"Literally the best cookie I've ever had"

Vicky and I were united again this week to visit and revisit a few agencies. We were fairly confident about our book this time because it had earned us a placement at Muirhoward. However, as always, people had very different opinions to each other. In one agency a campaign was our best work and in another, it had to be taken out of our book.

Its nice to go back and see familiar faces in an agency, especially when the team you're meeting are some sort of comedy double act. Unfortunately it also makes it even more frustrating when you know for sure that you'd really like to work in a place...

We also took some time out to see Scott Pilgrim Vs The World. It was possibly the oddest film I've ever seen. Is it a computer game turned into a film? Or a film turned into a computer game? Although it was weird, it was enjoyable and even funny in places. For those Lincolnites who see it - check out the young Gyles Lingwood playing Gideon (the villain).



A highlight of our London excursions has to be the discovery of Ben's Cookies. If you haven't been I suggest you get down there ASAP. They look so hard and crispy but they literally melt in your mouth. I had a white chocolate and macadamia nut beauty, there are no words to describe.....



THEY DO MAIL ORDER COOKIES!

Durex

AKQA have had this great idea for a Durex iPhone app that you can use to 'impregnate' someone's phone with! You have to look after a baby by rocking your phone and 'feeding' it and you can't get rid of it until you have bought a pack of Durex condoms and scanned the code on the box. Great idea, and definately something that would get passed around.

Round 2

On Monday and Tuesday we spent some more time daaahhnn in Landan for a few book crits. We began the week with a meeting at CHI & Partners. Although they don't offer placements the guys we saw were really positive about our book and gave us some great ideas to push our work further. The meeting was slightly tarred by the fact that I ordered a 'Cup of tea' from their coffee shop, only to receive a cappuccino. I was too embarrassed to say anything and proceeded to sip disgusting coffee throughout the book crit (silly me).

We then made our way to Farringdon to meet with the CEO of a start-up agency called London Advertising - www.londonadvertising.com. He seemed to like our ideas but picked us up a few times on presentation, which was odd as CHI had said: "wow, your book is so much neater than mine was". However, he did say he would like to see us again and that he found our book interesting.

After a short trip to Spaghetti House (yum), Vicky and I made our way to Saatchi & Saatchi. Through some very posh steel doors where we were told to wait in the very clean reception area, we were given clip on name badges, which we attached while looking at a wall stacked with yellow and black pencils.

We were taken upstairs to the creative department by Jonathan (his partner was away). He took a long time going through our book and getting us to talk about our work, while giving us some very useful tips and advice on how to get more from our ideas. He seemed to pick up on some obvious ideas that we hadn't ever thought of and gave us a very long to-do list to complete for next time. He said he'd love to see us again as he thought our ideas were great and he wanted to help us get better !

The next day we visited our first all-digital agency, AKQA. We were taken into the canteen for our book crit and had a really funny chat with the team. They went through every campaign, even though not all of them were digital and told us it would be great if we could come up with something digital for all our briefs. This all took place while about 20 people were singing happy birthday to a colleague next to us.

They gave us ways to improve and some really interesting thoughts on digital. When you should use certian social networking sites, how you should use them, getting the right tone of voice, etc... They were so friendly that they actually thanked us for finding the time to see them! We'll definately be going back to see them.