Foxkalomaski - Quick one

Quick update. Yesterday Steven and Gary (FK managing partner) had a meeting with a couple of media planners/buyers - the idea was to brainstorm some more ideas for the Thai campaign. Steven presented some of the ideas we came up with (including some rice ones). Anyway, apparently one of the media fellas said that rice idea was a bit 'too one-dimensional'. Gary said that they liked my sky lantern event idea too. Woop! For a moment back there I thought I was going insane.

'Great minds like a think'

Today I had a good chat with ex-Ogilvy Healthworld Creative Director Selwyn Learner. He recently set up his own agency and shares office space with FK.

Besides discussing our favourite Economist ads, he gave me a few words of advice on putting a book together. Though he studied Pharmacology at Uni and got into advertising via quite an unusual route (without needing a book), he had plenty to tell me. After showing him a few of my creative test responses, I realized that a lot of them needed work and weren't up to scratch (the fact that there we're some I didn't even want to show him told me enough!) I need to go back and rethink a lot of what I have so far. However, he did like the following line I did for lovefilm.com:

I intend to write a few more of these and put them in my book, but I'm having trouble repeating that simple 'setup - twist' formula. Any suggestions are welcome! I'm also thinking of putting some ads in for Dreams (the bed company) because their advertising is damn awful. I also started coming up with some ideas for the D&Ad 'Metro' newspaper brief which I intend to put in my book too. I'm giving myself till January to send off my Watford application.

The race is on!

Foxkalomaski - Rice

So me and Steven (a junior account executive on placement) have been thrashing out ideas for this Thai airways campaign. We came up with an idea for a microsite (as requested) based on Karma; Thailand being a devoutly Buddhist nation. The idea was if you treat others well, you'll benefit too. You reap what you sow. So basically, users are invited to submit what they believe are worthy journeys. Other users then up-vote the most worthy journeys, and Thai air makes the winners trip possible. A good deed gets rewarded. (I got the idea after hearing about this site called Kickstarter where cool projects request funding, then the best are given cash by the philanthropic visitors.) I figured anyone who submitted a journey would then encourage friends and family to go visit the site and up-vote their journeys so they stood a better chance of winning.

After pitching this and three other ideas in a presentation, the team weren't really sold on any. They said they'd rather we'd gone down the 'rice' or 'thai food' routes - ideas which had been mentioned in our first discussion. They suggested a couple of things: a website with rice based recipes and a competition calling for rice-based art which could then be exhibited in a major gallery - because 'ABC1s', (university educated, with with expendable income) are the type of people who go to galleries (marketing speak). And they said that our ideas were too 'niche' and wanted us to come back with something more commercial. After all, everyone has to eat.

('Of all the people in all the world' - rice based art I remember seeing in Manchester)

Looks like we're back to the drawing board yet again! I guess this is good experience in dealing with clients. As Luke Sullivan says, when one idea gets knocked back, 'there's always another ad'.

Do you see what I see?

Okay, so I heard down the grapevine that my welsh uncle, Tim, knows someone in advertising. Turns out this 'someone' is Creative Director at Fox Kalomaski, an agency down in London with clients including M&S and Thompson Holidays. My uncle called in a favour and asked if this fellow, Steve, would take a look at my CV. He agreed, so I sent him it accompanied by a covering letter and this:

It's an ad I made for myself as part of the Watford creative test. This was the only piece of writing I sent - since I don't have a portfolio yet - but the good news is it was good enough! My uncle also buttered him up a bit and got some drinks down him, but I'd like to think it was my ad that did the trick. So, it's probable that I'll be able to go do a 2 week internship there during October. My friend Phil has said that he'll let me sleep on his floor, since he is down south studying fine art at Goldsmiths. I just hope that if I have a job by then, they'll give me the 2 weeks off.

Joblessness is getting me down a bit, but I've got a sandwich ready for me here, so it's not so bad. Stay tuned.