First day of school!

Firstly, a massive thank you to Pravda, and particularly Simon Sinclair for giving us the opportunity of this placement. It might be for a week, it might be more, all I know is, that Ciaran and I have to work our little beards off!
For years they've given us advice in lectures along the lines of "work your arse off, make yourself indespensible and when you're gone, make sure they miss you!
Tomorrow we get to put all that advice into practice. In all honesty I'm expecting some bottom of the barrel briefs, lots of tea making and lots of nervous introductions but lets have some fun eh?!
First day of school all over again.

Peace out

Tom

Well Hot Damn

Well what do you know, we have a week long placement with Pravda! Apparently we have "A Lot Of Work To Do"tm but Simon told Liz who told me that he would like to have us in for a week or two to really 'push us'.

It could be as soon as Monday, so I'm cacking myself a bit. Woop!

Ciaran x

Pravda - Our First Book Crit

So we have literally just stepped out of our first book critique, with the 'Head of Chaos' from Pravda. I'm jotting this down now in the fear I may forget how it all went. We presented seven briefs, with a total of nine campaigns throughout. I'm not going to lie, but I was nervous as hell.

We sat in silent for a good ten minutes or so while Simon Sinclair had a look through our book, stopping about half way through to talk about some of the stuff he had seen. My Intercontinental Title pages seemed to do the trick, but we'll pretend the spelling mistakes and running around didn't happen in the morning.

He seemed to laugh at the right places, and smile at the correct imagery so in my brain it went well. Not brilliantly, because he didn't high five us and immediately give us a job, but I don't think it went that badly, because he literally told us that one campaign was "really good", and liked strategy behind some of the other campaigns but told us the imagery needed a little push.

I'm feeling quite indifferent at the moment, probably because the book critique wasn't on their turf, but I imagine I'll find out later in the day if we were popular or not. I'll just end on a bit of advice he gave to us, but it may have to be paraphrased; "I'm not going to say 'it's how many cocks you suck' but... you know".

Ciaran x

TBWA - We Still Love You

So today, as promised by the lovely Paul Burns and Adam Richardson from TBWA Manchester, we had the chance to talk through the work that Say Wat?! pitched on Wednesday for the D&AD workshop. We were also set a couple of briefs, including one that's very VERY hush hush, and only we from MMU have access to it! I'd tell you what it is, but I rather like TBWA and don't really want to antagonise them.

As already stated, the best work on Wednesday would have gained a placement at TBDubz over the summer break, and Tom and me were raring to go. Unfortunately the brief wasn't exactly awe inspiring, what with it being about Carex hand wash, and including some strict industry style guidelines.

We presented two campaigns, and a host of online and ambient work and today we found out that our work was literally pipped at one of the last hurdles to the placement. The online media was favoured; (Our squirt characters became little lemmings, similar to the mega drive game, trying to find their way to a pair of wet hands), and the ambient squishy squirts seen all over the land were held in high regards from one of the original art directors on the brief, but it was our TV work that let us down. I sort of feel a little responsible because the things Paul mentioned in our critique, were the areas I was working on. However, we got some fantastic advice, of which I'm hoping Tom will add to;

• Keep it short
• Keep it concise
• Present the strategy - present the idea - close with the repeated strategy
• PRACTISE PRESENTING - Come prepared with notes, and don't do a Paul Daniels, Debbie Mcghee double act.

We'll be contacting TBDubz for a book crit over the Easter break, and hopefully we'll gain that elusive placement we're searching for, but until then it's back to the grind. Afterall;



Ciaran x

A Belated Welcome

Why hello there! I don't think we've had the pleasure. My name is Ciaran Watkins, and I'm the second, and much beardier half of the Say Wat?! Creatives team. To keep introductions short; I'm lazy. I should have been contributing to this blog from the start, but I left it to my much better looking and dare I say, talented team mate.

Now that's me off the hook, I shall end this introductory post for fear of confusion. I look forward to your comments, if anyone actually reads the thing. I think it may be time to purchase the elusive .co.uk domain name. I also need to work out a blog sign off as all the cool kids are doing it and I'm obviously very impressionable. TTYN, or XoXo; the choices are endless.

Ciaran x

TBWA we love you!

Sorry for posting one after the other, its the only chance i get!

TBWA was a massive success! Well, not a massive success because the best team on the night were told they would be offered a placement and we didnt win, so not totally successful! (Well done Parisa and Dan btw).

We felt it was a really tough brief, mainly because of the large number of restrictions the client had placed on it, but Ciaran and I were happy with what we presented. Our 2 campaigns were funny and got across what we wanted to say and I think we really impressed them with our online and ambient stuff. I think we impressed ourselves with some of our problem solving skills.

It was also great to get inside the offices because not only was everyone massively helpful and friendly, but it looks incredible in there.

On a slight tangent, it's frustrating that the D&AD workshops have been so stop/start because it's a really good group of guys and girls and there's some really good work being produced. For the record, we love the Birmingham kids from the workshop, a) because they're all really nice guys and produce some fantastic work, and b) because they're the only guys who ever want to drink with us after the visits.

Also a big thanks to TBWA Manchester for providing us with beers which made my post-St. Pat's hangover feel amazing!





Peace out

Tom

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D&AD back on track!

Finally after a 2 week lay off, D&AD returns and we're off to TBWA Manchester in Didsbury!
Finally we get to check out the inside of that amazing looking church and finally meet the first real ad agency of the workshop. Absolutely no disrespect to Dinosaur or Love, I just think they would consider themselves Mixed Media Agencies rather than pure advertising!

So lets have a butchers at the brief...... Sell Carex handwash!
The brief in a nutshell sounds pretty interesting: Make people remember to wash their hands, highlight those with bad habits, promote the entire range of Carex products. Have fun with it, poke fun at the human condition! Great lets get cracking........

Lets first look at the mandatories......Thou Shalt use to the squirt characters, Thou shalt sign off mentioning the Carexperts!

Shit! This suddenly makes it a totally different project. At least, as our tutor picked up on immediately, this is the most true to industry brief we have recieved.

Peace out

Tom

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VISA! You've done it again! ....... or have you?

The new ad from Visa is fantastic, the music is upbeat and uplifting, the dancing keeps you hooked for the whole ad and the sell isn't too over the top or cheesey (except one cheeky flash of the visa card).
It's a great addition to their 'running man' campaign, 2 very memorable ads that make a great addition to Visa's portfolio and is a great dent on Mastercard's stronghold of campaigns.
I do, however, have one small grievance with the ad. It's already a music video for R2DJ, featuring a different soundtrack but features the same bloke on crutches dancing about! So what have they done, taken a great concept and slapped the Visa logo on at the end! Great idea to apply such a concept to the brand but is that easy!
I'm left wondering! Still love the ad though!



Thanks to YouTube for the link and credit to Saatchi and Saatchi for the ad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G_uc8mcDDA is the link for those that need it!

Peace out

Tom

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I like Lurpak............I think?

I've not really posted any opinions of other agencies work so here goes.
I love this Lurpak TV spot by W+K, but for the life of me I don't know why. I've always really enjoyed their press ads, they make some pretty funny insights about enjoying Lurpak with all sorts of food but this is their first attempt at TV as far as i know. It reminds me of some of the Tropicana ads from a while ago but I really enjoy this, I think it's the narrators raspy accent though! He's like Morgan Freeman or Donald Sutherland, you could listen to him talk for days.



Thanks to W+K and YouTube for the link I nicked, I haven't figured out how to credit websites yet. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbCxzuDQikQ

Peace Out

Tom

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2 WEEK POSTPONEMENT!

D & AD POSTPONED!

We've been given a 2 week 'break' from our D&AD workshop, which means we have 2 weeks to set ourselves our own briefs and try and work our arses off without a deadline! I fear this is one discipline we do not have, but lets give it a try anyways shall we!

In the meanwhile I've posted some of our work from our night with Love Creative. We produced some pretty polarised work, I think they liked the fact that we consciously tried to make 2 very different campaigns.

Thank You Carling!

A big shout to Carling for their great presence at the Carling Cup Final yesterday!

They managed to combine their sponsorship of the League Cup with some fantastic campaigns that got fans involved and even got some money for Charity.

Firstly they gave 100 (50 from Spurs and 50 from Utd) fans a chance to put their own messages on the adboards surrounding the pitch, which provided some funny moments in what was a very boring game.

Secondly they provided updates to the stadium announcing which team had the loudest fans. This was a novel idea, even though perhaps slightly pantomine, that would encourage both sets of fans to cheer louder for a bit of pride. What I didn't realise until afterwards though was that this was actually done in aid of a charity.

"In a world first, Carling has teamed up with Sky Sports to track sound levels from both ends of Wembley. Digital advertising boards and a giant screen in front of the Royal Box will be updated four times during each half to show which set of fans is making the most noise. Meanwhile, Sky Sports viewers will be able to see “Fan-o-Meter” readings during their live TV coverage.

The noise generated will raise valuable funds for the Bobby Moore Fund for Cancer Research UK with the donation rising in line with the volume level. Carling has pledged a sum of £10,000 but the figure will increase to £15,000 if the decibel level hits 100 dB and £20,000 if it tops 110 dB."

2 fantastic ways to use their ad boards and more great examples of Carling alligning themselves with the fans. It also provided more entertainment than the match which was shamelessly boring.

So thank you Carling! Great advertising, terrible lager!


Tom

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WEEK 2 - LOVE creative

Week 2 was at LOVE Creative. A big thank you to Simon and Harry for the night, for the workshop, for the advice and for the free beers.
It was a far more interesting brief selling the new menu at Little Chef, and there was some more great work on display (we'll be posting our efforts online ASAP!)
We produced 2 solid campaigns that split Ciaran and I, and Harry and Simon! One was described as "the campaign that best answers the brief" and the other was said to be "too much like a HP sauce campaign."

Due to a 2 week postponement we are now getting on with competition brief so we'll keep posting away!

Peace out

Tom
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Dinosaur - Cannibal Work

Here are our campaigns for the Cannibal "Charity" we made for Dinosaur. Some funny stuff here and hopefully we can have maccing these up but can't really see them fitting into our book. Shame coz we worked hard but oh well!
Some more criticism would have been appreciated but we move on!