Down at the bottom of the garden..

As requested by Vicky, this is my attempt at a Poddington Peas post. This was the hit cartoon series, first shown on the BBC in 1989. To my horror they are now recreating a new batch of 3D animated peas!

Take a look for yourself: www.poddingtonpeas.com

I am all for new technology, but I do not think that these peas will have the same hand-drawn charm that they had back in the 90s. Just look at what happened to Postman Pat and Fireman Sam, I know the plasticine models must have taken ages, but how great did they look?

Rory Sutherland

The famous Rory Sutherland of IPA and Ogilvy fame gave a lecture to my course (Creative Advertising) on the 10th of Feb to talk to us about consumer behaviour and economics. It was really very interesting - In fact it was SO interesting that I couldn't write down notes fast enough because I was trying to concentrate too hard. However, I've manage to write down a few interesting points:

John Kay is releasing a new book (that you can pre-order now) called 'Obliquity', which is basically another way of looking at creativity and how we should think about all the other oblique ways to skin a cat.

One of the main reasons behind the Smash martians' advertising success was because audiences were seduced by the funny, likeable aliens and weren't conscious to the hard sell.

He went on to remind us that people like animals more than humans - especially in the UK. We can't judge animals, they're innocent. So people will always prefer a non-human ad.

He told us lots more:
The difference between caravans and yachts

Why banks have marble pillars

The value of seduction over force

The downfall of web design/internet advertising

How to sell coach travel

To stop my rambling, here is another of his great lectures for TED:

R.I.P. Borders

Having worked in my local Borders for a few years I was really distressed to hear that they had finally given up the ghost. However, this wasn't much of a suprise as we were always told they were losing money. It was an excellent place to work and although it was only your average retail job they still let me indulge my advertising skills (ha) through the medium of chalk...

My personal favourite has to be Space Weekend.

Don't be precious...

After Vicky and I spent a good couple of days toiling over our YCN work for P&O, we were told it was a load of rubbish. As you can imagine, this was mildly frustrating as we had reworked and reworked and just didn't realise that the visual idea was impossible for us to realise...

We only had 3 days left until our crit, but we 'sucked it up' and came up with something new and photographed our ideas in the nick time.

This just goes to show that we can't hold our ideas too dear. There is always a better idea, and if you're too precious you will never find it. Our new P&O work is now a whole lot better - a lot simpler and was much easier to visualise... So fingers crossed we get some YCN recognition.