So taking our urge to watch cats, Ikea has teamed up with ad agency Mother to shoot this remarkable ad, using their Wembley showroom and a 100 cats. It seems to have paid off though – at the time of writing the video has already had 173,586 hits in just two days, the making of (below), attracting 1,318,505 hits! I’m wondering if there’s an opportunity here? Has Quicksilver ever thought about dog surfing videos?

PS. If your thinking of going to Ikea, you might want to take some antihistamine tablets before you go…

As one of the many slaves to Apple who clamoured for an iPhone as fast as my legs could carry me, I was, once again, forced to sign up with O2 as they held the exclusive contract, with Apple, to supply the iPhone .

I had been a customer of O2 for many years previously (circa 7 or 8 yrs) before I left to join Orange for an 18 month spell. Now, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t expecting O2 to lay out the proverbial red carpet or even wave a little flag for me upon my return, but part of me did think “A long-term defected customer is returning. What generous offer can you give me to welcome me back?”. The answer to any query I had was a big fat no. I even asked the customer service assistant in the O2 shop when I went to get my iPhone , but I didn’t get anywhere.

They just didn’t care.

They knew that they held the ultimate power in the consumer/service provider face-off. They knew that if I REALLY wanted an iPhone, I would siphon the milk from my (dead) grandmother’s tea in order to get my hands on one if need be. They didn’t need to offer me anything as a returning customer, they had me right where they wanted me (aka: signing my life away on a binding contract for an exorbitant monthly fee).

Then after the first few months of waving my iPhone around in the faces of those stuck in contracts with other providers, Vodafone and Orange announce within 48 hours of each other that they are also going to be supplying the iPhone in due course.

I quickly glanced at my phone in anticipation of a call from O2 for some serious ‘stroking’ and offers of a plentiful bounty of treats were I to stay with them and not defect, once more, to Orange or Vodafone. But that call didn’t come…and it still hasn’t. I doubt it ever will.

It strikes me, as a mobile phone user, that the service provider brands just seem to have given up the ghost in terms of wanting to create, and more importantly maintain, brand loyalty. It’s less about the service they provide now and more about the products they supply us with. They are a vehicle for the phones to market, and no more.

Sure, their advertising might be really appealing and their brand may ‘look’ glossy and attractive, but that’s really where their ‘brand’, as an experience, seems to end. Mobile service providers have become like commodities these days. They’re no longer chosen based on the strength of their brand, or how great their customer service is. They are chosen based on two factors:

1. Do they provide the phone I want?

2. Are they the cheapest?

I would like (and expect) more for my money. O2, you need to start seeing me as a ‘valued customer’ as opposed to just a standing order sum being deposited into your account each month. If not, my iPhone and I will be taking a walk down the road to Vodafone or Orange. Frying pan – fire? Maybe…I challenge you to make me change my mind.

Our Design director from t’north Robert Ball has been featured as part of the Preston Profiles feature on design blog The Disciples of Design.

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Year of Graduation / Grade

1997 / 2:1

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Profile
Before graduating I’d shared a house with my best mates Steve Royle (now at The Chase) and Steve Owen (The Partners, and Dave). I joined The Partners in 2000 after basically pissing about for a couple of years.

And I’m still there.

And they’re still my best mates.

Aww.

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The Disciples of Design Q&A

Q. How and where did you secure your first job?
A. I joined The Partners through a recommendation from my mate Steve Owen. I was working as an office clerk at the time and took all my holiday entitlement for the year to do a placement. Nine years later, I’m still here.

Q. Did anyone ever ask you what degree grade you got?
A. Only my mum & dad.

Q. Who’s work has inspired / influenced you the most?
A. I don’t really get inspired by anyone in particular – I’m inspired by fear of failure. I get inspired a lot.

Q. Where do you get your ideas from?
A. Mostly from ripping off other stuff, then changing it enough so no-one notices.

Q. What would you have done differently at University knowing what you know now?
A. I wouldn’t have had that pint of Old Tom at The Black Horse.

Q. What’s the best thing about your job?
A. Comparing it to 99% of other jobs.

Q. What is the most unusual thing you have done in your career?
A. I had a look round Puff Daddy/P Diddy’s superyacht for a photo shoot in Monaco once. I really blended in.

Q. What do you look for in graduates and their portfolios?
A. Attitude. I like enthusiastic students who realise how lucky they are to even be considering making a living out of colouring things in like what we do.

Q. Any advice for students entering the industry during the recession?
A. It’s hard to get a job in the creative industry even when the sun’s shining so do the same things but quicker, louder and weirder.

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Portfolio

2004/2005 – the National Gallery branding

We realised that if people are turned off by paintings, then posters of paintings aren’t going to change their minds. So we did the opposite. No paintings. As you might imagine, the Gallery took some convincing. We wrote a list of all the themes and emotions you can experience there – I like to think of it as the longest logo ever made. This went onto posters, t-shirts, banners, screensavers – the lot. The big red poster is still my favourite thing I’ve ever produced.

We eventually did show paintings, but just a glimpse, a tease. We broke the collection down into broad themes – love, war, sex etc. and produced advertising based on these.

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2006/2007 – The Grand Tour

We hung 44 full sized exact replica paintings up in central London for twelve weeks as an advertising campaign. You could download tours from a website or get commentary by phone. We even produced tour guides. It looks simple but took eighteen months and nearly killed us. Every wall space was donated free – asking permission in the sex shop was an interesting one. Each painting was graffiti proof, weather proof, beer proof. I was worried sick about vandalism but it was weird – they remained pretty much untouched. I think only four got nicked, and replaced pretty quickly. We’ve got CCTV footage of one getting ripped from a wall – it’s brilliant.

The idea is, it goes up in a new city every year. It was up in York last year.

(N.B. Rob neglected to mention the critical acclaim this project received, notably picking up D&AD and Art Directors Club of New York golds).

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2008 -2009 Thrislington Cubicles are The Partners oldest, and most award-winning client. I worked on a new sub-brand, building toilet cubicles for schools. For this brochure we got a load of blank exercise books and printed straight onto it with really rough digital photographs and nice big chunky yellow text. Everything’s done on a shoestring – I wrote it, the photography is by the boss’s son and most of the objects we found lying about.

We got this bog roll holder off e-bay. The things people can sell…

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2002 Design Council rebranding

This brochure was part of a new manifesto. As you can see on the cover, we decided it was one of the most important things of the century. We illustrated the problems and solutions by using two completely different styles of photography (Dod Miller and Lee Funnel). Amongst other things we photographed a fridge mountain in Wales and the guy doing the welding is creating the B of the Bang sculpture which is part of the sport-city development in Manchester…

We got the chance to turn it into an exhibition – nice big graphics. mmm.

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2008 Deloitte

This is a book what I wrote for Deloitte. It’s about being ‘One Step Ahead’ so we started page 1 on the cover. The book is about people who made clever decisions at turning points in their life. It took months of research. Thank God for Wikipedia.

I got to work with a great photographer called Andy Macdonald to bring the stories to life. I’ve got a thing about cables. I think they end up in pretty much every project I do. Lovely cables.

We needed a blood bag for this one – Andy made a phone call and it arrived – full – in about ten minutes. I didn’t ask…

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2000 D&AD

Lastly, I’ve stuck this in because it was one of the first things I did and it still makes me smile because it looks so kind of, well, shite. It was an invite for D&AD judging which was being held in Brighton. A million postcards later and finally we found a picture with a yellow pencil in it…

So hats off to Canadian paint firm Rona for spotting an opportunity and taking it (whether it is all above board is another matter entirely!). In this video you can see that they’ve cheekily piggy-backed on the recent Apple iPod Nano adverts – adapting it for their own gains. Very clever.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Maybe I’m just predisposed to Metro because the logic of it appeals to my own professional philosophy about thinking differently and inventing new opportunities rather than just iterating the same tired old ideas all the time. But in any case I’ve long considered Metro to be a great example of a brand that fundamentally understands its proposition and knows how to deliver it. Until now.

So this week I see that Metro has launched a campaign intended to persuade us to take our copies of the paper with us when we leave the train and put them in the recycling bin. It’s littering, apparently, if we leave them. And that shows me that Metro doesn’t understand its brand anywhere near as well as I had thought. You see Metro has established itself so firmly in the unique circumstance it created that it has transcended its functionality and become cultural. When you travel on the tube it is not littering to leave your copy of Metro on the shelf behind the seats, it is a public service to your fellow commuters. To take your paper with you, and to bin it, is to deny someone else the opportunity to pass their travel time productively. Pick a carriage of people and ask them, they’ll all agree, “please leave your copy of Metro behind in case one of us wants to read it”. In fact almost the only emotional interaction that ever takes place between non-acquainted human beings on a tube train is the brief smile and warm eye contact that is exchanged when one places a paper down and another immediately picks it up. It is that, dear Metro, that is your brand. And this advertising campaign undermines it.

As all discarded Metros get collected by LUL staff at the end of the line, and are presumably recycled, I’m not concerned about the environmental impact of my objections here. I just hate to see a good brand get it wrong.

Jim.

We all had to suffer and endure eight years of W before his time was up. This cheeky little ad for Veet hair removal cream, probably spent as long as that sitting in a job bag, waiting, yet, hoping for the day that it could be published. That day is now!

I’m feeling optimistic already.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You can see some out-takes on Superfad website.

Click here to view the embedded video.