PHOTO COMPETITION: SPLASH

ST LUKE'S PODCAST

Another podcast for your aural pleasure is up and ready for download for you to listen to wherever, whenever you want as many times as you like
These Podcasts will give a little insight into the day to day happenings in St Lukes starring all of our lovely employees every two weeks.

Link below to our podcast site

happy listening

podcastastic

pram - toy = rant.

For my IPA training I'm having to give a team presentation on the conventions within advertising that are holding the industry back as whole...

so....

I thought it would be a good idea to pick the St Luke's brain to see what opinions people have on this subject matter. So go on, have a bloody rant, let off some steam, throw your toys out of the pram.

No seriously all comments welcome, funny or serious or whatever.

Let's hope not

Tentacles

I saw this lovely example of inflatable sculpture guerrilla street art in Contagious and it's also here. Inflatable Tentacles must be the future of advertising.

Phil

The future - Let's all feed ourselves!!

This is fabulous in every way. Hugh F-W has launched an initiative called Landshare with Channel 4 (http://landshare.channel4.com) - where people who want to grow things can pair up with people who have land that they don't use. It's all about getting us back to growing our own fruit and veg. After the war there were about 1.5 million allotments in the country and we got half of our fruit and veg from them. Now we all rely on the horridness that is Tesco etc, to feed us. Why?
On River Cottage last night, there was a woman who lives in a 2nd floor flat, so she "borrows" someone else's garden to grow her vegetables. In exchange, she gives the garden owner a quarter of what she grows. She hasn't had to buy vegetables since and the whole thing cost her £30.
Such a fantastic idea, we all live under the misconception that we have no space to do things like this. But there's so much land that isn't being used - all we need is access to it.
This has got to be the future. We'd be better off (because we won't being ripped off by supermarkets for vegetables that have been flown in from Guatamala), happier (in our glorious self sufficiency), more relaxed (what better way to de-stress after work/at weekend, than with a couple of hours tending the broccoli).
Here's to growing marrows.

Photo Comp Entry: Splash

Another New Skool/Old Skool

Barak Obama ran a 30 minute ad in the states last night. Seemingly, this was normal practice until the 50's, when the practice was stopped because people got bored. Obama clearly isn't boring. click here for edited highlights.

SQUINN'S GOOD MOOD FILM

Click here for squinn's Good Mood Film, sure to bring a little lump to your throat.

OLD SCHOOL, NEW SCHOOL - ROCK ON

Ok, it's ACDC, but the idea is a gem. I like the using the old school to create something innovative. Could we do one for one of our clients?

talking of old sKool ad's...

anyone remember this gem from 1987/88? it's probably the first ad that i can ever remember seeing.
Tim R

WASSUUUUUUUUUUUUP!! EIGHT YEAR'S ON

The famous bud ad updated for the '08 generation. Let's hope it's true.

Creatives grow better in the South West

PHOTO COMP ENTRY: SPLASH

DIY BOOK COVERS - GUARDIAN COMP

little andrew

PHOTO COMP ENTRY: SPLASH

DIY BOOK COVERS

Let's face it, despite the parable, we all judge books by their covers. Good design can make a book much more attractive or put you off something with amazing content - think of the recent trend for re-reading the classics, mostly because Penguin did a retro redesign and a range of celebrity designed covers. Unfortunately though, book covers more often than not betray the content within. Some really good books get lost because of their appalling covers, and more disturbingly, bad books get on the bestseller's list because of clever covers. Anyway, in combat, a Canadian blog put out a call for people to redesign their favourite book covers with some interesting results. I especially like the Waiting for Godot cover. The Guardian have just opened a competition on the same them. Maybe we should do some entries. Mail to :book.covers@guardian.co.uk.

CREATE YOUR OWN SOFT DRINKS CAN

This is the age of personalised, DIY branding.

Forget scoopsville, the online icecream community Emily spoke about at the AGM. The latest craze to hit the virtual world is the Soft Drink Can Generator, a site which allows you to create your own brand of carbonated sugar water. Enter some text, choose an emblem, pick your colors and patterns and voila - a soft drink can will be generated for you.

Make your own strongbow can anyone?

FOR EMILY

FUN NEW GAME!!

Re: Roy's post below, I've invented a new game. As well as colour, you can also search for tags with this technology, so there's loads of practical uses for it - art buying? Especially now Getty has done a deal with flickr. Type in a tag, take a screengrab of the images and get people to guess what they are. What do you think these are?

ADDICTED TO COLOUR?

This site searches all flickr images to match any colour (or colour combination) you choose.

Not sure of a use at the moment but the speed and ease of the site makes it kinda fun and oddly theraputic.

PHOTOGRAPHY COMP RETURNS

Laura may have left our bosom but the photography competition lives on in her memory.

Rules are still the same - Please upload a copy of your shot to the blog and send a hi-res copy to either Nat or Jamil who have now taken over Laura's mantle.

The theme this time is: SPLASH

And the closing date is: Friday Nov 7th

All entries will be displayed from the 10th - 13th Nov giving you plenty of time to vote on your favourite, and the winner will be announced at Friday drinks on Nov 14th.

Good luck St Luke's snappers.

Let's do it for Laura!

strangely satisfying!

Just click and drag to reveal new colours. Simple as that.

The Brand Bubble

The Brand Bubble from Brand Bubble on Vimeo.

I heard about this on a blog called Brand New. Brand Bubble is a book by a couple of people from Y&R who are arguing that Wall St overvalues comanies by overvaluing their brands. It was this that caught my attention:

"They go on to argue that the exceptional brands that are valued by consumers have a common trait. They are seen as having energy and momentum. That's a powerful conclusion as it challenges a lot of the assumptions that underpin brand management, marketing and communications. It argues that consistency is a false idol; change, momentum and energy matter more."

Sounds pretty familiar, particularly in terms of the conversations we've been having about our creative brief.

It might just be a bit of credit crunch bandwagon jumping (if you can imagine such a thing). The authors claim that this bubble is twice the size of the subprime mortgage market, which sounds a bit scary.

Here's the microsite, see what you think for yourself.

EVERYBODY'S TALKING ABOUT: NEW SOCIALISM

The Apprentice, Property Ladder, Dragons Den.... capitalism was fun while it lasted. But as banks are being nationalised and city high-fliers are packing their executive stress balls into cardboard boxes and switching the lights off as they leave, people are beginning to wonder whether socialism had it right after all. Karl Marx's Das Capital is flying off the shelves in bookshops, and its readers are finding his predictions that capitalism would collapse under its own internal contradictions ever so prescient.

And even if the current crisis isn't quite capitalism eating itself, it has certainly shaken people's belief in the power of the market to fix our problems. Expect to see an increasing focus on people power in marketing.... and perhaps even some celebrity chefs try to rescue the bits of Britain with community projects.

What were you doing at last night at 10.04pm?

According to a recent survey, it's the time we are most creative. Personally, I'm almost comatose by that time (unless alcohol is involved and then the coma is delayed 'til at least 3) and I get most 'eureka!' moments first thing in the morning - normally still half asleep staring out the bus window passing over Waterloo bridge. The least creative time in the day is 4.33pm, with 92 per cent of people admitting to feeling uninspired in the afternoon - more ammunition for compulsory afternoon naps.

And having a shower is the best way of getting those creative synapses firing. The research also showed that 58 per cent of people forget their best ideas by failing to write them down immediately, although women are more successful at keeping note of their brainwaves - it's a good thing Lucy just ordered in a bucket load of stationary then. Pens at the ready...

Dreaming, running, talking, drinking... what are you doing when you have your best 'Eureka!' moments?

Everybody's talking about: Hedonism

The trends have so far been all a bit too goody-two shoes. We should remember there is a wilder, darker side to our culture. While liberal-minded middle-class graduates swot up on DIY art techniques, the full on, having a laugh and loving every minute of it working class kids are starting riots all weekend on a town centre near you. We are after all the nation of binge drinkers with our standing room only mega bars; the “buy one get two free and women drink for nothing” booze promotions; four-day stag and hen weekends; booze cruises and binge holidays.
Its not just booze, we love the shagging too. After the liberalisation of the licensing laws, every town now has its own lap-dancing club to join the Anne Summers on every High St. We have dildo’s in Dixon’s; pole dancing exercise classes and never ending sex every night on TV.
Drugs? Bring them on! Pills and coke cost next to nothing, pure MDMA and Ketamine are everywhere and spliff isn’t even properly illegal anymore, is it? And lest we think it is just a working class thing remember that the fastest growing group of problem drinkers in the UK are middle class, middle aged wine drinkers knocking back bottles of cheap 15% proof vimto every night. As a nation, a large proportion of us are out of our heads all the bloody time.

Everybody's talking about: Doing Things

We are human, we have opposable thumbs and we like to do things with them. Maybe it's because so many people have academic qualifications but no tangible skills. Previous generations new how to do things, they had at least a basic level of technical know-how that meant they could fix, say, the lawn mower if it broke. Now, if something breaks we bin it and buy a new one. Maybe it’s also to do with jobs that are all about organising and not about making anything. From project management to call centre working, so much work is service-based or involves being in the middle of a complex chain of operations with no tangible output. How many people do you know who find it difficult to actually explain what it is they do?

This is a big trend that includes elements of craftsmanship, amateur, frugal and the whole gardening/cooking thing. All of those ideas touch upon a desire to get hands dirty, to do something real, practical or difficult.

We see Doing Things materialise in activities like DIY art; knitting; learning an instrument; allotments; specialist sports; teaching holidays; blogging; volunteering or home baking. Through VideoJug people show the world what they can do; the Interesting conferences are a celebration of the knowledge purely for it’s own sake.

Look at the way so many of our own campaigns include an idea you can do, like make a Magic good mood film, experiment with IKEA textiles in an online roomset; take part in Bowtime in your local boozer.

Also see the DIY book covers and coke cans above.

then there is We Are What We Do (who will be speaking at the APG soon):

"We Are What We Do is a new kind of movement inspiring people to change the world one small action at a time.

Our philosophy is simple:
small actions x lots of people = big change

We have the 130 small things that you can do to change really big things. Pick an action, track it here, and see how it all adds up."

Everybody's talking about: Craftsmanship

This is about developing skills and interests that take time, focus and concentration. It could be specialist sports like rock climbing or learning how to play a musical instrument. It could also be DIY art; gardening, cooking, knitting or going on teaching holidays. Essentially, craftsmanship is the opposite of everything that is instant and fast about modern culture. It is a need for authenticity and uniqueness. Perhaps the story of the Hang gets to the heart of this trend. The Hang is a musical instrument designed in 2000 by two blokes in Switzerland. It has recently been popularised a bit by the Portico Quartet (the busking jazz band who were shortlisted for the Mercury Award. You can’t buy a Hang in the shops; if you want one you need to write a letter to the designers requesting an appointment to go to Switzerland to choose the right hang for you.

Everybody's talking about: Amateurs

Off-and-online, this is the age of the amateur. From amateur singing/skating/dancing talent shows to DIY art; YouTube, open-mic nights down your boozer and the situation in the run up to the US election where some bloggers are now more influential in US politics than newspaper columnists. We may even love spoof amateurs better than the real thing as Geraldine McQueen, Peter Kay's cross-dressing Irish transexual fake talent show character charted higher than the actual Britain's Got Talent winner. For some rise of the amateur is a triumph of democracy over elitism, for people like Andrew Keen, author of the Cult of the Amateur, it is practically the end of civilisation as we know it.

Friends make the world go round...and round

Click here to watch Andrew's GMF.

Everybody's talking about: Local Community

Ten years ago the big trend was Adventure with people going on exotic holidays, getting into food and wine from far flung places and jumping off cliffs among other dangerous sports. Now it’s bounced from global all the way back to local as we see an upsurge in pride in the local community. We’ve seen shop local campaigns, social housing projects like Accordia which won the Stirling architecture prize; Plastic Bag Free Towns; “no Tesco here” campaigns; farmers markets; holidays in UK; conservation volunteering and guerrilla gardening which seeks to instil a bit of local pride into the neighbourhood.

Al by Jules

Phil by jules - Flash form

Everybody's talking about: Micro Culture

There seems to have been a big swing away from the big to the micro. Mass is naff and small is cool. Sub-sub-music genre’s proliferate: post-punk/garage revival/dance-punk/baroque-pop/new-prog/post-rock/new-folk anyone? How about tailoring in Top Shop; long tail economics; Fendi bags and Pantone pens; micro-festivals like end of the road and shambala; digital micro-communities like Gurgle.

Everybody's talking about: Walking Away

It is time to take stock, give your life a reality check and maybe write a new 5-year plan. You thought you were well channelled and now your company's gone bust, your up to your eyes in debt and the house is worth nothing. You got a masters degree but your mate with the plumbing apprenticeship is earning more than you. You want to pack it all in and retrain as a tree surgeon. Maybe you become one of the 250,000 mainly middle class Londoners who have left the capital for a quieter life in the country. Alternatively you dream about all that while watching A New Life in Italy or The River Cottage you may even sign up for a life course at something like The School of Life.

Everybody's talking about: Frugal Cool

The recession has barely started and we’ve turned poverty into a lifestyle statement. Gardening is not just popular, its getting younger; cars are all about fuel consumption rather than speed. Fabulous.com has discovered the Frugalistas: “they buy entire outfits for under a tenner, cut their own hair and grow their own food”; On Ellegirl.com, Self-Made Girl shows teens how to make clothes and accessories; readitswapit.co.uk means you need never buy a book again; Junkie Styling tailors second hand clothes; Treehugger has cardboard furniture; Frugaldad.com shows Americans how to get rid of their debt and Real Ale is not just wholesome, it’s also cheap.

Everybody's talking about: The Wholesome 1940's

Not the bit about the war and the blitz but the wholesome, practical clean living side of the 40’s. Village fetes (or Brunswick Fete’s), home baking (Patten’s Cakes); knitting; Woman’s Institute, allotments, burlesque, afternoon tea and stripping parties; Dig for Victory vegetable plots in St James’s Park; steam train trips; Real Ale for its wholesome goodness and low level of alcohol; and A.L. Kennedy’s novel Day winning the Costa award.

Everyybody's talking aboutThe

Everyybody's talking about

Escapism

We all need somewhere to retreat to when things all get too much. So when you talk to me and I seem far away, this is where I'll be. If not in body, then in mind. Away with the fairies, on another planet, spaced out, daydreaming ... we all do it. Where are you when you're far away?

Great schematic diagrams of our time 8 (the truth)

Great Schematic Diagrams of Our Time 8

Life in a diagram

make your own good mood film

the latest installment on the magic good mood film site is a 'make your own good mood film' feature.

in three easy steps create your own good mood film, comprising all your favourite photos.

next step Hollywood.

Great Schematic Diagrams of Out Time 7

from an original idea by John Grant

Great Schematic Diagrams of Out Time 6

Spotted on a flipchart.

Great Schematic diagrams - 5

this is one Phil & Dan have got me working on, if anyone has any thoughts ;):P

Hey Planners...how about some charts too?

The pie chart is the all time classic. Now go do some work!

Great Schematic Diagrams of our time 4

We seem to be having sequencing problems on the blog but we wouldn't if it was structured like this beauty: the spider diagram. In the middle goes the core thought and in each of the segments go the key elements. It could be a problem with a range of solutions; it could be a positioning with a range of propositions; it could be an idea with executional thoughts; it could be salad with loads of ingredients.

Go forth and multiply, my friends.

Great Schematic Diagrams of Our Time 2

This is a system of thought in its own right. It is the dialectical triad. used by Marx, Hegel and Kant. It is pure creative thinking.

GREAT SCHEMATIC DIAGRAMS OF OUR TIME 3

The Venn Diagram

Forget Phil's divisive line (or glorified line with arrow), the Venn has it all.

While the line separates, the Venn unites.

It shows us the common ground on which relationships can be built.

It creates connections.

It brings brands and audiences together.

They were invented/popularised by a bloke called John.

Great Schematic Diagrams of Our Time 1

The big black dirty line
The daddy of them all and the subject of my cool stuff talk. It is sublime in its elemental simplicity.

It is you and everyone else. It is your brand and the competition. It is your audience and the rest of the world.

It differentiates and defines.

It lifts and separates.

No planner should leave home without one.