No Sooner Does One Season End....

It's all a bit Premiership. We finish up at Hilton Park Lane with the best Excellence Awards that we have ever seen, and straight away we're start planning for the twelve events of CIPR Pride Awards 2012. In the meanwhile here's a quick reminder of the excellence of Excellence...

A Fine Cup of Coffee

The client asks for something 'really creative, really different'. So you come back and pitch this. Would it get you thrown out the room? 

The coffee brand is David Lynch. The creative is David Lynch. We are a long way from Nescafe man and it's a short ride to Twin Peaks.

You will not forget the coffee. Which may or may not be a good thing.

Thanks to @Adweek, www.adweek.com

Chaotic creative - seeks partner with ordered mind.

Tell people that having a chaotic mind is a great idea. Tell them in a two and a half minute video. Tell them when your name is Malcolm Gladwell and you have a viral hit.

The gist of this popular little piece is that for creative people, chaos is good. Hoarding ideas for the future, is good. Serendipity is good. Malcolm tells you why:

The problem kicks in when you do not have a major book deal like Mr Gladwell. Clever individuals with less income than creative superstars are being shaken out of businesses into freelance and solo roles in the knowledge economy. And they are finding that they have to be two very different kinds of people: a chaotic creative person and a highly ordered manager - at the same time.

The essential stress and strain that used to happen between departments can now happen inside one brain. It's a big problem for creatives who work on their own.

Maybe the biggest truth of our time is that it is, as Richard Florida would say, a Great Reset. Outmoded forms of organisation are coming under strain. But the ultimate outcome won't be individuals working on their own. New forms of creative business structure are bound to emerge. The ones that will succeed will get the best from chaotic ideas connectors and from highly ordered managers - working together. A great model for a robust undertaking could be a group of creatives in partnership buying in the time of trusted administrators for the whole jointly-owned enterprise. Then brand it. We did that back in 2004 to create redbrand - and in the light of experience I would still  create something very similar if we were starting out today.

The trick for such a business is adaptability. For the individual, if you are a creative soul, it's not to waste your time doing invoices. Now, I must get back to finishing my tax return.

Pride - it's about being there.

The end of a tour should be a sad affair - all a bit rock and roll. It should be like a disbanding a ship's crew at the end of an exciting voyage. So it was with CIPR PRide Awards in Newcastle just before the holidays. It was sad because after more than forty Pride shows to date, this season has been the very best so far.

Our audio-visual crew covered many miles. Starting out in what seemed like an Indian Summer, we ended up in the Big Freeze. But what really made a difference this time was seeing eleven places in a way I had never quite seen them before.

It's too easy to say that the cities of the UK have all become homogenised - that they look the same with the same retail brands, the same vibe, the same issues. Well, it's just not so. The concerns about the economy may be common to many, but everywhere - is different.

That local difference is what makes Pride so special for us. Communicators in the regions and nations know their patch. They know the people and the place - and the nuance. It's what enables professionals in the regions to go out and bat so successfully for clients and causes. Local knowledge, local skill, local pride - that message really came home this year.

I'm going to reflect on what makes each region absolutely unique and blog it soon. In the meanwhile thanks to everyone, in every place we visited, for their help, warmth, hospitality - and congratulations!

There's a PS: redbrand was delighted to be not only the a/v production team but also a national sponsor of the awards. B2B sponsorship in the context of Pride is an opportunity that's second to none. Blog coming soon to tell you exactly why we find it so.

Anthony Veitch , Producer and voice, Pride 2010.

Pride is at: www.cipr.co.uk/content/events-awards/pride-awards-2010

Thanks to Geoff at Pic-Biz for use of photography www.pic-biz.co.uk

Blue - emotional force multiplier

The ever-popular 'can you make the logo bigger' is rivaled only by 'can we have everything in orange/purple/pink. That's our corporate colour.'

However, the lucky people who get to use blue have an advantage according to New Scientist. Blue light it seems, amplifies emotion in any direction. And it looks good, that's because it's amplifying our idea that's it looks good.

The moral? The most important thing in comms is not how the tech works. It's how people work.

The New Scientist link: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827845.000-blue-light-taps-directly-into-your-emotions.html

A Gift from behind the Paywall - one more time!

Mining for lost nuggets at @tonyveitchuk 's randymice.blogspot.com  - this definitely needed a second airing. Clever, creative, fun and involving - this is event par excellence! (It's worth the wait through the fifteen seconds of Microsoft commercial!) We would say 'objet trouve encore' if we could find the acute accent on the keyboard.

Haven't posted a video freebie for a while, but I find this effort irresistible. You will hardly notice that anyone wants to sell you anything.

The concept is leaving designer chairs around New York City - for the taking. Each chair has GPS and there's a whole load of effort that's gone into concept and into shoot. The agency who wants to sell their services is Mono - let's hear that name again a couple of times in the vox - it's Mono. And the Real Good Chair from Blue Dot does a nice appearance in the recession-time objet trouve role.



And the source of this video left by the kerb with code all ready to embed? Giving it away for the all the right reasons, News Corporation's Wall Street Journal.

Thanks to Andy Jordan at WSJ.

The chair? It's here for $129 http://www.bludot.com/Browse_Products/Seating/product/Real_Good_chair

PS: you guys made up 'kerb mining', right?

A Day in The Museum

One of the best things about this business is the opportunity to work in great places. They don’t get much greater than The British Museum. For the excellent Think!Sponsorship conference this month we provided PowerPoint management in advance of the event, and, on the day in the BP Theatre and breakout spaces. Plenary sessions included interactive audience voting.

If you have not used interactive voting systems for a while, then try TurningPoint, a PowerPoint (2007) add-in that offers a great easy-to-learn system. It has lots of options that you don't need to use first time round, but are worth exploring for post-show data as well for the obvious audience engagement benefits.

I didn't get to see all the presentations. Those I did see were really very good indeed, in that they were truly, 'engaging'. Video makes a big difference. This was a one-day conference packed with insight.

So when we are asked 'Do you get to go to nice places in event?'- the answer is yes, but we see get to presentations rather than the tourist sights! Of course, the real message is that we get to see and to meet new people. That's what conferences do like no other medium.

Thanks to Catherine Hawkins and her entire Think!Sponsorship team for the opportunity.

We provided: presentation management and technical support.
A/V was supplied in-house by BM team led by Steve Aucott.
The event and client is: www.thinksponsorship.com