adliterate

TED Global 2010 - Day Three

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 19:27:28 +0000

My last Day in Oxford owing to work commitments - that old problem of prioritising the urgent over the important - and a corker as far as I'm concerned.

TED Global 2010 - Day Two

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 16:23:11 +0000

Not a vintage TED day as far as I am concerned but one or two highlights.

TED Global 2010 - Day One

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 11:47:14 +0000

OK, so here are the people and talks that I think are really worth following up form day one of TED Global. Of course the talks themselves will appear on TED.com in the future so get ahead of the curve and check them out now.

Its worth remembering that the theme for this year's TED global is 'and now for the good news' finding reasons for hope and optimism for humanity.

This week I am mostly liking...

Tue, 18 May 2010 20:25:38 +0000

The Swagger Waggon campaign by Saatchi & Saatchi LA for Toyota.

This is a strategy I having been wanting to try for a Minivan or MPV for ages. Because the choice of a vehicle like this is often seen as a sign that you have simply accepted your life as a parent and 'given up' it has long seemed to me that there was mileage in hero worshiping parenthood and in particular the fact that the choice of an MPV proves that its all working 'down there' if you know what I mean. This ain't a sell out its a swagger waggon. By the way the promo is Number 2 this week in the Ad Age video viral chart.

And above everything else how about that for the first work out of the blocks after the recall - that's a client with balls.

All the work is on the youtube channel here but I've posted a couple of videos below.

That was the election that was

Fri, 14 May 2010 14:43:17 +0000

I have put together a few thoughts on the role of communications in the recent UK general election campaign. Given that we saw it from the inside.

At some point I will get round to adding in all the examples and links but have this to be getting on with.

For some strange reason when I uploaded this to slideshare it duplicated the 'that was' on the title slide. Weird.

Lessons from the front line

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For what its worth

Wed, 12 May 2010 09:16:05 +0000

The post on Client briefs and briefings seems to have got a bit of interest so I thought I'd make available a rudimetary briefing format for Clients to agencies.

I'm sure that it's not perfect but it may help, especially if your clients or you as a client don't have an approach to briefing that is set in concrete.

Creating inspiring briefs - a note to clients

Mon, 10 May 2010 08:27:23 +0000

This is a short paper I wrote for Clients to help them create better briefs for their agencies and therefore get more effective work out of them.

Lets start with a clear definition of roles – for the people and documents involved in briefing.

Clients are marketing professionals and brand guardians. You understand what performance the business needs from its portfolio of brands, the problems that those brands face in delivering this and the way marketing communications can be applied (alongside the other weapons in the mix) to get the results you need.

Client briefs should reflect this role and should act as a contract between client and agency to deliver communications solutions that meet that brief.

Agencies are creative problem solvers that understand the way to engage people with brands both strategically and executionally.

Agency creative briefs are internal documents we use to get the solution you need from the various creative disciplines in the agency. That’s the fundamental way in which they differ.

Probably the best post in the world

Sat, 08 May 2010 16:05:38 +0000

This is the new Carlsberg commerical from Saatchi & Saatchi aimed at galvanising the nation behind the England football team over the summer in South Africa.

It's based on the idea that Carlsberg don't do team talks but if they did they would be the best team talks in the world. In truth the ad is simply the culmination of a whole load of integrated activity from the trade out that has been building up from the beginning of the year. As usual a Youtube channel acts as the content hub for all the participatory activity.

Big society my arse

Tue, 04 May 2010 13:29:36 +0000

David Cameron's big society is as close to a way over complicated planning thought as you get in politics - intellectually interesting to the political elite no doubt but incomprehensible for normal people. This is a film we have just made to hit home the downsides of DIY government.

You can personalise the film here and blame the Big Society on someone who is thinking of voting Tory on Thursday.

Credit where it's due

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 09:06:16 +0000

John Lewis on London's Oxford Street. Image courtesy of Timothygareth

This is the new John Lewis ad from Adam & Eve. I guess in a way is easypeasy to create emotional advertising for John Lewis, after all thats what we got in spades last Christmas with the 'sweet child of mine' spot. Trickier to do it around the much admired, totally nebulous and increasingly tired guarantee that John Lewis are 'never knowingly undersold'.

This is one of those ads that you start watching and immediately fall in love with then get that aweful feeling in the pit of your stomach that the brand or message is going to utterly disappoint you. And it sort of does when the price guarantee is delievered at the end. Then just as you are about to throw something at the telly the final super appears and everything slots into place. Not only does the execution make sense but suddenly the dust is blown off a brand promise that we have all grown up with in the UK (well those of us who are terminally middle class at least) but had kind of assumed JL had got bored of.

On show here we have tight thinking and achingly good execution married together. And as for the track - well I have always loved Billy Joel in his Piano Man period.

Keeping the magic alive

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 14:32:53 +0000

Image courtesy of last.fm

Arthur C. Clarke, the legendary science fiction author, formulated three scientific laws over his lifetime. Apparently he stopped at three on the basis that three laws had been good enough for Newton. His first law suggests that when a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right, when he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. While the second maintains that the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. But it is his third law that is by far the most interesting and celebrated as it states that any technology that is sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.

A Future Fair For All - The Movie

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 14:38:30 +0000

We have created an interactive film with RSA to take the spirit and message of the Labour Party's manifesto for the UK general election in May to a broader audience than normally concerns themselves with such things.

The manifesto cover was ours too.

Are Superbowl really that super?

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:28:27 +0000

Image courtesy of BeckyAV

This is an article I wrote in the week after the Superbowl. So it lacks a little in the topical department. Thought I'd post it anyway.

In the distant past when advertising was a simpler and somewhat more lucrative business the wine bars of Adland would fizz with excitement every third Thursday of November. The cause for celebration was the arrival, straight from the vineyards, of the first pressing of the Gamay grape, a Beaujolais wine by the name of Noveau. And it wasn’t just the toast of the advertising fraternity, for a short time Beaujolais Noveau made it into the mainstream social calendar; the BBC might even follow its journey to fill out the final five minutes of their news bulletins.

Election coverage

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:28:48 +0000

This is our latest poster for the Labour Party. We are running it in Brighton to coincide with the Tory Party spring conference and the their slipping poll lead.

It's just a poster of course, but even in this day and age they can still be oh so powerful. This execution is about the incompetence of the person that would like to be the next Chancellor of the Exchequer. A man that would be out of his depth in a paddling pool.

As the election unfolds I am going to try and share as much as I can with you. Regardless of your political affiliations (though I have yet to meet a right wing planner) its going to be fascinating, and I suspect very different to the last great case study in political campaigning from the US.

Click below for a bigger version.

Childline campaign

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:15:35 +0000

The Childline remixing tool

We have created a new campaign for the NSPCC aimed at making Childline a part of the fabric of children's lives. The idea is to encourage children to express their emotions and to position Childline as the place they can do this freely with immediate online support for those children needing help.