Quote Friday: Giants Wanted

Another from David Ogilvy...

"If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants."

Which is topical, as we are hiring again. Senior account manager and writers/designers wanted.

Apply within.

Richard

And the winner is...

Slightly late, but the results of our Christmas Heroes quiz have been ratified by an independent adjudicator (not really). The top 5 are as follows:

In fifth place, with a respectable 8 out of 15 is Les from St John Ambulance

In fourth, we have Louise Philips from RNID

Technically joint second, but separated by a tiebreaker are Michael from Unicef (with 12 out of 15) and Nathalie from SOFII (with 12.5)

And our winner with a very impressive 13/15 is...

Action for Children's Linda Snellgrove who will now have £500 to give to the charity of her choice!! Well done Linda.

For anyone wanting the answers to the quiz, here you go:

James's hero is: Miles Davis
Hannah's hero is: David Attenborough
Richard's hero is: Harvey Milk
Matt's hero is: J L Carr
Tom's hero is: Ayrton Senna
Nicki's hero is: Donald Woods
Paul's hero is: Stephen Hawking

Tim's hero is: Dr B R Ambedkar
Mark's hero is: Ole Kirk Christiansen (the inventor of LEGO)
Rebecca's hero is: Alfred Wainwright

Sinead's hero is: John Hume
Folake's hero is: Martin Luther King Jr
Caty's hero is: Cleopatra (although Elizabeth Taylor was accepted too, and provided the tiebreaker between Michael and Nathalie)

Louise's hero is: Harry Beck
and finally, Emma's hero is: Judge Judy!

We'll let you know where Linda decides to give her money.

Richard

Worst banner ad ever?

Now, we're no experts in online advertising, but if your banner ad isn't going to continuously scroll, make sure your final frame is really fucking good.

Meet Birmingham... there's nothing there...

Richard

This might have been funny...

if the voiceover wasn't so bland.

Richard

Frying the Server...

Twitter endorsements really don't get any better than this. 4,000 hits in an hour and the My Action for Children server is presumably smoking like half my agency outside the pub at closing time.

Thank you Stephen.

Quote Friday

This week, Bill Bernbach...

“Merely to let your imagination run riot, to dream unrelated dreams, to indulge in graphic acrobatics and verbal gymnastics is NOT being creative. The creative person has harnessed his imagination. He has disciplined it so that every thought, every idea, every word he puts down, every line he draws, every light and shadow in every photograph he takes, makes more vivid, more believable, more persuasive the original theme or product advantage he has decided he must convey.”

You can read more here.

We did this

Today sees the launch of My Action for Children – which offers donors the chance to choose exactly where and how their money is spent. And, just as important, when people have given, it shows them exactly what they've achieved.

As you can imagine, it wasn't easy getting 400+ projects online. The accounting, logistics and organisational side has been challenging to say the least. But it's done, it works and we think it's a game-changer.

Thank you everyone at 9Web for building it, Baigent for plumbing in the payment system and, of course, Action for Children for making it happen.

James

Work not like

In a world of social networks, everyone is talking about what they 'like'.

Which is great.

I like my friend's status update. I like that photo. I like that event. My taste – my choice.

In the world of charity and design and marketing and advertising, the question of taste becomes a tricky one. For 90% of the work we produce, nobody here at Open, and nobody at the charities we work for is the target audience. So what we like, or what our clients like isn't necessarily what will work – ie what our audience likes.

And surely what works is what matters.

So maybe next time you look at a piece of work, or next time you pass something on the street, instead of clicking the imaginary 'like' or 'unlike' button, reach for the 'work' or 'doesn't work' button instead. It'll be a much better measure of something that you're maybe not even supposed to like.

Richard

Technically only one working-day late, here is our second quote Friday

In the world of charity, lots of things seem to have been happening for a long time. Certain things are safe. Certain things are easy. Certain things present little risk. And sometimes these are the right things to do. But sometimes we need to push the boundaries, innovate, move things forwards, be different, stand out.

We're very lucky here at Open to have some brilliant clients who also believe this to be true. Paul Arden said it much better than I ever could though...

"If you always make the right decision, the safe decision, the one most people make, you will be the same as everyone else."

Richard

Quote Friday..?

As feared, the busiest week ever has meant that we forgot about Quote Friday. On only the second week as well. Oh dear.

Maybe we'll get it back up on Monday and hope no-one noticed. Here's a picture of a sketchbook in the meantime.

We're doing much better with our Twitter, if anyone is interested... @openfundraising

Richard

You Saw it Here First...

Connected – our new product which lets you make regular gifts and receive brilliant feedback via your phone launched last week. And since it seems to be going rather well, we thought we should blog about it.

We put the whole thing together with our friends at CYMBA and have been granted a special licence to operate the system by the lovely people at Phonepay Plus. We're currently testing for UNICEF on the streets with Gift and there are several more good causes (plus channel tests) coming on stream in the next few weeks.

It's been a bit of a regulatory/patent law/technical marathon and we're still very much in a 'Beta' phase. But that won't stop us being extremely excited when we get a second.

To see it for yourself will cost you £3 a month to UNICEF. Just text LIFE to 70007.
This is a subscription service. You will be charged £3 plus one message at your standard network rate in the first month and £3 a month thereafter. UNICEF will receive between £2.40 and £2.96 depending on your network provider. To unsubscribe, text STOP to 70007 or call 0844 669 5255

James