Officially billed as ‘creative week: part 2’, the sequel happily lived up to the lofty expectations we’d garnered over the previous week.
We had a mixed bag of training this week. Firstly, from the aptly named ‘Knowledge Centre’ team, we had some training on how best to use professional resources (large databases of market research and huge libraries of past advertising campaigns) to be as informed as possible in planning campaigns. As well as meeting the creative teams Graeme & Senan and Anna & Pansy, we tootled off from the West Kensington countryside to the heady lights of the city visit two of the media agencies we work with – OMD and Posterscope.
How we see West Kensington
After a trip upstairs (I reckon it was purely arranged to show off the new OMD lifts – very stylish in case you were wondering) we met Harriet – one of the OMD grads. She talked us though how media agencies and traditional agencies work together in order to get the most collaborative work out. It also underlined the fact that they’re not just a buying agency, they also plan exactly which media channels are most effective for the chosen target market.
After a brief interlude in a quirky coffee shop (yah, we had lattes AND croissants. Maaate!), we headed to Posterscope. They explained that they’re an outdoor agency specialising in all types of outdoor media, which means they’re experts at planning cool and unusual campaigns with anything from posters on the side of bus-stops to the Clapham Colossus – a 200ft long backlit billboard near Clapham Junction station.
200 feet's worth of Jack Black
They showed us all sorts of innovative media spaces, and how they helped to create really memorable campaigns, a highlight being the simple but effective McDonald’s coffee bean bus-stop ‘poster’….
That's Right. Real beans in the bus-stop.
Our day underlined just how important it is to work with the media and outdoor agencies at the planning process of a campaign so that it can be really effective across all kinds of media. The day also revealed that Charlie has formed unhealthy attachments to West Kensington. His constant pining for the West Cromwell Road whilst we wandered around Soho was finally resolved when we headed back to Leo’s at the end of the day.
Chris
