Guerilla launch AEG water softeners

We have been busy boys and girls over the last few months launching a new range of water softeners into the UK. If you live anywhere north of Leicester you will think that us southerners are soft enough already. But actually we are hard, well our water is at least. Guerilla have created a web site, a trade launch, trade advertising and PR for the campaign which demonstrates the advantages to the average family of installing a water softener.  We really immersed ourselves in this project involving creating a positioning for AEG water softeners and a short film to dramatise the benefits of soft water.

If you feel like putting soft water at the heart of your home – check out their web site aeg-watertreatment.co.uk

If you want a chat with the softies at Guerilla-Creative who created this campaign check out our web site or be even braver and give us a call on 01628-819007

 

 

 

How much should a good idea cost?

As we are a Creative Ideas Agency we are constantly pondering what we should be charging for our ideas, I know clients are vexed by how much they should pay or have to pay for creative input. But perhaps this is not the right question. Shouldn’t the question be – what is a great idea worth? A colleague of mine was once selling an idea into an upmarket holiday company who were quibbling over the £5,000 creative development fee. He nipped the argument in the bud by reminding them that they only needed to sell one holiday package to pay for this. So possibly we agencies should match price to potential payback. Over the thirteen years that Guerrilla has been in existence we certainly would have made a lot more money.

Wake up to the ROI

I think we charged Great Eastern £3,000 for this idea. Based on an insight that we all fall asleep on the train at some time or other, we created a seasonal talking point that delivered a 3 to 1 ROI on the total spend in terms of extra sales and over £10 million worth of positive PR coverage including prime time TV, national and local radio and press.

Selling up with a little help from Tim

Our clever campaign for Slazenger re-creating Tim Henman’s face in tennis balls alerted a potential buyer to the power of the brand. I am not sure what was paid for the brand but I can guarantee it was a multimillion pound return on investment.

In reality an idea is worth what someone is prepared to pay for it. That should be based on the potential business benefit, which in theory will be reflected in the project budget.

One thing is for sure a really good idea is worth much more that a bad one – or worse still none at all.

Lending a hand with local events

We are a supportive bunch here at Guerilla so when one of our team mentioned a school carnival for their child’s school we jumped on the chance to design the poster. The brief was, well…brief – make it bright and eye-catching and pop some information on there. So we put Guerilla Girl Jess on the case. Jess is fast making a name for herself here at Guerilla with her funky, vibrant designs and we knew she would be just the person to deliver the goods. She didn’t disappoint.

Jess’s design has a retro feel and its use of summery colours really sells the carnival. The visual has a great sense of fun and portrays the all-inclusive, “everyone welcome”, nature of the occasion.

Suffice to say the school were delighted with it!

We can turn our hand to all sorts of creative briefs, however brief – so whatever your requirements why not get in touch and see if the Guerilla’s can lend a hand?

Winning the creative ideas war

At Guerilla we work in creative teams and each team want their ideas to win out, to be the ones selected to go forward. I recently came across a blog outlining techniques to get your ideas selected, most I have used in the past but there are a couple of new thoughts here worth considering:

1. Putting your own idea to the same test you apply to an idea from someone else.

When it comes to your own ideas, it’s easy to be a hypocrite and apply all kinds of hurdles to other ideas while letting your own thinking slide by unchallenged in your own mind.

2. Suspending advocacy of your own idea to push for another person’s concept.

It’s helpful to be able to come into a creative situation and demonstrate your willingness to champion another person’s idea. It can also open the way to getting others to support your thinking.

3. Combining two different ideas and making them better (not muddled) as one idea.

Being able to dissect ideas to pull out highlights and put them together as something new, is a great skill to have. Making everyone think it was your idea in the first place is genius.

4. Letting someone else take “ownership” of your idea in order to build support for it.

This skill really tests whether you believe so strongly in an idea you’re willing to let someone else step up and take it on as their own idea to see it prevail. The key to seeing your idea win out can be letting somebody else be the vocal proponent for it.

5. Displaying the patience to wait for someone else to say what needs to be said so all you have to do is agree.

It’s tempting to jump in right away and make all the points you feel necessary in a creative discussion before anyone else talks. At times though, patience and silence are called for when it becomes clear someone can and will express your perspective – and can do it more appropriately than you can.

6. Sticking to your guns amid challenges to a creative idea which delivers the core strategy.

There are many creative ideas which, while being really cool, have nothing to do with what you’re trying to achieve and how you should be achieving it. When confronted with others who are passionately arguing for highly creative yet hardly strategic concepts, make and remake your case if the idea you’re advocating is on the mark strategically.

These same principles can be applied in meetings with Clients and in the dreaded inter agency blue sky days.

If you want this kind of passionate belief in winning creative ideas for your next campaign contact us team@guerilla-creative.co.uk.

Introducing Jessica Gray

Today I had the distinct pleasure of sitting down with Jessica Gray, our most recent addition to the Guerilla family. She allowed me to quiz her on life’s most important questions including “what did you have for tea last night” and “what is your party trick!?” What she had to say was both exciting and ground breaking… have a read below but brace yourself – this is life changing stuff:

Quiz Master Kyle: What is your full name? Jessica Alice Gray – the Guerilla’s call me “Rick”

Quiz Master KyleWhat special skill are you going to bring to the Guerilla team? The wall of sloth, my special parking skills and my quirky and fun style of design.

Quiz Master Kyle: What do you like to do in your spare time? I like to go on trips, I like to go here there and everywhere. My last trip was to Bird World and next I’m thinking of going into London, maybe a trip to the Natural History Museum.

Quiz Master Kyle: If you could be any superhero who would you be and why? Wonder Woman definitely. I really like her outfit. (Superpowers are secondary to fabulous outfit choices in Jessica’s opinion).

Quiz Master Kyle: What is your all time favourite sandwich filling? Prawn mayonnaise on brown bread.

Quiz Master Kyle: What is your party trick? She gets a bit embarrassed but I manage to get the truth out of her…turns out that she can “talk like a chipunk” I invite her to give me a demonstration and lo, it’s like being in the room with Alvin himself. An extraordinary talent, I ask how on earth she discovered she could do that and she replies “it just came to me one day”. Astonishing.

Quiz Master Kyle: What are you most proud of? I am proud that I achieved a degree in Graphic Design and that I have found a job which allows me to use it every day! She genuinely does look proud, she’s right to be, we think she is doing a great job!

Quiz Master Kyle: What are your 3 pet peeves? She responds almost immediately, I think she must spend quite a bit of time thinking about these. I don’t like cuddlers, I don’t like people who make a fuss about nothing and I really hate people who don’t bother to indicate before pulling out! She goes in to detail about the time she was driving past a parked van as part of a line of traffic when the van just pulled out without bothering to indicated…she was furious.

Quiz Master Kyle: Tell us something interesting about you… I can scuba dive, I did my first dive when I was just 15 years old.

Quiz Master Kyle: If you weren’t working with the Guerilla’s, what would your ideal job be? She thinks for a moment and then she says… I do like packaging… I explain that this can be any job, any job in the whole world… She seems reluctant to let go of her love of packaging but eventually she admits she would quite like to have been an actress… we digress slightly while we discover a mutual appreciation of period drama…

Quiz Master Kyle: Beach or mountains? Beach definitely – skiing has no appeal for me

Quiz Master Kyle: Quiet pub or noisy club? Noisy club!

Quiz Master Kyle: Lazy Sunday breakfast or party with friends? Party with friends!

Quiz Master Kyle: What did you have for dinner last night? I had chicken fajitas. I experimented with courgettes in them, I won’t be doing that again – it wasn’t my best idea.

Quiz Master Kyle: When you were little what did you want to be when you grew up? I wanted to be a Mermaid. I ask her what made her change her mind. She looks at me like I’m crazy and then says I don’t have a tail! (I feel like a fool for asking). She interrupts my questions for a moment to tell me that she is thinking of dying her hair pink like a My Little Pony and we get distracted by a childhood story about the time one of the girls in her class used the tail hair of her My Little Pony to flick mud at her. It was a bad time for Jess.

Quiz Master Kyle: What was your favourite toy as a child? 1990s Barbie is the original as far as I’m concerned, me and my sisters used to spend hours playing with our Barbie’s. I say that I think Barbie’s were out before the 90’s and she tells me that as far as she sees it, anything either pre or post 1990’s is an abomination.

Quiz Master Kyle: Why did you decide to go into Graphic Design? I like thinks that look pretty, I want to make things look pretty. The way things look is important. Art was my favourite subject at school.

Quiz Master Kyle: Finally – if you were on the 10am train from Reading to Maidenhead, and you were travelling at 90 mph, what time would you get in to Maidenhead? I can’t answer that, I don’t know if there are delays on that line.

I can’t argue with that logic so I thank Jess and we both trundle back to our desks to continue our day. I can’t lie…the world of Guerilla feels just a bit more pink and sparkly with Rick in it!

Jess gives her answers some serious thought…

What does it take to work for a creative ideas agency?

At Guerilla we have a triple “A” measure of creativity.

Ability. A simple definition is that creativity is the ability to imagine or invent something new. The ability to generate new ideas by combining, changing, or re-applying existing ideas.

Anyone can be creative – but very few realise this potential.

Attitude. the willingness to accept change and innovations, open to play with ideas and possibilities, a flexibility of outlook, the habit of enjoying the good, while looking for ways to improve it. We are programmed from a young age to accept certain norms, like chocolate-covered strawberries. The creative person realises that there are other possibilities, like turkey, brussels sprouts and mayo sandwiches.

Application.  A stroke of genius or a flash on insight, whilst welcome is rarer than rocking horse poo. Creativity is an evolution of ideas, continually refining and improving to get to the best possible result. That’s why brainstorms work, it’s easier for someone else to see what’s good in an idea and improve it a bit, a good brainstorm is a virtuous circle of improvement.

The creative person also knows that there is always room for improvement. But you also need the commercial savvy to realise that you have reached the point of diminishing returns – i.e. any further refining will not payback in terms of ponds in the till.

Apply today

So if your first thought when you see something is I wonder how I could make it better, if you would rather try a new flavour over an old favourite and if you are big enough to realise that things can always be improved, you might well want to send us your CV.

And if you think your marketing output is going stale, your strawberries not tasting as good as they used to, give us a call and see what a dose of triple “A” creativity can do for your marketing communication.

Email us at team@guerilla-creative.co.uk or give us a call on 01628 819007. http://www.guerilla-creative.co.uk

The origins of Guerilla

2000 was a landmark year for many reasons, there was a lot of hubbub when the Y2K bug threatened (and then failed) to shut down everyone’s systems… The Tate Modern opened its doors in the former Bankside power station… Big Brother hit our screens for the very first time… “Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire” became the fastest selling book ever… Tiger Woods broke the record for the lowest score under par at the Scottish Open at St Andrews and the first inhabitants arrived at the International Space Station (the crew comprised of one American and two Russian Astronauts)….My point is that you can already see that 2000 was shaping up to be a bumper year…Then something extraordinary happened…two men decided to change their fates forever when they waved “cheery-bye” to their Mad Men city lives and decided to set up on their own. Yes folks, this month we celebrate 13 staggering, emotional and exciting years in the life of an awesome marketing company we like to call ‘Guerilla’.

To celebrate this momentous occasion, I dragged Gus and Ian away from their private jets and sat them down with a cup of coffee (or in Gus’ case a “double bagger cup of tea”) and quizzed them…here is what they had to say:

Quizmaster Kyle: How did you two meet?

Ian: Uniform dating dot com – sheer chance that we also worked together at an Agency. Did I tell you that Gus worked for me back then? (I mentally start to speculate as to what his job was) then Gus chips in;  Gus: I spotted him playing the piano in a strip club and liked the look of his cap sleeved T shirt. There is no arguing with the logic in that.

Quizmaster Kyle: When did you launch Guerilla?

Gus: When we were younger. Ian: April 2000.

Quizmaster Kyle: What made you decide to set up your own company?

Gus: The desire to create a community, commune if you will, of like-minded professional creative people with integrity, enthusiasm and ability. Ian just wanted a bigger car. Ian: Frustration working at snail’s pace in a west end agency when it was obvious the 21st century demanded fresh ideas with speed of thought and action to go with it. The days of pushing a brief under the creative directors door and waiting two weeks for a scribble back are long gone for us.

Quizmaster Kyle: Did you get into a fight over what to call your agency?

Gus: Only when I refused to let Ian register “Humphreys Funky Creative Bitches” as the name…  Ian: Naked in front of an open fire – I won. This is startling information – we would have put money on a Gus victory in these circumstances.

Quizmaster Kyle: Describe Guerilla in 5 words

Ian: Creative ideas generate impactful advertising Gus: Passionate, inventive, honest, intelligent and fun.

Quizmaster Kyle: What can Guerilla offer that other agencies can’t?

Ian: Nothing – but we do it all better. Why because we love and care about what we do. Gus: Total commitment to providing the best creative solution whilst having fun getting there.

Quizmaster Kyle: How do you settle “creative differences”

Ian: See question 4. (Ian is referring to the naked fireplace fight) Gus: Arm wrestling, table football and giving each other wedgies until one of us cries or splits their pants.

Quizmaster Kyle: What have been the highlights of Guerilla so far?

Gus: Ian’s pants splitting. Ian: The PC answer -Meeting and working with interesting and cool creative people both colleagues and clients. The real answer – Making enough money to build a swimming pool in my garden. (He sensibly omits to mention that he also has “room for a pony”)

Quizmaster Kyle: If you could go back to the start, what would you do differently or what advice would you give yourselves?

Ian: Honestly not a lot, probably to spend less on staff jollies. (That’s true, the annual Guerilla jaunt for cocktails does go to our heads. Magic Steve went AWOL for a whole morning after our most recent night out, he was last spotted weaving his way down Marlow high street and didn’t turn up until lunch time the next day) Gus: Don’t be in a hurry, enjoy the journey

Quizmaster Kyle: What will you be doing to celebrate this momentous birthday?

Ian: See answer 9. Ian reiterates that he won’t be spending anything on staff jollies to celebrate – I make a note to bring in my own party poppers. Gus: Cheese and onion crisps. Gus misunderstands the question and becomes distracted with the lure of beige food.

Quizmaster Kyle: What’s next for Guerilla?

Ian: Pitching for my dream account – Pole Position the international lap dancing agency. Gus: Form a political party, challenge the accepted norm, grow beards and fight crime.

So there you have it, the masterminds behind Guerilla allow me to unravel the mystery of our beginnings. Here’s to another 13 years. It’s been emotional!

Feel free to get in touch with the Guerilla’s to see what unique twist we can put on your brand communications. We’d always love to hear from you, no naked wrestling required!

Gus & Ian – The masterminds behind Guerilla.

A spanking new Guerilla website

Today is a very exciting day at Guerilla Towers because our marvellous new website has launched. That’s right, we are coming at you loud and proud with a vibrant new site with a Latin feel. The website reflects the energy and dynamism of Guerilla and more importantly, allows us some cocktail themed visuals linked to the creative process (a process which cries out for a team night of cocktails surely?!).

Explore the Guerilla bar – feel free to help yourself

To tell you more about www.guerilla-creative.co.uk and the thinking process behind it, I sat down with Gus, one of the masterminds behind its conception, here’s what he had to say:

Today you are launching your spanking new website, what was the thinking behind refreshing your old site?

We’ve evolved a greater understanding of what clients are looking for when they come to choosing an agency. With media becoming increasingly commoditised, brands need to constantly refresh their creative in order to stand out and gain customers interest and interaction. We are seeking to demonstrate to prospective clients that we can deliver fresh creative ideas by the way in which the new site looks and works rather than by showing lists of clients and galleries of work.

You have gone for a vibrant “Latin” feel to the site – how do you feel this represents your brand?

Che was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist, he also had a great hair and a cool beard. We don’t have any of these things in common but we are called Guerilla so we think we are entitled to borrow some of his style.

Talk us through some of your favourite parts of the new site and tell us why you like them?

I really like the fact that it is simple, you can get what we are about straight away and it’s not full of the bullshit which most Agency sites are.

What else can you tell us about the site?

The soundtrack to the show reel is actually performed by co-director Ian Humphrey’s band “Hard Options” back in the day, and we do mean back in the day.

How do you plan to promote your new look site?

Ian has a new car and when he’s not looking we are going to paint the url on the passenger side, we reckon on 3 weeks’ worth of exposure between Watford, Bourne End and Harewood Downs Golf Club before he notices.

Viva la creative!

Have a nosy around the website and tell us what you think – www.guerilla-creative.co.uk or pop by with your brief and we’ll get our thinking caps on and see what we can do for you.

Bon Chance!

 

Valentines Day is the perfect time to buy a special gift for someone you love and Christopher Wharton goldsmith, one of Britain’s best loved and respected jewellers asked us to dream up a promotion to get more customers into their Cambridge and St Albans showrooms during this important period. A Romantic creative treatment was the key and what could be more romantic that dinner for two atop the Eiffel tower in Paris? All you need to do for a chance to win this prize complete with travel and hotel accommodation is to make a purchase from before the 14^th February. Direct mail, email marketing, local press and in store POS delivered the campaign and the stores are nice and busy, especially as there’s and extra 10% off during the period.

Visit the website for your chance to win: http://www.whartongoldsmith.com/

Dining out on great creative

We have been busy in the kitchen and the board room winning a creative pitch to develop and run a national press campaign for La Doria’s “Cook Italian” brand.

In an unusual approach to brainstorming, the Guerilla team discussed the brand and attitudes towards Italian food, cooking and shopping over a pasta dish prepared in the office using only Cook Italian ingredients. Insights fuelled by this approach helped us to create a campaign which brings the brand to life and expresses the true difference Cook Italian ingredients can bring to every day Italian dishes. The campaign is live across the UK in food and lifestyle glossies, Sunday supplements and retail magazines until the end of March.