Behave…..or no lift home for you sunshine.

China has a ‘social credit’ system.

Basically, if you play up, mouth off or display any behaviour that doesn’t befit that of a good subject, you can often find your wings clipped when attempting to use the country’s vast transport network. Just one of a few sanctions possible I might add.

This policy has just been further bolstered by Xi Jinping deciding to abolish presidential fixed terms so effectively he could rule forever and even strengthen such laws to restrict the movement of ‘wayward’ citizens.

All this becomes interesting when you consider that ‘Robocabs’ (driverless, electric, automated taxis) are about to be rolled out in American cities like Pittsburgh. Robocabs use lots of Chinese tech’ and the first ones have already been rolled out by Uber – albeit with the safety net of a human ‘attendant’ who can step in if the automated system suddenly goes berserk.

Subject to plenty of plain sailing and no massive pile ups, the worldwide roll out of Robocabs is inevitable with the globe’s largest cities becoming the natural, obvious marketplace.

The bad news is, by virtue that you’re using a device to order a Robocab could leave Chinese subjects exposed to remotely activated restrictions and rendering themselves marooned at the roadside if they’d so much as discarded a cigarette butt. You could effectively be high and dry.

So forget big brother tracking of where you are – you may not even be able to hitch a ride in the first place.

Oh and don’t even think about remonstrating against the huge slight or infringement on your civil liberties because your leader can just change the law. And has done.

So by all means look forward to automated Robocabs and the hugely convenient novelty that brings but remember, what the Chinese Politburo giveth can swiftly become another Chinese takeaway.

iCopy: Will robots be the new writers?

“If you want to be a writer, then write.” – Samuel Johnson

Easier said than done for an 18th century writer. He didn’t have the robots trying to steal his job!

Let me explain. We’re all aware of artificial intelligence. Alexa, driverless cars, SMART-just-about-everything. But, why apply machine-learning to copywriting?

For starters, copywriting bots are devils for details… or, should I say, data. They can study trends in ads, lines and much more and repackage these into copy that drives results.

Goldman Sachs has already invested tens of millions in their automated copywriting start-up, Persado. In its own words, Persado uses scientific algorithms to “generate a precise combination of words, phrases, and images that can motivate any audience.”

According to Campaign, Persado “has used “cognitive content” on more than 4,000 marketing campaigns, through Facebook, display ads, email and mobile, by collecting response data from ad impressions.”

As our Creative Partner, Richard Elwell rightly pointed out in 2016, ‘the hackers have hacked the hacks, you could say.’

So where humans can only do so much, robots have unlimited capacity and unlimited access to data. They have a combination of logic and speed that us mere mortals can only dream of.

Where we, at some point, have to stop – robots only keep going.

They won’t spend a lunch break scrolling through Instagram, tell their colleagues how their new ‘healthy’ diet is supposedly going, go home to their family at 5.30pm, worry about getting a good night’s sleep, plan out their annual leave – you get the picture.

They don’t rely on inspiration or creative juices (or wine) either. All they need is a formula and they can write hundreds of versions of the same ad until they find the copy they know will sell.

The million dollar question though, is a formula enough?

While robots can supposedly be programmed to write compelling copy for humans (Persado now even offers one to one emotional language personalisation), they’re missing the vital human element. First and foremost, we can feel. We have our own lives and experiences to draw on, allowing us to empathise and apply that to our copy.

Then there are the rules, some might say, the copy commandments. Like all rules, there to be followed… and of course, there to be broken. Unlike robots, humans know how to break the writing rules and make them work to their advantage.

Ad Aged’s George Tannenbaum’s experience with Sharethrough is a classic example of how following the rules doesn’t always work. In a nutshell, Sharethrough is a headline recommending algorithm based on behaviour model theory, and neuroscience and advertising research. When Tannenbaum used Volkswagen’s award-winning ‘Think small’ headline, the algorithm scored this a mere 38, with the following suggestions for improvement:

Increase headline length
Where’s the brand?
Use more Alert Words
Talk about the body
Try adding a celebrity

Tannenbaum took the suggestions on board and applied every single one. This resulted in the below headline:

“Warning. Alert. When you think about Volkswagen think with both your head and heart, use the strength of your brains and the sinew of your arm, and think about a very small Volkswagen–the likes of which Kim Kardashian would drive.”

That earned 100, a perfect score. Needless to say, a perfect score from an algorithm does not make for a perfect headline.

Humans have creativity and, if you ask me, that’s something that can’t be engineered.

Assaf Baciu, co-founder of Persado, has said that content automation today is more about working with human-produced content to make it stronger, rather than replacing humans with robot-created writing. People are still the wordsmiths. And, for someone who has wanted to be a writer ever since I can remember, that’s a huge relief.

Baciu goes on to say, “We’re not here about displacing, we’re here about enhancing.”

So maybe robots aren’t a threat. Maybe they’re an asset. Think of the days when you’re snowed under with work. We all have them (my catchphrase on these days is ‘why won’t the words just write themselves?!’) and I know that if a robot could bang out some killer copy and ease my workload at the same time, I’d use it.

The more I’ve read into this subject, the more I think that artificial intelligence is only a major threat to the copywriters who are resistant to change. Who want to keep doing the same things and get the same results.

Emma Park at Isobar Australia puts it perfectly in her War of the Words article:

“There’s no doubt AI is changing our industry and outperforming the humble human in plenty of ways. But to make the most of it, copywriters (and agencies) need to reassess what they bring to the table. Our value does not lie in the words we write, but rather knowing how to use them.”

She goes on to explain that this is helping forge new career paths for copywriters, from linguistics officers to dialogue designers, scientific copywriters and language engineers.

The robots are here and they’re here to stay. Fact. And, while the thought of a robot outperforming and even replacing you is scary, I don’t see that happening for another 20 years. If robots can make copywriting more personalised, efficient, and give me more time to focus on the bigger projects rather than the day to day tasks, then I welcome them.

Machine generated. Written by a human. It’s all there to sell and, if you ask me, that’s what we should really be focusing on.

Power sharing

For the past few years, the chatter has been all around how shareable social is and the importance of peer reviews.
In the 90s it was called water cooler moments, for our younger colleagues, this was where co-workers would gather round the big bottle in the office and create small talk about last night’s telly.
Before (and since) then we simply talked to our mates in the pubs or over the garden fence to our neighbours.

Whatever ‘marketing’ title we give it, it’s simply good old fashioned word of mouth.

Back in the 14th Century a loyal French Aristocrat understood the power of giving someone something to talk about probably more than any of us ever will.
After the (as she saw it) unjust execution of her third husband for treason against King Philip VI, Jeanne de Clisson sold up her lands and used the money to fund a personal army to terrorise villages in Normandy and with the backing of the English, three warships which went on voyages of piracy in the English Channel against the French. The ships were painted black and had blood red sails with the flagship being named ‘My Vengeance’. She would kill the French crews but always save one. This one sailor would be despatched back to Paris to inform the King of the events and results.
She became such a terrifying figure in French history that she was named the ‘Lioness of Brittany’ and her infamy passed into folklore. All through simply understanding the power of word of mouth spreading a powerful narrative.

But word of mouth only works if the message is on the extremes.
Social media thrives on love and hate. Mainly hate.
We take to it to rant about Brexit negotiations, a late parcel delivery or as we’ve seen this week, shout about the Worst. Snow. Ever.
The bland, middle of the road stuff obviously fills the majority of our feeds but nobody listens or takes any notice. Just like the garden fence, no point in boring conversation about lawn feed, let’s have some juicy titbits about what he’s been up to down at no. 52. Cue mental image of Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough.

We need to remember this, our industry only gets talked about when it’s on the extremes. 89% of advertising is ignored (7% disliked, 4% liked) because it’s quite simply bland and boring. Think that’s bad, according to stats on three leading social platforms, the numbers are far worse. For every 1,000 followers you have, the engagement on facebook is 0.6%, twitter is 0.35% and linkedin is 0.2%. Then imagine applying the ‘4% liked’ theory. The day to day numbers we’re dealing in are so ridiculously tiny once you look beyond the headline quantities. So what if you have a 20k twitter following, that realistically equates to 70 people seeing your post, so it’d better stand out otherwise the chances are only about 3 are going to notice it and remember it in a good way.

Just like the ad world, it’s all about ideas that cut through.

Look at two recent examples, the brilliant Nike ‘Nothing Beats a Londoner’ film.
I live in the Midlands. I’m the wrong end of my 40s. I’m not particularly active.
Yet I saw the ad because of word of mouth. It showed up on so many of my social channels with my peers raving about it. Result: there’s a good chance my next pair of trainers will be from the Oregon based company and even more chance my son will possibly break with his Adidas obsession.

Then there was the FCK ad for KFC (seeing as Mother are getting all the plaudits, can I give a massive nod here to a client brave enough to spot a career defining moment).
I didn’t physically see it in the newspaper but what a great ad for that particular medium which was used to create something that got the whole world talking.

Love them or hate them, both are ideas that cannot be ignored and will go into folklore through simple word of mouth.

So the next brief you receive or give, remember the actions of Jeanne de Clisson and give them something to talk about.

Cream has finally passed its sell-by date

It was sad to read that The Drum Cream Awards are no more. After 20 years, time has finally caught up on this little awards scheme that we hold dear to our hearts.

The organisers, Carnyx, have stated that the Midlands and South West awards will be incorporated into the more prestigious and long-standing Roses Creative Awards which celebrates creative “life outside London”. Let’s be clear though, it’s not being merged in. It’s being shut down and forgotten about.

Now I don’t blame The Drum for stepping away from Cream, far from it. We’ve witnessed over the last few years a massive change in The Drum and the whole trade publication world. It has moved a long, long way from the trade mag it took over (the creators of Cream) Adline, which was based here in Birmingham. Now a truly international publication, web platform and awards programme, the sheer scale of the operation means some things will fall by the wayside.

Let’s be honest, we as a regional industry have to take some of the blame, back in the 90s Cream attracted thousands of people from across the Midlands (the South West were to join a little later) to a huge event held in the largest room in the ICC. Yet for the last few years we all fitted into the upstairs room of a pub. Some of the big local names also gave up on it with an absence of McCann, RBH and Cogent. This left Chapter, BigDog, Connect and ourselves fighting it out alongside the always brilliant Specsavers in-house creative team.

The numbers stopped adding up for Carnyx. Not enough entries, not enough folks buying tickets and too many nights away from home for the organising team at their multitude of events. The market has become saturated for both the organisers and agencies, especially if you have a full-service offering.

Cream has lost it’s significance in so many people’s heads. But this is to misunderstand and underestimate the impact it has had.

Cream is a gateway award.

As young and old creatives, we all dream of winning big on the international stage. Receiving the accolades and recognition for the work we believe deserves to be lauded. But it ain’t that easy for we small, provincial agencies. We’re not working with the budgets that allow us to hire the best help. We don’t have the masses of resource or time to lovingly craft and create. And we simply don’t have the exposure where our work is lauded before it hits our friends on the juries.

This leads to dubious work being produced and suspicions of how real either the work or the client is. And if they are real, was it paid for work? Often not and then you have a battle of convincing the FD to spend even more money on entries as well as having to fight to keep a creative department’s focus on the briefs that keep the lights on.

Of course, it’s not impossible to win on the bigger stage, many have done it (including ourselves) but it’s bloody expensive and difficult. We won 18 awards in 2017 but they cost us over £10,000 in entry fees, ceremony tickets, hotels, travel and celebratory refreshment.

Cream offered an opportunity to break into the glittering awards world where we could compete with our like-for-like peers. It was a level(ish) playing field. Now nobody is getting carried away with the value of awards – and in the tier system, Cream was obviously towards the bottom end. This doesn’t mean they’re not something to be proud of or that they should be dismissed. They gave so many young creatives over the past 20 years their first taste of standing on the podium and made them hungry for more. In fact, it was our showing as young creatives at the inaugural Cream awards that gave us the confidence and hunger to chase Roses and beyond. And once we’d tasted this success, not only did it spur us on but also the agency and created a healthy competition between the creatives but also the account groups. They were used as pay rise influencers.

If you’re lucky you go up time and time again. It’s such a minuscule part of a career but so addictive.

Take mine and Rich’s experience for example. We think we’ve had around 110 trips to various stages over our 24 year careers. If each trip takes approximately five minutes (including photos) that equates to about nine hours picking up awards. One day out of 6,240 or 0.016% of our working lives… so far.

We also can’t underestimate the power of Cream in bringing together a disparate and fragmented region. The Midlands agency scene has always struggled with unity and camaraderie. We’re too far flung with a predominance of location in the shires rather than a city centre. No local pub to congregate in where you’re guaranteed to bump into one of your peers and chew the industry fat. We have other events of course but none of them are ad focussed and none where work is put up on a screen for us to collectively wish we’d done or more likely mutter, ‘how’s that shit got through?’

While I understand that it was inevitable that Cream would eventually die, I have to admit it will leave a gap in the region and a tear in my eye over what could have been.

Blast:02 The Donny Situation.

A few southerners.
But mainly northerners.
No desks.
A 1950’s canteen with comedy menu.
A kid who’d been in the circus.
Two lecturers and a Jedi Master.
A Sega Megadrive.
London luminaries.
A book of briefs.
————
Right, off you go then, Adland beckons.
This was day one of our HND advertising course at Doncaster (or more affectionately, Donny) College, South Yorkshire. The year was 1991. The lecturers were Dave Bullers and Steve Dixon.
More engineering brick than red brick with the only dreaming spire atop the church next door (our campus was aptly called Church View – sadly now demolished).

Still ringing in my ears from a couple of years earlier, my classmate David Brazier had boasted how well his brother was doing in London as a ‘printer’. He even drove a BMW. Get him I thought, this was big news for Dudley. Turned out the printer, (Paul Brazier) actually worked at WCRS as an Art Director and would go on to chair the UK’s largest agency, Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO.

Anyway, back to Donny as me and my fellow intake stood in an underwhelming studio within a completely unremarkable town. Nothing whatsoever to write home about – so I didn’t. Instead I went home every weekend for the first few weeks because I thought I’d made a terrible mistake.
How wrong I was though. Because what an influence this place would turn out to be over Jon and I over for the rest of our working lives.
The welcome speech couldn’t have been clearer. We stood and listened through necessity not choice because the studio furniture hadn’t turned up in time for the start of term. ‘This isn’t a graphic design course. If you want to do graphic design, leave now.’ No grey areas there then. The sole aim of the course was to get us jobs as creatives in leading advertising agencies.

The qualification itself was purely incidental. A hand scrawled note on the door was unequivocal : ‘Adders only beyond this point. No graphics wank’. One lad had even been in the circus.
So we set about working on a book of briefs. Properly written, propositionally fortified briefs for everything from a home bread making machine to a vacuum cleaner and a sports walkman. To start with the task wasn’t to be creative, it was to be correct. Get the advertising right and only then can you set about making it creative.
A couple of weeks passed before Steve and Dave started to seed in other lecturers to help us. Practising copywriters, visualisers and art directors – all with London agency backgrounds. More studio culture than lecture theatre, it’s fair to say you could work hard or just piss about – and many more chose the latter than the former. The canteen menu bore bus depot style sticklebrix lettering which was wide open to naughty kid defacement – frequently exposing the very fragile territory between ‘corned beef hash’ and ‘corned beef gash’ – much to Doreen and Marians’ abject disgust.

You may already be scoffing but for all its obscurity, it soon became clear that there were some pretty formidable overlords at work behind the scenes at Donny.
John Driver, the course moderator had successfully run the Design for Communication course at Manchester Polytechnic that had spawned several agency luminaries. Soon enough, these glittering alumni would be paraded as visiting lecturers to our course with two of the most notable being Nick Gill and Tony Davidson (currently of BBH and Wieden & Kennedy respectively).
Jon and I teamed up early on in the course thanks to the matchmaking prowess of Jocelyn Fiske – another member of our esteemed visiting lecturer team and also a bloody good writer. I had a penchant for writing headlines but was advised to ‘lighten up’ and crucially, think more visually. Jon had just created a much feted campaign for the Sony Sports Walkman and regularly turned up late following another big night on the piss and was said to need some ‘order’. I was known as ‘Duds’ because I hailed from Dudley. Jon was from Kimberworth in Rotherham. Oddly though, he wouldn’t be known as Kim.
And so Duds and Jonny were born.
The teaching style combined light touch with brutal honesty. In the first year, we’d choose a brief, settle on a strategy, get said strategy signed off by Steve & Dave (so the resulting advertising was propositionally sound) and only then would we set to work on creating a four ad’ campaign. Punctuating the hallowed book of briefs, London based creatives also set live projects and then jumped on the train from King’s Cross up to our humble college in order to assess our output. Visiting lecturer days were nervy days. The likes of Ken Grimshaw & John Donnelly from JWT, Bill Gallagher at Saatchi’s and Ian Sizer & Alun Howell from Ogilvy & Mather were all lined up to see books. One of the second year group by the name of Paul Okey even secured an appointment with David Abbott himself but succeeded in getting the date and time wrong.
Not ones to let such a huge gaffe pass, someone pinned the famed IPA event ad’ penned by Tim Riley on a wall featuring a God like character addressing the assembled, wretched masses with the headline: ‘David Abbott speaks’.
Beneath someone had daubed….’but not to Paul’. Brilliant.

The culmination of our first year was to prepare a wall mounted assessment which would grace the main thoroughfare corridor. Mac’ visuals were in their infancy so everything was magic marker visualised with ticked in type. Six to eight campaigns were put before the meticulous, steely eyed scrutiny of John Driver (affectionately known as Yoda – more for his wisdom that his stature) plus Steve Dixon (a highly analytical Paddy McGuinness sound-a-like) and Dave Bullers, our plain speaking Course Leader from Hull and the pen behind several Yorkie TV ad’s.
Unlike today’s pastoral environment where ‘everyone wins with no losers’, our assessment grades were pinned to the wall for all to see, envy and deride. Fortunately for us that year, we both got a distinction.
Get us.

So year one was done and dusted and there should’ve been a whole Summer of pissing about to look forward to. Not for us though. We decided to look for an agency placement and ended up at Cogent honing our skills on such lovely stuff as Milton Keynes and Jewson under the elegant stewardship of Jane Warwick and the brilliant Mike Fox.

Donny year two kicked off and the pressure ratcheted up. Not only did we have to produce brilliant campaigns but also carefully choose the products/services we wanted to advertise too. This was deliberately designed to get people identifying potential USP’s / unexplored territory within brands in order to create laterally rigorous ideas.
Steve and Dave harried people regularly to show their book around London and to get advice from leading creatives. We’d heard the anecdotes and Soho folklore of glove puppets being used as props to tear young hopefuls’ work apart and students told to simply ‘burn their book’ and come back with completely new work from scratch. Not the stuff of the feint hearted.

Book crit’s would take the form of finding a phone box and repeatedly calling the PA to the glittering creatives we were stalking to arrange an appointment. We had a real thing for Abbott Mead Vickers (remember ‘the printer’ I mentioned earlier?) and so frequently tried to reach Paul Brazier who’s patience and guidance would come to help us enormously over the ensuing months (and decades). As well as criticism (and it has to be said, some praise), we were also invited to do work placements at Saatchi’s, O&M and Faulds in Edinburgh.
On placement during evenings in our £5 a night hotel, we played Masters Golf on an old Sega MegaDrive because we couldn’t afford the pub. Dinner was a £1 slice of less than fresh pizza from those grotty counters you see all over London. We’d arrive early at the agency and work very late. It was relentless but we loved it….but we were skint having spent far more than the £35 a week placement allowance.

Towards the end of our course, we were hand picked from several colleges to take a placement at the most creative agency in London at that time – BMP DDB Needham. We didn’t do it because of ever worsening money woes and yep, we still regret it but hey ho, that’s that.
We both finished top of our course by a mile but that didn’t matter. Everything we had been taught and the fantastic agency people we used for guidance far outweighed any grade or certificate.
During our course we were lucky enough to be flanked by some really talented people and peers. In the year above, none more so than Mick Craven and Gary Delaporte (currently Deputy Creative Directors of McCann Manchester) who provided wise counsel throughout along with Tom Richards (currently Creative Director of Havas Lynx).

At last year’s Roses awards, an impromptu re-union took place between us all and it was fantastic that Donny guys were still doing it – just wish I’d taken a group shot of Donny lads all together.
Our business has changed immeasurably since the class of ’91 but the way we were tutored remains eerily relevant today. The discipline, the extremely high standards, the work. Always the work.
After Donny, a few of us decamped to Wolverhampton University and the final year of their degree course. But it wasn’t Donny by any stretch of the imagination and it’s true to say that we owe everything to that little building and it’s room bereft of furniture but crammed with talent.

In every respect, Donny gave us the belief in ourselves to work hard and to do good stuff. Years after graduating, we’re still devout followers of this unique credo consecrated at Church View. We always will be.
And yes, I still laugh at the obscene cafe menu today.

Who am I? No, really – do you honestly have any idea?

Don’t worry, I’m not having one of those senior (or drunken) moments. But it’s a genuine question out there to all the brands, websites and media agencies who claim to have more data on me than ever before.

I’m not a massive social media user, store card holder or newsfeed subscriber but I’d take a guess that I’m about average for a white, British bloke in his mid-forties. Yet here I am believing the hype that some sneaky little ‘bot is monitoring my every move:
Looking at what I buy at the local Coop;
How many times I refuel at the Shell garage;
What websites I’m looking at;
Which boxsets I love to binge on;
Through my phone where I go running;
What my favourite podcasts and playlists are;
Which pubs I like to frequent and what my favourite tipple is (Guinness if you’re offering);
Even (if you’re a conspiracy theorist) listening in to my inane ramblings through Alexa and then selling it to the Russians.

We’re told that in this modern connected world we can pinpoint and individualise everyone. Targeting them like never before, picking up on their desires, passions and interests and then wham, we can hit them with a message right at the point of interest and deliver a persuasive message that will have them buying whatever we’re selling.

It’s the future apparently and it’s happening now. Personalisation like never before, no more wastage of time, effort or budget. 2018 is the year of connectivity and as a result we horrible little ad folk will know everything. No need to bother you with ideas that gently persuade over years and decades. Forming your opinions with clever and witty thinking. Now all we need to do is give way to the algorithms and allow automation to hit you over the head with exactly what you need, exactly when you need it. And it’s not just online, we’re introducing facial recognition poster sites in shopping centres that will spot who you are, link it to your profile and remind you that you like shoes and that there’s 25% off just for you inside.

So how come I received an email this week from LinkedIn (which some of you will know I use from time to time) that was ridiculously out of touch?

It showed me 18 faces I might want to ‘reach out to‘, ‘congratulate‘ or ‘say hello‘. Two were ex-colleagues who let’s just say I’m not really on Christmas card lists with. Three were old clients that had fired us some years back. Four were casual acquaintances who I’d struggle to recognise in a crowded room. Five I’ve never met and can’t remember even connecting or interacting with. That left four people who, to be quite honest, I’m in fairly regular contact with through their platform and so don’t need reminding of their existence.

For all their algorithms and knowledge, all they can really do is spam me with CRM that is a stab in the dark as to who they think I am and what I may be interested in. And they’re LinkedIn. They’re supposed to be one of the best.

Do me a favour, next time someone bangs on to you in a dreary Powerpoint with the personalisation buzzword. Stop and think, when those ‘we thought you may be interested in…’ or ‘because you bought…’ messages are served to you, how often are they full of shit?

The difference between a good ad, and a memorable one

One of the reasons I became attracted to advertising was because of how memorable it could be. There was always something I could talk about to friends on our way into the uni lecture halls in the morning. Between the PM announcing snap elections and games of ‘who has the bigger button’, I think it’s safe to say we are all in need of a little distraction and change of topic. Something to cut through all the noise.

A good ad will be a bite sized chunk of entertainment with product placement sprinkled throughout. Something to natter about during the morning commute or at lunchtime with your peers. It rarely lasts longer than a day in your mind before other things take over and you forget all about it.

A good example of this is Wieden+Kennedy’s work with American beer brand, Bud Light. It was designed to capitalise on the shows they’re featured between and playfully poke fun out of their culture (Patriots NFL game, The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones). Despite sales still being down after the three ads aired (however, the brand has claimed that they have stabilised), their final spot went viral. Building on this conversation, a new trilogy of spots was created and when a rogue beer appeared under their trademarked catchphrase ‘Dilly Dilly’, a town crier was sent out to enforce action on their trademarked catchphrase.

The phrases ‘Pit of Misery’ and ‘Dilly Dilly’ went beyond the advertising world and became integrated into the very culture Bud Light targeted. It provided a talking point between friends, both online and in person. Even going as far as getting used in the middle of other NFL games by the commentators.

However, an exceptional ad sticks around. It becomes a talking point for weeks. And remembered for decades. The Guardian’s ‘Point of View’ ad from ’86 is one such example. Stripped down to its essentials, keeping the public’s attention. A simple story. Shot in black and white. No music, just a single voice over. Yet it was so powerful it got people talking.

There’s even a rumour that it aired just once in a News at 10 ad break. And if true, it’s a testament to the power of creative over media spend. It didn’t need to be shown to everyone and their mother, because people were talking about it already. Something money can’t buy you.

It’s a stark difference when you look at 2012’s Three Little Pigs that roughly follows the same line of thought. The only difference is that it became cluttered with media and production spend instead. It was packed with so much going on that I started to lose track of what was happening after 30 seconds, meaning I had to watch it a few times before being able to understand what was happening and when. And with the overload of visual effects, narrative, and voice overs, I ended up completely forgetting it after a week or so, until stumbling across it in a search for the Point of View ad.

Way back, my creative directors penned an ad for Banks’ Bitter starring the legendary Roger Moore. Someone who surely must have cost a pretty (Money)penny. Instead of the usual production budget of 10% of media spend, they managed to get a 66/33 split in favour of the star fee and production, meaning more time spent on the strength of the idea, rather than how many people will see it. The argument was that seeing a Hollywood A-lister in an ad for a local Wolverhampton Brewery will be such a shock that people will only need to see it once to remember it.

It got talked about for weeks and proved the strategy could work, resulting in a few imitations over the years.

Sometimes it’s an ad. Sometimes, it’s a conversation.

At One Black Bear, we have the experience and talent to create campaigns that cut through the noise and create conversations. So, why not clink a bottle of Bud with our team and have a chat about what we can do for you?

A sweet start to 2018

One Black Bear kicks off 2018 by celebrating more sweet success and partnering with London-based, aspiring confectionery brand Mighty Fine – a brief that covers strategic planning, branding, advertising, PR and social media.

The brand, which started life as a small chocolate shop in Camden in 2014, is now stocked in stores nationwide including Harvey Nichols, Selfridges, Waitrose, Sainsbury’s and a number of select independent retailers. As well as some international stockists.

Kate Hartshorn, associate planning director, at One Black Bear commented: “It’s great to be working with such an up and coming business. We’ve helped them articulate what is special about their brand. Developing a positioning that is compelling to trade and consumers alike, and will help fulfil their ambition of becoming a household name.”

The agency has been tasked with relaunching Mighty Fine’s look as well as projecting the brand and broadening its awareness.

Speaking about the brief Kit Tomlinson, co-founder of Mighty Fine, commented: “One Black Bear is a top quality agency and we are really excited to be working side by side with them to make 2018 a spectacular year.”

This most recent appointment follows a brief from market leading frame supplier Arqadia – part of the international Larson Juhl group. One Black Bear was appointed following a competitive pitch. Arqadia marketing manager, Pauline Hutchinson, commented: “We were really impressed with One Black Bear’s approach. They really are an integrated agency with every discipline under one roof.”

Blast:01 Getting off to an Unsuitable start

BLAST:01

Inspired by the scary fact that 2018 marks 15 years since Rich and I decided to take the plunge and start our first agency, Unsuitable, we thought we’d look back at some of our journey and tell the stories behind a few of the projects.

To kick things off let’s head back to 2002 and those first few steps towards independence.

The agency we’d worked for since 1994 and dearly loved, Wallis Tomlinson, was bought by Palmer Hargreaves. As a result of the takeover we were plucked out of our Birmingham home and transplanted into Leamington Spa. A Warwickshire town which is quite lovely to live in (so I’m told by numerous colleagues) but not where you want to be creatively. My three hour commute (each way) didn’t take in a single poster site. Bliss you may think – but not when part of your job is to immerse yourself in the industry’s output.

From day one the culture didn’t feel right, WT had such a maverick work hard, play hard vibe and was full of passionate characters. In all honesty, it would have been near on impossible to retain the feeling we’d gained as Adline’s (now The Drum) agency of the decade for the 90s.

At first the agency took up residency in the WT Birmingham office, then it was decided rather quickly that we all needed to decamp to the sleepy Spa town. This was followed by the loss of some well respected, talented colleagues along with quite a few accounts. This inevitably led to a rather unpleasant atmosphere in the agency. Redundancies followed and our creative department went from a healthy 12 down to four (Rich, me, a designer and an artworker) so the Creative Director roles we’d assumed were suddenly pretty meaningless.

We had a meeting with the CEO and agreed with him that we’d give it twelve months to see if things could be turned around.

One of the few original WT clients that we had managed to retain was the Solihull shopping centre, Touchwood, which we had launched in 2001. As a follow up to the first campaign, we’d sold them a great TV, press and poster route titled ‘Little touches’.

The TV spots were directed by the madcap but amazingly talented Bluey Durrant through The Gate Films in Manchester. As far as shoots go, this one had passed pretty much without incident. It was studio based and not relying on any acting talent so it had all been rather relaxed and jovial. The client was however, unbeknown to us, feeling the pressure.

This was her first TV ad.

During the post-production in a London edit suite, I was sat with the client when she turned and asked where the Account Director was. I hadn’t a clue and blagged that he wasn’t actually needed as we had everything under control. She then went on to express that she thought the agency (since the takeover) had lost its vibrancy and culture. This was to be her last project with us and as soon as everything was in the can, she would be looking for someone new.

I was both astounded and angry at this. Here we were putting the finishing touches to a great campaign on one of the few creative accounts the agency still had and we were going to get fired, not because of the work but because of a seeming lack of love and attention shown to a client by the account management team.

Big lesson learnt that day in that darkened room in Soho.

I asked who she was thinking of talking to and she just replied “Have you and Rich ever thought of setting up your own agency?”

Returning to the office the next day I instantly probed my oppo for his thoughts. It was something we’d talked about being a possibility ever since we’d teamed up at college in 1991. We’d already decided to get our book together with a view to seeking employment elsewhere. Should we risk our half-decent salary, pension and company car on a punt? We both had young daughters and sizeable mortgages. Within a couple of weeks we took the client for fish & chips at Bank in Brindley Place to discuss whether it had just been an outburst in frustration? It hadn’t.

She put the agency on notice. In our faux anger to the announcement we also handed in our resignations.

Touchwood now needed a new agency within three months and we had a six month notice period to work.

On hearing news of our departure, Steve who had been one of four surviving members (us being two of those) of the original Wallis Tomlinson team asked what we were up to, he was instantly on board.

‘Unsuitable’ was born. A name and ethos created in anger against the (in)actions of the account director in that edit suite. Another lesson, don’t do anything in anger. The name and positioning of being an agency without ‘suits’ closed far more doors than it ever opened. That said, to this day we still love being face-to-face with our clients and discussing problems and solutions first hand. Old habits die hard.

We had told our employers we were off to Manchester to freelance for a while.

Then the latest edition of Adline landed on desks with the story that creative duo Elwell and Harrison were to depart PHWT to set up Unsuitable.

To date we still don’t know how they got hold of the juicy gossip. The remaining notice period was uncomfortable and we had to start servicing our new client by working under a tree near the library sending artwork to print via connecting to a Nokia 6510. Remember, this was 2003. A small file would take hours to transfer and run up a massive data bill.

On the morning of October 13^th 2003 we officially opened for business.

The phone didn’t ring and the email didn’t ping. Had we done the right thing? Too late now.

We should have enjoyed that brief period of calmness as what followed was two years of working 9am to midnight four days a week (we finished at 8pm on a Friday) and many, many weekends. Apart from the odd day, none of us took a holiday. Such was our desire to over deliver to all our clients and show the love that had been lacking previously.

We worked out of Steve’s box room for the first couple of months, then his wife fell pregnant so it needed to be transformed into a nursery. Cue finding our first office in Digbeth. 117 The Custard Factory.

The ink was still wet on the lease when our new client announced she was leaving.

We went on to retain the account for a further six years, experiencing the churn of four marketing managers into the bargain. As for the agency we left behind – 15 years on they appear to be thriving, having gone global and are still working with many of their original automotive clients.

We still retain some of that Unsuitable fighting spirit, regularly sticking two fingers up to the establishment, and although 2003 was a while back now – it’s amazing how it only seems like yesterday.

T-minus & biscuits

So called ‘Little Rocket Man’ and his equally deranged oppo’ in Washington may claim to possess the biggest nuclear button going (and in the closest proximity) but in truth, there is no button.

Because of its obsessive secrecy, it’s tricky to know DPRK launch protocol but Americans are more open about how they’d go about starting Armageddon – arguably a little too honest you could say.

Currently, the ‘Commander in Chief’ has sole executive jurisdiction over launching 800 land and submarine based mega fireworks (although this explicit autonomy is the subject of debate in The Senate currently – mere coincidence given who’s sat in The Oval Office you may say?).

Americans love reducing formality to a nickname – think ‘The Beast’ for the heavily armoured presidential limousine. So keeping in that vein, The President carries a series of nuclear codes in an attaché (brief) case called ‘the football’ and to access that case, there is a chip or ‘biscuit’ containing a code to open said case. These codes then check out with The Pentagon defence facility and confirm the identity of The POTUS himself.

All very orderly, sobering stuff you’d think. Hmmmm, not so.

Turns out that one of Bill Clinton’s closest aides lost ‘the biscuit’. Yep. The codes to the case containing the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal went missing and this f-up was only revealed very recently.

These things happen you might say; Never again….learn the hard way huh? My bad…. so sorry.

Well not quite.

Rumour has it that Jimmy Carter left his ‘biscuit’ in a suit that went to the dry cleaners.

Agencies – just like administrations – like to boast about the size and might of their weaponry. Time for a more grown up conversation?

The claims come as thick and fast as a terrified Korean flunky scribbling in his notebook. Best codes of practice, who is able to deliver the biggest impact, who can scramble it the quickest and ultimately, who will target the biggest chunk of civilisation thanks to the most strategically calibrated borehead….sorry warhead.

But you know what, why not ditch all the sabre rattling propaganda, fake news and chest beating by entering talks with One Black Bear?

‘More jaw jaw than war war’ as Churchill sagely put it.

We think through very clever resolutions to complex problems by making massive bangs for often modest bucks. Get round the table with us and you’ll find us refreshingly disarming.

We’ll even throw in some presidential standard biscuits with your cuppa.

2017 was okay, 2018 just has to be good

Let’s be honest, 2017 wasn’t that great.
The government’s plan for departing the EU began to unravel as it became clear it wasn’t even written down on the back of a fag packet.
A misogynistic psychopath took control of the highest office in the free world and while he hasn’t taken us to nuclear annihilation yet, his diplomatic skills to avoid it are somewhat questionable.
Then there’s been the whole Weinstein fallout which has at last shone a light on the disgraceful, seedy behaviour of powerful (mainly white) men in all industries including our own, however this has mainly been exposed (unfortunate term) in the US thus far but will I’m sure gather momentum in the new year.

All that and the Grim Reaper came calling for amongst others Keith Chegwin, Sean Hughes, John Noakes and Sir Roger Moore. So, come in 2017, quite frankly your time is thankfully up.

At the start of this year, I wrote about optimism and how we should all accelerate into the challenges that lay ahead. However, there’s no two ways about it, 2018 is looking decidedly unpleasant and I cannot in all honesty offer up the usual “everything’s great, you are the change you’re looking for” post you’ll find plastered all over LinkedIn. Sorry but balls to that.

Now I’ve got the doom and gloom out of my system… the past 12 months have been good for the Bears, honestly, they have.

We proudly won 18 industry awards at six ceremonies across Edinburgh, Birmingham and London for numerous clients in a multitude of categories from PR to advertising, design to digital. Creatively we produced some of our best work to date and financially we’re on target to deliver what we set out to.

We launched our new website (if this is your first visit, have a look round, we won’t bite) to really emphasise our positioning of ‘Sometimes it’s an ad’ and showcase how we think.

My personal top 10 creative highlights from the agency were:

Look beyond London online films for National Express. Made for next to nothing and brought to life by the voice of Diane Morgan.
See you first thing Britain campaign for Triton showers which ran not only on TV and social media but all across their business including signage and van livery. It’s now rolling out in Ireland with a new VO and endline.
Tomato & St Basils Soup for the youth homeless charity. A clever little mailer that warmed the hearts of those who received it. Look out for this getting bigger in 2018.
Ouch for National Express. A one word 48 sheet poster and a fun radio commercial.
Gingerbread home for St Basils. A gift from the charity to its supporters at Christmas to say thank you.
B-Hive website. We’ve supported this initiative of showcasing the regions best student talent to local agencies since its inception and we’re proud to have given the website a new buzz.
Branding and website for Youth Voice. An arm of St. Basils, we started with a blank piece of paper and developed not only a great logo but all the collateral for them.
Window on life for National Express. A series of three social films all shot in one day that tells the stories of why people are going where they’re going. We even had a client crying (in a good way) at the script read through.
Thanx for National Express. A fun alternative way to deliver Christmas. A campaign running across so many channels and the competition engagement has been off the scale.
Finally, our Mailbox pitch. We didn’t win it and I can’t show it but trust me, it was bloody good and should be running.

The top ten blog posts of the year were:

So, that was the year that was. We got through it and as ever, we face up to the challenges that lay ahead with optimism and fire in our bellies (as well as the remnants of a tin of Quality Street) and I leave you with this quote from an interview I listened to with Ben Priest of Adam&Eve DDB fame:

“We stopped trying to be different and decided to focus on just being good.”

But Toby.

40,000 years ago Jon and I had the idea to convince the then great Saatchi & Saatchi to give us a work placement.

Back then Saatchi’s had amazing brands coupled with amazing people in its creative arsenal. Think James Lowther and Inter City, Bill Gallagher and Silk Cut, Alex Taylor and Castlemaine XXXX.

On our first day, we duly sat in our shared office amid our fellow creative hopefuls – an affable pairing by the names of Toby & Joel.

There was also another bloke in the office who claimed to have been on work placement ‘terms’ for nearly four years. These terms amounted to £35 a week for the first fortnight, then you stayed for the love of it. Forget his name though.

We all got on well and had a laugh but took the viciously competitive nature of our joint predicament very seriously. For we knew it was a battle of wits to impress the decorated creative deities seated upstairs on the posh floor.

Briefs were issued and we had a pretty free rein as to what we chose to work on. However, our output had to be both prolific and high quality – not the happiest of bedfellows to many a creative it’s true to say.

Endless Silk Cut 48 sheet scamps, tireless TV daubings for Inter City, infinite attempts at crap Ozzie satire for Castlemaine lager… all recorded in the brutal nakedness of black and white bullet market visuals.

Toby (of Joel and Toby) went balls out for quantity not quality and would proudly ship pile after pile of his scamps to one of the hallowed creative directors or an overburdened group head. Just a few minutes later he’d return crestfallen and fizzing with irritation because one of the decorated deities had dared to question his efforts with the rebuff:
‘BUT TOBY…… WHERE’S THE IDEA????!!!’

Quite a withering put down for a creative you’d think. Unrecoverable even. But not for our Toby:
‘BUT YOU DONT NEED IDEAS ……THIS IS SAATCHIS…ITS ABOUT HAVING FUN’.

Toby. Oh Toby.

You really never will appreciate the enormity of what you started that fateful day.

For since then, all those years ago, ‘BUT TOBY…’ has been used on pretty much a daily basis as a sardonic but quality control focussed put down inside the walls of One Black Bear. Junior creatives frequently look puzzled (who the fuck’s Toby?) and planners likewise (I don’t even look like a Toby). We even use it regularly on each other in the embryonic stages of cracking a brief.

Yep, he may not be present in our Birmingham based agency but Toby is our patron saint of avoiding average bollocks at One Black Bear. Now canonised not cannon fodder, Toby’s momentary pain was our long lasting gain.

So Toby, if you’re reading, we will be forever in your debt for your elegant coining of a truly unforgettable and concise phrase for creative benchmarking all we do.

Toby or not Toby? Never in question me thinks.