Copywriting and Art Direction

Next up copywriting and art direction. This module was designed to help us understand which direction we were going to go, skill and job wise. We were asked to design a three poster campaign for a Phillips HD LCD Wide Screen TV, in both visual comminication, and purely copy. Not an easy task. After speaking with various agencies by this point I'd learned that in your book, they like to see the occasional thing that is good but couldn't run, because of political, or social reasons etc. The reason they like to see this is it shows quite how broad and imaginative your mind can go. This is a creative industry afterall. So this in mind I decided to go a little wild, and do something slightly off the usual path. For my visual campaign I depicted a plasma tv where the image was so sharp that it was cutting it's viewers. While my copy campaign described situations where people were getting into unusual and embarrising situations with their tv's because the image was so real. I also designed a second copy based campaign showing sentences that were being cut off because the advert was too narrow, thus needing phillips extra wide 21:9 ratio tvs. All three campaigns went down well, and I was quite happy with the end result. I think I'm still quite definatley an Art Director but I feel like I'm actually starting to get a grasp of strategy.

Strategy

Strategy in advertising is the core element that copywriters deal with, as an aspiring Art Director this isn't really in my field of expertise. But it's something that would be very usefull to learn. We were bombarded with various different products, each of which we were expected to come up with at least 30 Strategys that were useable as Strap lines. Strategey in advertising, like strategey in anything else, is a plan of how you intend to do something. In advertising this is often said within the advert usually as a Strap Line. A Strap Line is a short simple sentence that infers what te product is about. For instance Nike; just do it. Basically saying we've provided you with the gear, no more excuses. Trying to say that in such a concise way, that also attaracts the customer is a difficult skill. A good strategy spawns ideas for adverts, almost out of no where. At the end of this module, I was still not even vaguely good at strategy, but at least I was improving. I fully intend to conquer this beast of a concept.

London Week Trip 1

Yay London again, this time for a week, the extra time was put to good use but the coach there and back was a bit of a drag.

While in London this time we were meant to visit RKCR/Y&R, MC Saatchi's, Dave Trott at CST, and We Are Fallon. Unfortunatley Saatchi's dropped out last minute, which was quite disapointing. However all was not lost.

The first night we were there, we went to see Y&R. This was a great experience, as I was previously unaware of anything they'd done, when they'd actually produced several of my favourite ads including the mouth watering food ads for Marks & Spencers, and fairy tale saga for GHD. Y&R have set a pressident for high visual ads with good use of light and colour. This visit was also good because instead of the usual heres our work lets see yours presentation, we got to have an informal chat with a Junior Creative Team over a couple of beers. It was nice that it was more relaxed, but what was better was that they were still fresh into the company. They had insights based on recent experience on how to get into the industry. They talked to us about book crits, and placements, and both the fun and hardships of being new to the company. It was a very pleasant and useful experience, and the free beers didn't go amiss either.

The next evening we went to see Dave Trott at CST. Dave Trotts well known in the British advertising industry as being both a very skilled copywriter and a no-nonsence boss. We were asked, as all students visiting Dave are, to create an advert for the G-Wiz, a horrible little electric car with practically no benefits. Dave always gets people to work on this for several reasons; 1st being it has no previous advertising on it so theres nothing to be influenced by. Secondly he's already heard everthing about the car so he won't be surprised; and finally it lack of redeeming features forces students to really dig deep into research to find anything. It's nigh on impossible to come up with a right answer. My work was nothing to be proud of, but I'll describe it anyway. I found out through research that cars in London produce enough fumes every year to cover the entire city with a solid layer a foot thick. I also descovered that G-wiz don't advertise to help keep the cars costs down. So as a result i desined a web banner (one of the cheapest forms of advertisement, as you only get charge if someone clicks on it). In the banner was a load of churning smoke escaping slighty from the box. Anytime you'd run the curser over the banner it would turn into a g-wiz and would clear a path through the smogg. once your curser had left the banner it would clear itself up reveal a line that said "London produces enough fumes every year to bury the entire city in 12 inches of ash. Help Clean up YOUR City. G-Wiz" if you clicked anywhere in the banner or escaping smogg it would redirect you to there home sight. It wasn't my best work, and Dave didn't think that many people were that botherd.

However Daves aim was to teach us a few things about copy, strategy and ads in general; aswells as get us to realise how much competion there was in the industry so we'd have to work hard, not just at our work but at selling ourselves and standing out in the crowd. He also drilled home the nesecity for persuasion in a ad, something that is often forgotton.

Though he comes over as quite intimidating and in your face, to the point I actually considered planting him on his arse, he was actually very inspirring and taught me alot about creating adverts and writing stategy. It was better at the end when he revealed his true colours and had a chat with us. His talk lasted 6 hours finishing at midnight, but I'd happily sit through it again.

On the wednesday we went to Fallon. We were asked to design an advertisment campaign for Innocent Smoothies. In the proposition we were asked to push the healthy aspect of it, and that if you feel even a little heathier, you act healthier and more positively. I designed a series of tv ads depicting people in depressing stituations, having just missed the bus, getting caught in the rain, etc. however instead of getting down through the situation, the people drank some smoothie and took on a positive and slightly innocent attitudes. The man in the rain went puddle jumping and the man who'd missed the bus skipped to work Michael Macintyre style. The adverts were accompnied bythe Strap line " Take a Innocent outlook". The ads didn't go down too well, as they thought it was too much of a leap that innocent would make that much differently. Though these ads wern't my best work I disagree with that point, as I as an adult have done those kinda things anyway. Also many ads in the past have had unbelievable reactions to a product, for example Weetabix. I kind of felt let down by the critique, as it wasn't very useful in improving my work, but you can't win them all.