Day Three - Caffeinated gems

Day Two - My 8-bit desk mascot

Day One

Over the next month I’ll be documenting my placement/freelance time at Moving Brands with a daily photograph (of which will not disclose any information regarding the nature of MB‘s clients - got to keep some things confidential in this post-digital, hyper-connected era!).

For anyone over 30 in advertising….

I stumbled across a box of old Radio Times and TV Times from 1970 and set about absorbing the nostalgia!

Lots of ads for alcohol (mostly port or whisky), lots of coupons and TONS of cigarette ads with no health labels on them - I think about 1 every 5 pages is a cigarette ad…

A magical new-fangled thing called ‘colour television’ is all the rage, the excitement is noticeable throughout the pages - this thing we know as the ‘Internet’ is but distant dream. and print was still a trusty old delivery system (some of the ads however look no different from today).

Lots of classified ads for miners, manual workers and car factory workers.

The women in the ads look normal (I think I only saw a single ad for a slimming product).

Petrol for 55p a gallon, a pint for 4shillings, a new house for £75k, a new FIAT for £1099, cigarettes for 23p and a bottle of port for 63p.

Lots of long-gone airline carrier ads - when flying was glamorous…

I felt the urge to preserve some of the better ads and present them here scanned and descreened at 300dpi for your enjoyment…

I like the boldness of this one, (and the funky beer cans - that came in cardboard?).

A new thing this 'colour TV'...

A classic here, Benson & Hedges with their usual quirkiness.

My dad talks a lot about these (Facebook petition to bring them back!).

Old school Lego (note the old logo and lack of colour choice).

This makes the 70's kinda...cool.

Eat it now...or else (I'll need a coupon with that too).

...and get punched in the face because of your sexist euphemism.

There are a few more snaps here from pages I didn't surgically remove from the magazines.

For people with 'nerves'...

I've been to BBH and it's great actually...

If only...

This prediction was pretty accurate according to the BBC...

Project 300...Aftermath.

Phew! 24 hours of continuous brainstorming later and Project 300 is over. Although the initial target of 300 ideas was not met in this instance, over 100 ideas have been scribbled down in an inch-thick book that could be applied to the brief in question (including one or two that are campaign-worthy).

The project even attracted the attention of Dave Trott himself whose input I’m very grateful for.

The experience has given me a deeper understanding of how valuable good ideas really are. Sitting at a desk trying to force them out gets you nowhere. This insight serves to strengthen my belief that creative agencies must hire ideas-driven people.

On method of thinking that served me well during the project would probably best be described by the diagram below - Universal thought beyond the ‘nth’ dimension, (rather than a linear chain of thought) to achieve a stream of consciousness.



By grouping relevant associations together a fuller picture can be achieved…which in turn can be grouped with another idea to form an even richer and/or multi-dimensional one. Similar to the model of the human brain, interconnecting ideas from any source can combine to create stronger networks. More importantly, are the ideas RELEVANT and useful to a Creative Director?

One last thought…during extensive brainstorming sessions keep plenty of plasters close to hand to apply to hand blisters…