By Joe Ribton

Pencil-Less 

I’ve never owned a pencil case. I was always a borrower, a serial lender indebted in bics and HBs to the rest of my class. This week might have been a good time to celebrate and buy my first pencil case, but alas there are no pencils coming my way. I worked very hard, I learnt a lot along the way, blah, blah, blah. Still wanted a pencil or three though didn’t I? I entered Adnams, Giffgaff and Microsoft, so I was really hoping at last one measly pencil would roll my way. Dave Dye stressed the importance of arguing for your work, so I’m going to slag off all the winners for you here and suggest what my entries could have been put in place of:

Adnams – Okay, this was probably my best shot at a pencil, and I do feel strongly that Sophie and I were owed one here. The quality of the winners were unbelievably high, I’m not suggesting our entry was as polished as Dan and Jacob’s, but it had similar thinking at its heart as the other winners. Save the Bee(r)s is obviously most similar to our save the hedgehogs initiative, but they did have a more scientific way of actually saving the bees. One winning entry is just what will Earth be like in 100 years, which just isn’t strategy. Sophie put a lot into making our video really great – I think she deserves a pencil if anything else.

Giffgaff – I wasn’t expecting a win here, but Marc had got my hopes up. Our copy was really good (not written by me), but our video was a bit lacking (all made by me). The stress of crafting multiple entries resulted in Giffgaff not getting the finesse it deserved. I still think because it is a copy brief that should be what was judged. Our copy was written to a loose rhyme because I think, deep down, we knew all the judges wanted was nicely written spoken word.

Microsoft – I had a blast making this entry, but I am not at all surprised it didn’t win. The thing is, the brief was to change the way we looked at Microsoft… our entry did that. However, It is clearly a beneficial lesson to learn that when a client asks to be completely altered in the eye of their clients, that really means they want something that’s a safe distance from what they already have. Microsoft Portfolio was essentially our entry, just with less out there visuals – by which I mean there was no Kylie Jenner being eaten by a giant Bill Gates. Ah well, all the winners in this category were boring anyway.

I’ll just have to win something else.