Merry Christmas!

We don't do celebrations by halves... check out our website to see the extent of our festive cheer (and be sure to turn your speakers up).

Merry Christmas from all at Collective x

Christmas Party

After a small 'hiccup' (where the original company cancelled at the 11th hour), our Christmas party went with a bang. After delicious cocktails and a festive meal at Dollar Grills, we had a small awards ceremony at the Priory before being whisked off to the Empire Casino in Leicester Square for champers on the private balcony followed by some gambling - because nothing says Christmas like losing it all on red.





Lots more (carefully selected) photos on the flickr.

Shop and Donate!

Give a little extra to “charidee” for free this Christmas by using the links on the Wigout website to do your festive shopping.

For each sale, a percentage goes to breast cancer charities – at no cost to yourself!

You can use the links to shop at:
- Amazon
- Currys
- Dixons

Thank you! You are a Christmas angel indeed!

P.S. Please share the link with friends, family and colleagues.

Widgets Are Made for Marketing, So Why Aren't More Advertisers Using Them?

In response to a blog post from Advertising Age, the blogging community was discussing why more advertisers weren't using widgets. One theory was the cost. This was our response:

The cost of distribution can be high if it is adserved. But in the case of a Clearspring widget we did for learndirect, the technology was free and download was also free as it was hosted on the learndirect website. In this instance the widget was less about entertainment and actually provided a functional app for users – motivating learners on their learning journey. Clearspring said they might be changing this model in the future, but for now it has represented a massively cost effective way of communicating with customers and in learndirect's case, providing a truly useful widget for motivating learners.

Hayley

Callaway Golf game

Check out the festive game we've just built for Callaway Golf. Hit the presents and you could win some great golfing prizes.

Read the press release for more information.

Whopper Virgins

Burger King's new ad campaign, Whopper Virgins, is supposed to launch on TV next week. The question is, will it go ahead after much of blogland has found it culturally and morally offensive?



Some blog commentators see this ad as just another example of America trying to ram their own ideals and values down the throats of the rest of the world - another move towards a homogenized McWorld. Should they really send their intensively-reared, fat-, salt- and sugar-laden meat into the remaining corners of the world who've yet to be subjected to it? The locals' own hand-reared meat is probably healthier and tastier than a Whopper any day - I wonder if BK polled them on that?

Some commentators also noted that throwing one free burger at people who may be living in borderline poverty and famine is more than a little insensitive. However, there is nothing to say that anyone featured in the ad was in that situation and it would be just as wrong to jump to conclusions. Likewise many commentators have pointed out that some of the countries featured - Romania for example - are already exposed to fast-food advertising so it's wrong to generalise them all as 'poor backward country folk'.

Personally, on first view the campaign comes across as exploitative, stereotypical and condescending. I'd be interested to see a behind the scenes - not because I care if the Whopper really came out on top (that is perhaps the most irrelevant part of the whole campaign), but to see just how authentic or otherwsie their 'Whopper Virgin' setups are. I'm willing to bet that more than a little cultural stereotyping and staging went into the traditional outfits, idyllic rural backdrops and gentle pastoral folk.

Jon Darke sees it a bit differently:
I don't see it as exploitative. It's a wider sociological issue about the developed world's communal guilt, and the notion that we are forcing our cultures upon them through advertising and media. I don't believe this to be true at all, having been to some of these places, including the poorest villages in S.E. Asia, and spent time with the people. Exposing these people to a burger isn't going to brainwash them. They are simply going to think that a bunch of silly westerners came to their village, fed them, took some pictures and went away.

The ad is additionally controversial because of the product advertised. It's generally agreed that 'evil burger companies' don't do much good on this earth. That escalates to ‘How dare they advertise their product by feeding it to poor farmers to gauge opinion’. They exist because it's a viable business model in demand.

What is really boils down to is this: The advert is simply poor. How is the opinion of a Thai farmer on the taste of a burger relevant to me? It isn't that dissimilar to the recent Apple/PC war - corporate bickering déjà vu. Where's the creativity?

What do you think? Here's some more views from the Collective floor:

Omar:

"It's brilliant! The new-age missionary!! Bringing burgers to the deepest, darkest corners of this flat world..."

Jon H:

"A bit condescending mefinks.. "

Jon D:

"It's actually a good idea (in theory). Brand infiltration affects peoples' decisions more than you realise, and getting a control test is almost impossible with brands as large as these."

Stephane:

"I think it's pity - culture needs diversity; it should be the other way round. Unfortunately the humbleness of learning from others is not in the blueprint of Western industry."

Leila:

"I think that the whopper is a winner in taste any day! Down to McFilth I say!"

The campaign is supposed to launch in 5 days. Let's see what happens.

Links to further reading:
Official Site
Maholo
Inquisitr
Metro

BBC Radio 2 Live

Check out the great site we have designed and built for BBC Radio 2 Live In London. This supported a flagship launch event at the IndigO2 venue at the O2 Arena in London, featuring Adele, Duffy, Keane, The Feeling and James Morrison.



We were appointed by BBC Radio 2 to develop the branding and digital assets for BBC Radio 2 Live – an umbrella brand for all its live music events.

Soichiro Honda short film

We like this short animated film by Michele d'Auria, all about Soichiro Honda. From working on projects like Hondamentalism, we're well versed in Soichiro's philosophies, and this film captures his essence very effectively.

Pete up for a Bafta!

Pete Way, our Head of New Business, has been nominated for a Children's Bafta for his show: 'Basil's Swap Shop' which ran on the BBC from January to April of this year.

Pete will find out this Sunday if he has won. The best o' luck to ya!

Movember nearly over

It's been emotional, painful, hilarious, itchy and slightly scary. The Collective team has done a brilliant job of growing their mo's over November in aid of prostate cancer. Here are some pics of the mos' Guinness-tinged final lunch (is anyone actually keeping their facial furniture past December 1st?).







More on the flickr.

If you'd like to donate to the cause, please just click the banner below.

Twitter: What's the bl**dy point? Part two.

What more can twitter do for your brand?

6. Brands can engage in a real two-way conversation with their customers – brands have the potential to listen to the buzz about their brand in the Twitter-sphere, simply by searching for their keywords and thus actively and instantly respond to their consumers and react instantly.

Search for you brand using Twitter and listen to the noise.

7. Build a reputation for your brand by following potential customers and journalists that write about your space.

8. Lead generation.

One question though that still remains as to how do I know who is interesting and worth following? Time is money and all that and I don’t want to listen to people waffling all day (I have Facebook for that). I'm currently trialling MrTweet...so watch this space on my thoughts.

But so far for me it has been a bit of random luck finding people. One simple way Twitter could make spreading the word much faster is by making it easier to search for people and categories. So far, it’s been a bit of a treasure hunt. Although I hear on the twitter blog that there might be progress.
So to get you started - here’s some Twitter voices we are following who we think have something good to say about digital or do digital good:
@BBCdigital
@BarrackObama
@russelldavies
@kevinrose
@BrandRepublic

You got any better twitterers to share?

Hayley

Feeling festive?...

...We certainly are. Just check out the aerial view of our office.



(Very nice viral idea from Coke using Google Maps technology to the fullest.)

Twitter: What's the bl**dy point?

I have to admit, I did nearly give up with Twitter. I thought it was a geek world full of self-indulgent Facebook feeds. But what kept me going was not only characteristic sheer pigheadedness but also the fact that it’s full of early adopters (yes, geeks) who tend to be the type of people to talk about the industry stuff I want to know first. And the more I’ve started using it, the more benefits I can see.

So I’m sold….can I take you to the Twitter-side?

1. It’s not Facebook status feeds - Twitter is not full of self-indulgent Facebook-esque feeds. It’s all about knowledge sharing – so for you that means industry and brand knowledge building.

2. Keeps you ahead of the competition - by following the leading commentators and ordinary folk alike people are actively sharing industry information and news before it hits the regular media in nice dinky bite size pieces and links. Which makes you look clever in front of your clients and colleagues when you share a nice ‘new’ idea.

3. Networking – you don’t have to be mates with someone to stalk them now! Twitter allows you to follow who you like and it’s up to them if they want to follow you back or just ignore your noise – but quite often people will return the favour and engage in dialogue.

4. Profile raising – if enough people start following you and your ramblings, you can go from zero to hero and you’ll be a keynote speaker at FOWA in no time.

5. Easier than you thought - If you down load a Twitter firefox add on – it makes it really simple and quick to up-date and follow feeds. No more logging into a distracting webpage all the time. Try this: >https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5081

Hayley

She Says - Golden Stiletto Awards

Some of the Collective girls went to the Golden Stiletto awards last night. It was the inaugral award ceremony from the She Says organisation who promote and encourage females in the creative industry, headed up by Laura Bambach from agency Glue.

The 5 shortlisted pieces of work were all excellent. They were

• BBC's Culture Show by Hyper Happen
  
• Non-stop Fernando by LMFM
  
• Samsung camera phone by LMFM
  
• Virgin Bets (video ad campaign) by LMFM
  
• Sony Walkman Project by Dare, the overall winner.
  

All in all, a very fun and inspiring night.

Another Award Nomination!

Collective have been nominated for an E-Consultancy Award in the category of 'Innovation in Online Advertising' for our work with Snickers and AMV.



Our Snickers widget was the UK's first Ad served Clearspring Widget Banner Campaign. It centred on creating fun, interesting and engaging content, delivered directly to the consumer.

Congratulations to everyone who worked on the project. The results will be announced on 2nd December.

Our very own MD, Greg Doone, has a new article published that makes a great case for a currency that proves brand effectiveness online. Greg gives the Collective take on how to build a universal measurement currency and what’s needed for it to succeed.

Read it here: www.imediaconnection.com

Wig out!

Hayley set up the Wig Out campaign to raise awareness for Breast Cancer (and money for Breast Cancer Care). The idea is simple: wear a wig, eat some cakes and give generously.

Thanks to everyone, the first Wig Out was a great success. We raised £103 from kind donations and on behalf of the company, the directors donated another £50. 25% will be added by Gift Aid too.

WIG OUT TOTAL - £191.25... and counting!




As ever, check out more photos on the Flickr and vote for your favourites on the Wig Out site.

Movember week one

Movember has kicked off in earnest at Collective Towers. Here's who's Top of the Taches so far...


Omar's looking dapper with his tidily-trimmed nose-tickler (so carefully trimmed he was late this morning, in fact).



Jon's gone Wild West style with matching mutton chops. Looking foward to seeing how they develop.



Whereas Kenta resembles some kind of Bond super-villain.



Methinks we have a Mo-cheat in our midst.. Nice fuax-tache, Seren.

More pics on our Flickr.

Wear it Pink

Kenta and Sean cleverly combine wearing pink for breast cancer awareness AND sporting a terrifying costume for Hallow'een. Nice one boys, you look...

Bung Beer!

Thank you to Media Week, Campaign, Revolution, NMA and Marketing Week for allowing us to pop in and say hello yesterday. Hopefully the strawberry beer and cream doughnuts were a welcome treat for a Tuesday afternoon.

Amazingly, only two bottles of beer went 'missing' prior to the drop off and thanks to some very close guarding, the doughnuts remained in their boxes. Boy did they smell good though.

Pass the Jazz - Homepage takeover

As part of the 'Pass the Jazz' campaign, we've just launched a Honda Jazz homepage takeover that highlights Jazz drivers and why they love their little cars.

35-year-old Lynnette Smith, who was selected from a long list of 230 entries, stars on the Honda.co.uk homepage with a video showcasing her Jazz story, quotes about why her car is such an important part of her life, and photography of her beloved Jazz.

This is the first time that Honda has turned over its site to its customers, reinforcing the concept of brand advocacy that is central to the ‘Pass the Jazz’ campaign. However, user-generated content and customer opinion has been central to the Jazz website for some time, with Honda believing firmly in allowing customers to air their views on their cars in an honest and transparent way.

Visitors are encouraged to continue to ‘Pass the Jazz’ by sending a message to a friend from one of the stories pages, or by downloading a branded Facebook application which links back to the website.

Well done to everyone who worked on the site! We've already got a mix of stories from the charming to the inspiring to the funny.

Not one, but two!

You could accuse us of seeing double after this manic week of pitch preparation, but you have to believe us when we say we're up for TWO awards at the BIMAs.



We’re up for honours in the category of ‘B2C Content and Design’ for our learndirect 'Nothing can Stop You' campaign and the ‘Integrated Campaign Content & Design’ category (with Wieden + Kennedy) for Honda's 'Problem Playground'. It’s great for everyone who has worked so hard on these campaigns and it'd be wicked if we scored a double when the awards are presented at the Bloomsbury Club on 27 November. Now where's the champagne?

Ant update

Our little ant friends have indeed been busy, making themselves at home and digging away:



Katie's ants have made the most progess, surely due in part to the motivational poster bearing down on them.



Petter's men, fuelled by fruit and cereal treats, seem to have built a dual carriageway the length of their colony and have a rather cute Bug's Life wallpaper to gaze at.

More photos on the Flickr.

Collective Go Karting

Team Collective took to the track yesterday for a day of inter-agency go-karting. It was a gorgeous sunny day and the competitive spirit was out in full. After a tough 90-minute endurance race which saw spins, crashes and drama galore, it was the designers' team 'Make My Logo Bigger' who did us proud, scooping third place. Management team 'Irresponsibly Collective' narrowly missed out on the podium with a 4th-place spot, and the 'Young Team' kids scored 15th place despite inexperience (come on, we're barely out of our toy pedal-cars).



Well done all round. Back with a vengeance next year...

Friday night emails will never be the same!

Today Google announcesa potential saviour from those drunken moments of madness after a night of beers, spirits and other stimulants. Active during prime hours of risk (Friday and Saturday evenings), Google mail will present you with a series of simple mathematical tests that you need to (correctly) answer before the email is sent. Added to this challenge, these simple sums have to be completed within a time limit!

Jon Perlow, a Gmail engineer who created the software, announced the new product on Google's Gmail blog, explaining that he himself had sent some unfortunate late-night emails.

He said: "Sometimes I send messages I shouldn't send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late-night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together."

"Gmail can't always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we're launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.

"Hopefully Mail Goggles will prevent many of you out there from sending messages you wish you hadn't. Like that late-night memo -- I mean mission statement -- to the entire firm."

Gmail users can set Mail Goggles to activate at any time they feel they might need protection.

So sit back, relax, have an extra pint, with the knowledge that now, your letter telling the boss where to stick his job or that email to the ex telling them they should really stop being the idiot and get a life are risks you dont have to worry about any more.....

Collective in the News!

Learndirect highlights success stories in campaign

Learndirect, an e-learning specialist, has appointed digital advertising agency Collective to create an ad campaign to highlight career success stories and encourage optimism during the tough economic climate.

Collective won the digital project following a competitive pitched against Learndirect's other roster agencies Glue and Grand Union.

>Click here to read the full article on marketing week.co.uk

Flash for the iPhone

Paul Betlem, the Senior Director of Engineering at Adobe Systems, has announced that Adobe is developing a Flash Player for the iPhone.

This is great news for anyone wanting to deliver brand experiences on mobile phones – it’s just a shame we still don’t know when it will happen. The powerful combination of the iPhone interface with the rich interactivity of Flash is something agencies, marketers and consumers will find hard to resist. Interestingly, we can also envisage a potential cost saving for clients as pre-existing Flash content is repurposed for mobile.

At present, it looks like there is only talk about the Flash plug-in on the Safari web browser. As such, Flash widgets per se are not really on the card yet. Native iPhone widgets/applications in Flash are still a good while away, but we wait with anticipation for the opportunity to use this new technology.

Ants

Collective received its latest recruit of worker ants today.. literally.



The new guys are kind of dazed and sleepy so far - but it's a Monday and they did just take a long-haul trip with Royal Mail so fair enough.



Expect regular progress reports, if they actually ever do anything.

I'm a PC...the rejoinder to the stereotype.

Sometimes it's not necessarily how much you spend on a campaign that grabs attention or changes perceptions.

For me, the great thing about 'digital' is being' 'clever', not necessarily 'cool'. This week, Microsoft have validated this notion in withdrawing their $10 million campaign (featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld) and then launching a much simpler (and in many people's opinions more effective) messaging campaign that responds intelligently to the successful Apple "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ad campaigns.

"I'm a PC" aims to break the geeky stereotyping by showing a series of video clips from PC users around the world including members of the public in a variety of jobs and celebrities such as 'Desperate Housewives' actress Eva Longoria, author Deepak Chopra and musician Pharell Williams who all say proudly "I'm a PC".

Added to this, there is also a microsite that allows you (the general public) to also stand proud in announcing your PC-affiliation. So if you ARE a PC, why not join the throng!!

Musings of Kenta

It feels so good to know that our design dept is headed up by such a well-educated and thoughful man.

End of week one - Collective impressions

I joined Collective on Monday so I thought now would be a good time to put down some first impressions of week 1.

For those that don't know the history I used to be a client of Collective's in their early birth. The Collective style of working at the time really appealed and their work was creative, productive and refreshing. Enthused by this experience I ventured off to agency land elsewhere to try my hand at life on the other side.

So, I've now come round to Collective again (or come home?), not quite full circle as I won't be working in the autos sector anymore, instead I'll be looking after some of the fantastic clients they've been working with recently.

What this week has shown is that the spirit of collaborative working has been retained despite the growth in size of the last few years. In the agency's early days it was probably a necessity to get things done, but now with around 50 people, folks here still genuinely seem to recognise the value of sharing and lots of involvement in creating the work... having 'Collective' over the door is clearly a help but the culture seems to have it ingrained. I guess if you share the responsibility and rewards and everyone knows the client this helps.

Only area I've spotted in the agency where the spirit has lost its way is the dishwasher, which retains individual mealtime neglect.... can't think of a digital solution to this, but maybe a brief is out there for it.

Still, week one nearly complete. Looking forward to picking up the account bag on Monday already... and making some Collective glory.

How's your Colour IQ?

Check your Hue IQ with this fun little toy.



Collective League Table
0 - Steve Little
0 - Petter
0 - Bora
0 - Charlotte
4 - Daniel
4 - Silke
4 - Stephane
4 - Steve B
7 - Jeff
8 - Adam C
8 - Joe
12 - Jon H
16 - Katie
42 - Nicola

Class of Collective

The Collective team step back in time thanks to Yearbook Yourself





See more on the flickr.