Free Fire Posters

If you've been swanning around Shoreditch lately, you'll have no doubt spotted these Trainspotting-inspired posters for Free Fire. Placed side-by-side in Old Street Underground, these poster are a veritable feast for the eyes. The finest 'seen-it-in-real-life' design guff I've seen this year.

There's no reason why design/advertising can't have an aesthetically positive effect on it's surrounding environment. These posters are proof.

These palm-moistening posters were designed by Empire Design (I think, don't quote me on it). 

 

10 Years of Sell! Sell!...

Something that we've always been monumentally crap at here at Sell! Towers is shouting about what we do as a company and PR-ing ourselves. I suppose we're just constantly looking for the next opportunity or concentrating on working on the next piece of work that we can make into something great, so rather than looking at what we've done or what we're doing and shouting about it, we're getting on with stuff and looking forwards. This was brought home to me the other day when I realised that we had let pass the fact that we've been doing this thing for ten years, without so much as a nod. No PR puff-pieces, no big party, no shouting from the rooftops. So I said let's sit down for half an hour put down some of the stuff from the ten years of Sell! Sell! that means something to us, and this is what came out....

Ten years of Sell! Sell! — 15 years ahead of our time 10 years ago...

In ten years we have:

Always put the quality of the work first

Given ourselves a stupid name that confuses people

Changed the way an ad agency works

Invented an action figure 

made people more important than process

Helped a paper publisher become a successful digital brand 

Retained the IP of a big idea

Designed products

Named new beer

Helped people live healthier and happier lives 

Never gone to Cannes

Spent too much of our startup cash on a cash register from 1901 

Brought media back to the table

Introduced a legendary junk food to the UK

Had people work together rather than in a production line

Helped reduce copyright theft

Fixed our pinball machine a million times

Produced health guides that save lives

Hand-printed our own newspaper ads

sacked-off the pinball machine

Written a manifesto for a new creative revolution

had it published and sell out many times over

Helped create a kids’ social media platform

Campaigned to make 29th February a free day for everyone

Missed the big call from BBC news

Made an ad videogame before it was a thing

Created the concept for a city restaurant & Bar

Laughed at ourselves 

Breathed fresh life into a dusty old bottle

Made weekends sacred

Walked the walk that others talk 

Picked fights with the big guys

Put the client’s interests before our own interests

Made Paul McCartney laugh

Then helped him to advertise his family’s brand

Been close to the edge more than once

Stood firm against procurement for the value we add

chucked 12 pies off 12 bridges

Made it into a film that was screened at the Renoir

Set fire to the production line

Made some great friends

Made some good enemies

Never used PowerPoint

Brought surrealism to the big screen

Challenged the orthodoxy of the ad business

Been down to our last teabag

Made a dusty old liqueur the most extraordinary drink on the bar

Given everyone their birthday off for free

Not entered a single industry award

Had a client hire us three times at three different companies

Stayed humble

Remembered the value we add is in creativity not technology 

Given a keynote in Delhi

Weirded-out some regular agencies in Miami

Helped a challenger grow over 300% 

Made commuters crave a proper breakfast 

Sold the IP for a big idea separately to our fee

Failed to improve at darts

Directed Madness in a fake detergent commercial

Helped a tech innovator to appear as good as it really is

Created ideas to last and grow not to be flashy

Named technology

Said ‘no’

Never taken no for an answer

Taken a poker millionaire back to his roots

Accidentally took him out mid-shoot with a football to the danglers

Changed the way a creative company works with clients

Not been afraid to be unpopular for doing the right thing 

Charged for the idea not for the time

Never let a single piece of crap out of the door

Brought an old brewer into the 21st century with their first ad campaign

Retained clients for years through the work not contracts

Annoyed the wrong people

Presented ideas that scared the shit out of us 

Been rubbish at PR

Beaten big agencies in shootouts 

Been hard on ourselves

Run a global campaign from a five-person office

eaten more Tandoori than is probably a good idea

Said goodbye to a dear friend and partner

Scared ourselves

Questioned ourselves

Stuck at it

Had a great laugh

Waited for the business to catch up

Probably still at least five years ahead of our time...

We’re just getting started...

Brand Porpoise - Don't Get left Behind

If there's one thing we've learned about marketing and advertising over the last few years, it's that there are no shades of grey or nuances of approach when it comes to marketing – at any one time there is only one right way to do things, and everything else is old-fashioned, or dying. Now, this blind absolutism may seem extremely stupid, but hey, who are we to judge? Once a new fad starts to snowball, everyone wants to get in on the act. Pages and pages of copy are written and published daily by the marketing press on the fad, blog posts from eminent marketing twonks, tweets and hashtags aplently follow, plus, obviously a couple of people do speaking tours, and write books about it. Maybe you'll even get a whole conference dedicated to it, with people tweeting the sage advice about the fad. The aim, obviously being to work towards the moment when every brand in the world is doing exactly the same thing all the time. What a utopia!

Well, recently we have cottoned on to the fact that it is now impossible to be a brand in 2017 without having a porpoise. Yes, forget having a good product that people might want to buy, or a better service than your competitor. Forget solving a problem for the customer, in fact fire all of your product development staff, your engineers, fuck it, lay off the entire workforce – all you need to succeed is a porpoise. And that porpoise doesn't even have to be related to what your product or service is – you just need any old porpoise.

But why take a chance with your porpoise, when we can help you define your perfect brand porpoise with our unique Porpoise Definement Methodologizer (TM obviously)? We can find the perfect porpoise for your brand. But don't take our word for it – here are a few we've already done (everyone loves a case study don't they? Even if they might have been perfectly relevant solutions for the particular brand in question, but of fuck-all relevance to anyone else – if it worked for one client once, well surely it's right for every client in every category, right? That's the beauty of blind absolutism utopia!).

Here's the brand porpoise we recently found for airbnb...

It's name is Cuddles. Since we found airbnb's porpoise, things have really taken off for them. They don't have to worry about boring things like cost and convenience, or choice. They have cuddles.

Here's another brand porpoise, this time one we found for uber-cool taxi-driver disemploymentizing service Uber...

Uber's brand porpoise is a friendly little porpoise called Flipper. Now don't write in saying that Flipper is an unimaginative name – that just shows how little you understand about blind absolutism utopia. The point isn't to be original, the point is to just have a porpoise. And what a beauty it is!

Now don't be fooled into thinking that a brand porpoise is just for fancy-crazy new tech startups. No. Remember. It is right for everyone. Every brand. To demonstrate this, here are two brand porpoises (yes, that is the correct plural, sadly) that we found for functional, supermarket products. Here you can see them side-by-side, as you might in any supermarket aisle...

Now, before you write in and say Hold on, won't this be a tad confusing for the poor old punter? Two completely different brands, with quite different products that each have different functional qualities having what appear to be quite similar porpoises? We'll stop you there. Maybe you just don't get it yet? It doesn't matter. Every brand, to be successful these days, needs a porpoise. Don't argue. It says so in that marketing article online, and in that new book by that trendy bloke, and in loads of tweets and conference speeches. However, obviously defining or finding your brand porpoise isn't easy. Obviously. Obviously it takes a LOT of work, charts, presentations, worshops, away-days, idea-storms and brainsplooges to define a brand porpoise – all of which we can charge you through the nose for help you with.

And it pays to go to the experts. Take this for example...

To the untrained eye, that might look like a potential brand porpoise. But no. That is just a common-or-garden aquatic mammal. Don't make this mistake or your brand is destined to languish in the backwaters of the brand ocean for the next century. Come to us and we'll burn through hundreds of costly man-hours over the next twelve to eighteen months which our holding company accountants will give us hefty bonuses for help you work out exactly the right brand porpoise you your brand. And we'll maintain and feed it...

This is a picture of us feeding Coco-Cola's brand porpoise. Their porpoise is called Happiness. A bit twee, granted, but you know, when they're paying you this much it works, it works, right? This is where having an expert agency on-hand is vital – because a lot of people think that brand porpoises eat fish. In fact, a brand porpoise feeds on delusion. We have to keep them well-fed with delusion, with a bit of healthy misinterpretation on the side. We do a lot of research to make sure we have all the delusion we need to keep your brand porpoise looking great. Some silly people used to think that Coca-Cola's massive success was due to them being available on every street corner, constantly advertised to reinforce association with refreshment and taste, highly distinctive and having worked its way into becoming a product intertwined with American popular culture. But they could not be more wrong. Obviously their success is based on Happiness, their friendly brand porpoise.

To help people understand, we have – obviously – created a diagram: The Anatomy Of A Brand Porpoise...

Please feel free to use this in your next meeting.
Don't get left behind.
Don't be a dinosaur.
Don't be different to any other brand.
Don't get caught with some stinky relevant dolphin.

Get yourself a brand porpoise.

We can help.