So here we are, three months in to my placement at an advertising agency, and Red C has had me unleashed upon them without the safety net of my predecessor Anna Chan around to guide me. Though whilst I’m holding my breath and wishing myself luck, I think I’m going to be alright.

Here’s why:

1. The people I’m working with are ace. They are funny, clever and helpful

2. Holiday treats, birthday treats, leaving treats…there’s always some kind of sweet treat on offer, not to mention the decent coffee. Suddenly 7am starts don’t seem so bad

3. It’s a bit of a cliché but I can honestly say I’m learning something new thing every day

I remember when I first started searching for a placement last year and thinking that just getting one was what counted. Now I realise actually just how important getting the right one was. And I certainly found that at Red C.

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I’ve recently been tasked with giving a talk about ‘Creativity’ which has been a tougher gig than I first thought it would be… it’s a pretty broad subject to distill into a thirty minute talk.

The subject of the talk and what ‘creative angle’ I will take has sat in my head for a few weeks now and has basically led to the writing of this blog piece. Mainly because it has allowed me the chance to collect together some of my favourite stories about creativity… stories which a few people have encouraged me to share via the Red C blog.

So here are a few of them!

The Brian Eno and Back to the Future story!

Sometimes, to get to the right solution, you just need to start again.

Unfortunately in this business, starting again usually happens the night before a big pitch or presentation.. so it’s pretty tough to get everyone on-side and convince them that going back to the beginning will deliver a better end result!

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Clients to keep happy, prospects to pitch to, ideas to generate. It’s pretty much work, work, work all day, every day here at Red C.

We work round the clock, against the clock…and quite often in fear of the clock. With another deadline always looming it sometimes seems like we never stop!

Which of course we don’t. Ours is a fast-paced industry that throws us a new challenge almost every day – and that’s why we love it.

When the going gets tough we work twice as hard, sustaining ourselves with strong coffee, short lunches and plenty of biscuits. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

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With a background in design, later followed by psychology, my decision to explore advertising surfaced with the desire for creativity and a keen interest in human behaviour. So after hours of people watching and doodling I thought I’d study the subject in more depth, and went back to Uni to do a psychology of advertising MSc.

Psychology of advertising explores the many aspects associated with how ads are designed and executed, in order to effectively influence consumer buying behaviour. This might include various cognitive functions such as attention, perception and memory, as well as cultural and behavioural factors that drive our decision-making processes.

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I recently gave a talk on behalf of GBM as part of their Video Solutions day at Vison+Media at MediaCity. Since the talk I have had several people request some of the case studies I showed, so I thought I would collect as much as I could from that talk into a blog article.

A few years ago we took a major decision at Red C to push our digital video offering, this came about after we read an article in Campaign Magazine, which highlighted that the agency that could successfully deliver low cost video solutions to clients would have a larger share of the future. Which is true when you consider all the places now where clients can use video, from video adverts on the internet to video embedded in magazines on iPads to narrowcasting in Petrol Stations and Taxis… and of course video on YouTube and Vimeo.

Rather than highlight our own work; at the talk I highlighted several video case studies that over the years have impressed me. Together with the videos, I highlighted the responses the videos have received as well as reasons why I think they have been so successful… so here they are:

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When I was a kid growing up in Bradford I had one very memorable trip home from school that involved walking right through the middle of a riot. You see, some dude called Salman Rushdie had put pen to paper and written something called the Satanic Verses… and quite a few people were very unhappy that it was being sold in our city (which has a high Muslim population), so unhappy in fact that they decided to smash up the centre of Bradford.

History is littered with groups of people turning to violence, or drastic action, to both highlight their anger at something or demand change within society. From the Suffragettes burning their bras to the student protests in the US against the Vietnam War to more recent G20 protests around the world.

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I’ve just returned from a truly memorable holiday to Barcelona.  Even before I left I had anticipated that I was going to love this city as it’s very much famous for two of my three passions; football and food.  However, I was overwhelmed as not only did Barcelona quell these passions but it also managed to quell another – my love of brilliant marketing.

The landmark I was most excited about seeing was Mercat La Boqueria and it was here that I witnessed some truly outstanding marketing.  For those of you that don’t know La Boqueria is a food market located on Barcelona’s most famous street, La Ramblas.  La Boqueria has experienced several changes since it first opened its doors in 1217 and I’m sure it will continue to evolve, but I’m equally sure it’s marketing principles will not.

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Unless you have been living in a dark room with no access to any type of media, social networks or office gossip you’ll probably be aware of the recent super injunction scandal concerning a certain footballer’s indiscretions.

In early April, a story about serial WAG, Imogen Thomas’ six-month affair with a footballer famous for his ‘family-man’ image was leaked via Twitter. Ordinarily a story about yet another footballer having yet another affair with a glamour model would barely raise an eyebrow, so why did this one cause such a stir?

Because the footballer in question had a taken out a super injunction – the highest level of legal gagging order – to ensure Ms Thomas kept her mouth shut and his identity was kept well and truly out of the public domain. This led to a bizarre situation where the national press were legally prohibited from printing the player’s name but social media networks buzzed with speculation. Within days a Twitter user had revealed all: the mystery man was none other than ‘squeaky-clean’ Manchester United star, Ryan Giggs.

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This year is the 25^th anniversary of a very significant event for me, an event that has led directly to me being here today.

In 1986, as a young direct marketer working for home shopping giant GUS, I was lucky enough to attend the Montreux Symposium, on the Lake Geneva shoreline (as Deep Purple put it).  At the time, the week-long Symposium was the biggest event in Europe for the direct marketing industry, and attracted some major speakers.  But for me, the single most significant session, one that profoundly affected my approach to direct marketing, was a ground-breaking live demonstration and seminar by Professor Siegfried Vogele, founder of the Institute of Direct Marketing in Munich that is now owned by Deutsche Post.

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The use of eye tracking in the research environment is growing significantly as a result of major advances in the sophistication, power and ease of use of the technology, according to Tommy Strandvall, the Global Training Manager for Tobii Technology at the Tobii Eye Track UX Conference held in London on the 9^th and 10^th of June.  Certainly, there was a real buzz about the conference on the day that my colleague Rosemary and I attended as speakers to deliver a session on findings from a major email eye tracking study that Red C is undertaking in 2011.

In fact, Tommy set a very high bar with his own presentation at the opening of the second day of the conference, with some remarkable live demonstrations of beta technologies, including a much-anticipated Tobii set-up to eye track mobile devices such as smartphones and iPads.  We enjoyed a live demonstration of Tobii Glasses, a lightweight eye tracker capturing data on a device not much bigger than a smartphone.

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