Friday, October 12, 2007

What Nonsense...

Rob of agency Nonsense London sent me their pre-website website link the other day, and I liked it so much I thought you might want to see it.

You can help them to pick one of three brilliant site ideas (go Grannies go!). If their creative output is as good as their web concepts then we may hear more of them in the future**.

Its High Time Nonsense had a Website.

[**and then hopefully they will need more planners... ;) ]

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

How the blazes are we to choose an idea when the brief is devoid of any direction apart from 'can we have a website please'.

Not impressed.

Rob Mortimer (aka Famous Rob) said...

I worked on the idea that they all must have met the brief to be up there...but good point anyhow.

Anonymous said...

In response to NP...

Let’s look at the bigger picture. Our actual brief to ourselves isn’t available to download. (i.e. the one that said ‘get Nonsense talked about in the ad community’.)

The resulting idea is hightimewehadawebsite.co.uk, which is a viral piece targeted at Ad Land.

Just like the ideas (and the rest of the site), the ‘brief’ is short, sweet, and there to amuse - in the hope that people will respond by forwarding, or posting on a blog.

Now, if we'd have written a tight ‘brief’, not only would it have been dryer itself, but the resulting ideas would have been more conservative, and more complicated in order to fulfil that brief.

As a result, HTWHAW wouldn't have been as fun, and people wouldn't have forwarded the URL around the globe.

(One of the things that appealed about doing our website like this is that whichever idea wins will be more 'out there' than if we'd have gone about it in a more rigorous way.)

And it’s done what we wanted and got a little agency from Soho international recognition – so we’re happy!

Rob Mortimer (aka Famous Rob) said...

I dont think a brief has to automatically make things dry and conservative, quite the opposite in some cases... but if the brief was "get Nonsense talked about" that does answer some of the question.

It does feel 'creative first', but I like the ideas enough that it still works. (I can name any number of agencies with sites that appear to have no aim whatsoever other than existing.)

Anonymous said...

I absolutely reject the idea that a tight brief, and rigour should limit ideas - if it's good it should liberate them.
I'm glad the objective has been fulfilled, i.e get us talked about, but if I was someone looking for an agency, I'd be interested in someone who is capable of more than 'can we have a good idea please'. Just because it's wacky, it doesn't mean it's any good.
I'd want to know how the agency works, and the suggestion is that it's ideas first, justify them after, I'm sure that's not the case, but it looks like that.
Anyway, what do I know? I'm just some git from Up North.
Always good to talk about the ways agencies market themseleves - since they're mostly hopeless at it.

Anonymous said...

I've been following this for a while and congratulate Nonsense on getting some kind of profile within the Ad Industry. If that's what you wanted then well done.

I would, however question the long term business success of a "small agency in SOHO" who focuses on communicating the fact that it exists to it's peers. You may, of course be seeking work from other agencies. That may be your plan.

If, however, you intended to generate awareness and business from outside your own industry, I would seriously question the strategic thinking behind this campaign.

Anonymous said...

I stand corrected. Good briefs are interesting in themselves, and lead to better, more interesting work. That's a given.

Think what I was (very clumsily) getting at is that a proper brief in this context would have added an extra layer - in the form of a proposition that had to be dramatised by the ideas.

Now, while ideas should still have been good, and entertaining, it would have added to what we were asking of our audience. Not only would they have to 'get' the hightimewehadawebsite.co.uk idea, but also the strategy behind the 2nd site. The worry being this would have complicated the experience too much. (Less than 2% of visitors even download the brief, so you guys are special!)

I dunno if that's what would've happened, but its why we did what we did.

And, I take the point that it leaves our strategic integrity open to question. Perhaps we focus(sed) on creativity too much?

Re: Marcus' point - HTWHAW is not really a new biz campaign. It is primarily an AdLand publicity stunt . If we get any business out of it, great.

Really appreciate the input from you guys. Especially you, Northern Planner - thought it was you yesterday...

Anonymous said...

yep, can't resist poking my nose in. Glad it was taken in the spirit it was intended ;-)