Goodbye MAGNAFI
Today I am making the sad announcement that I have resigned from my role as Creative Director at MAGNAFI and will be leaving today. After an amazing couple of years, I have decided to move on in order to take on some new and exciting challenges. Although, I'm sure I will be collaborating with MAGNAFI again in the future as I am leaving on good terms with everyone and have enjoyed every minute of working with such a brilliant, talented team.
I'd like to thank Simon Lewis for the opportunity to work within a vibrant agency that has such an entrepreneurial, pro-active spirit. Not only have we been able to create amazing work, but also make a difference to people's lives with some of the campaigns we have run. This enthusiasm to make things happen is something I relish and it has been great to have the support of Simon, Emily Crabtree and the wider team to achieve great things.
Below are some of the projects I've had the pleasure of working with during my time here.
A particular highlight, and one that's never likely to be surpassed, was our campaign to get the NHS to Xmas number 1 in 2015. The team worked tirelessly and collaboratively to create something special and help the NHS to beat Justin Bieber to the number one spot. Seeing the music video we made on the TV just before the Queen's speech is something I'll never forget and by far the proudest moment of my career.
Off the back of the #LoveYourNHS Campaign we also 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.
It has also been a pleasure to work on some great adverts for Sofology. A client who likes to do things differently. One of the tweets about our most recent ad said we had 'made sofas sexy'! See some of our ads below.
We also took a trip to Vegas on Betfred Airlines. A great brief. I even got to sit in the cockpit! Bethan and James did an amazing job bringing it to life.
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 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! Sally, Lily and Em did an amazing job making it all happen. And Holly brought all the designs together brilliantly.
As well as working on great projects with amazing clients, we've worked on and delivered self initiated campaigns and content. Below is our MAGNAFI hero film using double exposure to show our showreel on different types of people to reflect the MAGNAFI ethos of 'Capture Your Audience'. Great to work with Si directly on this one too and lovely editing by Luke.
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. As a result of this Zack spent 10 weeks with us and built up a great portfolio of work in his time here. Check out the video of the day here:
Today I am making the sad announcement that I have resigned from my role as Creative Director at MAGNAFI and will be leaving today. After an amazing couple of years, I have decided to move on in order to take on some new and exciting challenges. Although, I'm sure I will be collaborating with MAGNAFI again in the future as I am leaving on good terms with everyone and have enjoyed every minute of working with such a brilliant, talented team.
I'd like to thank Simon Lewis for the opportunity to work within a vibrant agency that has such an entrepreneurial, pro-active spirit. Not only have we been able to create amazing work, but also make a difference to people's lives with some of the campaigns we have run. This enthusiasm to make things happen is something I relish and it has been great to have the support of Simon, Emily Crabtree and the wider team to achieve great things.
Below are some of the projects I've had the pleasure of working with during my time here.
A particular highlight, and one that's never likely to be surpassed, was our campaign to get the NHS to Xmas number 1 in 2015. The team worked tirelessly and collaboratively to create something special and help the NHS to beat Justin Bieber to the number one spot. Seeing the music video we made on the TV just before the Queen's speech is something I'll never forget and by far the proudest moment of my career.
Off the back of the #LoveYourNHS Campaign we also 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.
We also took a trip to Vegas on Betfred Airlines. A great brief. I even got to sit in the cockpit! Bethan and James did an amazing job bringing it to life.
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 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! Sally, Lily and Em did an amazing job making it all happen. And Holly brought all the designs together brilliantly.
As well as working on great projects with amazing clients, we've worked on and delivered self initiated campaigns and content. Below is our MAGNAFI hero film using double exposure to show our showreel on different types of people to reflect the MAGNAFI ethos of 'Capture Your Audience'. Great to work with Si directly on this one too and lovely editing by Luke.
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. As a result of this Zack spent 10 weeks with us and built up a great portfolio of work in his time here. 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. Steve has had a huge passion to do something to help lonely elders and it's great that we could work together to make it happen.
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. Every single member of the team should be proud of this work as everyone played a role.
In another big Christmas campaign, we collaborated with junior creatives Alex, Asa and David on #MerryCritmas, which 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 at Christmas. and featured in articles and magazines across the world with hundreds of creatives getting involved worldwide.
We even did our very own ‘behind the scenes’ #MannequinChallenge film to support the campaign at Foundry Film Studios.
More recently we created an ad set in a stunning country home for fashion brand Chi Chi.
A great campaign to be involved in as their brand goes from strength to strength. Will and James did a great job on the scripts and art direction.
And last but definitely not least is some of our most recent work for breast enlargement. A great brief and a lot of fun to make with an integrated campaign containing lots of assets! The two James', Helen and Lou did a great job in creating #MYAWorld
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. Steve has had a huge passion to do something to help lonely elders and it's great that we could work together to make it happen.
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. Every single member of the team should be proud of this work as everyone played a role.
In another big Christmas campaign, we collaborated with junior creatives Alex, Asa and David on #MerryCritmas, which 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 at Christmas. and featured in articles and magazines across the world with hundreds of creatives getting involved worldwide.
We even did our very own ‘behind the scenes’ #MannequinChallenge film to support the campaign at Foundry Film Studios.
More recently we created an ad set in a stunning country home for fashion brand Chi Chi.
A great campaign to be involved in as their brand goes from strength to strength. Will and James did a great job on the scripts and art direction.
And last but definitely not least is some of our most recent work for breast enlargement. A great brief and a lot of fun to make with an integrated campaign containing lots of assets! The two James', Helen and Lou did a great job in creating #MYAWorld
As you can see by the variety of some of our work and side projects, it's been a fun and enjoyable experience, in which I've made lots of new friends and worked alongside inspirational people every day. I will be taking this experience on to whatever I do next and look forward to staying in touch with everyone at MAGNAFI.
I've also found a few old pics of me and the team below too. Great times.
Goodbye MAGNAFI.
Nick x
