We didn’t get the pitch for the Youth Trust we were going for last week which was pretty gutting for the whole team as it was a lovely project and we’d done some really great work. The client handled it really well and said it was one of those horrible calls where she only had positive things to say, which she knew wasn’t any consolation.
Hey we made it down to the last two from six and it was really close. Well done team and we will learn lessons for our next one.
Good day today.
I have got everything ready for the Board meeting, which is planned to take place virtually with Clive in China after the Youth pitch tomorrow morning.
Really pleased with the effort put in for tomorrows pitch. I think the creative is amazing, especially given the timeframes and Andy has been a huge help here, although he has been able to build on the great work already done by the team.
It’s always a nice feeling when you have a presentation you are looking forward to giving
8am and the buzzer went, which is most unusual at Global Beach as they are not the earliest risers! It was, of course, our new Creative Director Andy Paterson-Jones whose arrival I have been eagerly awaiting for a couple of weeks.
Andy has already been helping us on a number of projects we have been working on and we have a pretty full on week this week. We have a second meeting with a Youth Charity here on Wednesday morning which requires quite a bit of Andy and my time but that will be time we enjoy giving as it is a really interesting project it would be fantastic to win.
Off to Crewe again on Thursday to start a planning process for the year with Bentley and then we have an introduction meeting on Friday with Juliet from AAR whom I know from previous agency life, as well as a number of new business opportunity meetings.
It will soon be Friday before I know it…
As you may have read I am in the process of finalising the new business plan and vision for the agency. The Chairman sent me a clipping with a quote from the Bentley Chairman over the weekend. It read “We have to deliver what our customers are looking for and not create technologies which are then searching for customers that want them”. Not a bad mission statement for all of us…
I have been head down on a new project for Bentley which we are presenting today. And like the last time I added a post on here what a beautiful sunny day for a presentation in the countryside!
As well as this I have been working on our new business plan and more recently our mission statement. I have had a habit of using that old movie line ‘if you build it they will come’ in many of my internet ramblings over the years and I tried it again yesterday only to have Stuart rightly cross it out.
The world has, of course, moved on since I last ran an agency. It is now much more about developing an idea and then working within all of the different channels where people will interact with that idea. Viral, social, online, mobile etc. I am slowly starting to distil this into a mission statement we can be proud of and hang our virtual hats on.
So without further ado, a first airing…
Intelligent Interaction
We help our clients manage their brands in a digital world
Consumers now have many ways of interacting with a brand. Knowing how to retain an influence over this interaction is where we come in…
Answers on a postblog please
‘ve had my iPhone for just over a week now (I know, with the imminent release of iPhone 3.0 I haven’t exactly been an early-adopter on this one) and I’ve figured out why it’s been such a success.
It’s not because it’s sexy and shiny and plays music and lets you watch YouTube and play great games and read blogs and twitter.
It’s not because the touch screen keyboard is pretty good and the accelerometers mean it automatically rotates the screen when you turn it over.
It’s not because the location services and built-in GPS mean it knows where you are and can do cool things with maps and friend/restaurant locators.
It’s definitely not because of the quality of the camera or the life of the battery or the slightly flaky exchange server push mail integration.
Nope, it’s more fundamental than that.
Using the iPhone is relaxing. Seriously. The gestures, the screen transitions, the responsiveness all combine to make a calming user experience. No other mobile device manages to achieve this: The Blackberry is a tense fiddle of scroll wheels or mini track-ball followed by cramped two-thumb typing, all Windows Mobile devices I’ve used are sluggish and require almost pin-point accuracy with a small stick and every Nokia, Motorola or Sony Ericcson I’ve ever used has had a counter-intuitive interface a predictive text system that has made me want to smash it against the nearest solid object.
Just about the only thing that’s frustrated me about the iPhone in the last week has been level 64 on Blocked.
Ad spend is shifting at an alarming pace, catching out most that are intimately involved in the industry (ITV is a good example of this). Brands need to be much more willing to get ahead of the curve rather than be left behind. They need to address head on the changes that they need to confront in terms of how consumers consume media and consequently how brands can influence them.
If brands are to truly get ahead of the game, they need to embrace a step change that will require top down direction and ownership starting from the very top of the organisation. Every CEO must recognize that part of this step change will necessitate new blood and new thinking across the management team, and the first candidates to go will be very easy to spot. The real challenge will be whether the board has the stomach to make such dramatic change, or instead hope that things will get better of their own accord.
There are many good and recent examples of where traditional businesses have adapted to this brave new world and many examples of where established brands (regardless of whether they are tech or traditional) have been pushed aside. I am sure you will find a few of both in the broadcast, technology, gaming and travel sectors without trying too hard.
With the reality that we are experiencing oversupply across most sectors, dwindling finance options, combined with a smaller and more cautious consumer base looking for best value – brands must be willing to adapt or get swept away.
Having implemented a range of dramatic changes to the management team and structure of Global Beach, I do recognize that such change brings with it a new and perhaps even scarier set of problems, and that having swept away the past there is nothing left to hide behind but the results of your future efforts.
7:30am on a beautiful chilly, but sunny, Spring morning in London and I’m at my desk with a big smile on my face. That smile has been there pretty much every day, with a few exceptions, since returning to agency life. I bloody love it and I’d forgotten how much I do love it.
My Nano is plugged into one of our clients, Bowers and Wilkins, fantastic Zeppelin Ipod Speaker systems . For those of you who are like me and only know Bowers & Wilkins because of the Zeppelin they are an amazing British company making some fantastically innovative audio equipment. Check out their new surround sound Panorama system that we have launched on the website today.
I have always loved starting work at this time of the morning. The phones don’t ring and the office is quiet allowing me to get my thoughts together for the day ahead as the staff start to drift in for our 9am start. This morning I have a new business catch up with one of my closest friends who is helping us build our pipeline. This has been sorely neglected and is one of my highest priorities. With the reputation and experience Global Beach have we should be appearing on many more companies radars when they are looking for a digital agency.
I then have a kickoff meeting for a new Bentley project. Bentley!!! I still keep pinching myself. I may only drive a people carrier but I definitely got goose bumps when the cab taking me from Crewe station pulled up outside the gates at Bentley. I was made to feel very welcome and the whole experience took me back to the days when I ran the Waitrose accountat my old agency. Being in the canteen with all the workers sitting down to lunch around us was a real sense of déjà vu.
After that I have a catch up with Clive to discuss how I am getting on against my 7, 30 and 90 day plan (Pretty good I think but you can always do better). One of the discussion points is going to be personnel and what skill sets I think we require to be the strategic and creative agency I want us to be. Having worked in this industry since 1996 I already have my feelers out amongst old contacts and the first post I am looking to fill is Creative Director. On that more next time…..
Then Lara and I are heading over to Kings Cross to firstly discuss a new project we are about to launch for Terrance Higgins Trust and then one of my favourite things, presenting new designs for a brand new project for the same client.
Being that I live in Bethnal Green I will probably G-Wizz it home from Kings Cross and work on the Business Plan I am writing before finishing the day with a call to Matt Passey in our Los Angeles office to discuss ways we can help each other.
Not bad for a days work and I might even find time for a bit of twittering and Facebook catch-up, despite Lara’s scepticism. Like Lara I may not want to know about my mates dissolving earwax but that’s my choice. The beauty of mediums like Twitter is you choose what it is you are interested in, not the other way around.
Yesterday was Red Nose Day and people all over the country were doing unusual things for charity. Some were cringe-worthy, some really weren’t very funny and some were just bizarre.
There was one that really made me laugh though, and that was Peter Serafinowicz‘ twitter vegetable pop star pun war. The idea is simple, think of a vegetable pop star combination, say ‘Tina Turnip’, donate £2 to comic relief and tweet your pop star to @serafinowicz. A great idea, nearly £5k raised for comic relief and something that just wouldn’t have been possible without Twitter.
As I trawled through the weekend newspapers in the search for anything other than recession doom and gloom, the debate on bankers’ bonuses or frivolous Valentines reunion stories, it became evident that in almost every newspaper or publication I read, there was at least one story on Twitter. Intrigued by the apparent fascination this weekend about the service, I couldn’t help but obsess over wanting to read more to find out whether I was missing something.
I was stunned to read in the FT that Twitter rejected a takeover by Facebook valued at up to $500m, even though there is no revenue generation model from the service… Now correct me if I am wrong, but it seems almost obscene to place so much value on something that has failed to introduce ways to make money from it yet.
I then went on to discover The Twitterati (OMG – there’s a name for so-called elite users) column in the Sunday Times Style magazine. I was horrified to read that someone had actually broadcast the birth of a child to the whole world using Twitter!
And then came the endorsement from India Knight (Sunday Times columnist) that she is retracting her initial thoughts about the service – “saying it was needy and megalomaniacal and plain weird for any sane person to spend the day posting random thoughts onto a public site”, to now class it as “amazing”. Amazing because of 3 things -
1. finding out people are funny
2. apparently it can be a great resource and
3. you feel connected
Embarrassed by the fact that I work in a Digital Agency and I had not experienced the Twitter phenomenon (and also having soaked up all this recent information), I immediately signed up to Twitter and selected a few friends to follow. Having broadcast my first thought “Crofty00 just sold her soul to the devil and signed up to Twitter” it was swiftly responded to by my ex-housemate – “you’ll be bored of it in 10 mins! :)”. How right he was… has the world slowly become obsessed with what everyone else is doing every moment of the day? At what point will we make the realisation that focusing on our own lives may provide a real benefit, rather than preoccupying our interest with others?
I don’t really see any personal benefit in Twitter, I don’t want to know when my mate “is listening to the weird bubbly sound of earwax dissolving inside his ear” or “totally lost for words and feels drained”. Can that sort of thing not be discussed in the pub, or are we now evolving into a world where the majority of our social communication is done solely through the realms of the virtual world…. known as Twitter. And will there be any real financial benefits in the future?
