Starting on the 7th of September, Three Drunk Monkeys have put together this campaign to promote Andrew Denton’s (Australian comedian & TV presenter) new series set in a fictional ad agency.

In what I imagine will be a cross between the legendary Truth in Advertising video and The Office, Joel Tobeck will play ‘Martin Manning’, the egomaniacal Creative Director of ad agency BND Worldwide.

Fingers crossed they don’t go too far and belittle some of the excellent work that comes out of most agencies, but judging from this clip it’s all just good fun and games and should help introduce more people to advertising as a career…

I love it when a piece of design is used to carry a message that resonates with me.  This Economist cover from 2007 put together by the team at Non Format is a perfect example. I’d recommend a look at their other work too.

There are several great quotes that I could draw on to summarise why this jumped out at me and why I agree so wholeheartedly, but my two favourites are…

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. – Einstein

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do… Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. – Mark Twain

Asking questions and acting on our curiousity is something that sometimes seems to get sacrificed for a “we’ve tried that before” or a “we do it this way” attitude.  A place I never want to get to.

My friend’s son has just graduated and is on the hunt for a job. Chatting about what his plans were, I asked him..”What work experience have you done?” and unfortunately his reply was “Well, none…but I got a 1st so I should be okay”.

Wrong…simply, wrong. A bold statement I know but there are several reasons why I believe that, whilst degree’s are a great way of ticking the ‘he must be reasonably intellegent” box,  real-life experience in a career you want to pursue is absolutely key…

1. HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO DO IT? – You couldn’t tell me that you love Surfing having read a few brochures, but without ever having got on a board before.
2. HOW CAN YOU CONVINCE SOMEONE YOU’RE PASSIONATE ABOUT IT? – Any young grad can come across as energetic, but how could you truly convince a company that you are passionate about that career without being able to say what you enjoy about it?
3. SKILLS, SKILLS, SKILLS – This can be from any work experience/society/club or activity but more and more in the UK getting a job is as much about the skills you have as the grades you get. I could tell you that I’m a great leader, team builder, sales person etc. BUT how much more powerful is that statement followed with an example? e.g. I’m a great salesperson, I was a campus brand manager and convinced ‘x’ amount of students to try ‘x’ product by doing ‘x’.
4. BE  PREPARED – Grad schemes can be challenging. You’ll be dropped in the deep end, asked to use your initiative and adapt to a corporate way of working in a short space of time. What better way to give yourself a heads up than by getting out and experiencing it first hand whilst there’s no one looking at you. Nobody expects anything from somebody doing work experience so its the best time to ask stupid questions, take risks and learn as much as you can.
5. STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD – A simple one, but for most grad roles you’re competing against thousands of people with degrees.  What have you got that they haven’t? What have you done that backs up what you say about yourself? How are you going to be best prepared for team assessment centres?

Now, all of this so far has sounded like an old man rant it’s true and I do appreciate that for many people work experience (in the traditional form isn’t financially practical). So, given that  one of my philosophies is to never complain about a situation unless you can offer a solution,  here’s a few examples of experience (paid and unpaid) I found helpful:

• Campus Promotions for Face Group including extensive work with “The Sun” Newspaper – paid.
• Direct Sales and Marketing with Car Data – paid.
• Took part in the Unilever 2004 Brand Challenge competition – unpaid.
• Voluntary role as Marketing Manager for SIFE society at Warwick University – unpaid (easy to do similar for any Uni society)
• A STEP placement running ‘Consonica’s’ marketing and launching their new product – RECOMMENDED
• Campus Brand Management for Diageo at Warwick University through the Campus Group – paid.
• Unilever Campus Rep – voluntary.
• Penguin Books Student Brand Manager, working with PD3 Marketing – paid.
• Finance and Marketing Coordinator for the Warwick Formula Student – unpaid Uni Project.
• Placement with Saatchi & Saatchi – unpaid weeks/summer schemes available in several agencies/companies.

These are just a few examples but each one gave me something to talk about, taught me new skills and also gave me the best direction of what I wanted to do going forward.

I hope this post comes across as useful rather than sanctimonious and if anyone wants any advice following it, please get in touch. The aim of this is to share my experiences to help other people get forward and is by no means the only way to go.

An article shown to me by marketingwizdom on Twitter  takes you briefly through the influncing skills Obama used during his campaign. One key part of this was the idea of building commitment. Obama, unlike other politicans focused heavily on gaining the smallest of donations from the public and offering small tokens (such as supporters badges) in return. I’d be happy to guess that at least one member of his large marketing team must have a. come from a charity/fundraising background and b. had a very loud voice to convince him to follow such a non-conventional strategy.

The reason I say this is based on a short spell I had street fundraising for Oxfam. My whole team were sent out onto the Streets of London and paid a competitive wage, but instead of being asked to gain donations, we were simply there to speak to people about the campaign, get them to say “I’m in”, take away a badge saying as much and giving us their contact details to talk to them more at a later date.

Surely not a good return on investment for the charity you say? But it worked, and many charities are following, so let me…with the help of a small story… explain how.

A road safety organisation in the US was looking for new space/opportunities to place their new billboards which encouraged passign motorists to reduce their speed. They targeted households along a particularly dangerous highway, a logical move, and sent out advocates to speak to residents on their doorstep. Considering several of the residents had been personally effected by road accidents, they expected good results and yet were left confused as to why only 2% agreed to host their posters.

So what next? Well, one bright spark rigthly recognised that actually asking these people to give such a ‘commitment’ (a billboard in your front garden remember?) was a step to far for a first contact. After a bit of a brainstorm, they decided that the next street they went to they would only ask residents to put a small sticker in their window as a sign of support (which most of them did). In all honesty, they knew that no one would ever see this, but what it did do was make that person feel ‘involved’ and ‘part’ of the campaign.

A few months later (having sent out regular updates in between) they went back to the same people and asked them if they would further their support by putting a billboard in their front garden and this time round over 60% of the street obliged. A clear success!

As our friend at marketingwizdom rightly pointed out, Obama looked at the longer term benefit of gaining a mass of small commitments. What this meant for him was that the public were much more likely to make a larger commiment/vote at a later stage and what it meant for Oxfam was that when the person was contacted at a later date, they were much more likely to donate larger sums to the cause.

Moorman, Zaltman, and Deshpande (1992) defined commitment as “an enduring desire to maintain a valued relationship” and what this example has shown us is that although this is true, it is becoming increasingly important in marketing to build this commitment gradually by first gaining our consumers trust and making them feel truly part of our campaigns & brands in order to secure their hard-earned cash week in, week out.

Us brand managers/clients could learn a lot from this campaign. Any of us who have tried wrongly to get every piece of product information included on a 6 sheet should be constantly reminded of this piece of creative.

By blotting out all the “buzzwords”, leaving only the simple consumer benefits, DDB have, subtley of course, also taken the concept of efficient advertising head on to achieve excellent results.

Simple, effective and I guess, most of all efficient.

Unilever Poland with Orangeblue, Poznan  (Poland) have created “Magnum Zones” in 40 of the country’s biggest cinemas. A great way of linking the treat to out of home occasions,  landing the premium message with gold-embroidered luxury seats and indeed has the potential to generate great PR.

BUT will people see it? Fine in an empty, well lit cinema, but with a few bums on seats and the lights dimmed, will it still work?

Either way it’s great to see some genuinely creative thinking and an idea that will link in well to their “royal treatment campaign”.

If anyone’s in Poland, I’d love to know how its been brought to life in the rest of the cinema and whether it links into somewhere in the foyer where you can actually buy some ice cream.

The Chip Shop Awards is about fostering and recognising creativity with no boundaries and no rules. It’s an international creative awards, open to anyone with great ideas.

The Chip Shop Awards is there to recognise that the best ideas don’t always fall within the rules. This is a worldwide advertising and design competition that has no rules. (Click here to read why the competition is called Chip Shop Awards).

Some prize picks…

My favourite part of it all…

In the 1980s, two young creatives based in Manchester, England, were desperate to establish their reputation as serious advertising creatives. Of course the best way to do this is to win creative awards. For that you need to have some clients and unfortunately for these two creatives, they didn’t have any clients.

They thought about how they could overcome this difficult problem and came up with the idea of doing brilliant creative work for a client for free and then using the work to win themselves some awards.

The client they chose was a fast food shop selling the great British dish of deep fried fish and chipped potatoes in the north of Wales. Barnacles Fish & Chip Shop was just an ordinary local takeaway but before long it had an advertising campaign that would be the envy of many business owners.

http://www.chipshopawards.com/