Extra Salt & Sauce

Last night I learnt the secret that Ian White and the rest of our direct team have been occupied with seeking for some good years hence.

I was watching some creative testing research. The moderator moved onto the mock-up direct mail packs and one of the respondents spoke the immortal words:

"Is there a pen in it? I always open stuff with a pen in it."

Sorted.

We were talking with a client the other day about what makes for cool work.

As good a definition as I've ever heard, especially when applied to what we do, is "EFFORTLESS ORIGINALITY". Trying to be cool never seems to work.

The coolest work tends to come from confident brands that have a strong sense of what they're about, and which strut that what-they're-about stuff in their ideas. The least cool work tends to come from briefs that are rooted not in a strong sense of the brand, but in a desire to reflect the interests and lifestyle of the target audience.

We've worked on beer here for donkey's years and done some reasonably cool work. However, in every campaign, from Tennent's Lager to Grolsch, there have come times when we've found ourselves trying to "inject more sociability" into the brand imagery. Invariably this has meant some kind of suitably "cool" on-trade setting. Invariably it has led to an unsuitably uncool dip in campaign quality.

On the subject of cool, there's some interesting stuff on wikipedia. The entry covers concepts of cool, theories of cool, cool as an elusive essence and cool as a marketing device.

It also includes this conversation on cool from The Simpsons.

Homer: So, I realized that being with my family is more important
than being cool.
Bart: Dad, what you just said was powerfully uncool.
Homer: You know what the song says: "It's hip to be square".
Lisa: That song is so lame.
Homer: So lame that it's... cool?
Bart+Lisa: No.
Marge: Am I cool, kids?
Bart+Lisa: No.
Marge: Good. I'm glad. And that's what makes me cool, not caring,
right?
Bart+Lisa: No.
Marge: Well, how the hell do you be cool? I feel like we've tried
everything here.
Homer: Wait, Marge. Maybe if you're truly cool, you don't need to
be told you're cool.
Bart: Well, sure you do.
Lisa: How else would you know?

That's the coolness thing sorted then.

The night that John McCarthy was freed in Beirut, Les, Gerry and Guy Gumm (the grand masters of Leith) found themselves in a pocket-sized restaurant in Bath. The proprietor shared the news with them.

They promptly ordered a couple of bottles of Chateau Musar. According to Mr Farrell, the best Lebanese red in the world (and better yet, only a fiver a bottle at the time). The owner and his missis plonked themselves down with them and they toasted John McCarthy`s release. Until four in the morning.

Waking up this morning to hear that Alan Johnston had at last been given his get-out-of-jail card, Gerry drove with purpose to Sainsburys and bought handfuls of Celebrations for the agency. Almost as good as a few bottles of Chateau Musar.

He proceeded to scatter them throughout the building with little notes on the boxes entreating passers-by to liberate a chocolate. A lovely and honourable intention.

Thwarted only by the fact that he didn't sign any of the notes so visitors to reception spent the day thanking the glamourous Shayne for her gift.

You see some funny things in Leith. My favourite sighting to date was a man, dressed as a tourist with the trademark heavy backpack, pausing to look out over the water on the Bernard Street bridge over the Water of Leith.

When I walked past him, I noticed that what looked for all the world like a backpack containing his worldy possessions, was actually a backpack containing, of all things, a parrot. It was sitting quite happily on its perch inside the rucksack, watching the world go by. Fairly surreal as sightings go. Needless to say, I didn't have my camera to hand.

But I think even this sight of strangeness was excelled a couple of weeks ago when 1,500 rubber ducks floated carefree down the Water of Leith to the astonishment of onlookers one slightly hazy Sunday afternoon.

Stockbridge has an annual rubber duck race on their stretch of the Water of Leith. But once the winning duck has passed the finishing line, the race organisers gather downstream scooping the losing ducks up into huge nets.

This year, dramatically, disaster struck. The nets burst with the weight of the oncoming ducks so they drifted on, all 1,500 of them, unencumbered all the way through Leith and out to sea.

I wish desperately I had been sitting slightly hungover outside one of the lovely shoreside pubs as the sea of ducks swept past. I'll have to mark the date in my diary next year. Just in case. And maybe I'll manage to carry my camera with me then too.

Tragedy struck yesterday in the planning department. In fact, it began to strike when I was down in the Lakes with AG Barr on Wednesday.

Sir Alan, our design guru, received a gift of goldfish a couple of months ago. In gratitude for another brilliant piece of brand identity creation. Having tried to palm them off on his son (who turned his rather fetching nose up at them), he brought them back into the office in the passenger seat of his car a few weeks later.

So they've been living on our coffee table in happy harmony since. Until Wednesday when the thinner of the two fish started flailing around the bowl looking distinctly unhealthy. Sarah ran out on an emergency mission to buy medicine from the pet shop. But I fear she was too late.

I trotted back into the department yesterday morning to find the thin fish doing that telltale belly-up float in the top of the bowl. So we scooped out the thin fish leaving the fat fish to rule the roost.

But he didn't take to it very comfortably and in fact seemed to keep tapping on the side of the bowl in distress, eager for us to go and play with him in the absence of his skinny companion. So gettyimages to the rescue, I found him a picture of some fishy companions and we've placed it behind the bowl to fool him into thinking he still has friends.

Do say hello if you're up here. I don't think the picture's done much to console him.

On the train back from a rather gloomy Cumbernauld this morning, I was startled to hear a siren begin to wail and a pre-recorded voice call "warning! warning!" Mildly startled, I was about to think about panicing - when the train conductor answered his mobile phone.

Someone should suggest to him that a man in such a position of responsibility shouldn't have a siren as his ringtone. But perhaps it's his little way of brightening up his day.

Gawker are rather spitefully keeping tabs on the length of time that their so-called celebrity bloggers haven't blogged for. So poor old Malcolm Gladwell apparently hasn't blogged for 193 days now. 196 days actually - assuming their count is correct - as they wrote about him on Monday.

So I know that certain people who shall remain nameless in the advertising community up here take great delight in observing how long we haven't posted for. But at least we're doing better than finger-on-the-pulse get-paid-to-write-for-a-living social commentator Malcolm...

With the Forth Rail Bridge closed for maintenance work, I travelled into work by Hovercraft this morning. Fifteen minutes from Kirkcaldy to Portobello and £18 for the week. That makes it significantly cheaper and faster than the train. Here's hoping that Stagecoach keep the service running after its two week trial. If the sun keeps shining like this morning I could get used to this New York style commute. Even if the Leith skyline isn't quite Manhattan...

Reading my copy of Fast Company on the way into work this morning (geeky I know, but bettering that, our lovely department assistant Brieanna, is taking Time magazine on holiday with her this week. Not just a pretty face), I came across some interesting chat in an article on the renaissance of Al Gore.

When sidelined from politics, he took up an adviser-ship at Google and then a place on the board at Apple. And is now ploughing the vast amounts of money that he’s making on the speaking circuit into various new technology ventures.

One of them is a company called Current TV. Set up two years ago, today 30% of the aired content is viewer generated (VC2 apparently). Amateur filmmakers, some in their teens, upload three- to eight-minute documentary-style film segments, called "pods”, to the Current website. Online modules help aspiring filmmakers navigate everything from framing a shot to negotiating music rights. The online community comments on the videos and votes to "green-light" pods that they want to see on air. Makers of aired pods get $500. Current gets a library of content to use for free and forever.

I haven’t had the pleasure of watching the channel yet as it’s only available to view in the US. But according to Fast Company, it’s “surprisingly engaging and unlike anything else on TV”, covering cutting-edge bands and dogsled races, African villagers struggling with HIV/AIDs and dispatches from soldiers serving in Iraq.

They’ve also done a lot of work with advertisers to create viewer-generated commercials. T-Mobile have been using it as a "groundbreaking way to reach customers, and to encourage them to engage with our brand." (Well, according to the director of media marketing for T-Mobile at any rate…)

We’ll be getting it at some point this year apparently via Sky and Virgin Media. One to look out for, I think.

Here's the second Strathmore Spring commercial, which has just launched. This one's called Ribbons and it's the follow up to the Double Dutch spot.

For obvious reasons, it was one of the more interesting shoots we've all attended, although there are always the inevitable periods of intense boredom between takes. Luckily we had Leith's answer to Eric Morecambe on hand to keep us amused. How those dark minutes flew by...

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Wednesday this week saw Sir Alan bouncing into the office suggesting a department trip to the Richard Long exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery. So off we skipped at lunchtime, hearts full of eager anticipation at the cultural stimulation ahead.

Unfortunately it was all downhill from the sweeping entrance to the gallery. Of course appreciation of art is a very personal thing. But as far as I could tell, Richard Long has made his fortune from clustering sticks and stones into circles in various far-flung locations.

For a little variety, he had thrown buckets of muddy water at the gallery walls. In room 7, he made a little effort - as he'd used his hand to spread the muddy water into a giant arc. But in room 5, he let gravity work its magic, restricting himself to simply chucking the bucket and leaving the water to make its own art as it trickled down the wall.

In fairness, there was a giant slate cross in the garden area that was pretty impressive. And Sir Alan - who knows what he's talking about - said that Mr Long's best pieces had been left out of the exhibition altogether. Lizzie and I were rather more taken by the cakes in the restaurant. Rude not to buy souvenirs, after all.

This ad has been scooting round Edinburgh on the side of various buses for the past month or so - and has been driving me nuts. A classic example of either sloppy media buying or sloppy strategic thinking.

I shall launch a powerful protest by not buying any oust. Ever. I'm sure they'll be devastated.