A very talented retoucher by the name of Dan Watkins introduced me to TED last year and ever since I have been a massive fan. Over the weekend I got a chance to catch up on my TEDGlobal 2010 viewing. The highlight so far has to be this talk from British author Matt Ridley entitled ‘When ideas have sex’.

In the talk Matt Ridley shows how, throughout history, the engine of human progress has been the meeting and mating of ideas to make new ideas. It’s not important how clever individuals are, he says; what really matters is how smart the collective brain is.

Click the ‘read more’ button below to watch his talk.

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Our client Swinton has over a million customers for which they have an email address and we had been working with them for a few months on some of their product focused emails.  We knew that there was much more they could be doing with email marketing and wanted to push the boundaries for them.  Our triggered email activity was first discussed in January when we received a nice timely email from Pizza Express offering BOGOF on all pizzas to celebrate the fact that the snow was finally melting and people were now able to get out to eat again. This triggered our own thoughts – “Wouldn’t it be great if our Swinton emails could be a bit more timely and relevant and well…. interesting really!”

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At the beginning of every year marketing experts begin to predict what they think will be the next big thing in marketing and advertising. In the past we have had the year of the mobile, the year of Twitter and the year of Social Marketing. Yet in 2011 in the UK, it could be that it’s not something new and technologically advanced that is the next big thing but something tried and trusted… the VAT-free direct mail pack.

Thanks to George Osborne’s planned rise in VAT on 4th January from 17.5% to 20%; it could be that the marketing departments for financial services clients turn to the good old VAT-free pack to help stretch their budget further.

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The great Johan Cruyff

Johan Cruyff was the most famous exponent of the football philosophy known as ‘Total Football’, which is the theory that any outfield player can take over the role of any other player in the team, save the goalkeeper. It’s safe to say then that this evening, Red C’s Copywriter, Stuart Clark, gave Account Handling a right damn good lecture in the art of ‘Total Football’… meaning that Creative emerged yet again victorious against the ‘Suits’.

Yet it certainly was by no means a one man show as Red C’s two new Creative hirings proved themselves very handy on the football pitch. Andrew Campbell produced a display worthy of the great Lionel Messi as he dodged, chipped, turned and danced his way through the Account Handling midfield. And Junior Designer, Dean Spicer, let loose a few deadly shots and produced a string of fine saves.

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I’ll be honest with you. I don’t usually spend much time looking round for new artists or unusual pieces of artwork. However last year I came across the artist Emma Hack, and instantly fell in love her work.

She uses body art on human bodies and blends them into detailed backgrounds to create intricate and fascinating photographs. Through a lot of dedication and hard work her career has developed from children’s face painting to makeup artist to a body illustrator.

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We love books at Red C. And we especially love books that contain great advertising case studies, just like ‘Advertising Works 18′, which features a case study on our award-winning work for the Swinton Mystery Tipper.

‘Advertising Works 18′ shows how marketing communications has helped organisations including UKTV, Swinton Group and Halifax, to translate big ideas into impressive results on small budgets. So it’s perfect for anyone wanting to produce effective campaigns or drive their business to greater success.

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You know when you were little and you went to your Grandparent’s house and listened for hours about what life was like, ‘in their day’? They used tin baths, outside loos and they didn’t have a telly. It sounded alien, especially the telly bit. I used to spend hours wondering just what they did to fill their time. Well, I suppose families were bigger back then.

It never occurred to me that stories I tell to my kids would make me appear just as archaic. I’m only 35, but it’s happened already. I was telling my 6 year old the story about how we didn’t have a telephone in our house when we were growing up. There was a phone booth at the end of the street that took 2 pence pieces and I used to organise my teenage social life from there. It would ring out and either be picked up by me at a pre-arranged time or by a local kid playing out. If it was the latter there would be a knock at the door of number 7, where I lived or a shout up at my bedroom window, “Helen, someone’s rung for you, it’s Louise.” I would put my shoes on and run down to the phone and spend hours racking up Louise’s Dad’s telephone bill.

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The history of football is littered with bruising encounters… AC Milan v Internazionale, Ayax v Feyenoord, Bradford v Leeds and now Creative v Account Handling. Despite the incidents on the pitch, though, it was Creative who walked off victorious yet again, having shot 15 glorious goals past their suited counterparts.

The game started off at a blistering pace and it was obvious from the kick-off that Account Handling were going for the jugular, and it was indeed the suited ones who drew first blood with an early goal that rocked Creative… who again were wearing their all black strip… but like footballing Ninjas we hustled, tackled and fired ourselves into a 6-2 lead.

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When Julian asked me to give Gary Numan a call about some illustrations, I was unimpressed. Partly because I’m often the butt of the practical jokes round here, and partly because I’m more of an Ultravox man myself.  So it was with some apprehension that I went back to my desk to make the call. As I dialled I decided I’d play it safe: skip the musical chit-chat and get straight down to business, which turned out to be a wise move when illustrator Gary Newman – and not the King of synthpop – answered the phone.

A pioneer of doom-laden electronic music he may not be, but Gary Newman is one of the UK’s top illustrators. His signature style is zesty, hedonistic, jet-setting. Just the kind of thing we were looking for to add some wow-factor to a “WIN YOUR DREAM HOLIDAY” DM pack.

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Red C’s Mystery Tipper campaign for Swinton’s Taxi Division has been selected as one of the finalists for the overall Diamond Award, at this year’s IDM Business Performance Awards.

The IDM Diamond Award is the most coveted prize in direct marketing. It celebrates the long-term contribution direct marketing can make to the success of a business. So it’s fair to say we’re pretty chuffed to be nominated. Read more…