Moody stills of our new gaff. That's Charlie in reception.

Hello there artists, illustrators, painters, printmakers, weavers, solderers, sculptors, thinkers, crafty kids, creative teams and creative types.  We’ve just moved into our shiny new studio. Unfortunately the walls here are blank, and we badly need something inspirational to look at.

This is where you talented lot come in.

Tell us what you’d do to make our boring walls look better. You can submit your ideas in the form of a moodboard, a written proposal, a sketch…whatever. Just post it to our Facebook group’s wall.

The people whose ideas / designs we like the best will be invited into the studio to paint, draw or install their creation. Not only that, but the person with the most votes will get a full paid placement in our agency. The deadline is the 30th July. The Creative Directors will then announce the winners the week after!

Good luck!

In what is becoming a frequent blog post, the ‘Start Thinking Soldier’ campaign has picked up yet more trophies.

Firstly, at the prestigious FITC (Flash in the Can) Awards, where it was rewarded for Best Flash Motion Graphics. Skive’s very own Dan ‘Greyskull’ Bradshaw and Stephen ‘Penfold’ Archer were on hand to collect the distinctive prize in Toronto, and evidently celebrated with a few cold ones afterwards. The full roster of award-winners is here.

The project also picked up a Silver in the AME (Advertising & Marketing Effectiveness) Awards for Best Integrated Campaign, and has been shortlisted at the D&AD Awards for a gold pencil in the Integrated category. Fingers crossed.

At the Revolution Awards last Thursday night a slightly stunned Skive were thrilled to take home Best Integrated Campaign for ‘Start Thinking Soldier’.

We’d been nominated in four categories, the others being Best B2C Campaign, Best Website, and Best Use of Video – and to be honest thought we had a much better chance in those than the hotly contested Integrated Campaign, which featured a shortlist of 7 including work from CHI, Dare and AKQA, as well as T-Mobile and ComparetheMeerkat.com.

It was fitting to be there with the creative team from Publicis Modem, Jon Groom and Asan Aslam, who were integral to appointing us and whom we’d first met some 18 months previously - as well as client Nic Cary from the COI.

It was also pleasing recognition on the back of winning an IAB Creative Showcase Grand Prix, for Most Innovative Campaign. Next up for the Start Thinking Soldier Awards Rollercoaster: FITC in Toronto…

Start Thinking Soldier has picked up a few more trophies – this time at the Creative Circle Awards, where it won Bronze honours for Best Viral Marketing and Best Multimedia Campaign.

In above the line categories, it also won a Bronze Best Press Ad for ‘Football’ and a Silver Best Public Service Ad for ‘Girlfriend’ and a handful of commendations, so congratulations to the creative team of Matt Anderson and Steve Nicholls of Publicis, who were also responsible for the four TVCs.

2010 is well underway and we’ve already  picked up our first trophies for the cabinet in the shape of the Recruitment Advertising Awards, held at the Grosvenor House Hotel and hosted by the ubiquitous Michael McIntyre.

The night started well and just got better, with Start Thinking Soldier picking up Best Campaign – just as Publicis’ Mel Hopkins needed the loo.

This was soon followed by Best Microsite, where Skive’s Louis Clement and Hopkins were joined on the stage by the COI’s Nic Cary.

Best was yet to come, however, as the campaign picked up Best Work of the year, and McIntyre was mobbed on stage by a jubilant Skive team.

It wouldn’t be a Skive Night Out without some glorious mishap, however, and while most turned up to work the next day with a sore head, there was alas no sign of the statues themselves. Turns out we’d left them in a sack at the hotel…

Skive has been appointed by L’Oréal Luxury Products Division as a digital strategic partner after a three way pitch, providing brand strategies and training across Fragrance, Skincare and Make Up, in order to upweight its digital approach and exploit emerging digital opportunities.

Skive will propose an overall digital strategy for L’Oréal LPD, identifying key objectives and success measurement metrics. It will also develop and implement the individual digital marketing plans for the key brands within L’Oréal LPD. Work begins imminently.

As part of Skive’s work, the agency will also provide a detailed series of digital marketing training programmes for the communications teams within the L’Oréal Luxury Products Division. Initially, Skive will work on briefs for Yves Saint Laurent and Lancôme brands but this will widen as the full L’Oréal LPD digital strategy becomes evident.

L’Oréal LPD recognises the importance for the beauty sector to reach target audiences through digital channels and this appointment signifies its intention to be the sector frontrunner in digital use.

Emma Dawson, Communications Director L’Oréal LPD comments: “The beauty sector has been slower than others to embrace digital but this situation is changing rapidly.  L’Oréal LPD recognises the need to use the medium as a way to engage further with our consumers, complimenting other marketing spend and Skive’s appointment is the start of our work to do just that.”

Sean Singleton, Managing Director, Skive comments: “The luxury brands sector is increasingly competitive by nature and has used TV advertising, glossy print ads and rich retail experience to target audiences. As research starts to show an increase in luxury consumers using the web for information about the products they buy, so digital needs to play a larger role in luxury marketing efforts. L’Oréal LPD is perfectly placed to take hold of the emerging opportunities ahead of its competitors.”

I’m going to be Social Media’s answer to Jeremy Kyle, Kilroy or maybe Trisha. I will be chairing an event at the IAB for the Social Media Council and I will do my best to uphold the humble British tradition of chat-show host.

In July 2008 the IAB launched the Social Media Council – a group comprising all the UK’s major players in this space, established to help advertisers fully understand the formats available, and how to use them.

The IAB holds regular panel discussions to work through in an open forum the pressing issues and how to make most of opportunities and to work out the best way to provide value through social media.

As part of Social Media Week the IAB will be holding a discussion entitled…

The importance of picking your battles online: when, where and why should brands respond to consumers in social media?

“Years ago if consumers were dissatisfied with a product, service or particular brand, they simply told a friend, wrote a letter to Which? magazine or participated in a ‘That’s Life’ phone-in. Now, in a digital era dominated by online reviews, blogs, Facebook groups and Twitter feeds, the consumer voice is louder than ever, and brands are being discussed (behind their backs) at length.

Our panel of experts will provide case studies and practical guidance, encourage debate and answer questions on when we should listen to unhappy customers online, when we should get them involved in our brand campaigns and whether the noise of a few vocal, unhappy customers makes any difference to the bottom line.”

The panel will consist of:

• James Turnbull, senior marketing manager, British Gas
• Ronnie Brown, marketing director, Outside Line
• Robin Grant, managing director, we are social
• Iain MacMillan, CEO, RMM
• James Bromley, Managing Director, Mail Online
• Cheryl Calverley, Senior Global Brand Manager, Axe Skin

I’d like your suggestions on which classic British chat-show host to emulate and I’m also keen to hear your the questions that you’d like to level at the panel.

tom@skive.co.uk

@ale_2point0

The Tweeting Twankey in all her glory

Find the Tweeting Twankey and win yourself some Christmas spending money.

To enter into the festive spirit, every day for a week some unfortunate from Skive will don the unmistakably gaudy garb of Panto’s finest comic dame and miserably troll the streets of London texting, tweeting, twitpiccing, foursquaring and lifecasting their camp hearts out.

During the generally accepted lunch hour of between 1-2pm, from the 14th – 18th December, anyone who manages to personally locate the Tweeting Twankey (and believe me, she will be hard to miss) and speak the magic password will instantly receive £100 shopping money to spend in the store in which they have successfully located the bewigged young fellow.

So make sure you keep your eyes peeled for an embarrassed looking chap in a bawdy golden frock, and ask all the weary sales assistants if the Twankey’s been seen nearby.

And for every person who follows the Tweeting Twankey on Twitter, Skive will donate £1, up to a £1000, to Shelter’s Christmas Appeal.

We’ve been doing quite a lot of work with Coty to support various fragrance launches and sales initiatives with rich media banner ads.

Recent work includes campaigns for Davidoff Hot Water and Daisy by Marc Jacobs.

The latest is for a limited edition CKin2U metallic bottle, with creative by Staffs and Raks, inviting users to ‘come play’ with the bottles, which liquify upon touch before reforming.

Initial thoughts:

I was initially quite taken aback by the quality of the set-up and I didn’t know many of the speakers but I had a feeling this was a pretty big deal.

Josh

Having never heard of flash on the beach, when I was invited by my Technical Director my reply was “What?” Then somehow the flow of conversation led him to contemplate whether I was engaged in narcotics …

Viet

Day 1: Dr. Woohoo – Cybernetic Arts

We saw Dr.WooHoo (possibly so called due to his love of ‘rock-a-billy’ judging by his quiff). He gave a cool speech on Cybernetics, showing us various videos from past cybernetics (which were surprisingly modern looking). I think that’s a concept that will be going very far indeed, for example, cinema could be filmed in a far more realistic 3D way.

Dr. Woohoo’s session really stood out, not because of his dangerously insane idea but his execution to create his brilliant interactive art designs. For his presentation he used the Zcam (infra-red motion detection camera for Xbox 360 Project Natal) to track movement of his face to create a drawing using Maya.

We then saw Hillman Curtis present a session on his work which wasn’t really related to Flash in any way but I thoroughly enjoyed it. He spoke about how his recent endeavours were mainly film based, doing portraits of different artists. One which he showed in the most detail was of Stefan Sagmiester (designer/typographer). It was called ‘some things that I have learned in my life’ (don’t quote me) and focused on him while at his new show in New York. It also had a few well-known designers etc telling the camera what they had learned as they wrote it on a foggy window for the cold, snowy outside to see. Milton Glaser had a nice story about how a taxi driver had told him “worrying gets you nowhere” (Buddha), which I liked.

Joel Gethin Lewis – Epiphany

The final speaker of the day, Joel Gethin Lewis, stole the show with his working life biography. The most impressive of which were huge interactive light installations – On tour with Massive Attack: he designed a huge concave wave shape which surrounded the band and reacted with the noise produced either by them or the audience. The Regent Street Christmas lights (fully interactive and even initialised by the public and not a “celebrity” for the first time),  finally he has created a 2.5 million interactive floor light install in Japan and all before the end of his 20’s. Nice CV Joel!

My personal favourite of this session was his work with the band Massive Attack. The interactive sound stage lights were used to create a great atmosphere for the gig.

Day 3: Mario Klingeman – Connecting the Dots

For a man who claimed he was merely a maths groupie (“I can’t play zee instrooments but like watching zee band” [heavy German accent]), DAMN did this guy know his maths! I really thought he was going to solve the hunt for the prime number formula.  He showed us how he made an image of the Mona Lisa fit into a Twitter Tweet (which I must say did pass me by slightly but it got about 200,000 views so I’m guessing its quite a breakthrough in the Twitter world)! It was pretty intense stuff, kinda like a mad scientist trying to tell you his life’s work in a matter of minutes, too eager and excited to make any sense, but you know there’s something pretty special there.

Seb Lee-Delisle – Work/Play

Our next meeting was with Seb Lee-Delisle of Flash Brighton etc (they have a few sites on the FWA award site including ‘Big and Small’). He was a great speaker and held a very captivating and interactive talk which was largely to do with a part of Flash which he hates and no longer seems to use called ‘Tween’ and instead urged everyone to use ‘Ease’ (looked as if he had a point). He then went on to hand everyone out a glow stick and some 3D glasses and we played 3D Pong by waving our arms frantically in unison to control our block.

JAM SESSION

We went to the ‘Jam Session,’ where six guys get up and at very short notice have to talk about a subject for 10 minutes.  We saw a few really great talks  there, one of which I found particularly amazing. Joa did a speed coding session which was just him DJing in code! Amazing, I’m sure he could do some sets in clubs with that concept and people would be  blown away.

Joa Ebert, speed coding, Live, 9 minutes, 40 seconds, absolutely crazy.

I instantly got why this was so popular at the conference last year. Each speaker was told to present something interesting in extremely short notice. Although they all presented some great things, two names stood out, Andre Michelle and Joa Ebert. Andre’s Kling Klang audio DSP lets you manipulate a sound that was placed on a circle like a clock a hand the pointer played the sound.

James Jarvis – Live Drawing with James Jarvis

Next was James Jarvis, an illustrator come toy designer with a skating background, who did a well-known ad for Nike. He was a very quiet man who spoke his story and then went on to do the rest of the talk whilst drawing and explaining his style under a camera. I went up to the stage afterward and managed to have a chat with him about skate culture, which we concluded has an extremely underrated influence on the creative industry and he gave me one of his doodles. Thanks James.

Joshua Davis – Space

So… the last session… Joshua Davis. Man, this guy is just on another level. A colourful punch of real life in a place full of square-eyed nerds (forgive me, square-eyed nerds). His approach to graphic design was just awesome. He showed us how he constructs his work and uses programs and a kaleidoscope technique to make these great images with ease. I really can’t explain fully how awesome and inspiring this guy was for me but if you ever get the chance to see him take a lecture (which he isn’t for a few years as he apparently has some things to do), for the love of god get right on it. Ok, so I liked his style but seriously check him out, top dolla…

He was perfect person to close the conference, fantastic speaker. He walked through his process to how he ended up with his final pieces. He showed interest in Bézier curve mathematics,  from which he created a relatively simple program that created curves. From constantly playing around and perfecting he ended up with his art. Using a program it can create countless different artwork – not bad considering this came from a dot just going across a screen. He applied the same concept of getting something interesting and making it great with a kaleidoscope effect which also created an iPhone app “Reflect” that created random pictures using any image.

Final thoughts of FOTB 2009

There was a little bit at the end where John the compare came on again and did a raffle type give away and introduced all the ‘people without which none of this could have happened’. I actually came away from the place with a slight ‘festival feeling’, the one you get when you are in a place with lots of people doing the same thing, working together. Very nice, well done John (organiser). May I just take the time to say I have never… NEVER seen so many apple products in one place in my entire life. The place was like the apple store on a busy Saturday afternoon, iPhones/Macbooks the lot, barely a PC or Nokia (etc) in sight.

As conferences go this was awe-inspiring and really exceptional, and the line up of speakers did were all fascinating and were a credit to each of their respective fields of profession. Even though I have not previous frame of reference everybody thought this year’s conference was quite remarkable.

Until next time FOTB ’09…

Viet Anh / Josh Denton