A Successful Week

Despite having technically finished our Creative Advertising degree, I still seem to have an extensive 'to do' list. The past week has definately had it's ups and downs - the downs being a funeral. On the positive side, YCN announced the winners of this years student awards...


Vicky and I were delighted to find out that we'd been commended for our work on the P&O Ferries brief! Here is one of our ads...


Hopefully we'll feature in the next YCN annual!

The day after the YCN announcements we got our dreaded dissertations back. I had written mine on the subject of Ambient Advertising, how it is defined and why it is increasingly popular. Vicky wrote about cool and what it means to people. We both ended up getting really good marks, which was great news as we'd put so much hard work in!

London Continued...

The last day of our London visits began with a trip to VCCP. We met with Tony, who is part of a senior team there. He was a lot more critical than anyone we'd seen before, but as Dave Morris once said, that is probably a good thing.

Our next stop was to Adam & Eve (loving the new John Lewis ad) for our second visit. We seemed to be taken a bit more seriously this time and were told that our book had improved, hooray! The comments were really helpful and we will be going back to pester them a bit more.

After a spot of Pizza Hut Buffet we made our way to Ogilvy.



We saw a different lady this time as our usual team was away on holiday. Kristal was really friendly and seemed to really understand all our work. I don't know whether it's because we've been there so many times or something but we're really starting to feel at home in Ogilvy! They're always so laid back and unpretentious towards us. No doubt we'll be going back again on our next trip.

The last book crit of the week was to Work Club...



We saw their famous 'Bart Simpson Wall' -



Although it was a fairly quick book crit, Greg gave us a lot to think about.

Why can't agencies all have the same opinions? We've never had so many book crits in one lot so it was really interesting to see that some people loved things that other people seemed to hate. I have a feeling we're going to end up with a few different books for different places if we listen to everyone's advice!

Lost in Hoxton

Sorry about the lack of posts but I have been at home for the last two weeks. The first of these weeks Vicky joined me for our next round of book crits...

We gave in our degree work a whole day early in order to go straight down to London and meet with Lol and Nat. They have a great blog on the Campaign website and work at Glue. After discovering The Breakfast Club 80s themed cafe we got well and truly lost in Hoxton looking for the illusive Tea Building. Despite recently acquiring a wonderful new iPhone, Google Maps just did not want to co-operate! We luckily got there bang on 1pm after going in a few strange buildings and making a panicky call to Lol. They were really nice and down to earth so we'll definately go back to see them again (it should be easier to find a second time round).

Next up we visited the headquarters of Barry M cosmetics. Vicky and I had a few good ideas for their brand so we contacted them directly to show them what we'd thought of.



They really liked our iPhone app idea and said that if they hadn't already got an app they would of probably made it, as they're so expensive to produce. How annoying! However, they did say that it might be worth taking our ideas to another make-up brand as our ideas definately had potential, so we'll see what happens...

The next day we started off by visiting BBH to meet with one half of the team that handles the Audi account. He was a really friendly and helpful guy and said that although all our ideas are ads that could run tomorrow, we should be going a bit more crazy. Basically, we need to stand out more.

Next up was Dare the digital agency. We thought we would be seeing a friend of a friend called Luke who is a designer there but he ended setting us up with two creative directors! What a legend. They both went through all our work giving us advice and telling us what to change. We both really like the laid-back atmosphere in Dare and the people we saw made us feel really welcome - another one we'll have to revisit!

Last of the day was a team at DDB that produced the Marmite ads (the ones I wrote about before).



They seemed to know what they were talking about and gave us similar comments to Kevin at BBH. We definately think that we could learn a lot from them so we'll be going back again to show them what we've changed...

I shall write about the rest of our meetings in my next post as I think that's enough reading for one day.

The End Of Our Degree

The theme of our final show is 'The 33 paths to advertising nirvana' And here is Vicky and I in our 'Cult' costumes, we are 'The Clarity Crusade'.

Sail Away

Here it is, finally! Our Self-promo...

Kleenex

My boyfriend's mum found this great pop up press ad for Kleenex Ultra Soft. It must have cost a fortune to produce but its a really nice and simple idea to get the reader to see just how soft the tissues are...



This is the first page you see. It just says 'It's like 80 pashminas in a box'. Sort of boring as you think its just a single press ad and then you open it up to this...




Its a pop-up box of tissues! And you even get a free tissue to cop a feel of - and it really is very soft.

Busy Bees

Vicky and I have been REALLY busy with our final deadline, which is next Tuesday! We've also (along with everyone one our course) been helping to build our final show...



It looks like a giant black maze at the moment, but soon it will be displaying some beautiful ads. Our show opens on the 4th of May until the 18th if anyone fancies visiting.

We have also been getting on with our self-promo film and I think we might have finally completed it! After 6 re-shoots we are finally satisfied. I will of course upload the final film on here when complete. Today we also helped out with Josie & Megan's self-promo...



...Which also looks like its gonna be a funny one!

Self-Promo

Vicky and I are currently shooting our self-promotional film for the 6th time. Our strategy is to show the opposite of us. I shall upload when its all finished and wonderful.

I came across this film to promote the post-grad advertising course in Watford. Made me chuckle. Its a really great idea - you can tell because I'm jealous that we didn't think of it for our film first!

Sound as a Pound

Got this with my change from the local corner shop, what a great idea. Might work well for Poundland... Well done Vodka Revolution though!