Crunch time.

So crunch time is here. With one deadline coming up on 14th April and another mid May, time is beginning to feel like it is slipping away. This year seems to have flown over, and the prospect of graduating in July is exciting yet scary. Its now going to be my time to shine, to step into the big, bad world and make a name for myself within advertising.

Although I am a little anxious of what the future will hold for me, I do know one thing, that I have learned a great deal over the course of the year, and I feel ready for industry. From learning how to film a TV advert, to planing out a project, and even how to use the Adobe suite confidently. I know I have the right tools, its just about how well I use them and the effort I put in.
Recently my partner and myself had the great fortune of securing an interview with David Aylesbury for placement at Robson Brown, one of the top Advertising Agencies in Newcastle, and I am hoping we get it. We will be pulling together some of our strongest work to form a short portfolio to help us gain placement. If we work hard enough here, hopefully this would lead to our first job. With the work almost over for the course and an interview coming up, I can honestly say I don't think the year could have gone any better.

So to finish off my (temporary) farewell, as I turn all my time to course work and deadlines, another ad of the week for Heineken, named The Entrance, enjoy!

My ad of the week. 'Yes' for Lucozade Sport

So it has been a while since I have shared my favourite ad of the week, I saw this while reading Campaign. The new ad for Lucozade features Rap star Tinie Tempah, Irish World Champion boxer Katie Taylor and Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker. The first by Grey since picking up the business last year. The ad uses the slogan ‘yes’ for the first time.
It was shot in LA, in a dark underground tunnel where Tinie Tempah performs a remixed version of his ‘Simply Unstoppable’ track whilst Barker drums and Taylor boxes. I think it works so well, using the different activities such as singing, drumming and boxing where you would need an energetic boost, but through putting the cool, underground twist, and celebrity face to each activity, Lucozade has a great campaign on its hands.

Here's the ad, enjoy!

My return since London.

To sum London up in a word. Inspirational. The trip with my FdA Creative advertising college class opened my eyes. Although I have visited agencies in London in the past I felt this time something was different. Maybe it is because my age, experience and understanding of the industry have all evolved over the past year so I now fully appreciate the stature of the agency visits. London is a place I have now set my sights on, a place where I feel it necessary to live in order to make the most out of my passion and my career, advertising.

The first visit we had on Monday 28th March was to Mother London. A.k.a. my dream agency. We had been asked prior to this visit to produce a campaign for MoneySuperMarket.com, to creative team, Tim McNaughton and Freddy Mandy.

Tim McNaughton


Freddy Mandy


On arrival I was very nervous but as the creative entered the room, I relaxed immediately, they were not fire breathing, life threatening scary creatives, they were just normal guys who happened to have a creative mind. We all separately presented our work, and fortunately with my own and Amy's I did feel it went rather well. They gave back constructive criticism so we were able to come away and work on it again with a better sense of direction. They felt the core idea was 'really nice' and very campaignable, but that the use of Shrek was not advisable as the brand would want their own characters. This is something myself and Amy had feared, so Tim and Freddy's points confirmed this fear was a truth. So what we can now do with the idea is to go back to the core idea we had, and just make the characters ourselves. As neither of us are illustrators, nor would we illustrate ourselves if creating an actual campaign, so using a student from one of the Illustrating courses may be a tool we could use. As they would get the credit for the illustration but our idea would be demonstrated well for others to understand. Hopefully the team at Mother will appreciate these changes, as we hope to follow up our visit with an email, which will allow us contact with them, for how to improve our book, and their thoughts on it. If we can get to the top level which they look for in a creative, then hopefully a placement could come out of this, impossible, maybe, am I going to try, definitely! I will just make sure myself and Amy stand by the tips they gave us on how to create a good portfolio, be original, have a wide range of brands, put in ideas that aren't even related to a campaign if it shows you think creatively, and stick at it.
Below is the initial work myself and Amy came up with,which we will now apply the changes to and produce professionally. Along with one of the TV ads Tim and Freddy worked on:

Print Adverts




TV



One of TIm Mcnaughton & Freddy Mandys TV adverts.



The next agency we visited was RKCR/ Y&R on Tuesday 29th March. This was quite a different atmosphere, not in a bad way at all, but just a different atmosphere, here we sat down for lunch first to chat before presenting, which I must add was a very nice lunch! Almost comical, with us all being so tight with money as students, we were scoffing down any food we could get our hands on for free! We then began with the criticism on our work for an Interflora brief, which creative team Andy Forrest and Nicola Hawes set us. They were a really nice team, you could instantly see the understanding they have of each other, which is really nice to see, as I feel it is what me and Amy have got the benefit of, through knowing one another for several years. It was funny to see our personalities almost mirrored, Andy being the more thoughtful, not quiet, but yet considered speaker (me), whereas Nicola had the more open personality who was more outspoken (Amy). Neither with bad qualities, but those personalities matched well. They then went onto give a little advice on our work. While they didn't think our campaign was bad, they thought we could do much better. They felt the use of info graphics could look pretty, but it was non-emotional, and as the product was flowers, that it should have an emotional answer. One suggestion I made was if we should go back to a previous idea which we had disregarded. After an explanation they said yes. So we will work on that to go into our our portfolios.
One comment that stuck in my mind from Y&R is that the creative team said that in my portfolio I should never have just one strategy for an advertising campaign, even if the other ideas are just scribbled down, if the person I am getting a crit from does not like it, I can quickly explain other thoughts incase they really like those and those one off ideas are the ones which get me in the agency. I shall never disregard an idea again! They also gave a great example for how to put creative thoughts into a portfolio even if they are non-advertising related. They had someone come in with an idea to prevent drink spiking through having a round bottomed bottle so you were not able to put your drink down on a night out. Now I am not quite sure what creation myself and Amy can come up with, but theres our competition, lets hope we beat it. The last point from RKCR/ Y&R that I will remember is when Nicola Hawes stated 'You have to learn to kill your babies'. This is a very valuable quote which is in reference to those creatives who get too precious with their own creations, sometimes if enough people tell you your idea doesn't work, it doesn't and you must learn to let it go.

On the same day we went to visit Amy Ward at Ogilvy. Unfortunately she was off due to illness but we had two lovely guys who gave us a tour of the agency. I was shocked to find how large the agency was. But also I was shocked to find how call-centre like the place was. Although I do not mean this in a mean way, I do mean that the main offices that were for creatives, did not seem creative at all. It seemed like the sort of place where a creative is just a small cog in the big machine, which does not appeal to me at all. One part I did find very interesting though was the Ogilvy Digital Lab, this had innovative technologies which can and will be used in advertising or marketing in the future. It had 3d tv, interactive gaming, 360 degree advertising so you can see the advert from any view, and LED advertising so in the future advertising can even be illuminous within magazines. They also had a newly invented 'Sticky Bits' app which I shall definitely be looking at when considering medias for a campaign. It allows a barcode to be scanned and then photos or videos to be uploaded or 'stuck to that barcode' so other users who scan the same barcode can view that content.

Then on Wednesday 30th March we visited Debra Quantrill at ASA, Advertising Standards Authority. Now I did judge before going there, and assume as it would be based around rules, that it would maybe drag. But I was very wrong. I truly enjoyed it! They showed some great examples to when adverts are at risk of being banned, should be, or should not be due to a complaint. I have two examples below.
Burger King. I Am Man.

Now if you look at this advert, there were several points which people complained about. Women felt it derogatory due to the reference to 'chick food' and the general public complained about the false size of the burger. It was these comments that entailed an investigation and resulted in the ad being banned. As it would have cost Burger King more money than it would have been worth to re-shoot the entire TV commercial to make these changes. All in all, I will be a careful creative when it comes to checking what is or isn't allowed.

Next is a positive example of an alcohol advert which does work. Due to the strict regulations on alcohol, now you must not insinuate that alcohol is needed to have a good time. This advert ticks all the boxes and although old, makes me laugh!


Lastly on Wednesday 30th March was our visit to Saatchi and Saatchi to visit Suzanne Hails, an independent creative. Although it was a very quick visit as she had a lot of work on, she did put as much constructive information into the visit as possible. Being from Newcastle also it was nice to see a regional girl had made the leap of faith, and that this had worked. The brief we worked on for Suzanne was for San Miguel. I was very pleased with the outcome, she felt it was a nice idea but just the the purely copy based ads we had done should focus on the surroundings rather than the drink which would give it more range and longevity. I completely agreed with this as soon as she brought the point to life. So to work upon this myself and Amy shall build upon it to ammend it for our portfolio.

All in all, I loved London. I have returned with a clear idea of what I want, where I want to go, what I want to see and how to do it.

The role of a writer.

On the 24th of March my class had a very interesting visit from Chris Rickaby, Copywriter. To name drop a few, he has worked at DDB London, Robson Brown in Newcastle and then in 1999 Different, where he worked for quite some time. One of his favourite recognitions as part of a team at Different was from Campaign 'proof that creativity exists outside the capital'. This just shows the level to which he is working to, and how important it was for myself to learn from him. Although I am predominantly an Art Director and my partner the Copywriter, we do change roles often so it is important to have the knowledge of how to write well.

He began by giving a presentation on 'The role of a writer'. He felt that traditionally the role of a Copywriter was to create ideas, be a strong team player, craft headlines, craft script/copy/web copy, and to copy check. But he now believed that the role of a writer these days is to still have knowledge of the traditional aspects but to also be able to understand cross-platform and transmedia story telling with the evolution of technology. This is something which I found quite interesting, and I will be looking at the range of different medias which can now be used in copywriting, at least I can say I am currently using a main new media for writing, this blog!

Chris then went onto to talk about one of the most famous Copywriters of our era, named John Caples, a.k.a. 'The Sizzle King'. He told us that in an advert 'Your not selling the sausage...what your selling is the sizzle'. Now this line I thought was perfect, it sums up advertising exactly. It means that you are not selling a product, your selling the thing that is either going to benefit you or someone else. An example of this is one of John Caples greatest adverts, as you will see below:

John Caples himself:


For its time it was truly inspirational, he was able to tap into how to sell something as boring as piano lessons. The piano lesson was the sausage, and the social poise from being able to play the piano was the sizzle. John Caples retired at the age of 82, a true sign of his dedication to his work, and an inspiration.

Chris Rickaby then when on to explain another of his tips, 'write with the reader', you must get a grasp of who your selling to. An example he gave to us about this was his experience as a junior copywriter working for DDB, his creative director Tony Cox, would come around to take a look at how he would be getting on with the briefs he had been given. More than often his response to their work would be 'its a bit cup and saucer', what he meant by this was that the visual and the copy were telling exactly the same thing. He was trying to tell them that they must compliment one another but not say the same thing. An example of this where Chris got this very right was a campaign he worked on to stop Mothers in Sunderland from smoking while pregnant, as you will see below.



The visual (saucer) hooks you but then the copy (cup) connects the visual with the information. Which gives it the emotional power. What I learned from this is to not use information which the audience can work out for themselves and I shall this apply this to future work through analysing critically what I create.

Lastly Chris advised us in how to have a practical approach to working in a team. A great example, as to how two people are better one, he gave was to look at IQ's:

Stephen Hawking IQ 157



Ant and Dec IQ 240



Although separately Ant and Dec would have very low IQ's, together they beat Stephen Hawkins hands down! This is why in Advertising it is a considerably big advantage to have two heads work on a brief. Thankfully I do have a partner so we are able to work this way!

When working in a team he advised a way of working on each brief no matter what the time scale.

Step 1: Free uncritical brainstorm. Write everything down.
Step 2: Critical review. Sort out the wheat and the chaff. Refer back to brief and pick winners.
Step 3: Develop winners. Eject what's not working and think about other media.
Step 4: Perfect development. Craft headlines etc. Agree your internal pitch to your Creative Director.


Overall I found the entire talk very helpful. Chris Rickaby was a lovely guy who gave some useful tips and insights into the industry I had not heard before. I will most definitely be considering them in future campaigns I create, if it means I can get the same kind of success he and his role models have had.

Acceptance.

So a couple of weeks ago now I had an interview for BA (Hons) Creative Practice (Top-up). If accepted, this would mean I would be completing a full degree whilst also gaining skills in how to get a job in my chosen creative sector, Advertising. I prepared several things for this interview, a full presentation of my work to demonstrate my skills in Advertising, a short statement which answered two questions given to me from the course which would show my academic skills, my creative CV and a statement was given about me from my current tutor.

In all honesty, from some reason it was the most nervous I have ever been for an interview, and I don't know why. Applying for the BA (Hons) Creative Practice (Top-up) is something I would like to have had the option of doing, but was not something I was relying on. A full degree I have been told is not necessary to get a job in Creative Advertising and as a job is what I ultimately hope to gain, if I am to gain a job first that is what I shall take. But as I may not gain a job before September I would rather a year with purpose or plan, than waste a year searching for a job. So I entered the interview fully prepared with the physical work I had been asked to bring, so it was just about mentally preparing myself, and I hoped that would be enough.

When I sat down for interview I noticed the course leader's lack of emotion to anything I had to say. Which made me increasingly nervous. It may sound egotistic, but I have never had an interview which I have failed, and therefore never really an interview where I haven't been able to say that it didn't go really well. I came away from it very confused as to what the interview result would be. I'm aware that this will have been due to the fact that she will not have been able to show any kind of emotion due to the volume of students coming in to apply, but this was most definitely a learning curve for me. Not every interview goes the same.

Especially as Advertising agencies will see students day in, day out, I am sure they will have this same approach to interviews, which I experienced. So in future I will prepare not to be shocked and therefore nervous by any unexpected emotion displayed by the interviewer. Fortunately an email last week informed me that I was successful in the interview which I am very pleased about but it still means I must work on my interviewing skills. While I have accepted, my partner and me will be looking for jobs over the summer incase an offer became available. As a full-time job would be my preferred route now so I can begin making my mark in the industry!

A change of colour.

Recently after much deliberation, I changed the colours of my partners and my website. We both felt the original colours looked slightly dated and just didn't suit us. So now we have used a slightly softer palette, which I now feel 100% happy with. As a perfectionist when I am not entirely happy about something it will niggle me until it is changed. The colours now represent my understated, quietly confident approach to things while also representing Amy's loud approach to work. I am still very happy with the overall logo as although it is very bold, we are both very confident people in our own way so need something the represent this.

I am hoping with the branding used, when looking at getting a job in an agency, we can show this alongside our Twitter and Facebook account which will let them know we take ourselves very seriously when it comes to work. We feel the look now fits us as a team, while also looking modern and not too busy that it will overshadow the work. Fingers crossed it's not just us who think this! Below are the new colours, also take a look at our revised website at www.maslewskibowden.co.uk :

London!

So next week my class and I travel to London to visit some of the top agencies! I cannot wait, the live briefs have been announced and we shall be working on some to take down to present. The pressure is on!
We will be visiting Saatchi & Saatchi, RKCR/Y&R, Ogilvy, ASA and my personal favourite, Mother. It is here I hope to show them what I am made of.

Saatchi and Saatchi have set the brief for San Miguel, with the proposition being 'The Slow Beer'. There were no real stipulations for this brief so my partner and me pretty much have free reign. While this is quite a fun brief, I do feel that there is some hard work to be done to make this original, as Kronenbourg were responsible for the recent 'slow the pace' TV ad as you will see below which has very similar theme to what I will be working on:



So there as there are several competitors saying the same sort of thing, it will just be mine and Amy's job to try and make San Miguel stand out.

This brings me to a similar problem with our next brief to be presented in London for Mother. I can truly say I think this shall be one of the hardest briefs I will have worked on ever. It is for Moneysupermarket.com, for those who may not understand its status, it is in competition with gocompare.com (annoying singing moustache guy) and comparethemarket.com a.k.a. comparethemeerkat.com. While those adverts irritate me very much, there is no denying they work and as a result have had a mass amount of attention. Everybody knows their names. Now it is my job to beat this. Impossible? Maybe so. But I have no choice but to get on with it. I just hope I am not embarrassed in front of Tim McNaughton and Freddy Mandy at Mother! If me and Amy get this right, it could be our rise and recognition, but if not it could be a sharp shock into the realities that maybe all briefs cannot be cracked. As Mother is currently trying to work on it themselves, at least we will have their empathy! Fingers crossed something good comes from this!

Lastly we have a nice brief from RKCR/ Y&R for Interflora with the proposition being 'Get flowers delivered'. This is quite a nice, simple brief and this should be a nice one to work on.

All in all I am really looking forward to London, visiting there as a second year student I have a lot more questions I would like the agencies to answer, and with me graduating soon, I wish to see if I am at the right level to go into industry. I want to know what I need to work on as a creative to get my foot in the industry.

Another perspective.

On the 17th March my class were fortunate enough to receive a talk from Dave McDonald, a Graphic Designer come Art Director from Infinite Design and he came in to tell us about his journey and perspective on the creative world.

Beginning his journey at Newcastle College 1996, Dave knew he had a passion for Graphic Design which he wanted to pursue. So after some thought, decided to move to London where he thought he could build a career. After moving down there and working in two of the top agencies of that time, he decided he hated it, it wasn't him and he knew he wanted to get out. This shocked me, and did make me re-think my options. I always thought at some point my creative journey would take me to London and that I would love it because everybody else does. But nobody ever talks about the bad experiences, Dave said it like it was and did make me think 'there is the possibility London could be a bad move'. While I am not going to totally rule it out, I do think this talk will allow me to think a little more about that kind of thing, that what could happen is not as straight cut as I might have thought.

After his brief trip to London, Dave moved back up to Newcastle to work on his creative career. When he moved back he took his book around all the top agencies over a 12 month period, which to his dismay got him nowhere at first. They all shot him down saying that he wasn't good enough. But he believed in himself and pursued it, which landed him a job in Infinite Design and 9 years later here he was, telling us about his perspective on things.

He has had the fortune to work on a number of great projects such as the design work for Northern Stage, One NorthEast, the branding for End Clothing, along with some personal and freelance work. But he did give one example of where he had a bad experience. On being selected to do the front cover of The Futureheads new album as a freelance designer he was very excited to work on something which allowed him to basically do what he liked as a creative. But the experience of this was very different. He told of his horrible encounter with the manager of the music company who just was not happy about Dave working on the project. But Dave persisted, hiring his staff to realise the work, over a £1000 later, Dave was informed he had been dropped from the account and thus lost out on all that money along with the frustration of the whole project.

Dave said he was burned from this but learned a valuable lesson, to always agree costing before beginning the work, to make sure guidelines have been set and to make sure money is received at milestones throughout the project. This lead him to tell us about the cycle of work, that your personal work informs your professional work which in forms your personal work which informs your professional work. Which is very true.

This leads me to the end of the talk with Dave, a piece of advice to 'Why me?', why I should be selected over anyone else to work in an agency and this was broken down into attributes he felt were needed to get a job.

Personality, Portfolio, Passion
Relaxed, Professional, Honest
Genuine, Confident, Receptive
Brave, Committed, Positive

Then lastly, just to be myself!

While this was a lot to take in, the talk from Dave was very helpful. I have came away from this of a much clearer idea of how I should approach things in the creative world, and I would know to get the money up front for freelance work now!
Overall I think Dave now has it sussed after the experiences he has had, while I am sure I will have some good and bad times to come which I will learn from myself, I am just glad I was able to understand it a little more so I am not so naive when I go into industry.

YCN Student awards.

I am happy to say, I have submitted mine and Amys completed YCN student award brief, for Tuborg. Fingers crossed it wins!!!

Below are some of the previous winners, take a look.

The Brief: Doritos
Break the rules of packaging and point-of-sale and bring the Doritos brand to life in the stores and shops it is sold in.


The Brief: Ctrl+Alt+Shift.
Redefine what it means to ‘give’ to charity.

Website complete.

So this week after much research and learning, I have finally set up the website for Maslewski&Bowden. To design the site, I used iweb, which was quite straight forward, and I based the design around the logo we had selected to use. The hard bit came when I had to figure out how on earth I publish a website from iweb or buy a domain. Fortunately I am writing this having figured out how to do this, so I present to you my partners and mine new website which I am very proud of, it took some sleepless nights, but I now know how to set up a website! Check it out:

www.maslewskibowden.co.uk

Personal Branding.

So as myself and partner Amy have now created our personal brand. This is our stamp that will be applied to our website, twitter account, and other avenues which are a representation of ourselves. It is something which must get our personalities, strengths, professionalism and creativity across to anyone who may look.
We came up with several ideas for our brand at first which we felt didn't work, they weren't bold enough, and looked too much like a company brand rather than a creative teams brand. MB creative wasn't working as you will see below.



So after this we looked at just using our surnames, using a punchy typeface and vibrant colours we felt we would get our personalities across.


After some deliberation we decided to use the purple and green colouring, it was most vibrant and could be easily applied through many medias. As seen below:


So having decided on this I am now working on our website and other accounts to apply the same graphics throughout. Hopefully it will impress!

Leith Visit.

Last week our class had the fortune to be visited by one of the creative teams from Leith in Edinburgh, Michael Maxwell (copywriter) and Ian Fletcher (Art Director). It was really fun getting the guys down, they set us a task initially to answer a creative task or question. The whole class were given a task per team, and ours was the controversial 'Do a t-shirt that promotes Colonel Gaddafi'. Now this was some task, as he is such a hated man at present with the troubles in Libya, so after some research we found a picture which formed the basis of our t-shirt. Quite frankly I think for completing this in half an hour, it wasn't too bad! Take a look:


After this task they ran through some of their work and just answered any questions we had. The general theme of the discussions were unfortunately, how difficult it is to get into advertising, but if you put enough effort in, how satisfying the job truly is. Their talk really gave some inspiration, as the workload recently on my course is stepping up a gear, and becoming rather difficult, but their talk gave hope to press on, because the best bit is yet to come!

They then set us two briefs one for Irn Bru Sugar Free and one for the new '380' model train which is being released for Scotrail. They are both very different briefs, and I am very eager to begin working on them.

To end with take a look at one of my favourite TV adverts Leith has produced. Named 'Knife for Life', it is an awful subject, which in an ideal world we shouldn't have to advertise to prevent, but I think Leith did a fantastic job with it. It is one of my favourite adverts, and just creates so much emotion no matter what your background. See what you think:

My ad of the week. Cravendale - Cats with Thumbs

This is a new advert which is part of a campaign named 'The Milk Matters' to break away from Cravendales old image. A genius execution by Wieden + Kennedy. It puts a new, upbeat, fun image to the Cravendale brand and quite frankly cats with thumbs amuse me greatly! See what you think.

Influential thinking.

Creative influence can be sourced from all different genres, fashion, music, art and literature. I have found it is just about applying this influence to your own personal subject.

After watching an interesting program called 'McQueen and I', I got thinking about the array of historic creatives who excelled to amazing heights in their careers. 'McQueen and I' was a documentary about Lee Alexander McQueen and Isabella Blow. Until watching this, I had not realised how Alexander McQueen had grown up or gained his own influences. He grew up in a very basic council house with his Mother, Father and siblings. On a daily basis birds would flutter around his home, if you look on the images below you can see how he applied this influence into his collection, the bird silhouette is heavily used and works. Although this is fashion I think his creative thought process is inspiring, it shows how you can use what may seem like common objects, and turn them into your success.




Another example from the same genre is Isabella Blow who McQueen was close friends with, looking at her fashion style, it is clear that the pop artist Lady Gaga has been influenced by her look and has turned this into her musical persona. Thus transcending fashion into music.

Isabella Blow



Lady Gaga




In advertising influences are very beneficial in creating a great advert. It can be understanding a certain target market, and using influences which appeal to that audience. So looking at past examples can only aid my learning in this.

Onwards and upwards.

Well it has been one productive week. Not only have I managed to almost complete my Personal Professional Development file (PPD), but my partner and me managed to gain ourselves a great work placement at an agency named Studio Precept.

On arrival I admittedly did not know a great deal about the agency as they have only been a working agency since December of last year, But I definitely liked what I saw, and was very keen on gaining work placement here. I applied for a Social Media Managers role and came away with the great fortune that they wanted both my partner and me to complete work placement at their agency. Which I am absolutely thrilled with! We get the chance to work on the social media, which is a huge part of advertising, and we also are able to work on some briefs that may be passed our way. The best of both worlds! I just really hope they like how we work so it will be become more long term. But all in all, this has given us confidence, that our work is to a standard which reflects us well as a team.

On another note, although it is a little old, a fantastic ad from Renault Clio. Featuring Dita von Tesse, Thierry Henry, Rihanna and David Bowie, it is certainly a mix, but I don't ever remember a clio which seemed this attractive. Very cleverly filmed and mixed, I feel their old message of 'va va voom' has had a beneficial shake up. It seems to me now, a very cool and sexy car. See what you think.

Enriching my culture knowledge.

Not only was my recent trip to Paris enjoyable, I feel I have come away with a clear idea of Parisian and/or French culture. Paris is not somewhere you live, it is a way of life.

From the unique cafe's where you may smoke, drink and just people watch through the day or night. Cafe's which are enriched with the history of writers or artists who have done the same whilst producing some of their great works in your very spot. To the main streets of St Germain, where fashionistas effortlessly strut along the street clutching their Louis Vuittons. Paris is a City which not only as a person, but as an Art Director, I should have a clear understanding of, amongst other cultures.

Different cultures around the world can trigger different emotions, thoughts and actions. So knowing and experiencing these different cultures can only aid me in getting across the correct message in an advertising campaign. An example of this is Mother London working on the advertising brief for Stella Artois, this uses the typical laid back, effortlessly cool attitude of a typical French male, and turns it on its head to the brands advantage. Take a look at the advert to compare this.

Stella Artois 4% Piano


In addition to this some photos I took in Paris, enjoy!

Volkswagen Commercial: The Force

My Ad of the week. This was one of the ads featured in the ad break of the American Super Bowl. I think it works exceptionally well, using the Star Wars theme allows the parents to relate to their childhood, whist interesting young children. Take a look, it certainly put a smile on my face!

My Ad of the week. MORE THAN freeman "Rooftile" home insurance advert

This week I stumbled across this fantastic ad from More Than for home insurance. It features US impressionist Josh Robert-Thompson in the style of Hollywood actor Morgan Freeman. At first I thought although it was brilliant it could not be rolled out to a full campaign, wouldn't it just get boring the same character just saying something slightly different time after time? But to my astonishment it hasn't, the agency has managed to make 4 similar ideas roll out. The awareness this ad has received is astounding, so it has definitely been a very successful advert.

Au Revoir

So this time next week I shall be packing my bags to travel to Paris for the weekend. I can't wait, so much great inspiration comes from France, Monet, Moulin Rouge, Toulouse-Lautrec and the Louvre. If I could name them all we would be sitting here for hours!
One of the most influential people for me is Toulouse-Lautrec, it was through seeing a few of his pictures in my Mothers art book at a young age that I gained a real respect and understanding for art which I still pursue today. So I really feel that in Paris I can broaden my knowledge on artists in buildings such as the Louvre, to hopefully become a great Art Director through looking at different styles and effects.

I shall leave you with some paintings of the Moulin Rouge Dancers by Toulouse-Lautrec along of some of the first ever true artistic advertisements he produced in the 1880's and hopefully if you have or haven't viewed these before you can appreciate the creative skill that has gone into them.

AD 206 Tuborg Brief MainGround Viral

AD 206 Tuborg Brief Packaging.

Tuborg Packaging

AD 206 Tuborg Brief Web Advertising.

Overall Dan felt the web advertising we produced worked very well. The only pointer he felt could be worked on was to utilise the acts we would be using in our MainGround event for advertising. Getting them to update their Facebook/Twitter/Websites about the event they would be playing at and re-directing their fans to the Tuborg website. This would utilise their fan base for Tuborg's MainGround event's benefit. Again this was very valuable feedback and is something we will amend when creating our portfolio books.