Collective inspiration with Steve Henry

Another week over, and I need to get my Friday blog out of the way. As is my wont, I have a couple of blog posts lined up, but I wanted to talk about the energy I felt this afternoon.

No point boring anyone with the exact details, but essentially, it was Steve Henry (creator of the Tango ads and the finest Pot Noodle ad ever), Marc the SCA 2.0 Dean, and a collection of advertising students talking about photography, washing powder, and banking. And the rate at which valuable ideas and thoughts were spilling from everyone's lips was like no conversation I'd been in before.

I came out of it thinking we could have seriously revolutionised banking. Maybe we haven't. Or maybe what we thought up could work, but no-one will be brave enough to hear us out and give it a go. But that isn't necessarily the point.

The point is that we were using our brains. We were feeding off each other - each idea was never one we'd stored in our heads and waiting to say, it was an expansion of the previous idea, or a lateral thought that took it somewhere new.

Because for all the talk of how creativity can be nurtured, and situations deliberately created to make it happen, I've remained just a little sceptical - especially as my best ideas have tended to be moments of solo inspiration. But today, for the first time, I really saw how it can work.

Thoroughly decent Goodfellas ad (for balance)

This blog can't be all doom and gloom, so here's a good ad. It draws you in, it strongly pushes authenticity as a brand value, and there's a great pay-off. A big platonic Italian kiss to the uncredited Mother London copywriter who wrote the script.

However, now we supposedly have to listen to what Steve Henry and Dave Trott are saying, that you really have to start making your ads special, or else who remembers them? I don't think things are quite this black and white - because in this case, what they want to do is make you choose them at the freezer aisle above the other frozen pizzas.

You might not remember this ad when asked "tell me about some ads you saw yesterday", but to me that's a bit of an artificial challenge. Surely the test is to put some brands in front of someone then ask if they remember seeing any adverts for it, what they thought. And if this one springs to mind as they're hovering around that freezer aisle, it's only going to be a positive.

Bitchin' Pitches

Today at SCA2 we had an all-day session on presentation techniques and public speaking. I've always regarded myself as fairly confident and a good speaker, but with a less-than-engaging voice - it's distressing how often I answer the phone in a perfect state of health to someone who immediately says "oh my, that's a shocking cold you've got".

In fact, it turned out to be the other way round. My voice was praised (apparently I use my "resonators", which although I've sung in the odd choir I've certainly never been trained to do), but I was picked up on for moving around, not gesturing enough, not making eye contact enough, saying "erm", looking at the floor, etc.

So I now have to just remember to GESTURE, to speak LOUDER, to speak SLOWER, to EMPHASISE each word, and remember to PAUSE.

Apologies for capitals, but I think they're semi-appropriate there. Anyway, I made a whole lot of progress today, and with the help of a Don Draper clip and a viewing orgy of Obama speeches under my belt this evening, I think I'm just about ready to pitch our agency name to Steve Henry tomorrow.