New Blood

From Monday 23rd till Wednesday, some of my work will be on display at the D&AD New Blood exhibition in London.

Anyone going, feel free to look me up and take a business card!

Things with which I have done: EU

This project was for a Europe wide competition. The brief was to focus on a segment of your home country and make them more accepting of the EU.

Our choice was C2 and D demographics...basically the most anti-EU people we could find, because we like a challenge.

Basically, are key insight was that before now, the EU's work had always been credited to what ever government was in control at the time, leading the EU to appear as a new threat to these people, because they have no knowledge of their part in previously accepted legislation.

So our job was to communicate the previous work the EU had done, specifically the work to help this segment (eg. cleaner UK beaches and paid working holidays).

You can see how we did this in our book on the project here

The results were recently announced for the competition and our entry came top out of all the UK entrants and 5th in all of Europe, earning us an honourable mention. I worked on this project with Dayve Talbot, Ollie Moxham and Christiaan Huynen.

The return of the London Gentleman

It's time for the longest of my increasingly frequent trips to London.

This time I'll be doing some work experience at BBH, so I'm very much looking forward to the whole thing and hopefully I'll come back better at what I do, as well as more bankrupt.

I also hope that the weather will get just cool enough that the glorious advertising sweater vest can be displayed. I don't know how to be professional without it...

The Gina G of advertising

I posted before about an EACA Europe wide competition I was entering, with the task of making the EU more accepted in our home country.

Well, the results came in last week and it turns out my team was the highest rated entry from the UK. We also came 5th in all of Europe, earning us an honourable mention in their results publication.

We're all obviously really pleased with this, as the UK is not exactly an easy place to convince about the EU and on top of that we deliberately chose the most difficult demographic within these fine lands....just to make it interesting. Ha ha.

I'll make a big post of all the work we did for this once my final university deadlines are out of the way, but until then, au revoir!

April Tools

The April fools jokes this year seemed to crank up the budget higher than ever before.

Looks like the day is becoming an even better tool for marketing, as suddenly virals can be displayed in traditional media without losing effect.

Take this rather expensive looking fake trailer from games website IGN:



This would be a pretty great viral if it had just been released on YouTube, but thanks to April Fools day, it could be posted as a major news item on the front page of their website. When people are spending big money on virals anyway, I guess it makes sense to release them on a day where lying in advertising is not just accepted, but promoted.

Penny for your thoughts...

Some new coin designs have been unveiled then, but I'm still not sure how I feel about them. I think that's probably because the quality seems to vary across the coins, with the corners of the shield in the 10 and 2p looking a bit too awkward for my liking.

Still, I think it's hard to tell without looking at the things in my hand. Hopefully lots of them at that...

London Gentleman

Well, I shall be venturing in to London for the rest of this week, enjoying agency visits and an interview along the way.

If you see a man in a stylish sweater vest, feel free to give him a job....and some better accommodation...