Another blog to follow

I've just started up a new project which I thought I would devote a whole blog to, but I will post a few of my favourite stories here. I am basically writing short stories based around 5 song titles to test my creative writing skills, so far I have had a few challenges and been reintroduced to some great songs. If you want to have a look at the stories or get involved, have a look at http://storiesfromyourmusic.blogspot.com/

Thanks
B

It's been a busy year...

Well, what a year it has been so far. I am finally settled in my little flat and I am loving being in the big smoke! We have had the pleasure of working at some great agencies over the past 5 months including Brothers and Sisters, where we worked primarily on Sky and we got very comfy in our huge bean bags! Whilst we were on placement at Leo Burnett we produced our first radio ad for McDonald's which is live throughout the festive season on a number of stations including Heart and Capital FM. It still feels so strange to hear it on the radio! I was in a taxi a few evenings ago and it came on, I had to hold myself back from singing along!

I thought I would just do a little post and keep it short and sweet. It has been a very busy year for the two of us but we have loved every minute! It has literally been non-stop since we left uni back in June! We have had the pleasure of meeting so many fantastic and inspiring people and we cannot wait to see what 2012 has in store for us! So for me...it's off to spread my wings and continue being a visual magpie!

A

We love bored panda

Some more great images from the blog bored panda, check it out.

Weekend of inspiration

Some visual inspiration for the weekend, done by the copywriter! Awesome website that this has come from:

ENJOY!

from boredpanda.com

B

Life in London

We're doing it, the whole London shabang is up and running, real life is in full swing! We've become caught up on the inside of the advertising industry, apparently with the cliches I'm so fond of, following closely behind! How to advertise without the puns and word play is proving more difficult to detach myself than I would have thought, even if it is purely for my own amusement!
So far London life has led us happily from 1 placement to another, fingers crossed this stays the same.
We started our career in the very friendly and welcoming Leagas Delaney. A close knit agency that really made us feel welcome there. Thrown in at the deep end, we worked on same fab live briefs for their top clients, British Red Cross, Skoda and Goodyear. We learnt quickly and loved that there was various people to turn to to discuss our ideas. The most enjoyable part of working at Leagas was their light hearted humour that helped us settle in. After 3 weeks there, we sadly had to say our goodbyes. But lucky enough we were heading straight on into Crayon.
Ah, Crayon. An agency we've wanted to get into ever since our second round of book crits, whilst still at uni. Finally we have got in! And it has continued to impress us, it feels like a big friendly family, in very homely offices, as soon as I saw the table tennis table, I knew it would be a fantastic 2 weeks of placement goodness!
 We are constantly experiencing new things within the industry and after our first ever client presentation last week we just want to do it again and again. The rush of getting the work together and the reward of meeting a lovely client that likes your idea is awesome!
Luckily after our placement at Crayon we have a few other things to look forward to, including the D&AD Graduate Academy, a month placement at Leo Burnett and hopefully even more! Every day within the industry demonstrates how much we still have to learn about the business but that's what makes it exciting for us!

A moment of free time

Hello poor neglected blog, lets fill you with lots of juicy insights into the lives of Anna and Becky.
Our most exciting updates from the past month or two:

We won a D&AD Student yellow pencil for our Integrated Communications entry, an exceedingly surreal and exciting time for the both of us and a very tense night of anticipation as the awards were being announced, several weeks on, and it still seems crazy! To see the full campaign you can either visit the D&AD website to make sure we haven't made up an elaborate lie: http://bit.ly/mG9KWC, or if you take our word for it, it's also on our shiny website annaandbecky.co.uk amongst some other work. Have a little looksie!

In other news, we've finished our University course in Creative Advertising at Lincoln, certainly the end of an era, but as we continue to pursue our advertising career we now have the difficult task of finding a house in London along with finding placements, our minds are currently preoccupied enough to not be too sad about leaving Lincoln; as they say 'onwards and upwards'.

We are also getting ourselves prepared for this years New Blood event, very exciting times. Business cards printed, portfolio freshly printed and drawn, there will be some new stuff as well as some not so new stuff to be showing to the industry over the long weekend. We also have 4 workshops over the course of the 4 days to look forward too, so definitely hoping to come out as more knowledgeable creatives, prepared perhaps a little more for the big scary world of advertising.

Well there's a little bit of an update for anyone who cares to know, as always if you ever want to know more about us, feel free to contact us directly, and if you're going to New Blood this week, keep an eye out for us! It would be great to meet!

Until next time, good night lads and ladettes
Becky

Gonçalo Viana Illustrations

Loving these geometry inspired illustrations by Gonçalo Viana

http://www.goncaloviana.com/index.html

A

Heart warming ads

This ad (courtesy of @givandriv) is funny yet beautiful.

This ad just makes me smile and feel a warm fuzzing feeling inside

A

Accumulative inspiration

So lots has been going on for us in the past couple of months, so regrettably our blog has been neglected, lets see if we can give it some loving shall we!?


Here's some comedy...



Here's some advertising in it's most simplified state, DIY advertising if you will:
http://www.think-mccann.com.ua/promo/#100_0

Here's some illustrations that appear to keep me happy for hours, sadly Anna doesn't see their brilliance. (Maybe I'm just easily pleased?)
http://www.nataliedee.com/archives/2011/May/

A few cheeky technology faux pas, that encourage the occasional chuckle
http://damnyouautocorrect.com/

WE LOVE YOU BLOG XXX

Book crits in London Round 2

So this was much more recent, after 5 days in London, we returned on Tuesday, with a lot of work to do! The difficulty is finding the balance between working on our London book and our University book, yes sadly they differ tremendously! Evidently course requirements are not the same as industry requirements.
Core similarities, big ideas, great execution, interesting, different and clear communication.
So London town feedback?
Different book, different people. To name drop, one Graham Fink. Yes a fantastic name to see, but we had a little bit of luck that helped us get our feet in his door. Good old Comic Relief teamed up with Creative Review and Graham Fink, with the opportunity to win a 30 minute book crit with Fink himself! 'Wow, what an opportunity that would be' Anna and I thought, might as well enter, just on the off chance. Maybe our luck was in, evidently so!

So many opinions already cast upon the man, having done our research, Anna and I again, were pleasantly surprised with how nice he was. (Well in comparison to what we'd be imagining from reviews, not saying he's a pussycat...although he did have a fake cat curled up on his sofa, which took me by surprise!)
Anyway lessons from meeting the ECD of M&C Saatchi... offer up adverts with clear facts and benefits about each product you're advertising. Strive for something he hasn't seen before, much easier said than done. Know your stuff about him and Dave Trott. He loves Dave Trott. Obviously his own hero within the industry. Read up on his blog, he probably will mention it. Don't be disheartened by bad feedback, just come back stronger and persevere. Our most positive feedback ranged from 'interesting' to 'now you've explained it I don't mind it' to 'no'.
Such a fantastic and surreal experience to have gone through so early into our career, but we'd definitely want to do it again.

We saw various other teams on our visit, all slightly less daunting than Fink, not surprisingly. Again it's just fantastic to get a feel for all the different agencies, they all give off completely different vibes and it really is about personal preference and personalities in the end, some agencies, we're not too keen on, will be others favourites. Which is what I personally think is one of the best parts of advertising, if you want it enough, there really is something for everyone.

So if anyone we've seen in London so far is reading this, I'm sure we will have thanked you already, or at least I hope we have... but to show our appreciation for the time you set aside to see us, thank you so much, and you haven't heard the last from us!

B

Book Crits in London Round 1

So a while back now, Anna and I began the journey of book crits with the lovely London folk. We were pleasantly surprised by how welcoming and willful they were to help improve our book. We learnt some valuable lessons, fast!
Always expect it to last longer than 30 minutes.
Always allow for travelling time.
Always allow for the chance of getting lost.
Always write notes that you will be able to decipher at a later date.
Don't accidentally mention some great work an agency have done, to the wrong agency... (my bad!)

and of course many more lessens about how to communicate best with our audiences and how to make our portfolio as impressive as possible.

It was a fantastic first experience of being on the inside of the advertising industry and we began to form a few favourite agencies in our minds. But with lots more to visit, we weren't putting all our eggs in one basket!

Oddly enough we began to hope for brutal book crits as we were learning more from these. The more constructive criticism the more we felt enthused to improve. It was definitely inspiring to talk through our ideas with various different creatives, getting many diverse perspectives on campaigns we'd come to a stand still on.

Summary of Books Crits Round 1:
- Refreshing to have so many creative minds talking to us about our ideas and giving us valuable feedback.
- Hardest part of book crits, is knowing which opinions to take more seriously. Everyone's opinions was slightly different...

When the YCC guys came to visit Lincoln...

Mike Cuthell and Paul Mann came to visit the third year students of Creative Advertising at University of Lincoln last week (Friday 1^st April). It was a great opportunity for us to learn more about the advertising industry from the London-bound creatives. Having met both Mike and Paul previously, my partner and I were looking forward to their visit, ready to absorb their wise words!

The guys took us through some of the work they have created in their careers so far and discussed the benefits and drawbacks of becoming part of the London advertising world. It was great to talk to creatives who were in our shoes just a few years ago, advising us on how to tackle the difficulties of making it in London when placements and jobs are so difficult to come by. 

It was inspiring to see some of Mike’s work that’s already gone live and to know, that could be us in just a couple of years time. Paul talked us through how creatives go about pitching their work to clients, with his recent pitch deck for Dove Spa, demonstrating how one big thought can become an integrated campaign.

Of course they then talked to us about the Young Creative Council, and how rapidly it is growing. My partner and I, having already contacted various YCC creatives have found the website extremely valuable. It is fantastic to know that there are so many creatives willing to help out the newbies! From our experiences so far we have found the YCC a brilliant lifeline for creatives making the transition from university to placements and I hope we can be part of it, once we have landed our first job!

Paul and Mike talked us through some of the resources the YCC offer including single creatives, Bang Bang briefs and the Unite events. The Lincoln course has a few singles who want to meet partners and the single creatives seems like the perfect resource, so it was refreshing to know that this is yet another service that the YCC provides.

Following the success of the Unite events, several teams will definitely be applying for Unite 3. The guys told us all about their previous Unite events and how they managed to provide various placements and jobs for some of the lucky creatives. Now, as Unite 3 is fast approaching, teams from Lincoln are applying for 1 of the exclusive 25 places, Anna and I obviously wanting to do everything possible to take one of these valuable spots!

The guys seemed to have plenty of time for us as a course, which was lovely; it meant we had the opportunity to ask plenty of questions, about their careers, placements, costs of living in London, where to live, how best to go about getting placements and how to turn those placements into paid jobs.

It was refreshing to get such an honest account of how the industry operates and it has spurred us on even more, counting the days till we move down to London!

So thank you very much for coming up to see all the 3^rd year students at Lincoln, keep up the enthusiasm!

Nice introduction to a song

I really like how this song is brought into the film and changes the pace of the story. 

How powerful a brand can be

Isn't is great to see the potential of a brand. Apple is one of the most well liked and acknowledged brands, and it would seem they could sell anything and we'd buy it! We are currently doing a branding campaign. Apples set the standard, lets try and top it! Have a read its quite interesting...
http://www.scoopertino.com/apple-blasts-into-supermarkets-with-revolutionary-apple-water/

The Pen Story in stop motion

Saw this and made us smile.

60, 000 pictures were shot, 9, 600 prints were developed and over 1,800 pictures were shot again.

Enjoy!

Single visual metaphors...

The first open minded self-promo video session commenced this morning which had some bizarre and unexpected results...

We conjured up a number of 'single visual metaphors' that described who we are as a team. Yes we had the clichéd metaphors, such as a magnet with repelling ends; a sponge because we 'absorb everything' and a bouncy ball for when we 'bounce' ideas off of one another, but.... we also had the strange and unusual....a dinner setting (because obviously we 'naturally feed off of each other'), a child eating giant and a midget (who should be a little wary of holding hands with this giant) to symbolise our metaphor that 'opposites attract' because after all, we are chalk and cheese!

There are many benefits of us being opposites; the fact that we can bring so many different things to the table; we have two brains so we see things in completely different ways and we can appeal to more types of people, to name a few. Of course there are negatives (which we can easily turn into positives!), we can have the occasional bicker or the odd dig here and there but this is all because of our passion and love for our own specialist fields and we believe that "you need the moments of conflict - it's these that create invention" - Mark Reddy (head of art at BBH London) - proof that my dissertation skills have come in handy!

As you may have witnessed from our earlier post, we have many differences and do not share views on comedy (Russell Brand all the way!!), men and clothes (there are no 'hidden gems in Becky's wardrobe' quote from our house make Rivett) along with hundreds of others. We took this insight and turned it on its head; what if animals didn't share? Mother birds wouldn't share their knowledge and wouldn't teach their young to fly, so the ground would be cluttered full of baby birds, so the cats would all get fat! Baby birds would die! Bees wouldn't want to share a home with other bees so they would have individual bee hives! What if the government didn't share? If they didn't share information, there would be no meetings and the country would be in even more confusion than it is now. However, personal details would be kept safe....(topical!)

So this is the beginning of our self advertising promo video...sounds crazy, we know. Watch this space to see how the development evolves. To end this blog (the first post by me, Anna, the picture person, so please mind any spelling mistakes!), we shall take you into the future where you shall see our grave stone (yes we have to share one) with the words "Where are we going to put all these pencils?"

More about A and B as a Creative Team

Anna and Becky are reassuringly different. After all what is the use of having two people that think the same things...

Anna Loves...                              Becky Loves... 
Chalk (she is the artist)                Cheese   
Chicken Korma                           Tikka Massala
Excessively Hairy Men                Not excessively hairy men
Cats                                           Dogs        
Russell Brand                              Russell Howard
Donner Kebabs                           Satay Chicken
                                                 
Anna is...                                    Becky is...
from Maidstone                           from Banbury
Brunette                                      Blonde
Right Handed                              Left Handed
Girly                                           Ladette
Organised                                   Always on time
Perfectionist*                               Eye for detail

*(Becky has written this post, this is why her list hasn't been justified, don't tell Anna)

Let's get this show on the road!

Hello everybody, how you diddling?

Thanks for joining us at the start, we are A and B Creatives. Welcome.
We think it's only fair to introduce ourselves:

Anna Gladwin is the art director of A and B. She likes pretty pictures and doodles when ideas are hard to come across. She enjoys watching America's Next Top Model and has a bad taste in comedy, for the most part.

Becky Fuller is the copywriter. So obvs me grammar is great int it?! When I'm not rewriting and rewriting sentences for some ad or another I'm probably watching some stand up comedian or writing a cheeky poem.

We are currently finishing off our degree in Creative Advertising at the University of Lincoln (yes we're aware of the inbetweeners joke thanks!) 

Hope you enjoy our future posts and all. We will try to be as interesting as possible, luckily this comes naturally to us!

Our key is in the metaphorical ignition, let's put our feet on the gas (sorry for the American term, but in this instance it sounds better)

Next stop, London. Due to arrive soooon!

Think this post needs a picture to bring this beautiful metaphor together...