A day in Paradise!

I have been meaning to do this post on my experience of the summer school at McCann Manchester for a long while, wtf is wrong with me! Anyhow Ok! how can I describe my day their, one word 'Paradise', creatives, well the whole advertising department in general get pampered like royalty, it shows what happens when you play into the game of being a vital sector in the political landscape of capitalism, but only if you work for one of the big boys in advertising, I assume! Anyway with their own swimming pool, canteen, garden, pub and even agency cat, I was blown away, imagine coming back from work and someone asking what you did today haha! but seriously all of this wonderful stuff has a purpose, to stimulate the mind so you can produce wonderful ideas for big brands, and that sounds like my cup of tea!

So 25 very talented creatives chosen out of 100 came to the summer school, and straight away we were given unlimited pads and markers, which I took advantage of, taking spares home for future use. And boom they got us straight to work with warm ups of doing a idea for a product or service in under a minute! As soon as we got the brain cells going, they took us out for a LIVE OMB (One minute Briefs) Tournament, which was defiantly my cup of tea (brew number two), because I love competition, specially head to heads, and it was just that! I was shaky at the early rounds, nearly getting knocked out in the first! but when I got my footing I blasted through the quarter and semi finals in dramatic fashion, putting on a show with the 3 finalist, shaking each ones hand, may the best madman or woman win!

Well the theme was 'scousers' and being the big football fan I am, this was perfect, and I hit it right on target with this beauty that cleverly incorporated OMB into the fold of the idea!

BOOM I win the LIVE OMB Tournament and for a prize I get given a £25 itunes voucher, but that was nothing near the biggest prize, which was beating all these top creative individuals, most them fresh former students! It was such a big buzz! My biggest hint yet that I had the potential to be top creative and that this is the career I truly belong in!

Carrying on to the later day activities, we were given a crash course in presenting a product or service, told to change character from car salesmen to children's Tv presenter, I was nerves seeing the others magically fitting into the role, but when me and my creative partner Faye came up, we did just fine, advertising coffee as yoga instructors haha. Then came the final hurdle, with my creative partner we had to come up with a campaign idea against other teams for one of their clients 'crosscountry trains'. Now being a recently formed team, we did not have a real way of working together, a real link in the chain, even tho we are good friends, but we did our best and came up with a reasonable campaign idea. 'Straight to the Point' it was called, a no nonsense approach about fast travel to your destination point, using symbolic imagery to get it across, but to who? There were gaps to be filled and adjusted, this idea was too board, it needed to be narrowed down, that was the problem, but we did receive a good reply to our effort from the established creatives at the agency, so it was not all bad as we felt!

Finally when all was done we went down to their pub for drinks and student book critics, I had my fair share of John Smiths, and soon followed showing my rough student book to one of the heads of OMB. Being rough as my book was, he mistaken my layout as a story board, and could not focus on a single ad as there where too many on each page, all thumbnails, but he did say I was crazy and had not seen this way of thinking before, which touch my heart strings haha but in conclusion I need to refine and polish the ideas I felt were BIG into a well tuned student book, presentable in all its glory. And this let me down in not getting into the final 6 for the full payed intern for 6 weeks, but I expected it even tho I lived in hope and was very happy with the feedback I received from there team!   

What now then? Well its written in black and white on this email, I need to go out in my final year and transform my portfolio from something I hate into something I love, a book that truly represents me in all thats hidden in my BIG imaginative head, and it will never be finished, being as vast in ideas like the locations of Lord of the Rings within me! Its just simply a matter of doing! LESS TALKING MORE DOING! COME ON DAN YOU CAN DO THIS, BLOW THE SKY OFF THE EARTH THIS YEAR! 

Thanks for taking your time to read the longest blog entry yet, expect BIG change from me in the next three weeks! Peace out!