whipplesqueezer

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!

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.

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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.

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A few weeks ago, we were lucky to go to a screening at Framestore for the new Jones’ Feature. One of new production company @MadamFilms‘ director duos.

We loved it. It was beautifullly shot, has some gorgeously well observed scenes (my personal favourite the bit where he tries to open little tiny milk sachets). And has more than a little feeling of Lost in Translation and Like Crazy feel about it.

It’s out on limited release but you can always watch the trailer here.

…is one sentence you’ll never hear Funnyman, Director and Twitter-Guru David Schneider say.

He came to BMB recently to give us a talk about Comedy, Tweeting, and the time he almost killed Steve Coogan.

It was ruddy brilliant. The only let down (as a planner pointed out afterwards) was that we didn’t nip across the road for a wheel of Neal’s Yard Cheese to wave at his olfactory organ. Because, as it turns out, David Schneider gets at least five ‘SMELL MY CHEESE’S a day.

FIVE! Not just on Twitter but in the REAL WORLD too.

Other interesting facts and tips we learned at Schneider School:

- Alan Partridge was very nearly a DJ in Milton Keynes, until Mr. Iannucci pointed out that this wasn’t quite silly enough. So Alan ended up in Norwich. Now, Schneider’s way of describing when something isn’t quite amusing enough is: ‘It’s a bit Milton Keynes’.  Which makes for a good yardstick whatever you’re writing. Is it a bit pedestrian? Can you push it further? As far as… Norwich?

- When you’re directing an actor, the worst thing you can do is ‘perform’ how you want a line to be read. Then all they’ll do is mimic it. Better to try and get them into the moment, so they get there authentically.

- Even if its a crazy idea, be as REAL with it as possible.

- In the infamous ‘Smell my cheese’ sketch, the fork was so close to Schneider’s face he almost drew blood.

- Schneider once very nearly stabbed Coogan to death. In a manner of speaking. In this scene where he plays Tony Le Mezma,during filming, he accidentally sent one of the knives flying towards him. As if by magic, the knife missed him by a milimetre.

- He’s obsessive about detail. He reckons us advert people are too. That’s one of the reasons he’s keen to direct some more of them.

- His ultimate rule: When you’re directing, always be able to explain your creative choices. Saying them out loud to someone gives you one last chance to check you’re not bullshitting. Never, ever, just say ‘trust me, it’ll be funny.’

After entertaining us with a veritable cheese-board of Alandotes, Prof. Schneider moved on to a crash-course in Hashtaggery:

- In his view, the ‘direct sell’ approach always bombs on twitter. It’s all about being tangential, like these lot. 

- Timing is everything. Being the first to react gives you instant purchase. A mediocre joke pays double if the timing is bang on.

- Twitter is a fertile testing ground for jokes. Tim Vine and Betfair Poker being two of his favourites.

- With the right ghost-tweeter, the dullest of dullard brands can have a personality. Bolts are pretty boring creatures, but there’s something amusingly incongruous about the idea of a bolt being funny isn’t there?

- 98% of Schneider’s Twitter followers think he is Ross off of Friends*.

But it wasn’t until the final lesson at Schneider School that my life-long commitment to not joining Twitter was finally smashed into little pieces.He pointed out the obvious – that 140 characters is a great way of training to be  pithier, punchier and preciser in your writing (never been my strong-point, I won’t lie). And in that sense, he argued, all copywriters worth their salt should be on Twitter.

That was me told. So, I’ve given up being a luddite and started Twittering, as has Nat. See you there over there! Brevity is the soul of wit, and all that.

 
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One of the best virals we’ve seen recently is this.

It’s so good that Nat and I created a real ‘first world problem jar’ in its honour out of a Cadbury’s eggbox. Here she is, next to Billy the Sellotape Dispenser.

So for the last few weeks, every time we find ourselves doing a first world moan, we put money in the moany box. Anyone in the office is allowed to enter. Then every few months, we count up the money and pay it in directly to WaterisLife.com

Here are just a few of the RIDICULOUS AND ENTIRELY UNACCEPTABLE first world moans that we have overheard here in these four walls.

I hate when…The fruit’s delivered late.

I hate that….Not one of the brands of staples in this building actually FIT the staplers. So when using them, they’re all that tiny bit too large and get stuck. (something we often find ourselves moaning about when trying to extrapolate a bent stapler from a finger and/or an A4 page.)

I hate that…Since we moved desks, we now have to walk ALL THE WAY UPSTAIRS to go to the loo.

And finally; this one is the absolute worst. The other day ‘some creatives’ went for a wrap lunch at one of the ‘trendiest’ restaurants in london, and ordered a celebratory Bellini. It came in a common-or-garden tumbler shaped glass and everyone couldn’t help being disappointed that it wasn’t in an ACTUAL champagne glass?

Unacceptable. Rest assured that everyone involved has now sufficiently off-set their pathetic whines!

If you find yourself doing a first world moan – whether aloud or internally – we’d be happy to help absolve you.

You can now donate in a virtual capacity by commenting or tweeting @loreleimathias and I’ll put some coins in for you.

That’s right, I have finally given in and joined the tweeting masses. If you’re so inclined you can follow my ramblings of little consequence here.

Without further ado, the winner of the Five second ideas for the inattentive generation competition is:

1. Richard & Jolyon with

Alpen: tastes like you’ll live longer

Co-op bank: where Jesus would bank

Colgate: your teeth are the best business card

Well done. You have won a month placement at BMB. Send us an email and we’ll chat about dates.

The others were all great in different ways, but we just love these strategies the best. The image of Jesus opening a current account makes me laugh.

We also got some lovely latecomers this week – this one in particular we liked from Will and Yury.

You can still see all the other shortlisted ideas here.

Thank you to all the teams that entered.

Muchas gracias for all your delectable entries to the Win a Placement at BMB with some Tapas Competition.

Clearly five seconds is a trickily small canvas, so it’s been really interesting to see what has come out of it.

Everything from ‘VineBooks’ to comic strips, to canape-sized portfolio cut-downs, from one-line strategies, to punchy team idents.

It was actually pretty hard to decide on one winner. So at the risk of going a bit X-Factor, we have managed to whittle it down to five finalists. In no particular order, the teams staying in the competition are:

Richard Biggs

Celine & Christopher

Adam & Gurter

Andres & Elson

Barry & Lukas

Thank you all very much for all your work, it’s been lots of fun. We’ll be announcing the winner on Wednesday. In the mean time here are some of your best bits.

Perhaps if you feel strongly one way or the other you could vote accordingly in the comments boxes. If not, we’ll be back with the results after a short break.

Thank you!

1. Richard Biggs’ strategies 

Alpen: tastes like you’ll live longer

Co-op bank: where Jesus would bank

Colgate: your teeth are the best business card

2. Celine & Christopher’s @Five Second Book (Click here to watch, or see highlights below)

3. Adam & Gurter’s Five Second Book:

4. Barry + Lukas’s taster plate (click below to play their video)

5: Andres & Elson’s five second book of strategies

(well, frankly your list was only five seconds if you’re E.T. but we’ve let you off because they’re so good):

Early Learning Centre: Make up for nature

Rymans: Your other source of office supplies

Ariel: Clothes insurance

Monster.com: In case your dad doesn’t ‘know someone’

BMW: Being hated isn’t that bad

Radox: Clear recent history

Discovery Channel: A gap year without alcoholism

Hello and thank you all so much for your amazing entries to the Win a placement at BMB competition.

We’ve had some good and bonkers entries so far.

You have until the end of tomorrow (friday 5th april) to show us how hungry you are by sending in your best creative tapas for the inattentive generation.

In plain english, that means, 5 second one-off ideas or 5 second portfolios or vinebooks – whichever way you choose to interpret it….!

Send your ideas to: Nathalie.turton@bmbagency.com or Lorelei.mathias@bmbagency.com

Yours peckishly,

Lol & Nat x

* Month runs from Mon 22nd April – 17th May

In the month when Trev controversially sounded the death knell of the 30 second ad, and announced that only 5 second ideas will survive in this ‘tapas generation’ we have decided to award a 4 week placement here at BMB* to the creative team that can come up with the best ’5 second’ portfolio.

Send your ideas to: Nathalie.turton@bmbagency.com or Lorelei.mathias@bmbagency.com

* Month runs from Mon 22nd April – 17th May