Last week the third years were given one of their toughest briefs to date. I'll let third year students James and Charley explain:
"Our brief this week was do nothing. Absoloutely nothing!"In an attempt to avoid creative burn-out the brief from Gyles and Mike was to stop advertising. Drop the whole subject. Completely. Put any creative problems out of our mind as completely as possible. The idea of this week was to turn to whatever stimulates our imagination and emotions and refuel."As part of this innovative 'detox' week, we were all booked into the local health spa (in the form of the brand new and very impressive Enterprise@Lincoln building next to the Library) for a 'Creative Detox' workshop run by Punch It Up (funded by Enterprise@Lincoln's Innovation Fund). None of us had a clue of what to expect and entered the workshop with open minds."Within minutes we were all walking around the room pointing at different things, calling a chair a dog, the window a cauliflower and the door a whale. Any inhibitions that any of us may have felt were thrown straight out of the window as we were chucked head-on into this liberating and light-hearted half-day session."We completed a range of activities hell-bent on removing, demolishing and completely obliterating any creative blocks that we had. And we did some pretty strange stuff as we sat on the floor, walked around the room, made a lot of noise, closed our eyes and stared deep into the carpet. The whole experience was SO beneficial: effectively demonstrating how each and every one of us unconsciously block and limit creativity. And how that impacts on our ideas – particularly when working collaboratively."Mandy Wheeler, the fantastically inspiring workshop leader, opened our minds and revitalised the often mechanical and methodical ways of working that we found we had inadvertently slipped into. She encouraged new ways of exploring ideas which took the form of techniques such as saying 'Yes, and...' and 'The infinite imaginary box in the floor' to effectively help push forward and develop our thoughts. The workshop made us very aware of the dangers of 'blocking' ideas and the serious limitations that can result."Many thanks for that report, James and Charley. Glad it was so worthwhile.
And THANK YOU VERY, VERY MUCH to the great people at Enterprise@Lincoln for helping us organise this innovative and pioneering event. We're now exploring the possibility of making this an annual fixture.
Now then third years, time to get back to the business of creating great ads...
Vix Jagger was one of the course's first graduates way back in 2006. After she left Lincoln she then did the MA in Creative Advertising at University College Falmouth (run by our External Examiner Chris Waite) which culminated in a D&AD Best in Show award at New Blood '07.
Vix and her copywriter partner Ric Hooley work at
Touch DDB, part of DDB London (The Gunn Report's Most Awarded agency in the World 1999-2008). Here are two very different but equally nice pieces of work they've recently done:
1. For the
Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) to encourage teachers to sign up to one-to-one tutoring
(ad of the week on the NMA UK):2. And a beautifully art directed ad for for ESSO OptiPlus.
I'm sure you'll agree, this is lovely, very effective work. Keep in touch Vix (and Ric!) - hope to see you back in Lincoln soon!
As posted a few weeks ago, Level 3 teams Charlotte Gibling & Vicky Daley and Pete Ioulianou & Ollie Agius were selected from hundreds of applicants to take part in the
M&C Saatchi/HYPtv 24-hour ad challenge. They were briefed on Saturday 7th November at 9am and they had to come up with an idea, write a script, film and produce it all in the space of (you guessed it) 24 hours.
Their work was judged by Alan Yentob (Creative Director of the BBC), Graham Fink (Creative Director M&C Saatchi), Peter Saville and Patrick Burgogne (editor of Creative Review).
Unfortunately, neither team were the final selected winners but here's what they thought of the experience...
Charlotte & Vicky (pictured below, mirroring each other and working hard as the other half of their team watch on):
"We spent the weekend in and around London not getting much sleep and meeting some very strange people. However, we definitely learned some interesting lessons...
Lesson 1: Do not lose the creative control eg. our film team seemed to consider 'making things look pretty' was the main priority in an advertising competition.
Lesson 2: People who do not study or work in advertising, do not understand advertising.
Lesson 3: Ask when you need help or advice as no one will volunteer the right answers.
We held our own amongst teams that were A LOT older and more experienced than us. This was an invaluable opportunity that will probably never be repeated and it has definitely toughened us up a bit. If something like this was offered to us again I would advise everyone to apply (as I know a lot of people put it off and forgot about it). In an industry that doesn't seem to have many female creatives, experience is everything."And here's Pete & Ollie (pictured below, nearest the wall):
"Got to M&C Saatchi. Used toilet. Met film team. Got briefed. Got nervous. Got enthusiastic. Met creative mentor. Impressed him with ideas. Got his contact info. Rampaged through London looking for actors. Found out Release Forms are annoying. Filmed idea. Met account director from Leo Burnett. Exchanged numbers. Had a Redbull. Uploaded film. Had a sandwich. Edited film. Panicked. Spent 4 hours getting edited film onto tape. Happy with what we produced. Didn't have time for sleep. Handed final tape in. Had McDonalds breakfast. Watched all films at ICA. Impressed by some. Not so impressed by others. Waited for judges to...judge. Didn't win. Surprised by winner. Learned a lot. Absolutely shattered. Slept. A lot."
Very well done to both teams. A great experience and you did us proud. Bravo!
Level three student Ruby writes:
"Last week level 3 students were once again treated to a workshop run by a visiting guest lecturer, this time from award winning copywriter Mike Waudby (there’s a lot of Mikes around here!). With three very intense briefs set over one very full day, it was a revitalising change of pace, in that oh-my-god-I-think-my-brain-just-melted type way. Each brief was aimed at a very specific target market: a £60,000+ Range Rover; The Dogs Trust; and Poundland – all comparative products with distinct market differences. We all benefited from revisiting the incredibly important areas of tone of voice and target markets, combined with further practice in the all important discipline of copywriting.In the process, we all came up with some pretty neat ideas to develop for our folios.Thanks to Mike for coming all the way from Cardiff. We really appreciate it."Check out his website:
www.mikewaudby.co.uk
Last week Creative Advertising staff and students launched a very exciting new blog. An organic student resource to share all manner of creative influences and stimuli, called Inspiration.
Why? Because the more information we take in, the more options we give ourselves and, ultimately, the better creative options we have to work with!
All it takes is harnessing the perspectives of 130 mildly insane Creative Advertising students... easy!
Have a look at
http://lincolncreativeadvertisinglinks.blogspot.com/Updates on this blog and the new Inspiration blog can be easily followed on Twitter:
CALincolnUniAnd you can also use the link in the Blogs List to the right of this post.
We've done it again!
The National Student Survey (NSS) 2009 results were recently published and - just like last year - BA (Hons) Creative Advertising was the best course in the whole of the University of Lincoln. A league-topping 89% of our third year completed the survey and gave a overall 'satisfaction' result of a record 98.9%. It's official, last year's third year CA students were the most satisfied students in the University! For the second year running.
The NSS is, as the name suggests, an annual national survey of final year university students asking them to score 22 questions from 1-5 about how they feel about their course (eg. 'I have received detailed comments on my work'; 'The course has helped me present myself with confidence'; 'Staff are good at explaining things') and the results are published nationally. The results at a University level are for individual courses and the published national results group courses by subject – in our case the subject area of 'Design Studies'.
'So what?' I hear you ask.
Well, it's very important for the staff team to know that the students are happy with the programme that they're on. And it's good for all of us (staff and students) to further build the programme's profile and reputation within the University.
But arguably more importantly is that it further increases the profile and reputation of the programme on a national level. And the more people that know that Lincoln is one of the the best places to study Creative Advertising the better: 'Hello, young creative. Welcome to our advertising agency. You went to Lincoln, you say? Excellent. I've heard that's a great course. Please show me your folio...'
Good news all round.
Saturday saw our busiest University Open Day yet, with a huge number of people finding out about the BA (Hons) Creative Advertising programme. Mike was based down at the main campus answering as many questions as he could and Gyles, Charley and James were on hand in the TPH studio presenting work, giving tours and helping with enquiries.
We met some very interesting prospective students (and their parents) asking some very intelligent questions about the programme, graduate employment, the curriculum and resources. In case anyone has any further questions
then complete the form here.The next Open Day is on Saturday, 21st of November. See the
Lincoln University website for more details.