Some Choice New Work

Exactly a month after starting, we've got our first ad out for McGarry Bowen - a tactical press advert based around the General Election.

Tassimo's endline "Be Indecisive" is all about keeping your options open as with one machine you can have over 40 different drinks options. So we thought it made sense to do an ad on the day that millions of people go to their poling stations to choose who they want to run the country. Particularly, as is predicted, we're going to more than likely have a government made up of more than one party.

Really chuffed that the client and everyone at McGarry Bowen did all they could to get it made and out there. 

Exciting News!

For us that is. You're probably not that fussed one way or the other are you?

Anyway, after nearly 17 years at WCRS we're moving on to pastures new. McGarry Bowen to be precise (or McGarrybowen as they like to be known - can't let those pesky spaces get in the way now can we?)

We start on 7th April and can't wait to get stuck into some new briefs and work with some lovely new people.

You can read all about it here.

Paint, Kung Fu and Robotic Gardening

Here are another two ads in our B&Q "UNLEASH THE B&Q IN YOU" campaign.

In one a woman finally casts off the shackles of beige to turn her home and garden into a rainbow of colour (with the help of her dog), while in the second ad a small boy decides to have some fun with B&Qs ridiculously easy to grow Easy Grow bedding plants.

They were directed by Olly Williams at HSI, made lovely by Absolute Post, and given sound by Munzi at Grand Central.

Men of Meat

After a pretty hectic (yeah, that's a deliberate reference to the middle bit of the song in the ad - what are you going to do about it?) six weeks or so we've finished up three ads for B&Q.

We wrote them over a weekend, presented them on the Monday, and by the Friday we were well into production.

The campaign aims to get the Great British public up off their sofa and doing all the little jobs around their houses and gardens that need doing. By using the iconic orange B&Q apron we're elevating these jobs and giving the people who do them almost hero status, which will hopefully encourage them to unleash their B&Q.

The launch ad is on air now with two 30 second spots to follow that will focus on some of the products available in store.

The ads were directed by Olly Williams at HSI, made lovely by Absolute Post, and given sound by Munzi at Grand Central.

Eliot Liss and Chantelle Bloom did the agency production thang.

Oh Yum!

After months of extensive research and development we're proud to announce the launch of a new product in the Churchill portfolio.

Doggy Din Dins by Churchill is a range of no-nonsense dog food, designed to keep your dog happy and healthy.

Over time, Churchill hope this will allow them to bring down the cost of pet insurance even further.

So whether you fancy a Sausage In A Can, or a lovely Gravy Shake get over to Facebook to claim your free sample pack.

Oh yes!

Martin Fucking Who?

Things were going along nicely with Churchill - we were writing some funny little ads and the client was very, very happy.

Then Martin Clunes had to go and ruin it by losing his licence for speeding.

Weirdly, he seemed to think it was odd that Churchill shouldn't want to pay a man who couldn't drive to advertise a product that only people who can drive can use, but everyone else saw it differently. As this great article from The Independent's Grace Dent brilliantly testifies.

The main problem was that we were due to shoot the next set of ads in the campaign around the time that the ban came to light, so we were thrown into a bit of a turmoil. We put out some 10 second offer ads to fill the gap, then got to work finding a replacement and re-writing the campaign to fit the new celebrity.

It was a bit of a fractious couple of months, but in the end we're pretty happy where we've got to.

We've used Dawn French who is really popular with the target market, and is also a really good on-screen fit with Churchill. She feels like she's been with him for ages. We have the launch ad for this campaign on our online folio page, so if you'd like to see it just click here.

We shot another 4 ads, which will air over the next month or so. We'll post them up as they're finished.

They were once again shot by the brilliant Dominic Brigstocke, through Tomboy, and were excellently produced by Lizzie Mabbut at WCRS (despite the distinct lack of lunchtime post-production sessions).

Oh, Predictable Affirmative Gag!

We've finally put our Churchill TV on our Carbonmade site. Well, four of them anyway - there is another ad waiting an air date and a couple more in development, so it looks as if it's going to be an ongoing project for the foreseeable future.

This project took a long, long time - perhaps as long as a year, with things changing and evolving right up to the shoot. We're happy with how things turned out, which given some of the pitfalls along the way we never thought we'd be able to say.

The ads were shot by Dominic Brigstocke at Tomboy, and post was done by Glassworks, with Nick at Angel providing his magic on the sound. TV production at WCRS was done by the lovely Eileen and Lizzie.

We hope you like.

Happy New Year!

Here we both are on set with new, improved Churchill whose latest campaign (which we wrote) will be on your telly from tomorrow. There are five 30 second adverts in all and they should all be on air by the end of January. We'll post them here when we've got them all finished. 

Hopping, Skipping and Jumping on the Bandwagon

It's the Olympics next year, and let's face it - every marketing department wants a piece of it. You can't really blame them I suppose as it's going to be watched by billions worldwide, and any positive emotions it generates might just rub off on your product (even if your product is a fat-filled burger or a chocolate bar crammed full with a glass and a half of monosodium glutamate).

BMW are no different. They've spent a great deal on securing the prestigious position of Official Supporter of London 2012 (or something) and so they wanted everyone to know about it.

That's where we came in. We had to tie in an event which celebrates the amazing feats a supremely trained human body is capable of with a company who makes cars. Cars you sit on your arse to drive around in. Often just to the shops down the road. Added to this, every headline had to include the word 'Joy' which formed the basis of the current global campaign for BMW. Oh, and we had to have a car in every one too. 

You see the difficulty?

Anyway, we decided to concentrate on the similarities between the athletes and the technology/design behind each car, and as such across the whole range in general. We think we did this pretty well in the end.

You can see them by clicking on the folio to your right, or here.

The ads were shot by Rick Guest and the images will be dotted about the Olympic park if you are lucky enough to get a ticket to the big event next year.

We haven't got any. Just saying, like...

MINI POSTERS

We've done some posters for MINI Coupe too. They're based around the old action transfers you probably played with as a kid. You can see them here.

Another Day, Another MINI TV Sponsorship Campaign

We've got some actual, real life, adverts on your screens at the moment!

We recently won a pitch for MINI Coupe and their sponsorship of the Jonathan Ross Show on ITV. The campaign line is "Another day, another adventure" so we purposely set out to make as many different 'adventures' as possible by keeping the structure of each ad very similar, but adding little changes to keep them fresh and interesting. We shot about 50 scenarios and whittled them down to the best 20-odd.

We'll post our favourites as a video file at some stage, but if you can't wait you can see them on Saturday nights on ITV for the next 10 weeks or so (don't know the time - you'll have to look it up yourselves).

The ads were shot by Pedro Romhanyi through Outsider, with brilliant post production done by Prime Focus.

Who Can?

The Homeserve Man Can!

Who on Earth is The Homeserve Man? Well...

Here's some new TV from us which is currently running in the Granada region. It's a test campaign for a service called Homeserve, which deals with all sorts of home emergencies. We didn't want to associate all the negative feelings involved with disasters with the service, so we deliberately went for a more cartoon, over-the-top approach. The jolly song and happy actors help to keep it all up-beat and friendly.

There's a 40 and a 30 second ad, and if all goes well it will be rolled out across the country at a later date.

The ad was shot by the excellent Pedro Romhanyi at Outsider.

Classy!

We've done some print work for The Corinthia Hotel. It's a very posh hotel that probably wouldn't allow the likes of us to stay, but has allowed us to do some nice print for it. We did four ads for the current campaign and you can see them if you click on the portfolio to your right.

More Work! (And It's Only February)

We've done some print ads for BMW. They're finance ads, so not something to get too excited about, but we think they're pretty nice for what they are. Especially when you consider everything other than the car was built using CGI. 

In Your Face, Bitches!

Last night Jane and I picked up an ANNA for this BMW April Fool ad from last year. Although we didn't actually pick up the award as we weren't there. Jane was at a singing lesson and I was doing bedtime stories.

Anyhoo, we won in the Topicality section. You can read more here.

Exciting Times!

2011 is only 25 days old and already the advertising world is left shuddering by the news that we've only gone and done some actual, real-life, appearing-in-magazines-and-all-that-sort-of-shit advertising.

As I write Jane is in a darkened studio in Acton, watching as a top-notch photographer moves a light a tiny amount to the left, stands back, thinks for a bit, then moves the light back to where it was in the first place.

THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!IS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!ADVERTISING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's a campaign for BMW announcing their sponsorship of the 2012 Olympic Games. Many cars are being shot, as are athletes and then (using the magic of computers) these two seemingly opposite entities will be merged, melded and formed to make one seamless piece of visual communication. Or some adverts as you and I might call them. Watch this space and we'll post them as we complete them.

And that's not all - we've also done a campaign for BMW flogging cars in the wake of the VAT rise. A very exciting brief as you can imagine, but the resultant print ads we devised look pretty nice and work quite well.

If that wasn't enough (I feel Brenda in the photo above may have a stroke if she reads this) we're hopefully going to get some pitch work we did last year made real in the next 8 weeks. 

It really is, as Shakespeare might haves said, "all go" at the moment.

Time for a sit down I think.

Bum Cheeks

Good God - we've only gone and done an ad!

After what seems like an age of pitching and producing work only to fall at research we've actually made a new TV advert!

It's for Radox Shower Smoothies and features the words "Bum Cheeks" for the first time on British Television (this may or may not be true - don't know, don't care).

Anyway, it was shot by the lovely Jess Koppel and features the voice of the lovely Lucy Montgomery, and was produced by the lovely Laura Lebbon. Lovely.

Diddley Dee Farmers

Hey, look at this - Jane and I have been doing some work since our last post. It's a new Kerrygold ad, where the farmers tell us about their Kerrygold Community Awards which aims to help local ventures in need of help. All very altruistic.

It's in Adwatch apparently, which seems like a good excuse for a pint at lunchtime. We're both immensely proud and honoured and there's a little tear in my eye as I write.

Anyway, it was directed and edited by David Stevens at the Assembly Rooms, produced by Eileen Rafferty, and put together by assorted lovely types in and around Soho (Jane?).

We're also in the midst of a new Radox TV ad, and a BMW pitch. So, there may be some more posts in the near future.

Ooh! I hear you say.

Done Some Radio

We've done some radio ads for Radox. Basically it's someone in a shower, making up lyrics to a song on their radio about their day. They were recorded at Wave, produced by Joe Pawsey (who is shit at pool) and performed by Lucy Montgomery.

The client's not approved them yet, so they'll probably change and that, but you can listen to them by clicking on the video. We've tarted them up by adding pictures of radios.

We truly are wacky in the extreme.

Pitch Lost

We didn't win the pitch. It was all Jane's fault.

Also, a Radox radio campaign we recorded before Christmas has been pulled by the head client. That was Jane's fault too.

Oh, and all that snow we're having... you know where this is heading...