Made in Leith – Dock

This is one of a series of guest posts from our current Hotdeskers Kenny & Malcolm. We asked them to share their views on the state of street ads around Leith. Here’s what they said…

“A woman looking away, perhaps catching the eye of a passer-by, smiling. She seems honest, friendly; it’s an open invitation for people to inspect her flawless skin.

Nivea are promoting their wide product range with this bus stop ad and it’s a good location for it. People on the street are getting exposed to the wild weather and are thinking about skincare. The female face risks alienating prospective male customers but the copy is bold, appealing to male sensibilities.

You can do things your way; there are one or more Nivea products for you, a perfect match to battle the elements. Kind of like Pokémon, catch them all.”

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THE HOTDESK

It’s a desk, but more importantly, it’s a foot in the door. Well, more of a toe to be honest. And it’s a toe that’ll be blistered and bashed by the end of your two weeks at the Hotdesk. Because what you’ll be doing is sitting bang in the middle of our creative department, working on some of the best briefs in the country. So why are we doing this? Well, it’s to try and find the next generation of creatives to work in Scotland’s busiest creative dept. So, if you’re up for it, check out leith.co.uk/hotdesk.

Give a Liver for Steve Jobs?

Organ Donation is a campaign close to our hearts here at Leith and Tangible.  (Tangible’s Grand Prix winning paper from the 2011 Scottish Marketing Society Effectiveness Awards is well worth a squizz).

So, amid all the current outpouring of respect for Steve Jobs, we couldn’t help thinking that it would be nice if everyone with a Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad or other Apple gadget might consider signing up as an organ donor in their country.

(Given Apple have sold over 250 million iOS devices, that would be a pretty awesome legacy, wouldn’t it?)

Steve Jobs had a complicated relationship with organ donation.  He received a liver transplant from a person in their 20s who died in a car accident.  But he was fully aware that his wealth played a huge part in securing the transplant (he could afford to register in other U.S. states as well as his own).  Following his successful transplant, he spoke openly about this, and how he wanted to improve access to donor organs for everyone, regardless of how rich or poor they were.  He was instrumental in creating a register of living kidney donors and changing the driving license arrangements in California so people were asked if they wanted to sign up to the organ donor register.

On the busy day of Apple’s earnings call in 2010, Steve Jobs took time out to write an email reply to a young man who wrote to thank him for his efforts to promote organ donation, followong the dealth of his girlfriend.  Steve Jobs ended his email with the words “Life is fragile”.

So, why not get on your Mac, your iPad or your iPhone now and Google how to register as an organ donor in your country?

If you’re in the UK, you can do it here.

And if you’d like to hear Steve Jobs talking about organ donation in his own words – here you go.

We were recently asked by the Dean and Cauvin Trust to help them win a National Lottery Good Causes Award for their work with vulnerable young people in Edinburgh.

They originally started assisting orphans on the Royal Mile way back in 1733, and currently work to prevent homelessness and the dangers which go with it, helping vulnerable young people to live independently and happily.

To help them continue their brilliant work by winning Lottery funding, we produced this short film to help spread the word. We’d massively appreciate it if you could take 30 seconds to vote for them here and spread this video far and wide via social networks, email and carrier pigeons.

The video was inspired by the excellent 500 People in 100 Seconds, and features the doubly excellent So Much For Love, by Gramatik (free download here).

During the period of time now known as the ‘ERA OF THE HOTDESK‘
we’ve come into contact with loads of talented, young creative types.

Some have come in on placement on the Hotdesk, some have come in for
work experience (on the Colddesk) to see what it’s all like. Some have even
got the bug and gone off to do creative advertising courses. Poor people.

Anyway, we’re launching another offshoot of the Hotdesk we call ‘Hotdesk Unlimited‘.

This is tapping into the young creative pool we’ve built up and giving them a chance to work on real live briefs and get paid.

The premise is simple:
- We post up a live creative challenges.
- They send us solutions before the deadline.
- The best solution get the cash prize.

We’ve just uploaded our first live challenge (worth £300 for the best solution) to create an identity for up-and-coming musician Plum. We’ve just sent it out to 60 young creatives.

You’re welcome to get involved. Simply sign up here.

And if this brief doesn’t float your boat, there’ll be more to come soon…

The very first SheSays Scotland event is taking place next Thursday (25th August) on the Leith Barge at 6pm.

It’s a talk for the organisation SheSays, and it’s about getting together to hear interesting people speak (mostly women) and having a few drinks.

The topic of the talk is “Where do good ideas come from?”

And to try to answer this we have three really great speakers. Eilidh McDonald, Head of Design at Frame, Eilidh is a recent gold rose winner and fantastic illustrator and blogger.

As well as Eilidh we also have Leanne Rinning, Leanne is head of Online PR at BigMouthMedia and is a seasoned social media guru. To top it all off we have Kate Bordwell who is a strategist at Equator, in her own words she specialises in “thinking about how everything fits together” and who also writes a brilliant blog.

It starts around 6 and tickets (which are free) can be bought here…

http://shesaysscot.eventbrite.com/

Don’t forget to follow SheSaysScotland on twitter .

See you on the 25th!

Born To Be Wide, Scotland’s best source of info on the music industry, is hosting a seminar next Thursday [July 7] explaining how to get music synched in ads, TV, film and computer games. The event will take place from 1930-2130 at Edinburgh’s Electric Circus and will be followed by Buy What You Hear DJ sets in partnership with the Oxfam Record Shop.

Featuring our very own Gerry Farrell, creative director of Leith, he’ll be joined by David Harron, Executive producer at BBC Scotland, one of Scotland’s leading music supervisors, Caroline Gorman from Rage Music and David McGinnis, A&R and head of licensing at Mute Song. An additional guest is expected to be confirmed in the coming days.

“Getting music synced can be a valuable source of extra income for musicians, and can also generate useful exposure,” says Born To Be Wide co-organiser, Olaf Furniss. “Each of the panellists is an invaluable source of information and will be able to shed light on this aspect of the business.”

The seminar will cover how the music choices are made, how much money is paid and will provide tips on the best way of getting music used.

Following the panel, the participants will DJ with tunes they have selected from the Oxfam Record Shop and everything played will be available to buy.

Tickets available here (http://www.eventzi.com/borntobewidesync)

Following a hugely successful Culture Hack Scotland, where Edinburgh festival organisers, media, developers and designers came together to “hack” new ideas and products for experiencing the festivals, Leith is proud to be hosting a follow up to this on the Barge this Friday, in association with The Skinny.

There were some great ideas that came out of the first event, including an app for browsing the Book festival and even a festival dating site, Festafriend. This follow-up event is taking some of these ideas a step further and making them marketable.

The event is a bit short on creatives, designers, brand specialists and marketing / PR professionals – although developers are of course welcome too. If you’re up for helping make innovative products go far, head along and register here: http://subculturehack.eventbrite.com/

For those not familiar with “hacking”, it’s less of the 80s cyber-criminal thing, and more of making creative stuff out of the internet. Facebook are famous for their all-night Hackathons, and now agencies are getting in on the act too (producing gems like eggwatchers.com)

Hack on!

I was contacted this week by a local Edinburgh charity called Dean and Cauvin Trust. It is one of the UK’s oldest established charities, providing a service to vulnerable young people in the City of Edinburgh since 1733, with one of its centres based in Leith.

It has made it through to the semi final stage of the prestigious ‘National Lottery Awards’, and would be a massive achievement if it won, enabling the charity to generate much needed financial support to continue the good work they do in supporting young people in Edinburgh.

Having been selected from over 1000 applicants, it’s one of the final ten projects competing to be crowned overall winner in the category of ‘Best Voluntary / Charity project’ of the National Lottery Awards 2011. In fact, it is the only Scottish charity in this category in the semi-finals.

SO COME ON! Voting started this week and will end at midday on Monday the 20th June. To register your vote for Dean and Cauvin Trust click here or call the dedicated phone line no: 0844 836 9730

And if you’d like any further information just call on 0131-3164994 or e-mail Richard Costigan or Louise Carnegie.

I’ve already registered my vote – have you?

We’re mighty excited about today’s Culture Hack Scotland, where Scotland’s arts and developer communities are coming together to mash up their respective talents into digital innovation brilliance.

The 24-hr marathon’s a brainchild of Edinburgh Festivals’ pioneering Festivalslab, who’ve been instrumental in making datasets available for creative tinkering, with the ultimate aim of improving people’s experience of the the festivals and other cultural events.

Starting this evening, the format involves sharing project ideas, an intense coding session building on data available, and a final revealing of the ideas brought to life in all their glory.

It follows a similar  model to the Social Innovation Camp, (pssst: it’s coming to Edinburgh 17-19th June), which brings a combination of talents together to solve social problems. The previous SICamp in Glasgow, fostered MyPolice, now trialling in the Tayside as a “new way to talk to the police”.

Results coming to a festival near you.

Following the completion of their Pro-Social Behaviour project, Young Scot have been working with our sister agencies Blonde and Stripe to make a fab wee animation to challenge the stereotypes people hold of young people.

Thought young people were all buckie-swilling ne’er do wells? Think again.