A good night was had by all at the Scottish Recruitment Communication Awards held in the swanky Oran Mor last Thursday.  And before we begin, we’d like to nominate the venue for a special award of their own; Best Mass-catered Meal Ever.

Seriously, the food was nothing short of brilliant, mass-catered or otherwise.

As for the real awards, we didn’t come away empty in that department either, winning Best Copy for our Scotsman campaign.  Not a bad result for a Herald-sponsored and run event.  Fair play to you Herald peeps. 

 To refresh your memories, here’s the winning campaign:

Incidentally, the Scotsman campaign was also nominated in two other categories, Best Use of Press and Best Art Direction but failed to get the ball over the bar in both categories.

Next up was the really big prize of the night, Best Employer Brand for Edinburgh Leisure.  To quote the entry requirements:

“This category will take account of how an organisation’s brand has been developed to improve efficiency in attraction and retention. Please submit a paper of no more than 1500 words which demonstrates:

• the rationale and background to the creation of the employer brand
• the results of the employer brand within the organisation, including the impact it has had on recruitment and retention
• the execution of the brand across internal and external communications (for example, printed materials or advertising)

Please submit examples of both internal and external communications work to support your entry.”

For the above reasons, it’s an award that can truly be said to be shared by all the staff at Edinburgh Leisure as well as everyone back at the 60 Watt ranch (aw, shucks). So you can imagine how proud we were not just to win, but to win against three other strong nominees, RBS, HBOS and Yell.

The rest of the night was a blur. 

As, in fact, was the morning after.

Uri Geller once claimed “to be able to bend spoons with the power of his mind” and to have psychic powers, although apparently he currently prefers to be called a “mystifier” rather than “psychic.^“ (Well, he mystifies me. Ed.)

He was the inspiration for the work that we’ve created for Ambergreen Internet Marketing, an international leader in the field of internet marketing with a core specialisation in Search Engine Optimisation.  Having carried out a strategic development exercise for them earlier in the year we collectively arrived at the positioning that Ambergreen thinks on a higher level, because the advice it gives its client has the ability to turbocharge their business perfoprmance and take it to a new level.

As the internet becoames ever more powerful this is an important distribution channel for many businesses even those in more traditional channels like Littlewoods Pools for example.

Who dramatises thinking on a different level better than any other? Uri Geller of course, who could bend spoons with the power of his mind, allegedly.

Cue this very simple but dramatic visual image that we will use on exhibition stands, direct marketing, online at Ambergreen’s website and in advertising.

Indeed the first stand went live today at Ad:tech in Olympia.

We think it rocks.

Helene’s just created a new identity for the Leith Walk Traders Association that is, like The West End Traders Association, a group that has received funding from Open For Business through TIE (Transport Initiative Edinburgh) to help them through the difficult trading conditions created as a result of the tram-works that are disrupting traffic flow and parking in Edinburgh.

It’s quite a cheeky nod in the direction of the tram-works, but upbeat and positive.

We like it.

Just like buses innit?

We wrote only a week or so ago about our three nominations at The Scottish Advertising Awards for The Scotsman, The Edinburgh International Climbing Arena at Ratho and our own house ads.  And now, stone me if we ain’t gone and done it again.

This time it’s The Herald Scottish Recruitment Communications Awards (nee Advertising) .  We’ve had a right good track record at these awards in the past; winning the Grand Prix no less than four times in the seven years it has been running.

Well, this year we’ve garnered five nominations;

Best Copy for our Scotsman campaign (Ouch! The Herald can’t like that but good on them for being good sports and allowing us to enter their arch rival)

Best Art Direction for our Scotsman campaign. (Ooyah!  Respect again to The Herald)

Best Use of Press for our Scotsman campaign. (Aaaargh! Beyond the Herald’s call of duty.)

Best Use of Outdoor for Edinburgh Leisure’s plumber ad. (What a relief!)

Best Employer Brand for Edinburgh Leisure. (A short written submission on behalf of our esteemed client showing the key role that recruitment advertising and internal communications - both produced by 60 Watt - has played in the creation of a very effective employer brand.)

Last year we walked off with three awards - and several hangovers - including our fourth Grand Prix and the Overall Effectiveness Award which sadly is not a category this year.  (Best Employer Brand seems the closest.)

Wish us luck.

Here’s some of the stuff that we’ve been nominated for…

We like this photograph.

Taken in the 1920’s by a mad photographer called Alfred G Buckham.  It is owned by The National Galleries of Scotland.

Buckham had crashed nine times before he was discharged from the Royal Air Force as a hundred per cent disabled. Continuing to indulge his passion for aerial photography, he wrote that ‘If one’s right leg is tied to the seat with a scarf or a piece of rope, it is possible to work in perfect security’..

Us middle-aged men love Elbow (the Spanish Archer…El Bow?  Gettit?).

Probably because they sing about middle-aged man things.

At one point on The Seldom Seen Kid Guy Grieve, in declaring his perhaps unrequited love, in Starlings sings

“You are the only thing in any room you’re ever in
I’m stubborn, selfish and too old.”

and …

“So yes I guess I’m asking you
To back a horse that’s good for glue
And nothing else
But find a man that’s truer than,
Find a man that needs you more than I.”

It is quite, quite beautiful.

(Not that any of us are currently having to deal with unrequited love.  But the lyric is so life worn, so knowing, so understated that it seems like the sort of issue we do have to deal with and certainly have in our distant past.)

And that’s why the bunting is out to celebrate the old fellas nicking the Mercury from the young team.

You know what?

Experience matters.

Ever been headhunted by a knucklehead with a cockney twang and - heaven forfend - not the faintest idea  of who you are and, even worse, what it is you’ve been doing all these years? Our new client, well kent recruitment agency Denholm Associates, does nothing of the sort, especially when plying their trade in the advertising and marketing arena, perhaps their area of biggest strength. 

60 Watt was recently tasked with creating a campaign for The Drum magazine to remind adfolk of Denholm’s market-leading recruitment skills. At the heart of the brief, a precious, little nugget of truth  - the fact that every single member of the Denholm agency team has worked in the business.

As the Bard famously said, “O wad some Power the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us!” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.  See the whole campaign here.

A bunch of us showed up at Elmwood’s offices last Thursday night to partake of the free wine handed out by the lovely Diane Young and her team from the Drum - sorry, to have a peep at the nominations for this year’s awards. 

Verdict: not a vintage year, although not bad for wine box plonk.

The standard of the awards nominations, on the other hand, to use a well known Gorman-ism, was “pish-poor.” Particularly disappointing when compared to the 2008 Chip Shop Awards winners which almost without exception were eye-poppingly good. 

Now I know the Chip Shop Awards is about great creativity, unfettered by the constraints of briefs, budgets or clients.  Whereas the Scottish Advertising Awards is about creativity in the real world.  But the standards of both awards have been much closer in past years. 

Hopefully they will again. 

You can see the full nominations list here. 

By the way, despite the comments above and hopefully not because of them, 60 Watt was delighted to receive three nominations: best 6, 4 or smaller sheet poster for EICA-Ratho, best recruitment advertisement for the Scotsman and best press campaign for our own 60 Watt house ads.  We’ll keep you posted.

You don’t get many opportunities this good.  In fact, you can count them on the fingers of one finger.

Come up with a name, brand identity, stationery, website, brochure and advertising for a brand new driving school startup.

Brave client, too.  So brave, in fact, that he nearly came to blows with his mum when he showed her the about-to-go-into-production name and car livery design for the new company. “You’re joking!” she said.  “Over my dead body!” (or words to that effect).

Well he went ahead anyway and two weeks later, became the proud owner of the very loud lemon yellow driving school car currently to be seen driving around the Edinburgh area.
And the story doesn’t end there.  Our client phoned up a few days later to say he’d bitten the bullet and driven round to his estranged mother’s house to show her the car. 

 Verdict?  “She took back everything she said.  She loves it!”

 You can see what alll the fuss was about here.

We’ve been appointed by probably the most complicated client setup in the world, ever - The West End Traders’ Association.  Funded by a grant from the “Open for Business Group”, an initiative led by Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce and TIE, (Transport Initiatives Edinburgh - which is responsible for managing the delivery of Edinburgh’s trams) and City of Edinburgh Council. The West End Traders’ patch covers a small and discreet area full of bars, restaurants and bespoke retail outlets in, you’ve guessed it, Edinburgh’s West End. First off, we developed a new brand called West End Village, an identity and street signage.  And we’re nearing the finishing line in producing a 36 page guide to the area. 

Our direct client, Michael Apter, who runs Paper Tiger and chairs The Association is fullsome in his praise and is particularly keen on one of our headlines as the following quote from him demonstrates. “Businesses in the area have been enthusiastic in their support for the ‘village’ and we’re delighted that the West End has been properly recognised as Edinburgh’s Best End!”

The Evening News did us proud last saturday with a large splash on page 9.  Our clients were delighted (see below).

You can see the creative work here.