Our joint Creative Director Tony went to one of the Honda World Ballooning Grand Prix rounds in Luxembourg this weekend. He writes:

"We went for a flight early on Saturday morning in quite strong winds. Had to use a tree to help us land safely, causing a bit of minor damage to the envelope (balloon talk for the balloon above the basket).

We saw the balloon again that night at the ‘glow-Up’. Check out the holes!

"Our Russian pilot Uri was very cool about the whole thing, offering us vodka to calm the nerves."

It’s a tough job, but…etc.

Saw this article recently on trend-spotting site if.psfk.com:

http://if.psfk.com/when/archives/2005/07/interview_with_2.php

It’s an interview with Niku Banaie, the director of innovation at Naked Communications, about their approach to creativity. He says,

‘People still like ‘advertising’ but some of the rules have certainly changed driven by the obvious things like technology and the breadth of new and alternative media channels, but also more interestingly by what people actually perceive advertising to be.

Would an old school brand manager think Nike Run London was advertising? It certainly communicates all the right things and ticks all the marketing boxes but would not have necessarily come out of an ‘advertising’ agency.’

Well, it did! It came out of us, matey. But Nike aren’t old school and W+K is not just an ‘advertising agency’. The whole point was not just to do some running ads but to come up with something that made people actually get off their arses and run. 30,000 of them paid for the privilege to do just that last year on a cold, dark, rainy, November night.