All in a golden afternoon with Futurerising...

 

 On Friday 5th February, creative advertising at LCA were given a treat; an event designed by Futurerising - where lots of authentic, no nonsense advice was given by Jeremy Garner (CD Weapon7, Michaela Nicchiotti (Creative, Cheil Worldwide) and Eddie Fisher (Creative, W+K) , along with an hour 'hit'.  Read on to reflect on this truly golden afternoon...

 

After a warm-up outlining the structures of the creative advertising industry by Donald (futurerising), Jeremy offered five words 'to keep things easy'; Risk, Trust, Oppose, Story and Absorb. He illustrated each point with reference to a campaign; with Risk he gave us the catch - Trust - smart skate for two , Oppose - a bit of 180 degree thinking for UNICEF , Story - Dynamo vs Coulthard adding  "always storyboard stuff", asserting storytelling as especially important today where media is so fragmented . For Absorb he urges us to break outside the industry in order to keep our creativity interesing, giving examples of his other creative projects paintings (Jelly Buckingham) and writing thrillers (alias, Seth Garner).

 

The break out session gave an exciting buzz to the afternoon, where LCA creatives worked in teams on either 'UP' by Jawbone, the Nike Fuelband or Fitbit. After which teams had a mere 90 seconds to pitch their idea infront of their peers and the three professionals. The winners; Cicely, Bill, George & Harvey (featured) came up with an interesting idea for UP where mums are made redundant with a social media element involving P45s being sent via Mumsnet. Congrats again and we trust you enjoyed the wine!

 

Michela offered us some insightful creative  solutions with new media, from not getting your hands dirty while baking cakes (with motion sensors on the ipad to turn pages on recipes) to setting challengs with  bake brave . There was also a romantic idea with the message involving geo taging notes a place to the one you love and sending the location via google maps for (only) them to find. Michela advises lots of book crits, which gives exposure and like Jeremy, to work on a personal (creative) project.  

 

 Finally, Eddie gave a sizzling presentation on approaching agencies and turning  placements into jobs. Eddie and his creative partner had about 10 placements in 18mths and then were offered a job by VCCP creating things like the galloping Cow; from there they moved to W+K. He then offered six principles which conflate into; getting a job as a creative needs hard graft, get as many placements as possible, keep developing your book, get the timing right, don't get complacent (kills creativity) and keep your creative curiosity going by being a sponge (echoing Fink, Hegarty and Garner) - generally do the opposite of what is 'usual', reading genres you wouldn’t usually choose* etc. - with an aim to become a well-rounded creative.  Other advice which we've heard before was 'be nice' -become a crucial member of a team (this takes time and lots of placement experience), manage time and he ended by reminding students, level 6 (3rd years) they have 17 weeks left and the level 5, 54 weeks to 'smash it'.

 

 Subsequently (6^th Feb) Fisher sent an email (forwarded to you by Fabio titled useful links from Eddie Fisher) – read it and check out these photos of our afternoon. We know each of you took something from this event (for some, red wine) which is perfect timing for the Personal and Professional Practice modules (that is the advice, not the wine).

  

*Following Fisher's advice, why not join our course bookclub to read stuff you may not usually choose? We’re currently reading 'The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult our next meeting is 24th April in the green studio (with windows). Emily Hall (Level 4) had a great idea to launch the club with wet sponges detailing the next book, which lends itself to a bit of user generated content -  we look forward to the videos...