Foreign restaurants are an absolute goldmine for bad spelling. Most of us have enjoyed a giggle at the ‘innovative’ dishes that pop up on menus in exotic climes… like the ‘friend eggs and tose’ I had for breakfast in Thailand, for example. Delicious it was too.

In this context, typos are funny, endearing and completely forgivable; they don’t negatively affect your opinion of the restaurant or the quality of the service you expect to receive. But what about when you visit a new business online? If you’ve got no prior knowledge of the company, how do you feel if you open their website and it’s full of spelling mistakes and bad grammar? Bet you’d be more suspicious than I was tucking into my friend eggs… Read more…

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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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 received a text from my 19 year-old cousin the other week. It said, “Thx 4 bday gift gr8 2 cu lol. cu soon xxx.” I nearly disowned him on the spot. How, I thought, can so many grammatical errors be perpetrated in so few words? Of course I replied in three times the number of characters, without so much as substituting ‘and’ for an ampersand. That’ll teach him.

Until now I have viewed ‘text speak’ as a harmless lexicon of youth… so imagine my dismay to discover that LOL, FYI and OMG have made it into the canon of the English language, the Oxford English Dictionary. LMAO. Seems it might be time to reassess.

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At the weekend I got a whole day to myself. No errands to run, no one coming round to see me. It was a rare treat I was determined to make the most of. So what did I do with my time? I got in some online gaming of course.

You see I’m from a generation who have been brought up on a healthy diet of video games. From the illustrious original Nintendo to the not so well known Sega Dreamcast – I’ve played them all. So it comes as no surprise that when I heard about the Gamification of the web and the positive effect it is having for businesses, I had to find out more.

So just what is Gamification?

Gamification is the idea that you can apply the elements that make games fun and engaging to things outside of a game environment… like your standard company or ecommerce website. It’s a technique that is becoming increasingly popular as more and more consumers become addicted to games such as Farmville and enjoy participating in social apps like Foursquare.

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The last time a future King got married I was only seven years old, and to be honest I was probably too busy playing with my X-Wing to care about watching some stupid wedding. However, 750 million people apparently didn’t think it was stupid and tuned in on their TV sets to watch Charles and Diana walk down the aisle.

I’ll be honest with you; this whole marriage of William and Kate isn’t something that I’ll be tuning in to watch on the TV. But having discovered how much effort is going into the social media activity for the wedding, I will be taking a look at how things run on the big day… purely out of professional curiosity.

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Technology. It does not like to stand still does it. In fact it makes me smile that if we grabbed someone from ten years ago and dropped him or her in the middle of the Technology for Marketing & Advertising Expo at Earls Court in London… they would probably think they were at least 100 years in the future.

It’s very easy to walk round here and look at some stands and just say ‘Wow, that’s clever’. It’s also very easy to attend some talks that really get your mind racing with the possibilities for your clients… so it’s probably a good job I’m spending today and tomorrow here then!

Thanks to it being painfully slow to get in, I missed the special keynote presentation from Google. From what I could gather, they are saying mobile phones are the future and they were amazed how many people relied on mobile browsing during the ash cloud crisis of 2010.

Anyway, despite missing that talk, here’s what I did manage to listen in on, on day one.

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Oscar night. I hate Oscar night. Why? Well it reminds me that I failed in my dream of one day becoming a Hollywood filmmaker and attending lavish parties attended by the great and the good of the silver screen… a dream that I know is shared by many people who work in the advertising business.

In fact it’s safe to say that there are creative departments up and down the country that are filled with frustrated movie directors and screenwriters… some (like me) still tinker away writing scripts in their spare time, hoping to one day strike gold… others make that brave leap and become commercial directors in the hope of achieving their dream of directing a movie.

So since it is Oscar night, I thought I’d write a blog that celebrates those in advertising agencies that escaped to better things in the hills of Hollywood and almost ended up picking up that prized golden statue!

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A great movie tagline

I’m not afraid to admit that I’m a big film buff, I’ll hold off on going as far as to call myself a Geek… but let’s put it this way; if you came up against me in a movie quiz I’d quite happily put money against me beating you.

One thing I love just as much as the movies, however, is some of the increasingly clever ways that we are told of a movie’s impending release. From some great copy lines to superb looking adverts to online viral campaigns that play with you; here are a few of my favourite campaigns… feel free to share some of your favourites too!

A simple start… a great line of copy

Before we get into all this new fangled web stuff I thought I would share with you my absolute hands down favourite copy line of any movie poster I have ever seen. Yes, to me it really is that good. And it’s a line of copy that is widely accepted to have contributed to a huge rise in ticket sales for what was essentially a B-movie.

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Back in November I attended the NatMag 100 conference at the Saatchi Gallery in London. One of the many interesting talks on the day was by the Future Foundation, who highlighted a few emerging audiences such as Media Madonnas and Digital Divas… audiences who are becoming increasingly hard to sell to thanks to the way they consume their media… essentially these people are disengaged.

It can’t have failed to escape you that over the last few years more and more consumers are becoming disengaged. Many of them sit at home watching the TV with their Smartphone by their side or their laptop or iPad on their knee surfing the web as they catch up on their favourite soaps! In fact it is common knowledge that as a result of this, these consumers are no longer saying, “persuade me and I’ll buy from you” they are saying, “entertain me and I’ll engage with you”.

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