Stuart Outhwaite is a
creative at London agency Mother. Outhwaite’s pick is a TV commercial that
hasn’t even aired in the UK, but turned into an international Internet
sensation, racking up almost 6 million views since it launched in the US last
month.
The ad is fronted by actor Isaiah Mustafa, who looks directly into the
camera and tells women that although their men may never look like him, they
can at least smell like him by using Old Spice.
‘I hate the people who
made this ad for many reasons’, says Outhwaite.‘They've managed to revive a tired old brand from the
seventies that even my dad would be ashamed to use and created a genuinely
hilarious piece of thirty second joy.’ ‘They've also succeeded in making me
feel pathetically inferior and “lady scented”,’ he adds.
Old Spice
historically produced advertising that spoke specifically to men, but they
changed the brief, asking agency Wieden+Kennedy to appeal to men and women at
the same time.
Craig Allen and
Eric Kallman were the team who had to meet the challenge.‘The idea came about by sitting quietly
in a room and staring at each other for days,’ says Allen. ‘It was hard to do
something that spoke to women, but also didn’t turn off men.’
The team knew
they liked the idea of a suave, sophisticated tone of voice.‘It started with “hello, ladies” and
kind of spiraled from there,’ says Kallman.
The commercial
was shot in a single take.Special
effects were only used to allow diamonds to pour out of Mustafa’s hand and for
the bottle to then rise up through it.It took 3 days and over 50 takes before everything came together. ‘It
was stressful,’ says Kallman.‘A
take might be acted perfectly, but the shirt wouldn’t fall around Isaiah’s neck
or he’d miss the horse.’
A set was built
on a beach that created a boat with a bathroom on top.A giant crane lifts the bathroom away
at the crucial moment to reveal the boat.‘In theory this should work smoothly,’ says Allen, but on day 2 one of
the safeties on the crane failed and sent the 1900 lb (860kg) bathroom set
plummeting.Luckily no one was
hurt, but part of the set had to be rebuilt. ‘That was horrible,’ says Allen.
‘Not our idea of a good time, but I guess it makes a good story.’
In early March,
D&AD and Metro challenged UK creatives to design a coverwrap to inspire and
motivate readers on their morning commute. Last week our jury worked their way through the entries.They’ve selected an eclectic mix of work for the shortlist
that they think will inspire Metro readers and brighten up
your morning. Thank you to everyone
who entered.
Big thanks also to our judges, who gave up their time to pick the best work:
As D&AD and
Hyper Island announce our partnership bringing the Hyper
Island Master Class to the UK, we investigate the skills gaps that the
digital revolution has precipitated.
Most people feel
a bit behind when it comes to that thing termed ‘digital’. Even hardened
professionals admit that keeping up with the pace of change can be impossible.
So how can agencies ensure they leverage the opportunities that digital media
offer them?
There is a
widely acknowledged dearth of graduates with the right skill sets and
competition to recruit is fierce. A fact demonstrated by the high placement
success rate of educational institutions like Hyper Island, who specialise in
this area. So training existing staff is key as well.
Harry Fowler at
Cogs Agency recruits talent with a strong digital bias to creative agencies. He
thinks that training is essential if the industry is to avoid the same small
number of skilled people being headhunted around the industry. The talent
pipeline needs to be kept active and one way to do that is to retrain existing
staff. ‘A crossover of skills is needed between traditional and digital
agencies’, says Harry, ‘Digital agencies need the strong brand understanding
and conceptual approach of traditional creatives. Traditional agencies need
people who understand the process-led production of digital work.’
One agency that
has taken the bull by the horns is Wieden & Kennedy London. The whole
agency participated in the Hyper Island Master
Class. ‘Whether we like it or not, we are all ‘digital’ now’, says Sam
Brookes, Managing Director of Platform, W&K’s innovation unit. ‘We all live
in that world, and we all need to be able to navigate it to a certain degree’.
A sentiment echoed by Harry who points out that ‘The rules have changed and so
have consumers, those that fail to skill themselves up will be redundant.’
Sounds scary,
but many see it as an opportunity. Sam Brookes says, ‘One of the important
things about the Master Class was that it didn’t make us feel inadequate. In
fact the training affirmed that we were already fantastic storytellers and it
simply gave us opportunities to do more of that, more of what we do best.’ The
pay-off has been visible across the whole organisation. ‘We now have a much
better idea how to act as an agency in this new landscape’ says Sam.
Here at D&AD
we were keen to work with Hyper Island given their track record; they have
placed graduates in almost every large agency in London and delivered their Master
Classes to professionals around the world. Their learning philosophy has great
resonance with our own approach to training, using experience-based learning as
a foundation. ‘It is fantastic that D&AD are working with Hyper Island to
bring this training to the UK’ says Harry, ‘Everyone should want and need
this’. If you are interested in the Hyper Island Master Classes read furtheror email workout@dandad.co.uk.
Domenic Lippa is
a Partner at
Pentagram, an international multi-disciplinary design studio.
He says a big
‘Yes’ to the look of the Pet Shop Boys’ newest album.Released last year, Yes was designed by the team at Farrow Design.
‘This is a
beautifully understated piece of contemporary graphic design produced at a time
when arguably the music market’s heyday may be over,’ says Lippa.
Founder Mark
Farrow has a long history with the Pet Shop Boys, having worked with Neil
Tennant and Chris Lowe since the release of their first album, ‘Please’ back in
1986.
‘A designer can
only do great work if they have a great client and in this case both the
quality of the work and the longevity of the relationship are staggering,’ says
Lippa.
The cover of Pet
Shop Boys single ‘Suburbia’ won a D&AD Yellow Pencil in 1987. Tennant and
Lowe are credited with Farrow as part of the design team for that work.
The design for
Yes came about when Farrow met with the band and they told him that ‘as this
was their most ‘pop’ album in a long time,’ they liked the idea of creating
something bright and colourful.They were also inspired by 4900
Colours, the kaleidoscopic work of German artist Gerhard Richter.
‘The idea of the tick was obviously inspired by the title
Yes,’ says Farrow.‘Reducing the
title to a symbol that included the other elements the band had requested just
seemed to work.It’s instant and
memorable and pop,’ he says.
The tick is made
up of eleven coloured squares, one for each track on the album.Farrow Design also came up with a
limited vinyl edition of the album.‘The album is split over eleven separate records, each in a coloured
sleeve,’ says Farrow.When
correctly arranged the eleven album sleeves make up a tick, measuring about
eight feet in length.
‘In an age of
visual saturation it is reassuring to see calm, minimal work, which has an idea
behind it,’ says Lippa.‘There is
no need for cheesy photos of the band, instead the simple tick referencing the
title says it all.The design defies
the traditionally superficial ‘pop’ stereotype.’
The limited
edition album has made a big impact.It was nominated for Design of the Year, currently on exhibition at the Design Museum.It was also voted on of the 50 ‘most collectible’ records of the 21st Century.
What would you do if you
had to design a shop window? Last year, Tom Carey and his team won second prize at the Student Awards challenge to create an installation for Hamley's
shop window on London’s Regent Street.
They came up with the
idea of creating an interactive summer environment in the front of Hamleys shop
window. Children colour in a butterfly template, which is scanned and made into
a digital version of their design. Their butterfly comes to life and flies
around the window display, which they can interact with using motion sensor
technology. Their design can then be turned into a kite that they can take
along to a butterfly festival at the end of the summer.
The story doesn’t end
there, though, as Tom needed to find himself a job – and in the middle of what
we all know is the ‘worst recession since 1993.’ He maxed out his overdraft by
turning down part time work as a shelf-stacker to get experience on four work
placements. 'Once I graduated, it really helped having made lots of
contacts and having industry experience'. Today he’s 6 months into a job
at interdisciplinary brand design consultancy, A+B Studio.
'Tom stood out the
moment he walked in - not only because of his untameable hair-do but his
scatter-gun approach to design. On second glance we realised that each piece of
work (whether it was jewellery, books, installations and even a
multi-functional-festival jackets) was incredibly thought out,
thought provoking and beautifully designed. Most
importantly - Tom was a person we really liked to spend time with,’ said Benji
Wiedemann, Creative Director.
Tom’s journey to A+B
Studio has 3 main features
He took a targeted
approach;‘While doing
placements I was looking for small up-and-coming companies that might be
looking to take someone on. I wanted to jump in at the deep end and get stuck
in.
He wasn’t afraid to ask
for help: ‘While on placement at hat-trick, I asked
pretty much everyone to have a look at my
portfolio and asked them about other companies that I might not have heard of.
One of the designers mentioned A+B Studio, who I emailed straight away.
And, as ever in life, he
had a bit of good luck: ‘A+B Studio were about to move to a bigger place and
were looking for someone – I was in the right place at the right time.'
Tom's worked on plenty of different projects since he got started, including the titles for BBC series, Hairy Bikers. Watch the title sequence here:
Member David Gamble is CD at SAINT @ RKCR/Y&R. Way back in 1999 he launched the New Blood identity while at Circus. His latest project is Recode for Decode, an exhibition of digital design at the V&A until 11 April.
Karsten Schmidt was asked to design an open source digital identity for Decode. The aim was to encourage others to play with Schmidt's code and create an original digital artwork of their own.
How does Recode fit with work you've done before?
For the last 15 years, my creative partner Simon Labbett and I have tried to come up with ideas that do whatever it takes to earn the right to engage with the audience, rather than just using specific media channels to try and force engagement. We have often used traditional media as part of this (sometimes the main part), as it has the breadth that some campaigns need, but we always try to accompany it with other more targeted ways to win that engagement battle. Digital has always been at the heart of what we do as it allows us to engage with people in so many different ways, and on more personal terms.
Recode was different from our previous work, mainly because we hadn’t encountered these sets of problems in the past, or had to engage with this relatively niche audience before. These factors - combined with a very tiny budget - led to our creative solution. We wouldn’t have devised the same campaign if circumstances were different (and if we had 3 million quid to play with).
We wanted to demonstrate the things that make digital art so different from more traditional art. Try interacting with a Monet at the The National Gallery and you’ll get arrested. Do the same at Decode and you’re adding to the exhibition. Anyone can have an effect on digital art, so we used that as our starting point. We wanted to open up every aspect of the campaign to our audience, and let them promote the exhibition for us.
What were the main challenges you had to overcome?
The biggest challenge was the budget. It was tiny compared to our ambitions. But we turned this into a positive, as the small budget was one of the main factors that led to the idea. We couldn’t have achieved everything we did without creating an open source campaign.
How did you find Karsten Schmidt?
We needed to get a respected digital artist involved to create the art application for Recode, so the V&A suggested using Karsten, who was already one of the contributors to Decode. We worked closely with him to make sure the application did everything we needed for the campaign and the collaborative art idea. His influence really helped the idea spread to a receptive audience.
Did you notice any trends or themes around the work submitted or by who submitted it? The Recoded submissions got better and more ambitious as people got to grips with the application and the code. We wanted to make sure that there was a low barrier to interaction with digital art piece, but a relatively high barrier to outputting a finished piece of Recoded work.
We needed quality, not quantity in the Recode gallery as we didn’t have the resources to deal with tens of thousands of uploads. This meant that although thousands downloaded the art piece, played with it, and passed it on, it was mainly our target audience of flash designers, coders, digital artists, and people with a higher digital understanding that uploaded Recodes to the gallery. They set the bar pretty high and created a competitive element that made the work even better. Just look at the latest piece by Matt Swoboda, it’s fantastic, and has raised the bar even higher.
We even noticed other digital artists from the Decode exhibition submitting pieces off their own backs. The ripple effect was the most important facet of the campaign. This all comes back to our objectives and use of niche targeting to create a wider buzz beyond the core target audience.
What's next for Recode?
The Decode exhibition is still going, so make sure you go before it finishes. It’s an amazing collection, and has inspired some of our creatives to produce some really interesting work.
We’re hoping to organise a ‘V&A Lates’ for Recode to show all the best work, and invite Karsten and all the other digital artists to meet in the real world for a change. Displaying the Recoded work alongside the exhibition would really complete the campaign for me, and truly blur the lines between product and promotion.
Can you give us a 'dummy's guide' to open source and how it can be used effectively?
I’ll hand over to Chris Jefford to answer the geeky questions...
Open source is a method of freely sharing code to a wider development audience with the goal of improving the finished product through personal input from many sources.
When a computer programme is created, the building blocks with which it is built with is called Source Code - be that Java, C, Actionscript etc. This source code is ultimately compiled and becomes an executable application - which is in effect locked-down, un-editable code. However if the source code of an application is made available, this means that the application itself can be adapted by whoever has that code, and enhanced by whoever has access.
Most development houses (think Microsoft) handle all their development in-house, and only make the finished applications available, never the source code. An application such as the popular browser Firefox however has been developed from a basic browser into a major force, by making the original source code available to anyone who wants to develop it, and taking in developments from across the world. True open source code is available to all, including all changes made through its lifecycle.
In an online world where crowd-sourcing is fast becoming an accepted part of life, open source development projects are set to become widespread in their appeal since there is now an almost limitless pool of potential developers ready to work on a project.
With respect to the V&A work, we knew that there would be a wealth of creative developers who would love to get their hands on the source of Karsten Schmidt’s work. This should be particularly interesting to students as the main benefits are that open source material is free, and you don’t have to start from scratch to create something new and engaging.
With the D&AD Student Awards deadline looming, they had hit on an idea to promote HP Workstations’ ability to bring to life ‘anything the creative mind can conceive’.
‘Our tutors always taught us to come up with a great idea, then work out the right channels to use,’ said Tom. They made a film that turned the otherwise mundane experience of everyday printing into a brilliantly choreographed audiovisual orchestra. They spent days holed up in a studio coaxing a stack of printers to perform.
The team ended up with a double win – second prize at the Student Awards and Best New Blood – racked up thousands of views on YouTube with their film, and even ended up on the BBC News. Most important though, they got themselves jobs and while their D&AD wins helped to open doors, it was still up to them to step on through.
‘We had been exhibiting at New Blood for a couple of days and although people from the industry had visited our stand, we felt a bit nervous about approaching anyone,’ said Matt. ‘We knew that time was running out though, so when we saw Mark Waites from Mother walk past, we decided to go for it.’
Tom hit play on their Student Awards film and Matt flagged down Waites to have a look at their work. They went for it after that, and approached as many people they could to introduce themselves and show off their work. ‘We probably spoke to about 20-30 people by the end of the exhibition,’ said Tom. ‘If someone was having a look, we’d catch their eye and tell them the story behind our projects.’ Eventually, they’d just walk up to people and introduce themselves, ‘because you never know who you’re going to meet’.
In the coming weeks, Matt & Tom followed up with everyone they met at New Blood. They picked up a bit of freelance animation work along the way, and met with production companies, advertising agencies and design studios.
In September, they got in contact with Mother and were offered them a work placement starting in December – all thanks to grabbing that opportunity at New Blood. Mother Creative Stuart Outhwaite also recommended the team get in touch with Work Club in the meantime as the agency had placements starting that month.
...and they’ve been there ever since. Tom & Matt landed a placement at Work Club and spent 3 months working on all kinds of pitches. ‘It’s been great to be involved in project from the beginning,’ said Matt. In December, the agency offered to extend the placement and the team was presented with a choice – stay at Work Club or take up the earlier offer from Mother.
‘We thought about it long and hard,’ said Tom. ‘We’d really enjoyed our time at Work Club and felt part of the team, but we knew that Mother would also be a great experience’ In the end, they decided to stay on at Work Club to continue with the projects that they had been involved with. They contacted Stu at Mother to explain the reason behind their choice, ‘Stuart was really supportive of our decision’ said Matt.
Just last week, the team were offered permanent jobs at Work Club.
So now that the job hunt is officially over, what advice to they have for this year’s graduates?
Keep an open mind – ‘We met with so many different people across advertising, design and production that we got a good understanding of what our options were.’
Create your own opportunities – ‘We didn’t win first prize at the Student Awards, and I think that just made us work harder.’
A self-proclaimed lover of the
classic and distinctive spread, Gower is impressed by a new campaign to launch
the Marmite Cereal Bar. It takes a brave brand to acknowledge that some people
may hate its product.It takes an
even braver one to run a national advertising campaign around the idea.The campaign acknowledges that the
cereal bar may be a product extension too far and plays on ‘love us or hate us’
advertising that Gower thinks has done wonders for the brand.
‘Spoof ads that play on
advertising clichés will always be popular,’ says Gower.‘Using them to then bring consumers
round to the view that a savoury cereal bar is reasonable is brave indeed.’
Created
by ad agency DDB, the initial inspiration for the campaign came from wondering
what would truly be a product too far, explains copywriter Will Lowe. ‘The art direction of the ads intentionally played on the advertising clichés that you see again and again; the child on the towels, the man in the shower, and the thin perfume model,’ says Lowe.
Marmite
Perfume and Fabric Softener appeared online in early March. The hoax products
initially bewildered members of the public who came across them.‘A number of the Facebook Love Marmite group
members actually thought the products were real and have been trying to buy
them,’ adds Lowe.
Meanwhile,
two sets of posters launched nationally.One set reveals the hoax with it’s strapline ‘This may be too far, but
how about this?’A second set is
running without the strapline, leading the public to think that Marmite Fabric
Softener might well be the real thing.
The packaging
for all three products was designed specially for the shoot and n sits in
DDB’s reception in London. The perfume bottle is based on the original Marmite
jar from the 1960s, which was translucent rather than opaque to show the
product inside.
‘This is a fun and engaging
idea,’ says Gower.‘These days
it's difficult to earn more than a few milliseconds of customers’ time but
these ads really achieve this. Brands have to have enormous confidence to pull
off ‘tongue-in-cheek’ so successfully.‘
With the Winter Olympics a thing of the past, thoughts will
inevitably turn to summer and the 2010 FIFA World Cup mania that will grip the
nation while England battles its way to glory – we hope.
Alongside any event of this scale come the inevitable ‘big
ads’ from sponsoring companies.Visa has gotten in early with a new commercial that scores a hat trick
for Engine's Robin Wight.
‘Unlike some, Visa has no footballer on their books to rely
on.Instead the clever creatives
at Saatchi and Saatchi had a brilliantly simple idea,’ he says.A slobby couch-potato football fan runs
all the way to the stadium in South Africa, getting him into shape on the
way.Like all the best advertising
ideas, says Wight, ‘it can be described in a single sentence.’
‘Visa gets you closer to the World Cup’ was the original
brief to Xander Smith and Jonathan Santana at Saatchi & Saatchi.They decided to literally show one
fan’s journey from Europe to South Africa, armed only with his Visa card.
The shoot took nine days across various locations in Morocco
and South Africa – home country to both Smith and Santana. ‘Some scenes were
shot in a game reserve.It was
hilarious to see lads from Leeds and London, fresh off the plane, running next
to real rhinos with lions around the corner,’ said Smith. The main actor was
also chased by an ‘obtuse ostrich’ a couple of times, he adds.
Our hero is actually played by three actors – one lead and two
body doubles.The production team also had a movement specialist on set who taught the actors
how to run correctly and in the same way to make it look seamless.
Football obsessed director Chris Palmer used the same
tracking shot throughout, always moving form left to right.The runner subtly transforms from zero
to hero as he races to the World Cup in South Africa, ending up in Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium.
‘The transformation of an overweight fan to a goal-scoring
hero is handled with polish and skill by Palmer,’ says Wight, who particularly
liked the goal celebration at the end.‘Maybe Rooney will be able to copy this bit,’ he adds.
As part of the Free Range season, this year's New Blood exhibition is being held between Thursday 24 June and Monday 28 June at the Truman Brewery. We are programming a festival of fringe events around its location in Shoreditch and the theme of these events will centre on networking.
Exhibitors and guests at New Blood 2009
If you would like to exhibit at New Blood this year, your course needs to register as a member of D&AD's University Network and then apply for stands. Please contact either laura.woodroffe@dandad.co.uk or rhiannon.james@dandad.co.uk for more information and an application form. All stands need to be booked by the end of this month.
If you would like to get more of a feel for the event, please have a look at this Video of New Blood
One of last year's graduates wrote about their experience exhibiting at New Blood. Please see below link for tips and things they wish they'd known before!
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