2016: A Great Year
Since I had a heart attack early 2015, I have decided to start documenting each year and get involved in lots of creative projects with driven creative people, so in keeping with this relatively new tradition, here goes...
We also created a recruitment campaign for young creatives called Magnaficent Seven. We received lots of entries to our competition brief in which we asked people to submit one minute videos to advertise themselves. Of these, 7 were chosen to a 7 hour creative day at our studios and experience pitching, talks and workshops along with a spot of filming. Zack and Ellis were chosen from the day to do a 7 week placement with us in 2017. Check out the video of the day here:
We created a film-led social campaign called 'Breathe Life' for kindness.org
Loneliness is one of the greatest causes of death in older people. Through a simple email request for wise advice, you can restore feelings of self worth in an older person and together help us end loneliness.
We heard the Olympic and Paralympic Parade was coming to Manchester ahead of London with lots of the golds coming from the North, so we just had to get involved! By turning Manchester Gold for their arrival. Along with our clients, we took thousands of gold hats, wigs and created a social campaign with Jonny Vegas to encourage everyone to #GoGoldMCR.
The hats made their way on stage as our sporting heroes took selfies, and there were loads of tweets as brands and the public got involved. Metrolink turned a tram gold and Nissan even brought along a fleet of gold cars! Of course, it's Manchester so it rained... but with that came a rainbow ending at the Town Hall over Team GB. A perfect ending to a golden day.
And to round up an amazing year, we had to top it all off with a Christmas campaign. We collaborated with junior creatives Alex, Asa and David on #MerryCritmas that features Father Critmas as the main star. He’s self proclaimed as the best Creative Director in the world and talented director Luke Logan filmed one of his infamous book crits where he roasts a creative team for their terrible puns, typos and innuendos in their portfolio. The website merrycritmas.com encouraged people to sign up and get involved this Christmas. After featuring in articles and magazines across the world and hundreds of creatives getting involved worldwide, we are happy to have spread some festive creative joy this year.
We even did our very own ‘behind the scenes’ #MannequinChallenge film to support the campaign at Foundry Film Studios.
One Minute Briefs has gone from strength to strength this year as we reached 13,000 followers after being Verified on Twitter thanks to all the OMBLES. We have created some great awareness for important causes and worked with some great brands to deliver impactful social campaigns. Some of the work you see above OMB played a huge part in. We hosted another event in Manchester #OMBLive3 as people came from across the country to network with fellow followers, take part in workshops, tournaments and some even won awards. It was an amazing evening and I'm very much looking forward to #OMBLive4!!
It was good to be able to talk about OMB and the #LoveYourNHS journey at a number of universities /colleges including Salford City, Leeds, Stockport and Man Met. Along with talks/workshop at School of Thought, SASCon, Glug, Pecha Kucha MCR and the V&A Museum.
Overall, it's been a great year once again. There are always ups and downs in life but it's important to take your opportunities to make things better for yourself and for other people. Collaborating with people has been hugely important this year and together we can make even more amazing things happen in 2017.
Since I had a heart attack early 2015, I have decided to start documenting each year and get involved in lots of creative projects with driven creative people, so in keeping with this relatively new tradition, here goes...
Firstly, lots of people have been saying 2016 was a shit year. No it wasn't.
It's important to focus on the positives... like this woman did: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/27/12-of-the-nicest-things-which-have-happened-in-2016-so-far/
On a personal note, after the successful campaign getting the NHS to Xmas number 1 in 2015, I took on the role of MAGNAFI's Creative Director at the start of the 2016 and have had a great year working on some brilliant client and self initiated campaigns. I'd like to thank Si, Emily and Steve for this great opportunity. As well as the rest of the amazing MAGNAFI team for being...well...amazing.
Off the back of the #LoveYourNHS Campaign we have picked up a number of awards, including Creative Circle, Drum Marketing, MPA, Brand Republic & Campaign Big Awards for Best Social Media Campaign. We also won Roses Best Online/Viral Film, Integrated Campaign and the overall Grand Prix Award. Collaboration was key to this campaign, so we were delighted to win Best Collaboration awards alongside One Minute Briefs & Big Brand Ideas at the MPA Awards and at the NECB Awards.
I also won Great British Entrepreneur Awards for Social Media & a Special Award for Social Enterprise with One Minute Briefs. More importantly, I got to meet my childhood heroes Caprice & Carol Smillie at the event in London!
Winning at the NECB awards gave me the opportunity to deliver an impromptu speech to thank the North East Cheshire people who supported the campaign and helped the NHS Choir beat Justin Bieber to Xmas Number 1. I then took the chance to have my say on an important issue after discussing it earlier in the evening with Adam Britton my best mate and fellow Creative Director at neighbouring agency, Trunk. He had seen a tweet of mine against the potential closure of Macclesfield A&E department which read 'Without Macclesfield A&E I'd be dead' and we chatted about turning it into a billboard in Macclesfield. So whilst I was on stage I asked all of the people in the room to support our quest to save it and make something amazing happen for the NHS once again. After the campaign, MP David Rutley and Macclesfield got in touch with me and I vowed to do what I could by creating a film and social campaign. http://www.macclesfield-express.co.uk/news/heart-attack-survivor-joins-bid-12219097 and only a few days later plans to close the department were cancelled. The powers that be will have seen what could be achieved with the #LoveYourNHS campaign so I hope we helped to push them into the decision to keep the A&E open and save lives in the process. I will continue to support the NHS and do what I can for Macclesfield hospital after backing their annual cardiac rehab walk earlier in the year.
Continuing my own cardiac recovery, I also returned to competitive football for the first time in 20 months with Mellor F.C in 2016. It was a very daunting experience but I came on for the last 20 minutes and managed to grab a goal. Slowly but surely I have been building my confidence and fitness back up and chip in with a few goals to help the team to a good position in the league and cup. I would like to thank Adam Axford our coach and my teammates for their support and efforts in the past year. And we need to keep it up in 2017 as Adam has promised to get the club badge tattooed if we win the league!
I was also delighted to be a finalist in the Cannes Young Lions competition alongside Paul Bond for our British Red Cross print ad and also receive a Drum Dream Commendation award for a children's book I wrote with my previous agency Big Brand Ideas thanks to the fantastic illustrations by Rob Bolt. https://www.bigbrandideas.co.uk/work/new-forest-book-and-game/
As well as this, I also won a Chip Shop Award for a GambleAware poster I created. However, I was even more proud to witness a number of One Minute Briefs followers also picking up Chips for their amazing ideas, some of which started off as a one minute concept. The Grand Prix was won by OMBLES Matthew Wyatt and Paul Bond too. An amazing evening and thanks to those guys for giving me and OMB a shout out on stage.
Hopefully 2017 will bring along some more great news as it has been another amazing year in which I have been able to work with some incredibly talented people.
The launch of MAGNAFI's partnering Foundry Film Studios coincided with us creating our very first Sofology ad. So You. So Me. Sofology. A fun ad with distinctive roomsets and quirky characters.
Working with Sofology has been brilliant as they are always looking to do things differently to achieve their aim of everyone feeling at home on a sofa they love, which is why we created a brand ad to communicate each of their ology's.
I also won Great British Entrepreneur Awards for Social Media & a Special Award for Social Enterprise with One Minute Briefs. More importantly, I got to meet my childhood heroes Caprice & Carol Smillie at the event in London!
Winning at the NECB awards gave me the opportunity to deliver an impromptu speech to thank the North East Cheshire people who supported the campaign and helped the NHS Choir beat Justin Bieber to Xmas Number 1. I then took the chance to have my say on an important issue after discussing it earlier in the evening with Adam Britton my best mate and fellow Creative Director at neighbouring agency, Trunk. He had seen a tweet of mine against the potential closure of Macclesfield A&E department which read 'Without Macclesfield A&E I'd be dead' and we chatted about turning it into a billboard in Macclesfield. So whilst I was on stage I asked all of the people in the room to support our quest to save it and make something amazing happen for the NHS once again. After the campaign, MP David Rutley and Macclesfield got in touch with me and I vowed to do what I could by creating a film and social campaign. http://www.macclesfield-express.co.uk/news/heart-attack-survivor-joins-bid-12219097 and only a few days later plans to close the department were cancelled. The powers that be will have seen what could be achieved with the #LoveYourNHS campaign so I hope we helped to push them into the decision to keep the A&E open and save lives in the process. I will continue to support the NHS and do what I can for Macclesfield hospital after backing their annual cardiac rehab walk earlier in the year.
Continuing my own cardiac recovery, I also returned to competitive football for the first time in 20 months with Mellor F.C in 2016. It was a very daunting experience but I came on for the last 20 minutes and managed to grab a goal. Slowly but surely I have been building my confidence and fitness back up and chip in with a few goals to help the team to a good position in the league and cup. I would like to thank Adam Axford our coach and my teammates for their support and efforts in the past year. And we need to keep it up in 2017 as Adam has promised to get the club badge tattooed if we win the league!
I was also delighted to be a finalist in the Cannes Young Lions competition alongside Paul Bond for our British Red Cross print ad and also receive a Drum Dream Commendation award for a children's book I wrote with my previous agency Big Brand Ideas thanks to the fantastic illustrations by Rob Bolt. https://www.bigbrandideas.co.uk/work/new-forest-book-and-game/
As well as this, I also won a Chip Shop Award for a GambleAware poster I created. However, I was even more proud to witness a number of One Minute Briefs followers also picking up Chips for their amazing ideas, some of which started off as a one minute concept. The Grand Prix was won by OMBLES Matthew Wyatt and Paul Bond too. An amazing evening and thanks to those guys for giving me and OMB a shout out on stage.
Hopefully 2017 will bring along some more great news as it has been another amazing year in which I have been able to work with some incredibly talented people.
The launch of MAGNAFI's partnering Foundry Film Studios coincided with us creating our very first Sofology ad. So You. So Me. Sofology. A fun ad with distinctive roomsets and quirky characters.
Working with Sofology has been brilliant as they are always looking to do things differently to achieve their aim of everyone feeling at home on a sofa they love, which is why we created a brand ad to communicate each of their ology's.
And, we also created a 'Life's too short to be with the wrong sofa' campaign.
This features provocative headlines alongside beautiful close up details and stunning sofas. All accompanied by en epic music track.
Another positive part of 2016 was the addition of James Clancy to the MAGNAFI creative team who came on board as Senior Creative. Some of you will know we previously worked together as a creative partnership at McCann Manchester so it's great to have him on board. One of the first pieces we created together was this ad for Betfred Vegas. Where we harked back to the 70s to literally take the viewer to Vegas.
This features provocative headlines alongside beautiful close up details and stunning sofas. All accompanied by en epic music track.
Another positive part of 2016 was the addition of James Clancy to the MAGNAFI creative team who came on board as Senior Creative. Some of you will know we previously worked together as a creative partnership at McCann Manchester so it's great to have him on board. One of the first pieces we created together was this ad for Betfred Vegas. Where we harked back to the 70s to literally take the viewer to Vegas.
We also went back in time for a very different advert for Bloom & Wild. Showing how 'times change but the sentiment stays the same' for their unique letterbox delivery for flowers through their online app.
We also created a #LoveGiving campaign to encourage people to experience the happiness giving a gift can bring. This started with an initial film created alongside my good friend and talented director/producer Lou Gallagher which led to an unbelievable 37,000 nominations in less than 2 weeks!
As well as working on great projects with amazing clients, I've also worked closely with Andy K, Charlie & Eleanor to deliver self initiated campaigns and content. Including our MAGNAFI hero film using double exposure to show our showreel on different types of people to reflect our agencies ethos of 'Capture Your Audience'.
We also created a #LoveGiving campaign to encourage people to experience the happiness giving a gift can bring. This started with an initial film created alongside my good friend and talented director/producer Lou Gallagher which led to an unbelievable 37,000 nominations in less than 2 weeks!
As well as working on great projects with amazing clients, I've also worked closely with Andy K, Charlie & Eleanor to deliver self initiated campaigns and content. Including our MAGNAFI hero film using double exposure to show our showreel on different types of people to reflect our agencies ethos of 'Capture Your Audience'.
We also created a recruitment campaign for young creatives called Magnaficent Seven. We received lots of entries to our competition brief in which we asked people to submit one minute videos to advertise themselves. Of these, 7 were chosen to a 7 hour creative day at our studios and experience pitching, talks and workshops along with a spot of filming. Zack and Ellis were chosen from the day to do a 7 week placement with us in 2017. Check out the video of the day here:
We created a film-led social campaign called 'Breathe Life' for kindness.org
Loneliness is one of the greatest causes of death in older people. Through a simple email request for wise advice, you can restore feelings of self worth in an older person and together help us end loneliness.
We heard the Olympic and Paralympic Parade was coming to Manchester ahead of London with lots of the golds coming from the North, so we just had to get involved! By turning Manchester Gold for their arrival. Along with our clients, we took thousands of gold hats, wigs and created a social campaign with Jonny Vegas to encourage everyone to #GoGoldMCR.
The hats made their way on stage as our sporting heroes took selfies, and there were loads of tweets as brands and the public got involved. Metrolink turned a tram gold and Nissan even brought along a fleet of gold cars! Of course, it's Manchester so it rained... but with that came a rainbow ending at the Town Hall over Team GB. A perfect ending to a golden day.
And to round up an amazing year, we had to top it all off with a Christmas campaign. We collaborated with junior creatives Alex, Asa and David on #MerryCritmas that features Father Critmas as the main star. He’s self proclaimed as the best Creative Director in the world and talented director Luke Logan filmed one of his infamous book crits where he roasts a creative team for their terrible puns, typos and innuendos in their portfolio. The website merrycritmas.com encouraged people to sign up and get involved this Christmas. After featuring in articles and magazines across the world and hundreds of creatives getting involved worldwide, we are happy to have spread some festive creative joy this year.
We even did our very own ‘behind the scenes’ #MannequinChallenge film to support the campaign at Foundry Film Studios.
One Minute Briefs has gone from strength to strength this year as we reached 13,000 followers after being Verified on Twitter thanks to all the OMBLES. We have created some great awareness for important causes and worked with some great brands to deliver impactful social campaigns. Some of the work you see above OMB played a huge part in. We hosted another event in Manchester #OMBLive3 as people came from across the country to network with fellow followers, take part in workshops, tournaments and some even won awards. It was an amazing evening and I'm very much looking forward to #OMBLive4!!
It was good to be able to talk about OMB and the #LoveYourNHS journey at a number of universities /colleges including Salford City, Leeds, Stockport and Man Met. Along with talks/workshop at School of Thought, SASCon, Glug, Pecha Kucha MCR and the V&A Museum.
Overall, it's been a great year once again. There are always ups and downs in life but it's important to take your opportunities to make things better for yourself and for other people. Collaborating with people has been hugely important this year and together we can make even more amazing things happen in 2017.