'Man' is now called 'It'

Have we gone too PC? Manchester to be called Personchester, or the Isle of Man becoming Isle of People!?!


What is the world coming to? The images rights for Man CIty and Man United would go down the pan! Ironman would have no place, Mansfield, mandatory? Man handle, manner, mannequin? 


What about sheep then? sheet, sheen, shelf? Where would we be? 

Should white and black be banned too? Is sun burnt being racist? 


It’s farcical and it’s annoying me.

Never Full

I couldn’t believe the cheek of ‘the SouthWest Train spokesman’ in TheLondonPaper yesterday. The article states that London’s trains have the most standing up people on any journey route. The spokesman said if they didn’t want to stand...’Then they could get another soon’..!


I travel to work at the time I have to travel, I choose to stand on the train as I would be late otherwise. I could go 20 minutes earlier, but get to work 40 minutes too early and there isn’t another train that leaves my station that I could get!

Tesco Ads

“Our ad, at last! It went out on the 14th August, but I lost the paper and then went on holiday, it has reappeared and now here it is... ‘As cheap as microchips’!

It’s a glorious advert. More glamourous than our National Express one, ‘Heads north. Tails south’. Hopefully more to follow.”
I wrote that yesterday in preparation for today, however, we have made a discovery. We have another! and it was last friday, fortunately the paper got delivered at home while I was on my holiday and I noticed that “Powering Down Prices”, another corker in the 1 liner department had been aired! I can’t moan though, as much as they are full of puns, they are keeping us ticking over and we are having a good laugh about it. Tesco, so we’ve been told, are at times very difficult to write.

Hopefully more to follow, we got 3 lines for 1 through and a proper Tesco half white half blue background accepted today, and a DVD title advert coming out in September. 

Half assed work

I’ve decided if you want anything doing in August, it’s a bad idea, holiday season ruins agencies, last week i was off with a fair few people, and even more seem to be off this week. I reckon if the companies knew only half the staff were working on a brief and not all the usual suspects, they should be entitled to some kind of refund, yes I know that sounds a bad idea, but if you wanted Juan Cabral to work with your company, and he happened to be away that week and you got Jimbob instead, what would you think? Not that anyone at Fallon is rubbish to be fair but he’s an easy rememberable name.


Holiday

I've been away a week and it’s still here, no banning from Blogger just yet!


I’m not even sure what to say 

almost so I might as well recap the highlights of last week.


I noticed many strange things last week, including a toilet at the entrance to our road we were staying on. But my favourite odd thing last week was the local adverts. On a budget but brilliantly thought up. The funniest one was outside a pub. 1 side said come in to this lovely pub, the other said Steep hill? Thirsty? That is playing to your strengths. This hill which I waked up 3 or 4 times in the week to get to our cottage took about 15 minutes to walk up and was difficult for a car to drive up, never mind a person without breaking sweat. Sadly though, this advert didn’t work on me. partly because the pub itself looked run down and pokey! 

The second great thing I did last week was going to a little village called Beer, where they have the Beer Social Club, the Beer Luggers Club and Beer Head, the caravan park. So many jokes could be pulled on that little village, it could even get sponsored by Heineken or something.

Oh and finally, heres a red squirrel, thankfully not to scale.

Cup doodles

I the creative young spark/nutter I am had a plan. The early morning cup of tea is made and drunk out of paper cup. Why don’t I turn that into a daily piece of art? So far I have 3 cups and 3 drawings. I will document my progress via my flickr site, but will have the occasional update on here. Oddly, I really look forward to my tea even more now. 

Newspaper Art

Today I have a new idea, cut sections out of the paper to reveal something behind them. I don’t know where it came from or why I thought of it today, but it just came to me and I think I’m going to see how this goes. It does help that I get 2 or 3 free papers a day so there is plenty of opportunity to attempt this new fangled idea.

Today’s attempt resulted in a great section about Boris Becker getting married to a girl that looks strangely familiar to his previous girlfriends, however I had to have a second glance, because it appeared that his 3rd girlfriend looks a lot like Robert Mugabe! Ah the fun things papers stir up!

Also I happened to cut out a section of the paper to reveal and rather interesting image of George W. Bush, then looked at the article I had removed and the image next it it and came out with a nice collage. It keeps me entertained anyway!


G-wiz that's fast

So ok, to beat the congestion charge and to still be in a car, the G-wiz is the way forward. It does about 40 miles then runs out of electric, and it’s top speed is about 20mph, but if you feel like a speed demon, why not customise it to feel like the next Lewis Hamiton. Racing stripes it is! although they are only number 2...does that mean there is more of these around?


Elves and Welshmen

Our first big critique of work on friday went well. The unnamed company has TRBR 5 out of 7 teams working on it and this brainstorming session was a great way to throw things around. This is how you get work done. Mark and Gemma started us off with a few things, then Chris and I threw a few in he mixer which when down well. Paul and Mark then said things we discarded, but annoyingly they went down well! Followed by Dan and Andy who, wish we’d tried this trick, threw down every idea, including one with an annoying woman I’ve forgotten the name of. Again they pulled stuff up which we left out, only for that to be liked more! 

I felt a bit peeved afterwards, we thinned down our ideas and it didn’t pay off. I think in future every time we think of using Jade Goody or elves and welshman we’ll present them all! I don’t mind being laughed at, if we get hired on the crazy and stupid ideas factor I don’t care. There is a lot at stake and we have to pull out every idea and treat it like a winner.

(P.S. thats exactly what we did today and 2 ideas went to client...score!)

It's Terminal (5)


TheLondonPaper has a sponsored page for BA’s Heathrow Terminal 5 in it today. It’s rather amusing the facts they print. 
i) On Monday 89% of all arrivals were on time. 
ii) On Tuesday at T5, the average time through check-in was 8.5 minutes.
iii) On Wednesday at T5, 90% of flights left on time.
iv) On Thursday at T5, the average time through check-in was 9 minutes.

This looks on paper not bad for a terminal trying to rebuild its reputation after a disastrous first few weeks. However the small print is brilliant. 

real i) 89% refers to the number of flights arriving between 6am and 2pm within 15minutes of their scheduled time.
- 15 minutes late you mean? and why up until 2pm, did it suddenly go horribly wrong?

real ii) 8.5 minutes was the average time the 854 customers we asked told us it took them to pass through check-in yesterday between 6am and 2pm
erm this paper was published on friday, yesterday was thursday and it is under Tuesday’s facts? Why?

real iii) 90% refers to he flights departing between 6am and 2pm in the airline industry, ‘on time’ means departing within 15 minutes of the scheduled time

real iv) 9 minutes was the average time the 780 customers we asked told us it took them to pass through check-inyesterday between 6am and 2pm
another erm, so they asked 74 less people and the average time went up! And to point out yesterday was mentioned again...thats odd, same day 2 different numbers.

BA paid for a full page ad to contradict themselves fairly often, and the rest is rather amusing, 6 accounts of how they have found T5. Surprisingly, no one had a bad word to say about the terminal, well I couldn’t honestly see them paying for an ad that did would you?

The advertorial feature signs off with a class line. Terminal 5 is working. Try it for yourself...  erm I’ll pass.

Thought for the day:

If we all held our breath for 30 seconds could we stem the flow of exhaling carbon emissions or would all the trees die from the over supply of CO2 created when we breathe out?

Water water everywhere

Water water everywhere and overpriced at best, I hate being mean, but train stations do love to fleece you for your money when you are in need. Being 20 minutes early for my train and needing a drink, I went to 4 shops to see how much a basic bottle of water would be. WH Smiths, Whistlestop, Boots and M&S were all wanting me to pay for a 500ml bottle in excessive of £1.30! and I know thats just because it is a train station. The worst thing was coke was cheaper than water, how is that possible? global warming makes more water surely! I however decided 750ml of lucozade was a better deal and thus my needless rant at water, and yes the Lucozade tastes so much nicer.

James Bond Oyster Weapon

In TheLondonPaper this evening, which is normally really bad or regurgitating news from the drivel of the free Metro in the morning, I came across this great idea. Removing your oyster card chip from its casing and attaching it to your watch! I thought this was a really cool thing, but as it turns out, it has a problem, ‘you must be able to produce a valid ticket or oyster card for your journey’, erm yeah, it’s in my watch, honest! Otherwise the swipe in and out using your wrist should take off and be a great adaptation to something that is proving to be a good idea in the first place.

PayPal

I got an email off PayPal today. It’s changing...it’s always changing, a new top up debit card, probably for the rich kids getting lots of monthly allowance and not wanting to carry the cash. But I was particularly delighted by the name on the fake card, take a bow Mr. TROY MUNNS! Haha delightful.

The power of websites

we’ve had our url wearecrap for about 6 months now, partly because it was great for an online portfolio, but also it was part of our final major project (FMP). This website, if you haven’t looked already has lots of our face plastered all over it. It has just got us an open offer of placement at VCCP on the back of it but today while sat in reception at TRBR, the team we were meant to meet at VCCP but left before we turned up, walked through the doors and dropped their portfolio off in search of their next job. SImon turned round and said, ‘hey are you guys CRAP?’ and we were amazed that we had been recognised by the people we were due to meet. The simple fact they had already seen us online meant we had a great conversation about why we didn’t see them.

Hope they get a job soon, they were cool, and if your reading this, which I doubt, get in touch. Remember the power of the web.

Kylie concert at the O2

Yes yes I know, I went, and enjoyed it (with my girlfriend). Though it was good and she can really belt them out when she wants too, I was taken back by the lighting and video that accompanied every song. I would like to meet the people that produced that show. Every song had a different theme, some were very clever others were busy but the uniqueness brought a new dimension to a concert I thought was going to be good anyway!

Abusive toilets

Apparently Chris doesn’t like them...I asked him why and the best answer was i don’t like being ‘schat on’. I blame the never ending wandering hand that comes under the cubicle side, or the fact in TRBR they have an air-freshener called ‘Rent-to-kill’ (actually Rentokil but still). The way I really don’t want to be killed off is by the air-freshener in the toilets!

Hamster Wheel

New technology has come along way and I’ve just been set a brief to create a product that has corporate social responsibility tagged onto it. While thinking this one through, why can’t gyms be power stations? It’s only like your hamster actually doing something useful while spinning in his wheel.