Friday was an uncomfortable day at work. It was uncomfortable because I was wearing a suit. There was a purpose to this sudden wardrobe shift – that evening I was heading to The Other Cinema for some vintage cinematic fun.

As I neared the venue I was relived that I hadn’t opted for smart casual, the pavement was filled with impeccably dressed characters queuing up outside. As soon as I stepped through the door of the Troxy I was transported back to the golden age of cinema. From the Usherettes greeting people as you walk in, to the vintage style stub you are given, it really felt like walking into some sort of time warp. The building itself is an amazing space: opened in 1933, it oozes art deco style. After being shown to our seats I took a wander around some of the themed stalls at the back of the auditorium. There were a good selection of pies that smelt delicious, but thankfully no jellied eels! I settled on a slice of carrot cake and a cup of tea, served in a proper china cup of course. I also treated myself to a packet of humbugs to suck on during the film. Before the lights dimmed for the main feature, there were a selection of acts including dancing from The Lady Grey’s, an organ recital and of course some good old fashioned sing-a-long action. There was also the chance to get to know the people sitting on your table a little better through a game that involved the flower all attendees were asked to bring. My only criticism was that a couple of the acts didn’t use microphones which, if you were sitting near the back as I was, made it nearly impossible to hear them over a auditorium filled with chattering people.

The film itself was an inspired choice, David Lean’s classic Brief Encounter, a cinematic masterpiece as beautiful as it is romantic, with some fantastic lines that got a few rumbles of laughter from the audience. Watching such a wonderfully emotive film in a candle-lit theatre, surrounded by vintage dresses and tuxedos, was without doubt one of the most immersive and enchanting film experiences I have had to date. I couldn’t help think about my grandmother, she would have been 23 when Brief Encounter was released; she may well have gone to see it at the local picture house. It’s fascinating to think how much a simple pass time like watching a movie has changed in one lifetime.

The Other Cinema is the latest offering from the minds behind The Secret Cinema, a cocktail of film and immersive theatre, exploring the power of shared experience and community. They will be showing a different film each month on the same day at venues around the globe. This was their first run and saw over 5,000 people attend over 4 days at venues in London, Edinburgh, Bournemouth and Norwich. CS will be catching up with Creative Director and Founder, Fabien Riggall to find out more about these fantastic projects in the very near future.

‘The minute I walked into Rosie’s office I knew she was a special industry figure. Her presence, enthusiasm, passion and love of what she does were clear. She has spent 28 years so far at BBH working her way up from Junior Art Director and has been incredibly loyal. Currently acting as the President of D&AD Rosie is passing her experience, knowledge and influence onto others. Please watch the video to the end to see her little dance’

Only 1 week to go before we have our next installment of our sell out (as always), Creative Social Presents. We are looking at everything that’s turning our socials on, getting them hot under the collar and red faced. FUCK THAT’S GOOD. Joining us in the hot seat, we have a brilliant line up of:

Sanky, Co-Founder/ Creative Partner and Art Director, AllofUs
Patrick Collister, Founder, Creative Matters
Seb Royce, Executive Creative Director, Glue
Simon Lloyd and Christine Turner, Creative Digital Head, Adam and Eve
Andy Sandoz, Creative Partner & Innovation Director, Work Club

One thing you can be sure of with CS Presents is these guys will make you feel the passion. We will be hearing all about the power of the universe to storytelling to things that could really blow up?! We will even be put in the confession chair and told how NOT to behave.

The romance starts here baby.

We are stardust, billion year old carbon, can understanding the universe unlock ‘The Idea’?,  Is there anyone here who can change the world? The world needs ideas and it needs them in a hurry. Now that technology means advertising can genuinely change behaviours, it may well be that there is someone who not only knows what we should be doing but also knows how to communicate it. Everything creative tells a story, we look at how the very best stories stay with us for life and our quest to find a new story for the audience.

And finally..

The business we are in seems to survive on, well, behaving badly and frankly, lying sometimes…The smoke and mirrors we seem to experience on a daily basis isn’t something to be proud of…so we intend to lift the lid on some things seen and heard that we wouldn’t have believed if someone hadn’t told us.

See you at the bar afterwards for a few beers thanks to our partners Source

We would also like to say a special thanks to our venue partners LBi for providing us with ‘The home of Creative Social Presents..’ a top notch venue for creative thinking.

Creative Social went down to meet Christine Turner and Simon Lloyd, Creative Digital Heads at Adam & Eve. The guys have just won gold and silver for their John Lewis ‘Harmony’ campaign at the Big Awards, and have recently launched Pottermore, J.K. Rowling’s new Harry Potter website.

Christine and Simon met while at University, after working together they both felt the creative chemistry that makes a winning partnership. A meeting with Pat Dougherty & Rob Kitchen at a talent showcase led them to a position at Bates UK. Even though they enjoyed working on Royal Mail, Woolworths & Sky, six months after joining, the agency took a pretty serious nose dive and they soon found themselves out of a job. They decided to try the freelance route and landed a contract at Glue. ‘Basically we never left; we were there 5 years later. It was our introduction into digital and also an introduction to being in a really great agency at the height of its success’ Simon tells me. Here they learnt the fundamentals of great, interactive digital advertising by working with a very talented group of people. At this point they made the decision to leave the pure play digital world as they could see the industry tilting. ‘Being in a purely digital agency meant you were sometimes picking up the breadcrumbs from established ATL creative, we wanted to get to a position where we were there at the very beginning when the briefs where being created, we believe digital should be part of the mix from the off, not just an add-on or an afterthought,’ Christine explains. They made the move to Lowe where they helped set up the digital team (and for the opportunity to work with Ed Morris). It was here they experienced working at the top of the food chain with the ability to present digital along side more traditional creative. They then they met with the award winning start up agency Adam & Eve and it wasn’t long before they felt this was the right place for them. An agency that truly offered a mix of traditional and modern talent. Two years on, they have built up an integrated digital team, as well as touching much of the more traditional work that is produced.

Having worked as a creative partnership for over ten years, I wanted to ask what they think makes a good creative relationship. ‘It’s harder at the beginning, you have to prove yourself not only to your partner but also to your new boss,’ Simon explains. He feels that as you become more senior and more confident you begin to build more trust in each other. ‘You have to like each other, that’s a start’, Christine tells me, even if they have not seen eye to eye that day, being able to leave that in the office is crucial. They are both big advocates of the creative team, they feel that a single creative is hindered by not having anybody to bounce ideas off and is ultimately less employable. They don’t believe, however, that creative teams should be limited to the traditional Copywriter / Art Director set up, ‘when we started we were forced to give ourselves these titles, but we didn’t work like that’ Christine says. Simon’s view is that ‘as long as somebody takes responsibility for a certain part of the job, that’s all people are after’.

The biggest change that they have seen within the industry is the shift between digital and above the line. ‘There was always a bit of a fear of digital’ Christine tells me, ‘now people realise that the thinking is the same, it’s just a different media’. They also acknowledge that on the flip side of that there has been a real turn around in creating great, heroic TV adverts that everybody talks about, something that Adam & Eve have become well known for (their latest John Lewis ad notched up over a million hits in 3 days). They both agree that we are living in an interesting time for adverting where the really successful agencies will be the ones who not only create both, but can integrate the two. With a lot of the pure digital talent moving to the above the line agencies, it will also be interesting to see what niche digital can find.

We move on to talk about the success of the John Lewis and Pottermore campaigns. ‘They were both very different’ Simon tells me, ‘I think the John Lewis work stood out because it was really different for that particular client’. The campaign involved an interactive installation with a live performer on the South Bank (check it out here). They had worked with the client for a number of years and built a trusting relationship which allowed them to become more daring. The execution combined a number of different disciplines into one idea which they admitted was incredibly stressful, especially when you’re watching an installation being lifted into the air by a crane.

Pottermore was a completely different type of campaign. By far the biggest project they have worked on, they started over a year prior to the actual live date. Simon and Christine were the only creative team involved and worked on the marketing and advertising of the site, art direction and branding as well as helping develop the concept of Pottermore itself.  The launch campaign focused on an announcement film in which J K Rowling would reveal Pottermore to the world. They utilized the huge fan base by releasing the co-ordinates of cryptic letters on the most popular Harry Potter blogs. The task to find them all and spell out Pottermore was supposed to take 2 days, it lasted just 3 hours. At this point the holding page for the official site went live, while at the same time owls started to gather on pages all over the web. When an owl was clicked on it would take you to a YouTube page with a countdown to the launch film featuring the author. ‘It was amazing to work on something with such a huge fan base. It was a bit like Christmas, you had this wonderful thing that was wrapped up and you could pull open a bit of the paper and tease people with it’ Simon told me. The level of success can be illustrated by the amount of user generated content that was created around the campaign, with fans from all around the world posting photos and videos of their ‘Potter Parties’ leading up to the launch.

I finished off by asking the guys what advice they would give to somebody starting their career in the industry. They both agreed a great portfolio was essential, but passion and enthusiasm were also key attributes. ‘You could have a brilliant book but if you come across like a bit of an arsehole you’re going to struggle’ Christine tells me. ‘It’s served us very well to be incredibly nice to everybody we have met, because you’ll meet them on the way up, and again on the way back down’ Simon adds.

In short, their checklist to success is:

- Have a good, simple book

- Be Nice

- Meet everyone

Check out Adam & Eve here.

I began by asking what they think it is that has got them to where they are today. Sam is quick to answer, ‘a combination of luck and hard work really.’ Going into a little more detail he explains that he and Dave had met whilst at university, both studying Advertising. They graduated at a time before digital advertising. As Dave says “There was no such thing as traditional advertising then, as there was nothing to be traditional against”.  In 1999 a forward thinking Creative Director suggested to them that this new ‘internet advertising’ could be big. This led them to BMP Interaction, the digital arm of BMP (now DDP), an agency with a reputation for great creative ideas. Within the first couple of weeks they were creating the online brand positioning for the Pot Noodle account, enjoying the creative freedom that an above the line agency would not have been able to offer. ‘We were lucky in a sense that we were ignorant of what you could do with digital,’ Dave tells me. A lack of knowledge about what you could and couldn’t do with this new medium, meant they ended up in fresh areas. Today Sam is still confident that ‘digital work forges more opportunities to be creative than any other medium.’ While working at BMP they met Dave Cox, who they describe as a ‘yes’ programmer. It was this unrestricted creativity, combined with positive technical attitude and ability, which allowed them to create fantastic work together.

Setting up Lean Mean Fighting Machine gave Sam and Dave the opportunity to become masters of their own destiny. This control and creative freedom suited the way they worked and also who they are. ‘It suited us because it was very do-it-yourself,’ Dave says, referring back to those early days creating work for Pot Noodle when they would be writing, designing, filming and having a go at whatever else came along without being stifled by hierarchies. For them, setting up Lean Mean fighting Machine felt like the logical step after BMP. One of the biggest differences, they noticed instantly, was the amount of people in meetings. ‘It doesn’t take many people to do good work,’ Sam tells me, adding that many of the big agencies function as a service industry rather than a creative industry. The more heads in a meeting means more opinions, and can result in ideas being watered down to try and please everybody. ‘Keep it small and nimble, keep an edge,’ is the advice from Dave.

I ask the guys about the projects that they have been most proud of. Sam’s first answer is the work that they produced for Emirates. ‘If you set a benchmark of good work you want to reach that and surpass it every time,’ he says. Having looked at work on their portfolio it’s clear to see why they have been consistently proud of the communications they have produced. In particular Sam talks about the Nonstopfernando project, a campaign that would still stand up today but that was groundbreaking at the time of its release, in terms of social connections and distributing an idea. For Dave, the memorable projects have been ‘any of the ones that have had a massive amount of risk.’ With Nonstopfernando, for example, they had to get it in one take with the client looking over their shoulder the whole time. Sam adds, ‘Creative people don’t think of it as risky, what’s risky about trying to stand out, trying to be original? The biggest risk is to stay the same, pumping out the same thing that looks and feels just like all the other advertising. Over time you won’t be relevant to people, in the long term you’ll become a bland company and somebody more interesting will come and take you over.’

When asked about the future of advertising, Dave’s opinion is that not much will change: ‘It will be the same problems that you have now, people don’t change a great deal, media just allows it to be projected in different ways’. These fundamental human attributes will still be the same in the future; they will just be facilitated in a better way. One thing Dave is sure of is that there will always be a gap for people to invent buzzwords to tell you about the next ‘new’ thing, which turns out, in most cases, to be a different form of something that existed before. Sam adds, ‘I don’t think anybody has ever told me anything about the future of advertising that has been remotely helpful.’

In terms of current challenges facing the industry, both Sam and Dave agree that creativity can be a problem. Dave talks about the changes within advertising in the 50s and 60s that lead to agencies starting conversations with consumers, and yet even today there are campaigns that are developed to simply shout at people. ‘Not enough people in the industry seem to be enjoying it, they all seem quite tense,’ Sam tells me. He believes that until people start to enjoy it and be proud to work in advertising, creativity will never reach its potential. Dave highlights the issue of ownership, relating to the way clients use multiple agencies on a single campaign as a contentious issue. He also talks about the way that many of the smaller agencies that have now been bought up by larger companies are forced to spend much of their creative energy figuring out how they are going to integrate.

The next question I ask the guys is ‘If you could collaborate with anybody alive today, who would it be?’ Dave’s choice, William Goldman, as he would like to witness how somebody of that caliber would go about his process and find out what he would do with a creative advertising brief. Sam tells me it would definitely be somebody from another creative industry, an artist or a poet maybe, ‘Imagine the ideas you could come with if you worked with someone like Damien Hirst, they would be a million miles away from advertising’

I finished by asking what advice they would give to somebody starting out in their career. Sam told me he had been reading a book the previous evening about stars that died young, ‘Buddy Holly died when he was 22 and he changed the world of music forever. If you go out when you’re young, with enough energy and you’re prepared to work hard, you could change the advertising industry. You could certainly change the course of your own life and maybe even something bigger.’ Dave agreed that it is all about energy, people expect their ideas to happen but sometimes things beyond your control can stop them from happening: ‘It’s like waves on a shore, you just have to keep bashing them down with idea after idea, that’s the difference between the good and the great. Some people get bitter and that energy turns inward, you need to have a good capacity to let ideas go as well as caring about them immensely”.

Check out the Lean Mean Fighting Machine site here.