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CYBER BUBBLE WRAP, AND HOW TO ACTIVATE IT

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Apologies in advance for what may be a darker post than usual. Dark, but in some way practical, I hope.

Yesterday a friend and co-member of the DDC* and I hit upon a realisation. At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to magically edit those bits of the internet that remind you of things you’d rather not be reminded of? Banners, Facebook ASUs, emails, etc.

Like, when it’s father’s day and you’re still getting used to the idea that that’s no longer something you celebrate. Or Mother’s day… Or  (poss just me and my friends, this one) Christmas!

Of course, we’re not begrudging people that do still have parents left to celebrate, squeeze with utter love and make a fuss of. But for those who have just crash-landed anew in the DDC*, or for those who were never lucky enough to know their dads (or mums for that matter), there should be a simple way to soften the little blows a tiny bit with a bit of cyber-bubble-wrap. A way to ‘unsubscribe’ from Father’s Day and its chums. You might say ‘these things are all part of life’, or ‘get over it’, which is true to some extent. But it also depends how long you’ve had to come to terms with your loss.

Or as Holly puts it:

“Fathers’ Day is no doubt a lovely and enjoyable event for fathers and people with fathers everywhere. But there’s also a considerable group of people who have lost their dads, hate their dads, or otherwise just don’t want dad-dom shoved in their faces every year. This post is for those people.”

So if you’ve ever wondered how to turn down the volume on the reminders, whatever time of year, happily there is now a way. It’s not particularly easy reading, but here’s how to take them all down – one by one.

Thanks to Holly, who you might remember from the internet a few weeks ago. Over to you, Copybot.

 

* See Holly’s blog for what this joyful acronym stands for!

ONE MAN’S BOTTOM DRAWER IS ANOTHER MAN’S BOTO HOUSE FILM

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A while back the legendary Mark Denton Esq came to BMB to give us an amazing talk about the importance of always picking up the phone because you never know what can come of it.

Since then Soho’s Head of Enthusiasm has pretty much visited every agency in town. If you’ve not yet had Mark come in, you should. He’ll come in, set off a firecracker of energy and obstinate optimism and leave it whizzing round the agency. He is a man who:

Answers the phone to EVERYONE no matter how busy he is.

Does not like the word NO.

Lives by the mantra ‘it’s more fun doing it than not’.

Truly emanates ‘nothing-is-impossible-ness’ from his every pore.

Get Mark in and he will tell you a gazillion stories of amazing creative projects that happened only because of the above.

But, we wanted to tell you our own real life example.

Months ago, an up and coming director called David emailed us, saying he was looking for some spec scripts to film for his reel. I said yes and reached for my dusty bottom drawer and pulled out one that got away.

It was a campaign for Cillit Bang that we wrote five years ago on freelance at Euros, under the care of one of our favourite CDs Mark Fiddes.

I won’t lie. It’s one of our darker ideas. But we kind of like the optimistic sentiment behind it. We have a load more in the campaign but this one was the easiest to film.

Incidentally, David has to be one of the nicest, easiest to work with people in the entire world. We can’t recommend him enough.

He has since set up a company called The Boto House  – his approach with which is to work specifically with agency creatives who have -um – unconventional ideas that don’t see the light of day for one reason or another.

So if you’re a creative and you have an idea that got away you’d love to see be made, why not pick up the phone and see what happens.

Follow @loreleimathias

Watford’s Week in the Wilderness

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Last week at BMB Watford Ad School came to stay.

In between highly informative lectures from @Katie_Grimsby, @AndrewWright2 and @Buders, we briefed the teams on three new campaigns for their book, then took them to the wilderness to camp out for the week (BMB’s lovely brainstorming area in Neal’s Yard). Then there was a Wildcard brief from The Tapas Whizz-Kids Richard and Jolyon who naughtily quit the course early to be on placement here.

It wasn’t enough that their old classmates were going to be at BMB while they were busy doing their month’s worth of live briefs here. No. To make the whole course hate them that little bit more, their tutor Tony had Richard & Jolyon set their old peers a brief. Interestingly, this brief produced some of the best work. And Trev’s personal favourite: The Ant Pad:  a five star retreat where only the luckiest, pluckiest of ants get to go and take a load off.

 

This winning idea appeared in the book of Emma and Alex, who after a lot of difficult judging, we picked out as the best of a brilliant bunch. Congrats Emma and Alex! They win a month’s creative placement here in July, despite having only just got together, after an arranged marriage from their tutor Tony Cullingham.

Here they are with match-maker Tony. The tall blonde next to the happy couple is Matt, who blew us away by making a whole video game in 3 days, and wins a two-week digital placement.

A nice end to the week was when they all said they’d enjoyed our week more than any other agency they’d been to. Not that it’s a competition or anything.

Anyway thanks for coming. And good luck out there, class of 2013.