no comments
I'd like to say the night started off with a bang! Fortunately it was just another night with The Bristol Creative Directors Network. A round table with 10 Bristol creatives enjoying a fabulous meal at Goldbrick House in the company of Chris Arnold.
For those not so familiar with Chris, he was Integrated Creative Director of Saatchi & Saatchi before setting up FEEL, which merged with Ron Leagas’ agency to form BLAC. In 2009 Chris started the world’s first independent creative department, a social enterprise and talent incubator all in one – Creative Orchestra. Chris is author of the newly published book, Ethical Marketing – http://www.amazon.com/Ethical-Marketing-Consumer-Chris-Arnold/dp/0470743026
Chris gave us real insight regarding his not for profit agency model and how a democratic voting system gives staff a sense of ownership. From choosing the type of business to go for, all the way through to which creative routes to present.
Interestingly, the business model includes exchanging fee for a percentage of the revenue. There was a lot of discussion around this model, with Matt Golding from Rubberductions introducing a concept of fees based on a promise of specific results. In the event the campaign doesn't achieve at least these, they offer a refund – now that's putting your money where your mouth is! (I'm seeing Matt later this week and hope to find out more, watch this space).
I think we all found the new model agency insight a real breath of fresh air and Chris's views on ethical marketing, and in particular Co-Op V's Tesco a real eye opener.
Much of the evening was also spent talking about how our industry still has a need for 'big ideas' but that much of what we do digitally is finding innovative solutions to business problems. This posed the question for some, where does that leave the 'Craft model' of the more traditional agencies?
Before he left, Chris introduced his furry backed business card. Everyone oooh'd and ahhh'd - it would seem that in this digital/screen based world of ours, there's a sense of a certain loss of traditional things even among the most technologically-biased of us!
Many thanks to Chris Arnold, whose easy company and no holes barred industry insight made the evening slip by far too quickly and to David Sloly, (CD at MZL.com), for encouraging Chris to make the trip down the M4!
jon@3sixty.co.uk
1 comment(s)
Bristol has always been passionate about its creative scene and in a smaller city sometimes you have to fight a bit harder to protect it. I think the up side to this is it that brings a much stronger community ethos to the scene than we might otherwise have. So I wasn’t surprised to see that Jamaica Street Artists (Bristol’s biggest art collective) are auctioning off some of their finest work in the hope that they will save their iconic headquarters, and one of the city’s major landmarks – The Old Carriage Works in Stokes Croft. They have over 43 artists in residence at the moment and are a collective with diverse skills including internationally established illustrators, film makers, and fine artists. In advance of the auction on the 3rd December, and building on the success of the Banksy exhibition, there will be a month long preview exhibition at the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery. The auction itself is invitation only and there is more information on how to get a ticket at the Jamaica Street Artists website. The preview at the City museum is definitely worth a visit, and you never know you might find a unique piece of work to buy. laura@3sixty.co.uk
After a short Summer hiatus, the Digital blog from Bristol returns! What better way to kick off our next installment of digital life from the ‘creative capital of SW England’ than to tell you about the launch of Bristol’s Creative Directors’ Network (CDN), set up by yours truly at 3Sixty and those creative types at Bristol Media (http://www.bristolmedia.co.uk/). We launched the network specifically to fill a gap for Bristol’s senior designers and creative directors from across the city’s creative and media sectors. The idea is to encourage collaboration and give isolated figures (all Creative Directors, please stand up) the opportunity to share their experiences and sense check ideas and influences. For the first event, London based creative (and ex-O&M Executive Creative Director), Patrick Collister came to the CDN to speak on the subject 'What does it take to be a world class creative director?’ Around 30-40 members of the CDN heard Patrick deliver some wise words: He said to be a great creative director you need 3 things: 3 bits of work - for authority. A partner - not a boss. Independence. He said creative people are welcomed by organisations in times of dire need but are resented thereafter for threatening the status quo. But then that’s a good thing. He said the digital revolution provides creative people an opportunity to climb out of the ivory tower and start acquiring responsibilities for every stage of the creative process, not simply the end product. Anyone need a ladder? Finally, he said there is also an opportunity for creative people to go further upstream and talk to clients about their businesses from a commercial sense rather than just their communications. This is a very good thing. As we all know, great creative ideas are at the heart of successful businesses. The night was a great success and was good to spend time with like-minded ‘colleagues’. If you’re a creative director and thinking of visiting Bristol in the future, do get in touch – we’d love to seeyou at our next event..
I must confess that until this week I'd never heard of a company called Twofour. They are a 280 person strong, £29m turnover TV and film business based in Plymouth.
This was just one of the new facts I learned from The Top 100 South West Creative Companies League Table – 2009", put together by Bristol Media. This guide is the first ever round up of all the major TV, digital, publishing, PR, design and marketing companies from across the region in one list, ranked by turnover.
The South West boasts some nationally known names such as Future Publishing, McCann Erickson and Bray Leino. And with Bristol-based Aardman Animations the region is home to a creative company with a truly international reputation.
But what really stands out for me from the Top 100 list is its diversity and the quality of the work being produced by relatively small, but highly talented firms.
A small plug for my agency, 3Sixty. We were voted as the third most respected creative company in the South West of England among a poll of our peers. We were pipped to the post by Aardman and E3.
Andrew Kelly runs the Bristol Cultural Development Partnership and was kind enough to give up some time to answer a few of my questions about the BCDP's role in nurturing creativity in Bristol.
I work for Bristol Cultural Development Partnership - Arts Council England, Bristol City Council and GWE Business West - and am currently responsible for cultural and heritage projects including the Bristol Festival of Ideas, BAC 100 and the Bristol Great Reading Adventure. In addition to these, I also work on longer term projects and lobbying and marketing. Most of the time I spend building partnerships, networking, lobbying and raising funds.
BCDP is a strategic organisation that was set up in 1993 to promote long-term development in Bristol's cultural programme and activity. Its many projects include: the formation and management in the early stages of At-Bristol; Brief & Animated Encounters Festivals; Digital Arts Development Agency (DA2); South West Arts Marketing; Brunel 200; the Bristol Great Reading Adventure, Darwin 200. Coming up is BAC 100 in 2010 which will celebrate 100 years of aerospace production in the West of England. We also worked for many years on the creation of the Harbourside Centre, but that failed. Managing both opportunity and risk - and dealing with, in some cases, failure - is a key part of this work.
We have had different goals in the fifteen years we have been in operation. Much of the work we did in the early years was what local government officers do now. In the early years the key priority was the work in developing the Harbourside area including the creation of At-Bristol and the (failed) Harbourside Centre. We also set up the film festivals Brief and Animated Encounters and then went on to lead Bristol's 2008 Capital of Culture bid. Now we are about ideas - especially arts and sciences - and our projects are geared towards celebrating and developing Bristol's position as a city of ideas. There's been lots of work - by people like Richard Florida and organisations like the Work Foundation - on the role of creative people in cities and we seek to use and build on this.
In capital terms the development of parts of the Harbourside area (though some of the linked developments, such as the housing, is awful); the renewal of organisations like Watershed and Arnolfini; the creation of festivals and initiatives that have lasted like Brief Encounters and the Great Reading Adventure. And in recent years the Festival of Ideas, Brunel 200, our work on Darwin 200 and the plans for next year for 100 years of aviation in Bristol. But that's not the full story: we measure our success - as much as we are able to - in, for example, getting more people reading, greater confidence by outsiders in Bristol and a better profile for the city nationally and internationally.
Every business has a role to play in BCDP and we like to think that we can work with all organisations, businesses and individuals in the city. The city is strong in these areas currently, though there are obvious fears with the recession, and design and marketing help sell the city as much as others. The growth of Bristol as a centre for creativity in recent years has meant that design has risen up the agenda as has media and the arts generally.
The city is compact; networking opportunities are good and people are eager to collaborate; we have two excellent universities; there is the full range of creative pursuits available for creative people to enjoy; there is an educated and committed businesses sector eager to see the growth of creative businesses. There's also the feel of the place - often a very difficult thing to identify - but one that makes an atmosphere conducive to creating things. The “Bristol phenomenon” is talked about now - in the sense of the place being good for science and technology - but it's been that way for some time. It's a subject that we plan to cover in future events.
I am always confident, but there is a nagging worry. It's not just the recession - recessions end at some point, but are always damaging - but I do wonder whether we are making enough of what we have. Mixed marketing messages don't help; Bristol is trying to continue to grow and be a green city (and this is something that we need to work out how to reconcile); and the squeeze on public sector funding and arts funding in particular will mean that growth will slow in the sectors which often feed into creative business. We also face upheaval in traditional media: the decline in newspapers (locally and nationally) is now turning into a rout and I can't see local newspapers surviving in their current form for more than a few more years. We will need to think not just how we promote activities in the future but also how we debate such work. It's also about democracy. I can't see bloggers doing this to be honest. We need also to be planning now for the next twenty years: we're about to start the project Bristol 2023 for the 650 anniversary of the city and county of Bristol which is planned as both a celebration of Bristol and a target to get the city to where we all want it to be in 14 years time.
The key challenges are raising the funding we need to do the projects we want to do; uniting arts and sciences in new ways; building the consensus for Bristol 2023.
There are many: Cabot sailing to Newfoundland; the work of Thomas Beddoes and Humphrey Davy in Hotwells; Brunel's work in the city; Sir George White and the formation of the Bristol Aeroplane Company and all that followed; Aardman and its work - together with the work of all animation companies; the BBC Natural History Unit; all the work that takes place in the universities; Watershed and the work that it does (alongside all other cultural organisations); the festivals and events…
Thanks for your time, Andrew—and good luck!
Hats off to Justin Staple who has just launched a fantastic new website showcasing Bristol's street artists www.bristol-street-art.co.uk
If you've got a spare 5 minutes I thoroughly recommend you take a look. Justin's done a great job - the Google maps integration is a particularly nice touch.
Justin has sent me some background on what inspired him to go to all this effort:
"Just over 2 years ago I arrived in Bristol to work as a graphic designer. During my early explorations of the city I was struck by the amazing array of street art, sometimes lurking in dark corners, sometimes as prominent features. I was soon following my other passion, photography, and photographing them whenever possible. Over time I began to notice how pieces of street art were changing, often they were being scribbled over or even removed by the council, in other cases they would be completely painted over with a new piece of artwork. It became clear to me that it was important to keep some kind of record of these pieces as they could disappear from one day to the next. So the natural follow on for me was to develop a website to display these photos."
Good work Justin!
3 comment(s)
Jo, Iwein and I, plus 897 other people crammed in to the Wills Memorial Building at the University of Bristol last night for a Bristol Festival of Ideas lecture on The Shifting Global Economy by Will Hutton—or, as he put it, “How did we get in this mess and how are we going to get out?”
The audience sat in hushed silence as Will talked about the size of the hole we’re in. The numbers are so large that they’re almost beyond comprehension. For example, the British taxpayer has advanced or guaranteed £1.3 trillion to the UK banking system. The entire GDP of the UK is £1.6 trillion.
Apparently we’ll get it all back, but Will (and the IMF) are not convinced. As much as £200 billion may have to be written off when all is done and dusted. That’s more than double what we spend each year on the NHS!
According to Will, the fundamental problem is that, ever since the UK’s manufacturing base was destroyed and “the country’s future sub-contracted to free market forces” in the 1980s, we forgot what real wealth creation is all about. Now that the smoke and mirrors of The City has been lifted, Will sees this moment as an opportunity for the UK to return to what “wealth generation” really means: innovation.
With all this debt to pay off as a country, we need to start earning some real money, and fast. I strongly agree with Will, but I was sitting there thinking, ‘as a marketing person, am I as useless to UK plc as all the bankers..?’ But then I thought about it, and actually I don’t think we are. In fact, us marketers – especially those involved in new technology – should be a crucial part of the team that gets us out of this mess.
Of course, we need super-smart people in our universities and best companies to invent things, but if these new products are to succeed then they need branding and marketing support. There have been countless examples of great British inventions that have been exploited by foreign companies who’ve been more marketing savvy.
So if a slug of government cash could be used to bring together the best creative talent with the boffins then this could be money very well spent. And, given the state we’re in, leaving it all to market forces may not be an option!
This is supposed to be a blog about digital creative from Bristol. Yet, I’m sitting on a London bound train, about to see one of my design heroes, Jonathan Ive from Apple based in the US of A. Oooh, the ever so slight irony of it!
Vital stats: 43, 6ft 2, 11 stone, 1 wife, 3 children, 1 ludicrous mortgage and 2 cats. I’m more of a dog person, but was out voted. Having 3 children IS a mistake, you’re out numbered and end up with cats instead of dogs.
Perhaps a more vital stat: Creative Director at 3Sixty, a digital marketing agency based in Bristol in the UK.
I am planning to showcase some of the great digital work that comes out of this wonderful and diverse city, plus the broader South West. Before I do, I thought I’d set out my stall by defining what I consider to be the criteria for great digital.
Judging creative work can be a subjective affair. I’m no exception. Years of hard earned experience as a traditional graphic designer with a passion for typography have chiselled and etched me into the old git I am today. Luckily, digital work calls for a slightly stricter criteria than some creative disciplines as it blends communication, aesthetics and technology. Here’s just a few:
Information architecture, user research, a great idea, original visual treatment, typography, colour, composition, clean accessible code, to name a few. It strikes me, that one very important consideration is frequently omitted…
I’m not trying to be existential, just clear. What do we want the user to do or get out of the experience.
It doesn’t take a designer to recognise good design, it feels inevitable, why would it look or function any other way. In fact, we probably only notice bad design. It gets in the way and feels extraneous at best or indulgent at worst.
Let me give you a couple of examples:-
Remember search engines before Google? They called them portals, a litter of seemingly random things, check weather, stocks, shares… all stuff they wanted you to do or see. Then Google came along with a solitary search box. They got it, they understood the point of a search engine. That was as much choice as a person could need.
Their user interface (UI) design is so intuitive you barely need a manual. The iPhone is not strictly industrial design so much as user interface design. The actual object only has 4 physical buttons. The real beauty of its design lies in the UI.
You might be thinking ‘yeah, but that’s not creativity.’ I disagree. Both these examples have something in common. Simplicity. It seems to me they understood the point of the project, what people wanted from it. Then designed, something innovative, removing anything that didn’t contribute to its primary objective.
Yes, the form follows function to a degree. It’s not that I don’t understand the need for pure play, passive enjoyment of largely aesthetic or entertaining stuff. These things can stir emotions, a powerful marketing tool for sure, but, ultimately they’re transient.
For me, the really creative, hard working and profitable digital work is based on a good idea, simply executed.
4 comment(s)
Why are there a disproportionate numbers of agencies based in London?
Probably part of the answer is the same explanation as to why there were so many cotton mills in Manchester – geography. The cotton mills were near raw materials. London agencies are near to an unrivalled (in Europe) array of production resources.
But computers and digital networks make physical proximity to production resources increasingly irrelevant. In theory, production can be done anywhere…just squirt the artwork or the video down the line!
So what factors will explain agency clusters going forward? London’s always going to have the advantages of access to a huge pool of talent and the kind of cultural influences I discussed in my last post.
But the decline in the importance of being physically close to production facilities means that the distribution of agencies throughout the UK could well become more proportionate over time.
In an industry that’s increasingly influenced by technology, it seems to me that more and more agencies will cluster around hubs of innovation. Gaining personal access to the latest developments in technology could become a significant competitive advantage for the smart agencies of the future.
It could also give those agencies a much better chance of securing the next Google as a client when the founders are still in their garage rather than going for their initial IPO!
If I’m right, then this is good news for Bristol.
McKinsey with the World Economic Forum have just published a global map that identifies the world’s most important innovation hubs.
Bristol comes out as a “hot spring” – a small, fast growing hub on track to be a world player. London is labelled a “silent lake” – an older, slower growing hub with a narrow range of large established companies.
In fact, when I come to think about it, part of the reason I setup 3Sixty was my contacts at HP Labs in Bristol back in 1994. Some of the technical team working there at the time were real Internet pioneers, and when I got chatting to them I was fascinated by the possibilities that this new innovation had for advertising and marketing (I was working in a conventional agency at the time).
So there’s one small example of how an agency got started because of proximity to a centre of innovation.
I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has got other examples.
Right, time for me to nip round the corner to Bristol University to see if I can find the next Sergey Brin.
P.S. Off to South Devon for a week's holiday on Friday...so no blog next week.
2 comment(s)
Hello and welcome to this new blog from the team at 3Sixty .
Lots of people I meet know a bit about Bristol – almost everyone has a mate that’s gone to college here – and have a general sense that it’s a great place to live and play.
But what a lot of people don’t realise is just how vibrant the creative scene is in this city. In fact, if you read a lot of the trade press, you'd be forgiven for thinking that not a lot happens in our business outside of the M25. So the purpose of this blog is to get a bit of wider exposure for some of the best creative work coming out of our city, with a particular focus on innovation and uses of new technology. Hopefully as the months go by I'll do my little bit to redress the balance.
Creativity needs feeding, and despite the Web opening up a whole new world of influences, there's nothing quite like getting out of the office to get the juices flowing. And that's one of the best things about being a creative agency based in Bristol - there's never any shortage of inspiration on our doorstep. For example, there's a great exhibition going on right now literally a stone's throw from our offices. It’s called “Crimes of Passion” and is being held at the Royal West of England Academy. Given Bristol's association with the elusive Banksy, it’s fitting that the exhibition celebrates street art.
A few of our team have spent some time wandering around the galleries and we’ve uploaded some of our favourite pieces from the exhibition to the 3Sixty Flickr account.
I'm not convinced that it's possible to run a great creative business and have your offices in the middle of nowhere (or Coventry). It's no coincidence that the agency scene in London is clustered around a few areas*, with plenty to feed the "sense of wonder" that's vital for making those connections that produce great work. It's hard to compete with Soho, but there's a distinctive flavour to Bristol's past and present that I think provides loads of fuel for the imagination. In fact, you could argue that agencies based in Bristol draw on a more diverse range of cultural influcences than their London counterparts. Will I start a flame war if I suggest that the London scene has a tendency to be re-inforcing and stifling of new ideas? Thoughts welcome!
I’ll be back next week with more…in the meantime if anyone from Bristol reads this blog and wants to feed us some ideas, please get in touch. If you’re not from the city, but want to know more about the agency scene down here, perhaps the best place to start is Bristol Media, which is a great network of creative and media people.
* I wonder how the staff at Ogilvy feel about being surrounded by bankers when they pop out for a sandwich in Canary Wharf at lunchtime?
Jonathan Waring
Blogging for:
Member since: 17 Apr 2009
Last login: 03 Feb 2010
Total Posts: 11
Chris Thurling
Member since: 25 Jun 2008
Last login: 16 Nov 2009
Total Posts: 10
