May 2013
2 posts
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April 2013
7 posts
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Hyundai, Innocean & car fumes
Before I write this I want to stress that I have the deepest sympathy for Holly Brockwell (read the blog here). I couldn’t imagine something more horrifying and sadder than losing someone so close in such horrific circumstances. I really truly feel for her, her family and her father for something truly devastating must have happened for him to feel forced to take his own life.
I don’t...
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Play for the mistake
I was sat eating dinner last night, plate on the edge of the sofa, TV on and so on.
The dog was sat next to me, staring at my fork every move it made. She was waiting for me to knock something accidentally off the edge of the plate, or for the moment I was looking away so she could pounce and take my chicken breast. She was waiting for me to lower my guard because she knew full well I was in...
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March 2013
24 posts
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“If its a great idea, you won’t fuck it up with a bad execution. If its a...”
– Dave Trott
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“If we spend too long looking at what others do to change the world, we will...”
– Jack Smith
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“When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your...”
– Steve Jobs
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The power of words
Nigger.
One word.
It carries such power.
It can offend a whole race.
It is a trigger to a memory of years of hate and anguish.
I listen to a lot of rap music.
They use the word. A lot.
The majority of artists in rap music are black.
So, why do they use a word that carries such hate?
Because they have changed the nature of the word.
They have taken everything bad about the word, and made it...
February 2013
6 posts
FOURTEEN: ‘EVERYONE CAN WRITE’ →
dw14:
An old Art Director once said this to me. He was often mocking us copy folk. ‘Just write anything, no one’s going to read it anyway’, he’d say. ‘It’s a headline, Dave, not War & Peace’…
So when he uttered the three words that sit proudly above this article – they hit me like an insulting and…
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"Excellence is the unlimited ability to improve...
“Excellence is the unlimited ability to improve the quality of what you have to offer.” - Rick Pitino (US Basketball Coach)
That is not be the best at everything.
That is not try and be good at everything.
It doesn’t take long to work out what we’re good at and what we’re not good at. Focus on what we are good at, and everything else should fall into place. It is...
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Genius lasts longer than beauty
“Genius lasts longer than beauty.” - Oscar Wilde.
Oscar Wilde wasn’t talking about advertising. I will.
In advertising, too many people think that ‘creative’ is the process of making an idea look pretty. Wrong. Creative is coming up with the idea. And an idea is what sticks in people’s minds. Not the artwork that accompanies it.
A good idea, whatever it may...
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The cleaner in all of us
In 1969, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.
I wasn’t alive. But I can only imagine the incredible feeling that must have surged around the world on that day. We had successfully taken man off Earth and on to the moon. And even now, 12 men have only ever had the privilege of setting foot on the moon. But a hell of a lot more helped, and were responsible for getting those 12 men there and...
Closed doors
In life, we’re always making decisions. Decisions define the path we choose. Door A or Door B? When I was at school, I had to make an awful lot of decisions. Decisions that apparently would define my life. What subjects do you want to choose at GCSE? What about A-Level? What Universities do you want to apply to? Which offers will you accept? And in the middle of all of these was a load of smaller...
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January 2013
5 posts
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What do you want to be when you grow up?
I was often asked this question when I was younger.
“Jack, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
As if to suggest your job defined who you were as a person. It has never bothered me. Ever. Until I just started to think about it.
What do I want to be? A person. A nice person. A person who has true things to heart. Someone who looks after their family and so on.
A better question...
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Contextualise everything
Things are only ever something in context of something else.
“What does stilton smell like?”
“It’s a bit like smelly socks, or a sweaty t-shirt.”
Nothing is just.
EVERYTHING only makes sense once it has been put in to context with something else.
You cannot describe the smell of stilton, without comparing it to a smell you already know.
I’m not just...
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Exam season
Ironically, it’s now I’m meant to be revising for 2 exams.
But my priorities seem to be lying elsewhere at the moment, namely trying to find a job.
OK, here it is, another rant.
Exams, exams, exams.
Why don’t I like them? I study a very opinionated and very changing subject.
Exams are based on fact. Fact doesn’t exist in advertising.
Market research, the...
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You're the customer!
I pay in excess of £3,500 a year to attend university.
Yet, for some reason they seem to think it’s a rule that I attend lectures and seminars I don’t want to, and treat me as if I am still at school.
If I paid anybody else £3,500 a year (for anything), I would be treated so.
I, as well as everyone else, am a customer of university.
I am a customer of the education system.
I...
December 2012
3 posts
5 tags
Universal language of...
It’s Christmas Day. The customary soppy rom/com drama (loosely based around Christmas films) are on. They tend to be the same plot. All is good. Things go wrong. Things get better. We all live happily ever after, with the whole film ending in a deep life message.
To avoid embarrassment, I won’t spill on the name of the film, but I was listening to a speech half way through about how...
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Looking for the right way to do the wrong things
- Drake, Lord Knows (Take Care)
I was listening to this album earlier, and heard this line again:
“Looking for the right way to do the wrong things”.
It got me thinking, this is such a beautiful way of defining creativity.
Creativity, by its very nature, has to be original. To be original, you must not be conventional. You have to break the rules. But, in breaking the rules, you...
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Remember the audience
The other day a group at university and I were tasked with creating some kind of guerrilla/ambient piece within Bournemouth to help improve the town, to tie into the Bournemouth Arts Festival and to encourage a commercial sponsor, if for nothing other than to earn more money for the event.
Our idea was fantastic, a bridge held up by cylindrical pylons became the site for Trebor Extra Strong mints...
November 2012
10 posts
9 tags
Why you should never aim to be happy
If your aim in life is to be happy, one would most likely rightly assume you are currently not happy. Or at least what you would describe as happy right now. That’s fine. Because in my opinion, we are never happy. Humans seem never to be able to be content. And that is why we are always miserable. Because nothing is ever good enough. The grass is always greener. This is true for the vast...
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Illusion of science
I was at work the other day. We were talking about how children of mothers who took cocaine during pregnancy would come out of the womb addicted to cocaine. I disagreed. The baby does not leave the womb and crawl to the street corner to get his cocaine. He is not addicted. Let me repeat. The baby is not a cocaine addict.
In my opinion, addiction is entirely psychological. I understand that drugs...
