Creatives' Paradise

Just before we left Leo Burnett we finished a little side project for them, an invitation to a party for the creative department in a place called Paradise – just a bit of fun.

Bye Bye Burnett

Ah, leaving is always tough, especially after meeting a bunch of great people. After two months at Leo Burnett London we packed our seven things and said good-bye to the friendliest agency we've been to. It's been a fabulicious time, we enjoyed it a lot. Cheers to Trevor, Ed, Tony, Bertie, Phil, Christen, Ollie, Richard, Ed, Rob, Nikki, Gaynor and lots of other people we were lucky to meet.

Now – entering portfolio mode and starting the countdown. 24 days to Wieden+Kennedy. Impressions from Leo's:

London's good

Remember young Wal thinking about going to Qatar to make awards ads? Back then young Jai told him it would be a great opportunity, they thought of going together. In the end, they stayed in London. Now the agency in question, Promoseven Doha has released the first bunch of ‘award’ work for the Dubai Lynx 2008 Award. Our favourite campaign, which scooped the Grand Prix is for the video game Medal of Honor. We like it a lot, it's a really nice way to look at a war game.

We’re very happy we’ve stayed, doing what we do here in London. Our placement here at Leo Burnett is coming to an end, time to move on. We’re looking forward to a couple of weeks off, working on our book and doing stupid things before we start our next, let it be the last, placement at our favourite agency in town - probably all towns - Wieden+Kennedy.

We call him Shmoo

This is how the mugs look like here at Leo Burnett. They have the green man on them. One of our favourite teams here, Christen & Ollie had this idea. We like this green guy, he's cool.

You ask us why we post a mug? Well, we're cheating really, as we don't have time for a 'proper' post. We're working on a pitch. The tissue meeting (we hate that expression) is tomorrow. So, we better get going. Chop Chop.

Down to two

Leo Burnett, our first month's over. We're still on our toes. At day, carving campaigns for McDonald's and alike. After dark, only a handful days left until Portfolio Night keep us awake. Shaping the book, preparing. More carving.

In the meantime, the first casualty echos from the Leo Lab. The creative duo Chris & Rob, one out of the three placement teams, had their last day today. Before you start accusing us and looking for case evidence, we're innocent. The two are alive and well. They are off to start at Ogilvy on Tuesday. We're saying thanks for the fish, the competition and good luck.

This is Jai & Wal, Creative In London, post 201.
Let the weekend begin.

Leo Playground

When we started the Leo Lab we were told it's was going to be a period of live briefs to gather experience. In the beginning it was pretty much what they promised. Now things have changed. All three Leo Lab teams were gathered on Tuesday for a meeting. The creative leadership wants to change the direction of the Leo Lab - instead of putting us on daily work briefs that need solving and have lots of limitations we are asked to do stuff that's 'really great'. Literally Leo Burnett's client list is our brief, pick a brand, do something great for it. Sounds good to us. It lowers the chances of getting work out, but if something does get through, it'll be pretty damn good.

We think it's a great way of using placement teams, agencies have enough teams who can crack briefs and please clients. Seems like they want a team who will challenge the norm. Exciting times for us.

What would you prefer? Getting the real briefs? Or working on whatever you like, trying to turn it into something amazing? The Leo Lab experiment commences.

Two weeks at Leo Burnett London

Fourteen days, three placement teams, two briefs and one big table. Time for a short recap. We've spent most of our time on a brief for Child Road Safety, which is pretty open, very exciting and quite huge (a big idea type of brief). The other one on our desk is for an online campaign for Beefy & Lamby, we've got to get more people eating meat. To spice things up, this week we've launched an attack on traffic to get more assignments to keep us going.

The agency's in Kensington Village, the office seems quite isolated, but that's quite nice as it has it's own outdoor area with lots of green, benches and pigeons; fab for those rare sunny hours. On the inside, it's feels really chilled, light and spacious, and not like a big agency that's a part of the Publicis machine. In fact there's just enough space for some after hours football, maybe we'll give that a go.
We're working hard on every brief and eagerly waiting for our reviews. That's what this placement is about. We want to be better than the other teams, the ones on placement, and the ones with jobs.

Leo Lab Landing

Monday morning Jai and Wal floated into Leo Burnett to find a buzzy place full of super friendly people. The office is crazy spacious, great for throwing our beloved hacky sack around. One of the other teams arrived with us yesterday, the third team of the Leo lab join us today. We spent our first day introducing ourselves, admiring serious finger boarding skills and acquainting ourselves with the two floored cafeteria.

Test Tube Creatives

Our six week stint is soon to come to a close this Friday. Life after Lowe will continue as another door opened today leading us further west. Leo Burnett is running a placement scheme called 'the Leo Lab' which puts three creative teams in a melting pot to see who survives – hell yeah we're up for that.

So after a bit of pestering, some good fortune and a little elbow grease we've managed to swindle ourselves into the Lab and start on the 7th of April. This gives us a week in between to get our beauty sleep and some well deserved and needed haircuts.