Doodling

Getting squiggly with something new for Open.

The world well drawn - freelancers please enquire

Long live the love affair with illustration.

For the people a few years back that said illustrators were a dying breed and that Macs had replaced pen warriors...Try getting a good illustrator now!

Love the work here of Beat 13 (see beat13.co.uk), but equal respect to John Burgerman, Andrew Rae, Peepshow, Non Permanent and anyone else out there making a name doodling.

Much respect for your imagination - long may the renaissance continue and if you have any availability please call Open soon as you can.

Close to our heart

Thought I'd share a couple of interesting visual books that have some of the nice outdoor, ambient and guerrilla work that's been picked up around the world.

I love to think that with the millions spent on advertsing, something as simple as taking a photo of a wall painted with a goal post outline and a swoosh can be published, blogged and carried right to the heart of consumer dialogue.

See Amazon to buy them.

The age of Nice

Have you noticed that if the 80's were the era of Gordon Gecko and greed is good and the 90's were all Gen X, Indie, Rave and a world wrought with recession, terrorism and the realisation that perhaps Greed isn't all it's cracked up to be and getting loved up can make it all go away.

And now, as we come to the tail end of the Noughties, everything is 'Nice'.

Anthropologists will tell you that we're entering a phase of new found cultural optimism which is emerging in the aftermath of war, natural disasters and new world market development. Wise words, but I also say it's because people are being Nice.

Creativity is now the preferred social cache and what you do, not what you've got rule the order. Both consumers and brands alike are putting pressure on themselves to provide voices and outlets for this new social creativity and with it a dialogue of optimism and positivity.

But how many social network sites can the web hold. How many blogs do you have time to read? (This one of course)
How many gigs can you go to? How many photos can you share, videos can you upload and watch?

There was a 90's saying: "I used to spend time to save money, now I spend money to save time".

So for us the challenge is harder than it ever was - gain the consumers attention and interest.

Well the good news is things are now more interesting, but now we're pitching for more time in an already crowded head.

So who wins? Well the nicest of course.

Welcome to the age of Nice.

Summer of Love for Homeserve

Our event and publicity team recently threw a huge party on behalf of Homeserve. We held it at Birmingham's cool Custard Factory for about 700 Homeserve folk under the Homeserve Summer of Love festival campaign.

With live bands, fairground rides, henna tattoos, remote control boats and loads more, for those that could remember... they said it was a great night.

Red Bull gives you wiiings...and wheels!

We're wrapping up our Red Bull 'REFUEL A BULL' promotion at the moment which has been a bit of a hit this summer. What was initially pitched at running in 500 bars ended up rolling out to more like 2500! So awareness and participation has hiked up dramatically and in October, one lucky blighter and their mate are off to Brazil to watch the last GP of the season from the track side. Give us a shout if you'd like to know more about this activity.

Hello Katie

There's nothing better than the smiling face of a newbie starting here at Open. This is Katie Holt, who recently joined us as an Account Executive. She's come from Cardiff, but she's not Welsh, but she does have a bit of twang picked up from her time there. Say hello to Katie!