HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

On the occasion of our finance director's birthday, I thought an ode might be in order. 

She will hate me for it. 

Sorry!

OWED ON AN EARN

You've always been thrifty,

Straightforward, not shifty.

Is that why you're nifty

At forty two?

The Lost Art of Communication

Good grief. The things some people do at the weekends. The bank holiday saw me breaking in a new pair of boots on Arenig Fawr, North Wales.

All was well until the top of this gorgeous mountain, where we found the wilderness besmirched by a twenty-foot portable radio aerial and the summit cairn occupied by a dominatrix of uncertain age barking an incessant babble of code into a handset.

Utterly preoccupied by her own self-importance, this harridan of the airwaves completely ignored every walker who arrived at the peak, leaving at least half a dozen of us irritated and in the dark about why this remote and tranquil spot had been so ruinously commandeered.

No eye contact was made, no smile exchanged. None of the mutual acknowledgement that is traditional among genuine hillwalkers. Now and again, a non-gibberish sentence:  "Any stations out there wishing to make contact?"  Well, ‘hello’ would have been nice!

We moved along to a quieter peak to contemplate the deeper meaning of this encounter, which was so symptomatic of communication today.  

When the medium becomes the message, it is just irritating blather. You can twitter and text (yes, and blog) all you like, but don’t let it take over from actually talking to people around you, noticing their interest and responding in a human, normal, sociable way. Please!

Back at my desk I am writing a sustainability report for one of our clients. Here are engineers engaging with students, listening and learning, being good neighbours. It gives you hope. In our language, communication and community have the same root. These are the contacts that count, in business as well as in life.

Further research reveals alarmingly that there is an international society dedicated to broadcasting from mountains.  SOTA – Summits on the Air – even offers an award for ‘mountain activators’.  It’s called (you have to smile) the Mountain Goat award.

I know who would get my vote.

Carrie

MAYDAY MAYDAY

No it’s not just a distress call, but hopefully I got your attention! Happy May Day folks. It’s a shout for the workers and a time to get your bells out and dance around the May pole!

The earliest May Day celebrations were actually about the festival of Flora, the roman goddess of flowers which may explain in a rather loose way the jump to fertility, may poles and men in ribbons and bells but possibly not the labour movement or the distress call! Internationally workers are celebrating the social and economic achievements of the labour movement, which may not be that clear in the economic gloom! But in its simplest form, May Day promotes 8 hours of work, 8 hours of recreation and 8 hours of sleep! Now we might not all enjoy that but it’s great to know the thought is there (personally I would love the sleep part!).

I often think how odd how things evolve and change in meaning; the ‘chinese whisper’ effect combined with the power of word of mouth and the subjectivity of opinion. There are lots of examples such as May Day, words with double meanings or that once meant one thing and then moved on to mean something else. A tale someone tells another, develops and grows in to something different – the power of communication in whatever form is one to be admired.

In our line of work it is something we harness to create a story to engage the customer, inspiring them to buy, refer or develop their loyalty – essential in today’s climate. This is something we all need to be clever about. We have to make sure our whisper is louder than someone else’s, that our messages mean the right thing to the right person. Those who succeed at this will be the businesses that emerge from the end of the tunnel.

For now whether you are the kind of person who sashays around a pole, bells jangling and hankies waving or you prefer other more conventional pursuits, enjoy a wonderful May Bank Holiday. Comments and pictures are most welcome, whatever you get up to!

Clare
Account Director

Down under

Sheep are certainly on our plate at the moment. Recently we've been trying to persuade engineering graduates from the southern hemisphere to hike north and put their knowledge to good use on the M25 and in the London area. Fortunately we had a very helpful sheep who spent 2 days tramping around the Norfolk countryside without so much as a bleet word. An interesting one this as I found my model (who incidently can dance to 70's hits) in a rural show in my back garden. Sometimes it's where you find the most unlikely opportunities.

Thanks Dean, Carl, Richard, Helen, Clare and Tim!

LD x

Stop bleating and get on your feet

Morning all. Frost crunches underfoot and a chilly morning mist clings to the ground. It is barely light, as your intrepid correspondent trudges up a steep dark field. Grey sheep in a grey fog against grey rocks. Like TV pre-1960.  

Eventually I spot my target, a canny old ewe with two eggy lambs snuggled close. Aaaaah. But you try getting the soggy wee buggers down to the shed, where they belong. 

Patience is not a virtue with which I am over-endowed, especially before 6 a.m. I stamp my wellies and wave my arms, and eventually the matriarch saunters a few steps in the right direction. One lamb follows, but the other doesn't move. 

She says 'baa'. He says 'maa'. I say 'shift, lamb' and nudge him with my boot. I really don't want to have to carry this cold, slimy, custard-coated little bundle of joy. Luckily, sheep are also short of patience at dawn.  This ewe knows that hay and cake are waiting in the warm shed. She strops forward, horns down, and gives her tender infant a cracking wallop to the midriff. Pathetic lamb is galvanised into action, springs to his feet and capers down the hill like a good 'un.

Over bacon and eggs before the day job, I was musing. Sometimes, a nudge is not enough. When the climate is damp and miserable, you've got to increase the kick in kick-start. Put some welly into your communications. Stop bleating about how tough it all is, and get back on your feet.

And never get between a woman and her breakfast. 

Carrie

Health & Safety from the bottom up

Deep joy. Who could have imagined that bottom scraping would be so much fun? The summer sailing season is almost upon us, and preparations for the re-launch of the good ship Odyssey have reached fever pitch. It's a case of all hands under the keel. Yours truly was promoted from deck gorilla to second hull polisher. A temporary position, I gather. 

I learned a lot this weekend about what goes on beneath the waterline. Anti-fouling, it turns out, is not a FIFA initiative to clean up the beautiful game, but a specialist coating to prevent the colonisation of one's underparts by barnacles. Or slime. 

Most importantly, I learned that when you're standing on a plank set across two ladders, it is best NOT to step on the end bit that sticks out beyond the top rung. Fortunately, I completed my less-than-elegant descent to ground level unobserved and uninjured, with nothing more than a bruised ego. I also managed to miss the paint can. 

So here I am back at my desk and what I have in front of me is our latest set of Health and Safety posters for Corus: Safe Working at Height. Ah, the irony. And here is the real lesson. Anyone who is smug about the 'stating-the-bleeding-obvious' level of so many Health and Safety communications, take heed. It is the bleeding obvious that causes all the trouble. 

If you work up close with a crane loading and unloading tonnes of steel every day of your life, you just stop noticing the risk. If you are absorbed in a task (even something as mindless as buffing a yacht hull to a blinding finish) it is all too easy to forget where your feet are. 

The safety campaigns we have put together for hospitals, construction sites, steelworks and offices have to jolt, arrest, startle, joke, remind and alert the people they are aimed at. We're not telling anyone what they don't already know (it's bleeding obvious, right?) - we're just bringing it to mind at the critical moment. 

Or do we deck gorillas have to go on learning by our own mistakes?

Carrie

I saw Lance Armstrong on the train last Friday…

Wearing a yellow 2007 Tour de France t-shirt, a Nike cap and cycling trousers, Mr Armstrong was casually leaning up against a window directly opposite me. He was reading a cycling magazine and listening to Sheryl Crow (to whom he was once engaged) loudly on his iPod.

I couldn’t help staring at him and felt a bit like a stalker, I thought if Lance saw me he’d think I was a bit weird. Just like I thought a 7-time Tour de France winner catching the 15.54 to Stansted was a bit weird.

To add to the madness, sat on the floor next to me and Lance was a huge ginger American about my age, stuffing his face with beef jerky. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt (quite normal) and had over his shoulder a tiny black leather bag with randomly placed silver studs on it (not normal). He also had an air rifle bag out of which two swords appeared to be peeping…

I thought that he could have possibly been Lance’s (not so) undercover bodyguard, so I played it cool, stopped staring, waited for my stop and got off.

Anyway, here are some pictures I managed to take whilst pretending to send a text message…

Click this link to see Lance in action... http://legacydirect.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/lance_armstrong1.jpg

Carl

Hoax, prank, practical joke, trick or deception

April Fools Day is nearly upon us, will it pass you by un-noticed or do you plan an assault on your workmates days before hand? Surprisingly, nobody is really sure where April Fools day came from or when it began. It is practised around the world but on different days and in slightly different ways. One explanation, that I rather liked, was by Joseph Boskin, a professor of history at Boston University. He believed that a group of jesters in the court of Roman emperor, Constantine, boasted that they could do a better job of running the empire than the Emperor. Constantine made a jester, Kugel, king for 24 hours. Kugel passed an edict calling for absurdity on that day. It would be easy to believe that it had led to the annual custom of April Fool’s day but the story was also an April 1st hoax back in 1983!

The BBC has a long history of April Fools day hoaxes. Did you see last year’s flying penguins? Presenter Terry Jones described how the penguins flew thousands of miles to the rainforests of South America to bask in the sun during the Antarctic winter. They even had video footage of the event!

From spaghetti growing on trees to converting Big Ben to a digital readout, the BBC has an excellent pedigree in April Fools jokes. April Fools have also been used to promote brands. Most notably Virgin back in 2002 when they claimed that they were going to begin advertising with genetically modified butterflies. The specially modified butterflies would have company logos applied to their wings by scanning them with a laser beam. They even said that they hoped to control the flight areas of the butterflies and keep them in main parks and recreational areas.


Nestle announced with a special website that they were changing the name of the American Butterfinger candy bar to "The Finger," in order to give it "a shorter, more contemporary name."



Last year Google Australia introduced gDay technology powered by MATE (Machine Automated Temporal Extrapolation). This new technology would apparently enable you to “search content on the internet before it is created". They claimed that they could use the technology to predict almost anything on the web – tomorrow's share price movements, sports results or news events. They even said that they could predict the wording of blogs and newspaper columns, 24 hours before they were written!


Some businesses USPs are based on hoaxes. Take a look at Heston Blumenthal’s menu with snail porridge and parsnip cereal. And if you saw the Gadget Show last night their top 5 April Fools gadgets included a gender bending voice transformer and an electric shock pen!

So keep your eye on Youtube for tomorrow's brain teasers.

Source for historical April Fool’s hoaxes: The April Fool’s Day Database

Kerry
Financial Director

G20 image problem?

Roll up, roll up. The G20 circus comes to town this week. My friend Jimmy is a plane spotter and he's lovin' it, hurtling around from Stansted to Heathrow to Northfleet for a glimpse of Airforce One and other high-powered incomings.

Politics aside - does anyone else think these mighty powers could have done better with their logo? Twenty little heads peeping over a big boardroom table? Four orange squares representing the cornerstones of civilisation perhaps? Even the name is rendered a little obscure. Is it G minus 20? G hyphen 20? Or G to 20 in as many seconds?

Tush, I have not done my research, and intend no disrespect to whomsoever designed the logo. You clearly had an impossible brief and I cannot begin to imagine the nightmare twists and tweaks of an approvals process involving government agencies from 20 nations... In fact, credit where it's due, it looks serious, ambitious and official. Smacks of world domination, in a Bond villainy kind of way.

That might be appropriate this week, as our gracious leaders seem set fair to be cast as big bad villains once again. Which made me think - could the grouping not be better presented? We're always banging on about the importance of branding - well how could the G20 capitalise better on its global brand equity?

Might I suggest an internal culture shift to a more unified and less partisan structure (address those entrenched silos and personal fiefdoms known as 'countries' perhaps?). They could come up with a programme of resolutions and communications to meet the new needs of stakeholders (that's us populations, I guess). And they could certainly put on a friendlier face. Something less austere and forbidding.

With just a wee bit of jiggling, I came up with this:

And that's why I am a writer, not a designer.

Carrie

Do men suffer from PMT?

The answer is yes, every Saturday afternoon before and after the match! We suffer from both Pre-Match Tension and Post Match Tension.

We get aggitated, growl and throw things about and mutter obseneties under our breath, which must sound familiar to every woman as they go through with it every month. The build up to the game can take hours. We wait with high hopes, praying that this game could be the turning point for my team. A win today will mean climbing away from the relegation zone or getting closer to the European places, i.e the ‘top six’, but it never happens.

You wonder whether to help around the house to pass the time? Naw! Too much effort, anyway you need to focus your mind on strategy and planning to win the game. It’s amazing how simple it all seems when your slouched on the sofa. Will 3pm ever get here!! You start flicking through the channels, Sky Sports, BBC and even that so called new sports channel Setanta?!! Listening to what they have to say about your team, the moment you hear some negative remarks or that your team may get slaughtered you switch over to the other channels for a more symphathetic opinion. They don’t give your team any hope either so you start cursing the analysts. By this time you’ve resigned to the fact that your team is definitely going to lose, because the experts on the sports channels said so. After all they should know, shouldn’t they?




At this stage you decide it may be better to go shopping and come back at 4.45pm and just catch the final scores and cut out the stress of listening to how your team conceding in the first few seconds to go down in history as the fastest goal scored in the entire league. On the other hand it could turn out to be the best game in the history of football and your team triumphs! 3pm and you hear the games have kicked off so you get comfortable on the sofa and lo and behold there’s a goal! In the first five seconds and it’s against your team! Time to switch off the tv and now where’s the vacuum cleaner?




Any other frustrated football fans suffering from PMT out there?

Surinder Kumar
Studio Manager

It's WORKMATE

Dear Reader

My, it’s been an out-and-about, here-and-there few weeks. We’ve been working on a piece, for a client who finds interesting land for development. Just as it is about to be off to print another major project comes along, that might be worthy of inclusion. This time it’s up north, in the Spennymoor, Sedgefield area of County Durham.

Coincidently, we were visiting Lindsay’s Father at the weekend and it made sense to check this new hotspot out, as it was on his doorstep. Turns out it is the old Black and Decker works and is an interesting urban regeneration story which Lindsay will enlighten you on if you ask her. As she went off to have a look at the tool shop, I hiked up the road a few miles to visit The Angel of the North.

Ah. What a vision. It is one of the most looked at pieces of art in the world, big too - with a wingspan wider than a Boeing 757 and enough steel in him or her to make 16 double decker buses or 4 Chieftan tanks.

As we’re talking ‘developments’, this spot was, in the old days mining land. Gateshead had the most productive coalfields in the world. 400,000 tons were shipped from the Tyne in 1625 and one family the Cole’s (nice) made their fortune at it. Today Antony Gormley’s Angel occupies the area, but my-oh-my was there a fuss when the idea became public knowledge. The locals and press ran a campaign against it, as a crackpot scheme ... Big, brash, banal ... Hell’s Angel ... It puts Gateshead to shame ... Gives the rest of the country another chance to ridicule the North-East ... The birds will have somewhere to shit ... Give it to London because they’re shite.

Well, well! But once the Angel was put up there was a change of heart. During erection day, people came in their thousands with dogs, children, cups of tea and it’s been pulling them in ever since.

It’s amazing what an effect a structure can have on an area don’t you think? Before the Angel went up over 83% of the locals recognised the name and what it was. Now 11 years on, we all do and it is now part of the N-E culture and something absolutely to be proud of. I wonder can buildings ever hope to stand for this? Be so emotive? Perhaps we should think of them more as ways to communicate and engage with people rather than fit in and doing the rational stuff.

Anyway another week, another monument, what a job!

Alphonzo x

Cultural Attaché to Lindsay Deering

Technique v Personality

Good weekend? I'll wager you don't often spend your Saturday mornings attending public lectures at the Barber Institute in Birmingham. Well you really missed a treat the other day when Mike Brearley came to deliver his thoughts on the subject of technique and personality in sport and psychoanalysis. Fortunately for you, dear reader, I was there, bright-eyed and taking notes. 

For those poor souls not properly raised, Mike Brearley was probably the best captain that England's cricket team has ever had; a strong, quiet philosopher of a leader, with a knack for reading people as well as knocking the odd century at the crease. His point was a pertinent one, about the dual role played by technique and personality in performance. 

So, on the one hand you have the specialist technical skills required to master an art. The way you grip the bat, your foot placement, the drop or lift of your shoulder. And then you have all the unconscious personality elements that go into success. Things like attitude, self-discipline, resilience, confidence, imagination, empathy, responsibility... Everyone spends their first few driving lessons learning how to control the car, change gear, make use of pedals and mirrors. But is is something else entirely that makes the difference between being a good driver and ending up as a road safety statistic. 

I couldn't help but notice the parallels with our own world of creative brand communications. Technique is essential, but on its own it will not win. Or sell. We admire technique, but we respond to personality. We win or lose (Kevin Pietersen eat your heart out) on the basis of character, approach, feeling. And I think this is what we mean when we talk about brand. 

Of course, poor technique can always wreck the result - our skills have to be continuously reviewed and perfected. But without personality, the most beautifully crafted film, the most perfectly printed brochure, the most thoroughly researched campaign will be as flat and hollow as an England victory achieved only through a miscalculation of the Duckworth-Lewis method. 

PS Even if you're not into cricket, you might like The Art of Captaincy by Mike Brearley.

Carrie

Once Upon A Time...

It’s World Storytelling Day, so for those who don’t normally bury their noses in a good book, take a few moments to enjoy a cuppa and ginger nut and enjoy some of those literary greats who can spin a yarn and allow us to lose ourselves in our imagination…

Whether you like a tale of intrigue and suspense, slushy chick lit, grisly crime, wizardry and magic, biographic insights or even the Mr Men adventures, books are a great way to escape and explore another world. Revel in the creativity of an author who may have penned one book of observations or feast on the riches of a prolific writer who pens a novel faster than you can say “read it”! Please take a few moments and tell us what floats your literary boat?

Currently reading: The Exodus Quest, Will Adams
Modern favourite: Bad Luck and Trouble, Lee Child
Classic tale: The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer
As a child: The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter

Clare
Account Director

A little charity...

This weekend my son took part in a 24 hour game of badminton to raise money for Comic Relief. The next day he had blisters on his hands and feet, and his body ached so much that he moved like Fearne Cotton with altitude sickness. The £110 he raised for charity proved his tenacity and endurance, and also made his old mum very proud.

Here at Three’s Co we are also supporting a charity initiative called FX4Charity. By registering with FX4Charity every foreign currency transaction generates a gift to your chosen charity: £1 for every transaction and an additional £1 for every £1,000. And it doesn’t cost you a penny.

£1 doesn’t sound like very much but it soon adds up. It got me thinking about what donations could buy. How can we choose the charity?

According to the Charity Commission there were 168,000 charities registered in December 2008. How do we choose which charities to support when they range from delivering aid to the world’s disasters to shelters for battered men?

Anyone watching Comic Relief on Friday will know that a mosquito net costs very little and can protect someone from bites while they sleep, saving on treatment costs and ultimately saving lives. In Africa water and sanitation are big issues and £5 pounds can buy a month’s soap for a whole family in the Congo - vital in stopping diseases spreading within camps.

Closer to home £10 could buy around 300 glass slides for studying tumour samples and various cells in detail under the microscope for Cancer Research or help to fund a trial to investigate whether a national screening programme for ovarian cancer could help save lives.

Rainbow Trust Children's Charity provides practical and emotional support to families who have a child with a life threatening or terminal illness. They support 1,000 families each year. Workers join the family in their own home and are there to provide whatever practical support is needed. They may attend hospital appointments with parents, sit by the bedside of the child to give parents a break or take worried siblings out for the day. £20 allows a family support worker to sit with a sick child in hospital for an hour.

A £10 donation to the RSPCA can feed an abandoned puppy for a fortnight.
Well I say why not have a mixed selection, some general ones, and some much closer to our hearts because of personal or family experience. Whatever you choose, it’s important to do something.

According to a Chinese proverb that I dug up – “Wealth is but dung, useful only when spread”.

Kerry
Financial Director

Have a little shuffle...

The iPod shuffle quiz is a fun little thing that has been doing the rounds on the web for a while now. It’s quite old, but things that are old aren’t by any means less funny or meaningful. I think my granddad’s jokes are better than mine and he means a lot.

Just put your iPod on shuffle and click through. The songs that appear are the answers to the questions below.

Here are my question and answers. Have a read and then copy and paste them into the comments box and fill them in with your own. If you haven’t got an iPod steal one, just for the purpose of this little exercise of course, and then give it back.

I’ve also made the quiz a bit more relevant to what we all do…

What did you feel like when you got out of bed this morning?
Peter Pan Over the Bronx

When you looked in the mirror last, what did you think?
Drunk Girl

What are you thinking about right now?
Coming Of Age

The last time you answered the phone, what you really wanted to say was…
Birdflu

What did you want to shout out the last time you were in a meeting?
Believe

What would you really like to sign-off all your emails with?
Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before

What did you really think about the last campaign you produced/managed/designed?
I’m a New Man

What is the story of your life?
Again & Again & Again

What are you plans for this weekend?
High Fidelity

What song will be played at your funeral?
Perfect

How would you like to be remembered?
Time to Pretend

How will you be remembered?
7xx7

Damn that last one. I knew all the answers wouldn’t be good. You can try and guess the artists too if you like, or I’ll include them upon request.

Have fun.

Carl

Beach Combing

Greetings, landlubbers. I recently had the enormous good fortune to find myself aboard a privately chartered yacht in the Leeward Isles. When cruising in such exotic climes, one can’t help but concede the difference between the Caribbean and the North Sea. Crystal water, playful pelicans, turtles and dolphins, shallow turquoise bays with white coral dust for sand and a perfect sailing breeze...

While Cap’n Jack Sparrow was sadly absent, this place abounds with names that smack of piracy. Dead Chest Island. Pull And Be Damned Point. Throw Way Wife Point. Nasty Dog Rock.

But step ashore and disappointment awaits. True, the hammocks are comfy, the rum is fiery. The painkiller cocktails are memorable and the locals even more so. But the beachcombing is not half so interesting as the shores of the North East coast of Old England where I first learned to paddle. Here be no fascinating strands of orange rope. No green-tinted old plastic bottles. No rusted cans. No sanitary products among the slimed kelp. No kelp at all, in fact. Occasionally a pink and pristine conch shell and once (great excitement) a floating coconut, gently rolling in and out with the lapping wavelets.

The last straw for me was the stunning Dead Man’s Bay on Peter Island, a broad curving beach with thatched sunshades and luxurious loungers. And a man in a white uniform actually combing the beach. With a comb. It’s a hard life.

Carrie
Copywriter

Happy Red Nose Day

Knowledge is knowing the tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

Happy Red Nose Day.

And Happy Friday the 13th too.

Did you know that fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskevidekatriaphobia?

Did you also know that the fear of the colour red is called erythryphobia, and the fear of noses is called rhinophobia? So we’re guessing the fear of Red Nose Day would be called erythrhinodayphiobia, and that the fear of Red Nose Day on Friday the 13th would be called paraskevidekatreythrhinodayphobia.

Or maybe not, the fear of trying to spell that may be too much. It’s tempting to create a phobia for that, but not that tempting.

On a lighter note there are some brilliant things happening today, including Red Nose Day so get your noses on and do something funny for money. Today is also the final day of Cheltenham Gold Cup so thousands will be hoping that this is just a superstition and the £500m (did someone say credit crunch?) collectively placed in bets will be winning ones! So when the racing starts today and defending champion Kauto Star faces arch rivals Denman and Neptune Collonges keep your fingers crossed if you’ve placed a bet.

Oh and if you still think nothing ever good happens on Friday 13th Black Sabbath released their debut album on Friday the 13th February 1970.

Clare
Account Director


-

A Right Honourable piece of work

Dear Reader

Hello from the homepage of FX4Charity. A brilliant new way for people making foreign payments (fx) to donate to charity (4Charity). Anyway, just launched, I tagged along as Lindsay (Creative) and Amanda (Client Services) were lording it, quite literally at the House of Lords, on launch day. Talking with all the really good people in the Third Sector, and L having her picture taken with the other founding members (see below second left, with dodgy sleeves) in Victoria Park, I snook round the other side to look at something equally historic, a Rodin.

For anyone not up on this genius let me indulge you (on this piece specifically). In 1884 AR was commissioned to create a monument that became The Burghers of Calais, see pic.
St-Pierre has such determination and poise. He holds the key to the city, and around his neck is the rope prescribed by the conquerors. Another figure, with his head buried in his hands, is close by on the right (you need to be there to see it all and there are others around, the original is in Calais if you’re going that way). These two men illustrate the greatest contrast of feeling in the group. By putting them together Rodin achieves thunderous power. To compose six different figures into a single unified piece, Rodin cuts them into three pairs, each pair differing from the other and yet tied to the others in rhythmic movement. The spaces between the figures are also varied and show the relationship of volumes in space. But Reader just look at the detail! Rodin had an amazing ability to show feeling through facial expression and hands, he seemed to be able to express internal depth through external features. He cut the hollows of the face heavily to get strong shadows, and his textured surfaces catch the light and heighten the sense of life and movement.

I quickly resumed my position at the eats table and enjoyed the remains of the day immensely.
For more info
http://www.fx4charity.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Burghers_of_Calais

Timber!

What's it all about?

Blogs generally fall into two camps, personal/business promotion or as a platform to disseminate information and stimulate debate on a particular subject. Blogging is a powerful advertising tool which we can use to best advantage, to quicken the pulse, to connect with clients and prospects and to differentiate our businesses.

The blogs that stand the test of time, the ones that have legs are the ones which as well as being witty, humorous and informative, raise and debate contentious issues. The ones that gather readers and commentators because of the nature of their content. People use the internet to connect and communicate, there is thought to be approximately 200m blogs posted worldwide and few ways of measuring the most popular. The Huffington Post, the internet newspaper, was at the top of the Technorati top 100 blogs list but closer to home names like Andrew Sullivan, journalist and Sunday Times contributor, feature at number 25 on this far from complete list.

Social networking sites like Twitter have seen a speedy rise in popularity. Twitter is also a form of blogging and is used to great effect by the likes of 10 Downing Street to keep us informed of events on a daily basis. With mobile technology rapidly changing the face of blogging is likely to evolve to keep abreast of the ever changing pool of users and the gadgets available to them.
This week, while the news is full of banking calamity we learn from Brand Republic that (quote): Twitter is set to begin 'building revenue-generating products' after receiving an additional $35m from investors. How clever! This is on top of $20 million received in venture capital to date and as yet they haven’t yet generated any income. Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, said in his blog that they are now positioned extremely well to begin building revenue-generating products and that Twitter was planning to ‘charge for commercial accounts'. He said the company would look at adding new services through which it could make revenue from its business users.

It’s not hard to see the value of a website that, while it is apparently light hearted, pulls heavily on the success of the blogging community as a platform for both comment and as a business tool.

What will these new services look like I wonder, there is no doubt that the Twitter researchers will be following the success or otherwise of another new online business community: On 22nd January 2009 Sage (UK) Limited, the business software and services provider, released its State of the Nation survey results, which showed that almost half (47%) of surveyed respondents do not consider salary, job title or status as indicators of their success in the workplace. The survey was carried out as part of Sage's national Business Brains campaign, which aims to identify, explore and celebrate the qualities that make people in business more likely to succeed. Brain training games offer a playful way to make you better at problem solving. Through them, we’re told, you’ll discover your Business IQ – a way of measuring your relative business strengths and weaknesses, the qualities that will help you overcome the challenges you face in your daily professional life. All of the games are inspired by their association with The Krypton Factor.

With the benefits of mental agility exercises and improved cognitive recall also being promoted by the likes of Nintendo and the Alzheimer society, online games are increasing almost daily and Sage have very cleverly harnessed this with their latest marketing brain wave.

I’m not a quiz addict more of an internet junky, once I start on a thread I can get lost in the www for hours at a time but this game from Sage is compulsive, when you get into it (and a login with email details is required), you pit your wits against three other players and against the clock. So you’ve got the old grey matter working and the time constraints help to get the adrenalin pumping, that combined with a growing will to beat your fellow contestants encourages you to return, to put the Sage website in your favorites and return again.

Will Twitter be using this model to enhance their own and add business services for which they can charge? One thing is for sure, good marketing is about mental agility, becoming a trend setter rather than a trend follower, finding that unique selling point and advantage over your competitor.

A unique proposition can’t be found in a book, it can’t be learned or taught, it’s not about following guides or rules in fact it is exactly the opposite it’s about breaking the rules, thinking outside the box about using your brain to out-wit the competition.

Twitter is a good simple idea and a popular idea, but what will make it a successful business?

Kerry

Financial Director

Sticky Mess

Cow Gum, scalpel and a set square and a mountain of CS10 paste board! Those were the tools of our trade when I first ventured into the world of advertising and design. Jump to the present day and it’s Powermacs, keyboard and mouse and a mountain of work on a CD or memory stick! Technology has jumped in leaps and bounds but the end product is still the same. We still aim for the perfect print. Although the time to turn a job around is a fraction of what it used to be as we have far more powerful tools to hand. Illustrations can be done in a flick of the cursor, photos enhanced and retouched by the touch of the magic wand. What used to take weeks to turn around, now takes a few hours or even minutes. Has this affected the quality of work?

The days of applying the sticky stuff to the back of a sheet of type, fresh from the typesetters and pasting it onto the board and painfully getting it to line up with something, anything! If the text needed amending and you had time to send it back to the typehouse, great. If not, a scalpel and a steady pair of hands were needed to cut each word or character and feed it along bit by bit to make the amends, and that’s before the Cow Gum dried up! If that was the case then you had to douse the text with lighter fuel (no not set it alight!) to soften the glue. The gum rolled off the back once dried and collected into a ball, used to make a great weapon. You often had these disgusting looking missiles fly across the studio, bouncing off the walls, German designed desks or most often your colleague’s head! This may sound undisciplined and chaotic but from all of this emerged some great work. A combination of work hard, play hard!

Who can forget the wonderful smell of Magic Markers! Enough to keep a smile on your face all day! Everybody looked forward to Magic Marker layouts and the wonderful effects created by splattering it with lighter fuel to create a unique piece of work! Although now a days we try to create the effect digitally but where’s the Magic Marker smell to keep you smiling?

Have you any thoughts or views?

Surinder Kumar
Studio Manager

Goon Gone

On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the cows go bong!
And the monkeys all say BOO!
There’s a Nong Nang Ning where the trees go ping!
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang
And you just can’t catch ‘em when they do!
So it’s Ning Nang Nong
Cows go bong!
Nong Nang Ning
Trees go Ping
Nong Ning Nang
The mice go clang
What a noisy place to belong
Is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!

It has been 7 years since Spike Milligan passed away, aged 83, but he left a legacy that will always make us smile.

With all the credit crunch news, £600million pension disgrace, Australian fires and blazing wars and famine across the world – don’t you think that sometimes it is worth taking 5 minutes to think life is not that bad after all and sometimes making someone smile is priceless?

Sorry it is a heavy one this week but in client services we like to keep everyone happy, happy clients makes good business but also keeps us all sane in this mad mad world!

Clare
Account Director

Raiders of the Lost Archives

Now here’s a random thing. Imagine receiving an email from a client you worked with over 16 years ago - a plea in fact. In the interests of client confidentiality, I cannot reveal the person who sent this request, but Exorcist Man – you know who you are.

“Someone, whilst being very diligent during a tidying the office moment, has accidently managed to file forever (binned) the posters you created for us. Having now calmed down a bit, the only way I can think of sorting things is to ask if you keep the posters on file anywhere?

If you do, I was wondering if I could have copies and get them hung on the wall, as this would seem to be a) the only way I prevent this happening again and b) a nice way to decorate our pretty plain looking office.

I appreciate that this is a long shot, but I’m asking in the hope that you file things for as long as we do.”

Well I’m amazed he’d kept the stuff so long, must have liked them!
We’re hunting through our extensive storage facility for copies. No, not some massive hangar like the one in the closing scenes of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but a mound of very old and probably obsolete DAT tapes that might contain the original artwork. Fingers crossed.

Over and out.

Amanda Kelly
Client Services Director

My first time...

Hello.

My name’s Carl and I am a copywriter at Three’s. This is, as the title states, my first blog of what hopefully will be many. I thought of other ways to start such as ‘Carl’s on the blog’ or ‘I’m inspired when I’m on the blog’ but I’m not the biggest fan of puns.

Actually right now I’m suffering from writer’s blog (sorry I couldn’t help that one) block, so I’ll include a pun or two that will hopefully raise a smile…

Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says, "Dam!"

And…

There was a person who sent ten different puns to various people, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.

There you go, I think I resorted to bad humour to get my way out of what I believe was an awkward situation. My first time was quite a nerve racking experience but I’m glad I got it out of the way and will be soon having another go with, I can assure you, no puns and a better message for one and all.