creative
Things to do to escape your computer (or TV)
…hire a bike or roller skates or a boat. Please help by adding to this in the comments. Following on from this weekend’s activities. I’ve been thinking about what a great bunch of things Jason set me to do. All could be done with little…
Earning Eternal Respect In 48 Hours The Twitter Way
I had a fun weekend this weekend. Thanks to a number of things. 1. Weekends are good anyway. 2. The weather was pretty nice. 3. I did normal stuff with Sophie like have nice lunches. Laze around. Drink a bit of wine. Get some chores done…
Kijkers by Kessels Kramer
I was lucky enough to speak at the Boards Magazine Creative Workshop in Amsterdam last week. It was really good event and I genuinely enjoyed all the other speakers. There were a bunch of highlights. From seeing the amazing preview of the…
7 Tips For Getting A Job At A Creative Company
I’m sure that lots of people have written lots of things like this lots of times before. But it’s a bunch of thoughts I’ve been having as Poke have been looking to recruit ‘creative strategy types’ (there’s a hint in there somewhere for…
Radiohead House of Cards on Current.com
I was just watching Current TV and this film about the Radiohead House of Cards video came on… It really is a bit good.
Forget the Congestion Charge
Mauro, one of our lovely young creatives was talking to me about beating up a car in Street Fighter 2. And I was sort of like: “what?”. And he was like: “when you see it you’ll totally remember”. And he sent it to me. And I was like…
Looks Like Carphone Warehouse, Smells (and Sounds) Like Minilogue
Minilogue video by Kristopher Storm (Music by Minilogue). Carphone Warehouse ad by Kristopher Storm (Music by Minilogue). I’m really confused. Everything in my brain is shutting down and I’ve got no idea what to say about it. My groove has…
Love’s Powerpoint Website
I’m gutted. But impressed. And glad. Love have made their new website in Powerpoint: http://www.lovecreative.com/ I’m gutted because I’ve been whanging on about doing a website in PowerPoint for the last couple of years. But impressed…
Hitchcockian Copyright Message
It’s rare you see a creative interpretation of an anti-piracy message. I felt that this was one of them… The text alignment is superb around the finger.
What Advertising Can Learn From Radiohead
I wasn’t going to blog about the House of Cards video and it’s brilliant integration with Google and the geekosphere. I wasn’t going to blog it because everyone else has. It is bloody brilliant though. Yet another example of how Radiohead…
Creative Similarities?
On the David Elsewhere stuff Tim just commented: I liked spike’s version from a year or two ago. With a link to this video: It’s a different thing doing a different job. But I can see how one would perhaps make you think of the other. For…
Compfight.com
Andy our latest new Poke chap alerted me to the awesomeness of Compfight.com. It’s a Flickr search tool that allows you to find and view lots of Flickr images quickly with some key filters (like Creative Commons licensing). It’s a top way…
Portfolio Night
I was lucky enough to go to Portfolio Night 6 last night. Set up by the enterprising young dudes behind http://ihaveanidea.org/ it’s billed as a chance for young creatives to meet creative directors (for a fee of £10). I felt like it was a…
10 Things I Learned from Mental Detox Week
If you’ve just arrived here from AdBusters you might also be interested in what I got up to this weekend – I did still use the Internet a little bit – but it’s primarily a bunch of offline stuff that I did started by an online thing… Might…
I’m Chatting at Under The Influence
Iris are putting on an interesting event next week in London. It’s totally free so go and sign up if you like the look of it. It’s called Under the Influence and it’s 20 talks spread around 5 pubs in Borough Market. Each one has a…
The Next Creative Revolution
I liked this thought piece by Nick Law from R/GA. The Next Creative Revolution at Creativity-online. It’s a thoughtful (yet slightly empassioned) piece on the evolution of advertising. For a taster: This, we are told, is integration. For…
Judging Viral – Viral in 5 Words
I’ve been doing some bits and pieces of awards judging for various folk this year. It’s all been interesting so far. The one I’m most worried about is the D&AD Viral Category. I’m the chairman of the jury and I’m guessing that there’s…
What a Wonk
Following on from the post about URLs out, searches in. According to Ad Week: W+K in NY have hired a search dude (By the way I’m not suggesting a causal relation between my blog post and the hiring before anyone thinks I’m being a total…
The Rise of The Ad Man 2.0
[I’ve written this post once already. I got to the end of it just as someone phoned me up. I picked up the phone. Fumbled it. And dropped it on my laptop which duly crashed in a spectacular fashion. The second revision is slightly shorter…
4×4 Meme: More About Me
I got tagged by blackbeltjones with the 4×4 meme. So I rolled over and became a part of it. Plus it gives me a chance for some totally self-absorbed and pointless blogging. It looks like this meme has mutated a bit over time, but I’m going…
Awesome Elvis Dancing in The Park
Another bit of creative dance from elsewhere in the world… Thanks to Mr Polaine for the link – genius.
Monkeys and Drums and Stuff
Scamp has written a really good piece about ideas and their appropriation by advertising. It specifically talks about the Cadbury’s Gorilla and the fact that it was originally pitched to someone else, and there was once a drumming Gorilla…
Loving Love
I popped in to see the chaps at Love in Manchester today. I don’t normally just turn up in strange towns and nip round to see people, but I got nice email from them yesterday as I was on the train (completely out of the blue), so it felt…
Do You Want to Do Digital?
Scamp asks the $6m question: Most above-the-line creatives claim that most digital creative work is poor, and they will be able to do it much better, when they’re asked to. However, my question to above-the-line people is… do you actually…
Photojojo – A Smart Thank You
If you’ve not come across photojojo and you use a digital camera a big chunk of your life is missing. They deliver some of my favourite online content. So I did an odd thing this morning, I switched from using their RSS feed to getting…
Mangement Techniques
Where I work it’s all very nicey nicey. Which makes for a nice place to work. But sometimes I wonder whether it’s the best way of getting the best out of people. This clip inspired me to think about alternative styles of motivation… (From…
Toy Hacking
I’m really excited about the upcoming Toy Hacking workshop. I’m all signed-up and ready to go, but still quite in the dark about what I’ll actually come away from it being able to do. In my fantasy vision I’ll become some kind of mad…
Stockhausen’s Helicopters
One of the things I’m trying to do differently this year (not a resolution as such) is to avoid reading the trashy free papers that come as part of the commuting package. I’m pretty sure their particular brand of reporting-lite has…
How To Do Digital @ Scampblog
Great post by James Cooper (creative director of Dare) over at Scampblog. I particularly enjoyed his skillful deployment of the 180 degree handed complement: 2. Be original. Same rules apply to when all you lot who moan about whether…
The Internet (now in handy book form!)
David McCandless has been doing bits and pieces for Poke as long as Poke’s been around. In fact he’s written lots of the funnier words on the funnier projects that we’ve done. So it’s nice that someone gave him a book deal. And if he can…
Great Book – 99 Ways To Tell A Story
Whether you like comics or not this is a great book. The author takes the same, very simple, story (a guy going downstairs to the fridge) and tells it 99 times in different ways. There’s loads of variety and you don’t have to be a comic…
The Most Creative Website Ever
I’m doing some pitchy type stuff and ran out of inspiration so I typed into Google “most creative website ever” hoping that I’d find something to inspire me. And I came to this post about the most creative website I’ve seen in a long time…
My Last Post…
As a 34 year old. I’m 35 in 20 minutes and that’s a thing that makes me feel a bit, well, old. I was trying to think what to write about on the train home. I’ve had 2 glasses of wine and a hectic day. And I’ve been to an uninspiring talk…
Courses I’d Love to Do
I’ve just been helping out with a D&AD / IPA talk about ‘sharpening your creative skills’ for wannabe Creative Directors. Not sure how much help I was, but hey ho, I told a few stories and gave my opinion on some stuff. (The image above is…
This Mix Album Is Good (Real Good)
I got a mix album today that is quite exceptional. It’s rare that a DJ mix gets me excited these days, I’ve heard a lot of them over the last 18 years or so, and they generally stopped being remarkable to me a while ago. The odd one…
Cravendale Do a Very Very Good Thing
W+K London and Unit9 have made a really brilliant thing. It’s part multi-player interactive game/muckabout. Part UGC. Part video editor… http://www.milkmatters.co.uk It follows on from the really nice Cravendale ads that are on TV. You can…
Old But Pure Gold
I’m sure I should have read this before. But for some reason I hadn’t. It’s perhaps one of my single favourite blog posts ever: Hugh ‘GapingVoid’ MacLeod on How To Be Creative I discovered it when looking at his cartoons the other day…
A Whole New Mind – Brilliant Book
I read a book yesterday in one sitting. Well a couple of sittings if you include changes in mode of transport from bus to train. It’s very rare that I do that. It’s also very rare that I find a ‘business’ book that grips me like this one…
Recruitment Musings
This is a tough, slightly reflective post to write. It’s very much a brain dump, the start of some thoughts rather than anything resolved. I’m hoping that some of the smart people out there on the internet will add to it and help these…
Flying Elephant Spam
Perhaps the most creative spam I’ve received. It’s very surreal.
10 Reasons Why Digital is Better Than Advertising – Number 10
Of course there are brilliant people in advertising who ‘get it’ too. And blatantly you don’t have to be a web-obsessed geek to come up with interesting interactive ideas. But naturally it becomes easier to consider this world if you spend…
10 Reasons Why Digital is Better Than Advertising – Number 9
[Sorry I’ve been very rubbish at putting up these last 2 reasons – they were written, but I’ve been suffering from a semi-crippling case of uncertainty…] If you’re ‘a creative’ you either want to write a novel or make films. If you’re a…
10 Reasons Why Digital is Better Than Advertising – Number 6
It’s interesting to see the difference between digital people and advertising people right now. There’s a whole lot of smugness going on. Ad people are smuggly going “we’ve got the clients” ears (hopefully not in boxes in a gangster way…
10 Reasons Why Digital is Better Than Advertising – Number 2
OK, you have to know some stuff to put things on the Internet, but not that much. Just look at the people in 80% of YouTube videos, do they look like they know how to do complicated computer stuff? Or use a VCR? Or open a tin? In spite of…
Plundering UGC Cash, Who’s In?
I’ve just been flicking through New Media Age. And after my earlier comment about User Generated Content, I was dismayed to see how many column inches have been given over to terrible UGC ideas – but with MASSIVE cash prizes. I did a quick…
I Got My First Haters…
I knew it would happen someday. It was only a matter of time. But I’ve got my first haters! Sam and Highly Miffed are upset about the post and subsequent comments around on the Youth Marketing conference that I didn’t like. See their…
Our ‘Secret’ Creative Director
OK. It’s time. I can now finally reveal the all-new 3rd Poke Creative Director (after all the buildup). He’s the guy on the left. His name is Yacco Vijn – pronounce it as Jacko (like Whacko Jacko) Fine – pretty simple, and he claims it’s…
Blog Recruitment Rules, OK…
Buzz and me with our new ‘mystery’ creative director A follow up to the Poke Seeking Creative Director post… In short, rather than doing normal job advertising, or going through recruitment consultants, I wrote a ‘job ad’, then Nik and I…
BBH Wins Lynx Digital Account
An interesting ‘moment’ in online advertising. BBH win Lynx digital account. To my mind Dare have done some really amazing online advertising for Lynx (Feather and Blow to name but two), and I’m really surprised that the account has gone…
I Love Second Life
Someone mentioned to me that they were surprised by how much I hate Second Life, so I probably need to put the record straight. I don’t hate Second Life. In fact I love Second Life – above you can see my alter ego Taito Dahlstrom wearing…
Poke: Seeking Creative Director
Poke are hiring. We’re looking for a new creative director. It’s a nice place to work, or at least I think so. We’re looking for someone quite particular. If you’re interested, or think you know someone who might be, please take a look at…
When good ads go bad…
I like the new advert for 3. The one for free Email and IM on your phone. If you’ve not seen it, here it is: I was really really disappointed when I opened up my weekly Zoo magazine (it’s a work thing, honest) to see this press version of…
Tony Davidson on Digital Creativity
The above image is blatantly stolen from the excellent DigitalAgency blog. But short of retyping the whole thing I couldn’t think of any other way of doing it. It’s from the D&AD Student Annual, written by Tony Davidson (Creative Director…
Making Friends in 2006
So this is how people are making friends nowadays. This MySpace friend recruitment drive was spotted in a tunnel in Shoreditch on my way to work. Also spotted this in the same tunnel, it’s becoming quite a little creative hotspot… Graffiti…
PEZ MP3 Player
Who cares about Apple, Creative Labs, Sony and all those guys. Surely the best MP3 players simply have to be made by Pez. It’s got a tiny memory, looks really flmsy, the battery life is bound to be shocking. But there’s something strangely…
Diablogue: Life takes….
Diablogue (a new find on the blog trail; thanks Russell) pointed me in the direction of a new online Visa campaign produced by AKQA. Life Takes Visa As the Diablogue guys say there’s some sweet moments in there. But I can’t help but feel…
I read a book!
OK, OK, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I managed to read a book. I can read, and I like reading. But so often I start with great intentions; I order a book from Amazon (or heaven forbid pick one up in a real bookshop). I tuck into it with…
Levi’s Antidote
Levi’s Antidote is, in its own words: “…a living, growing snapshot of what people are thinking and doing across Europe.” Now, as the guys at SMLXL so rightly point out, this is theoretically a great idea. A campaign that supports…