LIFE MOVES PRETTY FAST...

Felix at 8 months

When I start back at VCCP in January normal service will resume on this blog but at the moment my days (and nights) are totally taken up with this little one who is developing and growing up so fast!

It has been amaing to watch him every day learning more, understanding more and doing more.

Who knows if this is just me projecting how I would like him to turn out but he seems a remarkably chilled baby happy to be passed from person to person, or sitting calmly playing next to me while I try and do some grown up work meetings. He has a great sense of fun, a wicked smile when he knows something is silly and is pleasure to hang out with.

Why I am still on maternity leave

A couple of people have commented that they were surprised that I was "still on maternity leave"

I have realised how lucky we are in the UK to have such family-friendly maternity policies when my French and American friends talk about going back to work at 12 weeks as if that was the norm.

Before I went off on maternity I did wonder whether I'd get bored and how soon I'd come running back to VCCP. I thought maybe 6 months at the most and then work would be too much of a draw.

The reality is a bit different.

Felix is 5 months now and has turned into this brilliantly funny little baby full of life, energy and smiles and although I am exhausted I can't imagine being back in the office full-time in 4 weeks (they do know this btw!)

Through Twitter I feel plugged in and connected to the advertising - digital - comms community that I am a part of so although motherhood is all consuming at the moment I don't feel cut off. This has to be a fairly new phenomena - the way that social platforms enable non-working mothers to stay in the loop professionally.

So I will be coming back to work but I am discussing a 4 day week and a change in my role so that there are less mental late nights (although I am aware that these are always going to exist in our industry) and meetings outside of London. Because as well as loving my son I also happen to love my job and the industry that I am lucky enough to be in so I am going to have to try and work out how to try and harmonise the two.

I think that I will probably attempt to come back to work around the 9 month mark. My next project is to find a loving french-speaking nanny to look after the little one.

Anyone have any ideas?

He's a charmer and a lot of fun to hang out with!

When is a sofa not a sofa?

This is my chocolate brown leather sofa

Or to be more precise this WAS my chocolate brown leather sofa. I sold it last week to a lovely family who love round the corner from me. It was a heart-wrenching moment for me because in so many ways that was more than just a sofa.

I got it when I was living in New York. It was 2003 and I had just broken up with my then boyfriend and was moving out of Brooklyn into my own apartment in the Lower East Side. It was the first time that I was living alone, in my own space and it really felt like a growing up phase. I also had a considerable lack of furniture so this sofa was the first thing that I purchased.

The sofa became symbolic of the new me.  I really loved it. It was 7 feet long and I have no idea how they moved it in and out of my 5th floor walk-up or to the flat in Marylebone or to the house in East Dulwich but somehow it always traveled with me.

And it was just too big for our front room. And the colour was just too dark for our front room. So we sold it.

Why am I even sharing this story? Well I guess for a start this blog is meant to be about things that are important to me and the sofa and what it stood for was but also professionally I keep seeing ads for DFS and Sofa Warehouse where all they stress is the price of the sofa. I think that they're missing a trick because although price is important the symbolic value of furniture and the memories that they represent are not only more interesting than price but also potentially a stronger lure and I have never seen any ad campaigns for sofa companies tap into the insight, so room for differentiation.

Frank's Cafe & Campari Bar - Peckham

Last year Frank Boxer, Paloma Gormley, Lettice Drake and Hannah Barry Gallery joined forces to create a pop-up art/food experience that was my favourite of the summer. They took over the roof top and top floor of the rather skanky Peckham multi-storey car park and created a sculpture exhibition and a restaurant on the roof.

(Pix from AR - hope that's ok! www.arplus.com/5176/franks-cafe-peckham-london-by-paloma-gormley-and-lettice-drake)

It opens up again on the 2nd July and I'd really recommend checking it out. It's opposite Peckham Rye train station (12 mins from Victoria, London Bridge or Blackfriars) and open Thursday through Saturday until the end of the summer.

The menu is good though limited given the nature of the space. The atmosphere can be a bit too trendy for its own good at times but its a big enough space for it never to feel crowded and the views at sunset are just wonderful.

This is the official website with all the details.

Almost time for a non baby related post...

But not quite!

16 week old Felix in the sunshine.

Promise that normal service will resume soon.

Trying to describe the first 3 months

It's hard to write about your newborn child without resorting to Hallmark-esque cliches. Before having Felix I would always roll my eyes slightly when parents would eulogize about their children saying things like "it's just the greatest thing in the world," "its indescribable" or "it's a totally different kind of feeling, a totally different kind of love." Then what do I go and do on our first night out without Felix except bore everyone senseless at the dinner table about our wonderful, extraordinary, beautiful baby boy.

If you are a parent, or a mum in particular, I wonder if any of these things that I love about my son ring true:

The way that he snuggles into the warmth of my neck as he falls asleep wrapped around me

His exhausted panting after a long feed

Sleeping like a frozen statue with his arms sticking out at odd angles

His gummy smile that lights up his entire face when I sing "Three Blind Mice"

The way that he kicks up his legs for me when I change his nappy

The intense stares he gives me with his huge dark eyes

If I had to pick one word to describe the first three months it would be this - AMAZED.

Amazed at this tiny creature who is so dependent and yet so remarkable. Amazed at the fact that somehow I seem to know what to do. Amazed that Francois and I managed to create something so lovely. 

Visting VCCP

Felix is now 8 weeks old and is turning into a real little baby boy from being a newborn - smiles, eyes focusing properly on people and good gurgles and coos. I took him into the agency last week to meet everyone. I think that you can judge from his smile that he was pleased with his first VCCP experience.

Life as a mum - Thoughts one month on

Felix turns one month today. 28 days ago at 12.08 this little person finally arrived. It's now hard to remember life without him.

We drove home from my mother's house yesterday afternoon through Spitalfields and looked out at the crowds of people milling in the bright sunshine, standing outside the pubs pints in hand nattering away with gangs of mates. With a newborn strapped into the car seat all this real life outside the car seemed oddly distant. Although newborns sleep a lot so theoretically its easy to be out and about with a baby, what we've found is that actually we wanted to put our little one into some kind of safe baby bubble for the first few weeks. At the start in between feeding and changing you just spend hours gazing at them, amazed that you actually created something so amazing. Their soft milky smell, their luminous eyes as they start to open and focus on the world and their incredible ability to unlock deep feelings of protection and love, it's really like nothing else.

It's also scary - babies cry, it's what they do but are they in pain? What can you do? Leave them to cry it out, pick them up and hug it out?  It's sometimes feels relentless as each day at the start is fairly identical and days merge into nights with no let-up.

But despite being pee-ed on, poo-ed on, vomited on and "sleeping" in small chunks of time I just look down at his tiny trusting face each morning and it's worth it, I wouldn't change any of it.

My thoughts on baby Planners

I have always said that I am not a big fan of "baby planners", that I think that planners benefit from doing something else first, be that in advertising or out in the real world, however I have started to re-think my position on this.

Felix has made it very obvious that he would like nothing more than to follow his mother into the world of Planning and is even starting to study books that he feels will help.

So I say bring on the baby Planners!

Introducing Felix Louis Arthur

Every parent thinks that their baby is the most adorable child in the world, but I don't just think it - I know it. He just melts my heart each time I look at him.

Please meet Felix Louis Arthur - born 12.08 Monday 8th March 2010

This is Felix meeting his mum...

And his dad...

And us together as a family leaving the hospital.

Happy days.

BABY - the waiting game...

As you know most of you know we are due to become first-time parents next week (gulp)

Judging from friends who have become new mums it takes a bit of time to get your head above the surface and come out for air. So I just wanted to say a huge thank you for all the emails and tweets that you've sent through. As the pregnancy insomnia gets worse and worse and I get more and more sumo wrestler-esque it's been great to have folks to to moan with.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that this blog might be going a little quite during March (in fact it has been a little quite for a while as pregnancy sort of took over) but I will post as soon as the little one arrives.

PS - These are his/her first shoes. Knitted by his French great-grandmother. I think that they are pretty snazzy.

The Secret Wedding Photographers

This is Antonia, one of my best friends, on her wedding day.

I think it's beautiful.

It was taken by my very talented little brother George Torode who has recently launched a wedding photography company The Secret Wedding Photographers with Victoria Nightingale. Their aim is to produce non-cheesey, slightly reportage type pictures that really capture the spirit and emotion of the event.

They say: Their unique approach utilises the best facets of their collective experience, which they apply with integrity to every shoot. Subtlety underpins a contemporary, fly-on-the-wall style of photography, allowing them to blend into the scene and letting your day flourish uninterrupted. The approach to each project is personalised from the outset; focusing on teamwork to create the level of documentation that a wedding deserves, and leaving you with images that are natural, graceful and timeless.

If you know anyone who is planning a wedding it would be lovely if you could pass along his website.

http://www.thesecretweddingphotographers.co.uk/

Tell George that his big sis sent you...

Off On Maternity Leave: Future-Baby due in 3 weeks

It felt very very odd on Friday evening packing up my desk and boxing away my files. Despite being ready to slow down, nap during the day and generally prepare for the tiny whirlwind that awaits us it almost felt sad leaving the agency. It's been such a busy and exciting 18 months at work that I don't know how you just switch it all off. I guess when Future-Baby actually arrives it probably becomes much easier to forget about work for a while, or at least priorities shift.

There have been a lot of jokes about whether I would be live-blogging or tweeting from the delivery room (which I can assure you I will not) but all this Social Media stuff has been such a part of my life for such a chunk of time that I can really image not using Twitter etc. It's been a bit of a life-line during pregnancy what with early morning insomnia etc etc. I found that I still felt connected to a wider community even at 3am.

From the mums that I know devices like iPhones and Blackberrys suddenly take on a whole new level of importance because for the first few weeks/months its hard to get out and about and even hard to find time to sit down in front of a computer.

I just wanted to thank all those folks who tweeted with me and wished me luck. It made my last train journey home rather lovely. Some of you I know in real life (some I've known for a long time, others are newer friends), some I feel like I know through Twitter etc but have never actually met and some of you I hadn't really spoken before but to all of you, thank you.

I guess that the tone of this blog might be a bit more baby-related over the coming months and I hope that's ok. Though like Iain I have apprehensions about sharing too much so will try not to be a baby-bore.

it's certainly the calm before the storm in our house.

Exciting times.

How to get your first job/placement in Planning

I've met a ton of folk over the last few years all looking to get into planning - either with a full-time position or as a paid placement. I was chatting with Michael who is our head of planning after an interview that he conducted last week with a wanna-be planner. There were some useful tips that came out of our conversation that I wanted to share. Many many seem like common sense but you'd be surprised how many times people just don't seem to have considered them.

1. BE DIGITAL - or to be more precise - BE POST-DIGITAL: Most of you trying to get into the industry are young, at least 10 years younger than I am if not more. You guys grew up surrounded by digital technology. I wrote by uni essays with a fountain pen, never turned on a computer and had to sign up for time slots to use the public payphone. I want to be surprised and engaged by new stuff that you're excited about - maybe its specific sites, pieces of online content, technology platforms. It depresses me enormously when I seem to know more about the digital space than people I'm interviewing. We're living in a post-digital age, we need post-digital planners.
2. KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT THE AGENCY: This should be the most common sense piece of advice that there is, but it is astonishing quite how little homework some candidates do. Try to find something thought provoking or another angle on work that the agency might have done. It's not enough to say (for example) "I really like the work that you did on Meerkat because its funny." What do you think that the insight was? How was this positioned Vs its competitors? What do you think the proposition/creative brief might have been? What might you do differently or where might you think about taking the campaign.
3. USE YOUR EYES AND EARS DAILY: I often ask questions about everyday brands that I know that candidates will have come in contact with. Sometimes I'll ask about supermarket chains - as its a pretty good bet that most of us use them, have seen/heard some advertising, maybe gone to their website etc. I'll ask people about how they think they are are positioned in the marketplace - what kind of audience are they trying to attract, how is this demonstrated through advertising or in the in-store experience. Too many times I have been told "I've never worked on supermarket brands so I don't really know." You don't need to have worked on something to have an opinion.
4. SHOW ME STUFF: Treat it like a show and tell. Maybe it's some form of advertising or club flyers or pictures of graffiti or some thoughts that you've been having about specific brands or a categories. It helps the interviewer to understand what excites and interests you and gives you a great springboard for smart conversation.
5. BE CONVINCING: David Ogilvy once said "we sell or else...". An interview is your chance to sell yourself and to convince your interviewer that they should give you a job. If you can't sell yourself, what chance do you think you'll have in front of clients or agency colleagues selling a strategy, or a proposition or a creative idea. Why should the interviewer hire you - what's unique or different about you? What will you add? Maybe you've found out that they're working on 3 pitches in the next month and actually you're offering to simply be a spare pair of pitch hands (and every agency needs those!) Maybe there's a new client that you have a deep understanding of. Find that angle that will make you convincing and stand out.

And that's it really, 5 thoughts on how to get into the world of advertising.  It is hard especially it seems at the moment, but then once you're in advertising its pretty hard too so you should probably get used to it. All the good people that I have met have ended up getting a job, it may have taken a bit of time but they all got there in the end.

Good luck.

Career Women Make Bad Mothers ... FAIL

New year, new advertising controversy. This time courtesy of Garry Lace's agency Beta and the Outdoor Advertising Association. As I'm sure that you've read about its a campaign designed to demonstrate how outdoor advertising can generate mass public awareness.

Did it work?

In one sense without doubt. Debate was sparked all over the web (though mainly on Mumsnet and Twitter from what I can see and ironically not on BritainThinks.com which was the stated objective) and  the ad was pulled yesterday.

But does this prove that outdoor "works" as a medium or does it prove that a controversial message generates controversy?

On Monday Islam4UK announced that they would be marching in Wooten Basset with empty coffins in an anti-war demonstration. They likened the British Army to the Nazi Army and all hell broke loose.  Just take a look on Google. Islam4UK didn't use an outdoor billboard to spark this, they used a press release but it got the required result.

Messages that upset and anger people get them talking.

The message not the medium.

It's quite simple.

If Beta had decided to make a short film about how inadequate working mothers are, then seeded it and released it online I think that it would probably have had the same effect.

And now apparently Beta have decided to sue Mumsnet (can anyone confirm that's true??) The Mumsnet community certainly seem to think that is the case. Click on the link and read from about the 60th page of comments for the latest.

As one mum said "He Who Shall Not Be Named" (they are not allowed to mention the Beta founder by name anymore) wanted a campaign that sparked debate and when it sparked debate he now wants to shut it down.

Ridiculous.

Happy new year.

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

UPDATE 7/01/10: The Mumsnet legal action was initiated because of the comments about Garry's genitalia apparently. See comments below.

Top 10 Digital Marketing Trends for 2010

Stu is a brilliant Planner who I work with at VCCP.

I had been thinking about doing my own top 10 list but then he went and wrote up one for UTalkMarketing and it was bloody good so I decided that the sensible thing was to reference it and post it here:

1. People get to grips with marketing on social networks
2. Brands begin to realise its about lighting lots of fires in different places
3. Less about technology showcases and more about ideas
4. Someone will figure out how to do something interesting with Google Wave
5. The Android is nigh
6. Transparency gets even more radical
7. Crowdsourcing
8. The internet will bleed into reality
9. People will switch off
10. Everything will change but nothing will change at all

Each point gets a smart write up in his article. Well worth hoping over and taking a longer read at your leisure.

Any other links to 2012 Lists I'd love to know.

APG BATTLE OF BIG THINKING '09

Gordon Macmillan wrote a post last week on Brand Republic in which he talked about the Battle of Big Thinking.In it he said:

In what is likely to be one of the hottest sessions of the day Head of Strategy and Innovation at VCCP Amelia Torode will share what she has learnt from campaigns including comparethemarket/meerkat.com, in Big Thinking in Social Media.

Having just finished working out what my big thought that I want to share on Thursday is, I just wanted to tell Gordon that I am afraid that I am not talking about meerkats or markets. It has been a great campaign to be a part of, but I wanted to use the opportunity to talk about something totally different. I didn't want my session to be simply an agency creds, so have taken another approach and am not actually talking about any Social campaigns that I have been a part of. It's about stuff that excites me and I'm grappling with at the moment, I hope that it's useful, entertaining and above all I just hope that it's big thinking not medium sized thinking.

So meerkats will be missing (although I do reserve the right to reference other animals) The other thing that seems to be missing from the Battle of Big Thinking are women. I don't believe in positive descrimination for women, preferring that everyone is up there on stage on their own merits but there have to be more than 2 "big thinking" women in the UK? I asked the organizers when they invited me why there weren't more women taking part. What about people like Lady Geek,  or TechnoKitten? Most of the senior clients at o2  are women and more than capable of some serious big thinking! It would be great to see a wider range at next years event. I worry that at most conferences the panels look a bit like like the one in the cartoon below, albeit with more hair...

Anyway, saying that at least the girls will stand out stand out. There'll myself and Sandrine Plasseraud from We Are Social. You should be able to tell us apart. She's French and lovely. I'm British and a bit pregnant.

Come say hi if you're going on Thursday

Details here: APG BoBT Some tickets still available.

CROWDSOURCING Advertising - can it work?

I'm a bit torn on this subject. It's something that's been troubling me for a few weeks now ever since I saw Nic Ray from crowdsourcing company  Idea Bounty present at Media140 .

The decision to cheaply outsource, sorry I meant to write, "crowdsource" Peperami's latest integrated advertising campaign frather than use an advertising agency worried me. I know that this is going to sound like sour grapes as I work in a creative agency, but I wanted to share my concerns and get your thoughts. Very open to be proved wrong on this and I am genuinely looking for other POVs.

In principle I am all in favour of a policy of Radical Transparency. I believe that opening up issues to a larger audience leads to unusual and unexpected solutions (incidentally it also leads to a lot of shitty ideas that you have to sort through in order to find the half decent ones but that's not the point) and  the crowdsourcing approach of Walkers Do Us a Flavour (Win a Packet) and the Netflix $1m algorithm recommendation competition never troubled me in the way that the Peperami case did. In fact I use them as examples of best in breed innovative thinking.

So what's different about Peperami?

It might be to do with the monetary reward that Peperami put up, $10,000 for an integrated advertising campaign. That's 6,000 in UK pounds. Now I don't know about you but I think that it's a bit of a rip off. I have said as much to Nic personally and he pointed out that the fact that they had over 1000 entrants meant that there was a considerable number of people who felt that it was the right level of renumeration. Maybe its a sign that there's a terrible recession going on and a lot of out of work creatives are prepared to work for peanuts? Because let's be honest about it, this initiative wasn't PR-ed in developing countries where that amount of money would be worth considerably more. No it was PR-ed, according to Ideas Bounty, on sites like Brand Republic and to the UK creative industry in general. The winner hasn't been released yet but I was led to believe that it was won by ex-agency creatives.

I also have issues with the creative role that Ideas Bounty take. It's up to them to whittle the 1000 entrants down to a managable number for the client to choose from. Suddenly Ideas Bounty is the creative authority. That just doesn't feel right to me. It takes real skill to ascertain whether there's a brilliant creative idea lurking under the surface of an idea that might not sound that good (meerkat anyone?) I also think that it take real expertise to be able to build and shape a good idea into something extraordinary and I also know from experience that reading someone's creative idea as opposed to having them in front of you and explaining it properly are two totally different things.

Maybe it just troubles me as the logical conclusion of an initiative like this is that you don't need agencies anymore, you simply crowdsource the creative ideas cheaply and then partner with production houses. Maybe that is a good thing - over-paid, over-precious, over-protective are all allegations that can be thrown at some advertising agencies. But I hope they're not allegations that are true for all agencies. I hope that some a proper creative and business partners to their clients.

There's a great article in Forbes magazine The Myth of Crowdsourcing, in it Dan Wood takes issue with Crowdsourcing and writes " let's not ... pretend that 10,000 average Joes invent better products than Steve Jobs." Is he right when it comes to creative ideas and advertising campaigns? I wait for the next Peperami campaign with interest and also to see whether as a client they feel that they ever want to work with an advertising agency again.

_{(SOMEONE EMAILED ME SAYING THAT THEIR COMMENT NEVER APPEARED - AT THE BOTTOM OF THE FIRST PAGE OF COMMENTS IS A TINY ARROW, CLICKING ON THAT GETS YOU THRU TO SECOND PAGE OF COMMENTS)}

GUINNESS - Is there anything to talk about?

I enjoyed this BBH Labs post that Pats tweeted to me yesterday - "if you want a conversation say something interesting."

Then I watched the new Guinness ad online and was struck by the fact that the only thing that I could really say about it was "I wonder how much money they spent on that?"

It's beautiful, but feels very 1980s and a bit out of touch.

About 30,000 views on YouTube so maybe it wasn't just me who wasn't that interested by the ad.

Going Loco with Southern Railways

This just makes me smile.

When the "more bums on seats" pitch brief came into the agency, we were looking to find a different way of approaching this creatively. We didn't want to do a category job for all trains it had to be Southern specific, we also didn't want to do the job of the South Coast tourist board and simply talk about the great destinations that Southern trains go to.

The insight for the brief was sparked off after reading Alain De Boton's The Art of Travel - we wanted to try and work out WHY people feel the need to travel. It's a great read BTW.

Southern trips are all quiet short-haul, in essence great day trips. I'm not sure about you, but often my Saturdays are fairly routine - I can predict with worrying certainty that I will go to the local farmers market, drop off clothes at the dry cleaners, go to the gym, phone my folks and generally potter locally. We briefed creative teams to BREAK THE APATHY OF SATURDAY.

Which was the springboard for Loco Toledo.  Loco is a wrestler from a small town in

Mexico

, where there are very few trains, and having recently arrived in

England

, is overjoyed to find that there are hundreds of trains going everywhere.

We are also developing the character through social spaces online, such as Facebook ,  with the hope of a wider roll-out next year. If you travel on Southern you may well see Loco around on your travels.

And don't forget to check out the Southern website for some brilliant online only ticket offers and thought starters for easy places to explore.