Awwwww, ain't they cute?

Wishing my partner in crime, Luke and our goody buddy Alfred Malmros the best of luck in Cannes this week. Enjoy the yachts, parties and booze! (Oh and cheers for leaving me with all the work, you monobrowed bastard.)

An unusual update

Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you, we've finally managed to get a quick post in.

Last week we started working at Sony music and will be for here for several weeks. It's a pretty exciting project to be involved in and we're hoping that it'll be our first piece of work that really becomes big.

We'll try to provide a few updates.

A Grown Up Meeting

Last weekend Luke had the interesting job of documenting Innocent's AGM with the use of an iPhone taped to a big orange helmet.


You can see the photos that were captured here, along with a few tweets to add a bit of context. What you might not see are all the faces of the people he walked past on the journey from his house to Fruit Towers or hear the laughter of the people on the tube. That he will be keeping to himself.

The Consumer Cam as it was named, was dreamt up by the gang at RIG. They were asked to make sure the show the day from the consumers point of view, instead of what Innocent wanted to put across. Something that really shows the nice human side to the company and their attempts to be honest in what they do.

The day itself was really rather good, with tasting sessions for new recipes, Q+A sessions with the founders and fun presentations to understand the goings on behind the scenes.

More of the highlights can be seen on the Innocent blog and a video below of all the pictures sped up.

Well who's a lucky boy then?

He's a man's man, according to Foursquare anyway

As well as having been crowned Cyber king of the Guardian competition, Luke was also deemed most manly man of all by FCUK, who were using Foursquare checkins to judge by. In a busy, busy two weeks, he graced with his presence, Wembley stadium, Charlton's mighty Valley, and the not so mighty Selhurst park, as well as a host of burrito joints and pubs. The cunning stunt also decided to name my house in tribute to someone dear to my heart, for which he will eventually pay dearly. As he deceived FCUK of his true manly actions, he has been instructed to buy me some nice socks to appease me for the time being. The joys of being in a creative team, eh? Here's the article. And here are our stalk co-ordinates Luke, Wilf.

UPDATE: Having worked with Luke for 2 years now, I was shocked and horrified to see this in a phone box up in town one day, I am considering contacting FCUK to have his title removed as this is clearly not manly behaviour and he's been hiding this secret life from all of us...

Shocking, I know, but I guess we all have secrets...

In other news, the 'boy' has also been selected to be the "outsider" at the Innocent AGM, which is happening this coming Saturday. He'll be giving us a bigger report on that after it's all happened. Follow the meeting on Innocent's Twitter accounts here and here.

We've been

Enjoying spending some time in the company of other creative teams, attending industry events, competitions and generally working on our book. It’s been a busy two months, full with highs and lows but it’s been fun that’s for sure. The main highlights are below, some of which may be old news for some readers who follow our twitter.

UK Young Lions winners 2010

Luke entered the Guardian Cannes Young Lions competition with our good friend Alfred who is a very switched on lad (Wilf could not enter as he works freelance and is not based in an agency). They did well, claiming a runners-up spot in the print category. Happily, they won the Cyber category with the idea shown in the film below. It means they are heading to Cannes to compete against teams from across the world and to show the world what the UK has to offer.

Centrepoint - Websites Sleeping Rough from Alfred Malmros on Vimeo

The Newspaper Society

A few weeks ago we also attended the ‘Young team of the year’ competition (Run by the Newspaper Society). We were given a brief to produce a campaign for Strongbow that would run in local media. We had to present our idea to a panel of top judges by the end of the day and the experience of generating ideas in a room full of other teams was pretty rewarding. After speaking to most of the teams, it seems like there was a very similar thought in each teams idea but the teams that won managed to quickly convert it into an original execution. Afterward, some lovely people with cameras asked us all to explain our idea which you can see below (Best to click through to watch it on YouTube).

Err, yeah.....

We didn’t win but the two teams that did were given the chance to go and face the rest of Europe on another brief at ‘BestYet team of the year’. And we can now report that one of the UK teams (Gavin and Julia) won the competition.Below you can watch a little piece of content that the Newspaper Society have produced to generate views of the work and interest in future competitions (Again best to click through to watch it on YouTube).

An inspiring project

This is one of the best ideas we’ve seen in a long time and it’s spurred us into writing a post on here again.

Introducing Robin of Shoreditch, a collective of people that are using their talent to help the people of Haiti, in the best way they can. They've developed the 100 Brands project. An idea that we should all inspire to create once in our careers, an idea that helps people for a good reason. We cannot fully do it justice, so it’s best to watch the video below as to fully understand how important it is as a project.

The 100 Brands Project from Robin of Shoreditch on Vimeo.

You can view each idea they produce on the 100 brands project channel and get a more in-depth look at how the project progresses on their blog.

You can donate money directly to the project here. Let's try and held those in need, rather than bitching about an ash cloud. Spread the message as wide as you can and lets help them get the attention of those brands.

Look what Garth said on twitter

Garth crooks sent this tweet out shortly after the Chelsea game. It's since been deleted but we've got a screen grab that we took last night. He makes a valid point.

Lara Croft changed our lives

Luke wrote an article for our university alumni magazine, here is for those of you lucky enough to have not studied at our campus:





It turns out that we have something that past students have lacked: we are digital natives. We’ve grown up with the exhausting coverage of reality TV and shared our lives online through Instant Messenger, Facebook and MySpace. We have a different understanding of communications. Mine personally changed the moment I explored the globe with Lara croft on my games console. It was this work, along with many others that pushed expectations further; since then I’ve become easily distracted and I’m not the only one.

It’s become second nature for many of us to use laptops or phones while watching television, or to even play online games and talk to strangers around the world. It’s changed the way we interact with others and interpret media and brands are learning this all too well. In the past, the consumer was faced with a barrier of print or television advertising that enforced the brand’s image. Now we use the Internet to find out what really stands behind that wall in an instant.

Technology has forced brands to re-think how they are perceived and act accordingly with smarter, adaptive and considered communications emerging. The best examples of these are Whopper Sacrifice, the Facebook application, Nike+ – the running tool that uses iPods to motivate the user and monitor their performance – or Fiat eco: Drive which allows drivers to use data analysis to understand how they can drive economically and reduce their damage to the environment.

These are compelling, long-term ideas that create publicity through their innovative and useful nature. It’s a reflection of the development in the industry that these ideas blur the lines between product design and advertising. Ideas now run along multiple narratives at once, with consumers interacting in real time across media, gaining an extra understanding of the brand in each medium. And we are skilled in this very understanding through years of gaming, watching television, surfing the internet and reading.

This is what forward-thinking agencies are looking for: an ability to create ideas that work in real and online worlds, but, most importantly, merges them together. It’s a mindset that many of our generation display, yet fail to harness. And the way to do this is best summed up by Samuel Beckett “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better”. Yes, we should experiment with what we know, learn as we go, and adopt techniques as we have new technology. To do this, we need to learn the skills and software required. Learning how to code or to capture film is more important than ever. It’s this DIY attitude that will provide experience, understanding and sharpen our ideas for the current climate. What’s more, through building sites, hacking technology and creating content, you could become essential to agencies looking to identify with modern consumers. Just remember: it started with playing games, watching films or reading, and it’s important to keep that sense of fun every time you experiment.

Chat Roulette

chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

Made up of boys, girls and perverts.

Thing’s we haven’t tried but one day hope to understand

It’s been a while since we’ve written anything of great length on here. Partly due to getting a bit tired of wanting to take our thoughts any further than our heads. Yet we’ve also spent a bit of time trying to do a few ‘actual’ things rather than just noting down thoughts on here.

It’s become clear that you can sometimes suck all the life out of ideas by over-analysing and for any creative’s that cannot be a good. It’s much better when you just understand and enjoy the human aspects of what makes something good, rather than ripping it to shreds, advert or otherwise.

As an aspiring team, we’ve tried to always have an opinion and stay open to viewpoints (Neil Perkin once wrote about how important it can be to employ young people who blog). What we’ve been thinking about recently is how we can put this enthusiasm to good use. Show that we understand what’s expected and then transfer that learning into our work in a less obvious manner. Simply, show what we’ve understood from our experiences outside of the industry.

This desire could well have come from working outside of university for a while, with Wilf working freelance on web and design projects and Luke learning his trade as a copywriter at Tag. It’s proved eye- opening, you become keen to use your skills for outside projects as well (Even if we do spend most of our spare time working on our book).

It’s taught us that there are a lot of ways to express our creativity than what you are taught in university; the most rewarding of these is investing it in something you feel passionate about. To help us sum it up better, here is a nice video by Nick Roope where he says this about an Orange project “Don’t tell them together we can do more. Show them together we can do more”.

In any case, it seems that it can only benefit us if we attempt new personal projects and experiences. As it’s only with experience that you really progress.

Useful

Some rather nice little notes on each of the slides. It can be easy to forget the simple things at junior level so it's well worth spending a minute over to make sure you don't loose track of what's important.

Handy tips for creative thinking

View more presentations from Dave Birss.

Tumblr Gold

Sometimes Tumblr contains complete junk but it does uncover some absolute nuggets.

Like below.

We heart The Teens' Speech

The Teens' Speech by Poke is really rather good. It was a piece created to inspire younger people to think about their future and to also persuade adults to take more care in their actions, as one day these young people will inherit it. Not to mention, show that these kids are not just a mass of aggressive hoods.

Below is the final film that was shown on the myspace homepage and on youtube. There are many extra pieces on the blog, in particular these excellent findings and Poke man Andy Whitlock has got some nice stuff on his site about what they had set out to do.

The post that started last year and won’t end till the next

We had intended to try and write about our favourite work from last year in quite some depth but that’s fallen by the wayside due to heavy drinking and bouts of food induced coma’s. Instead here is a small list with a few slapdash words.


whopper sacrifice – Offering you a simple reason to take annoying people of your friend list and changing behaviour on Facebook.

Baker tweet – Real time updates so that you can get the freshest baked foods. Not to mention some great writing.

Chalkbot – Writers were able to inspire riders during the tour and promote the Livestrong cause.

Facebook showroom – Using Facebook’s features to spread news of the Malmo store opening.

Best job in the world – Promoting tourism to Australia with a whole load of PR behind it and a very effective idea.

Philips Carousel – Great piece of work but not sure how much it actually sells the product as there isn’t even much association.

McDonalds favourite – Amazing writing and pretty bang on what Maccy d’s is all about.

Monopoly city streets – Got off to a bad start but its good that the brand is experimenting with digitalising its games.

The Zimbabwean trillion dollar billboard – Just a very powerful idea.

The Obama campaign - Simply the most advanced campaign for government ever held. Embracing the views of the people as well as clearly stating his views for the world to review.

The Newspaper club – Taking digital design into the real world. Holding a physical piece of paper when you read can be a very nice experience and just look at wired magazine for an example of an enriched physical experience.

via chinmay22

As for this year, we’re not making any resolutions or predictions. Instead it’s more about making sure that we take part in lots of random acts in both advertising and life as a whole. Taking inspiration from Dave Trott here and his stories that show just how much you can learn if you throw caution to the wind. Guess we'll have to see how this has gone by the end of the year.

It feels best to use the words of a great man to bring it all into context.

“Don’t look for the next opportunity. The one you have in hand is the opportunity.” Paul Arden.

Sony pitch win

Photo via Ian Muttoo

Over the last month or so we've had the pleasure of spending of our spare time helping out at Anomaly London. Today the news broke that they have won they have won the two-way pitch with Fallon for the Sony Europe account. A more informative news story can be found here.

We've been lucky to share some time with Johnny Vulkan (Who inspired Luke to write his dissertation on branded utility and the future ethics of advertising.) Mike Byrne and Paul Graham; assisting and listening to them work during the pitch, which has been very valuable. Seeing the application of their strategy through to creative ideas. What's more, we even managed to get an idea presented and overall its been rather rewarding.

Its also interesting to look at how they solve business problems overall, rather than just create adverts. So we look forward to seeing it come together. It can be summed up by this quote from Ben Moore (Sony VP of Communications)

"We are looking for great strategic thinking that leads to great creative execution. To get there we were looking for a new advertising model that puts brilliant people, who instinctively understand digital but who have an agnostic view, at the heart of our approach. Anomaly will give us that."

Thanks to Everyone at Anomaly London for the late night grub and words of wisdom and a special thanks to Alfred for his continued support.