My first ever book is coming out soon. Just to hear that sentence makes me smile because I still can’t quite believe it. It’s a children’s book and I was inspired to write it when our son was struggling so much with his reading. At night he would get cross and hide the books we were reading the night before or simply refuse to read. As a copywriter and avid reader myself, this was worrying me. I knew there had to be a way to engage him with stories and stop him feeling so anxious. So, I took it upon myself to write a story he would like to read.

A different approach was needed

After speaking to his teacher we discovered he has a mild form of dyslexia. Which is why the big pages of text in books like Harry Potter and Mr Gum, the sorts of books his peers were reading, were just too much for him. I spoke to an Educational Psychologist about it and she explained it’s because the pages are too text heavy, making it too difficult for him to read. It needs to be broken down a bit… which gave me my idea!

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Not so long ago O2 had a catastrophe on their hands. Their network crashed, leaving hundreds of thousands of O2 customers unable to use their mobile phones.

Customers were outraged, and they took to Twitter to tell O2 exactly how they felt. As you can imagine, it wasn’t pretty. Insults were thrown and expletives were used, and this went on for two days before the network was fully up and running again.

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Recently I had a quite splendid weekend. Not only did I spend most of it in my comfy pants, but I spent it watching hour after hour of simply amazing sporting action. The Cricket World Cup, Arsenal v Chelsea, Manchester United v Spurs (my team) and the 39th Ryder Cup… I was literally in my element! My Mrs wasn’t overjoyed but Strictly Come Dancing is back on very shortly, so she will undoubtedly have her revenge!

What makes sports so blooming marvellous is its unpredictability. Its ability to shock and surprise and this is exactly what this weekend was all about.

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The London Underground can be a lonely soul destroying experience. There are rules everywhere plastered all over the carriages, endless announcements with excuses of why the tube train is delayed or why you can’t alight at a certain station… and if that isn’t enough, everyone is really unfriendly!

In an attempt to make light of the experience and add a little humour into a mundane journey, some quite inventive guerrilla artists have been putting alternative signs inside carriages and on the platforms.

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We’re all big film fans here at Red C… as well as being advertising geeks. So the death of Tony Scott has really shocked us, as he not only made some of our favourite films, he also made some of our favourite adverts too.

Not many people realise that Tony Scott started his career making TV commercials. At first Tony had wanted to do documentaries, but his older brother Ridley persuaded him to work at RSA. Telling Tony (who was mad keen on cars) that he would have a Ferrari with in a year of working with him… and he did.

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When we were asked to pitch for the Marisota Autumn-Winter 2012 DRTV Advert, there was a buzz of excitement around the agency. Not only was this an opportunity to win the recruitment activity for Marisota – a brand we helped create – it was a chance to make an ad that would break free from the traditional home shopping template, and take the brand in a more modern direction.

To sum up the brand in a sentence, Marisota is ‘a collection of contemporary clothes, underwear and footwear available in a choice of sizes, lengths and fit options that is designed for today’s modern woman.’ It was our job to come up with 4 concepts that expressed this proposition in 4 different ways. The concepts were then put before a research panel of existing customers and prospects. They helped select the winning concept, called Sketchpad.

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The Barnaby Festival takes place in Macclesfield every summer and offers an entertaining mix of film, music and visual and performance art. This year one of its highlights was the Heart & Sold art exhibition at the Mulberry Tree Café in the Heritage Centre. The exhibition features a wide spectrum of work from twelve talented artists that includes short films, photography, oil paintings, pottery and jewellery. What makes these artists exceptional, other than the high standard of work they have collectively produced, is that they all have Down’s Syndrome.

Many of the artists featured are well established, and some, like Lester Magoogan, have exhibited in the Tate Modern. When you see his work it’s not surprising; Lester has universal appeal. His charming black and white line drawings fizz with personality and wit, reflecting his unique way of looking at the world.  He’s popular too. He can count the late Spike Milligan, Sir Peter Blake, designer of the iconic St Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover, and Jamie Hewlett, comic book artist and artwork designer for The Gorillaz, amongst his admirers.

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Here’s a question for you: how do you contact people? Using your mobile phone? Facebook? Twitter? Skype? Today we’re spoilt for choice when it comes to choosing how we correspond with others. However, I believe there’s one form of communication that’s far superior to any other, and it’s the traditional letter.

The pen is still mightier than the hashtag

Don’t get me wrong; I like my iPhone and the whole social network thing as much as the next person. But the traditional letter still stands out as the more thoughtful and personal way to communicate with others. Writing one takes time, effort and planning, and that’s what gives them their value and makes them so much more pleasing to receive than a quick Facebook update.

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Information as pictures! If only my teachers had presented complicated statistics, dates and graphs like this when I was at school. It certainly would have made history revision a lot easier!

Infographics are everywhere in 2012 it seems. But what is one exactly? Well, in simple terms, an infographic is visual representation of complex information. In other words, it’s a way of presenting information that’s easy on the eye, easy to scan, and above all, easy to digest.

So when Safeguard gave us the challenging brief of making a list of caravan and motorhome statistics more interesting, we knew there was one creative execution that would do the job perfectly.

We started by selecting the most interesting stats, then reworking them into a more graphical format. We kept the copy short and punchy, on the basis that anything too long and wordy would make it look like an email.

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We always like to do our bit for charity here at Red C and over the years we’ve raised thousands of pounds for causes that mean something to us. This year, we’re looking after one of our own. Ex-Red C art director Nicki Galley left us after the birth of her second child, Ava, who was born with a Rare Chromosome Disorder. She is now a full time carer for two-year-old Ava and has to be there around the clock and spend many nights in hospital with her.

There are hundreds of ‘rare’ chromosome disorders.  Ava’s disorder is just one variation of 100s of disorders and Unique help to catalogue them, bring similar disorders together to help parents understand the potential implications. This disorder is so rare it’s difficult for parents to find support once their new-born child has been diagnosed. One charity, Unique, is there for them. Offering advice, support and somewhere to turn when they need it most. We wanted to do something to help Nicki and her family and supporting the charity that helps support them was the obvious choice. So we formed ‘Team Unique’ to run the Bupa Great Manchester Run. It didn’t take long for the banter to start between the runners. ‘I haven’t done any training’, ‘I’m not bothered about my time’, ‘I think I might do it in an hour and ten minutes’. And that was all from Steve White, who incidentally was the fastest of the lot.

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