The Open Road

We just stumbled across this great piece of archive footage of London in 1927. Lovingly restored in colour by the BFI it gives a nice insight into the London of yesteryear.

Cliff Freeman & Partners. Where's The Grief?

Last week marked the sad end of the great New York agency Cliff Freeman & Partners.

Cliff Freeman and his agency showed the world of advertising that it is possible to make really, really entertaining work that was all about the product.

That's something that ad folks here in Britain have always been unwilling or unable to do - maybe it's because of the way people in the British ad business generally see the idea of selling as a bit grubby and beneath them? Over here, most people seem to think that any funny sketch or interesting thing with a product shoved on the end is an ad.

Cliff himself previously wrote the famous Where's the beef? ad for Wendy's. It never ran over here, but to me has always been a great example of a proper piece of advertising - in effect it's a simple product comparison - but the way it was done made it funny, and "Where's the beef?" became a catch phrase that really stuck.

Cliff's own company went on create some of the best advertising that I can remember, the stuff that helped me realise what it's really all about when I was first starting out. The stuff that helped me feel ok about wanting to do advertising that was unashamed to be advertising, but that was very entertaining or interesting at the same time.

Read an great post from someone closer to them, by the excellent Escape Pod here.

And another from Ben here.

Guinness Pop Quiz

Exhibit A




Exhibit B




1. Which of these commercials cost a shit load of money?

2. Which of these commercials makes you want to drink a pint of Guinness?

3. Which of these commercials spends 87 seconds dramatising an utterly meaningless endline that could be for absolutely anything?

Answers in the comments please.

Bring it to life.

Beautiful Losers At The Old Music Library

I went to watch the Aaron Rose film Beautiful Losers last night at the old Music Library in Brighton. It was a great place to watch it, surrounded by the faded glory of that impressive building, and the large scale work of some talented local artists. The film features Ed Templeton, Barry McGee, Margaret Kilgallen, Jo Jackson, Chris Johanson, Thomas Campbell, Geoff McFetridge, Mike Mills, Stephen Powers, Harmony Korine and Shepard Fairey.

It's a well made, lo-fi film, which I think would be interesting to anyone else who is already interested in this kind of thing. Some of the artists come across really well in the interviews, and there is an informality that seems really genuine, although some of it gets a bit over-earnest for my taste. If you view it as a record of a group of people coming up at the same time, then it does its job well. And the venue made it a great overall experience, thanks to all involved.

The trailer for the film is above.

Sell! Sell! Is Four

A quick glance at the calendar tells me that it was four years ago yesterday that we excitedly walked into our first office. We had no clients, no promise of clients, and just enough cash to last a few weeks.

But we did have a clear idea of what Sell! Sell! was all about - doing the best work of our careers in a no-bullshit, creative and friendly way for clients who want to get things done.

With that in the front of our minds, we opened up our doors. I say opened our doors, in fact the first day was spent painting the floor of that first studio space over on Clerkenwell Road, and working out what we were going to do for desks.

I really can't believe that it has been four years, it's passed so quickly. One thing's for sure, it has never been dull, here's a few high(and low)lights...

Andy literally painting himself into a corner when painting the floor of our first office.

Getting our first proper clients, the text service 82ASK - thanks a bunch Sarah and Thomas.

Helping Krispy Kreme to launch over here with some really fun work, including making their 160 page employee handbook in a three-day design and writing marathon.

Having good friends and colleagues join us for our 'Six Months And Not Gone Out Of Business Party'.

Flying out the next morning to shoot the first part of a £10m global ad campaign for PokerStars, which went on to help the Moneymaker Millionaire the most successful ever freeroll.

Coming back from said shoot a week later to find the smelly remnants of the 'Six Months And Not Gone Out Of BusinessParty' untouched.

Teaming up with the smashing folks at Nuffield Health for the first time, and helping them to do the best work they've ever done - including Inaction Man, a small, fat guy that was 500% more effective than any piece of direct mail they'd ever done.

Having to defend ourselves legally when a big company tried to pilfer some of our ideas.

Winning the pitch for The Industry Trust for IP Awareness against some proper agencies, and taking them from being the people who did those embarrassing 'you wouldn't steal a car' trailers to produce a campaign that is actually working.

Moving into the new Sell! Towers out here in fashionable Whoreditch in the week before Christmas, because we thought it would be quiet.

Hooking up with Fentimans, a fantastic company who were on our wish list when we started out, and building a great relationship working with them.

Sadly losing our good mate and co-conspirator Matt, when he decided that the trials and tribulations of running your own creative company were not for him. His contribution to Sell! Sell! will not be forgotten. Cheers Matt.

Coming up with Freeday Friday, a campaign to get everyone a free day off on February 29th 2008.

Being told we hadn't won a pitch for a big client, even though they liked us and our work the most, because we weren't big enough.

Making what was probably O2s weirdest campaign of the year, FoneGloo.

Getting broken into and having a laptop nicked that contained secret MI5 data (that last bit isn't true).

Hiring our first full-time Sell! Sell! employee, Ryan - an extremely talented designer/creative, and watching him slowly grow ever more hairy.

The confident yet scary feeling of turning down two potentially lucrative pitches because the opportunity wasn't right.

Hiring our second full-time Sell! Sell! employee, the smashing Emma 'Golden' Graham, and thus becoming possibly the only London ad agency (I use the term loosely) to double in size in the last year.

Writing and shooting our first Straight8 film, extremely good fun and scary at the same time.

The folly of making our directorial debut on the Madness commercial.

Having a good long think about the recession, and deciding not to take part.

Being on the brink of winning what would be our biggest ever client, with creative work that we're excited about making. . .

Over these last four years, we've produced lots of different and interesting work for lots of different and interesting clients, and we're proud to say that we've never done any of that 'below stairs' stuff - you know, the smelly work that agencies do for the money that they never talk about. We like to think that we're proud of everything we've done, here's a selection...

CSI for Momentum Pictures

Krispy Kreme


Moneymaker Millionaire for PokerStars


Inaction Man for Nuffield Health


Knock-Off Nigel for The Industry Trust


Job Survey Viral for HotOnLine


FoneGloo for O2


'Wallchart' house project.


Every Little Helps for Friends of the Earth


'Freeday Friday' house project


S&M Cafe


Screenthing


Zazz for Madness


fish4


Fentimans


Smart Health Guides for Nuffield Health

Phew, well I'll stop there, for everyone's sake. Suffice it to say that we've done loads of work that we're proud of, and for that a big thanks must go out to all of the clients who have been kind enough to exchange their money for our creative thinking and doing: 82ASK, Krispy Kreme, Momentum Pictures, Disney Channel, Beefeater, PokerStars, HotOnLine, The Industry Trust, Friends of the Earth, Crisis, S&M Cafe, Madness, fish4, O2, Nuffield Health, Fentimans, Ladbrokes and Associated Newspapers. Without you it's fair to say that Sell! Sell! would just be a bunch of very broke idealistic creative people in a room, playing pinball.

And to everyone else whose support has helped us to get this far: Janesy, Hearn, Hunt, Qua, Debs, Judith, Kristian, Badger, Roy and Stanleys, Stanners, Dave and Ben at Karmarama, Patrick, Byrney, Jonathan, Liz, Eliza, Kate N, Tess, Colin and the Therapy peoples, John and Lee at Splash, Steve and Tim at Another, Tom at Gas & Electric, and the rest - a very humble but heartfelt thank you!

Houlton-Gate: Fentimans Fight Back

If you've read a newspaper or a news website over the last couple of days, you've probably seen the stories about our good friends at Fentimans having their delicious lemonade branded an 'imitation liquor' by officials in the town of Houlton, Maine, in the good ole US of A. At the centre of the furore is the up to 0.5 per cent alcohol by volume that is created when Fentimans botanically brew their drinks.

The Aroostook Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition, the Maine Alliance to Prevent Substance Abuse, the Maine Attorney General's Office, and Houlton Police Chief Butch Asselin (I swear this is true) have all got involved.

Officials from the Aroostook Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition (ASAP) and the Maine Alliance to Prevent Substance Abuse (MAPSA) have maintained that the beverage should be classified as imitation liquor since learning that a Houlton High School student brought a bottle of the lemonade to school several weeks ago.

The story trucks on today as the latest developments are that Maine's Attorney Generals office has banned the sale of the lemonade to under 21 year olds.

So, obviously it was our pleasure to help Fentimans with a suitable response, which is what you can see here.