*DEADLINE EXTENDED – We’ve had some fantastic applications, and are now looking for freelancers who specialise in Copywriting, Animation or Video production*
We’ve had several requests from our membership community to bring back our famous Portfolio Review Nights. Well, there’s good news! We’ve secured the date and the venue, and the next Portfolio Review night will be held on Wednesday 13th November at Origin Workspace, Berkeley Square.
If you’re a Bristol Media Freelance Member working in the creative sector, this is a fantastic opportunity to have your portfolio work reviewed by top creative directors from several of the most successful agencies in the region. We’ve got 15 creative directors signed up from agencies including Mr B & Friends, Oakwood, Epoch, Armadillo, Proctor + Stevenson, Zone, saintnicks, Great State, Bray Leino CX, The Way, Halo, Home , Six and Prophecy who are all eager to meet local talent.
Freelancers will have up to 8 minutes with each director who will offer their advice and constructive feedback in a speed networking environment. In the past, Freelancers have often secured a project or been invited for a further interview with the agency team, and we hear that the creative directors have a great time, too!
We’re now looking for freelancers working in the fields of digital, graphic design, branding, web development, video production, animation/motion graphics, VFX, photography, illustration and copywriting.
This is a very popular event which is for Bristol Media members only. We only have 15 places available.
Please email [email protected] saying why this is the perfect opportunity for you right now, along with a link to your portfolio or website. Applications close at 5pm on Friday 25th October.
Did you know that the creative industries in the UK are now responsible for 8% of GDP? But what is it, this thing called creativity? And what does it mean to be a creative person? Why is it that agencies exist? What is it that (most) marketers cannot do themselves?
Hosted by Patrick Collister, ‘Getting the Big Idea’ is a one-day ‘how-to’ workshop for Creatives, Planners and Account Managers, designed to provide the necessary tools to generate ideas. What it is NOT is a session involving finger-paints, plasticine and connecting with the inner self. It will, however, provide the answers that teams need to understand exactly what it is they’re doing and how to do it faster, with more confidence and with greater expectation of success.
The day will be divided into three key parts:
Using ‘The Hierarchy of Ideas’ methodology, you’ll gain an understanding of exactly what sort of idea is being asked for to create successful paid-for communication by breaking ideas into three key parts: the business idea, marketing idea and creative idea.
The workshop also provides practical tools to help you generate strategies, creative platforms and creative ideas faster.
It’s designed to be interactive with a mixture of individual and teamwork where you’ll work together on a ‘live’ brief. As well as being stimulating, the session is intended to be energetic and fun so you’ll leave feeling confident and rebooted.
You’ll acquire real tools of real use which you can use the very next day to improve the creative brief, develop brand positioning ideas and generate creative ideas that will cut-through.
“A unique viewpoint derived from his years spent in both advertising and direct marketing; every person I have sent on his courses has emerged from the experience marvelously rebooted and re-energised.” Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman, Ogilvy Group UK and President of the IPA.
The 1-day workshop is on Tuesday 8th October from 9.30am – 5pm at Zone, Bristol. Places are limited so book early!
Tickets are £245 (+VAT) for Bristol Media members and £345 (+VAT) for non-members. Lunch and refreshments are provided.
Patrick was the executive creative director and Vice Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather, London. Then executive creative director of the EHS Brann network of direct marketing agencies. From 2013 to 2018 he was the creative lead for Google’s creative think-tank The Zoo. He has won many awards, the most prestigious being Cannes Gold in 2013 with Cheil for Samsung. In his spare time, Patrick publishes Directory magazine and resource.
Patrick will also be joining Bristol Media for a lunchtime Vision keynote in September entitled ‘Permission Denied’ – get your ticket here.
We want our 15 million members to enjoy the same personal, tailored experience online as they do in our network of branches. So for us, technology doesn’t mean designing something to replace the human touch, it’s simply a way to enhance and extend it.
This virtue certainly resonates with Sonja Jefferson and Will Wellesley-Davies, who have just joined our Service and Experience Design Team leadership team.
Sonja has been a leader in the world of content for many years. She founded Bristol’s content strategy firm Valuable Content and is co-author of the award-winning book, Valuable Content Marketing – how to make quality content the key to success and joins Nationwide to head up the fast-growing content design discipline.
“Nationwide has a long history as a values-led business; the most human business wins today and content design in a transformative practice in the drive towards that goal. It’s great to see the Society adopting content design across the business and we have some incredible talent in our team. I’m excited to see how far we can take it.”
Will has joined from the strategic UX design agency, Nomensa, where he was Principal User Experience designer and will be scaling up Nationwide’s UI design capability to meet the modern ‘Fintech’ challenges of service design to better serve the needs of both customers and colleagues.
“Nationwide believe in putting people first; in honesty and integrity – applying these values to the design of future innovative financial services, which touch all aspects of people’s lives across society is a really exciting opportunity.”
If the Service and Experience Design Team sounds like something you believe in and would like to be a part of, take a look at our roles or get in touch with [email protected]
Hi Pete, what do you do at Prophecy Unlimited?
Prophecy Unlimited is a customer journey agency, launched in May 2017. We brought together two great South West agencies, EMO Unlimited, renowned for customer acquisition, and The Real Adventure Unlimited, experts in customer relationship management. We realised that we could combine the complementary skill sets and people together, the result being Prophecy Unlimited. That ultimately means we work across every channel in the mix, and for some clients we work end-to-end across the whole journey.
Customer journeys are rapidly changing in terms of technology and consumer behaviours, so we work with our clients to create a successful and impactful customer experience.
More specifically, my role as CEO involves two key jobs: one is making sure the Prophecy team are happy, and then making sure that clients are happy, too. The two are incredibly interrelated, happy team, happy clients, and vice versa!
Who’s in the team?
Everyone from client services, project management, creative content, data and insight, tech, HR… the list goes on. I’m responsible for making sure we have key team leads ensuring we all work to the best of our abilities. No one department is more important than another, it’s a real team effort.
What are you most proud of as a business?
The client list that we have for a South West agency – I’m so proud of it. We have several clients who have been with us for over 30 years, some large blue-chip brands and global players.
I’m ex London, and we tend to have this chip on our shoulders about London, thinking it’s the big be all and end all. But I actually think the work coming out of Bristol is as good, if not better, than the London players. Bristol has such an energy and creativity.
What’s your favourite office gadget?
Big Red – our coffee machine! It’s got to be at least 10 years old. Probably as long as we’ve been Bristol Media members it’s been trucking along, supplying us with coffee. As part of our induction for new starters we have a stint with the coffee machine. Not quite barista training, but it’s a proper machine so not just a press and go.
Whose work do you admire and why?
This is a tricky question, because I think about the campaigns I like at the moment and actually, I wouldn’t pin it on one particular agency or brand. I’ve never known a time for the agency world to be quite as challenging, in terms of the changes and the dreaded B-word. Any agency that’s making their client feel confident enough in them to buy work is absolutely doing great. Hats off to all!
What’s the biggest challenge your industry/organisation is facing at the moment?
I can think of two, clearly economic uncertainty is one of those, but also data. The scandal around Cambridge Analytica made consumers wary about their information and what’s being used and where. Not only that, but with more data available, we need to make sure we don’t just disappear into big systems like Adobe or Salesforce. It’s something we’ve been focussing on at Prophecy recently; transparency in the customer journey, not just getting the system to tell us the answers but making sure we’re sensitive to human emotion and using old school planning skills.
If you had one piece of advice for someone just starting out, what would it be?
Get involved, put your hand up, get stuck in and remember that your voice matters. Great ideas can come from anywhere, any team and any person. Don’t be afraid to speak up! And seek out a mentor if you can.
What’s your favourite place in Bristol/this area?
On Friday mornings I religiously make a breakfast run to Hart’s Bakery. The guys know to leave a small window in the diary so I can get my sourdough, or sausage rolls, or cheese toasties… There’s too much to choose from!
If you could sum up Bristol/this area in 3 words, what would they be?
First up, real. As a city, we don’t pretend to be anything different. We’re proud of our differences. Then vibrant and innovative.
What exciting plans have you got coming up this year?
That’s a really good question, because we’ve always got new things in the pipeline, and those vary by client. Probably the most exciting thing is our new customer journey methodology, it’s a model for getting to the heart of what’s working in a customer journey and what’s not.
We’re working it through now and we’ve got some clients using it. The hairs on the back of my neck are standing up a bit thinking of the difference it’s going to make. We’ll be sharing it soon so watch this space!
To see latest examples of Prophecy’s work, visit the website.
Fancy joining the Prophecy Unlimited team? They’re on the lookout for new hires, find out more about the roles available here.
If you’d like to be part of our Featured Member series and profile your business, get in touch.
2019 is a landmark year for Quantock as they celebrate 30 years as one of the UK’s leading creative communication agencies.
To mark this occasion Quantock are holding an exclusive event to celebrate the past and look to the future of Natural Creativity™.
In conjunction with D&AD and their New Blood Festival, the event will be showcasing some of the most exciting and award winning creative talent emerging in the UK today. Not one to miss if you want to celebrate how Natural Creativity™ is still the most powerful asset the industry has, and see tomorrow’s up and coming stars.
Event Location: Clifton Observatory (Bristol’s iconic landmark)
Date: 19th September 2019
Time: 4.30pm – 7:30pm
Why is the event taking place?
It is rare in this modern age for an independent agency to have survived (and prospered!) for 30 years. As a way of giving back, Quantock are keen to celebrate this milestone by bringing to Bristol the UK’s best graduate creative talent and award winning D&AD pencil winners.
Why Attend?
No need to head to London, when you can see the winning D&AD pencil winners, and emerging creative talent here in the South West.
Come and join many others in a 30 year celebration of Quantock and New Blood.
Who should attend?
Anyone actively involved within the creative communications sector, marketeers, clients, agencies, and anyone looking to make connections.
Get your exclusive pass to the event now
Tickets need to be ordered and printed in advance. Head to The Future of Creativity – Eventbrite website for more info. Alternatively speak to one of our team.
W: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/preview?eid=63577325492
E: [email protected]
T: +44 (0)1823 327532
Leading one-day digital conference, Collaborate Bristol returned to the Watershed Bristol to celebrate the best in UX and design in the South West this Summer.
Designed and curated by strategic international UX agency, Nomensa, Collaborate Bristol was held on June 21st at Bristol’s iconic Watershed. Returning for its sixth year, Collaborate Bristol welcomed a mix of speakers including: Onkardeep Singh MBE, senior UX designer at Three; Juliana Martinhago, product designer at Monzo; Georgia Rakusen, design research lead at ConsenSys; Gavin Strange, director and designer at Aardman Animations; Hilary Brownlie, head of service design & innovation at Registers of Scotland; Catalina Butnaru, ethics track lead at City AI; Eriol Fox, senior product designer at Ushahidi; and Nomensa’s own head of UX, Jon Fisher.
Onkardeep Singh MBE, who opened the event with his talk around passion for your work said: “There’s a laidback and informal feel about Collaborate which not only aids in building the community but also helps to bring honesty to the table, demonstrating the key challenges that we all face as designers and UX practitioners on a daily basis. This works to bring about topics that we wouldn’t usually talk about in a design context and I believe that’s fantastic.”
As a firm highlight on the tech events calendar, over 200 of the top UK creatives descended upon Bristol’s harbourside for this sold-out event. Focusing on collaborative thinking centred around UX and design, Collaborate Bristol is renowned for its unique approach to digital conferences in the South West, elevating delegate knowledge whilst building on those critical networks.
Speaking of the event, Henry Carroll, events manager for Nomensa, said: “We are always incredibly proud to bring Collaborate to our home city of Bristol. Of course, we operate in multiple cities across the UK and Europe, but Bristol will always have a special place in our hearts, and we feel privileged to bring such an event to the city, partnering with local businesses to contribute to Bristol’s thriving tech scene.
“Despite running for six years, no two Collaborate events have been the same yet and we’re proud to bring a multitude of speakers to the stage with a diverse range of experiences and passions. This year, we were thrilled to be joined by representatives from Monzo, Three, our own Nomensa experts and more, all showcasing the latest thought-leadership in UX and design, encouraging a collaborative approach and out-of-the-box thinking.”
For more information, visit: https://collaborateconf.com/
Our Content Apprentice Izzy headed over to Bath for this month’s Featured Member to talk with Sue Bush, Creative Director at Touchpoint Design, and find out more about what they’re up to. Here’s what we learned…
Hi Sue, tell us what you do?
We are a brand design agency, we design brand identities, primarily for arts and culture and not for profit clients. We work across all touchpoints, which is where we got our name. The touchpoints are: digital, printed materials and large-format visuals. Ensuring a consistent brand identity across all applications.
Who are your team?
There are 3 of us in the production team, myself (creative director), Georgia (designer) and Ian (technical director). We are a small team, but we collaborate with lots of talented associates that we bring in on a project by project basis.
How long have you been a Bristol Media member?
We’ve been a Bristol Media member for 4 years I believe. We became members because I moved to the South West from London, so it was a good way to get to know everyone and join the creative community.
What’s your favourite place in Bath and Bristol?
In Bath, Solsbury Hill, it’s really invigorating up there. It’s a steep hill but a great place to clear your mind. In Bristol, probably the harbourside, a great place for people watching.
What are you most proud of as a business?
I love that we punch above our weight. We’re only small but we take on some really big briefs, size is not an issue. Our rebrand of the American Museum & Gardens was a great example of where we demonstrated what we can achieve with a complex and demanding brief.
Our favourite projects to work on are those where we get involved right from the brand discovery stage, researching, unpacking client vision and values, positioning etc. Going in deep from the start gives us insight and helps us to maximise impact and spark really effective creative solutions.
What exciting plans have you got coming up this year?
We are working on a website with Taxi Studio for the West of England Design Forum to help women in design. There’s a big disparity between women reaching roles of seniority so it’s great to work for something we’re passionate about.
We’re also a part of a ‘mastermind’ group of 8 agency owners. We’re small giants, like the concept developed in the book Small Giants by Bo Burlingham. Based around the idea of sustainable agency growth, rather than expand for the sake of it, to make a wider positive impact beyond simply our own financial gain. So we’re excited to see where this takes us in the future!
Whose work do you admire and why?
Marina Willer from Pentagram. We love her, she’s very humble considering how successful she is, and she works in sectors we work in (charities and creative arts). Her work with Amnesty International and the Serpentine Gallery in particular. She creates clear solutions that are bold and impactful. She is a stand out influence for us.
If there’s one thing we need more of in this region, what is it?
In Bath, it would be great to see a big contemporary art centre. Bristol has Spike Island and the Arnolfini, and while Bath has great spaces, like The Edge and 44AD, it would be nice to have a permanent space that can pull in some of the bigger high-profile artists and act as a creative hub across disciplines.
If you could sum up Bristol in 3 words, what would they be?
Vibrant, refreshingly diverse and fiercely-independent.
What’s the best tip/trick you’ve learnt as a business?
For designers, use a notebook! Don’t go straight for the computer, sketch ideas before you start pushing pixels around, it’s so much easier and quicker. Leuchtturm notebooks are our favourite! Our greatest tip is to really listen. Ask questions, then actively listening to the answers. Prompt and facilitate those conversations to get insight.
Keen to feature your business? If you’d like to be part of our Featured Member series, email Kirsty or Izzy for more information. See you in September!
This is the second edition in our featured members series, where we profile our members and showcase the amazing businesses and individuals within our network. In the last edition we interviewed AMBITIOUS PR, if you haven’t seen it, give it a read here.
This month we hung out with Kerry Harrison and Richard Norton from Tiny Giant, here’s what they had to say…
Tell us about Tiny Giant, who are you?
Tiny Giant are all about moving ideas with minds and machines. They’re a studio that wants to create and create and create. They’re a house of ideas, not just a house to inhabit, but to live in and I think that’s what separates them so much…because they’re so passionate about their ideas… it’s very much about feeling like you’re a part of something larger, a part of what’s important.
Well that’s what a neural network would say, but if you asked Kerry and Norts then…
So it’s us, Kerry Harrison, Richard Norton, plus our technical director Derek Ahmedzai. Fun fact, Ahmedzai means the tribe of Ahmeds. Do you notice that the last 2 letters of his name are AI? That’s why we asked him to join our merry jamboree. We also love to collaborate – so if anyone is keen to join forces, give us a call.
What do you do?
We do quite a lot of different things, but I’d say there are 3 main things. We help our clients tell compelling stories with social media, websites and content, we’ve both been doing it for over 20 years. We’re also interested and excited by online bots and smart speakers like Alexa and Google, lately we’ve been playing around with chat bots and voice technology. Lastly, AI, we use it to supercharge our client’s creativity and make headlines with fun things like AI cocktails and cakes.
How long have you been a Bristol Media member?
We’ve both been with Bristol Media for a long time prior to Tiny Giant. Before we took the plunge and set up Tiny Giant, we both worked for other local agencies who were members of Bristol Media. It’s a long history!
What are you most proud of as a business?
In terms of what we’ve achieved so far, creating the first ever AI curator for the Cheltenham Science Festival is a huge highlight for us. It’s been really cool working with them because the person that came in as the coordinator wanted to create some noise and excitement, so she was open to everything. We’ve done some amazing things like live interview with Aida on BBC Radio Gloucester, featured in plenty of blogs, plus an animation is on the cards. It pushed us creatively because we’d never done anything like it before.
What’s your favourite office gadget?
Our Alexa, we can’t even remember a time before smart speakers. Tiny Giant even has its own Alexa skill, Tiny Giant Tales, so you can stay updated on what we’re up to.
Whose work do you admire and why?
In Bristol, we love Fiasco Design, they create beautiful work plus they do an event called Thread which always gets inspiring speakers. Outside of Bristol, a company called Lord Whitney, who create these otherworldly dreamlike sets for music videos and advertising.
What’s your favourite place in Bristol/this area?
[Kerry] The Watershed, I really like what they do there, plus I really love independent films and going to their cinema. A little place out of Bristol I love is the view from the top of Ashton Court, where you can look over the whole of Bristol, it’s gorgeous.
If you could sum up Bristol/this area in 3 words, what would they be?
Welcoming, chilled, collaborative.
What’s the best tip/trick you’ve learnt as a business?
Resilience and positivity. As a start-up it’s not always easy, but it’s much better to DO the thing and think about what could go right rather than what could go wrong. You need to have a positive mindset, keep going and always look on the sunny side.
What exciting plans have you got coming up this year?
We’ve got a few talks coming up, we’ve just finished Social Media Week and K In The Park with the BBC’s Hannah Fry. And there are lots more in the pipeline like the World of Work Conference at the Henley Business School. We’re going to build some storytelling bots, and generally doing a lot of festivals – look out for all kinds of things – bots, AR filters and lots of creative AI.
If you’re interested in collaborations (particularly if your name has an ‘AI’ in it!) get in touch with Kerry and Norts. Thanks to Tiny Giant for getting involved.
It’s just over two weeks until the next keynote event in our Vision series where we welcome Steve Chapman, artist, philosopher, TEDx speaker, and all-round supporter of the weird and wonky, to Bristol.
Steve’s entertaining talk promises to explain how to nurture what makes us uniquely weird so that it becomes our creative super power, if you haven’t got your ticket yet then book HERE. We spoke to Steve ahead of the event to find out more…
1. What can attendees at ‘You’re Beautiful Wonkiness’ expect from the event?
Some stories and conversations about what it really means to be a creative human being and the importance of weirdness (or as a minimum being just weird enough) if we want to make a difference in the world.
2. What do you hope attendees will take away from the event?
I hope that people will gain a re-kindled love for their natural born wonkiness: those unique talents, quirks, and ways of seeing the world that we consciously or unconsciously traded to fit in better and be more like everyone else. I hope people will leave with a sense of creative mischief and a bold experiment to make a difference to something that’s important to them.
3. When we first spoke with you, you mentioned that your philosophy was “screwing around with normality.” How do you live by this?
The short answer is that I’ll share some examples of this at the session! The rather longer answer is that I am constantly curious about how common sense and expertise stifles, rather than enables, change. So, when I spot stuckness I’m intrigued by how I can create an experiment that is counter-intuitive or the opposite of what is “normal” simply to see what would happen. And the important thing about an experiment is that you don’t know if it is going to work or not. So learning to live with failure and rejection is as much part of this as the joy of seeing something take-off and have a life of its own.
4. How should organisations be embracing the idea of celebrating employee weirdness?
The first thing I would say is that there is no point in doing it unless a) you are serious about it, and b) everybody brings more of themselves to the workplace, be you a work experience person or the CEO. I come across so many organisations that say “We want more creativity in the workplace” but are really saying to me “Can YOU get THEM to come up with more ideas for ME!”
This work is much more difficult than people appreciate as it requires a fundamental shift in the cultural permission to be more “mad, bad and wrong” in the workplace, to be counter-cultural in service of the change they are wanting to see. This requires loosening the grip of what is regarded as “sane, good and right” around here, just enough to promote bold experimentation, creativity and innovation. I wrote a blog a few years back that I would send to organisations that wanted to speak to me, to check how up for it they really were: https://canscorpionssmoke.com/2016/11/05/want-creativity-workplace-serious/
5. If you could only offer people one piece of advice about their approach to creativity, what would it be and why?
Be more obvious and try much, much less. Work on becoming more of what you already are rather than striving to become something you are not already. And if those around you reject you, humiliate you or shame you for doing this – find some different people to hang around with!
You’re Beautiful Wonkiness: The rise of the outsider is taking place from 12.30 – 2.15pm on Tuesday 16th July at Origin Workspace, Bristol.
On March 14th, Design/Build/Market is bringing together a panel of startup experts to discuss the most effective ways to build and launch an app.
The quarterly D/B/M event promotes collaboration between founders, designers, developers and marketers to devise better solutions in the tech industry. It’s run by CookiesHQ, an agency that turns innovative ideas into digital products.
Past events have focused on topics such as social media, VR and web performance – this D/B/M will feature specialists from the Bristol tech community tackling questions about research, development, release and everything in between.
The speakers will be TechSPARK’s Ben Shorrock, founder of Yena Ash Phillips, angel investor David Harris, technical director of CookiesHQ Nic Alpi, and a representative from startup hub We Are Growth. The event will be chaired by Briony Phillips, Associate Director and Scale-up Enabler at Engine Shed.
The CookiesHQ team will be giving away tips, tricks and insider knowledge – plus running a competition for aspiring founders to win a free discovery workshop.
Design/Build/Market: Building and Launching an App takes place on the 14th March, 6.30-9.30pm at Engine Shed, Bristol. It’s open to founders, developers, creatives, business owners, students – or anyone who’s curious.
Places are limited, so book your place now.
You need to load content from reCAPTCHA to submit the form. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers.
More Information