Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Binge Drinking Youth

We've been doing a lot of work on booze in the agency over the last few months. Again, I can claim no credit for it whatsoever, but I think its good work and very different. Its bang on strategy for the youth target (18-24 years) audience and seems to be going down really well. Its a creative approach that tries not to scaremonger or preach, but rather engage young people and treat them like adults.

The thought at the heart of the campaign was - "you wouldn't start the night like this, so why end it like this?"

Its sparking some really informed and strong discussions online...

We started with a short film that has now gone viral (in first week over 400,000 views)

Then the female TV execution was aired:

And this is male TV execution.

In addition to these three executions we did a PR and Social Media launch with an installation in Covent Garden, Blogger Engagement, some very cool online ad units and print and outdoor.

Interesing 2008

Thanks to the wonderful Jeremy at Pengiun and Tom Hopkins F and I know have tickets for Interesting 08 this weekend.I am very excited. I missed it last year because of the usual 30-something excuse that there was a wedding we had to go to. Weddings seem to have calmed down a bit this year (thank god!)

If any of you out there are going and we have not met IRL, lets make sure that we meet up! It would be great to meet some of you properly as opposed to virtually.

PS. This is what I look like

Jon Steel - some words of wisdom

Jon was my Planning Director for a while when I was at Berlin Cameron/Red Cell in New York in 2003-04. We didn't work together for too long as he and his family moved back to the UK, but he was without doubt the best boss that I have had and the best Planner that I have had the opportunity of working with. If you haven't read his two books, Truth, Lies & Advertising or Perfect Pitch get yourself on Amazon and order them both. They are down to earth, humorous and intelligent reads.

Jon came in to chat with the Planners at VCCP last week.

I wanted to share some of his thoughts and also some of my recollections from my time working with him.

INSIGHTS: Get out face to face with your consumers, not behind a mirror.

We talk a lot in advertising and Planning about the importance of Insights, but ask people what exactly they mean by an "insight" and where exactly you find them and often you get a lot of waffle. Jon places a huge amount of importance on uncovering insights and doesn't think that a focus group in a typical research facility complete with fake mirrors etc is the way to go. Jon's planning department would always be out and about with a video camera doing primary research with consumers. I remember for a Pfizer pitch talking with migraine sufferers and getting them to show us the places that they went to hide from the world when their migraines came on. There was a Middle School teacher in Manhattan who used to lock herself in the stationary cupboard, a mom in Brooklyn who showed us the nest that she made out of towels on the floor of her bathroom - genuine insights, captured on film that all made their way into the pitch winning presentation.
We did similar work also for Pfizer but this time we spent time with allergy sufferers and their families. This led us to the insight that most allergy sufferers are content to battle through on their current meds. The only reason that people would stop and think about their meds and switch was when they realised the impact that their allergies were having on their loved ones - this led to our creative thought "Others Suffer" which won us that pitch too.

PITCHING: Collect "evidence" on your pitch journey

When you pitch with Jon there comes a point in the pitch process when you stop trying to find a better creative idea. You stick with what you have and then you work out how to sell it, how to bring it to life, how to make it inspiring. He often says that out of a a 3 week pitch, a full week should be spent focusing on the pitch presentation. Better to have a 70% idea that is sold brilliantly, than a 90% idea that no time has been given to the actual pitch. We used a lot of Planner-shot video, photos that respondents were asked to take, respondents drawings and images. As we were doing our research we were always thinking, how can I use this in the pitch.

THINKING: The best place to think is never at your desk

When you ask people the question, where do you do your best thinking - the answer is never "at my desk." With that in mind its critical to build in time and space to actually think. One Jon technique is to get a team together outside of the agency when they are working on a pitch or a new assignment. He gets each person to talk to the others for 5-10 minutes about their thoughts and observations about the issue at hand. Every-time that you hear something that interests you, you write it on a Post-It. At the end of the session you have a wall of interesting stuff that you as a team have uncovered. From there it's not that hard to start clustering them and determining what the story is out of them all.

.................

Russell Davies did an interview with Jon a while back. He writes that "Jon is the model of what a Planner should be." Here is a link to the file, so have a cup of tea, put your feet up and listen to two of the UK's most seminal Planners having a chat about advertising, planning and other such nonsense.

This is a Viral

This is a viral.

Or at least its compelling content that I sent around, hence a viral.

I hate it when people ask for a "viral" - just produce good content and human beings are inclined to and enjoy sharing.

Warning: This is quite graphic

Watch More Videos       Uploaded by www.bebo.com/itdoesnthavetohappen

The YouTube "Creative Inspiration" Question

Creative inspiration is hard to come by I know that.

What did we do before YouTube?

Only Dead Fish posted about this brilliant Lastminute.com ad. I loved it - thought that it was funny, smart, made me smile and made me think about Lastminute in a new way.

But isn't it just the same idea as this?

The UK policeman plays the US janitor role, but essentially its exactly the same idea.

Does it matter??

The US version was not an ad. The UK version has a clever twist in the tail and promotes a brand.

I guess that I am trying to work out how far you can get away with an ad "inspired by..." a YouTube clip.

Hmmm.

Where are the girls?

This has been something that Beeker and I chatted about a while ago in regards to what we ended up calling "Lady Bloggers". I was lamenting the fact that there just did not seem to be very many of them.

Something seems to be going wrong somewhere:

• iMedia Connection 2008: 2 day long conference on future of our industry. c 30 speakers, not a single girl
• WOM Conference 2008: 1 day long conference on Advocacy and Word of Mouth, c 20 speakers - me + 1 other woman
• Clio Awards 2008: 20 judges, I was the only girl.

What is going on?

It seems to be more than simply a lack of Lady Bloggers, it is actually more to do with the profile  of women in our industry in general.

I am genuinely interested in why there aren't more women talking and judging at events like this.

She Says is an interesting organization that was started by Laura Jordan Bambach and Alessandra Lariu from Glue. They are aiming to help create a connected network of females to help address this issue. While they started She Says with a view about addressing the disparity of female digital creatives, I actually think that it is a much bigger problem than simply a creative one and one that needs to be sorted.

I guess my question is that, are women just less good and managing and promoting their own "brand" so to speak so that they are less high profile and known generally than their male counterparts? Is is that men are better at public speaking stuff like this? Do people just get onto the circuit and then stay on it and these are more likely to be men?

Opening this up to the Lady Bloggers (as well as the Boy Bloggers) - amomgst others Katie,  Angus,  Nicola, Lady Geek, Catch Up Lady, Beeker...

Planning for Good - activating the Plannersphere

Mark and I have been working to set up the UK branch of Planning For Good.

It's taken a little longer to get off the ground than perhaps we'd have liked, mainly due to the fact that both of us are working like idiots and always seem to be on a plane, train or automobile to some place or other.

Luckily Michelle is now helping us - have a read of her blog Grad In The City, its good stuff - so hopefully we may be able to actually be able to set up PFG sessions and email people with the right details.

Anyway, with that in mind the next session of Planning For Good is on:

THURSDAY 8TH MAY

3PM

THE BREAKFAST CLUB, Soho (Unless someone can offer up a room in a central agency and maybe some coffee and tea!)

In case you don't know about Planning For Good, take a look at the UK Blog.

PFG was started in the US based out of a frustration that Planner & Friends can sometimes feel - namely that if they have to re-segment the dog food market/pickle market/chewing gum market for the hundredth time they might scream (sorry any dog food/pickle/chewing gum clients who might be reading this post!)

In a nutshell once a month we are asking people in the industry (and by "the industry" I mean media, PR, digital, experiential, advertising etc) to give up 90 minutes of their working week to spend time on a live not for profit client brief.

It will be a live brief, from a client with a budget so if any of the comms solutions presented to clients are actually bought then agencies stand a chance to actually produce the idea and make some money.

Anyway, the request that I am posting to you is - can you help spread the work about PFG and the session on the 8th May.

I am hoping that this is Web 2.0 collaboration in action...

Fingers crossed, see you there.

Will be posting the brief in the next few days as soon as we get it from the States.

Also if you have any not for profit clients that you think that we should be talking to for future briefs can you post or email and let me know.

Thanks!

Clio - Content and Contact

I LOVED being a part of the judging of the Clio Awards last week.

It was led by Johnny from Anomaly: Faris from Naked New York; Robert Wong the Global Creative Director of Google, Icaro Daria (the most awarded creative in the world last year apparently) and me.

Inspiring people; inspiring work.

Brilliant to be able to see such imaginative, innovative work from all over the world. We are NDA-ed until May and the award show in Miami, but once we are  allowed to Faris and I are  blog it and talk through the panel's thinking and reasons for specific award judgements that we made.

It was a hard one to judge, we were looking at everything from ARGs to full length feature films to blogs to bizarre pop-up Japanese retail stores and ice skating Japanese dogs (I kid you not!). How can you possibly compare stuff like that? I think that the criteria for people entering this category was stuff that people were really proud of but had no idea what traditional category it fitted into.

Obesity - having your cake and eating it

This was in Private Eye.

Very funny.

Although technically in our defence we don't advertise red Coke, we advertise Diet Coke, Coke Zero and Minute Maid juices. Still it made me smile. My dad wanted to write a letter into Private Eye to let them that. Luckily he has been persuaded out of that course of action.

Speckies - award for creative work that never actually ran

Love this! For creative work that was either killed by clients, Account Directors or snotty Planners (being one I am allowed to call Planners this) Deadline is May 1st, so get hunting back for those "award-winning" ideas that never actually ran...