The Naked Copywriter

Skype's phone box experiment, by The Viral Factory

2009-12-02T18:32:00.003Z

Pixels at Dawn

2009-11-26T17:58:00.007Z

Are we entering a new era of professional collaboration? Or do we face a creative showdown?

An interesting question and one this event organised by Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication in association with d & ad set out to explore.

'Pixels at Dawn' took place last Tuesday night (November 17, 2009) at a huge venue called Rich Mix on Bethnal Green Road.

I went along to meet @pixandu and tackle some quick-fire briefs set by and worked on by folk across disciplines such as broadcast, advertising and design.

Why can't we all just work together? This event was a fun way of nudging us all to just that. So as soon as I arrived, I grabbed a free chair (after my free beer) and when the time came to start the first brief, I hooked up with the strangers next to me (this was the idea, plus @pixandu had to work late), Fan, Ed, Axel and a girl whose name I didn't catch because she was as quiet as a mouse.

I should also point out that while the crowd were working away on the briefs, so were the three groups of professionals from the following companies: BBC, Ogilvy, RDF, So TV, Six to Start, Kessels Kramer, Mint Digita, Somethin' Else and Puregrass Films.

You should also know that these teams were not made up of copywriters and art directors, although I think one team had a designer from Mint Digital (who incidently I had heard speak at Media140 London).

Brief one - Young at Heart - set by Joe Ferry, Virgin Atlantic Airways

Create a product, service or comms strategy that creates a brand idea to attract an aging population of flyers (over 60s). Communicate how we can benefit this group.

What the professionals came up with:

A whole bunch of crazy ideas, such as: Spend the inheritance, Relive the 60s, Branson's gang and even a Mile High Club, although I have no idea what this involved.

What we came up with:

Name and campaign TBC but the product is basically an over-60s club that you automatically get access to, for free, if you are, yes you've guessed it, over 60. So a bit like a bus pass, then. You get your own card but the main benefits are the, um, benefits. Here are a few that we thought of in the ten minutes or so:

Additional airmiles
Priority check-in
Priority seating near gate
Priority boarding
Over 60s toilet
Bingo
Help with bags
In-flight TV and radio specifically for over 60s

You can go as crazy as you like. I wouldn't want to patronise this audience too much but I'm sure you can have some fun - the idea is supposed to be young at heart, after all, because of Virgin's younger image.

I should point out that one of the pro teams had the same idea as us. Perhaps other groups in the audience did as well. It wouldn't surprise me. It doesn't annoy me that other people had the same idea. I think it's one of the best. I think it provides a real product around which you can build all kinds of communications.

It was interesting that both our group and one of the pro groups also came up with the idea of allowing the over 60s to meet up online before they travelled, in case they wanted to meet up and chat - or maybe spark a little romance as one of the pro teams suggested.

So it was nice to see we had a digital element, although don't forget folks, the Interwebs (all six of them) are just media. It's the big idea that counts.

Brief two - Jedward - set by Graham Stuart, MD, SO Television

@iboy will like this one. The brief was to make Jedward musically credible, giving them a career beyond the past week.

Bit of a funny one, as I can't help feeling that there have been many manufactured acts down the years who couldn't sing. And that anyone could be made to sound tuneful in the studio. So why not Jedward? Because everyone knows they can't actually sing?

Like I say, not sure this has stopped a few people in the past. So wouldn't some producer simply work on them to make them sound ok?

Anyway, once we got over that intitial question, we had some fun. So did the pros. Here are some of their ideas:

Basically watch Jedward 24/7 and humiliate them in 000s of ways.
An experiment with the Royal College of Music to see if we can teach Jedward to sing (had this one)
Children's TV presenters (heard this one on twitter but I'm fucked if I'd want my child watching those two)
Sing Star off-key singing competition
Get Jedward to make a record in every country around the world.
Work with charities (had a version of this - see below)

Some of our ideas:

Yup, see if we can teach them to sing.
Get them to work with deaf kids.
Chucklevision II.
Ant and Dec and Jedward (where each on of Ant and Dec had to have a Jedward over each shoulder).

Brief three - New political party - set by Ben Casey, CD, The Chase

Piece together a set of attributes for a new kind of politician for a new political party. What might the party be called? How would you create the campaign to launch it?

Well time was short here but it was interesting to hear that so many different people had had such similar ideas. Here are some of ours:

All female party
Talented people only party
Not real people - like Gorillaz
Tell the truth party

And that was that. The MC went around the room getting the crowd's thoughts and ideas after we'd heard the pros present their work up on stage. Pretty impressive when you consider they'd had 10 minutes or so on each brief and were working with 2-3 other people they'd never met from different companies; different disciplines, even.

The future of collaboration? I hope so. And it was nice to catch up with Matt, Phillipe, Matt and Theresa from D&AD's autumn 2009 digital advertising workshop, too (Hello Rhiannon!) We even managed to get to work on a couple of the briefs together.

I'm not sure if there's going to be another PAD, but if there is I'll see you there.

PS. If you've ever read any of my previous posts, you might know I'm intrigued by Google, SEO and search rankings. So you'll forgive me for pointing out a little Google ranking wierdness relating to this particular post - I was ranking 8th on page one of Google for the term 'Pixels at Dawn', whilst I was still writing the post. I goddammed love the Interwebs. It's so goddammed fast. A bit like me on the draw (sound of ricocheting bullet.)

Peperami and Unilever have a crowdsourced* winner

2009-11-24T09:23:00.003Z

Two winners, in fact.

Read Idea Bounty's interviews with them.

*Yes, it's semantics but is this crowdsourcing? Isn't the term supposed to refer to a common solution to which everyone adds? Check out the definition of the word and make up your own mind.

Have you had customer service this good?

2009-11-23T10:46:00.006Z

Here's a customer service email I received from hungryhouse, an online takeaway service.

It's worth reading as an example of the kind of customer service we should all be getting.

In fact, this email probably goes above and beyond the call of duty as it's possible I made a mistake (although even if I did, what happened illustrates the importance of a landing page that echoes the offer you've just read.) You'll see what I mean in a minute.

OK so hungryhouse.co.uk lets you order your takeaway online.

I'm not quite sure why it's better than calling up your local restaurant direct but I gave it a go on Friday because I happened to see a 10% offer RTed (that's retweeted for all you twitter haters - come on, keep up).

So I clicked the link and went through to hungryhouse.co.uk. Within seconds I'd found our local curry house that I was going to order from anyway, so I thought I'd try hungryhouse and save some money.

Trouble was, because I never saw a big button that said '10% discount', I had no way of knowing that I'd secured that deal. I don't know what my order usually costs and I was going to add it all up to see if I got the money off.

So I was left wondering whether I got the deal at all. And I thought I'd just paid exactly the same price for a longer service as it would take time to pass on the order to the restaurant.

Actually, we found the order go through immediately and I'd say ordering through hungryhouse was just as quick as calling the restaurant direct. I can even see the benefit of browsing the menu online (many local takeaways do not have a dedicated website), plus, hopefully, you won't get any Chinese whispers over the phone (no pun intended) and so hopefully, you won't get any mistakes.

Well, there's still room for human error, as I discovered when we were left naan-less and in posession of two, not one, mint yoghurts (I know, I know, how did we manage?)

However, I emailed hungryhouse and received an email back within an hour or two. Here it is:

Hi Hayes,

I'm really sorry to hear you had some trouble using our special offer tonight.
The discount is definitely up and running. Provided that you clicked on the link
and chose to pay by card, 10% of your order value should have been deducted.

I completely understand your frustration. Rest assured that I have passed your
information on to our IT team so they can investigate what went wrong.

As a gesture of apology for this disappointment, I would like to offer you
Â£2.00 off a future order with us - if you're willing to consider giving us
another chance to serve you better. To redeem this discount, you need to upgrade
to a member account at URL
- it only takes a few seconds and it's free! Â£2.00 will then be automatically
deducted from the next order you pay for by card. Please note however, that
unused credit automatically expires after 90 days.

This slightly more than covers the discount you should have received on your
order tonight.

Thanks for ordering at hungryhouse and for bringing this issue to our attention.
Once again, I'm really sorry for this incovenience. I hope you enjoy your meal
from 3 Spice and have a great weekend.

Kind regards,

Whitney

help@hungryhouse.co.uk
http://hungryhouse.co.uk

http://twitter.com/hungryhouse
http://facebook.com/hungryhouse

Isn't that good? Hungryhouse - give it a go. And pray something goes wrong so you can get one of those lovely emails from Whitney.

PS. I even told hungryhouse about the missing naan in my feedback email, which comes soon after your food. Another email from Whitney, this time to tell me she'd credited my card the cost of the bread. What do you think of that, then?

All TV ads are shit

2009-11-11T12:33:00.010Z

Or at least that's the way I felt watching the ad break during Dancing with the Devil last night on More4.

Did you see it? I think it was one of the most interesting docs I've ever seen. It got up close and personal with some of Rio's biggest drug lords. And whether you believed them or not, most of them said they'd like nothing better than to get out of the life - if only they had an alternative.

In addition to football, funk and samba, one alternative was the church, by the way. And that's how we got such incredible access to the traffickers - by following a pastor who used to sell drugs and carry guns himself.

So maybe any ads that broke up this amazing film would have seemed shite in comparison.

Only I got really down. Like actually questioning my whole career. Isn't advertising shit? Wasn't being a copywriter shit? Wasn't I shit?

Then this came on and my belief in advertising was restored:

What do you think?

My headline for Twitter's first press ad

2009-11-04T11:59:00.003Z

You can't read everything but you can read the people that do.

Or should that be 'people who do'?

Any grammar freaks in the house?

7 rules of brainstorming

2009-11-01T21:02:00.003Z

Like Wal, I've been in many brainstorming sessions.

And like Wal, I've never really been in any that ever seemed particularly effective.

I've read up on the subject before and I seem to remember a few tips on how long you should do it and how many people to involve - and yes, I do think it's important you set a few parameters - or rules.

Here are 7 rules of brainstorming from IDEO, the design and innovation consultants, courtesy of Wal at Hyper Island.

Fucking awesome social Media guru

2009-10-06T12:11:00.003+01:00

Via Rik Brown at BBH, via Ad Contrarian, via Ad Broad, this movie was made by a freelance journalist in Dublin, named Markham Nolan. Props!

Just as interesting is that it's made with a tool called Xtranormal whose strapline is 'if you can type, you can make movies' - couldn't have put it better myself.

Make the goal fun

2009-10-06T11:43:00.002+01:00

I've posted before aboutthis book and the story about a painted fly in a urinal that encouraged men to aim for it and therefore not splash man wee all over the floor.

Well here's another great idea, via @BBHLabs on Twitter.

Problem: Everyone's using the escalator instead of taking a short, healthy climb.
Solution: Make climbing the stairs fun.

How's your Swedish? Read more here.

Google Wave in under 8 minutes

2009-10-01T15:53:00.004+01:00

All about its features (you'll have to wait till I can try it if you want me to write about its benefits).

100,000 people were invited to preview it from yesterday. I signed up but ain't heard nothing yet. Looks like fun as a communications tool. Have a look for yourself.

The way forward

2009-10-01T15:50:00.001+01:00

R/GA's Bob Greenburg and Barry Wacksman show and tell.

140 followers for Media140 London

2009-09-29T16:19:00.006+01:00

Thanks to my pigeon-catching skills, I bagged a free ticket to Media140's one day London conference on October 26th.

To thank them for the opportunity to explore the impacts of real-time social media on agencies, marketers and brands, I'm trying to get 140 followers, follow 140 people and have tweeted 140 times by the time October 26th rolls around.

Do you see what I'm trying to do?

Well I'm already following 140 people, so I won't be able to follow you back.

And I've already tweeted 119 times, so I've only got 21 tweets left before October 26th.

But I've only got 70 followers, so I need 70 more. I think it's possible. The trouble is no-one's really going to find me through my tweets at any great rate because I haven't got many left before I reach 140.

That's why I'm asking for your help here. Go on, be a love.

Follow @hayesthompson on Twitter and tell your friends!

Cheers!

PS. I hearly forgot to mention what's in it for you. When normal update service resumes, you'll be tweeted to a heady mix of:

Crucial advertising and digital news
Hilarious copywriting anecdotes
Unmissable updates on how my 10-month old daughter, Maggie, is progressing
Random stories about my cat, who shits too much. In the house
Thrilling conversations with some of the indutry's most charismatic and insightful figureheads
Links to 'shit' that other people will be sending you links to 'minutes, sometimes hours' later (and some that no-one else you know would have sent you)
My own brand of cynical, yet up-beat comment on advertising, the interwebs and life in general
Completely useless writing tips (if you don't have to write - if you do, they're indspensible)
Your own guide to what's fresh and what's wack, Jack

Next kind of Heineken fridge

2009-09-27T20:30:00.003+01:00

First we had the walk-in fridge

Now we have the follow-up: a walking fridge

Next up

The walk-n fridge (although I'm not sure what that is)

OR

The Christopher Walken Fridge

Thank you Nike and ( DOUBLcorrection) R/GA (or how we did on the D and AD digital advertising workshop's competitive brief for nike football)

2009-09-15T14:25:00.008+01:00

Thank you Nike and Wieden and Kennedy for producing this monster of an ad (Thanks Ciaran)

Thank you also Nike and R/GA for providing the competitive brief that allowed Cosmo and I to be accepted onto D&AD's Digital Advertising Workshop, on the strength of our response.

Touchdown! Goal! etc.

Watch this space (the Internet, I mean);)

Is using the word 'joy', sad?

2009-09-15T11:47:00.006+01:00

First we had a glass and a half full of joy (oops, sorry, did I post the wrong clip?)

Then we had BMW's expression of joy

Now I've seen Puma bodywear bringing us a little joy (Thanks @iboy)

What is it with everyone using the word 'joy'?

Is it because it's so short? Valid, I suppose. Brevity could be one of a writer's goals.

Or is it because we feel comfortable with trends? I hope not.

Whatever, if you're planning an ad based on happiness, here are a few alternatives, courtesy of dictionary.com:

Synonyms:
1, 2. pleasure, joy, exhilaration, bliss, contentedness, delight, enjoyment, satisfaction. Happiness, bliss, contentment, felicity imply an active or passive state of pleasure or pleasurable satisfaction.

I know which one I'm going for next.

Hey managing directors

2009-09-02T14:25:00.003+01:00

Talk a bit more slowly.

How to do mobile apps

2009-09-02T12:36:00.004+01:00

(From people who know.)

As you'll see, doing mobile phone apps is as easy as 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 - so not quite as easy as 1,2,3 but definitely doable.

The IAB guide to mobile applications

Nice T-shirt idea

2009-08-26T21:14:00.003+01:00

Want one.

(Click on the pic, quick.)

Just what you needed...

2009-08-26T10:14:00.004+01:00

An App to let you know what you can probably already see - the nearest McDonalds, Pizza Hut or Starbucks.

Even if you had your eyes closed, you'd probably be able to find these places, as they pretty much repeat themselves every hundred yards or so.

Still, this is the future. And I mustn't be too sarcastic, even if the first thing you see on the link coming up is the nightmare-ish Monopoly board shown in the picture above.

The new Metro Paris Subway App (v 3.0) has jumped off its underground train, climbed the stairs and hopped aboard the augmented reality bandwagon (there's that sarcasm again but bear with me.)

Yes folks, in addition to keeping you up-to-date with all the latest goings on the Metro tracks beneath the city, the new Metro Paris Subway App now also displays the latest stations and points of interest when you're above ground, overlaid on top of your iPhone screen's display from your camera lens, in an augmented reality style and fashion.

And if you're still here after reading that paragraph-long sentence, then you might like to click the link to find out what on earth I'm on about:

The new Metro Paris Subway augmented reality iPhone app

Or just watch the movie on YouTube:

How not to use Twitter

2009-08-25T12:59:00.008+01:00

LeahBeno: An 8 month old baby is dead and his dad is in jail. Find out why tonight at 9 and 10.
1 day ago from web

Is this what it's come to? Tempting people to watch to find out how an 8 month old baby died? Would you hear that on TV? F*ck. Maybe you would in Minneapolis, I don't know.

What I do know is that it looks very wrong on a Twitter udpate.

Here's a little bit more about the person who wrote that:

Name Leah Beno
Location Minneapolis
Web http://www.myfox9...
Bio I'm a reporter for Fox 9 in the Twin Cities and loving it!

So allow me to dish out a couple of awards:

1] Most innapropriate use of exclamation mark 2009.

2] Most innapropriate juxtaposition of exclamation mark and tasteless headline 2009.

And she really ought to get something for her next update, too.

The father of the 8 month old baby that died this weekend has a very violent past. We showed you the details at 9pm. More tomorrow?

No thanks.

Battle of the mobile phone stunts

2009-08-21T12:01:00.003+01:00

First we had a song and dance in Liverpool Street Station and Trafalgar with T Mobile (life's for sharing, remember?)

Now we have former pickpockets going around putting money into people's pockets - or 'putpocketing'.

These mobile phone companies are crazy. Me and my wife play a game where we can spot the latest mobile phone ad on TV. It has crazy music, it has trippy visuals - and, generally, it makes no sense whatsoever. A bit like mobile phones, eh? Er, well, not really.

The latest crazy shiny light TV ad is from Talk Talk (See below.) And they're responsible for this 'putpockets' stunt, too.

So that's nice. Talk Talk is handing out £100,000 of its customers' money to American tourists in Trafalgar Square throughout August. And if you join up, maybe they can give away some of your money too!

Read the story here

Actually, a very beautiful ad

Lowest price diamonds guaranteed

2009-08-17T10:22:00.004+01:00

Bear with me.

I haven't lost my mind.

I just wanted to

a] share where to get the lowest price quality diamonds on the Interent (this company cuts diamonds itself after buying them from The Diamond Trading Company, the largest distributor in the world). In fact, if you find the same diamond for cheaper even after you've bought it, you'll get 110% what you paid back. Yup. 110%. London-based too, so you can see the diamond before you buy it (mind you, even if you buy by post, you can return what you don't like - their customer service is excellent - 99% positive on Amazon.co.uk)

b] conduct a little Internet experiment (you know how I do.)

So anyway, I'm not linking to this company. There is a catch. You have to email me for the name of the diamond company. I'm not going to do anything with your email. I just can't post this link right now. Ok that's it.

Aviva 'New dad' and 'Retired bikers' TV ad

2009-08-16T20:17:00.004+01:00

As I said in a previous post, these two ads by AMV BBDO are the best ads on the box right now IMHO.

I know why I like them so much - it's because they seem so real. Are they actors? Are they real people? I don't know.

But these ads are believable. And that's what makes them so good. It helps that I'm a] a new dad and b] a biker. So perhaps I have a natural affinity towards these ads.

I don't know. What do you think?

Interesting to see that Aviva has its own YouTube channel too. Well, I say interesting. I'm not really sure if that's interesting at all. Perhaps in a geeky way. Did AMV set it up? Did Aviva?

So many questions. So little time to go and find the answers. If only I was Scamp. Then I would do this properly.

You shouldn't be tweeting...

2009-08-10T17:45:00.001+01:00

...but you are.

Top 10 reasons why your company probably shouldn't tweet.

I feel like dancing

2009-08-07T09:05:00.002+01:00

Help me celebrate.

Watch the most popular video of all time on YouTube.

I don't mean watch it on YouTube. I mean the most popular YouTube video. Watch it here.