News and blog

Happy new year, party animals and culture vultures!

Now that January is done, along with those pesky resolutions (probably) and rotten detox diets (definitely!), your thoughts, like ours, are no doubt turning once more to the most fruitful, enriching and downright entertaining ways to make the most of life in the city.

As all ad aficionados know, this weekend’s Superbowl (that’s a bit like the FA Cup final of american football, non-sports fans) is eagerly anticipated, and not just as an epic clash of gridiron titans. There’s the heartfelt singing of the star-spanled banner, the national celebration of american exceptionalism… and there’s the half time ads.

Gamification is the application of gaming mechanics to non-gaming scenarios. It’s a fairly new term, but the concept definitely isn’t. After all, when you strip away the buzz words, you’re left with the practice of making something that isn’t usually fun feel pleasurable and rewarding.

Welcome to the new ‘timeline’ profile from Facebook.

A dodgy Coke habit…

As all enthusiastic consumers of caramel-flavoured carbonated vegetable soft drinks will be aware, singular purveyor Coca-Cola is in the habit of creating occasional new packaging designs; to mark the festive season, for example.

It comes as some surprise then, that this year’s “white can”, so-named for its predominant colourway, has met with a near-hysterical social media response from consumers.

The Wall Street Journal continues the story:

Coke said it became aware of consumer complaints through Internet postings and some telephone calls to the company. Many Internet comments have been critical of the white cans. “PEOPLE! Don’t be a victim,” wrote one consumer on Twitter, warning that mixing up Coke and Diet Coke is “a SHOCK to the palate!”

Another person accused Coke of “trickery,” and still another called the white cans “blasphemy,” among hundreds of tweets.

Mis-steps from this colossus of the branding world are not unheard of, and one cannot help but call to mind the New Coke fiasco. Looks like a classic case of bad planning.

Hat tip to Gawker.

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More enlightenment and opinion from Madhouse, Manchester’s leading integrated marketing communications agency

Following our recent Madhouse seminar on The Future of Digital, we thought we’d consume a few blog-inches by looking at some of the trends that are likely to be transforming the way we all buy, share and communicate in the years to come.

It’s often said of Jarvis Cocker that, in his current corduroy-jackets-with-elbow-patches phase, he resembles nothing so much as a geography teacher – albeit of the kind who still seems close to his inner teenager even while describing the formation of an ox-bow lake.

Read more ›

We were in Brussels yesterday visiting our valued clients – and good friends – at Toyota Europe. The city was looking as festive as you would expect, given that it gave its name to one of the key Christmas vegetables, and Toyota itself was channeling the spirit of the season with its traditional illuminated tree, and slightly less traditional illuminated car.

Say hello to your digital future…

Madhouse has just hosted the latest in our ongoing series of quarterly seminars.

This one was entitled “The Future of Digital” and once again a packed house full of the agency’s friends and clients came together  to find out where our industry is heading.  The key question at this session was “what we can expect from  the digital world over the next two, five and ten years?”

Joining us to gaze into the crystal ball was digital expert Andrew Gordon, who talked the audience through a range of topics, asking thought-provoking questions and helping everyone to focus on the bigger picture.

Well, we knew it would be “all olympics, all the time”, and so it goes…

For all the font fans out there, might we heartily recommend the new paperback by journo Simon Garfield, entitled Just My Type. Can you guess what it’s about?

Digital media are completely reshaping the world in which we live and particularly the marketing industry within which we, here at Madhouse, work. We often get asked by clients what the differences are between this “new” digital realm and the traditional one that everyone knows and understands. In response, we thought we’d bring you a series of short blog posts about what digital means for the different areas of our business. To kick us off, planning director Clare Briscall talks about what digital means for planning.

Music is a matter of taste – that much we all know. One man’s Meat Loaf is another man’s Poison after all. Here in the Madhouse creative studio though, we take a positive delight in combining seemingly disparate sonic flavours to create a steaming aural gumbo from which we all sup. With our ears.

We call this exercise ‘Five Tunes’.

As a high-flying advertising executive you naturally use LinkedIn, don’t you? Of course you do. But wouldn’t it be great if someone from LinkedIn could give you advice about how to get the best out of the site? They have!

On a recent lunchtime wander, I experienced a bizarre brand-based flashback to my school days, which I will share with you now.

The new occupant of Tate Modern’s vast Turbine Hall was revealed the other day when the latest in the gallery’s series of spectacular Unilever commissions took up residence at Bankside. Tacita Dean is the artist in question: she has plunged the enormous space into darkness, up-ended a gigantic cinema screen at one end of the chasm and is projecting her 11-minute film – the less-than-mysteriously-named ‘Film’ – in glorious Tate-O-Rama until March next year.

A select team of Madhousers brave enough to be photographed in hard hats and safety shoes was recently dispatched to the Burnaston Toyota manufacturing plant to witness the genuinely fascinating spectacle of a car being built from (cough) scratch. We were present as machines as large as some city centre flats pounded (in the most precise sense of the word), rolled and trimmed vast coils of steel into instantly recognisable Toyota body panels. We oohed and aahed as Jurassic-like robots set about welding panels together to become cars. We were even let into the secret of how the Indiana Jones theme is helping Toyota build cars more efficiently.

As autumn is settling in, the Manchester festivals are just warming up.

If you are a foodie like me, you should visit this year’s Manchester Food and Drink Festival from 7^th-17^th October at Albert square and other locations. With a pop-up food village, resident bars and the all new street food dining experience it looks like a fun packed few days! Plus don’t miss the Oktoberfest Bar and Real Ale Festival (7-12 Oct): entry is free and authentic German beer will be on sale as well as live entertainment. See all the events here.

Once upon a time, the word ‘renewable’ was rarely appended to anything other than library books. However, in today’s resource-conscious world, ‘renewable’ is one of the best things to be, and never more so than in the case of fuel sources.

It’s something we know all about at Madhouse, as recently we have been working closely with Verdo Renewables, manufacturers of wood pellets and briquettes for a range of heat sources including open fires, multi-fuel stoves and biomass boilers.

One of the ways we make sure we continue to build a strong team here at Madhouse is to hold an annual graduate recruitment day for the cream of the summer’s marketing graduates. We invite them over to Madhouse HQ, then give them a range of projects designed to give them chance to shine. And while it’s intended to be plenty of fun – no one says, “You’re fired” – there is a real job at the end of it.

Our regular Madhouse seminars have become a highlight of the Manchester marketing calendar, with a steady stream of regular attendees and newcomers all enjoying insightful speakers in an informal setting.

The next seminar, which takes place on November 30^th, will take a good look into the future, though we won’t be buffing up our crystal ball in order to get a good view of what lies in store. Instead, we’ve invited Andrew Gordon to peer into ‘The Future of Digital’ and help us all make the most of the opportunities ahead.

We know that millions people now have a Facebook account – an average of one million new users sign up each month in the UK. We know too that there are 175 million registered Twitter accounts, and that Google+ has already become the fastest growing social network. But if you’re not quite sure where on earth this is all heading, then you need our new Grab-a-Byte series.

Moving to a new home is always a hectic time, but after twelve years in the same building in central Manchester, we decided to put up with a little disruption and move Madhouse a couple of minutes down the road to 196 Deansgate. Admittedly, it was a little emotional at times – we couldn’t help but remember the pitches won, the memorable work produced, and the very many valued clients and team members who took the rather slow lift to our old home down the years – but with a brand new office specifically designed to our requirements, we definitely made the right decision.

Last week a UK telly bigwig had a go at advertisers in a high profile RTS convention speech (tis the season, after all) over the current perceived lack of creativity in broadcast commercials. It’s interesting, even shocking, that a media owner would take this stance publicly, presumably at the risk of alienating their own customers: the folk with the media budgets.

We experienced a nice bit of experiential marketing recently when we entertained our good friends and clients from Toyota at a swanky new restaurant called Australasia based in Spinningfields, Manchester.

I was fairly certain I had already written a post about signage on the UK trunk road network, but it seems that that was just a dream I had. I have now though, and here it is. Before you go reaching for the back button, let me explain… this really is design related. And interesting – I promise.

While perusing the Mashable website this morning, I stumbled on a very interesting article about how the iPhone is now for – how can I put it? – old fogies.

There’s a nice little piece in today’s Graun, in which five leading graphic designers discuss who they admire most in the field.

It’s well worth a quick look, and there’s lots of nice links to lovely stuff too; I love the idea for the typesetting in this edition of Dracula, for example.

However, and at the risk of appearing biased, the most-relevant-insight award must go to ol’ grisly chops Saville: [for the most part] “The graphic artist has now become a branding consultant, and communication design has become determined by the findings of research and focus groups.”

You said it Pete.

Hat tip to Emine Saner, plus Graun subs and photo eds, whose work I’ve paid extensive ‘omage to in this little post 

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More enlightenment and opinion from Madhouse, Manchester’s leading integrated marketing communications agency

One of the great clichés in advertising – and every other industry, to be fair – is that of ‘thinking outside the box’. However, last week at Madhouse we were more concerned with what went into the box – or more specifically, the large blue crates into which we packed up our agency in advance of our big office move.

Shameless, alright

Picture the scene… mid-70s Harlem. Or maybe the Bronx. Or Hell’s Kitchen, I don’t know… anyway, somewhere funky-sounding in New York City. The boroughs are broke, the streets are full of drugs, sex, trash, disco and punk. Even the damn cops are driving hot Gran Torinos.

Madhouse is on the move...

We all know that old chestnut about moving house being the third most stressful thing you can experience after bereavement and divorce… well yes, I guess… but here at Madhouse we like to keep things upbeat, thank you very much.

So, as we prepare to leave our much-loved home of over a decade, there’s ne’er a moment for a backwards glance. It’s onwards, upwards, and a fantastic opportunity to blow out the cobwebs along with all that junk that’s accumulated.

I think it’s fair to say that the first press advert I remember being really impressed by as a kid wasn’t actually meant for me. While I’m sure that child-friendly ads for Monster Munch and Action Man all impinged on my subconscious and helped to hoover up my pocket money, the first advert I recognised for the power of its concept rather than for its magnetic attraction to the cash in my pocket was for a packet of Benson & Hedges fags.

Not sure what to do this bank holiday weekend? There’s some seriously big events on this August Bank Holiday, so take a peek at our quick guide to how to spend your weekend…

This year’s airport novel has to qualify as without-a-doubt one of the best crime thrillers I have ever had the pleasure of reading; thrilling, gripping, and intense, with a quality of writing that surpasses even the likes of the late, great Stieg Larsson and his Millenium Trilogy.

I was sent an email recently from a young lad asking quite a topical question – and articulating what may become an increasingly common dilemma.

The email sender explained that he had just finished the first year of a two-year HND course in visual communication, and was wondering what would be his best course of action once his HND was complete. Should he go on to get a degree at university, or would it be better to head out into the world and get a job in the industry?

Recently LinkedIn took their membership for professional users to another level by announcing the launch of their new plug-in, ‘Apply with LinkedIn’. Developed as a “simple button that you can recognise anywhere across the web” it’s customisable for businesses too.

As Google+ reaches ten million users, it’s probably about time that we came up with a review of our own. The first thing you need to bear in mind that it is still only in the beta testing stages, so some aspects are not going to work as smoothly as you might hope and it’s by no means the finished article.

This week in Manchester the events seem to have a recurring theme: Picnics!

For the social-media savvy, the Spinningfields Twitnic is back from 5-7 August. Enjoy a picnic on the green with friends and forge some new business relationships too.

As much as one is loath to be all blah about one’s furnishings, it has to be said that here at Madhouse, our settees are terribly de swank…

Le Corbusier two seater

I remember when it were all factories round here…

We may well be national, indeed international, in our outlook here at Madhouse (not to mention our client list) but that doesn’t mean we’re not proud of our home city.

Welcome to this week’s instalment of our regular Madhouse blog feature, What’s on in Manchester.

If you’re a jazz fan then don’t miss Mamadou and the Super Libidor Band on Thursday 28 July at 8pm in the Festival Pavillion for a mix of jazz, rock and afro-beat.

This week’s Thursday movie showing at Screenfields, Spinningfields is that 80s John Cleese comedy classic  A Fish Called Wanda. D-d-d-don’t be late to grab a deckchair for the 8:30 start.

It’s a hot ‘un

Celluloid portrayals of our industry vary dramatically, to say the least, so this week’s rundown of the Best 25 Advertising Movies Ever in Adweek makes for curious reading.

Welcome to the first instalment of our weekly guide to Manchester. This week we have highlights from The Lowry…

Why not visit the Warhol and the Diva exhibition at The Lowry which has had some great reviews on Twitter this week.

Try something different and book tickets to watch Batman Live which starts this week.

The smart red lamps in this photograph may bring to mind the comfortable and cosy interior of some chic hotel cocktail lounge, but these are actually the Brussels Airlines check-in desks at Brussels airport. Having passed through here recently and been bathed in this relaxing light, I realised what a pleasingly low-key example of brand awareness marketing this was.

Target audiences, brands, pitching… it’s our bread and butter here at Madhouse. So, imagine my amusement this lunchtime on overhearing one of the most wide-of-the-mark pitches in history.

A unique pleasure

High summer arrives and Manchester’s cultural calendar hots up accordingly… keen to get into the swing of things, the Madhouse team joined Smoking Gun PR this week to check out the Fur Coat and French Knickers show from The Lady Boys of Bangkok.

From the man who brought you “Vorsprung durch technik”

Already at the thick end of an illustrious career in our industry, John Hegarty ’s latest book is an eargerly-anticipated manifesto for advertising. Co-founder of BBH and TBWA London, Hegarty’s career is as storied as any, and this tome combines history with over 40 years of experience, insight and advertising wisdom – not to mention a ton of famous campaigns.

FA Cup third round weekend? Champions League decider? The magic of the World Cup? Not on your nelly, Pele. As far as we’re concerned there’s only one bit of silverware that counts: the MPA/NABS Challenge Cup, which took place last Friday.

Further to our earlier post about the art and design of the Olympics, the Grauniad today has an excellent gallery showing the lead image for every games of the modern era. That’s since 1896, fact fans.

Are you familiar with the concept of CRO? That’s Conversion Rate Optimisation – a set of techniques which can be used during website design to maximise the number of site visitors who become customers.

It’s the new thing in web science and as you would expect, Madhouse is in the forefront. So much so, in fact, that CRO was the topic of our most recent and most successful thought-leader seminar yet. We were thrilled to welcome CRO guru Andrew Gordon and a packed roomful of industry participants all eager to see his presentation.

You know it makes sense…

Visitors to the Madhouse blog may be interested to participate in a debate that has been raging wildly here at the agency, namely:

The earlier Dairylea post has set us to thinking about another cheese brand phenomenon…

In stark contrast to that workaday-yet-cherished, ever-present spready cheese most of us raised on this side of the English Channel recall from our childhood, in 1981 a continental usurper, Babybel was poised to appear on these shores.

Not strictly speaking a brand of yesteryear, Kraft’s Dairylea still infests the lunchboxes of our nation’s youth today. Of course, it’s all about newfangled brand extensions like your Lunchables and your Dunkers these days. But readers of a certain age will fondly recall a simpler time, when, if you wanted some processed spready cheese, you had just one option:

CRO – that’s Conversion Rate Optimisation – is so important, we’re making it the subject of our next Madhouse marketing seminar. Leading the session will be Andrew Gordon, an inspirational speaker who will equip those who attend with five simple steps towards effective CRO. It’s essential stuff for marketers everywhere – plus, if that isn’t enough, early morning refreshments will be included.

While eating an apple that was the size of a plum recently, it occurred to me that I seem to encounter these apparently shrunken products on a regular basis these days. And while organic matter still actually does come in a range of sizes – there are giant apples in my local Tesco that would make a splendid meal for a family of four – we’re all familiar with The Case of the Vanishing Wagon Wheel, along with the attendant explanation that it’s us who have grown larger, not the product that’s got smaller.

When we tell people that we’re an integrated marketing agency, people always ask us, “But what kind of stuff do you actually do?”. And while we love to talk about our work – it’s our passion, after all – sometimes, it’s easier to show than tell.

As one of the most fondly remembered brands in the bathroom, Vosene has been trusted for generations to keep hair clean and scalps healthy. Madhouse is proud to have been working with this classic brand for a while now, and the great reception given to our latest project – a Vosene website dedicated to families – has encouraged us to really let our hair down.

Parking a car is something that most drivers do a lot, and recent advances in technology have made it easier and safer than ever before. Take Toyota Parking Aid for example. A series of sensors in the vehicle bumper relay audible tones to the driver as they approach obstacles – even when they’re out of sight. A rear view camera can also be added, giving drivers a picture of what’s happening behind their car.

Here at Madhouse, we had a great 2010. We won some very hard-fought pitches and we began building relationships with some great new clients such as the famous Interflora – plus, of course, we continued to produce successful work for longstanding friends including Toyota and Motorola.

Here’s a riddle for you. What does Madhouse have in common with Justin Bieber, Starbucks, Def Leppard and both Manchester football clubs?

Quite apart from our catchy pop hooks, our tasty coffee, our mid-eighties poodle perms and our insane soccer skills, we’re proud to reveal that as of now, we also all have an official Facebook page!

By now, everyone knows about the importance of SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation. It’s how you create websites that take account of the way search engines operate, helping potential customers to find you quickly and easily.

But having found your site, what do they do when they get there? Do they stay and spend, or do they have a quick look round and move on? That’s where CRO comes in – another acronym that can help you build a better business.

They may have gone in under cover of night, blanketed by a thick duvet of secrecy, but once Barack Obama announced that the US Navy Seals had successfully completed their mission to kill Bin Laden, the news spread with unparalleled speed.

Iconic logos come in many shapes and sizes. There’s roundels, swooshes, arches and stripes, to name but a few. That’s all well and good, but have you heard of a nurdle?

New Look recently launched their mobile commerce website; a site optimised for shopping on smartphones and other mobile devices, with easy-to-browse products in one, two or three column format, a New Look TV channel, and “one click buy” for registered users. It looks like one of our high street fashion faves is taking the fight to the competition by wholeheartedly embracing the possibilities of “m-commerce”.

Recently on my commute from Didsbury to Manchester I haven’t been able to help noticing a strange piece of graffiti (or “street art” as the aesthetically-inclined might put it). It’s quite simple, but nevertheless effective in getting my attention – the words “help i’m burnt” in capitals with no apostrophe! I first noticed it in Withington, and then on the side of a bin in the city centre.

The latest online adspend figures are in!

Over at the Internet Advertising Bureau the calculators have been whirring to spectacular effect. Now the results are in and Madhouse can reveal that internet advertising spend has increased by 12.8% to reach a landmark £4 billion.

It’s no surprise that as advertisers loosen their purse strings, the internet is making the biggest gains. What’s impressive is that these statistics indicate the internet’s total market share (of an industry worth £16.6 million) has risen to 25%, or £1 for every £4 spent. Display ads account for the greatest proportion of spend, with a significant 200% surge in advertising in social media environments.

Nowadays, marketing seems to be obsessed with creating almost unfathomable, concept-driven campaigns, so imagine my delight when, during the recent renovation of my 1930s property out in the “rolling hills” of Lancashire, I discovered a little retro gem of  “John Smiths no nonsense campaign”-esque material.

March brings breezes loud and shrill, and now, a little bit of vomit into your mouth when you think about Charlie Sheen quaffing tiger blood, or Justin Bieber well, being Justin Bieber. If you’ve been spending too much time in the real world to catch up with the latest trends on twitter (shame on you), here are last month’s top 10 most tweeted about topics.

If you are anything like me, then living a hectic online life probably means that you end up having about 30 tabs open at the same time on a bunch of different browsers, resulting in multi-tasking madness. The good news is, new browsers like Rockmelt go some way towards solving this on-screen logistical nightmare.

Here at Madhouse we’re always looking for new ways to put our creativity on display, so we are pleased to announce the launch of our very own showcase on The Drum directory. Avid readers can look out for our latest projects here – and don’t forget to keep in touch and tell us what you think.

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More enlightenment and opinion from Madhouse, Manchester’s leading integrated marketing communications agency.

Regular readers of the Madhouse web log will be aware that over the last few weeks we have been providing you with the results of an industry analysis undertaken by our planning team. The aim of this research is to identify and elucidate the key trends in marketing for 2011 and beyond.

Just as soon as we get the forthcoming royal nuptials out of the way, it’s going to be all olympics all the time, until the dust finally begins to settle sometime around mid-September 2012. In fact there might be so much olympics that even the most ardent beach volleyball enthusiast will begin to tire…

Black Swan recently snagged a statuette for star turn Natalie Portman. Illustrator Olly Moss created the outstanding posters for the movie. Natalie’s previous roles include Princess Leia’s mum. Olly’s also done some gobsmacking STR WRS visuals. Wheels within wheels, baby, wheels within wheels…

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More enlightenment and opinion from Madhouse, Manchester’s leading integrated marketing communications agency.

Drum roll please… This is the big one. The result you’ve all been waiting for. The biggest single marketing trend for 2011 as revealed by the work of the Madhouse trends analysis team is… Mobility!

What we’ve done here, you see, is attempt to coin our own buzzword. Snads are, of course, social network ads, and they are the second most significant trend in marketing for 2011.

Since the dawn of time (well, about 2004 to be more precise) marketeers have been searching for an effective way to monetise the phenomenal audiences that social networks can command.

Many creatives use equipment manufactured by Apple Inc., and we’re all pretty familiar with their iconic (sorry) apple-with-a-bite-out logo. But did you know that during the first few months of the company’s existence in 1976, the logo was something entirely different? Your shiny MacBook Pro would have kind of a different vibe with this glowing from the lid…

In with a bullet at number three, our next most significant trend for 2011 is location-based marketing. Facilitated by the ever-deeper penetration of smart mobile devices with decent networking capabilities and bandwidth, social media has been liberated from the static device (your PC at work or your Xbox at home, for example) and has taken to the streets.

You might be reaching for the Nytol right about now, but hold onto your horses cowboy. The fourth most significant trend in marketing for 2011 doesn’t come bottled. The tablet craze may have been kicked off by the crew at Cupertino, but these devices are set to progress beyond their formerly geeky and latterly design-savvy preserves, and burst into the mainstream big time this year.

Number five is alive! Nope, it’s not a robot called Johnny, it’s apps. We have already noted the growing significance of mobile devices, their operating systems and ecosystems, and apps form possibly the single largest component of the whole connected digital marketing tsunami.

I emptied out my webmail account today and realised that it is really just a receptacle for spam. Written communication with my friends tends to be via facebook so the webmail account is used for little more than receipts for online purchases and then the inevitable emails that follow from those retailers to persuade me to buy more stuff.

Some seem to do it really well, they send offers that are targeted, relevant and reach me at the right time. Others just don’t get it right. Just because I once bought an Leona Lewis CD (it was for my Mum, I promise) it doesn’t mean that I want the CDs of other screaming divas as some retailers seem to think.

Causing a buzz at number six, Google’s Android operating system is the next of our critical marketing trends for 2011. If eyeballs are gold, then Android is the bank: more mobile devices are using this OS than any other now, as Android overtook Apple’s iOS and Nokia’s Symbian at the start of the year to grab the top spot.

The urge to peer into the future has occupied the minds of man for millennia; via means as various as tea leaves, the I-Ching and the bulge of the crystal ball. But by the mid-twentieth century, the soothsaying glassware of choice had changed form: now, it was the cathode ray tube that delivered The Future into our homes. As friends and families gathered round that tiny glowing window in 1953, in order to witness the Coronation of Elizabeth II, they were bound into a collective vision of what life on the planet would become: that the domestic interior could be the centre not just of relaxation and gentle entertainment, but also an arena that would allow some kind of vicarious participation in Great Global Events thanks to the humming valves of the television.

In Berlin airport at the weekend I saw a series of ads that made me wonder what the client and creative director were thinking when they signed them off. They were for the Die Welt Kompact newspaper and showed a series of babies that had been aged with crow’s feet, lines around the mouth and grey hair. The headline was “Big news. Small size.”

Then I realised that I am not the target audience – what works for the German market does not necessarily work for the UK market. This is something that we at Madhouse have come to be conversant with during the eight years we have worked on the Toyota Europe account.

Our remit with Toyota is to produce campaign materials for their after sales and accessories teams which are then launched to the Toyota marketing teams across Europe to translate and localise as they see fit.

Over those eight years, and having produced over 200 campaigns for Toyota, we have developed a great deal of insight into working with European marketing teams, for example:

• in Germany the style is quite literal – if the ad is for oil show the oil, if it is for a service, show a car and a mechanic
• we can be much more abstract for the French market
• everyone loves children (maybe not prematurely aged children though), especially the Italian, Portugese and Spanish
• ditto animals
• contrary to popular belief, Germans really do have a sense of humour, as do the Finnish and Polish

We would love to hear from you with your experiences of working with European brands. And if you are looking for an agency to work on European campaigns, give Madhouse a call. We don’t do wrinkly babies, but we do do our best to understand you and your customer, wherever you or they might be.

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More enlightenment and opinion from Madhouse, Manchester’s leading integrated marketing communications agency.

Okay, so there’s nothing inherently new about the notion of “joined up thinking”, but our statistical analysis doesn’t lie, and the fact is that number seven in the list of critical marketing trends for 2011 is integrated marketing. It’s what the experts are talking about, and you should be too.

The Madhouse marketing trends analysis team (let’s give credit where it’s due: James, Jenna, Philippa and Sarah) have been inundated with requests to expand upon the trends grid we teased you with a couple of weeks ago. (See below: Feb 2^nd)

The heady scent of coffee and pastries filled the air around our offices on Mount Street in central Manchester yesterday, as we kicked off the third of our popular breakfast seminars.

The media landscape is constantly changing, particularly with the incessant growth of the digital realm, making this a truly exciting time to be in marketing. It’s no surprise then that a lot of clients approach agencies wanting to be part of the latest marketing trends, whether that be apps for iPads and smartphones or new social media outlets. We believe each of these channels is brilliant for targeting specific audiences (and we’re as addicted to Angry Birds as the next person); however, unless it’s relevant to your sector or your company, why waste time and budget simply jumping on the bandwagon?

We all adore a hot hot hit parade, so to quench your mighty thirst here’s a chunk broken off from the archive. Mr Konnie Huq describes the 10 best men in advertising.

Caution: may contain military language (and/or nuts).

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More enlightenment and opinion from Madhouse, Manchester’s leading integrated marketing communications agency.

Some really positive coverage of our recent work for Lornamead, SmokingGunPR managed to get us a great little spot in the M.E.N today so pick it up and have a read if you can.

A quick look at The Shocking History of Advertising by E.S. Turner

As I pulled this faded old Penguin paperback from the shelf in a cluttered second-hand bookshop, my first thought was that if the author considered the history of advertising to have been shocking in 1952 – when the book was written – what would he think of the way the industry has behaved over the last 30 years or so? Think of Benetton, FCUK, and Sophie Dahl vigorously enjoying herself on behalf of Yves Saint Laurent for instance.

With Christmas now a few weeks past, I’ve been investigating one of my most intriguing gifts: namely, a copy of the book ‘Tree of Codes’ by Jonathan Safran Foer.

In a world of constant change and innovation, separating the truth from the hype can be a bit of a challenge. With a new next-big-thing touted seemingly every week, how the heck are you supposed to know what shape your communication strategy should take?

I emptied out my webmail account today and realised that it really is just a receptacle for spam. Written communication with my friends tends to be via facebook, so the webmail account is used for little more than receipts for online purchases and the inevitable emails that follow from retailers trying to persuade me to buy more stuff.

The coffee giant Starbucks has recently unveiled an updated logo – to be appearing on your street soon. And if not on your street, then almost certainly somewhere pretty close. Personally, I’m a little perturbed. It’s always strange seeing such a familiar image undergo a bit of creative design surgery, and that may be why I’m unsure about the change; and with other bloggers raising similar doubts, it seems I’m not the only one.

There’s a great article over on io9 today about Facebook’s new advertising algorithm. No spoilers, so you’ll just have to trust me, it’s well worth a read here. Science fact: any piece that namechecks Vance Packard’s ad classic The Hidden Persuaders should merit a few minutes of your time.

And if that’s not enough to tempt you, it’s worth it for the fabulously cheesy 1977 Dr Pepper ad you’ll see…

More enlightenment and opinion from Madhouse, Manchester’s leading integrated marketing communications agency.

Don’t Panic Events and the Bridgewater Hall events team brought some of Manchester’s brightest young things together this week at the Bridgewater Hall, here in the city.

The night was billed as a “networking event”, and was held to showcase the beautiful corporate and event spaces available for use at the concert hall, also home to the legendary Halle Orchestra. The evening was introduced by the Bridgewater Hall’s Chief Executive, Nick Reed, and featured music from up-and-coming artist Josephine.

You probably remember the millenium bug. As digital clocks ticked over into the new millenium at the end of 1999, a legacy glitch from the dim and distant days of early computing (specifically: using two digits to denote the year, not four) would kick in, sending everything haywire and causing TEOTWAWKI. You know the kind of thing: nukes spontaneously launching, jets falling from the sky, forty days and nights of dark, cats sleeping with dogs, all that stuff.

Anyway, didn’t happen, right? (Mostly because billions of dollars and millions of programmer hours were spent fixing critical systems on time, but don’t ever let the facts get in the way of a good story.) Well rejoice, armageddon enthusiasts – ‘cos it’s happening all over again!

So… while we were all getting over our festive excesses, someone else’s excesses were proving very costly indeed. Over the new year, Gillette finally severed their links with Tiger Woods, bringing his lucrative sponsorship deal to an end. By burying the news over the new year period, they were able to quietly dump their man and start the year afresh.

Interestingly, they didn’t drop him when the scandal surrounding his marital status originally broke (although they did cancel all his ads from appearing); this may have been largely due to legal issues and termination fees. However, the final straw must have been the fact that during the rest of the year his performances were less than sensational, and he failed to win a single tournament during 2010.

Anglepoise Apex 90 (1989-2004) author’s own

Product design is just one discipline at which Brit designers often excel while simultaneously passing somewhat unremarked. Perhaps this is because the very best product design is unobtrusive; giving an appearance of form seemingly intrinsic to function.

An amusing morality tale about the perils of crowdsourcing.

Just for fun we’ll put this one in a Powerpoint-friendly format for you…

- Suffolk Tourist Board (aka Choose Suffolk) seeks wholesome, family-friendly campaign to promote bucolic idyll

- Agency tries to harness the power of social media by throwing Tourist Board website open to suggestions for “icons of Suffolk”

- Dani Filth, frontman of doom metal merchants Cradle of Filth, duly elected with landslide majority

I know where I’m off to this summer – the kids will love it!

Thanks to The Telegraph and Gawker

The exact details of this exciting project are still under wraps, but it’s no secret that this rather exclusive little residential development around Lymington on the Hampshire coastline, just a stone’s throw from Bournemouth and the New Forest, will all but sell itself. Our preliminary work on strategy and identity has already taken place, with site visits and planning sessions designed to immerse the team in the ambience of the location, and develop a close understanding of the expectations and likely emotional responses of typical future residents.

The third in our successful series of Madhouse marketing seminars is due to take place here at Madhouse HQ in Manchester on Wednesday 16 February. The topic of this session is how to raise your Google rankings through a new approach to search engine optimisation – or SEO as you’ve probably learnt to call it by now – and our speaker is Dan Kavanagh from Ignition Search in Sheffield.

At Madhouse, we like to think that despite our 11 years in the integrated marketing game, we’re still a young-at-heart agency with youthful good looks.

So it was with great excitement (and maybe a smug glance at ourselves in the mirror) that we started work on a website for a new range of anti-blemish cosmetics by Witch. Once again, the commission was from Lornamead UK Limited, who asked us to work on its digital presence, only this time the focus was on a fresh product.

It’s often said that you should never mix business with pleasure. However, Madhouse and our joint MD Phil Rogerson have disproved the rule, putting our weight behind Phil’s local Northwich chapter of the Round Table.

Phil is Vice Chairman of the Northwich Round Table, and realising that the chapter’s online presence was looking dated, he briefed the agency web design department to come up with some creative suggestions. Of course, as an integrated communications agency from the north west, the team were only too happy to help a local organisation that raises thousands of pounds every year for local, national and international good causes.

Madhouse enjoys a successful ongoing relationship with specialty pharmaceuticals manufacturer IS Pharma, so we were very pleased to continue this with a new product brief, the branding and awareness campaign for IS Pharma’s Episil oral spray.

This treatment has been designed to relieve oral mucositis, a painful inflammation and ulceration in the digestive tract that can occur following chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

We’re pleased to announce that we have three new recruits here at Madhouse: Philippa Gledhill as an account executive, Jenna Wilson as junior account executive and Sarah Challinor as office manager.

Philippa joins us here in central Manchester as a business management and media studies graduate from De Montfort University, and says, “I like the fact that it’s a creative company and I get to work on exciting accounts like Motorola, so it’s very fast-paced.”

Happy new year, social networkers!

The LA Times reports myspace is set to lay off over half of its 1,100 staff, just two months after a major redesign/relaunch. The first “superstar” social network (or was that Friends Reunited? Remember that? Anyone? Bueller?) is, as Gawker’s Valleywag so succinctly puts it, halfway in the grave.

So 2010 has been and gone, and over the year a wealth of good, bad and ugly ads graced our screens, newspapers, phones and billboards. However, according to Nielsen, the most popular TV ad of 2010 was for CompareTheMarket.com, featuring those misunderstood mammals, the meerkats.

Here at Madhouse, we’re firm believers that when it comes to Christmas, it’s better to give than to receive. Having said that… when we took delivery of a massive hamper crammed with the kind of pocket money sweets we all used to consume on Saturday mornings while watching Swap Shop/Live & Kicking/Dick and Dom in da Bungalow (delete as applicable), we promptly jettisoned our noble instincts and dived in as though rationing had just ended.

This from December’s Creative Review blog is enough to make some of us here in the Madhouse creative department a tad nostalgic. The tune that soundtracks it is all wrong mind – needs to be something much more like this.

Only a couple more sleeps and then the holidays are here for the Madhouse team. It’s been an exciting first year in blogland for us, and we hope you’ve enjoyed reading our occasional missives. We’re looking forward to more blether next year…

But for now, all there remains to say is “best wishes” to all of you, and “see you in 2011!”

And if you would like to see our creative team’s outstanding festive elf-help cartoon, (including an explanation of what Madhouse *really* stands for)… click here

Six months ago, I blogged about four essential iPhone apps that were rocking all over my world far more effectively than Status Quo have ever done. In the intervening period, however, a few things have changed!

Admittedly, some have stood the test of time and will, I think, live on: WhatsApp and Shazam both have what it takes to survive. But there are now some new digital kids on the block, not to mention a few games that have proved too addictive for words!

TouchMouse

This is a great app, especially if you do a lot of presentations. It basically turns your iPhone into a wireless mouse, which means you can click on presentations or click links with your smartphone. You can then present your information in style, looking bang up to date while you do it! Set it up and start practicing now!

Only £14.99 you say? I’ll take three

Once upon a time, Christmas ads were something to behold. Whacking great ensemble pieces with choreography, catchy tunes and big celebs worthy of a West End show. Or at the very least a top-end provincial panto.

There’s been a bit of a revival in recent years (take a bow, M&S) but there really isn’t anything around to compare with the kitschy delights of the Woolies classics. It’s hard to think of a retailer this kind of thing would work for nowadays. Festive dancing cossacks, eh… WTF?

A recent survey shows that 41% of UK retail brands expect to have a transactional mobile site or application within the next year.

But what about now? Too many retailers lack a solid mobile presence and, while the 41% swing is a move in the right direction, there is an argument that, as an industry, retail doesn’t appear to be seizing the (rather sizeable) opportunities which mobile presents. The survey was commissioned by the Association for Interactive Media and Entertainment (AIME), the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG).

Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, I give you… the NEC P100.

Back in 1994 this brick represented the bleeding edge of mobile communications technology. It’s analogue, so no data, no pics, no video, no SMS; just calls. It’s heavy enough to kill a man, and as you can see, compared to the iPhone 3GS, it’s bloody mahoosive.

Vanity caps. The tendency to use an initial capital letter For Anything That Seems Important To Me, when it isn’t a proper noun, or the first word of a sentence. More egregious still: SHOUTING. Both curses of our modern age.

As of September 1^st 2010, the codes which govern all broadcast/non-broadcast advertising have changed. The ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) commissioned a 12 week public consultation, conducted by CAP (Committee of Advertising Practice) and BCAP (Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice) with a view to revising the existing codes.

Bearing in mind the ASA ‘has previous’ in this area (namely making seemingly spurious changes every couple of years, that rarely cause any great change in the industry) then a rather loud ‘so what?’ would not be an unexpected reaction.

At Madhouse, we enjoy the challenge that comes with delivering ideas for the major brands we work on. So when we were handed the brief to design the master creative and brand guidelines for Interflora’s key seasonal campaigns, we were understandably delighted.

Our aim has been to ensure consistency by establishing a single creative direction for the company’s three key sales periods: Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. Our designs for each event demonstrate the beauty of Interflora’s floral ranges, combining this quality with the emotions that customers feel when they receive their wonderful bouquet.

Last Tuesday saw the more athletically gifted members of the Madhouse team (a pretty high proportion of us too, it has to be said), getting into some early festive spirit at Spinningfields Ice Rink.

In previous years the city’s seasonal skating attraction has been located in Piccadilly, beset by hordes of kids and set to a thumping day-glo Cheryl Cole soundtrack. Make of that what you will. This year it has moved to Spinningfields; partly, one suspects, to drive footfall into swanky new shopping street The Avenue.

It’s still not quite Central Park under the stars, but it’s an altogether more magical experience than before; Nat King Cole gently crooning over the speakers, tasteful silver and purple Christmas decor, atmospheric lighting and a convival “alpine lodge” for all your warming beverage needs. What could be better?

And not a twisted ankle in sight.

In an attempt to engage with a core element of its market – namely the teens/early twenties demographic – Phones4U serves as an excellent example of how Facebook can drive deeper social engagement with consumers.

Using the ‘Poll’ ad format, Phones4U were able to encourage users of Facebook to nominate a musical hero. By clicking on the advert the consumer was directed to the brand’s Facebook profile page, where they were able to participate in the campaign. This was the first phase of the campaign, and when all the votes were counted up, it was Dizzee Rascal who stood on top.

Peace, maaaan

The recent student demonstrations relating to funding in higher education recall an earlier era of youthful protest. For those with an interest in signs and designs, it’s interesting to note that one of the symbols most powerfully associated with the student activism of the 1960s was the work of a British graphic artist, Gerald Holtom.

This ad campaign, by the Leo Burnett agency in the 1940s, is the origin of the term full bleed.

Thank you Leo. Thank you meat.

Image Copyright © 2007 CoJo’s

Working in the city centre provides some clear lunchtime advantages: choice of sandwich, picking up dry cleaning, TK Maxx-scouring and lunchtime haircuts (a risky business that could be the subject of a post in its own right).

This week we have been mostly reading Jerry Della Femina’s hilarious advertising classic “From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbour”. First published in 1970, it’s just out in a new edition, as a crafty tie-in with a Mad Men dvd release – and is available, as they say, in all good bookshops.

The announcement of the latest product to come under the Mini brand, the Mini Scooter E, has hit the internet and media circuit in the last few days. But while Mini as a brand still commands a huge amount of respect, one can’t help but think that they’re starting to spread themselves a bit thin. The previous releases of the Clubman and, more recently, the Countryman, were nowhere near as successful as when the ‘original’ Mini was reintroduced less than a decade ago. Yet rather than get ridiculed for those later releases, they have carried on moving forward, finding other ways to push the boundaries of their company.

The 21st of October saw Madhouse host the latest in its popular best practice seminar programme, with delegates from some of the region’s most recognisable brands in attendance.

The quality of the welcome pastries, as always, was only outshone by the quality of the speakers. The hot topic for this event? Getting Twitter and LinkedIn to work for your business. An area of massive potential, massive growth and, some would argue, massive misunderstanding.

But hey, that’s why we’re here, and that’s the whole point of our seminars – to deliver some sanity to clients, and help them define a clear strategy for the medium. The seminar is, of course, only as good as the content the speakers deliver, and we were fortunate enough to have two excellent sessions last Thursday.

Clare Briscall, our planning director, was recently asked by UTalkMarketing to talk about brands that yearn to be ‘cool’. This is her response to the following questions:

• Are brands obsessed with the pursuit of cool?
• What are the dangers of pursuing a cool strategy?
• When is it not appropriate for a brand not to pursue a cool positioning?
• What factors should they focus on instead for emotional engagement longevity?

Pursuing cool is a fool’s game if the brand is selling products that can never be cool. But hold on a minute – isn’t one person’s cool someone else’s lukewarm? So surely cool can be applied to every purchase and is a matter of opinion?

In these recessionary times, empty shop units have become a familiar sight even in districts that still seem fairly prosperous. But these vacant shells needn’t necessarily remain vacant for long if they can be colonised by the creative community. Landlords are usually keen to fill the space even on a temporary basis – anything to keep the cash coming in. And while that often means discount stores and bargain basements, I’ve recently encountered a couple of more exciting ways to inject life back into spaces that commerce has left behind.

What is a brand? For starters, it’s the definition of your business. Without it, customers understand what you sell, but not how or why.

Secondly, a great brand builds trust with customers. Just think about your last three purchasing decisions. Now consider how influential branding was in making that choice. In short, when asked ‘to buy or not to buy?’, the answer is invariably in the branding and its emotional strength.

We’re delighted to say Interflora picked Madhouse in a recent competitive pitch. We won the task of delivering their crucial master creative and brand guidelines for the flower legend’s new seasonal peaks campaign. It means we’ll be getting creative with Interflora’s three biggest sales periods – Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day.

At Madhouse we value understanding, whether that be understanding an industry sector, understanding communication channels and trends, or understanding what it is that appeals to clients’ customers.

It is this understanding that forms the basis of all our work, which is why Redrow plc – the country’s leading residential and mixed use property developer – came to us with the brief to help them evaluate the success of two areas of its business.

Here at Madhouse we’re proud of a lot of things, and that includes our sponsorship of Chester Rugby Club’s Under 15s team. Here are our lads in their new strip, which we recently helped to buy. New strip, new season – come on boys!

Back in July we held the very first Madhouse best practice seminar on social media, and the response was phenomenal. As an integrated agency using social media for the benefit of our clients, we called on two industry specialists to give us their views on how social media can work for business.

At Madhouse we relish a challenge so when K3 briefed us to create stand-out in a cluttered B2B market, we were all over it. K3 is an Enterprise Resource Planning specialist, and if you’re wondering what that means, they’re all about interrogating the processes a business uses and identifying ways in which they can become more efficient. K3 literally saves businesses hundreds of thousands of pounds just by stripping back processes to get to the crux of inefficiencies.

Educational seminar
Venue: Madhouse
Date/time: Thursday 21st October 2010, 8.30am – 11am

This week sees the start of the Commonwealth Games in Delhi – two weeks of good, clean sporting endeavour for athletes from around the globe, no doubt. But did you know that the Commonwealth has it’s own logo? Nor did we! But it does!

Designed in the early 70s and officially adopted in 1976, the flag…

Superheroes and comic books are guilty pleasures for many people – me included. So discovering that the new Captain America film was shooting scenes in Manchester’s Northern Quarter was not only hugely exciting, but as a newcomer to the agency, it has given me the perfect opportunity to join the Madhouse blogging team. So here goes…

Fighting through the crowds of people pushing to get a glimpse of the action, I found myself at the front, and attempted to scale the fences of the closed set on Dale Street in order to film one of the car chases. While my camera work leaves a little to be desired, I did manage to capture a good 15 seconds of a drive-by scene. Video coming soon…

We always like to see emerging technology here at Madhouse, and there was plenty on display at this year’s ad:tech exhibition.

He’s a marvel…

Over the next few weeks, a handful of streets in the Ancoats district of our fair city (better known to younger readers as the “northern quarter”) will be transformed into 1940s New York for the filming of Hollywood’s latest superhero blockbuster, Captain America.

There’s a fantastic exhibition on at Tate Britain right now which must remind a fair majority of readers of sticking their fingers together with superglue and trying to get those fiddly decals on straight as a child.

Fiona Banner’s installation of two rather lifeless and yet still intimidating fighter jets runs until January 3rd 2011. Our Madhouse representative has already seen it, and reports back that Fiona’s trussed-up Sea Harrier is particularly impressive, resembling a dangling pheasant in an upmarket butcher’s shop. If you’re down in London pop along and have a look – no glue or Humbrol Enamel required.

LOLz

We love the internets. We love the social networkings. Ergo, we love teh kittehs.

No wonder then, that the new Ikea spot from Mother is, like, completely FTW.

UP THERE from Jon on Vimeo.

UP THERE from Jon on Vimeo.

These guys deserve a few cold ones after doing this…and i’m sure they won’t be alone.

Have a good weekend.

Rich

Nice use of 2010’s top Christmas gift to create an atmospheric and stylish result. Some serious time and brain power from Dentsu London, well done.

Making Future Magic: iPad light painting from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

Nun finer…

In the week preceding the Bishop of Rome’s jaunt to the UK, the Advertising Standards Authority (popularly known as the “advertising watchdog” to journalists everywhere) has put the kibosh on the above campaign, for swanky Federici ice cream.

The whole Italian brand/Pope’s visit/”delicious temptation” thing hangs together pretty well for me, but apparently ASA were overwhelmed with 10 whole complaints – deemed sufficient to kill the piece. According to Campaign the ad was produced in-house by the brand, and has already appeared in Grazia and The Lady magazine.

No, no. Apparently, it really is about the motion of the ocean – or rather, the O.C.E.A.N.

 Confused? I’m not surprised. Let me explain.

You see, the clever folks at 2CV Research ran a study between April and May this year, and O.C.E.A.N. was at the heart of it. And, it seems, we’re all part of it – because the ‘O.C.E.A.N.’ consists of five main personality types: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. Through understanding this methodology, 2CV were able to segment consumers and analyse their purchasing decisions.

Madhouse is part of the fabric of Manchester – it’s official. And that’s according to no lesser authority than BBC Four!

Actually, it was our building they were referring to – specifically, Lawrence Building on Mount Street in the city centre, which has been our grand and stately home since 1999. Having spent 11 fantastic years in this buzzing location, we’ve long considered ourselves a fixture in the city, but it still came as a surprise to find ourselves on screen recently as part of BBC Four’s wonderful ‘People’s Palaces’ documentary about Victorian civic architecture in the north of England.

It all got a bit ‘Never Mind the Buzzcocks’ in Manchester last night as 16 ad agency teams battled it out to be crowned the city’s kings of pop trivia. The occasion was a charity pop quiz on behalf of NABS, the industry’s benevolent fund; although once the hard-fought competition got under way, there was precious little evidence of charitable behaviour as inter-agency rivalries bubbled to the surface, and we just had to come up with the answers to burning questions like “How did Jeff Buckley die?” and “What year did Siouxsie and the Banshees’ ‘Hong Kong Garden’ come out?”

Earlier this week, our friendly search giant released Google Instant to the world. This huge change to Google’s search engine delivers dynamic real-time search results as you type with no clicking required! (Collective “WOW!”). Google actually calls it “search before you type” because Google Instant predicts what you’re about to type and delivers search results based on those predictions. With predictive search and instant results, you can often get the answer you want much faster.

Are these changes going to affect the way we look at SEO? Only time will tell.

I’m personally very impressed with the changes and in order to demonstrate my enthusiasm, I’ve already submitted the new feature to rigorous scientific testing. As a result of which, I can now reveal the alphabet according to Google.co.uk…

“Awesome!” people say, confirming with every utterance that it has become today’s superlative of choice. Though as a statement, it is, in my opinion, somewhat subjective: one man’s awesome is another man’s average.

The following is an abridged version of an important and lengthy Friday afternoon debate in 2006. Real names have been removed to protect the individuals concerned.

Number 23 in a neverending series: Jailbreak

Nestlé went live last week with their latest campaign for the nation’s favourite mint-with-a-hole, the venerable Polo.

Philip K. Dick was right all along…

The growth of email marketing continues unabated with the latest Email Census recording that email marketing spend has risen from 14% to 17% of total digital marketing spend in the UK. It has now therefore really arrived as a core marketing tactic for many companies and it is essential to maximise its effectiveness and return on investment.

Gently, now…

Adolescent males of yesteryear will fondly recall the formative influence of Cadbury’s flake advertising upon our hormonal selves. Right up there with the Damart thermals catalogue and a scantily clad Debbie McGee. If you know what I mean.

I sit in front of the computer, fingers frozen, throat tightening, stomach tensed. I stare at the screen, the cursor flashing: it demands words from me, but I haven’t got anything to give.

Swifter, higher, stronger… richer

 There was some controversy during the recent FIFA World Cup in South Africa relating to the promotional activities of brands which were not officially sanctioned partners of the tournament, and their alleged, “unauthorised” attempts to capitalise on that sporting jamboree.

My god, it’s full of stars… 

I wasn’t sure what to title our latest blog, so why did I plump for the above? Well we all know how Carlsberg’s famous strapline goes, and as we at Madhouse hosted our first free best practice seminar earlier this month, it was a phrase that I couldn’t help bringing to mind.

It’s hardly contentious to state that Pablo Picasso was probably the greatest artist of the twentieth century: his life and career have been explored in forensic detail ever since his death in 1973. However, Tate Liverpool’s ‘Picasso: Peace and Freedom’ show is currently offering art lovers a great opportunity to investigate one of the less celebrated aspects of Brand Picasso: namely, his thirty-plus years as a card-carrying member of the French Communist Party. Typically, Picasso is characterised as something of a playboy, an incorrigible individualist, but this exhibition argues that this reading ignores his commitment to a number of progressive causes, not least his work on behalf of the many World Peace Congresses that occurred in Europe throughout the nineteen-fifties.

Another Science Fiction: Advertising the space race 1957-1962

Megan Prelinger (Blast Books, 2010)

There’s no need to provide a book review, you can check out the NY Times’ own piece here:

At Madhouse, we get lots of requests to source various branded items for clients and sports teams – particularly clothing. Recently, we have created some striking and very popular ‘street style’ hoodies for kids’ sports team.

See what happens when you don’t do your research!

The testimonial. Number twelve in every good marketeer’s go-to book of tricks. And when you’re communicating those all-important endorsements through the medium of radio it can mean only one thing: hit the streets kids, it’s voxpop time.

Once upon a time, we named ourselves Madhouse. The ‘mad’ bit stood for ‘marketing’, ‘advertising’, ‘design’. And that was more or less enough to sum up what we did.

Now though, it would maybe be more difficult to summarise the business in such a snappy way. We’re still Madhouse of course; that’s our name. But as an integrated marketing agency, our services extend into all kinds of areas that we perhaps didn’t imagine back in the nineties.

Madhouse might be based in land-locked Manchester, but recently we’ve been immersed in a world of foam-crested breakers, sun-bleached hair and the salty tang of the ocean. Not that we’ve moved the studio to Bondi. It’s just that we’ve been creating a new surf-based website for the soft drink specialists Calypso.

In just a few short years, social media has transformed the marketing landscape. As an integrated agency, Madhouse has worked hard to understand the implications so that we can give our clients the benefit of our knowledge; for many, it is already an essential element in the marketing mix. On the other hand, the use of social media is sometimes presented as a miraculous cure for all ills – something that just needs to be mentioned in order for it to work its magic.

When it comes to looking after ourselves here at Madhouse, we reckon we scrub up fairly well when we need to. Certainly, the clouds of cologne that billow round the office before any agency night out would suggest that we all take at least a little pride in our appearance. So perhaps that’s why we’ve managed such a great job on four prestigious personal care websites for Lornamead?

Delivering effective campaigns for any product or service is a source of great pleasure here at Madhouse. After all, it’s what we’re good at. However, when that product is one that can transform the experience of people with serious medical conditions – well, that gives us an extra glow of satisfaction.

I did something completely different this morning: I flew in a hot air balloon! It was a birthday present from my good lady wife, and what a fantastic experience it was.

Sixteen of us (yes, sixteen!) clambered into the basket at 6am in the middle of a remote Cheshire field on a glorious sunny morning and we quickly soared to 2,000 feet.

Your name here?

A random thought on the movie business occurred to me recently, prompted by Russell Crowe’s mini-tantrum during a Radio 4 interview, in which it was suggested that the Aussie bruiser might have lapsed into an Irish lilt during his starring role in “Robin Hood” – Hollywood’s latest blockbuster recycling initiative.

Here is “Jabulani” – the official, FIFA-sanctioned ball for the World Cup:

According to the magnificent promotional blather, Jabulani is…

No. 135 in an ongoing series… Birds Ice Magic

Transparency. Never a bad thing in my book. Take the relationship between agency and client: the work that we produce is driven by the client’s brief. If the client isn’t clear and concise in their statement of requirements/goals, then it is reflected in the end result. Things can be….confused.

Search engine optimisation – which convention dictates we must abbreviate to SEO – can be a bit of a minefield really. There are lots of different agencies out there, and a lot of different selling points which a provider can use to try and ‘hook’ a potential client.

However, ultimately, SEO is all about understanding your target audience – and how to reach them at their most receptive. That’s certainly how we approach campaigns at Madhouse, and it’s a strategy that our clients seem to like. But if we’re talking about REALLY effective use of SEO then, for my money, there can only be one winner.

I recently attended SAScon in Manchester – that’s the Search, Analytics and Social Media Conference – and while I was there, I listened to an interesting presentation by Bruce Daisley from YouTube.

Although it was supposed to be a fairly neutral look at the future of video on the internet, Bruce did a fairly slick sales job about YouTube and the expanding list of advertising opportunities on that site.

The RAF touches down in Albert Square

The Dutch 300m relay team were pleased with their success…

On Sunday, Manchester hosted its annual Great Run. The 10 kilometre road race is entered by about 40,000 people, and takes runners around the streets of Manchester, out to Old Trafford, past the Imperial War Museum in Salford, and back to town again.

Madhouse is named for the disciplines of marketing, advertising and design – our core business (together these days with digital, of course).

We were nevertheless quite tickled to find the following on Wikipedia the other day:

Architectural competitions can be exciting affairs, particularly when they’re accompanied by exhibitions that actively invite public comment and participation. They feature proposals for imagined futures, and the magic lies in the possibility that the potential buildings might become real – and we, as viewers, get the chance to have our say. Dinky little wooden models take on giant dimensions in our minds; slick CGI renders act as templates to be laid over reality; video presentations and expensively bound brochures tempt us into casting our vote in what can seem like an architectural ‘X Factor’ showdown.

Communication is moving fast. No, not fast; it’s moving at break-neck speed, and it’s never been easier to access information and, in particular, to pass comment to a mass market. Businesses and organisations are still getting to grips with much social media, but while the ‘understanding, trying and refining’ phase rolls on, it’s important to remember that Tweeting as part of the marketing mix must be carefully thought out.

With the well documented demise of traditional media such as TV, press and outdoor, and the increasing emphasis on social/online media plus the famous success of Barrack Obama’s social media campaign in the US Presidential election, surely it was on the cards for the UK to follow suit and for us to expect a seismic shift in marketing activity via the web for the 2010 general election.

They say the simple ideas are often the best, and surely there is no better example than Pacman.

First released on May 22^nd 1980 in Japan, it became an icon of the decade’s culture. There were spin off games, a TV show and merchandise galore, all driven by the game’s popularity. The fact that the original Pacman is still enjoyed by gamers today is testament to Namco’s basic format.

I recently blogged about the ways in which people ‘read’ a web page, and on the same theme, I’m now following up with a related post.

Here is a heat map of users interacting with the Firefox menu bar.

We as marketeers are only too aware of the clamour of proliferated media today, and indeed we’d like to think of ourselves as proficient exponents of these instruments.

As valuable as these tools are to us and our clients, it’s nice to know also that there are mavericks standing out from the crowd and using mass marketing techniques to amplify the voices of the otherwise unheard.

Just a quick one, but I saw this quintessentially Mancunian road sign on the journey into work and it cheered me up on an otherwise grey and miserable morning. I had to take a shot of it in ‘Isolation’ as I strolled past. Let’s hope the roadworks won’t tear us apart.

I’ve compiled a list of links to new and emerging technologies that are worth following. Some of them take the core of other products and add functionality, while some have spotted a new niche in the market. Most importantly, it seems that a few of them have been developed with Web 3.0 in mind…

Mobile

Most apps have been offering subscribers information based on their specific location but Loopt blends the love of social networking with location-based services. It detects mobile friends in your vicinity and lets you know where they are with the option of making contact.

Organisations are poised and ready, eyeing each other warily, stripping off Lycra and limbering up as they proceed to their blocks… only, no-one has told them what race this is.

The New York Times reports on the shuffling for position of marketers as they wait for the much anticipated iPad – not so they can watch Okay Go’s latest madcap video, but for the love of the almighty mean green. (Money, that is).

Whether you’ve been on the iPhone band wagon for a while or you’ve just given in and got yourself one, here are a few apps that you need to get hold of – just in case you haven’t already! And if you haven’t got an iPhone, just see what you’re missing out on!

Here’s a pic of a stretch of the incredibly important Bridgewater canal in the middle of the city of Manchester, taken recently at lunchtime en route to The Sevenoak pub up in Chinatown for a smooth pint of Black Sheep.

The Bridgewater turbo-powered the industrial revolution of the eighteenth century that transformed the world (sorry about that folks – Manchester, so much to answer for…), but it holds a more recent significance for all you advertising heads in the room.

Sponsored walks, sponsored swims, sponsored sitting in baths of baked beans. However, you choose to raise cash for charity, the chances are the internet has changed the way you do it.

My two young lads did a three mile walk recently for Sport Relief – with mum and dad in hot pursuit of course. And it seemed that the most effective way of getting the tenners rolling in was for us parents to whack up a status on our Facebook profiles appealing for cash via the Sport Relief website.

So, after a two-year foray into the world of social networking, AOL has decided to bid farewell to Bebo. You remember Bebo, right? All the kids are doing it. Well, they were. At the time of purchase (Bebo was a snip at $850m) it was widely considered to be the prime challenger to Facebook on the web 2.0 horizon. Its predominantly youthful demographic supposedly the perfect springboard for all sorts of lucrative brand activity.

Online though, it’s evolve or die – and the sad fact is that Bebo has lagged waaaaay behind.

As Tiger Woods teed off at the US Masters yesterday, Nike launched their latest ad to feature not only the newly-controversial golfing superstar, but, a little spookily, the voice of his dead father, too.

Instead of running a mile from one of their hottest promotional properties when the going got tough (as many a sponsor would; think Kate Moss, Kerry Katona, Peaches Geldof… the list goes on), the global sports and fashion brand has adopted a rather different approach: go for it with all guns blazing. While the likes of Pepsi, and Procter & Gamble’s Gillette brand hit the panic button, pumping out dated, re-cut, re-hashed and Tiger-less ads to fill the void, Nike has taken its own advice: Just do it – boldly standing by their man and slapping the swoosh front-and-centre.

So is this ad, and the strategy behind it, tasteless golfsploitation or marketing genius? So far, opinion is divided. A Yahoo poll is showing 63% (of some 166,000-ish respondents) saying they love it, while a separate vote on celebrity site TMZ finds 77% of 90,000-odd readers calling it marketing bullsh*t.

I thought this might make for a pretty interesting post. In my daily search of the world wide web for all things geeky, I recently came across a study carried out by Eyetrack III.  In the hope of trying to answer some difficult questions regarding best practice in web design, they mapped the eye movements of a bunch of people looking at a variety of websites, and have revealed some pretty interesting stuff about how we look at the web. So… is there a template that the user will intuitively understand, knowing where to click without really thinking about it and without being bogged down spending time learning how to interact with it?

The results were pretty interesting (to me anyway) and not always what you’d expect.

Or “what I did last night” – a.k.a. the Madhouse staff outing to Bellevue dog track.

You’ll be pleased to see, dear reader, that we’ve avoided a tired, obvious “going to the dogs” pun in the above headline. Consummate pro’s here, you know. Anyway, last evening the Madhouse team got gussied up and hit the races; some gambling novices, some hardened tote-heads, a wonderfully surreal time was had by all (see what we did there?).

Actually, it was brilliant. Bellevue is a fab slice of old school Manc fun, nestled over in the east of our fair city between Longsight and Openshaw. A packed house for a Thursday night, young and old, a hearty spot of grub and a well-priced pint, plus a dozen exciting races and betting service at your table – what could be better?!

It’s always satisfying to win a new account as a result of a keenly contested pitch, and having recently discovered that our work for K3’s SYSPRO ERP system has been successful, it’s no wonder that there have been a few big grins around the Madhouse studio in the last few weeks.

Briefly…

For those of us sat firmly in the PC camp, writing the creative brief is our chance to put the spreadsheets and project plans aside for a while and flex our creative muscles at those Macs. There is no better feeling than sitting down to brief the creative team knowing that the simple piece of paper you hold in your hand will result in fantastic (you hope!) creative work. Starting the creative brief feels like opening the front page on that new exercise book – it’s a clean sheet of paper that has the potential to either depress the creative team beyond belief or inspire them and remind them why they love their job.

I say reluctant but, if I’m honest, contributing to the Madhouse blog is an ideal way for me to spend the commute to work. I just hope that you find the content as interesting as I did to write.

If you go back to August 2006, as MySpace attracted its 100 millionth member, I would’ve staked my house on the site becoming the internet’s primary destination. Meanwhile, approximately seven million people were using the much smaller, Harvard dorm born, Facebook.

In the two years that followed, Facebook caught, and subsequently eclipsed, MySpace. By January of this year, Facebook had become a tool for over half of the United States – its 350 million active users encompassing a whopping 54% of US citizens. It also leapfrogged Yahoo as the second most visited site in the States, trailing only to the perennial leader – Google.

At Madhouse, we’re proud of our track record of helping clients achieve great things with their integrated marketing campaigns, and new arrival Stuart Lunn is going to help us spread the word even further. As Business Development Manager, Stuart will be building our relationships with existing clients, helping them get even more out of their marketing budgets, as well as extending a friendly hand to those with whom we haven’t yet worked.

Stuart arrives at Madhouse from the Media Initiatives Group, bringing a wealth of sales and planning experience, particularly in the digital field. His skills will add even greater depth to our line-up of talented individuals, and we’re looking forward to forging plenty of new connections thanks to Stuart’s distinctive brand of business know-how.

Almost every business has a website these days, but not every business site really performs as well as it should. If your site doesn’t appear in the search engine results for the search terms that are most relevant to your business, then it could be that you are being missed by the people who most need to find you. But at Madhouse, we aim to give you a helping hand – for free!

Madhouse has been creating effective integrated marketing campaigns for over eleven years now. It’s little wonder then that we have developed a systematic six-part method for the planning, creation and execution of campaigns – a method that places the emphasis firmly on creating measurable results for our clients.

When we begin working with a new client, we set out to form a genuine two-way relationship; that way we can start to really understand the business, the market and the client’s place in it. We launch each of these new relationships with a planning session at which Madhouse team members get together with client representatives to look in depth at the product, the target audience and the ways in which it differs from the competition.

Over at Tate Liverpool, the latest show to take over the fourth floor galleries is called ‘Afro modern: journeys through the black Atlantic‘: it’s an exploration of the cross-pollination that took place between artists in Africa, America and Europe during the twentieth century.

Conventional art history tells us about the influence that African art had on the Cubists, but this exhibition offers the chance to consider how far this appreciation went beyond merely taking delight in the ‘primitive’ or the ‘exotic’, and whether it amounted to a genuine two-way conversation between cultures. We’re aware of the extent to which Picasso (for instance) appropriated African forms, but less well known are the ways in which European modernism influenced black artists in Africa and the States.

Whether we’re revelling in some unexpected sunshine or – more likely – having a grumble about the rain, we can’t escape the fact that the seasons of the year are always with us. And at Madhouse, it’s a subject we’re always thinking about on behalf of one our most long-standing clients.

As an integrated marketing agency, we are well used to creating effective websites on behalf of our clients, but we thought it was about time we dispensed some tender loving care on our own internet offering.

So for the past few months we’ve been beavering away behind the scenes to create a leaner, meaner Madhouse web presence, and having transformed it from top to bottom, it’s now up and running for the whole world to see.

One of the great things about the Madhouse studio is its location in the heart of Manchester. As well as the advantages of being connected to the city’s vibrant creative sector – not to mention the fantastic shopping and wonderful nearby sandwich shops! – it also means there’s a wealth of interesting galleries on our doorstep. And one that always delivers a satisfying lunch-time visit is the Cube Gallery just round the corner on Portland Street.

It has to start somewhere, so here goes: the Madhouse blog emerges blinking into the daylight, gets a resounding ‘thwack!’ on the rear end, and begins bawling for all it’s worth.

Consider this post to be the first squawk from our virgin voice-box.