Friday 27 June 2008

The happy thing to come out of this week....

ISOBEL WON BERNARD MATTHEWS!!!

So chuffed for them, we know how hard they worked on it (well from what they told us anyway!) Up against Publicis it must have been a toughie but they got there and its certainly well deserved!

WELL DONE AND CONGRATS!!!

Wednesday 25 June 2008

The lighter note...

Still rather angry about heinz. But hey these stupid things happen.

We went to see Rob at Isobel the other week. He (and David) challenged us to come up with some new strategies and then email them over to him and he'll give us an opinion (again). I know we say this nearly every time but I think we're nearly there. Sitting in Euston station last night (we are spending wayyyyy too much time in that station.) we went through our new products/stratergies (no-ones seen these even though we had crits yesterday except one that we mentioned to Daryl from Lunar. He liked it.) and each one had at least one of the:

I would buy it because of that.
I'm learning something new about that.
It interests me about that.

Maybe all these opinions we've been getting are finally sinking in! Quite a few people said right at the beginning that when you think about ads day in day out, your brain becomes trained in the art of stratergies and creative thinking in terms of advertising. Maybe our brains have finally come round to adlands way of thinking.

we'll have to wait and see what everyone else thinks of them eh?

P.s Yes something exciting is happening from our degree show but no we can't tell you yet.

THE ANGER!



Apparently, Heinz don't like gay people. No sorry shall I get that right, they don't like it if their customers don't like it. Im furious that this ad has been pulled. There's nothing wrong with it.

I like this ad, it made me laugh so much when I first saw it and though it was brilliant.

And now they're pulling it. Pathetic.

Hollyoaks shows every night homosexual storylines involving a teenager and a priest. They get praised no end for approaching subjects affecting young people everyday. Nobody bats an eyelid. Adland however gets up and does the same and its a slap round the face saying:

"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOUR DOING PUTTING THAT ON TV?"

I'm not impressed.

Saturday 21 June 2008

The little bit of luxury...

This is something that has recently appeared on the Hermes website:


And although I appreciate the gesture of allowing me to make a paper replica of a multi thousand pound bag I'll never be able to afford, I was making these back on my foundation course 4 yrs ago of some of my own bags. It would be better if I could find the photos of them but photos from 4yrs ago are hard to find in my collection!

The new website...oh so we think it is...

We're fans of Isobel and one day Debbie stumbled across what we thought was the new website.

And then we had a great time going through it all looking in all the nooks and crannys, and then logged out and went home.

Next time we tried to find it however.... we couldn't. You type isobel into google and you get

www.isobel.com

which gives you this site:



However (we managed to track it down...) if you type in www.isobel.com/main.htm you get this site:



Which we think is alot more fun, you get to go in different rooms and see fun things but now we're questioning; which is the new site? and if its the latter how on earth are you meant to find it?

The thing I forgot to mention...

OH YEAH! lol sorry but as of thursday we are officially not students any more. We are now what they call unemployed.

Oh joy.

Both Debbie and I recieved 2:1's but like that means anything in this industry.

However its typical that the one day that neither of us go into Uni to look after the show someone turns up to look at your stuff.... Thank god they left us a note!

Shall update if anything interesting happens from it!

Wednesday 18 June 2008

The flogos...


Oh my god... Think the shapes of lucky charms cereal, think the foam party of fallon and mix in a bit of brand marketing and what do you get? FLOGOS....


The popular ones/ The new home office binge drinking ads...

Well aren't we popular this week, emails for this emails for that!

We got invited to a press launch this week (OOOOOOOOHHHHHHH!!!) lol but unfortunately, our schedules clashed which meant we couldn't attend (Booooooo!) but our friend Chris Quigley thankfully sent them over to us for us to have a gander. you might have seen them already its the new home office ads for binge drinking if not, here you go...





This is also accompanied by a lovely viral...



We are loving the song featured in the boy vid, im trying to find out what it is as we speak, and i know thats not the point and its meant to have a really strong message that they're trying to get across but a good soundtrack adds interest!

I like these ads, a bit icky in some parts but its a different approach, however I do have to wonder how much effect it will have on binge drinking. As much as I like the concept it didn't make me go "oh my god i'm not doing that anymore" but i'm not a big drinker anyway!

Opinions from the drinking public anyone?

UPDATE: We found the song. Its Eightlegs: These grey days.

Tuesday 17 June 2008

The direction...

I recieved this email today...

we have just put together this book. I nearly deleted at that stage. Anyway carrying on it was revealed that this was a book about surfing. Now I have never surfed, I have had many a holiday down in devon and cornwall watching people go into the water time after time after time trying to catch a wave, it did fascinate me and at some stage i did want to have a go but i had no tuition and felt a bit of a dumbass.

Debbies much more of a surfer chick than I am, Living in wales she has more of the geographical advantage in having a go.

This book looks like it has some fantastic imagery and some great illustrations. I'm not sure how many people in the ad industry enjoy surfing but if you are it might be worth a look!



Of course surfing has been used in adverts before noting the amazing guinness ad and the poor in comparison vauxhall surfing car ad.

Anyway this little apitiser was filmed by Martin Morrison, who's directed Channel 4 programmes, including Grand designs.


The creative cattle market...




If only i had the time to make a farm based viral for this...

Yep the time has come for all those loose creatives to get rounded up in Earls Court to be flaunted in-front of the top directors in the hope of being adopted and taken back to a warm agency stable where they can chew the cud and produce useful products until they become old and useless and get sent out for pasture...

Way too many farm analogies there but hey, D&AD New blood is opening on Monday. You have to be a "VIP" to go on monday night, So sign up if you want to go. We'll be there stood on the MMU stand. Tuesday and Wednesday are anybodies days so go and have a look!

The creative talent show

Brompton Hall, Earls Court, Warwick Road, London, SW5 9TA

Private view:

Monday 23 June 2008, 6.30pm10pm

Exhibition:

Tuesday 24 June 2008, 10am9.30pm;

Wednesday 25 June 2008, 10am4pm

Monday 16 June 2008

The very wrong decision...

http://www.brandrepublic.com/news/816981/harry-potter-star-emma-watson-face-chanel/

Seriously, this girl is featured in a kids movie. Chanel is and expensive, upmarket, sophisticated, sexy brand. Who made the decision that she would be right? I am baffled. Yes she is pretty but no-one knows her through anything other than Harry Potter. Its a bit too kiddy porn for my liking....

UPDATE: Well, apparently she isn't now. According to Elle UK the person who released their story, got it wrong. Thank god for that!

Friday 13 June 2008

The hush hush...

Debbie and I are full of secrets at the moment and well we know where a certain creative is going to move to soon but can't say and we know what the next cadbury's ads are going to be about but we don't know if we can say or not!

That aside, it was our degree show tonight and it went pretty well lots of friends and family hanging around looking at work and the odd industry person sneeking a look at what had been produced. To be honest free booze did not help matters but we got approached by head hunters and the typical thing you get at these shows and we aslo managed to meet someone who we've known for quite a long time now but had never actually met! Adam Richardson was on the course a year previous to us and it was really nice to meet him in person and find out what hes getting along with. He's enjoying himself and thats all that matters. Read his blog here.

Yesterday however, we were in london again, you know if railways did railmiles like airways did we've had racked up shit loads by now.

We went to see Iris, they expressed interest in us after we appeared in campaign magazine and requested a book crit. Overall we surprised them (Neale and Leigh. great blokes, easy to talk to and understood where we were coming from) they said our work in book was a lot better than the PDF we sent them ( on a side note I hate PDF's i prefer showing the book in person but if thats what you wanna see i'll send it to you!) and they loved some of our wider thinking ideas. our print ads were kinda standard but to be honest I think they all are these days. There hasn't been a taxing print ad for me since silk cut. But our ambient and 'other' ideas were the best things in our book. We secretly knew this, but its a long way into the future that print/billboard ads die into the past and are never seen again. Someone has to make them, boring or not.

Its not worth our while doing a placement at the moment as were not quite there yet and can't challenge what they're already producing but one day we will.

Then we went of and saw one of our favourite people in the industry Rob Fletcher.
Over at Isobel they've just finished pitching for a rather important client (we wish them the best of luck its a biggy) and Rob kindly took the time out to talk to us about our book. He was surprised that no-one had offered us a placement yet but in a way once he'd seen the book he knew why. The strategies just aren't there. We know what we have to do but getting that stratergy and knowing if its good is our downfall. Were getting there, everything else is fine, we can execute, we can write and we can PR ourselves to the point of no return but slowly but surely the stratergies are improving. Unfortunaltely its the one thing that will get us the jobs.

We'll get there sooner rather than later...

Wednesday 11 June 2008

The most annoying advert at the momment...

Paula the ****ing cow from Dr.Oetker.

This sodding advert does my head in. WHY OH WHY do they make these adverts in another country and think that its perfectly ok to shove an english soundtrack over the top even though the words dont match the movement of the mouths! ITS SOOOOO BAD!

please ignore the idiot on the sofa in this video but its the only video with the advert i can find at the moment.

Monday 9 June 2008

The boredom...

seriously how do they do it? how do people on the dole do nothing all day for weeks/months/years at a time?

I've had a few days off and I'm starting to do my own head in. I'll be so thankful when we get a placement and i have something to work for/on.

Sunday 8 June 2008

The bad thing about widnes is...

It doesn't like blogger. At all. I've been back in the sh*t hole that is Widnes for the last week and for some reason i had trouble logging into blogger, so i couldn't post. I apologise.

I'd love to say we're extremely busy at the moment, running round like headless chickens but we're not. We're waiting very impatiently to get the next two weeks out the way. We've got our degree show very soon and that has to be sorted and New blood to attend, plus something else is happening this Thursday which could be very influencial in what happens next for Debbie and I.

I'm still thinking of some ideas for campaigns but we've been told that our book should stay the same for a little while until we've had a bit more feedback (although all feedback we have had has been great.)

roll on next week...

Monday 2 June 2008

The cool thing...

Look down there... the bottom right hand corner...

see that raccoon balloon? Yep well thats all part of Oranges new interactive website, created by POKE and I love it. Theres going to be a huge balloon race taking you all over the internet chasing balloons and winning prizes and if you need more info head over to Iain Tait's blog. Its all on there.

The very sad news...

http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/813412/

Sadly, the plane that was involved in the live shoot of the Honda ad crashed killing two people on board, luckily other skydivers managed to jump free.

R.I.P

This was a separate event to anything Honda and is no way releated to Honda C4 Or W+K.

Sunday 1 June 2008

The Directed Honda Ad...

For all those who were a bit dubious about the LIVE tv ad, well heres the one that W+K Made through lots of takes by the look of it and wow they can do some great things in the air, a bit more technical than the live one but i guess they can be when you have the time to do as many takes as you like!

The live one was great is this better?