D&AD at M&C

Last week we made our way to M&C Saatchi, where we had Tom and his partner Uche reviewing all of our D&AD advertising workshop work. We had five campaigns in ours but the guys didn't really dig most of them. Blimey.

The stuff they did like though we're accord with as well. So we're currently working with these strategies, to turn them into great campaigns for more suitable brands. And yes, we're quite excited with the outcome we have on our hands so far.

Overall we liked the advertising workshops, the briefs were not very ideal for a portfolio, as they are either charity brands (NSPCC) or very niche products (Rexel eco stationary, D&AD workshops). Nether less it was good practice. And we've met lots of nice people on the way. Thanks D&AD.

Change

Via Adsurd

Advertising Techniques

*hastily drawing dashed lines around our ads*

Le Publivores

Last week we went to The Night of the Ad Eaters. 6 hours of ads in a cinema with entertainment in between. We didn't stand the whole night, we might have, but at times the ad selection was way to random.

We reckon the IPA just used the french real, as for 20 minutes they had ads running with Paris as a location – zero idea and zero fun, mostly. Now if that would have been London it might have been more appealing right? Overall it was a good night, there were some pretty wicked ads that were fun to watch on the big screen with a non forgiving crowd that applauded the good stuff. Have a look at some of the spots that stood out, they are nicely assembled by Seventy Seven. Thanks for saying hi, Luke & Co. I think I also spotted Mike&Phil in the crowds?

The Bill, and The Chris.

Jai Wal

D&AD workshop portfolio

We are just collating all campaigns, and revising a few of them for a final D&AD advertising workshop book which we'll have to enter later today. It will then be sent to M&C Saatchi. They will look through them and give us feedback on all our work next week – should be quite interesting. We're pretty happy with most of the stuff in there. After that's done there's gonna be even more time to rock our own briefs.

Rewarding

Working all day, first caf, reading the brief, reading it again, running around in circles, surfing around, playing with the phone, changing location, changing music, rereading the brief, doubting the brief, doubting if you can deliver greatness, giving up, picking up again, thinking, chewing on everything around you, mindless sketching, joking, taking apart the problem, reassembling it again, texting, nonsense, the most random moment, almost the end of the day, the cliched spark, a line from the lips without thinking much, the tense silence, filled with oh's and ah's while a hundred and one new connections are made up there, based on this one thought.

You can't beat this stuff. That's why we're here.

Creative Henna

We're working. On the portfolio. Today it's Tropicana, Kingsmill and Tide. We don't like writing on hands. Sometimes it's fun though.

The big guys

Let's see what the advertising god themselves have to say about the first job, the portfolio and dedication, all things which are discussed in the thread below. Black Bag, a worldwide creative recruitment agency interviewed some of the finest creatives about a career in advertising. These bits I like best:

“…The only thing I know is that if you want to make money one day, the only thing people are paying for in this industry, is the quality of your portfolio. It’s up to anyone to decide at what moment they want to move for money, but obviously, the more you work, the better your portfolio is. The best one you can get. It’s as simple as that. People will be ready to pay you because you’re the star of the moment or whatever, but at the end of the day, invest in your portfolio and one day you’ll be able to do exactly what you want. You’ll have the freedom to choose the agency, freedom to move from one country or another or the freedom to get lots of money. Portfolio means money.”

“…I'm a really big believer that your first or second job can really make who you are. You can be really imaginative but if you get bad Creative Directors at the beginning of your career they can point you in the wrong direction and make you do hack work and you may never get it back.”

"If I am gonna to be in this industry I wanna be the best at it. You can't guarantee that you're the most talented, I mean that's something I couldn't guarantee. But I could guarantee that I'd work harder than anybody else. For the first six or seven years, which is terribly for my social life, I'd probably slept in the agency two or three nights a week. I would work as long as it took. I forced myself to write as many ideas as I possibly could. So I would do stupid things like, I'd get layout pads and fill it with a hundred squares. Like post-it notes. And I couldn't leave until I filled each box with an idea, even if I loved the first idea."

Have a look at their site Diary of a Creative Director for more interviews.

We want it, We'll get it

Phew, lots of comments on here recently. We read all of them and appreciate them.

We started this blog as a team to create a platform for us to keep track of our doings, to keep us looking around, to keep us exploring, to keep us writing & thinking. Perhaps it hasn't worked out as planned. Or maybe it worked too well? At some point a lot of people started tuning in. We think it was around the time we started getting our first placement offers. A conversation with you started. And we've been pretty surprised by it. There's no need to recap what was said on the comments, however it's been a lot of everything. We enjoyed it at times, and hated it at others. It seemed more of you were interested in comments then in the things we were actually writing.

Here's the most important thing we took away from it:

Our book isn't strong enough yet, the strategies could be far stronger. Yet it's nothing new, as we both know that we can do better. For us it's a constant process of improving the portfolio, and never to stop doing so because we'll never be satisfied with it. Admittedly we do slow down at times, as we're constantly doing placements. And they always take priority.

It's tough to work all day at the agency and work on the portfolio at night. Yet that's no excuse. In fact that's the main reason we went for the D&AD workshop in the first place. We wanted to have deadlines for ourselves that we had to keep hitting on the side of agency work. But it turns out that the briefs for the workshops aren't as portfolio friendly as we thought (more on this in a later post).

We need to and want to get better, constantly. All creative teams need to. It's our last day at adam&eve today. We haven't got anything lined up. So that gives us this weekend to work out a plan and refine it next week on where to go on from here. We want to make our strategies stronger, make our book more interesting and develop into a better creative team. From what we can gather hardly any agencies are hiring at the moment. So the only way in for us is to be better. We need to make them want to hire. That's what we're going to tackle. There's no shortcut, it'll always be hard work and it will demand a lot of time. We haven't had the luxury to create a book together at college, so we need to be quicker as well. If you like, stick with us and give us a hand. As long as you stay constructive, you're more than welcome.

It's gonna be a fun ride.

Have A Wicked Day Mate!

A big shout out to Wal. Happy B'day bro!

Cream – lots of work and a bit of fun

Thanks to Rory from The Talent Business for organising this exhibition. All went smoothly, we mounted our poster and some work on our stand, then enjoyed a cold beer to loosen up just before the first visitors arrived. The work of all teams on view was great, a good opportunity to see what we're up against and to meet more people in the same boat. Cheers to everyone who came up to us to say hi, here's a big hello back.

Cream Cream Cream

The exhibition yesterday was lush. It went quite well for us, we met lots of new people and saw old friends. It was all about networking so we tried to talk to as many people as possible. We'll see what comes out of it. Event photos and more paper hat goodness coming your way soon, maybe even a review of the event? Not now though, as we have a fresh new brief on at adam & eve and will hang around here for at least another week. Way to go.

Sod Orange Wednesdays

Who's got the strawberries?

This Thursday, The Hospital turns into portfolio land. The 20 best young creative teams are showing their work – and we're in. Good timing as new stuff is waiting to be seen in our book. Is anyone else rocking up?

It's all about the book

OK, I've been around for some time, and things have changed. I think the portfolio of a young creative team is more important then ever. A year ago when I was doing the rounds with my former partner it seemed the book was a key to a placement. You just need it to get in and then it's up to you to crack the agency briefs and show you are hard working and can do something no one else does in the department to get hire.

But getting a placement isn't enough anymore. We had a chat with a great talent hunter this week and we came to the conclusion that it is really hard to find a place that hires at the moment. Most places are filled with placement teams that have been around and are cracking one brief after another. So finding an agency without a 'placement history' is hardly possible, and if you find one, it's going to be one that's not particularly good.

You need a Rock n'Roll book. One that flashes hard. Before starting the placement you need to appear as the hottest team since Tefal's thermo spot. Making a list of agencies that are likely to hire is a waste of time. You need to have a portfolio that gets people dripping. Fuck the credit crunch, if you are good you will get hired, if not, you will be placementing around. It's all about the book, more than ever. But then again, it always was all about the work, no matter the right place at the right time, no matter if you have a blog or not, if you're good – then you will rock.

LURPAK banners

We just received the files for the Lurpak campaign we worked on during our placement at Wieden+Kennedy. The banners are to be found on various food sites like delia online and uktvfood, although the pages need a bit of refreshing to stumble across them. They are supporting the print and TV campaign that is running at the moment. We've uploaded some of the banners here.

Delicious ads for dinner

Watching ads all night sounds fun right? RIGHT? Right.

That's why on the 16th of October we're heading to the Bloomsbury Theatre to the Night of the AdEaters. It features more than 350 films of the best Russian, Asian, African, South American and UK advertising spots. They like to call it 'advertainment' and source the spots from the worlds only library dedicated to TV and cinema commercials – the 'Jean Marie Boursicot Cinématheque'. Check out adeaters.co.uk for all details and come along if you like. Bon Appetit!

jai&wal at adam&eve

We’ve been on a placement at adam&eve since Monday and it’s quite sweet. Being a start up it’s around 20 people big and everyone is a busy bee. Originally we were penciled in for a month, however it's now two weeks as there aren't many briefs floating around. So out of desperation we're performing daily rain dances after everyone leaves asking for more briefs.

yet we were informed that they might cut it after two weeks if work won't be around.

Our first brief is for the Telegraphs online dating service, Kindred Spitis. Wait, no, don’t bother looking up our profiles, we disguised those quite well (they are for research purposes only). The office is near Leicester Square, that makes it our first agency in Central London, as before we’ve been either West (Lowe & Leo’s) or East (W+K). Central ad ghetto's fun.

Of course there is an apple tree here, we are yet to bite into one. Would you?

Workshop Mania

This workshop at WDMP has been like two weeks ago but the pictures were lost in limbo – that's me not finding my camera cable. There's also a video clip of a creative team singing their idea on this workshop, but they didn't seem completely happy about it popping up online without their approvement. That should teach us a lesson about asking permission.

Anyway, the workshop last week was canceled, it'll happen this week instead. We'll be at WWAV & Leo Burnett, the briefs are to make a digital campaign for NSPCC for the former and a campaign against Drink Driving for Leo's. Charity all the way. All of this comes as a side dish with our placement at Adam&Eve that starts tomorrow. But Wait. That's not all. If works piles up, it does so in a serious way. There's something else coming up in two weeks time which is already stealing our sleep. It should be good and and it should fun. We're excited.

Campaign - graduate issue

Tipped of by a friend we picked up today's campaign, as we haven't been reading it for a couple of weeks. This issue is all about graduates, how to get into the industry and more importantly how to survive once you're in. Have a read of the online article and if you think it might be interesting, get a copy. You won't read anything you didn't know before, but it's nice to hear some of the things again. There's also an interesting bit about online portfolios for young creatives.

Seaside in Yalta

I like chess so I couldn't resist to take this picture, old men playing chess – classic.

15.09.08

dim3 ak7ion

Creative Blog Roundup

It's time for another look at new creative blogs from around the UK and the whole wide world. It seems like new blogs are popping up daily, some are quite interesting, sadly lots of them quiet out rather soon.

I asked for a car, i got a computer
http://iaskedforacarigotacomputer.blogspot.com/
Ferris (not his real name) is a friend of ours and his posts are pretty amusing, he works in a big ATL agency in London.

Two men eating for three
http://twomeneatingforthree.com/
Stu & James are a creatives & creative directors in a digital agency in London, their blog is a lot of fun.

A week in creativity
http://aweekincreativity.blogspot.com/
This one didn't have an update in some time but it's well worth a look. Robin, a creative from Belgium is hosting the blog and gets a different creative (team) from around the world to write about their week, great insights.

James & Joe
http://jamesandjoecreative.blogspot.com/
James & Joe are a creative team from the University of Leeds and we do like their blog. It's a collection of fresh stuff with some of their bits in between, don't miss out on their website!

The Barry & Troy Show
http://www.thebarryandtroyshow.com/index.php?/the-blog/
Cool stuff on this one, they did have an introduction text on them somewhere but I cannot find it now, but they have some interesting stuff to share.

Ad-Revenge
http://ad-revenge.blogspot.com/
Sara is a great art director working in Madrid, she started this blog where she takes bad ads and sprinkles her art direction dust over it to make them grande. Wicked.

Small Bears and Bogeymen
http://smallbears.blogspot.com/
Luke and Wilf from UCA (third year) are pretty new to blogging, in fact they just started last week, but it's looking good so far.

JaLucy
http://lucyandjade.blogspot.com/
One of our favorites. Lucy and Jade are a fresh team from St.Martins. They work at Work Club. No useful content at all, only lots of fun and random stuff.

Riverrun
http://theideasflow.blogspot.com/
Sal learned copywriting at the Miami Ad School and just finished his job in Beijing and switched over to Jung von Matt in Hamburg with his new partner Andres – good luck guys!

This is Us
http://www.adrianandmike.com/
Adrian & Mike are currently placementing (should be a verb) around London, they don't post often but when they do it's good.

Deviant Monkey
http://deviant-monkey.blogspot.com/
Hayley is from Wigan and she just found a Partner, Sarah, with whom she just started her first placement at Pravda, see how they get on.

It would never run
http://itwouldneverrun.blogspot.com/
A blog with spec work that could never run, some are fun, some ridiculous, have a look. And if you have some yourself send them their way.

Biscuit Barrel
http://iaskedforacarigotacomputer.blogspot.com/
A Copywriter with the destination London for the first job is leaving his traces here.

jpandtem
http://jpandtem.blogspot.com/
Jack from Devon and Tom from Yorkshire have some great stuff online. They post their work and other thoughts in-between placements.

The Idea Bakery
http://theideabakery.blogspot.com/
An aspiring creative blogging her inspirations, observations and daily antics – stolen straight from the blog.

Mike & Phil
http://mikeandphil.blogspot.com/
They graduated from the University of Lincoln and are now rocking London, they just finished their placement at JWT and started their next one. We're yet to have a drink with them, sorry guys.

Live broadcast from my mind
http://livebroadcast.blogspot.com/
Javier's blog, he hardly posts, but I'm including him here because I wish he would, cool guy.

The Oxymorons
http://theoxymorons.blogspot.com
Dip and Rob are attending the Dare school (long placement scheme type of thingy) and they write fun stuff about their creative time.

Blog.Like.No.Other
http://hazwadblog.blogspot.com/
Harry and Laura, a creative team I've met at the Shelf Award.

Guy and Sarah
http://guyandsarah.blogspot.com/
One more team searching for their break in advertising, doing weekly ad reviews on their blog.

penny on the rail
http://pennyontherail.blogspot.com/
A working London creative writes about stuff, and it's quite interesting

Toby's Blog
http://tobybrewer.blogspot.com/
Toby is a creative writing about his interests, creative work and photography. Check out his sidebar, he seems to have quite a few blogs.

Oh my god it's a German
http://www.woweewow.com/
That's lovely Seb changing his blog for the Xth time, good read.

That should you keep busy for a while. Again, if we missed anyone, feel free to link to your blog in the comments. And thanks for reading ours.

Shoe Circus

We were really surprised when Microsoft handed over their advertising account to Crispin Porter + Bogusky earlier this year. But it made sense! If there is one ad agency who can help them it must sure be CP+B, right? They had to make Microsoft cool – that's a mother of a brief. The campaign had to be better than those uber good 'Mac vs PC' commercials from TBWA.

Of course Crispins offices are full of Macs, I bet every single creative loves them – and now they have to make ads for Microsoft. Tough job. A couple of days ago they released the first TV advert. It's starring Bill Gates & Jerry Seinfeld, have a look:



I couldn't wait too see Crispin goodness and was disappointed by this average mix of celebrity power and no idea spot. Am I missing something? Maybe the follow ups are gonna rock the show? I'd so love to see Microsoft becoming cool with Crispins help. Their greatest challenge so far.

*This blog post is written on a mac

Wild Thing

A good friend of ours is looking for an Art Director in London. If you are a writer on the lookout or know anyone, let him know – creativepartner08@yahoo.co.uk

This week

Hello there. Back in London. And it seems like it's going to be a hell of a week. On the workshop front we're going to WDMP tomorrow and to Visit Britain on Thursday. Beside getting our stuff together for those sessions we need to spend lots of time on our book so we can go back to see Matt soon. Not much 'portfolio time' is left as we're starting our next placement on the 15th of September. Adam&Eve.

50 Today

Let's forget the controversy for a day and remember the genius. 

The Workshops Begin…

Last night we had our first D&AD workshop at Feel. It wasn’t an agency many of us had heard of but after a bit of research we soon realized they’ve done some pretty cool work. Chris Arnold, the CD and Partner ran a great first workshop. We didn’t touch on much advertising really, the session was more focused on creativity and communication in general. Chris also dabbled with some psychology and NLP, which was a bit of an eye opener.

For last nights brief, Chris asked us to put together a reaction diary for the week. And last night he explained why it was so important to be able to read reactions, as only then can be really evoke them. Chris talked about many things last night but I think the one point he wanted us to go away with was everything we do should get a reaction.

Here’s the template + instructions we were given, so if you want you can try it yourself.

BFI's Comic Book Season

I've been a huge fan of Superman since I could walk. Read all the comics, used all the stationary, wore all the t-shirts and might have even named a girl I fancied at school Lois. Since those days my obsession had somewhat calmed, but last night it all came rushing back. As part of the BFI's Comic Book season this August they had a one night only showing of Superman II. Oh my goodness, was it good. Overly camp acting, terrible effects, corny dialogue and more Amerciana than at a Bush rally in Ohio. I loved every minute of it. The best part was the fact they didn't use the remastered version. We were shown the original print, so it was grainy, the colour was faded and the sound was only a little better than what we'd expect from a Grundig cassette player from Argos. It felt the way it should have done, it was watched the way I have always wanted to see it; like it was 1980, for two hours I had gone back in time (well kind off).

For those into your comics, there's lots going on for the remainder of the month so if you get a chance I'd give the Southbank a visit. They are showing Persopolis from the 18th-20th Aug, never seen it before but it looks good. I was lucky enough to be given the tickets as a gift but I think they're about seven quid, totally worth it. Right, off to do some more people watching for our Feel brief.

Jai Time!

Yay, I'm off. Flying to Kiev and Yalta for two weeks.
Jai is going to do his magic here so long – enjoy.

D&AD Workshop – Introduction

17 young creatives and 6 agencies hosting sessions – sounds like it's going to be great fun! The introduction sessions for this years autumn D&AD advertising workshop was this Wednesday, at their office in Vauxhall. It started at 6 but of course we arrived late, blimey!

It was pretty easy going, after all the essential information we started with a simple creative exercise. We mixed into pairs of two and spent some time talking to each other before drawing a poster about the other person so we'll get to know everyone. After that we received some D&AD student briefs (random, the TfL brief was one of them) and worked on them for 15 minutes in the same pairs and presented to each other. Just a bit of fun, getting to know the group and getting comfortable presenting work in front of each other.

The first 'real' sessions will take place next week on Tuesday and will be hosted by the agency Feel. They already sent us a pdf called 'the Reaction Diary' which is quite interesting and promising. We're happy to be participating, we've already met some pretty cool people and of course it all ended in the pub – but enough talk, here are some pictures:

D&AD Workshop – WHSmith

Ok, we didn't make any copies of the campaign we submitted to qualify for the D&AD advertising workshop, as we've been pretty busy with Nike stuff at that time. But as we went to the introduction session on Wednesday we received our work back and we thought we'll share.

The brief was: Create a campaign to encourage parents to spend more quality time with their children, by showing the range of products that WHSmith has to keep all ages entertained.

Here are the two campaigns we sent in.


Jai prefers the first one but I like this one more. We don't know yet which agency did set the brief. Maybe we'll find out and ask what they preferred.



We had a couple more starting points we've submitted as lines:

• Adult Play Time
• Invest in your assets
• You'll need them once you're old
• Playing makes you younger
• Be a TV family
• Make time before they make you to
• Keep them younger longer

Nothing new

Last couple of days were a nice break from the blog, just a bit lazy really. Enjoying the non existent summer, writing stories (about a cactus), reading books (advertising), working on our portfolio (a hairstyling brand) some design stuff (branding for a food franchise), calling agencies (new London office of the Brooklyn Brothers) and more stuff. In a bit we're off to the D&AD Workshop introduction session which takes place tonight. Hope to take some pictures there.

Happy Birthday!

Tam dam! Yesterday was Jai's birthday, he reached the 24th year on this planet. The Blog says Happy (belated) Birthday! Hope the Hangover disappears smoothly :) I also have to recover from a super rainy and muddy Field Day.

Kristin at the Club

An obviously cool place to hang for London creatives in between placements and freelance is Soho's Breakfast club (also a famous Planner hideaway). That's where we bumped into Kristin today, Wal's former creative partner. She's doing some cool things at the moment with her partner Graham – watch out for them! On the piece of paper she gives a shout out to her single favorite blog reader.

Rum Alchemy II

It's this time of the year again. The weekend before last I made my way to Borough Market afresh to obtain selected ingredients for another round of flavor Infused Rum. I bottled and mixed the dried fruits and spices on the day. Now it's going to take the three bottles at least a couple of weeks – ideally around three months – to unfold their flavors and sync together perfectly. The most important thing is patience and a weekly shake. I'm also rather curious how they will turn out compared to the ones from last year. It's less sugar and a bit more fruits this time. Maybe for these three I will get around to do what I wanted last time and design some labels for the infused rum. Let me introduce the cast:

Say hello to good

In spite the summer's not really jazzing, everything's good. Things are sinking in and we are having a couple of days off. Jai is working part time at the airport and I'm doing some freelance packaging design, great fun.

Today made us especially happy. First we discovered a post on the W+K London blog about us. The Welcome to Optimism blog was the first one I started reading regularly, it introduced me to blogging and was one of the reasons I started a blog myself – so we're pretty chuffed to appear on there – a small dream comes true.

And if that's not enough to sweeten up the day, there's another one of our goals reached. We received an email from D&AD, we've made it onto the Advertising Workshop which will kick off next week. It's gonna be good. Every Wednesday, new creative people, drinks and food for our portfolio. Yummy! We might have even been smart enough to make copies of the work we've sent in. So if I'll find them I'll post the campaigns, the brief was WHSmith.

We hope your day was as good as ours, we all need some goodness nowadays to go with that boring weather – let's all say hello to good and it'll keep coming back.