We Sometimes Have Good Ideas…
As part of our 5th Anniversary retrospective, Pete Fellows looks back at some of our more creative advertising campaigns over the years as well as some of our less inspired efforts.
When I launched Fellows and Associates back in 2009 I felt that building a brand within the sector was going to be very important. I also believed that I needed to distinguish Fellows and Associates from our competitors and try to develop a house style of advertising that helped to suggest that we were something different. Whilst we haven’t always been consistent in our advertising we have developed, I believe, a quirky style that at the very least demonstrates that we might think differently about recruitment to our competitors. This admittedly self-indulgent article reflects on this. I have included some of the key campaigns that I felt helped shape our brand over the years, some of the work I’m most proud of and also some of the adverts that in hindsight weren’t our best work (each title is a link to a full page version of the advertisement).
Curious Campaign, August 2009
I launched the brand in an unconventional way with a simple black page advertisement in a variety of different publications linking to the website, yesiamcurious.com (the website is no longer there). The website then morphed into our first video release to accompany the campaign ‘Goose Attack at Wedding’. Which is still live and has, at the time of writing, 130,662 views on YouTube.
Choice is Everything, March 2010 and What are you? …Chicken? July 2010
‘Choice is everything’ appealed to my sense of humour but it also launched a mini-run of adverts such as ‘timing is everything’ as well. ‘Chicken’ is my all-time favourite advertisement that we have done. People mentioned it to me months afterwards. The punning was probably inexcusable though.
Empowering Candidates, December 2010
In 2010 we went for some pretty striking advertisements. Here is another example.
Captain Feasible, November 2011
Captain Feasible was a video, social media and print campaign. It remains one of our more ambitious projects albeit not as successful as our launch ‘Goose Attack’ campaign. We took out a two-page advertisement in the CIPA Journal.
Tempted, December 2011 and Rorschach February 2012
Sometimes we find an image that just works and we don’t need to add much for an advertisement with impact which was the case with ‘Tempted?’. On other occasions we start with a concept and go from there as in the second example from an idea by Emma van Opstal.
Gadzooks! March 2013 and Good Looking, April 2014
We had a couple of high concept advertisements in 2013 such as ‘Gadzooks’ (from an idea by Phillipa Field) from March 2013, with a redesign of our logo and a 1950’s style. In both cases above these advertisements influenced our social media efforts, so for example, we began changing our corporate Twitter page to reflect our latest advertisement. The second advert reads, ‘Ring Fellows and Associates because we are ridiculously good looking*’ … ‘*We might not be ridiculously good looking’. Note our new official logo in the second advertisement.
Big Year, August 2014
For our 5 year anniversary we had to go big and in addition to some extensive advertising we released a video celebrating our adventures so far. For that and the corresponding advertisement we decided to go for an animation style. The idea behind this double page advertisement came from Phillipa Field.
Secerna, June 2012
We do a great deal of advertising on behalf of our clients. I thought I should pick one to represent this and this advertisement for York based firm, Secerna, from 2012 still sticks in my mind. We accompanied the campaign with a video release and content in our news section and on social media.
Bad Advertisements: World Domination, May 2012 and We Are Listening, February 2011.
Both were the result of running close to deadline day due to a busy workload but that is no excuse for these two advertisements far below our usual standards. ‘World Domination’ might have worked with a bit more time spent on the design, ‘We are Listening’ is just a bit boring frankly.
If you have any favourites we’ve left off, or indeed advertisements we’ve done you’ve disliked then comment below or on Twitter.
Pete Fellows is the Managing Director of Fellows and Associates and he is listening.