The random shit I think about @therandomshitithinkabout - Tumblr Blog

Thinking about thinking.

I think, like I do a lot, like everyone does, about things. I think about life choices, decisions that come and go. I think about all the things I can achieve and even things that I can have no impact on whatsoever. And at the moment, I'm thinking about thinking. What I'm thinking about, is the capacity to think. I apologise, I've already said that word too many times for it to start to not seem like an actual word. Anyway, everyone has a similar capacity to think, I think. It just depends what you spend the time thinking about. Say we're in the brain of a CEO of a company. You might look at them, as the intern you are, and think that their thinking so much more than me. Well I believe, I'll start using that word, that they are thinking no more than the intern, yet they are thinking about different things. That is what separates us. Social classes, groups, ethnicities, football teams and even sex. So, in my ambitious head, I am no inferior to the CEO. I just have to start thinking about what they're thinking about. But actually think it, not just think about their thinking.

If I didn't go to university, I would still be in my small market town with no idea of what the advertising industry is.

If I didn't go to university, I would still be in my small market town with no idea of what the advertising industry is. My parents don't even fully understand, even though I've tried to explain several times. They just smile at me and act proud when I talk about it. Then they swiftly move the topic to Dave from the local and how he's been getting into mischief with the police. Anyway, back to my point. The creative industry is taking a turn to try and hire a more diverse range of talented creatives. And I understand why! But how do you get these people to know about the advertising industry, without the help of family or someone they already know? I don’t think it necessarily starts with the agencies saying that they won't look at CV’s or that the internships they’re offering have no age limit. The most creative 70 year old is still sat in their house, watching TV adverts they love with no clue of how they're made or who makes them. It would be good to see what the industry can do to get these people applying. Say the 70 year old does find out about the industry somehow. They're probably not going to have a portfolio, especially not to the level that you see at Cream for example. So would agencies be dropping the portfolio from the hiring process as well? There are a multitude of things that get in the way of hiring diversity but the main thing that stands out is that the advertising industry needs to start advertising itself better. Lets get the 70 year old creative superstar to know that this industry could be the one for them. P.S Why aren't University students seen to be diverse ? Yes we may have learned methods of how to come up with ideas, but we have all lived completely different lives.

Meditation

I’ve started meditating. And it’s amazing. It was at a talk with Weiden & Kennedy’s about escaping the office when they mentioned about the app headspace. I was intrigued to try it so I did. The first session was a little ropey, but now, on the third session, it is helping a lot. I think that all people who are stressed, who have too much on their mind should take 10 minutes out of their day to go sit in a quiet place, use the app and meditate. I’ve recommended it to a few people at university, who said it has helped dramatically to calm their stress as we become ever closer to the end of our 3 year stint. So that’s it. Use it.

I think I know that person

There are two scenarios that I would like to bring up. The first was at an agency drinks, where someone came into the room who I really felt like I knew, I didn't know how I knew them but I did and they were most definitely from advertising given the surroundings. The second was when I was sat in the American Diner in Spitalfields market. This time it was the waiter who I recognised. He also had a Yorkshire accent which made it seem even more like I knew him. I was sat there making up in my head the possibilities of how I knew this guy, but it turned out he was an actor and he said that i’d probably seen him on TV somewhere. Which still I have no idea which programme it is. The woman at the agency I was sat opposite at another agency while on placement. The feeling of knowing someone but not knowing where you know them from, I think, is similar to brands and advertising. When you are walking down the isle in your local supermarket, you are attracted to the brands in a way that you recognise them, but you don't know where from. However, the feeling with brands is less noticeable and more subconscious, no one stands there pondering over why they recognise a certain brand. In the moment though, you are intrigued into the product because of what you have seen at some point in your life, and obviously the fresher the image, the more recognisable the brand is. I think that a lot of the public doesn't believe in advertising. My Dad tells me that he doesn't shop at Aldi because of the adverts, but when I ask him why, he says its cheaper than all the rest but how does he know that? Advertising. By looking at how people recognise other people, I can now see why advertising, even if it is shit, works.

#advertising #creative #student #thoughts

Why are Migrants coming here?

The topic has been talked about a lot, especially with my family, asking the question above. Why here? Why should we take them? Why do they want to come here? Benefits?

One reason, and i’m not saying its the only reason, is the fact that they are taught to speak English. 840 Million people in the world speak the language. It’s our reign that has driven the language to be spoken by so many people and now our language is giving people hope. Just put yourselves in their shoes. Your country is under attack, you aren't safe and have to leave everything behind, risk the journey and look for safety. What can you take with you? Only a few items, but the essential thing that you've got is your knowledge of the English language. Which is also widely spoken in Europe. You would go to where you think this skill would benefit you.

If you are thinking that I'm trying to make a point about how our country is powerful and has tripped up over itself, then I'm not, and I'm sorry if it sounds that way.

I wanted to share this because I was amazed by the simplicity of a possible reason. It stopped me in my tracks and slapped me around the face. It is a different way of thinking. Most people think that they are trying to come to Britain because of other reasons rather than the simple fact that they might just be able to speak common tongue.

Big enough not to smile

I know most of this bullshit that I am rambling on about isn't to do with advertising, and most of it is written when I've had a few pints down my neck. But if you want to read it you will. Anyway, I'm not doing it for you! I'm doing this for me. Back to what I was going to say. London is small. However big it is, it's still small. The more people you see on a daily basis. The less you are connected to one person. I find that as I travel further up north, back to where I live, people become friendlier. I don't think people are becoming friendlier the more you travel north. I think it is because, on a daily basis, they just don't see as many people. They don't lose the connection that people have. Simple communication that has made our species amazing. I have been trying, the last few days, to simply smile at someone on public transport. And it is harder than you think. Well it's not hard to smile, it's hard to get one back without a look that questions your motives. The fact that most people on tinder, a dating app, are in London, is ridiculous if you ask me. There are so many opportunities to meet new people. But so many, is too many. London is a world where no one smiles on transport. Where it does take the power of an app to meet people and people are so close, they are distant. Yet at home, where you don't see thousands of people pass by your eyes every day. There is no need for an app to date, there isn't any reason why you wouldn't say 'hi' to person next to you on the train. I may sound like I am taking the view that the north of the country is better, but I am not. London is a great city which I adore for what it gives, but I do love the connection with people from back home. I hope that I don't change my northern ways, but I fear this has already begun.

Who?

'It's not about how much experience, how you think you are right for industry... It's what have you got to offer! What is your take on it! Develop your own personality in advertising that breaks the moulds!' I know that, reading this, if you know me, is going to be a pretty disheartening topic, but i am feeling this way at present. Who am I? What am I? I feel like now, I cannot go home after university! Return to the simple life, work in a bar 4 days a week, play golf and live an easy life. I feel I have come this far that I cannot turn back. All within two years! I have lost who i was! But that raises the question who am I now! Enough with the who's! Am I what I want to be! My drive to be successful.. Is that for my personal benefit, or is that just so I can impress others. I feel everything I do is to impress others and not myself! When taking on all these placements, who am I impressing? I think this blog post really, cannot be answered. Apart from people can give their interpretation of who I am. In a two week placement, you have a very short time to get your personality across. I have only just been imagining how I come across to people. Do I come across as being cocky, nice, a bullshitter, a twat. I don't know to be honest. But is what people think of me really who I am? In the last two years I have changed drastically. Even by the things that you can see, my football team, my fashion, relationships, the fact that it's hard to actually smile at someone while walking around London. I have changed so much that I have forgotten what it's like to be me. I've forgotten what makes me me. Who is, what I do for? Me ? But who am I ? http://youtu.be/GCyjiEtHuL4

Touchy subject followed up with a response from my good friend Louie.

It has now become that we can't help everyone we want to. Migrants trying to escape to country's with better prospects and all round a safer place to live cannot cope with the influx of people. I watched the film Noah's ark not so long ago. Not the best film going but the story was relatable to every inch of humanity now. I know the film was built on the biblical story, but this was my first experience of it in depth. The growing population came to mind when watching. After a little research I found that the population is set to rise by another 2 billion people by 2050. And we can't even look after our own kind now. When hearing the news about migrants, cancer research sprung to mind. This might be a wild claim, but in one aspect of life we are doing the best we can to help everyone with this disease, yet we aren't capable of helping migrants which are in a similar situation to those with cancer. A life threatening situation. This argues the fact that should we only protect our people. The people who are born in the United Kingdom. The people who have a British passport. Or the people of the world. When you look into the problems the migrants are escaping from. The very same problems have been happening for years. In different parts of the world, conflicts have always taken place. And through the age of time, it gets worse the further you look back. Going back to the point of this post. We are putting millions and millions into defeating cancer, so that more people can live. When we can't cope with the amount of people in the world. I think I have a very strange way of seeing life. Human life. There is no need to reproduce. It's in our nature but we have succeeded. And there is nothing slowing us down. Turtles lay over 100 eggs and only about 2 ever succeed and live till 100. We have succeeded and we are progressively destroying the world. I have gone massively off my topic. However, the fact that we can't help people in need, shows the situation we are in. Louie's response Its all good mate apart from one aspect. And ovbcourse this is my opinion, Ive done my own research into increasing populations because its something very easy for people to complain about and so I wanted to know the trueth behind it so I could give an answer to what is quite an obvious and id say simple thing to correct. I believe your right in saying that it will increase by two billion but from what ive read its actually forcast to stop at that level due to a number of factors. Mostly better health eaducation and protection in third world countries. Ive also looked into I think its China or Japan where Families were restricted to one child. Whole towns are being evacuated, theres not enough children to go to school its not viable and as you can imagine its having a massive impact on the economy, I dont like the whole economy thing but if it keeps people fed in certain places thats reason enough to be a factor. Another which is the same for all countries is the growing welfare bill for retirement made worse by the fact that we are living longer. Thos coupled with the restriction of children there means there are and will be less adults to pay for the retired to live. Finally and not very big here but will be is A.I many people in the east now have artificial girlfriends because there isnt enough time out of work to build bonds with real people and its just easier. So id disagree with the idea that we dont need to reproduce. Oh so to be clear I dont actually view population as an issue which you may find weird My response I do agree but what if the Chinese and Japanese government said they could only have two children. Then the population would neither increase or decrease. The thing what I was getting at with the not needing to reproduce, is in economy terms, then yes we do. But when you look around, people are everywhere and I reckon some of that is wearing off so we aren't necessarily looking for a long term partner who can provide us with kids anymore. We have other ambitions than that, because there isn't at much need to breed. If we were living on the edge of destruction then we would need to, but we are far from that hahaa. And A.I .... They are already sticking to the rule of which we saw in I.robot some 10 years ago. A.I is inevitable, it's already happening. Google has bought into the company DeepMind which are already playing with A.I. Are you watching Humans on Channel 4 ? Louie: Our future prospects are certainly different. But I think things like love will always be a human trait. I am

My artistic impression of tonight's wedding ... Haha who am I kidding

What’s your hobby? ‘Advertising’

Watching films, playing football, and when I am home for summer, I love to play golf. I love it. I love the concentration you have to have, the tenacity to improve and the conversations with members as you go around the course. I live in a small Market town in Yorkshire where the majority have grown up playing a sport.

However, when I travelled back down to London for the D&Ad New Blood Talks, it was there that an ECD who was giving the talk said.. “The other ECD would of been here but he is out of the office playing golf, which isn't very Creative Director like” and then referenced the ‘Mad Men’ era.

Later in talk, he went on to say that creatives who are looking for jobs need to have something else to go along with their work. A hobby that isn't just ‘Advertising’. ‘If you had a youtube channel with 100,000 followers it would make you stand out’.

This is where I asked him, “Why can’t Golf be a hobby?”. To which he gave an unsatisfied look and said ‘it depends what you are doing with golf, if you are doing something creative then maybe’.

This really got me thinking about the things people in advertising do in their spare time and if the advertising world is forgetting and has lost connection with the average person.

Playing the likes of football and golf allows me to talk to a wide variety of people, mainly which have no interest in advertising. But these are the very people we have to advertise to. By being around people like this allows me to gain key insights and are able to relate to them a lot when coming up with ideas.

We had a brief for VW, during the research I showed my Dad the ‘Honda Type R’ youtube advert. A revelation in the advertising world. I remember when we saw it for the first time at Uni, everyone was losing their heads over it. I showed my Dad and he didn't really get it. His response was ‘Oh’. I know he might not be the target audience Honda was looking for when they did it, but none the less, his experience of it was a reality shock to me. I then showed my mates from home and their reaction was similar, they thought it was pretty cool but it didn't get them raving about it the same way we did in our class.

Are people in advertising, advertising to people in advertising more than the average person? Or even just advertising to those who live in London?

What I think, is that everyone needs a connection to the average punter, be that going to a pub and having a few pints with the locals, playing golf with the local members, playing football at the local team but you also need to have a passion for creativity. A business mind of innovation and a love of creativity.

I think you need the best of both worlds.

Im not just saying my hobbies are football and golf, I love films and regularly read and write reviews but it would be great to hear what other peoples opinions are on the matter in question.

#advertising #Student #BucksAdSchool #AdLife

Trip into London 22nd October

I know it's late, I really need to start writing it on my phone so its fresh in memory.

Anyway, less of that, we started the day at the Royal College of Surgeons, in the Huntarian Museum. The atmosphere which was derived was that of a jewellery shop, with priceless jewels on display. These we no ordinary jewels though, these were jewels of life. Remnants of peoples body parts, animals that had been dissected and stories of the human abnormal. This was an interesting experience, but consequently rather disturbing. The questions we were asking, for our Character Brief, were about who these people actually were, how they felt, how they coped in their lives and how were their lives affected.

We then went to the John Soane museum, the tardis of random but inquisitive artefacts that he had collected through his life. We were strapped for time in here as we had a table booked at the cafe rouge, so I did not get the proper looking that I would of liked to have. Still, I managed to spot this wonderful painting which I fell into an awe when I was studying it for a brief few minutes. The painting was by William Hogarth and was named 'Chairing the Member' (1754-5). There is so much anger and rage, complexed with novelty and humour of the rich and poor. Anyway before I start talking about the painting lets move on.

We had a spiffing lunch at Cafe Rouge then carried on our adventure to the British Museum. There, we viewed a display which told the lives of two people through the tablets they had taken in their life. There were captions to notify what the tablets were for, there were photographs with descriptions and little objects in-between the photos. The biggest question that I asked myself came from a glass of red wine, which was positioned after he was diagnosed with cancer. This implied that he got to a point where he stopped worrying about life and started to enjoy it. My question was, when do people stop worrying and start to enjoy their life, is it at the worst possible news?

After the JR museum we all split up and went our separate ways, I decided to wonder off on my own, which resulted in having a pint in the Nights Templar. Then i set off again, i felt lost, i felt like i had no purpose to walking. UNTIL. There it was, a gold banner across the top of the building, which was glowing with light. Lion King. I had to buy a ticket, so i did. I then had an hour to spare so went to Garfunkles on my own for tea. The waiters had sat me right in the middle of the restaurant with couples and families all around me. It was good for people watching though, i had a running commentary on my phone as to what was happening.

Lion King was amazing, I nearly cried. I could go on for another 200 words but I think I have wrote enough and that last sentence was pretty powerful.

I had a wonderful day and gained so much information and insights.

Wycombe Project

This was our very first brief we were tasked to do. We were told to head into the South West of High Wycombe with a list of small tasks to complete. Some such as; Buy a pencil and draw it, Find a stone and draw it and take 5 lines from an overheard conversation. We could do as many as we wanted or as little, however, the main objective was to explore High Wycombe and talk to the people.

Libby, Bradie, Lucie, Holly and I all decided on choosing the most boring one which we though was the, 'buy a pencil and draw it'. Although, we took it literally, so we bought pencils and we drew the word IT. We drew about 100 different 'IT's'... and based on the quote by Ray Bachellor in our lecture we set about asking questions, as to what things are. We held the 'IT' pictures up in front of many different buildings, people and objects.

The main goal, if fully developed, would be for the people of High Wycombe to question what is in their local area.

Character briefing

Today is the start of a new brief. The Character brief.

Today felt good, after the word brief where we were all momentarily lost, it certainly feels like I am more on track and have a greater drive to work, and drink less! My song that is the starting point is Ella Fitzgerald - Mac the Knife (live). To be honest, in the briefing today my head was filling with ideas and concepts that would help me along the brief. When suddenly I remembered about VMC tomorrow. Homework, the dreaded homework, which you only realise you have the day before the lesson. That is most certainly what i will be focusing on tonight, get this ‘HOMEWORK’ out of the way so that then i can focus on being creative. However, although I may not be actually good at it, I am finding a new found love for writing, which I never had before. I am starting to enjoy it, expressing my opinions, even if it is just for myself. Write everything down, then when you look back, your memories will be far greater.

John Webster 'The Human Adman' screening with the SCA at GOOGLE

We hardly knew what to expect, apart from the fact we were going to hear a lot of legends in the advertising world talk and that we would watch a film about the great John Webster. Upon arrival we were presented with free alcohol, a winner for every student on a tight budget after the heavy two weeks of freshers.

We, Isabelle, Lucy and I, mingled with the students of the SCA, the university whose students had re-edited the interview Patrick Collister had done with John Webster. They had definitely seized the opportunity to re-emburse their course and their status with this film. So much that they even decided upon four ‘Ad’ breaks in the short, approximately, five minute long piece. These Ad breaks delivered examples of the SCA’s greatest work, to show what the university can deliver. Some opinions on the ads were very controversial, mainly from the current SCA students themselves, questioning wether it was the time and place to actually showcase their work. Many of the feelings foretold were that of the SCA were relating their present work to that of John Webster. However, they had the awards, mentality and credibility to break the borders and to reach out and tell the ‘Ad World’ what the SCA is all about.

From a Bucks student point of view, the evening left me with the feeling to drive more for my goals, and to drive more to make our university the best. The drive to self promote our institution.

Word Brief end Analysis

My word was 'Seal' and most definitely went on a journey with this 'awe inspiring' word! The main focus of my final piece and the journey was based around a chair.. we all use chairs from day to day but never actually take notice of them. Much like when you get used to locking your car, after a while of doing it you don't take notice of it happening. That is when you start to ask yourself, "did I even lock the car?". Then have to go back and actually double check that the car has been locked.... but anyway ... basically my final product was to get the audience to question the chair, to first of all see the importance of the chair (in unexpected environments) then to question the chair infront of them and the one that they were sat on. However, after the little poster of ..

Seal. Seal. Seal. Seal. Seal. Seal. Seal. Seal. Seal. Seal. Seal. Seal. etc. With a few Sael? in to throw the mind,

, from the feedback given, the change of text, was not described as clearly as possible which left the audience guessing. Quote Miriam "you knew what you meant in your head, so it made perfect sense to you, so you presumed we would be able to understand it as well".

I definitely agree with what she said, I did feel that I was so in tune with what was going on.. that everyone else would of been.. however they were not!

I will most certainly take the feedback on board and hopefully come back with a stronger piece on the next brief.

Can't wait.

Day of the Word Brief crit

Well, got about an hour and a half until I get underway with my first ever crit. Nervous but quietly confident, don't want to seem confident as it could be completely wrong and that would be a massive disaster! Showing off to the max.. is the same as acting like a dick. Well.. time will tell ! Sorry to repeat the same phrase again because time will always tell.

Word Brief

Finalising the last stages to my project today, had some problems with the university printers but all was well in the end! Unsure wether it is good... or bad, but tuesday will tell. Just have to keep pressing on and make sure the first brief is as good as i can make it!

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