Achievement in Europe; Danielle receives academic diploma from edcom

Danielle Jackson has scooped another diploma for BA Creative Advertising at LCA, this time from Edcom (European Institute for Commercial Communications in Education), achieving third in the thesis competition.

 If you recall Danielle was a YCN winner in 2013 with her partner Kaitlin for the UGG for men campaign, but just prior to entering that competition she'd completed her dissertation Identity for Sale (follow link to see an online research poster of her study).

Danielle became a finalist having got through the national competition stage and ended with third place in the European final. This is an outstanding academic achievement, of which we are very proud. Danielle is a great all-rounder, her creativity is a product of an informed, analytical and inquisitive mind and her performance reflects the aspirations and philosophy of our course and college; success through creativity.

Edcom is an organisation that promotes excellence in the communications sector by encouraging exchanges (competitions, conferences, summer schools etc.) between academia and industry.  BA Creative Advertising became an Edcom member in 2013 through our new course leader Fabio Fragiacomo. These achievements of Danielle indicate the quality of our student’s work, and why not share this beyond UK boundries?

WELL DONE DANIELLE!! (I did warn her I'd shout about it).

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...

Advertising is not an Art form

Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs - Marlene Dietrich

Tiffiny Jenkins, asserted last night that advertising is not an art form. Jenkins was part of the panel which eloquently presented the What is good Art? debate at Leeds City Art Gallery.

A truth

Jenkins began the debate outlining that contemporary art critics and commentators are resistant to exclaim their judgements on what is good. Progressing to outline three aspects that judgements entail; a contextual understanding of art, contemporary experience and knowledge  and an understanding that good art speaks a truth. Immediately, I recalled Hegarty during a talk at LCA (2010) stating that creative advertising tells a truth in an interesting way - which is the first point I want to make in support of creative advertising being an art form.

Creative circle

Nigel Walsh unpacked the importance of context to aesthetic judgements, through reflecting back to postwar NY (Tom Wolf, Barnett Newman) and the role of the creative circle. He then pointed at an interesting paradox; our contemporary obsession with celebrity culture (artists) that's resulted in the democratisation of art (diminishing the creative circle) -qualified with the success of Tate Modern, -incidentally a brand judged as 'cool', [good ] by a panel of '39' creative professionals Campaign (2012).  The criteria they used was 'innovation, originality, style, authenticity, desirability and uniqueness' - themes discussed in the debate. 

 Negative Knowledge

Ken Hay, unpicked more complexities regarding criteria and summarised that the interaction between creatives and audiences give meaning to art and that it is this that decides what is good. A view in harmony with this IPA publication. Hay ended with an interesting assertion 'art is the negative knowledge of the world'.  Which again - made me recall Hegarty, who states that Advertising is an Art not a Science -around the time he picked up the Lion of St Mark at the international festival of creativity at Cannes.

Transcending qualities

Antonia Stowe an artist involved in the Trinity Leeds development - (congratulations again Jacob as event manager) asserted the qualities of good art, in transforming Leeds. The transcending qualities of great work such as think small by DDB - springs to mind. Our (Chris, Jane & I) contributions to the debate included are can advertising be good art? and does the creation of good art depend on a particular 'process'? You already know Jenkins' response, adding that advertising cannot transcend time - old adverts are just something to laugh at and are some low form of art -a rather habbitual view I feel. Therefore as a remedy, I recommend a read of Art and Advertising by J. Gibbons who points to creatives such as Tony Kaye who employs methods and themes often associated with high art. I also recommend that we put the panel members on the invitation list to our forthcoming exhibition; 19 degrees from 17th June.

Creative Advertising is an art form

Project manager Alex and partner Zoe (placement RAPP UK) will be pleasantly surprised with the renewed buzz surrounding the final year exhibition, which is to have a presence at New Blood. The proposition for the exhibition 19 degrees; Creative Advertising is an art form is a result of a meeting yesterday. 

Coincidently, on Tuesday, 12th March, 2013 there is a talk at Leeds City Art Gallery which revisits questions that surround aesthetic judgement. Critical awareness is one of those lovely learning objectives on all our briefs and is a skill required of Creative Directors, panels of judges, art educationalists and students - in critical evaluations.

Therefore, the Creative Advertising team intends to attend the talk - run by Leeds Salon and recommends the event to the CA community (alumni and partners). So, time to skim read a bit of Kant and purchase a ticket! That's if your not on the train to the Creative Circle event, which seems to be where most of Level 6 are heading - make sure you don't end up like the Bellarmine (image above).

The talk is connected to the Dawn Chorus exhibition at Leeds City Art Gallery and speakers include cultural commentator Tiffany Jenkins; Curator Nigel Walsh, Deputy Head of the School of Design, Univeristy of Leeds Kenneth Hay and Artist Antonia Stowe.


Image above: Renee So, Drunken Bellarmine, 2012. Wool, acrylic, oak tray frame.
Courtesy Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre London © the artist

Hospitality

Creative Advertising is host to many visitors recently, starting off with Neil Wallace (Art Director, Brass) who kindly came to our studios to give a final crit to Level 5 - Thanks Neil. Then there was Paul from Face, whose talk included some advice about working in creative (online collectives). Then Joel from Link Communications, gave us some interesting insights to experiential marketing. We are also looking forward to a visit from Trevor Beattie, in April who is setting a 24 hr brief to our L5 & L6 creatives.
Hospitality was the theme of Liverpool Biennial 2012 exploring tourism, immigration and being a host. these topics continue through recent visits to York, Liverpool, New York and L'Aquila (well virtually anyway).

Our tourist behaviour includes visiting the NRM to see 'Whatever the weather, selling train travel in winter and  the York Chocolate Story.  More recently during an annual visit (18th Feb), to Liverpool Tate / Albert Dock and  Port Sunlight we came across Thresholds an exhibition that continued the hospitality theme '...throughout all the works ...runs a question of place and identity, name and belonging.

A piece that caused some interest was Royal Ascot (1994) by Mark Wallinger - The video depicted the royal carriage at different years of the races, where the Queen replicated her movements where the BBC seemed to use the same editing formula year-on-year. The repetition explored British identity, class, rituals and history. Interesting stuff for those that need to target audiences with creative ideas...

Critical Mash-up 2012

This is a very brief plenary of the critical mash-up event hosted in the level five studio. The main topics were social media, traditional media, identity, psychology and creativity. Perhaps social media being the most dominant but with a variety of different focus points, such as 'the viral', mobile advertising and location-based advertising. Identity ranged from branding to gender and even to advertising itself. There were some excellent examples of  triangulation where different sources representing a range of viewpoints were used to interrogate an interesting debate. There were many successes where a range of critical theories were used to critically analyse and evaluate an issue from Althusser to more contemporary critical theory. There were some new phrases used to describe the nature of contemporary audiences such as on-demand society, producers (as opposed to consumers). Conversation and collaboration cropped up a lot as well as new challenges to creativity. One of the many insights that came out of this sharing of  critical activities was that social or media has a new, sometimes very physical relationship to 'producers'. Anyway, many thanks to all the delegates for contributing to this event, which was quite difficult to summarise (due to my depreciating memory skills). So, please lend a hand by leaving a mention of the many interesting exchanges omitted.

Notes from Liverpool

Innocence and Experience is the title of an art exhibition curated by Marianne Faithful, currently showing at Liverpool Tate. It's an interesting collection of art, which in part follows a biographical narrative with references to music Ska's not dead by Jim Lambie, 2001 and the tastes and influences (Magritte, Dadd & Blake)of the sixties pop culture scene. Through exploring the exhibition I found that there is more to Faithful's career than being part of the 60s pop aristocracy, as I was unaware of her long-involvement with galleries. She was also one of the first to experiment with music video with Jarman, 'an art form that would have a profound influence on popular culture following the launch of the MTV channel in 1981' (Tate, 2012). Linked to the exhibition (part of the same series) was a collection curated by Philip Treacy called

Conversation Pieces, within which was untitled (double portrait) 1991 by Felix Gonzalez-Torres. This piece was a pile of posters 'available for viewers to take away ad infinitum. The image featured, the doubled touching/overlapping circle, represents one of the most important themes in Gonzalez-Torres’s work: the pairing of two like people in togetherness.' Maybe it could represent Art and Copy?, anyway true to the artists intentions I took a poster and placed it near our studios. The piece for me represents how creatives can re-think how people can interact with art. Perhaps, it may encourage you creatives to re-think how audiences  interact with ads?  Please leave some notes of your day in Liverpool.