The Grand Finale

The last project we worked on at Blackwood was a direct mail piece for Audi's RS6. We have only just recently seen the finished product and we are really happy with how it turned out. Take a look below.

A look back

Here are a few examples of some of the work we did while at Blackwood.

The first thing we worked on was a pitch for Waikato University. Having just come out of uni ourselves - we were able to understand the target audience well and I think a few of our insights were quite helpful in the process. While Blackwood made it to the final two agencies in competition for the business, we didn't win the pitch in the end but it was still a massive learning curve and it was great to have the opportunity to work on such a huge campaign.

Based on the premise of "whatever you're looking for - you'll find it at Waikato", these are three kind of 'big picture' billboard executions that were also expanded into more specific concepts that worked around some of the interesting things that you will find at Waikato university.

We also designed a microsite as part of a promotion aiming to get students to enrol at Waikato.

We became a sort of christmas card production company for a while and ended up designing three cards for DHL (Tasman Cargo Airlines), Audi and British American Tobacco NZ.

Michael had a fun photo shoot with Bevan Docherty for Heart Children. Art directing a shoot was a very interesting experience!

These are the Alfa One print executions as part of the same campaign as the TVC. The soundtrack from the TVC was also used in the radio ad.

Happy New Year!

Well we have just had a fantastic couple of weeks holiday and are back, rested and ready to continue our job search in the year 2009. Our internship at Blackwood finished at the end of last year and I would have to say that we learnt a whole lot more about the industry and ourselves! The last four months had both good and bad experiences but I feel like it has all been a part of learning the business. Hindsight is an very interesting thing because I probably wouldn't have been quite so positive a couple of weeks ago! Learning is messy, stressful and uncomfortable... I suppose that's nothing new but there's nothing like a challenge the size of the grand canyon to make you realise it! So on with the job hunt. Next up we are planning on having a quick stocktake of the work that we did at Blackwood and will hopefully inject some new work into our portfolio before getting out and about and seeing some more CD's. If you happen to be looking for a creative team that is ready for anything, or know someone who is, give us a call, email, letter, message in a bottle, pigeon, angel, toothfairy, paper plane, blimp, telepathic sign, a lightning-burnt note in the side of a nearby mountain... just make contact in other words!

The creative devil wears Prada

Last Friday was a rather sad day for us. Our favorite senior freelancing creative Adey Richards finished his stint at Blackwood. The creative department has been a bit light, with only one intermediate team plus us as interns. Luckily Adey was freelancing almost the whole time we have been here. The Pond's senior copywriter, Phil Parsonage also worked for a couple of weeks, but these two were the only senior creatives we have been able to learn a few pearls of wisdom from (and not nearly enough!)

Adey walks in the office with his Prada shades every morning,
so we did this poster and stuck it up on the wall behind him. He loves it! (Adey is faking 'angry'!)

Both Adey and Phil were awesome guys. Phil loves making wicked comments about everything while Adey would sing to any and every tune on the radio. I still remember one afternoon Adey, Anna and I launched into an impromptu singing trio, singing along to an old cheesy BSB's classic! Although the two seniors were often stretched by the crazy amount of work they needed to handle, they were always nice enough to give us help even when they were totally exhausted near the end of the day. In particular Adey, who sat right next to us, gave me some very useful art direction advice. To have the chance to learn from a senior art director who has worked with the legendary Paul Arden and David Trott was just unbelivable.

Well Adey, we'll miss your singing and the Pad Thai lunches we had. Most of all we'll miss you as our mentor and my morning Man Utd scores update with you. Hope to see you again in our next agency!

TVC!

Recently we have been working on a brief for Alfa One Rice Bran Oil which ended up in a TVC and series of print ads! It was a real bonus being able to go on our first TVC shoot and we learnt a lot about the process - and how painstakingly long even the simplest things can take! While we think that the idea is perhaps better in print... it was cool to make a TVC too. After coming up with the initial idea, our creative director took the lead on most of the decisions about the details voice over and music - so some things we would have done differently, but all and all we are stoked to have had the opportunity to get a good idea of what a TVC involves.

Out of tune radio

Our first brief at Blackwood was for the NZBus iPod promotion. Luckily we came up with the goods on our second day and got to make a radio ad! It was really interesting going to the recording, choosing the talent and stressing about getting the rights to the song (which changed about 5 times!). Our idea was also expanded into an ambient stunt with singers giving out flyers on buses. Enjoy :D

Click below to listen to the radio ad.

Our first team placement - Blackwood!

Hi everyone, we'd like to share some job hunting news. For the last 4 weeks we've been doing our first placement at Blackwood Communication Group (BCG)!

We've been thrown into the deep end from day one and are glad that we cracked a radio brief in our first week, which eventually expanded into an ambient idea as well. It was really cool when the ad was aired 3 weeks ago (we'll post it on the blog here soon).

Not wanting to be a one-trick-pony, we have pressed on to have more ideas through in the last few weeks. Contributing to a big pitch was stressful but we really enjoyed it. Overall we think we've learnt a lot and are glad about how well we work together in a real agency environment, considering we're a newly formed team. In fact, we feel like we've been here a whole lot longer than 4 weeks! 

Anyway, before we end this post and get back to work, we'd like to say a big thank you to all the CDs and lovely people we've met in the last few months who have been helping us and offering us advice & encouraging words. In particularly, a big big big cheers to Paul Catmur, Paul Nagy, Tim Hall & Scott Henderson, David Gapes, Jeremy Southern, Vaughn Davis  & David Bell and last but not least our ECD James Blackwood. Thanks guys~!