It's a load of namby pamby tut
I’m a massive fan of Lord Alan Sugar, his one liners are legendary:
“If you survive, I promise you this, as sure as I’ve got a hole in my bloody a**e…”.
I’m currently following Lord Al on Twitter and his tweets are just as straight down the line as his conversation. One of his recent tweets was: “I agree as my book explains most ad agencies are looking for awards at Cannes and forget what they’re actually advertising” . This isn’t the first time he’s shown his dislike either, whenever the ‘branding’ task on the Apprentice comes around you hear about it: “I’ve written books on advertising. Cheque books.” and “I hope that one day you run a business that has got a turnover the size of the amount of money I’ve pi**ed up the wall over the years on advertising”.
Now Lord Sugar wants straight talking advertising to go with his straight talking attitude, but even so, I reckon he’s actually right on some of his points – some agencies can be obsessed with wining awards!
One of our designers told us a story about going to a job interview. He was waiting in the meeting room when the MD walked in, slammed an award down on the table in front of him and sat down without saying anything but with a rather smug look on his face. Hmmm, so what! Needless to say the designer came to work with us rather than them.
Saying that, we aren’t against entering awards but we certainly don’t design something with this in mind. And in terms of ‘forgetting what we’re actually advertising’ we don’t do that either. At Threerooms, we’ve got a really good combination of skills. Myself and Ian (co-founders) were both originally designers and, in the past, are both guilty of designing for designs sake, and cursing under our breath whenever the client wanted to ‘make the logo bigger’, as it was going to ruin our kick-ass design.
Since then though we’ve developed the business and now see things from the other perspective – what the client is trying to achieve, and not just how it looks. As a growing business with talented designers who care about the design and account/marketing people who care about the message, we’ve got the perfect combination.
We don’t want to ever stop pushing the creativity though if it’s right for the client. The majority of clients will always prefer to play it safe, that’s why when a client comes along and lets us be creative we love it! And then after the project is finished, the client is happy, the objective of the campaign has been successful, then that’s when we consider entering it for an award. Never the other way around.
A room with a view...
Well the cold weather has set in for sure! We’ve noticed the sun is very reluctant to get out of bed in the morning (just like one of our designers...!) and its very quick to set. We managed to capture this shot out of our studio window before the sun hit the deck for the night. Its quite pretty where we work! Click here to see more of our studio in Strelley Hall.
Makes you feel all happy inside
I'm sure the majority of people who see the new T-Mobile advert flash mob advert can't help but smile.
Fun in the Snow
Okay, so most of the time we're too busy working hard for our clients but some of the Threerooms team managed to get out in the snow to build 'Three Snowmen' in the grounds of Strelley Hall. Here's a pic...
Everyone's heard of Robin!
I’ve recently come back from Las Vegas. I went with a friend from Sheffield and when asked where in the UK we were from, not one American had heard of Sheffield but EVERYBODY had heard of Nottingham. Why? ...because of you-know-who, Mr Robin Hood.
Some Americans were amazed it was actually a real place and were even more amazed that there actually was a Sherwood Forest and a Sheriff of Nottingham.
In fact, wherever I’ve been in the world, I have never had a problem explaining where I’m from because everyone has heard of Nottingham, due to Robin Hood. Apart from the obvious, London, I can’t think of anywhere else in the UK that has this sort of legendary recognition, perhaps Stratford from Shakespeare fame? (Let me know if you have any suggestions.)
So when tourists visit Nottingham, after seeing the legend in films, such as Robin Hood Prince of Thieves and the latest film starring Russell Crowe, what do they think?
I know the City Council are looking into the possibility of building some kind of Robin Hood experience, as per their recent trip to the US to explore the idea.
Investing in Robin Hood and the city will help increase International tourism, and therefore increase the flow of money into the city. Could we ask individual businesses to invest as a collective interest through sponsorship etc?
We should definitely make more of The Castle. Warwick Castle have created a really successful tourist attraction. They have a better castle perhaps, but they also have daily re-enactments, falconry displays, archery displays, a Trebuchet, to name only a few. Of course we have the Robin Hood Pageant though.
At Threerooms we love Notts, are really proud to be based here, and would do anything to promote it… so what other ideas could we come up with to promote our fantastic city?
