The Girl Effect: The clock is ticking

Tree House for Yellow in New Zealand

This a film about the Yellow New Zealand (Yellow Pages) campaign by COLENSO BBDO Auckland, NEW ZEALAND, From back in 2009. Someone told me about it today so I did a youtube search.
Yellow say they can help anyone get any 'job done'.

Special Build from the late 90's

I saw this special build for Absolut in New York back in 1998. Absolute New York.
I can't believe I found a picture of it online the other day.

The Future of Creative Services Debate. Thursday 17th February, 2011

Last night the IPA Creative Services Group hosted a debate on the future of Creative Services departments within advertising agencies. It certainly was a very interesting night, a really great turn out from many London agencies, from large ones like Publicis to smaller ones like VCCP Blue.

Melissa Smith, co-chair of the IPA Creative Services Group opened and chaired the night, introducing the panel and telling us about what each panelist would be talking about.

Phil Nunn (Executive Media Director, TBWA\London) was the first speaker and he told us that he believed all agencies need to be Media neutral, that TV and print are not dead. It's now all about using all channels available to us and involving media planning bridging the gap between creative and media. We need to use more media, different media. There is so much opportunity out there

Andy Fowler (Executive Creative Director Brothers & Sisters) spoke about his favorite campaigns of the past couple of years, these included the Wranger site, Levis go forth and Nike+, and how it is interesting that their Marketing department is now called ‘Digital Sport’.
He said we need have access to loads of media for our campaigns and that Creatives should feel like ‘a kid in a sweet shop’ having access to so many channels in which to let their Big Idea grow.
It’s all about craft Andy says and that there can be as much craft in creating new media as we believe TV and print as used to be. Creatives have the opportunity to get their Idea out in more interesting ways.
He spoke of the Brothers & Sisters Museum of London app, and how we now have access to technology you used to only dream about.

After the talks from Phil and Andy there was a group panel discussion, with questions afterwards.

The panel was Melissa Smith (Creative Services Director and Co Chair of IPA Creative Services Group), Andrew Dobbs (Recruitment Consultant, Talent Business), Tim Bath (CSD of AMV BBDO and Co Chair of IPA Creative Services Group), and Olivia Chalk (Head of Integrated Production, BBH)
There was much discussion on structure. Melissa discussed how TBWA are disbanding Project Management and their account handlers are now doing their clients production and that they are unskilled, but some Project Managers are becoming account handlers. She also said that there is a trend for agencies to bring in Content Producers.

Tim Bath said how at AMV they have a Project Manager who has entered via the Graduate scheme and how this is the same scheme as account management and planning. He said how this is introducing the role to grads who may never have considered Project Management as a career progression from university. He said how AMV now have content producers, that they have merged the TV and digital departments, and while you can't separate just yet as there are specific skills for ‘heavy lifting’ digital work like back end website builds that agencies still need specialised people for. The panel agreed this. Tim says the PM role at AMV is media non-specific role, facilitating the development and production.

BBH no longer have Project Management, Olivia told us, they are now producers. All departments take responsibility for delivering projects. Everyone is client facing. BBH Producers cover TV, print interactive, mobile and integrated. Each Producer has core strengths in one field, and their skills are pulled in and out on projects as needed.

Andrew Dobbs from The Talent Business talked of there being different routes to integrate departments. A good Project Manager asks the right questions pull the right people together. A good pm knows how to manage the project.
What about client liaison on production and strategy? Melissa asks.
Tim replied that the PM role is to have an understanding of roughly how it's done. 'Get the right people in the right place at the right time'. It's an untaught skill-set. He suggested that there is a 'big demand, but a small pool of good project managers'. He hopes the Grad scheme, which AMV are involved in, will be a good way of getting them.

Brothers & Sisters do not have Project Management, they have Producers. They have two processes, and Internal and External process. Producers produce their own TV commercials as well as use external production companies. Andy believes in Super Producers. He likes the idea of producers who have specialty in one area but running the project with other producers feeding into them.

The panel discussed the interesting point that you need to have specialists otherwise you end up with mediocrity, you end up with a jack of all trades and master of none – as Tim put it, 'one person might have a rolodex of contacts to get the job done, but that person is only as good as that rolodex of contacts'. There are hundreds of production companies doing amazing things out there and to limit yourself affects the creative output.

Melissa suggested that Creative agencies are not so much worried about costs they spend as it is all about the creativity, and what is needed to produce this, and this can mean roles are duplicated, and how in more account management based agencies care more about the bottom line, and are very concerned about.

Tim said that he believes there should be more duplication of roles and that everyone should be media neutral.

When asked by Melissa ‘How many briefs are you getting in for super producer?’ Andrew replied that the 'requests tend to come from smaller agencies, because in these smaller agencies you work in all aspects of the campaign and it’s all hands on deck'. He said 60-70 percent plus of the briefs he gets are for this Super Producer role, but that most of the candidates he is finding are in the US.

Tim suggested that these smaller agencies are the breeding ground for these super producers, places like Adam & Eve and Brothers & Sisters.

From this debate, Melissa said that there was hope that the IPA can draw some consistency for the roles, create a standard job description as Project Management is such a varied role from agency to agency and everyone agreed that the size of the agency dictates the role, that every agency is inherently different.

Lactofree Print

Client: Lactofree (Arla Foods)
Agency: Weiden + Kennedy London
Creative Directors: Sophie Lewis & Lucy Collier
Creatives: Ben Everitt & Sophie Bodoh
Photographer: Sara Morris
Illustrator: Owen Gildersleeve

Facebook apps work half as well as regular banners

Interesting article on this on Mashable.

Interesting statistics and graphs within the article, but they are all US based.

Personally I never click on them, but then do we notice banner ads? I am more inclined to interact with a cool takeover - that is if I am not in a hurry and find the takeover is annoying me. Fickle consumer.

the dreaded stairs

Great film not sure who did it, but this staircase in Odenplan, stockholm was re-built by engineers to see if they could get people to take stairs than use the escalator.

At first hardly anyone took the stairs, almost 97% of the people took the escalator.

Now they have reversed the percentages, 66% more people take the stairs than take the escalator.

Volkswagen initiative. clever buggers.

Stick it in the diary

Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2011, 5 April - 1 May 2011.

It's been going for 15 years now, £30k prize. The 4 Shortlisted artists: (details copied from The Photographers' Gallery site)

Roe Ethridge (b.1969, USA) is nominated for his solo exhibition at Les Recontres d’Arles Photography 2010, France (3 July – 19 September 2010).

Thomas Demand (b.1964, Germany) is nominated for his exhibition, Nationalgalerie, at Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (18 September 2009 – 17 January 2010).

Jim Goldberg (b.1953, USA) is nominated for his exhibition Open See at The Photographers’ Gallery, London (16 October 2009 – 31 January 2010).

Elad Lassry (b.1977, Israel) is nominated for his exhibition Elad Lassry at Kunsthalle Zürich (13 February – 25 April 2010).

Sven Prim

I have spent the past few weeks speaking with Sven's agent Molly about a shoot for a project I am working on, unfortunately he did not get the job but Molly was amazing and patient, and championed Sven's work really well. He is quite remarkable, at about 25 years of age he was signed to Molly whilst still at university in Sweden. He does his own retouching too. Certainly one to watch.

Something for Christmas

My brother in-law is studying Photography at Bolton University and has done a project based on the work of Canadian photographer Diana Thorneycroft, to be honest I had not heard of her before he sent me a link to her work, I am not sure whether I should be disturbed or intrigued. I think I am both!

Gary Redford - Illustrator

See, you are not getting away from it, I am still very much riding on my wave of discovering new (to me) illustrators. Gary Redford I found through the Association of Illustrators website, I love old travel posters which is probably why his work caught my eye. Enjoy!

Roya Hamburger

Following on my love of illustration theme this week, I saw this work today sent around on an email, and it is quite interesting, thought I would share it.
Her name is Roya Hamburger and she is from the Netherlands.

Old VW ads

I was having a bit of a search on the internet and, though I am not that old, remembering when ad agencies did amazing long copy ads - I mean to be fair these are not the longest copy and probably not strictly 'long copy' but compared to our digital-i-want-to-know-everything-in-5-seconds-world you don't really see anything like these anymore. Enjoy!

Cheese or Font??

A bit of fun for a Wednesday evening. Some of my friends were posting this on their Facebook sites.
Have a go, see if you can work out if they are names of cheeseses or the name of fonts?? Cheese or font?

Anthony Burrill

I really love this bloke's work, I was working on something a couple of weeks ago which made me think of his stuff. I just thought I would share a bit, you have probably heard of him, he does all those 'Work hard and be nice to people' posters but if not check his stuff out here.

Nokia ad - filmed on the N8

Stop Frame animation, shot entirely on the Nokia N8 they say. nice. W+K London.

Made by cows

Ad agency: CHI & Partners
Creative team: Matt Collier, Wayne Robinson
Creative directors: Dave Masterman, Ed Edwards
Typography: Alison Carmichael
Illustration: Paul Slater

Killer bear digital for Tippex

Very clever interactive youtube digital stuff

Cool interactive mobile app - Wi Fireworks

Unit 9 have this really cool technology to link smart phones with digital outdoor sites, this looks interesting;

'Wi-Fireworks – How it works: we are beaming free wi-fi from our windows. Open a browser on your smart phone. The phone automatically detects our wi-fi as the strongest signal and we redirect the phone to an html5 page optimized for multitouch devices running our game. Whatever you draw on the screen, appears on the windows. Click explode, and watch your doodle explode as a firework. Its not an app. It’s a wi-firework experience in HTML5'

Your very own website oilspill

Thanks to Mashable.
'A Cleaner Future' — which is a joint project between marketing company Mark & Phil and Post Production house Greener Media that wants to raise Clean Energy.
Visit www.instantoilspill.com and paste the wesbite you want to slick.

Incentives & Promotional Marketing Event 21/22 Sept 2010

You may be interested in going and book out your calendar, if you are into that sort of thing.

Cannes Lions 2010

Some really great work again this year, unfortunately not too many UK awards. You can see all the winners here.

Everyone is talking about the Old Spice ads by W&K Portland, getitng loads of attention on youtube and they through facebook.:

See the Old Spice ad here

Also the great 'Music. See what it's made of' ads by Billboard (US music chart)from ALMAPBBDO São Paulo
Brazil:

Marketing Week Live on today

The Marketing Week Life conference is on today at Olympia. I just popped down there and there are loads of stalls - it is split into 4 sections:

1. In-store Show
What is says on the tin, all different mechanisms, ideas, shelving systems, presentation ideas for all you retail kids.

2. Data Marketing Show
Didn't bother with this one, all about marketing data I suppose.

3. Insight Show
stuck my head in but again a bit irrelevant to me.

4. Online Marketing Show
I really thought this was going to be exciting but it seemed to be more aimed to clients looking for individual inline marketing solutions.

All in all an ok event but probably not as relevant for creative services people.

That said, if you still want to go, details are on their website

IRN-BRU 2034 World Cup ad

I was up in Scotland last week with my wife's family, and not a big football fan myself the family up there are nuts about it (even though Scotland are not in the world cup)
Anyway during one of the fre commercial breaks this came on. Brilliant! It is part of a campaign of other ads produced by the Leith agency in Scotland. The other ads are on youtube too.

Twitter London Lanscape Map

Just a bit of something I find more interesting that useful to us. I saw this when Stephen Fry posted a link to this on his Twitter today, amazing what people do with their time. This work was crafted by CASA's Fabian Neuhaus for his Urban Tick blog