LIFE MOVES PRETTY FAST...

o2 Scrum On The Beach

I think that its a lovely piece of film that perfectly captures the spirit of messing around on the beach. Except that this time the (big) kids messing around with the rugby ball just happen to play for England. The reactions of the folks on the beach who had no idea that this was going to happen is lovely. Thom talks over on his blog about fake-ness in advertising that proports to be real (the example that he cites is T Mobile) I can tell you that none of this was faked in any way.

Find out where Scrum on the Beach will be in July and August. The first session will be held in Martello Bay, Clacton-on-Sea, Essex 4 July, 11-6pm and the last Lusty Glaze Beach, Newquay 29-30 August, 12-11pm

(FD: 02 are a VCCP client. I did not have anything to do with this campaign although I do sit next to Clem and Rich the creative team, who were also the team who devised Compare The Meerkat)

How Toby Young got Twitter

Sometime earlier this year in the immediate Twitter frenzy that followed Stephen Fry's live-tweeting from a broken lift, Toby Young (he of "How To Lose Friends and Alienate People" infamy) joined Twitter.

And he really annoyed me.

In his Spectator column he loudly berated Twitter, bemoaning the fact that being part of Twitter felt like a dull party where everyone talks loudly but no-one talks to you. I sent him a tweet that day in which I tried to point that he just hadn't started using the "@" sign in his tweets. Once you understand the etiquette of "@" then it suddenly becomes quite easy to join the conversation. I heard nothing back, which surprised me, most people when they recieve a direct tweet usually respond (unless of course you're trying to tweet with Ashton Kutcher or Oprah Winfrey!)

Toby seemed to be in the same Twitter-trap as a lot of journalists who on one hand deride Twitter as being the ultimate in boring self-promotion, but on the other hand write weekly columns talking about the minute details and daily in's and out's of their lives. It always stuck me as fairly hypocritical.

Which was why I enjoyed Toby's latest Spectator piece : "I would like to take this opportunity to apologise unreservedly to Twitter. Like many of my colleagues, I unfairly characterised it as a vacuous expression of our narcissistic age. In fact, it turns out to be the most effective tool for advancing freedom and democracy since the invention of the internet." It's a lovely piece of writing, very funny, a great example of volte-face and well worth reading and sharing with all those Twitter-deriders. And I have to say that I totally agree with him!

I spoke at a Unilever PR conference last week that Simon Clift was heading up. I was talking about Social Media and brands. One of the folks attending, Babs Rangaiah asked me for my views on Twitter. He wanted to know if I thought that Twitter was here to stay and would people still be using it next year or the year after. The quick and honest answer is "I have no idea". The longer and honest answer is that whether  or not Twitter remains as the active micro-blogging platform of choice is almost an irrelevance, what is more important are the behaviours that it has helped to foster. Twitter in and of itself is simple a platform of communications, I prefer to look at what Twitter users that have developed themselves such as the use of "@" replies which was started by users not by the founders, the use of hashtags "#" and essential applications like TweetDeck, Twitterfall and TwitPic.

Twitter is conversation, a smart Search application, negates my need to visit Netvibes and check RSS feeds  and Twitter is a means of bringing events happening far away from me physically close at hand (be that #iranelection or #MasterChef) In essence Twitter is what you want it to be. It is becoming as important to me as Google.

Have a read of Toby's article. I'd love to know if you agree.

R.I.P. Scamp

I was genuinely saddened when I got an email from Simon aka Scamp from BBH saying that he had decided to call time on his blog.

Back in 2006 Scamp was one of those early ad-bloggers, alongside the likes of Russell and Iain, who inspired me to start blogging.

What I loved so much about Scamp's blog was that you were pretty much always guaranteed to have a really good read. He was witty, opinionated (sometime overly) and the site quickly became the digital centre of gravity for conversations about creativity.

While there were lots of Planner types blogging, Scamp seemed to be alone as a representative of the Creative department. I always knew where to go to find the newest creative work and the latest creative controversy. When I read Scamp it felt like I was sitting in a dark Soho pub surrounded by bitchy, funny creative teams. It often veered into car-crash territory, sometimes got too bitchy, too personal and probably sometimes illegal (it broke the Hate-Speak rules on occasion) and it annoyed me that the majority of people who posted hid behind an Anonymous moniker, but working life will be less fun without Scamp.

RIP Scamp and remember that you can always change your mind!

UPDATE: I have been emailed to remind people that Scamp is recommending If This Is a Blog... as the new digital space for disecting creative work. Happy to do that!

Talking to teens - binge drinking

It's bloody tough doing behaviour change creative work that is targeted to a teenaged audience. 

You can't preach, you can't tell them what to do or think.

Its hard to find the right tone of voice, hard to find the insight that will really, genuinely connect and prompt re-appraisal.

That's why I am so proud of VCCP's new work for the UK government (the COI)

How do you get young people to re-think their attitude towards binge drinking?

Our work on this campaign which started last year was about "the cold light of day...".

It's only in the cold light of day when you look back at what you did or what you said when you're pissed up that you start to appreciate quite how much of a prick you were. Behaviour change starts with the admission that maybe there is a problem. I hope that this film starts people thinking.

It was made by the brilliant Saul Dibb who directed Bullet Boy and The Duchess.