Oh jeepers! Yet another slideshow.

Yes, people. I’m sorry. I’m going a bit crazy on the SlideShare thing right now. But I’m doing a lot of talks and presentations at the moment – and they take a long time to prepare – so if anyone else can benefit from them I’m happy.

This is one I did today at the Ogilvy Idea Shop to show people how to deal with creative block. I think I’ll write something more about the Idea Shop tomorrow. But for now, here’s some PowerPoint jazz.

A sneaky peeky at today’s talk

I’m doing a talk to small businesses at the Ogilvy Idea Shop today. If you’re one of those businesses, look away now. I’m talking about stuff I’ve learned from having been involved in a number of small businesses over the years. Here’s a preview. Again, if you visit the slideshare page you can see the speakers notes in a tab under the presentation.

The Ogilvy Idea Shop opens for business

I’m rather excited! The Ogilvy Idea Shop opens its doors at 9am tomorrow morning. It’s a pop-up agency in Brixton Village Market where we’re giving free advice to small businesses, community projects, arts groups, and other folks who want to pick our brains.

It all started in November last year when Ruth Jamieson, one of our star copywriters, came to me with the idea. We roped in Art Director/Designer extraordinaire Paul Grizzell and made it as awesome as we could. Then, with the backing of the big dudes, we made it real. When I say ‘we’ I mean Ruth and Paul recruited some more volunteers and together they worked their arses off in every spare minute, several evenings and most weekends. I did very little apart from nod proudly whenever they showed me what they’d been doing.

So, anyway, tomorrow is the big day when it all kicks off. We’ll be covering as much of it as we can on the Idea Shop blog and twitter account. And I’ll probably be doing some tweetings too.

Wish us luck!

Creative Cheat Sheet presentation

I’m on a bit of a Slideshare kick at the moment. I’ve decided to share a presentation based on the Creative Cheat Sheet article I wrote 10 years ago. It was written for advertising creatives but I’ve had some lovely feedback from people outside the industry.

You really need to view it on Slideshare and click on the notes tab underneath the presentation to understand what it’s all about. But if you just fancy a quick gander, you can flick through this:

You can download a PowerPoint version from the Slideshare page.

And you can download the wizzy Keynote version with all the wanky transitions here.

Leftovers from the first OgilvyOne Creative Breakfast

I’m doing something new at OgilvyOne. I’ve started a fortnightly education programme to show off the latest digital doo-dahs and share the stuff that’s exciting in the industry. I did the first one this morning and didn’t have any half-eaten croissants thrown at me. So I thought I’d share the stuff here.

It’s the first of a two part presentation on the top 10 technology trends of 2010. Of course, this is just my own opinion and it’s there to be argued with. I’ll be bringing you the second part in a couple of weeks time.

You can also get the PowerPoint version here.

And if you want the (infinitely better) Keynote version, drop me a line.

While you’re waiting on Steve Jobs’ news today, here he is 9 years ago.

This is film is amazing. It’s a bit of a history of the computer from Mr Jobs followed by his vision for the future of the Mac. A vision that has been realised amazingly well. And one that a tablet fits into rather comfortably.

via cult of mac

So many analogue guides to digital

I always find airports fascinating places. Fascinating in that dull, scratch your eyeballs out kind of way. So I’m sitting in an airport right now and in an effort to keep my fingernails away from my eye sockets I took a look around the newsagents. The one thing I noticed was how many magazines there are to help people with digital stuff. Which I find strange because I always use digital means to find answers to real world stuff. I was tempted to get one of these just for my own amusement but succeeded in restraining myself. Here’s a handful for your enjoyment.

Another analogue thing goes digital.

As a guitarist and a geek I’m kind of turned on by this. And repulsed at the same time. But I think I should maybe spend a couple of hours playing it before I properly make up my mind. Can I have an early release model to test please?!

See more about it on the Misa website.

Should all clients and agencies have contracts like this?

I found this little gem on Stan Lee’s brilliant BrandDNA blog. It’s a contract between DDB and Avis when they were doing the ‘We try harder’ campaign in the 60s. You can now understand why the work was so good. I particularly like point 4.

Read more about it on Stan’s blog.

Another creative use of YouTube

Make sure you let the video load fully before you start playing. Very nice.

[Thanks Tom]

Ouch!

e all know that the last year gave the advertising industry a mighty kick in the goolies. Many would say that the industry deserved it. Including me. But unfortunately when the advertising industry gets hammered it also affects other industries that the public have a lot more affection for. Like broadcast and publishing. And an article in this week’s Guardian shows exactly how badly the publishing industry has been hit. It gave us the incredible stats:

Advertising revenue totalled $19.5bn in 2009, a 17.5% decline against 2008, generating a total of about 170,000 advertising pages (the year-on-year 25% drop).

That’s a pretty big thumping. The worst on record, in fact. And as you can see, it’s affected some magazines more than others – with my favourite magazine being the worst hit (I’m not talking Razzle or Asian Babes here – although I’m sure they’ve been feeling the pinch too).

Among the major publishers, Condé Nast fared worst, with Wired losing 40% of their ad pages, Vanity Fair 32% and Vogue 31%.

Most advertising people will be seeing this as a blip and will expect the market to recover at some point. I’m not so sure. I’m not just getting up on some smug, digital high horse here – I actually think consumer behaviour is going through a shift just now. And just as importantly so are advertising spending patterns. So if the two audiences who pump money into the publishing industry are thinking different maybe the publishing industry needs a radical rethink of its business model.

Any ideas?

What type are you?

I’ve got a bit of a love for typography. I’m so sad that when I go to a restaurant the typographer inside is making harsh judgements on the font choice on the menu (while the internal copywriter is scanning for amusing typos).

So I liked this little thing from Pentagram that helps you find out what font best represents you. As you can see from the image above, I’m Dot Matrix. It’s nicely designed (as you’d expect from such an agency) and quite fun.

You might need a password to get in. It’s ‘character’. Go enjoy.

Typographic loveliness

his is just gorgeous. A site where you can get a typographical treat every day to tart up your blog post. It’s called Daily Drop Cap and it’s one of those sites that makes you go “Why hasn’t anyone done this before?” Genius! What’s best is that Jessica Hische, the typographer and illustrator behind it, has added in the code for each entry to make it simple for coding dumbasses like myself to add it into their posts. I’m going to bookmark this one right away – and be prepared for lots of drop-capping in the future. Yum yum yum.

More rantings from an opinionated bugger

Neil Potter over at Albion runs a rather nice industry blog. And he’s slightly more disciplined than I am at updating it.

A couple of months ago he emailed me about a blog post I wrote back in 2007 about the future of digital agencies. Obviously it’s slightly out-of-date now. So he kindly asked if he could interview me for his blog. And as a self-seeking egotist, I agreed.

He’s put up the first half of the interview, with the second half coming later in the month. If you’ve got the time or interest to read any more of my opinionated babblings, you can read the post here.

Alternatively, if you want to see a little girl talk about kittens, click here.

It’s like social media without the social media

I’m a customer of First Direct and on the whole I like their brand (even after they buggered me about really badly last month). Last night I was on their site to empty my bank account a little more when I spotted a button for First Direct Live which apparently “Streams live what is being said about us online”.

I thought “Ooh! That’s brave for any brand to do. I’ve got to see this.”

What I encountered was an amazing stab at what I’ll refer to as ‘cloaked transparency’. It was like social media but without any content. It sounded like it was talking but was really just going “mwah mwah mwah mwah” like Charlie Brown’s teacher.

It feels to me like someone sold in a social media strategy based on transparency and then the client got the jitters at the last minute. The quotes that they’ve got up there feel like self-congratulatory corporate tosh. Shame. It was probably a better idea not to have done this at all than do something this hollow.

Do you think it’s OK to just dip your toe in the water when it comes to social media? Tell me your thoughts.

Indestructible hard drive? Yup, I wish I’d had one of those.

A few years ago I bought myself a 250Gb hard drive. Back then, that was REALLY FREAKIN’ BIG. And being a Lacie drive, it looked like it was built like a tank. I filled it with music, films, porn, photos and copies of my work. There was a lot of stuff on there that was pretty special to me that I didn’t have a copy of anywhere else. I stupidly trusted it to last forever. It didn’t.

I plugged it in a few weeks ago and it didn’t work. It made all the right sounds and lit up all the right lights – but it refused to mount on any computer. My heart sank. I was actually quite amazed by the sickening feeling it gave me to know that I couldn’t access those files. They say that the worst thing about a house fire is when you lose your family photos and home movies. That’s kind of how I felt. A similar thing happened to one of my colleagues last month and he was devastated too.

I know there are services out there that recover data from broken hard drives for you. And I’m going to look into that. But I can’t think of anything reasonable that I should have done differently.

I’m just wondering if there’s a better solution than backing up your backup?

New Year’s Resolution

Blog more. Simple as that.

Wouldn’t be difficult, eh?

Sorry folks. I’ll be back in action very soon.

A simple guide to Google’s forthcoming Chrome OS

I’m so looking forward to having this on my netbook. Go, Google, go!

Graphic goodness on the iPhone

In the last couple of weeks I’ve downloaded a couple of iPhone apps that have seriously blown me away. And I thought it might be a good idea to share them.

The first is TiltShiftGen. It automatically creates beautiful TiltShift miniaturisations that look incredible. It doesn’t feel like your usual iPhone app – it feels a lot more professional. The interface is lovely and really easy to use.  And as a poor example of what it can do, here’s a shot of my twitter alterego @ImLondonBridge:

If this is the kind of thing you’d like to play with, you can get it here for a measly 59 pence. And you can see better shots on Nathan’s blog here.

The second app that I’m loving big time is Sketchbook Mobile. It’s an iPhone version of Autodesk’s Sketchbook Pro application and it’s just incredible. It’s got layers, can integrate photography and seems to have the uncanny ability to make you draw better than you can with actual pen and paper. Here’s a 3 minute self portrait I did when I was testing it out:

There’s a free version of this to try out first. But for a paltry £1.79 I recommend upgrading to the full version. You can get it here.

This stuff has excited me because it feels as if the iPhone is moving from just games and simple widgety things to running full-on applications. I’m looking forward to seeing what other wonderful things pop up in the next few months.

Get ready for a brand explosion

Oh dear.

Our British TVs have been kept clear of product placement for years. But that’s all about to change. Broadcasters (except the BBC) are being given the go-ahead to make money out of putting products in shot.

The good news is that it means our broadcasters will be able to raise more money for their programming. The bad news is that some of them are so desperate they’ll probably go overboard in an attempt to bring in the cash. Fortunately I don’t really watch the goggle box very much.

Read more about it here.