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.

Day in the life of...Creative Interns (Jac & Chris)

We are a creative team interning at Mortierbrigade, Brussels.

I guess the place to start with our particular internship is before we even get into the agency.

While we are here we are living in the Mortierbrigade Hotel. It's a big house inside the agency's compound (it used to be a brewery). It has three different rooms on different floors and they get nicer the higher you go. They have different themes and it's a pretty cool place to stay, check it out here http://www.mortierbrigadehotel.com/

So to the actual day. We start off with possibly the shortest commute ever. Five seconds of arduous walking gets us from the hotel's front door into the agency.

The Belgians are fairly laid back with arrival times, 9.15-9.45 seems to be the ok time to turn up. However we like to represent the British 'kill yourself before you're 40' work ethic and usually get in before 9.

The first point of contact is the bar. Time to get the coffee going and find out what the word is on the advertising streets.

We then walk up the stair case of lights to where the creative teams and planners have their desks. We have our own over sized desk complete with faulty but comfortable chairs.

The obligatory check of the e-mails/blogs/social networks then happens. If we have a brief going we will work separately on it until about 11.30. The office is pretty open plan and everyone keeps the chatter to a quiet hum. So when we need to spar loudly over some ideas it's time to go to a client meeting room or outside.

As far as the briefs go, we have been put on a wide range of brands and medias. We have worked on script writing for a 'come dine with me' style TV spot. Guerilla and ambient ideas for a beer brand and indie radio station. Art direction for a snack print ad and copy for T-Shirts for a bank's summer party.

Our afternoon to evening consists of getting ideas presentable in some form for a review at the end of the day. This is either with a creative team who we are working with or the pant-wetting experience of presenting to the top dog, Jens Mortier. Don't get me wrong, he is one of the friendliest guys you'll meet. But your genius idea starts to lose its glow when you realise you are presenting it to a man who has more Lions than the Serengeti.

This routine is punctuated with requests to 'image source' for print ads and layout tasks.

We leave the agency at around 18.30 and sometimes head off to a bar to sample yet another of Belgium's thousands of beers.

Day in the Life

Well done to level six students on their Coming Soon mention on the IPA Gradvantage blog. While I was having a look for the posting (which is coming soon ha ha) I noticed that the Gradvantage blog has a 'day in the life' tag. So, all the postings under the tag are written by students who've been on placements in agencies playing a role e.g. Art Director. Such posts will give insights into the experience of creative advertising, which, I think you may agree could be very valuable to you. Also, I thought this is a great way of using our course blog.  I mentioned this to Jennifer (L5) who has just come back from BBH and Jack and Chris (L6) who are currently undertaking an intern at Mortierbrigade, so they can launch our Day in the life series. So here's how we can do it, while on placements keep a blog of your experiences, then simply copy and paste one of these posts onto the course blog.  Over to you Jennifer, Chris and Jack...

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.

 

A Little History of The Word - One for the Copywriters.

 I am currently reading A Little History of The World by E. H. Gombrich. You may recognise this author if you've studied a history of art, as he wrote the classic text book The Story of Art. Anyway, like the title suggests, Gombrich's earlier text History of The World, which he wrote in six weeks! Anyway, within this is a small chapter called I C-A-N R-E-A-D, which explains the connection between the construction of contemporary and ancient words. The origins of the English alphabet stem from the Phoenicians a wealthy and creative civilization based in modern day Lebanon. They were maritime merchants who took their culture across the Mediterranean. 'For Phoenician craftsmanship was known throughout the world...most popular of all their goods was their dyed cloth, especially the purple' (Gombrich, 1985, p30). Gombrich suggests that through inventing a series of signs where each represented a sound 'and that just twenty-six of those signs were all you needed to write every conceivable word' (Gombrich, 1985, p29 the Phoenicians invented 3000 years ago the most convenient way to communicate. A tool that you copywriters still use today. Did you know that our alphabet originated from Lebanon before you read this post? If not where did you think it originated?