It's a ten! Blogging - ideal for Creative Advertising

While David is in London at D&AD, here I am in Edinburgh on a staff development activity called Better Blogging. Here are ten reasons why Blogging is ideal for our Creative Advertising programme:

Blogging is the ideal medium for copywriters!
Like writing good endlines, you need to decide the purpose of your post, think about your target audience and language, use strategy and reduce all the unnecessary noise. [David will like this bit] It is good to use the inverted triangle model - punchy headline first, then background detail later.

Blogging is ideal for making our research quad visibly active!
As the course team has four areas of research interests; narrative, new media, copywriting and art direction - what better way to share such a (dynamic) ever-changing activity than in an ever-changing environment like a blog?

Blogging is an ideal method of (as Richard says) collecting creative fuel!
You can capture imagery, sound, narrative (anything) pretty cheaply and immediately for inspiration for your art and copy.

Blogging is an ideal way of sharing work experiences!
Thanks to Coming Soon's shout out on the IPA Gradvantage blog - I had an idea that A Day In The Life Of series would be great for sharing work placement experiences, in real time.

There are lots more reasons, which I will write up later, bye for now and good luck Tom!

Four Thought

I was listening to an item from the radio four series Four Thought about the significant role of computer games in the world today.  Games PhD researcher Mitu Khandaker  believes that the computer game extends our thinking and culture. This made me think about what Andy Fowler (Executive Creative Director of Brothers and Sisters) said recently (at an IPA creatives event) about how agencies today use New Media to create objects, games and experiences that enhance peoples lives in some way. Have a listen and share your thoughts on how you think games can extend advertising and maybe creative thinking?

Revealing Coming Soon

This years (level 6) final show is revealing in the sense it goes beyond a mere showcasing of undergraduate work. The show offers an experience that captures both the (collaborative) creative spirit and individual personalities of 19 creatives. A screening of a short documentary (see below) is the focal point and visitors are made welcome by being offered a comfortable seat (am I showing my age here?) Anyway, as this short review is tagged with the label 'social media' (a research interest of mine) the following exhibits are selected because of the social strategy employed. The Coming Soon campaign itself was seeded well, through blogging e.g. Gradvantage blog and tweeting with reach as  far as Beattie and beyond. Lily Tidy's blogtweetrepeat project illustrates her individual work ethic and the creative thinking philosophy of the course. Lily uses the headline of the day to kick start a creative thinking process. Chloe Robinson's Advertising and Travel book has some excellent case studies such as Lemon & Paeroa by Ogilvy New Zealand as Chloe describes 'a social media success and tourism figures rose to 425%'. Another book caught my eye, but perhaps not for the right reasons was So there I was by Molly Henage, I just wanted to emphasize to all less senior creative undergraduates that 'though paying attention is something you should do, everything is on the VLE' is not of course accurate or good advice - Molly merely jests! The Art Vinyls series by Chris Poots for the Cara Cowan are both on and off the wall, as the campaign is simultaneously an art installation, ambient and sound cloud. The last mention goes to Tom Birds' Birdeux Tapestry which is a material scroll-like-tapestry depicting the narrative of his creative escapades over three years, which also appears in his website where he invites creative directors to complete the tapestry with their contact details. There is so much more I wanted to say but alas it is home time and David has told me to stop blogging my time away.