Advertising on the BBC

Just a quick one today peeps. We wanted to let all you ad hounds know of a new TV series called The Hard Sell starting today on BBC4 at 10:30pm. This evenings topic is sex and advertising. Sounds like one to Sky+. Anyway, we found out about it at work as Ed Morris our CD is appearing on it, alongside Sir John Hegarty and the like. Set your reminders and tune in.

Portfolio Night 2008

ihaveanidea.org is doing it again. Portfolio Night 6 is coming up in a couple of months. On the 8th of may young creatives will have the chance to put their books in front of local & international creative directors in at least 17 cities around the world (face-to-face as well as online response after uploading your book). It’s the second time in London and Wal participated last year with Kristin, it was awesome and we can recommend it to everyone looking for adivice, jobs or placements. A review about the last one is to be found here. The tickets will be around 20 quid and will be available from the 21st of march.

Now why should you pay for a bookcrit you ask? It will save you the (sometimes impossible) trouble of getting in touch with great creative directors and putting your book in front of them.

Last year we’ve waited to see the list of CD’s ( here is last year's list) before getting the tickets, this time we won’t as we’re pretty sure about a great turn up. The London night is hosted by JWT and will take place at their Knightsbridge office. And there's free beer...

makeryanaircheaper.com

The amount of feedback we got for Evian was fantastic, we really appreciated all the comments. We'll let you know how that turns out. In the mean time here's another thought for you guys to mull over when you have a spare sec. What do you think folks?

First day at LOWE

Today we had the day of the snap at Lowe. We started at 10 and caught a delicious breakfast just before at a caf in wonderful South Kensington. After arrival we were shown around the place and met some familiar faces, people we've met before, randomly of course. We spent the first day of our placement connecting our brains to this place and working on our first brief. More to come.

Secret Cinema

Shhhhh...we're not really supposed to talk about this but we thought we'd risk sharing it with you guys. Wednesday night we discovered Secret Cinema for us for the first time. It was awesome. We had to sign up online and pay for tickets on Tuesday, and believe us it’s quite odd handing over hard earned cash for something that is a mystery. However we gave it a punt and it was no disappointment.

So yesterday morrow an email pinged up with a reference number and time, telling us to meet at the Royal Academy of Arts; quite plush, not what we were expecting. Anyhow we turned up and witnessed the most disorganized and perhaps most immoral queuing system known to man. We thought we’d be a bit clever and ‘bad’ and jumped the swarm bringing us closer to the entrance; however to our dismay there were people rather more cunning than us. As a result we quickly found ourselves nearing the last people that entered. Note to self - never underestimate a Londoners creative queuing resolve.

Still, the atmosphere was beaming with excitement, with performers in pink outfits running around and mumbling nonsense to one another, a mini orchestra blaring and a Dick Tracy type photographer with an old fifties camera taking pictures during the queuing chaos. Clearly a clue to the movie but we weren’t cultured enough to guess which one. Eventually we got in to see even more performers, even stranger now.
Secret Cinema were also kind enough to provide lots of freebies and after a great short the film - The Funny Face starring Audrey Hepburn. Certainly not something we would have watched if we had not gone, but it was a pleasure indeed. A motion picture full of wonderful acting and marvelous dancing. The movie choice seemed to accompany the London Fashion Week very well and everything around it fitted the plot. We found out about this through le cool magazine, give it a go.

All good

That's us. After six weeks of lots of work on our portfolio we are having a great beginning of the week. Yesterday morning we saw Fabian & Ida at W+K and we're going there for a placement around May, yesss! Afterwards we saw Scamp and his partner at BBH who gave us an ace of a crit with great advice.

A quick rest and we made our way to drop off the book at Lowe where it was to be seen by the creative director, Ed Morris (forwarded by The Talent Business). We're glad as he seemed to like the book and we'll start our first placement as a team this monday there. We cannot wait!

L'eau de vie

A work in progress idea for our book. We've been turning it around in our heads and on paper for the past couple of days. We'd appreciate your comments on it. What are your initial thoughts? What do you get out of it? etc…

Cheers!

Things you do not need…

…but love to get for free.

Matter, the direct mail experiment – I've read about it on Russell's blog. It is a box full of stuff you actually enjoy receiving. Intrigued by this idea and being within the target audience (for males, aged 25-35) I signed up just before the deadline and received the box on Saturday. First I was surprised by the nice packaging with it's stylish colour and branding. Carefully I unpacked it and was pleasantly overwhelmed by the things inside.

My flatmates gathered around the box quickly and forced me to forward them the details so they can receive the next one as well. Which will happen summer this year, as far as I know. This first Matter pack contained nine items from different brands. Ranging from a calender (Virgin Atlantic) to a simple product sample of Original Source (mint and tea tree, most refreshing shower gel ever).

'In an increasingly virtual world, we're beginning to appreciate the value of real things. Matter is a box full of interesting stuff–a way for companies to talk to people by giving them things.' We like this approach. You can find out more about Matter here.

Our favourite pieces are to be found below, a wristband for Wii, simple and great. Music Monster, a cute mini-toy / phone pendant for Sony Ericsson and a double pack of Play-Doh for Sony Bravia. The later two are done by iris.

Frozen Grand Central

This is today's best video. What a great idea. We love it. Good job by ImprovEverywhere.