The record?...

Ok so if may massacre wasn't busy enough already we just made it that little bit more. The line up for may 8th now stands at...

• Wieden + Kennedy (great way to start the day...)
• Saatchi & Saatchi (To see Rach and Izy but also Brian if he's available...)
• Lunar BBDO
• PORTFOLIO NIGHT (which comprises of 3 crits for Rachel and 3 for Debbie)

9 crits in one day... is that a new record? Thats usually what we do in a week. So if you dont hear from us until the monday after you know its because we momentarily collapsed from exhaustion.

The one thing thats keeps us going though... Is it will all be worth it in the end.

The list...

Okies here's the products we're having in our book for portfolio night...

• Nandos
• Toyota IQ
• Slim Fast
• Fed-ex
• Virgin Experiences
• Euro 08'/ Thomas Cook
• John Smiths Grand National (viral as below...)

Just thought we'd keep you updated :)

The good day....

Well we have some very exciting news, something quite good is happening for us in the next couple of weeks but we have to keep it under wraps for now. (Its not a placement and its not a job) Lets just say I was nearly sick when we recieved an email from a certain person today.

Anyway thats not the only thing on our list for today. John Allison and Chris Bovill came back to where they began to tell us all about the trials and tribulations of "smelly briefs"

They gave us a nice talk on how to crack briefs and how they came to be where they are today.



After, they gave us a crit but it was kinda a group session on teaching some 2nds years how to go around getting crits, anyway they said that we had a really good book, its not great yet (we wouldn't expect it to be!) but for the stage were at its really good and we've got some things that they said we should have a good go at from some ideas we had. And also commented on what an easy book it was to look at, the way it flowed. Some of our stapline/stratagies need work but otherwise all systems go go go for portfolio night!

The mystery...

Now im not one for stirring up trouble but... I was looking around a few agency sites, and Leith up in Edingburgh have some impressive clients and some adverts that I remember, especially this one from Carling...

Visit4info confirm that Leith made the advert, but Farm communications (who we visited for a crit a couple of weeks back) also have it on their website in their portfolio. I'm confused. Who made it?

The final countdown...

haha bet thats stuck in your head now isn't it!

anyway, yep 10 days till Portfolio night or what is known to us as May massacre. Were quite chuffed with the stage we're at, we have half a book sorted and this week we are finalising some new ideas.

An extra crit has surfaced, apparently John Alison and Chris Bovill have managed to come up to Manc to see us all at D&AD so we should get a crit off them! I should be taking photies and filiming bits so ill stick that up if its any good! They've attempted this twice before so hopefully its third time lucky!

The Difference between good and evil...

Good Mac....
(kept me warm and dry this morning in the pouring rain.)



Bad Mac...





It displayed this msg 2 seconds after we finished our viral, just before we could get it onto an external drive!!!!


Thankfully Big Kev (our wonderful IT technician ) managed to save it! :)

The Euston 21.05 Steeplechase...

On your marks, get set, GO!

(turn your sound on...)

the list is growing...

The rumours were true, AMV BBDO are attending portfolio night and so are poke (I have a feeling that could be due to a bit of our meddling, from what I remember dave didnt know about portfolio night before we went to see him...correct me if im wrong.)

Its great to see the list getting longer as it reduces the chances of Debbie and I getting the same people, trouble is though with such great people turning up we want to see them all!
Everyones opinions will be useful but the ones that I really would love to see are:

• Russell Ramsey - JWT
• Graham Fink - M&C Saatchi
• Seb Royce - Glue
• Alasdair Graham - Ogilvy
• Dave Dye - Dye holloway Murray
• Paul Silburn - Saatchi & Saatchi
• Brian Campbell - AMVBBDO
• Iain Tate - Poke

Yes, I know that list is long and I cant see them all but if I get to see any of them I'll be happy!

The rest (for now)

Amazingly now, Debbie and I have no crits lined up until may 8th so that means nearly two weeks of so called rest. We say rest as for once we'll be staying in one place. Manchester. But the work is still ongoing, and thankfully the ideas are too!

As for thursday, Karmarama was great, slightly strange location and the building stands out a mile but it is beautiful. A bit of a strange situation awaited Gina and Sarah, we had previously sent some work to karmarama before they brought us in for a crit but between then and the crit we changed our book so we took both along.

This, although it sounds like a bad idea was actually really good as it turns out that some of the ideas they had about our previous book we had actually done for our new book, so it just showed how we were progressing!

We've also got a definate campaign that will be sticking around, it seems our resurection of IQ has worked and they really like it!

Salt and shake needs work again, still not there and im thinking of dropping it in favour of some new ideas that are coming through. Its becoming a bit too USP now.

Gina and Sarah provided us with some really good insights and some great advice that will really take our work forward, and hopefully quickly!

The credit where credits due...

Well sincere congrats over to scamp for being part of the team that produced this stunning poster for ITV. Its won the March Anna!

Taken from Brandrepublic.com : Bartle Bogle Hegarty has scooped the March ad of the month in this year's Awards for National Newspaper Advertising for its film poster style ad for ITV crime drama 'He Kills coppers'

Read more at: http://www.brandrepublic.com/Discipline/Advertising/News/804254/BBH-wins-March-Anna-ITV-crime-drama-ad/

The relief!...

I panicked, I looked portfolio nights website for an update on CD's only to find that every list of Londons CD's had been deleted off the site...

Was it cancelled? had something gone wrong??????

Luckily after I sent an email to them the list popped back up again, but with no new names. We heard rumours that AMV BBDO will be involved in this years somehow.

The quickness...

well we've done it, were not sure how, but we've made a book in less than a week, and the ideas (we think ) are better than the last two books... we'll have to see what karmarama think of it tomorrow but hopefully by the time portfolio night comes round the book should be coming up to scratch.

The new concepts for the brands include:

Nandos "doing it for the nation"
Slim fast "there is another way"
Salt and shake "shake till satisfied"
IQ "intelligent driving"
Energy ombudsman " let someone else do the fighting for you"

The line...

Where is it? What is the thing you would never do in an ad?

Our new campaign for Slim-Fast is slightly controversial, but the Nandos one is touching upon some historical elements that may just be pushing it a little too far...

What is your boundary that you wouldn't cross?



P.s I mean portfolios here, not real world ads

The missed bit?..

Some of you might be thinking " they haven't mention foam city" well I got all excited when I found out it was released (severe lack of internet and tv on crit weeks) and then got heavily disappointed when I saw it. I thought they were going to focus on clarity and capturing the beauty of bubbles along with a s***load of foam but i was wrong. It bored me slightly.

The now...

Well thats another book in the bin, very useful whilst it was there but we have better ideas coming up now and our turnover time is getting quicker, 1st book was 3 months worth (ish) 2nd book was three weeks worth and book 3, well that we hope to be ready for Thursday. Karmarama get the first look and then we need to decide what we need to do for the up and coming may 8th massacre.

That is where we fit basically a weeks worth of crits into one day. W&K, Lunar BBDO and portfolio night with 6 crits. We are, and are going to be, knackered for the forseeable future but in all honesty we're loving it. Every moment is adding to our love of advertising and making us want it even more. I apologise for the lack of images for the crit blogs this time, we got so caught up we forgot to take piccys!

A HUGE thanks to all the agencies that gave up their time for us this time....and last time and for all the future times.

And apologies for all the text on these posts... they gave alot of advice!

The Thursday events...

This week has gone soooo quick compared to last time but we've learnt equally as much. Our last trip was to POKE to visit Dave Birss, have a look at his blog its in the list.

Now this was the crit of the week, he's got so much to say, and its all so useful and ineteresting! he gave us some good opinions but alongside it some great ideas on how to improve what we already have. he's given us inspiration for new work for the book were working on now. Cant really discuss that right now but its coming soon we promise...

The rest of the day we chilled but at the station we had an epiphany, we actually we had a couple of laughing fits but there was an idea in there somewhere! Were gonna have to film it this week but we think it'll be really funny if it works.

On the way back we were sat with the same man that we did last time strangely enough, and somehow most of the way back we were talking with him and another guy about advertising....ITS EVERYWHERE!

The Wednesday events...

First thing back to covent garden, and we have to thank rory from the talent buisness for inviting us to their office, those 15 minute outside on a fire drill were riveting... Only joking it was actually quite funny! Rorys great, he has lots of good advice about different agencies and what we should be thinking about, showed us a few things to think about and grilled us on where we liked and where we wanted to be. Rory liked what he saw and hopefully we should be getting some stuff lined up for the future...

Off to Noho and to MCBD to Gavin and Danny, the place is a little cramped for our liking but gavin and danny seem like really cool guys. Different from everyone else basically they hated our book. It wasnt anywhere what they thought it should be, just proves how differing opinions can be. They said:

1. Nandos isnt clear, the line is wrong should be more about why wecould kill chicken and the hotness maybe degrees of chicken?
2. Toyota IQ is all wrong (but we knew this by this point anyway...)
3. Breville is way too gimicky its all too obvious.
4. Salt and shake seemed a bit studenty (thank god were still students or else we'd be in trouble!)

They did give us some good advice to where we can rent studio space for when we get down here to work on our book if we need it. they also advised us to find the right agencys and really focus on where we want to be. That way we'll get the briefs right.

Well after that one we decided a little break was in order so we went and looked at butterflies, the natural history museum has a special tent with them flying about all over the place so that was a nice change.

After that i got a bit Itchy... I needed to pester someone (lol) so we thought sod it and off to soho we went, Golden Square we've seen many a time and we tried our luck at WCRS, last time in london we took a chance with TBWA and it paid off, so why not try again?

But we failed, WCRS were too busy but we did get a contact out of it so that was good. Then I realised that M&C Saatchi were extremely close by 100m actually but they have nothing telling you that it is there! ( the transport department ad characters gave it away) anyway we tried again and...

SUCCESS! Luke agreed to see us, ah we love the creatives that take a chance on the Ad babies.
He liked what we were thinking and doing but the ideas primarily need to be bigger, MUCH bigger and we can pretty much see it now. Its so strange that without opinions outside of our bubble how things can go soooo wrong OPINIONS ARE FANTASTIC SHARE EVERYTHING!
He liked Lineker. We need more digital. and we mentioned our nandos bird flu D&AD entry. He liked that too.

We've also noticed that the more crits we have the less they actually talk about the work in the book, it turns into pure advice which is good because most of the opinions we've heard before.

After that it was time to go back to the Charlotte street area to visit TBWA again.
We got to meet martin aswell as theo this time which was nice, however we were a little rushed as they had a meeting to go to.

They said:

• Nandos, the line needs more clarity and it feels too familar but working on the videos is great.
• Breville works but not without a guide to what the product is.... they suggested a change of product but the only one that came to mind was Smirnoff.
• Salt and Shake is ok but it needs to be brilliant....
• We need more campaigns

4 too little 9 too many sooo 6 or 7 seems a safe bet for next time me thinks... if theyre good enough that is.

The Tuesday events...

Well back to Saatchi & Saatchi, we love this place. Rach and Izy came down to talk to us in the coffee bar and we had a really good chat, nandos the website is stronger than the print ads and the print take too long to 'get' we should think more about quick visuals. we should stay away from medical visuals but the line is really nice.

Toyota IQ the logo could be changed into a moph of IQ somehow? but there are alot of car ads that 'play games'

Breville the product isnt out that might cause a problem, a bit too gimicky but they think that breville ould like the idea (good for breville but not for us...)

Salt and Shake they told us that AMV have the account for walkers so that should be fun when we get there later on in the week... the gary lineker stuff is good along with the tv and radio but the rest of the stuff is questionable.

Well after a good chat with the girls we mentioned that we didn't manage to get hold of Brian from last time, one phone call later and Brian was on his way down to the coffee bar to have a look again...

Brian is a great person for crits, hes so to the point and we honestly believe him. To him Breville doesnt make sense and it has to be relevent to the product it has to have water and toast in there somewhere. He did like the adshels tho.
He says our book has definately improved. thinking is good but the executions need to get better...

He wasnt sure about nandos its interesting and he likes the kill it idea but it still needs work them worth dying for nandos makes more sense.

IQ didnt make him want the car, we need to make it more attractive than smart and the yaris and he didnt like the line.

Salt and shake, also intersting but again not sure and doesnt understand the print ads likes it as a concept but not sure about the executions, tvs not good but the linekers good.
See how opinions change even within an agency!?!
Its all good though!

Off to Covent Garden next, its such a nice place to be. DKLW was next on the list and Keith was ready although very busy! Its strange he seemed to like everything and it was rather a short crit, but all he suggested was a couple more campaigns in there and we should come back after graduation and maybe talk about placements if the works still good enough...
He also mentioned a serious subject should be in there somewhere. hmmm thats one to think about.

Kevin At AMV BBDO next, this was a bit of an RKCR Y&R moment the building was not hard to miss... Kevin explained his role in AMV how he is a bit of a go-between with the teams and CD and filters out some of work, he had piles of portfolios and showreels on his desk so we were rather thankful that we had his undivided attention, he didnt say much about the book its self but he asked that we leave our CD for feedback later on as he was going to show some other people (sounds promising but we wont get oour hopes too high!) we may have to send him some other stuff tho cos its changing but more about that later...

Well that was the last crit session of the day officially but later on we went off to the pub with Jai and Wal the lads from Creative in london. It was a really good laugh, we talked about crits placements, ikea trips and dinosaurs (do you remember that childrens programme how cool was that?)

The Monday events...

Okay then, here goes, well after an uneventful virgin train ride (very thankful for that) Debs and I ran off to visit the farm which is literally five mins away from euston and very well placed in our opinion! We were booked into see Owen Lee (CD) however he was off ill, but he didnt cancel no.. (lol the trucks ad has just come on telly its actually growing on me...) he asked two creatives Andy and Jim to see us instead. We really appreciated that so thanks Owen.

Andy and Jim are great guys very to the point but very helpful and gave us some good ideas
They said: Nandos: lines dont have to have word play, we should keep away from expressions and cliches. the ideas should have more to do with that its worth killing chickens for nandos and we should try looking at our ideas and explaining them as if we were in the pub to get the message right. Very good advice we think.

They liked the IQ endline but it needs to be pushed much further, base is good but it needs to get madder! needs more attitude how would you really have fun in a car? Prohibited fun? Changed personality? Extenuate the fun aspect it should be bigger than big.
Breville is too USP. picking products with a USP is too easy and also too restrictive.
Walkers is also a bit too USP we got told to ditch the radio (poor radio it easily gets forgotten but for our book i can see where theyre coming from) They didnt like our lineker scandal and thought there was too many ideas all over the place...

We liked The farm but i think we'd need to see a bit more. Andy and Jim know Danny and Gavin from MCBD they txt ahead of our appointment on wednesday...were officially being talked about!

The Portfolio (update)...

Ok well before I get yabbering on about the book crits I guess you better see what they were on about. I can put these up here now because basically, theyre all going in the bin again. lol yeah we like some of them but as the world of advertising goes they need to be a bit more edgier (does the word edgier exist? well it does now.) Nandos and salt and shake survive with new campaigns and concepts for round three (its starting to sound like a reality show.) but breville and IQ are going into what scamp likes to call the bottom drawer, just in case they are reqiured for something else. like emergency loo roll.

So head on over to the portfolio page for Book number 2.

COMING SOON: new Salt & Shake, new Nandos, Grand national, Slim fast, RSPCA, Alcholism help and something for the energy ombudsman....

P.S we have karmarama crit on thursday talk about being pressured!

UPDATE: IQ may not be dead...we might be able to save it from the loo for a little longer.

The big gap..

Hi everyone out there, sorry for the huge gap but avid readers (lol) will know we were in london this week for crit week 2. I shall write it up this weekend so keep your eyes peeled and all will be revealed,

thanks to those who have been commenting on here and on the portfolio, all comments are greatly appreciated and taken on board for the future.

Ta.

The most demeening....

Well its friday, which means ive (Rachel) had to work for my small living... my boss thinks its a great idea to buy in novelty belly bars that have rude sayings on them, of course somebody asks me to tell me what they say on them.

1. thank god she was under the age of 25
2. thank god she was serious and actually bought two.

this is what those bars said,

• cock sucka (yes spelt like that)
• lets fuck
• insert dick here (god knows where that bar was intended for)

Oh the things I do to afford printing in uni (dont even go there... cos we spent £40 on it the other day)

btw I dont work in Ann Summers or anything like that, its a simple make-up/hair accessory/cheap perfume shop with the odd bit of body jewellery thrown in.

Debs works on a Sunday. she gets wet for a living....as a lifeguard.

The nerves...

I wasnt nervous for crit week 1. I was looking forward to it, finally outside opinions on work that hadn't really been seen outside of a university studio. But now we have something to prove. Its not begginners work anymore, we've meant to have moved on, learnt something and produced better work because of it.

I dont know whether its because im tired (btw this is Rachel talking) but Im really worried about this set of work. I think its better, no actually I know its better, Debbie thinks its better, our tutors Eric and Liz say its better. And it has moved on BUT is it good enough for out there?, is it good enough for us to get a placement and really get going in this industry?

Im probably worried about nothing, and everything will be fine next week, in fact everything will probably be fantastic next week but in some way I think I know how Juan felt before trucks was aired.

The portfolio...

COMING SOON...

Im starting to upload our portfolio onto a seperate blog page, but we need something to show off on our crits so for now theres one campaign on there. More will follow in the next couple of weeks.....

constructive comments welcome.

http://allaboutthecritportfolio.blogspot.com

The work (part 2)

Heres something from our Breville 'Clearly better' Campaign. We know that see through adshels have been done before but we like them. The toast will get darker and lighter over time (not greener as thankfully it wont be real toast.) and the water one will have bubbles getting faster and faster and will light up at night. These are to advertise the transparent kettle that they already sell and the transparent toaster that we found on a concept site.

The excitement is building...

Well portfolio night is getting more and more exciting by the minute, ok i exaggerate a bit but its sounding really good! 11 agencies have signed up and all the tickets are sold. Debbie and I are seeing three each, as many as is allowed. I just hope that we get different people!

CREATIVE DIRECTORS LONDON
Craig Davis / Chief Creative Officer / JWT
Russell Ramsey / Executive Creative Director / JWT
Mike McKenna / Creative Director / JWT
Ben Clapp / Creative Director / Tribal DDB
Stephen Reed / Assoc. Creative Director / Tribal DDB
Graham Fink / Creative Director / M&C Saatchi
Mark Goodwin / Deputy Creative Director / M&C Saatchi
Seb Royce / Creative Director / Glue
Andy Sandoz / Executive Creative Director / Work Club
Ben Mooge / Partner, Creative Director / Work Club
Sam Ball / Creative Partner / Lean Mean Fighting Machine
Dave Bedwood / Creative Partner / Lean Mean Fighting Machine
Gavin Gordon-Rogers / Creative Director / Agency Republic
Will Awdry / Creative Partner / Ogilvy
Alasdair Graham / Creative Partner / Ogilvy
Sue Higgs / Senior Writer / Ogilvy
Chris Clarke / Executive Creative Director / Digitas
Paul Silburn / Creative Partner / Saatchi & Saatchi
Dave Dye / Creative Director / Dye Holloway Murray

we've got lots of crits next week and one on the 24th so that should be good preperation for the 8th....

The update...

Well for all those who look regularly on here, you may have seen the toyota post we did, for some of our up coming portfolio work, well we finally got our mits on some magnetic paper and we made magnets yay! (yes it was very blue peter.)

Also we received our buisness cards today. But they were wrongly printed. :( so does anyone have any suggestions for what to do with 100 buisness cards that have the wrong email address on it? (we already tried to get the one which is printed on there but the person who has it lives in spain so i can't negotiate.)

The repeat...

Doctor Pepper has just re-released the "whats the worse that could happen" campaign. Why? is the question... why do agencies re- release campaigns, with such creativity going on in this country there shouldn't be a need to do this anymore!

The attempt....

Ok, sorry about the blurryness but i was trying to take a photo quickly and it went a little too quick. It seems that someone wanted to out-do fallon before the release of Foam city.... It didnt work very well....

That white bit is foam I assure you and not some snow left over from the weird weather were having! For those not aquinted with manchester, there is a small fountain that runs through a man made river in the central part of the city, but it seems the scallies got their hands on fairy liquid again.

The Naughtiness....

Naughty naughty Mexican TBWA....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080408/us_nm/mexico_absolut_dc;_ylt=AjGhiJslh0NDbgLYBMCzhqTlWMcF

The ad shown above is causing rather a lot of controversy and I can see why! 

The disappearance...

I'm worried. Yes it seems most of the creatives in London have disappeared. we've been ringing around some agencies but everyone is away from their desks! 

Although, we have just confirmed an appointment with MCBD (they sound a little crazy on the phone but thats a good thing, right?). 

The waiting game...

Were one week away from London crit week 2, and Debbie and I are playing our favourite game again... Inbox babysitting. Constantly watching for emails from agencies regarding book crits...

So far Saatchi and Saatchi, AMV BBDO and TBWA are lined up for next week with a couple more possibly confirming in the next couple of days.... heres hoping.

Portfolio night just got a bit more hectic, W+K first thing on the 8th, then Lunar BBDO later on in the day followed by portfolio night. That day's gonna be a wild one!

We might also have something lined up with karmarama, but thats still in negotiations hehe.

Apart from all that... I had a bit of a giggle today one of those evil parking attendants patrols right outside our studio window, and he was happily sticking tickets on peoples car and taking photos as evidence (he had no clue that I was taking photos of him from above). When he went back to his mopedy thing I noticed he had a huge "L" plate stuck in his windshield! they'll let anyone run around with those tickets wont they! Do you think he was learning to drive the moped or learning to be one of the most hated workers on the planet?

The change...

OK after some constructive coments (thankyou :) ) we have decided that we should change the toyota strapline of our campaign back to what we originally thought of: 'Big fun, small car' It makes more sense as its become heavily about games...

we've been working hard trying to get our book together for book crit week 2 which is coming up the 14th April... now were just waiting for a few people to get back to us and we should be sorted!!

The wednesday ritual...

Well, every wednesday (as its orange wednesday) Debbie and I take a break from advertising and head off to the cinema watching one maybe two movies and this week was Step up 2 and Horton hears a who! Step up 2 is pretty much your sequal with the same story line as the original just shaken up a bit, but the dancing was incredible much better than the original.
Horton hears a who is quite strange... very much a kids movie but strangely enough it ws quite disturbing in places! Theres a strange sort of fascist leader kangaroo, which is quite scary and at one stage they even say that its not ok for men to do ballet. Probably me being picky but for a kids movie i was quite worried! Otherwise it is really funny and really beautifully animated!

Also when I got home Wieden and Kennedy had finally agreed a date with us for a book crit yipee!!!! its meant we've to fork out for a hotel stay but thats ok!

The Remix...

Well as soon as trucks was released a lot of people were thinking how they could remix it and there are some pretty good ones!
Over on Youtube you can find the ad to the tune of:

Bon Jovi: Living on a prayer
Phil Collins: The world we live in (also to be found on Adam Richardsons blog)
Europe: The final countdown
But this one has to be the best so far....

The survival!!!

Thankfully being the easter hols, everyone was at home for april fools day but it still meant we had to watch our backs.... and we survived YAY!

Love the way that CHI are trying to pass their security breach off as an early april fools.....

"everyone at CHI knows we are all earning double that!"

I feel sorry for the poor placement person who has the email "workexperience3" They're account was where the email first appeared! They must have been cacking themselves thinking they were going to be blacklisted for life!

This is what adland came up with for the 1st...

(BMW's is talking about electricuting dogs that pee on the wheels of their new 4x4)

And this from the BBC: