2am again, and trying to save the world…

Again I find myself staring at the screen trying not to be distracted by Foxtel, msn, myspace, food… it’s 2am.

Well my mind is full of thoughts not knowing which way to go…. This past week has spurred my brain into overdrive.

I just feel I can’t ignore everything around me that is pointing to how we need to stand up and take notice about our responsibilities and take a stand for our planet.

I think a few things may have spurred these thoughts… Such as… reading some of the countless articles that are everywhere on the subject. From the lift out from the weekend newspaper to Ad news, B&T, Adbusters and more. Everywhere you look. I feel totally over whelmed to do something…. The least we can do be conscious of not making things worse.

If we all only put in a little effort we can a make a large impact!
There are so many ways we can help or at least try to offset our contributions to polluting our struggling environment before we totally destroy it.
Obscene things are happening. For the first time ever, polar bears have actually been spotted eating each other. They are running out of food as their habitats become increasingly smaller. Animals migrating further towards the poles and the earth gets warmer. The seas are heating up which is contributing to factors leading to more intense storms, hurricanes and drought!

There are so many things each of us can do that will help. Reducing our carbon emissions is a crucial part of what we must begin to do, we can do this in so many ways. By using our cars less, flying less, not wasting electricity, building energy efficient offices and houses, the list goes on. If we must travel by plane lets at least off set our emissions by contributing to planting trees to absorb some carbon dioxide.

Anyway as we are starting up a business what can we do to make ourselves environmentally neutral or what can we do to give back to the environment and or community?

This is also something that people in regional areas are concerned about, I think this must be integrated into our business values and stance.

It’s about time we all took some responsibility for what we do.

Hmmm it’s 4:05am.

Just remembered something… I washed my sheets this afternoon and forgot to put them in the dryer…. What to do…

Well good morning! It’s Monday

It’s been a while

Well it’s been a while since I last posted a blog on wordpress. Now that the communications revolutions essay has been submitted I feel I can breathe a slight sigh of relief. I feel I worked so hard on it but got almost nowhere although I did understand the concepts. It was a very unusual feeling as I feel I did a lot of research.

Lantern creative is slowly moving ahead, one step at a time of course. I am in the process of creating a myspace page for us to help with the establishing of some personal and creative networks in the areas we are focusing on. We want to gain an understanding of people on a personal level and hope that we can begin to network in some form. Although everything is still in its early days we need to begin work on these connections. When I look at our timeline, I see time moving way too fast! It’s scary. Myspace is a new social platform which I feel we can use to our advantage. This is the case especially as we have an enormous obstacle to overcome in terms of distance between ourselves and our audience. I have discovered some connections which I didn’t know existed within old friends and aquaintences. I am still to find out whether these people can actually do what they say they can.

I have had various conversations with Verity over msn, mostly at about 3am while she’s house hunting in Dublin and I am doing homework or procrastinating. We have talked at length about our business and where it’s heading. I’ve discovered that un-knowingly we both feel the urge to continue our nomadic existance and at some stage soon possibly migrate to London. We shall see where things go.

Well here comes another week, easter is gone and we are now four months into 2007!

brainstorming qualities…

Hmmm, so what qualities may we want our advertising business to have?

… HUMOR – IMAGINATION – EXCITEMENT – REASON -BALANCE – FRANKNESS – DETERMINATION – WIT – STRENGTH – BODY – UNDERSTANDING – EMPATHY – CLASS – INTELLIGENCE – CREATIVITY – DRIVE – SPARK – FLAVOUR – SPICE – CHARM – FRESH – FUN – CURRENT – UNUSUAL – ENERGY – BOUNCE – SPIRIT – URBAN…

Ok, so how will our business be/show these qualities?

HUMOR
We don’t want to be too serious in the sense that we don’t want to be seen as uptight. Under the right circumstances we also want to make people laugh, I think that when an ad makes people laugh they get a good feeling about the product and also find it memorable.

IMAGINATION
We need to come up with ideas and strategies that will stand out. For this we will need to have imaginative thinking. Off the wall ideas will only come delving into our imagination. At times these ideas may be on the verge of ridiculous or possibly be just right. Ultimately we need to find different ideas that will work for our clients.

EXCITEMENT
We want to surprise people. Be doing things that they don’t necessarily expect. As we are starting out we also need/want to generate some hype.

REASON
We will need to have sound research and understanding of our products to be able to rationalise our ideas.

BALANCE
We don’t want to have too many of one type of client. We want to show that we are versatile.

FRANKNESS
We need to be upfront with our clients. We don’t want to be given the run around or be caught up with clients who are problematic. Therefore we need to be straight up about how we work, what goes on with the creative process, what outcomes they can hope for, our responsibilities and what we expect from them.

DETERMINATION
We will need determined to push though the most creative ideas possible and not allow clients to make them wishy washy if they think they are too different. We need to show them that we are determined to make great ads in Albury. We have to make sure the clients understand that the work we are doing won’t be the same as what is already being done. It will take courage on their part to be different but will be worth it. We are determined to change the face of advertising in this rural metropolis.

WIT
See humour… We want to create clever ideas that will make people think.

STRENGTH
We will have to be strong to be able to start up from scratch. There are many obstacles that we will have to overcome and we won’t get past them if we are a weak team.

BODY
Hmmm… We need to show a body of work that shows we are versatile and can actually do what we say we can.

UNDERSTANDING
We will need to understand that our prospective clients may not be comfortable in doing something that they believe to be risky. It’s most likely that they will be conservative and quite new to the advertising process. They will probably be quite wary of us so we will have to do our best to put them at ease and make them feel comfortable.

EMPATHY
See understanding…

CLASS
We will aim to bring some class to some products that people think they have to go elsewhere to find or that they don’t think they sell in places like Albury.

INTELLIGENCE
We need to make clients feel at ease and comfortable with us. To be able to get them to trust us we have to show them that we know what we are talking about.

CREATIVITY
Our business will revolve around creativity. We will need to think differently. If we don’t come up with creative concepts we will not be a success.

DRIVE
We will need drive to keep the ball rolling. We want to show that we are a dynamic business.

SPARK
We want to be lively… We want to be light in the dark…

FRESH
We want to do things differently, if possible breathe new life into businesses whose image in the public eye may have become a little stale over time.

FUN
See humour

CURRENT
We need to show that we are down with the times and therefore can portray the clients we are representing as modern, desirable and that they know what their customers need and want.

UNUSUAL
Coming up with unusual ideas will appeal to people, they will provide cut though and people will be more likely to remember them.

ENERGY
We don’t want to appear sluggish or lazy. We need to show our clients that we are motivated. That we will get the job done efficiently and they will see results.

task 2

What makes a good project or topic?
-  I think a good project needs to show depth and understanding of a key issue.
-  It needs to be clear as to what it wants to say or what it intends to accomplish.
-  A good project will show that the topic has been thoroughly explored through
    research.
-  It will show both sides to an argument and debate them.
-  A good project will set out to find a solution to the issue at hand.
-  A good project will be organized and coherent, it will cover any key elements
    related to the issue and be presented in a way which can be understood by all  
    those who interact with the project without prior knowledge on the topic.

What and who is our project for?
-  Our project will serve two purposes. The business side of our project is useful to
    business owners in rural areas who need advertising done.
-  Our written aspect of the project will be for those in industry to gain a more
    thorough understanding of the issues faced for these people, this will help them  
    have more of a positive approach to working in this side of the industry and will
    make it easier to deal with these clients. I believe it may possibly also serve to
    encourage those creative heads in the area to look towards doing some work for
    the business around them rather than always moving to Melbourne or Sydney
    straight away to work.

The four sentence abstract:
 A shortage of advertising services in rural Australian areas means that business owners in country areas such as Albury/Wodonga are posed with the inconvenience of having to source advertising work from agencies in other cities such as Melbourne and Sydney. Almost all creative heads which live in their areas move to find work in larger cities where there is more work and money.  So, lets start an agency in the country and relieve some of the workload.

How my project will be presented:
I think my final project will be made up of a number of related and interconnected pieces. I will be working together with Verity so we will have to have a large body of work. As we are planning on starting up a business there will be various components that will make up the final project. The planning and research: this will include the business plan and our documented findings on the rural market and client base. The actual business will form the second part: our website, and real work for real clients. In a sense it will be a series of projects which join to form our major project. It will be a lot of work so I am worried that it may be a bit too ambitious, but I do believe that it is do able…

We want our finished work to display a number of these qualities:
Humor and wit, Reason, Balance, Frankness, Determination, Strength, Body, Understanding, Class, Intelligence

el principio…

Well this whole internet thing seems to have a tendency to become somewhat addictive, I hope this blog becomes useful for me in some way… If nothing more I hope it eases the pain of some course work and helps me write some of my exigesis….