Forwards

Last week ended well and this week has begun with us tasked with attempting to crack some awesome briefs.

And it feels like we're learning, which makes a change.

We've come a long way...

Chevy vs Chevy

This lovely, violent demonstration of how far safety has progressed in cars definitely hits home, and shows us how much 50 years can make a difference. Although it may not seem like a huge difference in that your car is royally buggered in both instances, I'd prefer my legs not to be pinned to my chest like a Ryanair flight, as is the case with the original. The leg room provided post-crash by the modern car looks a lot more inviting...enjoy!

Placement With 'The Fighters'

This week we started our first placement.
It's been good so far and we're excited to be given a chance to learn from an awesome group of people.

Crazy Stats

Small Thought

Issues with iTunes made us think about how we listen to music these days. Apart from iTunes, we personally use Spotify, Deezer and The Hype Machine (The last being a personal favourite.)

So Hype Machine in particular has its own online feed of songs, which randomly generates new tracks that seem to relate to the popularity of each track in musical blog land. Which to us is awesome, as most of the people that write music blogs are the people that go to tiny gigs that you can't be bothered to attend. Then you get to sift through all their hard work for little musical nuggets, making you feel like your down with all the new music and before all the commercial hype and blah. Anyway, we digress.

Our point is that Spotify or preferably the Hype machine should broadcast on a digital frequency (If they do not already.) Thus allowing you to listen to the random stream of music whilst in your car or on your snazzy new iPod with it's in-built radio. Wouldn't that be ace, then the blogs would really get a following and build an even larger community. This might already exist, but if it doesn't then maybe we should make it happen. Any thoughts on this, let us know.

Dangerous Graffiti

Graffiti by Agents of Change, secrets by MI6, all natural cola by Red Bull - creativematch

Can't help but think that in the 'real' world, these guys would have been blown out of the water within seconds. Still, the effects are pretty cool, especially with the light being drawn and being fixed, as opposed to being viewable only through a frame.


A few years ago the guys at GRL did their own 'Ghetto Matrix', using a number of cameras, interspersing stop motion with real time to nice effect. We thought that this was a pretty good attempt at bringing light drawing into reality, something which Red Bull took to the next level.

To Be In School Right Now

President Obama gave a speech to the school children across the USA, to those of all ages who are about to start the next year of their life in education. He did an excellent job. You can read the whole speech here, but below is a small section for inspiration:

"But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country."


A great speech. As for the kids, how wonderful it must be to know that others believe you can face the challenges ahead of you.

Magical TV

Not the biggest fans of most ads on TV, especially the Poo at Paul's low point. Although, we are massive fans of most of the 4creative ads and a personal favourite is below. It shows that there is still some great Tv work, even if some people say the UK is at a creative low.

Customers Think You Are C**ts

Photo via Bonnie Almedia

Recently a family member has been plagued by bad customer service, particularly by an Internet provider who tried to charge for an extra two months even after the provider had been switched.

So, this family member calls up and kindly asks if they can take this charge from the bill, yet the bloke on the other end of the phone replies with something similar to “Sorry, I can’t help you. You will just have to pay it.”

Sadly for the bloke who was in the overseas call centre, this family member likes a good argument. They then started to shout down the phone till and eventually demanded to speak to a supervisor, at which point the employee said this “Was not possible.” As you can imagine, the noise levels in the house suddenly became a lot higher and this continued for an hour or so. Eventually a rather frustrated figure walked back into the room where we all sat rather sheepishly and muttered, “They will call back tomorrow.”

The next day the phone rang and a Scottish bloke on the other end asked for the family member. And after a few minutes it was all sorted, with the man on the other end of the phone stating that “He’d be pissed off too.”

This got the cogs turning a bit and we’ve come to the conclusion that no amount of advertising will work if you have a bad product or customer service. It may well mask the flaws or get first time buyers to purchase the product, but the changes of a repeat purchase are low. To us, it seems that the best option is to work hard to make sure you have a reliable product and to secondly make sure you have a good support system for your customers. We think that there must be a way to bypass the bad training and lack of understanding that most people encounter with customer service.

With this, we’ve been throwing a few ideas around and are going to try and work on something to try and make the customer experience a little more bearable.

We’ll keep you posted on any developments.