Reading is good for you.

Yet another brief set. This time by FARM. The brief it to promote/ raise awareness for National Book Tokens. MMMM. Bit boring but we are thinking a good challenge. It's going to be hard to persuade someone to get a book token over any other gift. I mean in the brief it says a stat like 65% of adualts read, potentially that's a big market to tap into. But who cares when, WHS, John Lewis, Waterstones all do their own tokens and personally i only remeber book tokens as a naff prize the school library would give you if u entered one of their competitions. So stigma, image, and other book shop competions to shred. See below for some of FARM's work for National Book Tokens:







Off that track, I might be moving to london soon, does anyone have any suggestions of good areas to live in?

Also DANAD, extended the deadline for a few briefs for another week. Apparently because of lack of entries... mmm like 4,000 entries wasn't enough to judge. Dammit.
I did fancy entering again, but i have had enough of competition briefs, for now.
We have started our website. At the moment, its pretty simple and lacks a brand identity/ concept. But do we need to actually brand ourselves? Or is that all a bit tack and try hard? Shouldn't the work speak the loudest?

sign,sealed,delivered.

Extra busy at the moment.. But here's a a bit about what we have been getting up to.

Firstly. AMV visit. Really swanky building, but was surprised when we ended up in a front living room. AMV have transformed their meeting room into a sort of soap tv set. Complete with authentic features like wellies left by the door on some news paper, family photos, nic naks, dvds, family games and so on. This setting instantly made everyone feel at ease! Tim Riley was a really nice guy. Totally honest about his thoughts on our work and to the point. He said we had a strong copy line but maybe had two ideas merged into one. I got a good feeling from AMV but we didn't see (as Tim says, the ever diminishing offices with movable walls) real situation of the working environment. Nether less, it wouldn't matter if we did, they don't actually take on placements, which is a bugger.



Moving on, WK. We met Sophie and Ben. After an early 4:00 am wake on Monday, we made it nice and early to WK for our meeting at 9:30. They were again insightful and honest. They have asked us to come back to see them once we have graduated in 3 months. Which is promising.



Yesterday, the "two Lauras", ex students, now middle weights working on accounts for companies such as Virgin Atlantic and Sony in GYRO (an Integrated agency), set us a brief for Sony VAIO all in one pc/tv. Bit of a boring brief and being so busy we only had 2 hours to do it in,but i think we managed to crack it pretty well. They gave us some good tips and mentioned GYRO "open day" where you just pop along get your work seen by three creative directors and they pick two teams for a 3 month placement. They also mentioned that most placement teams they have picked have since gone on and hired. See pic below.



And finally, DANDAD is sign, sealed and delivered!

Knitting away the blues

I've been suffering from a nasty cold today and to keep me entertained i have started knitting. I'm finding it's a good way of keeping busy but also makes time for creative thinking. Although not much has popped into my head regarding the AMV brief (See below) but i have found an article in today's Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/mar/06/credit-crunch-lunch

Apart from knitting and generally feeling sorry for myself and fooling my daffodils on my desk by shining my desk lamp on them to think its spring, I have been doing final edits on DandAD before its sent next week. EEPS!

Abbot Mead Vickers BBDO Brief

The brief has been set. A week today we have the presentation at AMV in Marleybone with Tim Riley.

The brief:
The Restaurant Association

Back ground:
Restaurants are being hit hard by the credit crunch. Instead of eating out people are either cooking for themselves or ordering takeaways. So whereas Dominos, KFC and McDonalds are all taking on more staff, restaurants are laying off people, and in some cases closing down all together.

The Restaurant Association represents the interests of Britain's restaurateurs and they think it's time to act. They want to run a campaign to encourage people to eat out.

Strategy: Up to you.

Media: Any



I think the brief is a really interesting topical route and certainly challenging.
After the presentation we have an appointment with MajorPlayers, recruitment specialists. I'm so far a bit wary of recruitment consultancies but they may change my mind. I would like to know other peoples thoughts on them and past experiences. Is it really a route to go down considering we graduate in three months and the road looks rocky.

Acacemia

After much controversy, the dissertation has been handed in! There has been many talks at my university with external examiners and course leaders over the necessity of the 10,000 word dissertation that forms a double module for our creative course.

Within my university there are two sides arguing for and against a dissertation element. One side believe that a degree is only a degree if it has a long piece of written theory. Whilst others believe that this idea is old fashioned and excludes a lot of creative students that excel in creativity and not academic writing. If you think of it in another way, it would be odd to give say a student studying maths a double award creative project. Myself, well, I felt proud to hand in a chunky bit of work and it means i will get that "Hons" on the end of my degree, oh yeah! It took me over half a year to research and I got really involved in my investigation. However, I think it may have distracted from my practical work, but i made just one day a week solely for research and writing. I think that perhaps, that one day a week i could have been making much better use of my time like visiting agencies, doing more briefs etc. After all, agencies never ask to see your dissertation. I would like to know what creatives outside of university think of creatives having to write academic projects. Does it help or distract a creative?

Since the University has analyzed the arguments, a "critical journal" has been introduced, to link research with portfolios. Any how, the deed has been done and good riddance.

Back to the practical. We have an A.M.V week long brief being set this Thursday and a W.K visit the week after. Bring on the long nights.