now i ain't sayin she a gold digger

a place for you to rack up the fruits of your failed relationships.

say what you see

another recent agency visit was to razorfish to meet william lidstone and dan bonner. they had lots of advice to give and even set us a live brief to work on during the afternoon but almost as importantly to any self-respecting ad student; they had cake! william and dan started by giving us a presentation showing previous campaigns that razorfish have worked on including the dealership without cars, created for audi. i was particularly impressed by the augmented reality calendar, combining with an app, could be kept up to date month by month as new audi models came out.

william explained that razorfish offer 'expertise, experience and scale' and believes that big brands want a larger agency. he talked to us about razorfish's current approach to advertising and marketing as one of the leaders of digital and also where he saw the future of digital. we learnt about omni-channel retail which seamlessly knits together the consumers' experience across many different platforms, big data - using social, behavioural economics to build a service geared around you, multi-screening - based around the idea that certain tv is better experienced with your friends, remotely but collectively commenting, as many people already do on twitter, mCommerce - not only shopping from your phone but combining it with your in-store experience and near field communications (nfc) - the technology in oyster cards, being applied to phones, keys and other portable items.

once we'd had our fill of tech-talk, coffee and cake we split into three teams and worked on a live brief. with only 15 minutes to come up with 5 to 10 ideas based around the factors laid out about the brand we were then scored against brand new thinking:

• did we capture what the brand stands for?
• how new was the concept?
• did we apply the thinking to the components that the client had specified?

it was the first time that we had such a short time frame to work on a proposition and we were all keen to impress (not to mention the incentive of a prize for the winning team) and with the adrenalin pumping (don't judge - we're planners) i was the first up to present my group's ideas. it was nerve-wracking and although our group didn't win it was a great experience and we were provided with helpful feedback.

it was inspiring to see the way razorfish combine ideas with digital technology and was a really motivating and challenging afternoon. a big thanks to william and dan for their time... and cake.

leave it to levi's

on saturday night i met up with charlie, a friend that i was at camberwell with, who's now also pursuing a career in advertising and is studying at sca 2.0. he was telling me that diesel don't make men's jeans above a 34" waist which led me to think of this:

m&c saatchi

a few weeks ago we entered the seven floor building on golden square that is m&c saatchi. we were there to meet the deputy managing director, jeremy hemmings, who talked us through the agency mantra of ‘brutal simplicity of thought’ (incidentally a recent amazon purchase of mine). this, he explained, is based around the principle that it is easier to complicate than to simplify but when you isolate the most motivating message from a brief it has a more profound impact in communicating.

jeremy talked us through some of m&c saatchi’s previous campaigns and pointed out how they take the surt (simple universally recognisable truth), add it to the defining truth about the brand and that this is what leads to their proposition. he was proud of m&c saatchi’s cheeky approach to advertising and showed their dixons ad to demonstrate this, which had a small run but which led to a large amount of PR as they played on dixon’s underdog status encouraging people to browse in shops like selfridges and john lewis and then buy the product cheaper on the dixons website. i agree with not attempting to turn the brand into something it’s not but i’m not sure that putting down retailers who offer a different service is the way to go about it. all the same, that’s one example and it was very interesting to have the opportunity to interact with one of ad lands big names.

me at m&c

jeremy then passed us on to dusan hamlin, the joint ceo of m&c saatchi mobile, another one of the many branches that come together to form m&c saatchi. dusan spoke to us about the challenge of providing exciting content on a small screen. in his opinion 2010 was the year of the iPhone, 2011 was the year of the tablet device (pda’s) and that in 2012 smartphones are set to outsell the combined sales of pc’s and laptops, he believes that this is set to be the year for android. frustrated with my blackberry i took dusan’s prediction and marched my blackberry down to the shop last week to exchange it for an android. we wanted to know more about the future of mobile and how you sustain innovation in an area that is moving so fast. dusan went into the fact he saw the future lying in remote access and cloud based computing, also how m&c saatchi use mobile today and how this can be utilised by marketers; apps for branding and acquisitions, sms for crm (customer relationship management) and loyalty, and qr codes for retail marketing and connecting the digital world with the real world.

i got a couple of questions in, one that still bothers me is why so many advertisers put qr codes on posters on the tube. why? dusan said that some are linked to contact information, not necessarily a site but surely you still need signal to even connect to that. i don’t think qr codes will be a around for much longer and i pity the fool who has tattooed them on their body.

dusan spoke about the close relationship that they have built up with apple which means that every app that they have ever built has been listed by apple. apple have a list of 100 bloggers that they list as key influences within the mobile industry. by m&c saatchi mobile getting these bloggers to plug the product, apple will hear about it. dusan also discussed the trial and error nature of viral videos. it is best to do ten things and have two of them work rather than intensively labouring over one final piece due to the speed of change within mobile. this is something i need to relate to my own work as i have a habit of getting tied up in the finer details when i need to be just churning more work out and vetting it later.

the main message that i took away from our morning at m&c saatchi is that in industry, especially within areas such as mobile, everyone is still learning. for me this represents an exciting if not daunting challenge.

fimo freddys

as we all know, a key member of adam & eve is freddy the french bulldog. i've begun a production line of fimo freddy key rings which i'm hoping to send with my cv once i have enough.

fimo freddy

freddy