Sadness. Happiness. Fear. Excitement.

So today I said my farewell to Ogilvy Towers. And – WOW! – I can’t believe how attached I had become to the place. There are some amazingly talented and lovely people there. And I’ll miss them a lot.

I loved the digital leaving card they did for me. So I thought I should share it.

Farewell my Ogilvy friends x

We need your votes

We’ve put the new Additive website up. So you can find out a bit more about what we’re about now.

And first of all, we want to know what you think of the idea we’ve got for a logo. It may be a bit shit – but it’s hard to tell when you’re this close to something.

See please go to the site and vote now.

And tell everyone else to do it too.

Ta x

Gettin’ down on the Diddley Bow

One of my favourite Unchained shops in London is the amazing Duke of Uke. And I’m not the only one. My daughter makes me go in every time we pass. Thanks to them, we’ve got 5 ukeleles in our home. And now this very beautiful three-stringed Diddley Bow.

The picture above is the actual one I’ve got (you can see more about them here). It’s made out of a Romeo Y Julieta cigar box, a couple of old bolts, a door hinge, some tuning pegs and a plank. It’s electric. There are no frets. And you play it with a bottleneck. I love, love, love it!

So when it came to writing the music for my new podcast, this was my instrument of choice. I set up a microphone, started up Garage Band – and this is the result:

>>> Future of Advertising Podcast Theme <<<

Have a listen and tell me what you think.

Future of Advertising Podcast coming soon

At long bloody last! I’ve been wanting to do this podcast for about 5 years. And now it’s finally happening.

On Friday afternoon I recorded my first interview with the legendary Dave Trott. When I started in the industry, he was the guy I wanted to work for. So I was quite taken aback when he actually agreed to see me! I’ve got half an hour’s worth of material that is peppered with absolute gems. So I probably won’t do much editing to it at all.

The topics we covered included:

- the bullshit of branding

- why he doesn’t give a damn about the advertising industry

- alternatives to the classic creative team

- and how to present digital work

All going well, the podcast will also include a review of the latest advertising by a 10 year old and some top tips from an industry expert. I may even give you a taster of the theme music in the next day or two.

Watch this space!

davebirss.com – now with added pollution

I’ve just come across this simple way of getting people to talk about the oil spill again (now that the news is no longer focusing on it for fear of boring the shit out of people with the same story of not enough happening). Click on the above image to see it on this site.

The oil-spill over a webpage execution is not that groundbreaking an idea. But it’s nicely done. And I’m sure it will do a brilliant job of increasing conversation around the topic (although I don’t think that’s actually the intended outcome).

If you want to spill oil over any other webpage, click here.

I want to rant more about this topic – but I’m unable to until I fully leave my current employment. It is making me do a lot of thinking, however, on personal ethics in a business environment. Maybe I’ll blog about it. Later.

Rory does it again

I’ve got to say that I’ve worked with some truly incredible people during my time at Ogilvy. One of the most inspiring of those would be Rory Sutherland. We’re both cursed with minds full of anecdotes and useless trivia – and when the two of us get together, his PA is eventually forced to stop our conversation and drag him off to his next appointment (late).

You may have seen Rory’s first TED talk last year. It was an absolute hit. And the great news is that TED have just released another talk he did a couple of months back. Here it is for your pleasure and delight. Enjoy!

The Kinsale Sharks explained

I was rather hungover today. It really hit me just before I did a presentation to a roomful of clients. But I don’t think any of them noticed. Or, at least, I hope they didn’t.

The reason for last night’s over-consumption of alcohol was that I was in Dublin for the launch of this year’s Kinsale Sharks Awards (there’s an awful picture of me on the front page of their website). They wanted me to talk about the brand new digital awards categories that I helped to develop. And I thought I should maybe explain my thinking behind them on here as well.

The Sharks are global awards, attracting entries from every continent (apart from possibly Antarctica). This is the 48th year of the awards – but the first year they’ve included digital. So I was incredibly flattered when I was asked to help sort out the digital categories. Having been frustrated by digital categories in other awards, I realised this was an opportunity to rethink how they should be structured. And that’s just what I did.

My issue with the majority of digital awards is that they’re structured just like traditional advertising awards – where the categories are divided up according to media type. And, in my experience, that just isn’t the way good digital work happens. The best work has a great engaging idea at its core – and that idea is then expressed across a number of online and offline channels. That doesn’t seem to have been recognised by any awards. Until now, that is.

To make sure we award the best in digital creativity, we’ve split the digital part of the awards into three sections:

Digital Channel

This recognises excellence in the digital media channels that it makes sense to award. Like banners, websites and digital outdoor. But it’s the other two sections that really excite me!

Digital Craft

I don’t think there’s been enough concentration on the crafting of digital work. We want to award outstanding writing, graphic design and interaction design. One of the things that interests me here is that it starts to acknowledge the importance of tech people in producing a great creative product.

Digital Fresh Thinking

This is the category that I’m most excited about. It’s there to recognise true innovation and ground-breaking stuff. In fact, we’ve even created a WTF?! award for work that’s so out there that it doesn’t fit into any of the other categories. In my mind, that’s the most prestigeous award of the lot.

I’m now really looking forward to going over to Kinsale to judge the awards (and earn a few more hangovers) in September. And I’ll be in brilliant company with jury members that include Trevor Beattie, Dan Harrison and Tom Richards (all three of whom I’ve earned previous hangovers with).

If you want to enter the awards, you can find out more on the Sharks site.

Also please tell me what you think about the categories by email or in the comments.

And finally, big thanks to the very lovely Tanya Cawley and Carol Lambert for being nothing short of incredible.

I have an announcement

This little paragraph in the back of Campaign today announces a couple of great things.

First, that OgilvyOne has a fantastic new Head of Digital Creative. Pav is one half of the team (alongside Jamie Romaine) that were responsible for the brilliant Wimbledon Seer app – and lots of other pieces of digital loveliness. He is truly awesome and I wish him every success.

And the second thing is all about me.

Me, me, me, me, me, me, me.

I’ve decided to leave OgilvyOne to concentrate on the things that are really exciting me right now. And we’ve managed to part company on the most amicable terms. I couldn’t be happier!

You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to make a few deductions from the contents of the sporadic entries preceding this one.

- I’ve been VERY busy. Too busy to blog. I’d like to change that.

- I’ve been doing a lot of educational talks recently. And I love them.

- A quick glance to the right hand column also shows that I’ve been doing a lot of my ranting through Twitter instead of here. It’s faster and easier. For you as well as me.

So what am I going to do? Is Campaign right? Am I starting up a digital training business?

Well, ehm, yes.

I was a bit surprised that it’s got out this early before I’ve had a chance to properly make plans! But – it’s true – I want to offer my digital education and inspiration program to other agencies. They’ve been a labour of love. I’ve been putting them together in my evenings because I’ve just not had the time during office hours.

I’ve found that the training has been a great help within Ogilvy. It’s helped to inspire Creatives to come up with great digital ideas. It’s helped us to spot new opportunities. Which means that clients get better work and – more importantly – users get more rewarding, relevant and original experiences. It seems to work because OgilvyOne appear to be my first client!

[Here comes the sales bit] If you’re an agency that wants to find out more about upping your digital skills, drop me a line and put the kettle on.

I’ve also got other plans that I want to pursue. Like writing a book, starting a long overdue podcast, making the web dyslexia-friendly and trying to be the best single dad in Christendom.

I’ve got a few more weeks here at Ogilvy Towers. Hopefully enough time to pack my parachute and be properly prepared.

Wish me luck!

More news coming very soon.

‘kin brilliant or ‘kin awful?

I’ve just seen the announcement of the new Microsoft Kin phones. And I’ve got to say that I’m actually quite impressed. And that’s coming from someone who’s got a reputation as a bit of a Mactard. So I should probably explain myself.

I’ve always found Microsoft’s products to be the worst possible user experiences. They’ve usually felt more obstructive than intuitive – and have caused me to swear a lot more than I’d like to. You might think that’s a typical response from someone with a MacBook and an iPhone – but I also own a PC, often run Windows on my Mac and have been a Windows Mobile user in the past. So I’ve been more than just a casual Windows user.

But this time Microsoft has surprised me. A lot. And in a good way. It feels as if their thinking has started with the user this time. They’re looking at the way connected people are behaving and trying to give them a new way of sharing stuff. A simple way of doing it. An innovative way. And it looks like the user experience will genuinely be quite good.

And I think one of the reasons is because they’ve created the device and the software together. Much like Apple do. And when you do that, you’re going to get an operating system that works well with a processor. Rather than the ridiculous time lag you used to get on most Windows Mobile devices.

Of course, I reserve my judgement for when I actually have a go on one. But for now, well done Microsoft. I hope you roll this way of working across your entire organisation.

If you haven’t seen the phones yet, here’s a quick peek:

How we got to where we’ve got to on the internet

Here’s last week’s OgilvyOne Creative Breakfast. There’s not much practical information in here. Instead it’s a race through time from the earliest known computer right up to some point this afternoon. Most of the images are clickable so you can find out more about the stuff. But I got bored doing that towards the end and started getting a bit more creative with the links. That’s what lack of sleep and a glass of cheap Sauvignon Blanc does to you.

I’m going to try to blog about something properly soon. I’ve got the notes in my moleskine – I just need to find the time to rattle them into this WordPress thing.

ChatRoulette probably isn’t the first media choice for most brands

I love the idea of ChatRoulette. It’s so simple and obvious you’d think someone should have done it years ago. And as much as it’s not somewhere I particularly want to hang out, I love the fact that it exists.

It’s such a seedy corner of the web that I hadn’t even thought of it as an environment for a brand. I guess that’s why I’m so amused to find that French Connection have got involved and are offering a bountee for the first couple to actually hook up from the site (or at least the first ones to admit to it). It fits the edginess of the brand perfectly.

Well done them! I reckon if I tried it with any of my own clients, I’d get fired.

More Creative Breakfasting

Yesterday was the fourth Creative Breakfast for the OgilvyOne creative department. And this time it was on how Social Media can be used in advertising.

Most Social Media talks cover the same old stuff – relationship building, customer service, getting lots of followers, yadda, yadda, yadda. I didn’t want to trot out the same stuff I’ve been seeing for the last couple of years. I didn’t think it would be useful for the department. Instead, I wanted to talk practically about how you can use Social Media for marketing communications. And it was a lot more work than I thought. And deprived me of more sleep than was healthy. Fortunately the next Creative Breakfast is being done by the mightily talented Melanie Oxley-Wilson on the nitty gritty of User Experience. I’m looking forward to drinking coffee, munching miniature pastries and hearing her speak.

Please be aware that everything in this presentation is merely my opinion. But I’d love some feedback. If you think this is a load of misguided crap, please say so. Likewise, if you think it’s the work of a marketing genius. All those who merely think it’s ‘alright’ can keep their mediocre opinions to themselves.

Generating data while I sleep

I’ve got a new favourite iPhone app. It’s called Sleep Cycle and it’s a data junkie’s wet dream of an app.

You set your alarm before you go to bed and place your iPhone beside your pillow. During the night it uses the accelerometer to measure your movements, collecting data on your sleeping pattern. Then it gently wakes you up when you’re in a light stage of sleep.

You can see your sleep patterns for each night on a chart. (That’s how I slept last night at the top of the post.) I’m looking forward to seeing how my pattern changes once I get home and start going to bed sober.

Yawn.

Drinking Guinness and getting opinionated

That’s my weekend. I’m just flying out to Dublin to judge the digital part of the ICAD awards. The ICADs (for those of you not familiar with them) are the Irish equivalent of the D&ADs. They’re an organisation that celebrates and fosters great creative work within Ireland – and I’m really looking forward to seeing what creatives in the Emerald Isle have been up to.

I’m also looking forward to seeing Paul Belford, a fellow international judge, who was so helpful and encouraging when I first tried to pick up work in London nearly 15 years ago.

I’ll probably be tweeting the experience. If I’m not too hungover.

Sláinte!

What are you worth?

Major Players have just released their 2010 Salary Survey. If you want to see if you’re getting what you’re worth, have a peek. Most job functions are covered. Here’s the creative bit:

This week’s OgilvyOne Creative Breakfast

This week’s talk was on banner techniques. There’s lots of examples of great banners in here – and all of the images are clickable to take you to a live version.

If you fancy a gander, help yourself:

Where the internet is right now

A beautiful infographic treat on current web stats. Enjoy!

Infographics get personal

I’ve found myself talking a lot about data visualisation recently. So I’m loving Dan Meyer’s infographics of his personal habits in 2009. It’s amazing how much you can learn about someone from just charts. Very nice.

Titbits from the second Ogilvy Creative Breakfast

Here’s the second half of the top ten trends in digital presentation. And I plan to add something to the blog soon that isn’t a slideshare presentation. I promise!

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.