The Digital Beard.

Technology has created some mind-blowing ideas of late. 

One rather disturbing development I have come across recently is the Digital Beard. The use of male facial hair as a digital storage device.

Klaus Von Strutenberg a digital pioneer in California has successfully transferred data from optical fibres to the strands of  human hair. 

Strutenberg's research found that men's beard hair and optical fibres  have a very similar molecular structure and they behave in very similar ways.

In 2012, Strutenberg successfully uploaded a Mariah Carey music video to a single bristle.

Tom Yoravinmeon, a volunteer, had his films, playlists, photos and personal information uploaded to his beard via an adapted bristle
port and cable. 

Strutenberg said, "I know this sounds implausible, but I see the day when Netflix will be able to stream direct to Bluetooth beards. 
All personal ID, like passports, CV's and bank details will be stored on a hairy chin. Facebook will actually be on the human face."

The trials have not been without controversy.

Female scientists and groups like WAB, Women Against Beards, have attempted to disrupt Strutenberg's trials on the basis of inequality.

A group of female lawyers, backed by Gillette, have filed a petition  to stop the trials on the grounds of sexism. Women, or most women, are unable to grow beards.

In response, the research team have tried to digitalise a woman's hair with disastrous results.

Strutenberg found the electrical negatively charged  impulses from the brain interfered with the positively charged digital information. 

One female volunteer's head caught fire when Spotify, (a major sponsor of the trials), tried to upload the complete discography of Dolly Parton to her ponytail.

Another volunteer's ears melted when the researchers tried to upload Kim Kardashian's Twitter page to her lustrous bob.

An extreme female activist group called  Bye Bye Beard, ( The BBB),  have been attacking men in San Diego bars with shaving foam.

Unperturbed, Strutenberg's team are continuing with their trials and they expect the Digital Beard to be launched in 2018. 

During the research trials there was one notable discovery. 

Any advertising or branded content was automatically rejected by beards. 

The advertising content remained on the hair follicles to be removed later with a fine beard comb. 

It appears that beards are natural adblockers.

Here is a quick film that was smuggled out of Strutenberg's Labs.

The passing of time never defeats a good idea.

In 1994, two students Zane Radcliffe and Graham Davey knocked on my door.

"We got an idea Tone. Can we borrow the whiteboard stand?", they said.

"Use it well. Bring it back", I replied.

Off they trundled with the portable whiteboard and a few marker pens.

Later that same week the boys pinned up an idea for Hornby model train sets at our Friday Review. 

The campaign showed how they put the whiteboard to good use. This is what they did.

The idea showed many skills.

It showed the team could write witty headlines.

It showed how they could steal up on an audience and grab their attention.

It showed they could write ads that didn't look like ads.

It showed they could think in a topical way. Back then railway concourses then were awash with excuses for delayed and cancelled trains. 

It showed they had smart media thinking.

And it showed they had conviction in their ideas and a bit of mischief.

Not many first term ideas at Watford make it to June.


The Hornby campaign did.

I loved the idea. So much so, that a few years ago I found the work in the plans chest.  

I laminated it and displayed it in my rooms.

After Watford, Zane and Graham split. Zane formed a partnership with Mike Oughton and landed a job at Leo Burnett. 

The Hornby campaign was one of many great ideas in their folio.

Zane won tons of awards in his 15 years in advertising.  

He left London and started his own agency in Scotland called Newhaven. 

He then left for Northern Ireland and became a best selling author. (London Irish and A Killer's Guide To Iceland were two of his bestsellers.)

In 2015, Zane  came back to advertising and is now the Creative Director of AgencyUK in Bath.

Zane wanted to inspire the younger creatives in his department to come up with simple, fresh ideas.

So he went back into his own plans chest and dug out the Hornby campaign he wrote with Graham when he was a young creative at Watford.
  
Zane also showed it to the Hornby client.  The client loved it and bought the idea.

The idea took 21 years to go from the Watford pin boards to the real world.

Zane entered the work for The Drum Awards 2015. 

It won the top prize, The Grand Prix.

It also won the prize for headline writing.

Good ideas will  always be good. 

Hang  on to them.

You never know when their time will come.

On your bike.

When I was a wannabe creative I found a job by cycling around the offices of Leicester knocking on doors. 

That's what the Tory Government of the time told us to do. 

'Want a job? Get on your bike', they said.

I managed to get a job 3.5 miles from where I lived. 

I worked out that 3.5 miles was the maximum distance that my front bicycle tyre would manage.

You see, it had a slow puncture and I couldn't afford a new inner tube. 

I stuck a new Elastoplast on the inner tube every morning. 

I pumped it up and it got me to work. 

And every evening I stuck another Elastoplast onto the tube and managed to cycle home. 

That's why my first job in advertising was at a local advertising agency called Gaytons. 

3.5 miles away from home.

The Creative Director didn't have a bike. 

He had a sports car and a pretty secretary. 

He also had a hyphen.  

I'd never met anyone with a hyphen before. 

I was really impressed with hyphens. 

Back then it meant you were posh and rich and you came from a good school.

The Creative Director was called Nigel Parry-Williams. 

And when 'the hyphen' spoke I listened.

He told me that if I wanted to make it in advertising I would have to go to London.

I told him that if I worked in London I would need 60 Elastoplasts a day.  

30 to get me there and 30 to get me back.

He gave me money for a train ticket.

Nowadays, young folk can afford inner tubes.  

They can fill their house with inner tubes if they like. 

So, they can work further than 3.5 miles from where they live.

It's not surprising that an increasing amount of my ex-students are now working a long way from home.

Here are some ex-Watford students who now work in The U.S.

Some of them have bikes.

None of them have hyphens.

                            Sherry Malik Ogilvy New York

Adam Arber, ex-Watford and now Creative Director. His Joe Boxer campaign for FCB Chicago, below.

Michael Micetich class of 2012 and now working as a writer at 22 Squared in Atlanta.

Simon Horton, ex-Watford, and now freelance writer/art director in New York. Simon is Brooklyn's very own Catman.

                                 Simon's view from his office. 
                      Below, Catman strikes.

There are stray cats behind every apartment I lived in. I fed them but wanted to do more, so sold this idea to my local cat charity:

The idea is that lucky cats have brought good fortune to people for centuries, so its time cats had some good fortune themselves - particularly those at the Brooklyn Animal Action. We made 40+ ceramic lucky cat donation boxes and put them in stores across Brooklyn. 

Each ceramic cat was hand glazed to resemble a cat in need of adoption, we also added the cats name to the collar.

It's a tiny project but it's providing the charity with a steady income and helping with adoptions. Simon.

Ex-Watford team, Thom Glover and Eoin McClaughlin with the account handlers at Droga 5 New York.

Ex-Watford, Jeeves works at Wieden & Kennedy, New York. Below, one of his silly films for Gap plus a recent print ad he did that unsettled a few people

          Helen Rhodes, ex-Watford and now an art director at Wieden & Kennedy, Portland with a selfie which is a photo of a drawing of a photo.
 

Sam Oliver, class of 1999 and now the Creative Director of     Apple, Palo Alto California. Sam sent me a pic of Eric, his faithful gnome. Eric is not a digital gnome. He is just a gnome.

Paddy Fraser, Watford Student Of The Year 2008 and now Creative Director at Crispin Porter, Los Angeles.

Jana Pejkovska, ex-Watford and now a senior art director at  Publicis New York .

Gavin Lester Creative Director, Deutsch Los Angeles.

Antony Goldstein Creative Director WK Portland, Oregon.

James Cooper Creative Director Betaworks New York.

Technology is a wonderful thing.

...you levitate above your Hoversofa which X-rays your back and sends the results via Instagram to your doctor who is in a hammock in the Maldives where he re-calibrates your fridge to add 3 mg of radium to your water supply to destroy the benign tumor he's just found in your kidney and he also re-codes your Throbcushions to boost the ultra-sound waves to massage your aching limbs which makes you feel so warm and fuzzy you tune your fibre optic hair transplant and stream a 7D holographic concert comprising Mahatma Ghandi on guitar Adolf Hitler on drums John Wayne on keyboards Marilyn Monroe on bass and Stalin as backing singer whilst your Leap Forward Motion Headset detects a heightened level of mosh pit desire in your neocortex and hurls you on stage in your Teletubby onesie to join your personally constructed band so you can Twerk excitedly to Adolf's jazz inflected drum solos until your Jawbone beeps that your increased body temperature has risen above the acceptable levels of Tinky Winky and triggers your all-weather smart ceiling to precipitate a gentle flurry of personalised lime-green and cerulean tainted snowflakes which cool you down whereupon one Bluetooth snowflake reads your Facebook page and classifies you as  a potential skier and via your Ocular Rift Portal you are immediately whisked away from your Twerking to the top of a gentle blue run in Augmented Reality St Moritz wearing skis made out of potato peelings which your 3D printer has produced by the interface with the recycling bin and you take a gentle inhalation of cold alpine air from a phial in your headset as The Eye Tribe function in your ski goggles propels you forward to traverse the fluffy white powder and you ski so beautifully and gracefully you instantly fall in love with the sport and you purchase a ski chalet with your HSBC Saliva Recognition debit card  from the hologram time-share saleswoman at the bottom of the ski slope who has an uncanny resemblance to your favourite actress Sandra Bullock and after signing the mortgage contract Sandra scans the trace of saliva on your card and recognises that after a virtual ski you are extremely ravenous so she  texts the nearest Jamie Oliverbot patrolling your neighbourhood which glides up to your electrified front door electrified because the paving stones in your street have sensed a rather furtive walk from an unidentified individual with a dodgy beard so as a
precaution your local vigilante officer has switched your front door to taser mode and has granted the Jamie Oliverbot access to post your favourite pizza with Ecuadorian anchovies and
Nepalese mushrooms through your wi-fi letterbox which alerts your Domestic a 6 inch plastic model of Tony Blair with propellers who picks up your evening meal and via the Royal Doulton GPS which is disguised as a malnourished Chinese peasant on your mock willow pattern plate and delivers it to your lap and shortly after your final gulp your Bowel App says that the pizza will be through your gut in 228 minutes and 16.7 seconds and alerts your toilet to the exact time of fecal deposit so it can self-fragrance with Aux De Ski Instructor just in case you forget to pay your next instalment on the ski chalet you now own and yawning heavily you make your way to your amniotic pod knowing that every thought you had during the day will be written in to proper sentences by the Literati algorithm in your Microsoft pillow...

Technology is a wonderful thing.
But it's not as wonderful as a clear campaign strategy for a brand.

Watford alumni dominate Christmas campaigns..

The naughty creative elves, who once worked in the grotto of the Watford Ad School, have been busy making media mischief. 
Happy Christmas to you all. TC.

              Written by Steph Ellis (with Rory Hall) class of 2010.

    Written by Laurent Simon and Aidan McClure. Class of 2003.

Written by Milo Carter and Sophie Knox class of 2009 and 2010.

Written by Colin Smith and Angus Vine, and creative directed by Jim Bolton. All Watford.

                    Written by Nic Wood and Andy Forrest Class of 2003

                 Written and directed by Tim McNaughton class of 1999.

Creative directed by Adam Scholes class of a helluva long time ago in the days when I had a full set of teeth and my hair was 9.6 on the cumulus cloud scale.

Written by Sam Bishop and Mike Eichler class of 2009.

 https://www.kfc.co.uk/friendshipbuckettest#

Written by Dan Delhavi and Drew Haselhurst class of 2013.

Written by Anna Carpen class of 2010.

And one Christmas ad that isn't Christmassy by Gareth and Martin class of 2013

Creatives need to work like Jamie Vardy.

 
Jamie Vardy is a footballer.

Five years ago, at 24, he was playing for Stocksbridge Park Steels.

That is the creative equivalent of being an art director on the Screw Fix catalogue.

Jamie Vardy's dream, however, was to be a professional footballer and play for  the 'Weiden & Kennedy' of the Premier league.

He wasn't the most gifted player. Technically, he was very average. Which is why he was playing for a good pub team.

But he had two qualities.

Energy and passion.

As soon as he stepped over the white-painted line and went to work he became the love child of Roadrunner and the Duracell Bunny. His game was based on pure energy.

He worked hard, he listened to the coaches. And he practiced the art of shooting and passing. 

Halifax Town and later Fleetwood, semi-professional clubs,  were impressed with his work ethic and gave him a chance.

So he found himself playing in the Conference League.

That's the creative equivalent of moving from the Screw Fix catalogue to work on  glossy brochures for Harrods.

After a couple of good seasons as a semi- pro, Leicester City, a Championship team, signed him. It was a gamble.

The good folk of Leicester asked why the club had paid £1 million pounds for a non-league player.

For the first season he was generally considered to be out of his depth, in the same way a 'catalogue creative' might be if asked to write the next award-winning John Lewis television commercial.


When Vardy had a bad day at the office, and I've seen him have many, he picked himself up, reminded himself he's in a great job and hurled himself in to the next challenge.

He kept learning his craft on the training pitches. And he got better and better at his job. 

The harder you work the better you get.

The Leicester shooting coach Kevin Phillips pulled Vardy to one side and got him working on the placement of his shots rather than just shooting with power. 

He scored more goals, made more goals and he helped Leicester get promoted to the Premiership.


Energy relates to the degree of passion you bring to everything you do.

When you are fascinated by a project, or personally invested in a subject or task, you feel charged and exuberant.


You are able to summon up as much energy as it takes to create dozens, scores, even hundreds of ideas to one brief. The energy you invest is repaid by results and positive feedback.

Vardy summons up huge amounts of energy and the results are goals. Which is why he is currently the leading scorer in the Premiership.

And the feedback is a call up to the England team.

He may not be playing for the 'Wieden & Kennedy' of football, but next season he could well be.

His stats are interesting.  
If his current trend continues he'll get around 300 touches in the penalty box,  have 110 shots and score 34 goals. His conversion rate is 30% which means he misses more than twice as many chances as he scores.

That's like writing 300 campaigns a year, getting 110 through the account team and 34 ideas bought by the client.

If one of Vardy's 34 goals is spectacular he'll win goal of the season. 

If one of a creative's 34 ideas is spectacular it will win a Cannes Award.

It is possible to go from the non-league creative departments to the Premiership of Adland.

Jamie Vardy will be at work again this Saturday.

He may not score, but if you watch him you'll see the two things that made him successful.

Energy and passion.



Tony Cullingham runs The Watford Branch of The Jamie Vardy Appreciation Society which currently has 15 energetic and passionate members.
www.tonycullingham.com

The next Steve Jobs comes to Watford.

When an old Watford student takes time out to visit the course, it is lovely. 

When an old Watford student who is an advertising genius with tons of advertising awards visits the course, it is beautiful.

Sam Oliver, with Shish Patel, won The Student Team Of The Year Award in 1999. 

Since graduating, Sam and Shish have created some outstanding advertising campaigns at Ogilvy,  DDB, W&K and BBH.

Recently, Sam Oliver was offered the best creative job in the world after mine. 

He was asked by Apple to be The Number One Creative Guru on Iphone at Apple's HQ in Palo Alto, California. 

He said 'yes' to this job.

Before leaving for the US, humble Uncle Sam, as his 1999 classmates named him,  popped in to Watford to see the newbies and to have a hug with his old course tutor. 

Sam gave a pep talk, (inspiring). 
He ran tutorials for the students, (amazing). 
And had lunch with me, (stomach churning).

Sam with the Watford students.

Sam was inducted into THE WATFORD HALL OF FAME and was presented with the highest possible accolade I could give: The Course Gnome.

Eric, The Course Gnome will be flying out to the U.S. and Sam has promised to put Eric on his desk to remind him of his humble beginnings as a student on the Watford Creative Ad Course.  

Good luck Uncle Sam Oliver. We love you.

Sam with me and Eric, The Course Gnome.