 David Kennedy 创建的企业文化。在公司创始之初，这样的企业文化旨在留住公司里有才华的年轻人。当时公司里的股东停止发放高额薪水，年轻的创始人不得想办法留住大伙儿。Wieden 告诉观众，他们的办法就是「创造一种无比古怪、超级疯狂的文化氛围，让每个人都牢牢地被粘住，以至于离开这个地方就会像丢了魂一样的痛苦。」
It was of utmost importance that employees didn’t feel like employees, he says. The working environment needed to inspire people and allow each person the freedom to express themselves without fear of failure. They were all given “permission to fail” – an idea that continues to be propagated throughout the company today.
他说：「让员工觉得自己不是员工，实在太重要了。」 工作环境必须能够激励人们并给每个人自由去表达自己、不惧失败。每个人都获得 「允许失败」的通行证。这个概念在公司传承至今。
W+K 波特兰办公室照片墙
Where most big ad firms have a wall dedicated to their shiny awards, Wieden+Kennedy has a wall of photos in tribute to the weird and wonderful people who work there.
很多大型广告公司都有一面墙专门放他们耀眼的奖杯，而 Wieden+Kennedy 则用一整面照片墙致敬公司里那些古怪而精彩的人们。
When a bunch of hungry creative individuals is handed a licence to mess up as much as they like, the confines of creativity are invariably stretched. Any sense of authority and order goes out the window and what ensues is a culture of chaos. Wieden recognises “chaos” as a state of deconstruction that challenges comfort zones and demands creativity, as opposed to “order”, which thrives off structure and formality.
当一群如饥似渴的创意人得到准许可以任意发挥，创意的界限便不断扩张。
把所有的权威和秩序扔出窗外，接踵而至的是一种拥抱混乱的文化。
Wieden 认为：与诞生结构主义和形式主义的「
秩序
」相反，「
混乱
」是一种解构的状态，它挑战舒适区，要求创造力。
“I have sworn in private and in public that we will never, ever sell the agency. It just isn’t fair that, once sold, a handful of people will walk off with big gobs of money and those left behind will either face salary cuts or be fired, and the culture will be destroyed,” said Wieden.
Wieden说：「我曾在私下里和公开场合赌咒发誓，我们绝对绝对不会卖掉公司。这样做不公平！一旦卖掉公司， 一群人可以拿巨额钞票拍拍屁股走人，而留下的人则要么被减薪，要么被裁员，而我们的文化也将毁于一旦。」
He ended with this bold statement: “The partners and I got together a couple of years ago, took our shares and put them in a trust. A trust whose only obligation is to never, ever, under no circumstances, sell the agency.”
最后他说起自己的一个大胆声明：「
几年前，我和合伙人们一起，把我们的股份全部交给一个信托基金。这个基金的唯一职责，就是保证无论在什么情况下，
这家公司永远、绝对不会被卖掉。
」
His announcement was a moment in advertising history, delivered almost spontaneously on stage at Design Indaba. It sent ripples of applause through the audience – and reverberated through the ad industry worldwide.
这个声明是广告界史上一个重要的时刻。当时他在 Design Indaba 的台上几乎不由自主地说出来，引起了台下绵延不绝的热烈鼓掌，并在世界范围的广告业中引起了巨大反响。
