At the Marketing Society Awards for Excellence 2013 we achieved the interesting distinction of winning an award that we didn't enter and didn't even realise on the night that we had been recognised for. It is the award for Marketing for Sustainable Consumption.

The Marketing Society awards supplement says, "There were no entries in this category but the judges felt that The Fairtrade Foundation deserved to win for demonstrating outstanding performance over a very long period of time… A stronger, globally consistent branding helped establish a bold visual identity for Fairtrade in the UK and met the need of licensees to roll out partner marketing activity internationally… With a limited budget the foundation globalised the brand, found an accessible tone of voice, made its understanding of the ethical consumer more sophisticated, took its communities online and translated all this into a commercial proposition with success."

For more info on our work with Fairtrade, see here.

It’s a nice feature of the industry that
creativity can spring from anywhere. For thousands of years we’ve learnt
through reading and story telling. From Fred Flintstone’s relatives round the
campfire to the faithful paperback, knowledge is gained, shared and put into a
context we can relate to. This is true of the core narrative of most ads. I spent
my university years studying 'book' books. Or rather books with words and mostly
fiction. Recently I’ve been taking a closer look at picture books, or to give them a proper title: the graphic novel. As soon as I mentioned this to a couple
of friends, recommendations came flooding in and suddenly I feel as if I have a
lot of catching up to do.

I started with the famous guys: “Persepolis”
by Marjane Satrapi and “Maus” by Art Spiegelman. They convey very complicated
and tense political situations with astounding clarity. After only the first 20
pages of “Persepolis” I already felt like I could understand far more about
what life must have been like during the Islamic revolution than I would have
done even from a filmic news bulletin. It’s just so clear and so accessible.

“Maus” is a survivor’s tale of the
Holocaust. Don’t worry: it’s powerful but not depressing! In Orwellian fashion Spiegelman
makes Nazis cats, Jews mice and non-Jewish Poles pigs. It’s both moving and
shocking, but again there are laughs too.

Perhaps what links the two books is that
they are both about families. We’re looking at cartoons, but these are real
people and real lives. They are the true stories beneath politics. Ultimately
what’s so great about them? The picture form means they’re not preachy. They
have charm.

Both
books are still quite text heavy. I got thinking about moving away from using
words altogether. Are pictures enough to tell a powerful story? Can you enjoy a
plot without words? The answer lies in Robert Frank Hunter. He uses very few
words at all. His stuff feels more like a catalogue of beautiful illustrations
and designs that weave into a story. The action and emotion are both pictorial,
and there’s very little need for much else. I guess we naturally
respond well to imagery and that’s how ads can likewise be such powerful
communicators, and equally powerful storytellers.

(Thoughts from planning newbie Alexa)