aspire to enquire

Innocent Prize

I sent a picture to @innocentdrinks the other week which resulted in my getting a small prize. It was a picture of the Age Concern Hats which had just started going out in Sainsburys Central on Queen Street. 

I've started getting into a bit more of this kind of thing - it's fun, and also interesting seeing how these kinds of things run. Hopefully it will give me more idea of digital campaign stuff without me really noticing. I'm going to have a go at Live Guy on Tuesday too.

My picture was rubbish though, definitely not up to Innocent standards.

And it got featured on the Innocent Blog, which is always fun times.

And look what (I'm presuming) Mr Dan Germain sent in return! ...

Thanks Innocent! The brand book will actually be really useful for my dissertation, which WILL be at first draft stage by the end of this week, so muchly appreciated.

I'll try harder on the picture next time.

take all the magazines, put them in a 'zine museum

I've been getting a few letters like this recently, I get them every year.

I usually duly fill them in and send them back. I've sent my one for Grafik back already.

But then I looked at my shelf of i-D magazines from the past year (actually, it's the past 2 years - the 4 years before are in boxes now) and noticed that three out of the past 6 month's magazines still have their wrappers on. I didn't read them. They just landed on my doorstep, and now they're on my shelf. While May, September and October are in plastic, August and June are looking pretty crisp as well. I don't remember reading much from those either.

The most recent one, I bought while I was out one day, because it didn't land on my doorstep. Maybe I've been holding on to this subscription form a little longer than I thought. I've read every page of November. Not just because I overheard the Alasdair McLellan telling my employers in New York that he was shooting the whole magazine and there was lots of our labels in there, and not just because it's full of Lara Stone, but because I had time and a need for a magazine, so I went and bought it.

There must be some kind of name for this kind of behaviour - the "blindly assuming things will always be there" principle or something. I love the magazine, so why did I let it go unnoticed for 3 whole months? Was it because I knew it would always be there?

If I'm not the only person who behaves like this, that presents massive problems for newspapers as they try to move people to subscription models. Sure, they might have a guaranteed revenue stream, but maybe not an attention stream. Will that matter? If advertising revenue is less important, does it matter that they can't guarantee eyeballs anymore? 

Maybe their daily nature will encourage people more.

I don't think I'll be re-subscribing to i-D. It might mean I read it more often.

Two becomes One

Living, as I do, in Wales, it's become quite easy to take bilingualism for granted. Nearly everything here is available in both English and Welsh. 

Which is why I found the use of Spanish so interesting when I was in New York this summer. 

I'm hoping this post won't become an exploration of the use of language as signifier of cultural identity, because that's something I know very little about. 

But as a Welsh Graphic Communications student, there are a parts of bilinguality that we are invited to explore. 

For starters, it's a huge challenge: In a lot of professional Welsh graphic design jobs, not only are you required to produce a beautiful and effective poster, website or brochure, but it has to come in two languages, without losing any of its effect. There are whole design companies who specialise in it.

Moreover, you need someone in your company who can speak the language. But they also need a firm enough grasp of it to be able to translate not just the words but also the meaning. In a country whose language is based upon convergence of centuries old local and regional dialect, that's not going to be easy. This is hard enough when being done by a Welsh company - what about the companies advertising in Wales but based externally?

All of which makes it a little easier to understand little oops moments like this:

© BBC. The Welsh translation to this sign reads something like "I'm not in the office at the moment, please send my work for translation"

Despite those setbacks, I still see the use of Welsh as a challenge, not a constraint.

I also think that there should be more reasons to use both languages than just that it's the law. 

Admittedly, most sane people have probably thought at least once in their life that seeing as the whole population speaks English, what's the point of using Welsh at all (there was an interesting Rob Brydon documentary on this subject the other week actually). But I think they're missing some of the point.

A well-designed bilingual poster will not just reach the demographic that English one would have done; DIY enthusiasts, benefit claimers, or whoever, it will also reach a Welsh Person. It's a self-identifying demographic. 

It could encourage more of a sense of empathy, or community, or inclusiveness. It could draw on Welsh colloquialisms to give more local impact. It could do all sorts of things by speaking exclusively to Welsh People, whether English or Welsh speaking. As aspiring designers and advertisers we should be relishing this opportunity.

As an aside, I was just listening the new Seth Godin audio book ("Tribes"), and he quotes someone who says we should stop using the word "opportunity" and replace it with "obligation". So there you go.

In New York, I found it all a bit confusing.

This billboard is in north Brooklyn bordering on an area called Greenpoint which has a long history of being colonised primarily by Polish emigrants.

This kind of advertising is everywhere in New York. If you call any big phone number, you're given the opportunity to speak in Spanish, much like in Wales with Welsh. 

I don't have a problem with advertising or communicating in a country's second language, as I said above. But I think there's an opportunity being missed. If not for value-building reasons, at least for money-saving ones.

Unsurprisingly for me, being one myself, it's the smug Europeans who are already starting to do it a bit better:

And reassuringly, there's instances where I'm reminded all to fondly of some Welsh signs.

I guess my point is this: Wouldn't it be great if the idea of being a New Yorker included the idea of multilingualism?

Of course, if you ask anyone, it already does. 

So why don't we see that in the graphic design there? Why do Bank of America have to have separate posters? Is the Spanish-speaking 2009 Toyota Corolla different to the English-speaking one? Are native English-speaking Americans to stupid to decode more than one language in a poster? Is there a problem with showing America as one, multicultural nation?

Expect to be bored

There's an advert I've been seeing quite a lot of here recently, for the 2008 Kia Borrego . I'm kind of glad it's come out because I've been meaning to write a similar post since I first arrived in the US and watched TV. 

If you don't want to click the links, the basic premise of the ad is that you'd expect to see certain things in a car ad, but not that it was an ad for a Kia. Kind of similar message, I guess, to the UK Kia ads, a little bit. Maybe. 

The sad truth of the spot is that yes, you do expect those things here. I don't think I've seen a single car 'commercial' here yet that hasn't featured at least one cliche - a slow motion pan around the car, a shot of it driving round some country bends against a dramatic woodland/desert/mountain backdrop, or any of the other things mentioned by Kia (who, incidentally, do a very good job).

I wanted to bring a few together for this post, but they're not on YouTube, which shouldn't be a surprise considering the adverts are stuck in the 80s. No one's told them about the internet yet.

Even Honda seem to be letting the side down with some animated bloke telling you about their sales events.

I guess my point in this post is how sad the whole situation is. Is the state of advertising in the US so bad that even if a new brand wants to stand out, the only way it can really do it is by copying everyone else but adding a disclaimer? By saying "Yep, this brand is just like everyone else, we just have a different name" ?

I'm not saying that UK car adverts never have shots of the car. But if you even dreamt of making a car out of cake here, or animated flying engines, you certainly wouldn't be looking forward to a career in US automotive advertising, if the current evidence is anything to go by.

Flyer tipping

I can't remember if I've mentioned it before on this blog, but I do a bit of flyering, or 'promotions' to earn a bit of cash through Uni. I've been doing it since September, since you ask.

I think I've generally shyed away from mentioning the actual employer, but seeing as they're complete idiots^± I'm going to go ahead and say that I'm an employee of A3D2 Ltd, who own and manage the Tiger Tiger 'brand'.

I'm leaving in a few weeks, and I've been wondering what I'm going to tell my replacements so that they too can enjoy many happy hours of flyering. I've been comparing the flyer job recently to cleaning up poo, but I think the poo is probably a better job, for a number of reasons:

1. You get a sense of job satisfaction.
2. You probably have more idea of your position within the company and appreciation from your employers.
3. You'll get more respect from the general public. 

  
So, with that in mind, here are my helpful flyer tips:

• Work out what you are going to say before you say it.  What do people want at that time, and how does what it says on your flyer relate to that? And can you say it before they've walked past you? Lines that have worked for me are "£3 lunch today [sir/madam/guys/gents/ladies]?", "discounts at Tiger Tiger tonight [as before]!" and "good evening, there's [offer] tonight [as before]"
• Look approachable.  I can't stress this enough. I can notice the difference straight away when I go out in my branded 'promo team' jacket, for example. Everyone spots you a mile off and swerves to avoid you. Dress like the people you're trying to get in the club at that time, and everyone's happy.
• Make Eye Contact.  So no sunglasses. 
• Take as many breaks as you feel you need.  People really respond to positive vibes. If it takes an extra coffee, smoothie or a pasty to perk you up, go get it and come back refreshed and ready to rule the £3 lunch.
• Enter the zone.  Glaze over and get on with it. This is for two reasons. Firstly, you won't be offended when people tell you to fuck off, grab your flyers and throw them on the floor, assault your colleagues, or just look the other way as if you are nothing. Secondly, once you're in the zone you'll find it a lot easier to say the same thing in all weathers for 4 hours in a row.
• Walking round does not mean you get to more people.  Find a place, get into its rhythm, and stick to it. The flyers will, quite literally, fly out. 
• Pick up the ones people drop on the floor.  Only if it's nice weather though. You can use them again! For me, it's the old idea of people keeping a tidy room tidy. Also, it's good CSR. Not that anyone at Tiger would care about that. 

There's a lot more I could say about flyer design, but if you work for Tiger, forget having even the slightest bit of input in that. So my bit of advice to be would just be to let that go. Tough times.

That's my flyer tips!!

Does anyone else have any?

^±I should say that the Cardiff team have been really good to me. But whoever it is at head office that sends them completely unsuitable flyers and then forces them to use them for months on end, needs to have a think about why the *ahem* numbers on the weekends are *ahem* dropping like flies. And sort the generic map on the flyers out. The club is on the other side of the road to the dot. Start there.

Integrated PR

There's been loads of coverage recently of the current 'units' campaign.

I first noticed it on Classic FM last week, it wound me up no end. But it's totally stuck with me, and I've since seen the TV spots, which, in my opinion are much better.

The main reason I'm writing though is because of the little article about the campaign, in campaign (!). It's a 'live issue'...

In a nutshell, the article examines the use of PR alongside traditional advertising campaigns, in order to boost awareness and such. For 'units', they talk about the news release of survey results a few months ago saying that middle-class adults are drinking too much. It also quotes Amelia Torode, who's blog you should definitely check out.

Now that I think about it, I totally remember all that news and how it made me feel about my own behaviour. When the advert came along, it reinforced that undercurrent of thought, and is really making me wonder about how much I drink. Definitely an inspiring integrated campaign. The article talks about Honda, too, so there you go.

I guess a danger could be, if this starts to be more common, that it works against a campaign. If, for example, another study is released and the government later puts out an advert not as well-targeted or well-written as 'units', could the government seem to be being reactionary, and their message losing weight? We've already seen how badly Gordon Brown has led the public agenda over the past few months. 

Summertime...

It was our end of year barbecue on Monday.

It was really nice for all the years to come together actually, it was a really nice day, possibly the nicest yet this year, and we all discovered a massive green space right behind campus that we didn't really know existed. Many many thanks to the third year members of SLuG (Student Liaison Group - no idea where the U comes in) that made it happen.

This is Lara.

I've seen these gig bands before, but I was pretty impressed that she was still wearing hers from last year when the next one is only a month or two away. This is a really nice little piece of subtle marketing for events... You give people a product that they want to take away and wear to remind themselves and other people that they were at this event. It's like an exclusive club, the pilot's wings of live music. It's a lovely way of maintaining brand affinity without really spending any money through the year. 

Although it's a big weakness in some ways, the fact that you can't take them on and off easily probably makes their wearers seem even more hardcore if they keep them on. Lara doesn't seem particularly hardcore though, I guess that's why it stood out.

Alison thinks that people might get a crate of beer if they arrive wearing the previous year's band. If that's true, it's just the sort of thing their target audience will love. Even if it is Carling.

Last Saturday

Last Saturday, there was quite a lot going on in the centre of Cardiff.

There was a bit of this:

A bit of this:

Some of this, bizarrely: 

And, quite a lot of this:

But what was most noticeable, for me, were the TK Maxx promo team on Queen Street for most of the afternoon. Unlike the promotions team I was with at the time, they weren't just handing out flyers, they were undertaking in some kind of amateur dramatics with a TK Maxx theme. They were also wearing those labels, and 'prom' dresses available for cheap from the shop. This picture shows them in the middle of one of them crying and complaining that she's missed out on all the great bargains at TK Maxx.

You couldn't do it for everything you're promoting, but when you can, you should. It was really effective, really memorable, and just something different from the usual charity / "are you on contract?" / £3 lunch people you get there day in, day out. I don't know who thought it up, but well done to them anyway. I wonder what will happen this week.

The motive is the message

I never intended to be particularly negative on this blog, and I think so far I've tried to be at least constructive if I've been having a go at something. Hopefully I can keep this up for this post!

I've noticed a few little poster campaigns recently that have made me think a lot about how messages work as outward reflections of the source of the message. Not really anything to do with 'medium is the message', more like just examining the message as the message. Before I waffle too much more, here's an example you've probably seen yourself at some point:

It's a banner saying 'improving the image of construction'. The question I have with these particular posters is this - as a member of the public, shouldn't you (the builder) be improving your image to me, rather than telling me that you're doing it? Wouldn't it be better to say 'this site has a waste management policy', or 'a noise policy', or 'we don't whistle at passing women' rather than telling me that you're improving your image?

To me, that message, 'improving the image of construction' would work, say, on an internal noticeboard on the subject, or on letterheads, but, personally, I think it completely misses the point when displayed for the general public. What do you think?

And so to my next poster, in a similar vein:

I can't read the small print now, but it says something like 'this poster campaign has been designed to inform and inspire discussion and debate'

I'm not sure I can really decide where to start.

There's another part to the campaign: once you have seen the above posters, you'll be checking your 'student portal' (which happens A LOT) and you'll see a link to the student centred learning wiki:

If you click on that bottom image you may be able to see that someone's commented on the poster - "The impact is strong and it has something clear to say"

What?!!!!

What is it saying? Who is it saying it to? Why is it saying it? What are we meant to do with it?

Oops sorry back to the point of the blog which was to say - this is another example of an internal process or statement of aims being told to an external audience, when really they should be getting a message that has a call to action that will fulfill those aims.

It must be pretty easy to become product/production oriented when you're working in a given environment all the time - but campaigns like these will hopefully keep reminding me that one really needs to keep the end user/viewer in mind, otherwise you've wasted your time.

I should add, if you're reading, Learning Teaching and Development Unit, that you've got away lightly in this post. I think your poster campaign is really not very good. Even after reading through all your wikis I'm still none the wiser, but maybe this was a campaign for tutors? It would make a little more sense then. But if so, why is it on student noticeboards? I'm really confused.

It's advertising. It's New York.

About a fortnight ago I returned from a little trip to New York City. The scale of the place is huge and obviously in a weekend I didn't get to see nearly as much as I wanted to or even leave Manhattan. I'm hoping to go back out over the summer to see a little more and maybe a bit more of the US.

One striking thing I noticed though, which I was a little surprised about, was the advertising. It's not something I've really noticed in other countries I've visited, because I haven't been able to really appreciate the tone of voice in other languages, but in New York the differences between US and UK advertising really jumped out of the billboards and smacked me in the face.

No messing in New York. Here it is, here's the product. Like, why haven't you bought it already, dumbass? It kind of reminds me a little bit of the bit in the Helvetica movie where Michael Bierut is talking about Coca-Cola in the 60s.

Here's another one:

And another, highly coded poster persuading the reader of why they should visit Turkey, through extremely subliminal means:

It also seems to be the case in the green / ethical area, which seems a little odd to me when it's all about being nice and floaty and friendly green.

Hopefully that one above won't biodegrade before the end of the ad run.

And then finally...

Innocent et al are conspicuous in their absence. And with the green thing, I appreciate it might be a slightly newer concept to Americans with the US only recently really getting on the bandwagon officially, but this kind of blatant 'green this, green that' strategy strikes me as a little dangerous.

Where do they go next? I mean, if it's not 'GREEN' will they have to start going down the lovely copy route, and if so, how will that compare with all the general commercial messages that seem to still just shout 'BUY ME!'?

I always forget how small the UK compared to most other markets - it probably makes it a lot more exciting to produce work here because you have the whole British cultural reference palette to draw on and most people will get what you're saying. How do you find common ground between 303,824,646 people?