Firecracker. Digitally driven • Marketing led

It’s the Final Countdown…

August 25th, 2010 by Firecracker

The temperature’s rising, the barometer’s getting low, there’s a storm in the office and it’s the excitement of the Break into… final. Our team are split about who should win and it’s a tough call because the finalists are all lovely, hugely talented individuals.

It’s down to the public vote now and voting they are, while Ryan Taylor had a strong lead, Benjamin Hague has been catching up fast. On Facebook ‘Team Ryan’ have been working hard, hard, hard to give their hero a lead, they dominate the Break into wall and have managed so far to keep him in the Number 1 spot.

Here at Firecracker Towers there are three separate camps as you might well expect – and this is where they are pitched:

Team Ryan – 25% of the office vote

Cowboy or Pop Idol? Watch his tribute to Bon Jovi (really??!) and you decide. He clearly has a huge following on Facebook, there has been a Ryan frenzy, and it’s put him in pole position. When our Jon (Lea, master of the written word) interviewed him on the telephone, he confessed that Ryan has a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’. Jon has since taken a vow of silence and refuses to share what ‘quoi’ could be.

Team Benjamin – our Firecracker fave with 45% of the vote

Benjamin is the baby of the competition and a dead ringer for Lloyd from X-Factor 2009 (don’t you think?). We don’t know a lot about him except he has a lovely voice, comes from Yorkshire and is a big fan of David Gray. Our copywriter Debs Seal has just moved from France to Yorkshire so is keen to lend her support to her newly local ‘boy’.

Team Lauren – 30% of the office vote

The only female left standing a vote for Lauren is a vote for girl power. Yes her audition is slightly annoying but doesn’t she have lovely teeth? And she looks gorgeous in her Facebook profile pic. She’s a Virgo which means she’ll automatically have support from our MD who shares her star sign. A vote from Hugh Taylor is a sure sign of breaking into something…..(lets hope its not a rash).

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10 things I hate about Microsoft

August 13th, 2010 by Elizabeth Clifford-Marsh

I want to make it clear straight off the bat – I am not an Apple fan girl. Personally I don’t give a monkey’s what OS my computer uses, and I use MS office simply because it’s there. Although I do prefer Firefox to IE – but that’s mostly a legacy of IE 6 being so pants, and it’s no longer a conscious choice. However there are many things about Microsoft that get right under my skin – things that detract from a user perspective and things that surely can’t be that hard to fix.

1. MSN – I have so many gripes with this poor excuse for a website I don’t even know where to begin.
a. It’s so slooooow to load. Seriously what’s the hold up? It’s a basic news page. The BBC doesn’t take that long, neither does the Times or any of the countless multimedia sites. What’s the hold up?
b. When you log out of Hotmail you are automatically redirected to MSN. Not wanting to p*ss around waiting for the page to load I begin to type the URL of the next site I’m heading to. However, Microsoft in all its wisdom is convinced I don’t want to go there and where I really want to go is to Bing. So it automatically moves the cursor to the Bing search box. I am sick to death of seeing Bing search results for “acebook”.
c. Buttons. Shouldn’t. Move. Anyone else get irritated by the next button in the picture gallery being ever so slightly out of place on each subsequent page? I am lazy. I don’t wanna move my mouse.

2. Now personally I’m not a MSN chat user, but according to a colleague who does, it drops out constantly even though you’re internet hasn’t. That would be annoying. Casting my mind back to the dark ages before Facebook, I think my last username was “bruisehag” on account of my first year uni antics.

3. Auto formatting. If I want to type the date, I will type the date. Sometimes I want to type numbers that happen to look like a date – doesn’t mean they are. Ditto bullet points moving all over the damn place. Microsoft, you are not smarter than the average user. Take your damn picnic basket elsewhere.

4. By the same token, we don’t need to be told of every little thing you do behind the scenes. I’m like a theatre audience – all I care about is the show runs smoothly and no-one fluffs their lines. I’m not interested in hearing about props going missing backstage only to reappear minutes before the curtain goes up. So what’s with the constant notifications when I start up the computer? I don’t need to be told about being connected to a certain network every single time… just do it!

5. Another colleague with a VERY weird Word gripe – running spell check results Microsoft informing her it cannot find proofing tools for Welsh. Her dictionary is set to English! I was convinced it was user error as well but I’ve seen this happen with my own eyes!

6. I’m a PC ads… and so are 80 percent of computer users in world. That’s billions of people. No need to be so smug.

7. Our esteemed designer Sarah HATES Outlook 2007 onwards – a lack of support for CSS means HTML emails have to be built using toothpicks, kindergarten scissors and crayons!

8. Bill Gates dropped out of uni and is now a billionaire. Meanwhile my student loan is more than my yearly income. Nuff said.

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An Indian Summer? – No, its all Greek to me

July 20th, 2010 by Sarah_am

If I had a rupee for every time someone said ‘ohhhh its an Indian Summer this year’ then I would still be a very poor person indeed. But I would be very many rupees better off. Is it patronising to correct a person’s wrong use of phrase? In fairness as a metaphor mixer and saying corrupter, I’m not exactly guiltless of disrupting the English language, but hey you have to make a stand somewhere right?

So anyway the fact that it isn’t actually an Indian Summer, just an unusually warm, yet TIMELY English summer isn’t the point, this is just a very roundabout way to the point.

Which is this: I was at the Southbank for lunch the other day, it was a beautiful BRITISH summer day, the sun was hot, hot, the natives and tourists were happy, happy, and by the river was a Greek beach. Yes you read that right. A fabulously timely, relevant and beautifully delivered brand experience. The Greek beach (almost) at Gabriel’s Wharf is a collaboration between Greek brands including (but not limited to) Mythos beer and Olympia Airlines.

Part of the ever growing ‘pop up’ culture it was only there for two weeks at the end of June so if you missed it, try and picture it here…

Complete with deep sand, sun loungers, bar and bar tables, the private beach offered passers by an oasis from the busy streets of London overlooking a stretch of water no way as calm and blue as the med but definitely more befitting of the setting (that’ll be the Thames).

As far as brand experiences go it gave a good enough feeling of Greece to make you want to go, without giving you too much and making you think you had it all here in the UK. An Indian summer may be a late one but it looks like a Greek summer in London is an oh too short one. Bring back the beach in 2011….

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Firecracker Brings Back Lunch

June 17th, 2010 by Firecracker

We have just gone live with a campaign for Monster which encourages the nation to ‘Bring Back Britain’s Lunch Hour’. It’s an interesting one and something which is particularly close to Hugh’s heart – he who is a big advocate of the Slow Food movement.

So we’ve all got to thinking about what we’re going to do in our efforts to ‘Bring Back Britain’s Lunch Hour’ and here are a few examples:


Hugh Taylor
As the thrusting boss of a busy digital agency it’s part of my job to go out schmoozing with clients and prospects over long, productive lunches (yes, it’s tough but somebody’s got to do it). Trouble is, business lunches do not honed athletes make. I am now in training on bike and foot for at least three lunchtimes a week. I recently took part in the Three Peaks Challenge for fun and charity and I’m going to be doing more. Any sponsors?


Sarah Aird-Mash
I used to be a lunchtime desk potato. Then I discovered BBBLH. Now I’m spoilt for choice, evidently the pub is a favoured destination but being round the corner from Selfridges is quite handy. Then there are friends, clients, lunches, meetings (in the pub). Picnics in the park. So many things to do, so little time. My BBBLH quest is to get as much out of every day that I possibly can, starting with lunchtimes.



Elizabeth Clifford-Marsh
I spend too much time indoors, and yet I’m from New Zealand and I’m used to the great outdoors. So now the sun is shining I am going to work on my tan. BBBLH isn’t about doing something to save the world, it’s about doing something that’s makes real use of that crucial one hour lunch break. There’s a park nearby where I can stretch out and think nice thoughts. I’ll be more relaxed and have a nice healthy tan.


Sarah Hodgson
I get plenty of fresh air at lunchtime because I’m usually outside the office having a ciggie – so no problem there. But seriously, I studied classics at college and I’ve let it all drop since starting work. BBBLH has encouraged me to revisit my lunchtime. I’m going to get through a worthwhile book every two weeks. There’s nothing nicer than a bit of cultural nourishment (as well as the food kind) at lunchtime to get the old grey cells working. There’s more to life than the web!


Jon Lea
I’m good at taking lunch breaks, so getting away from my desk is no problem. But I always end up with a chicken roll and a cappuccino at the local café with my head buried in the FT (all right then, Daily Mail). Here I am in the middle of central London surrounded by green spaces: Regents Park, Hyde Park, Green Park, St James Park. So for a change of scenery I am going to do a great British park one lunchtime each week – to get some exercise, soak up the sun and study the “birds”.


Micky Mollallegn
I’m a bit of a philosopher. OK a lot of one. I like to read about people who inspire me – right now it’s Martin Luther, who spoke out about his beliefs and challenged the world in a generation that was ruled by a corrupt and exploitative faith. My problem is it takes me the whole lunch time to read a single page because it sets me thinking in so many different directions. So three 300 page books could potentially take me 3 years of lunchtimes to complete. I’d better get on – lots to digest….



Andrew Hughes-Onslow
I’m the new boy on the team so at the moment my main lunch activity is exploring the neighbourhood and weighing up all the options around. I understand there is a kick boxing academy, French school, gym and library in the area, also numerous pubs and also of course the park. I think I’ll spend my lunch hours this summer exploring, kicking back and formulating a plan. Watch this space….

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It’s all about the Elephants

May 14th, 2010 by Sarah_am

If you live in London you might have noticed everyone has gone ele-crazy. Thanks to the Elephant Parade which is the ‘largest financial support organisation for elephants’ in the world, there are 258 lifesize Elephant sculptures displayed around the Capital. For me it all started a few weeks ago when I spotted one on Carnaby St, then another near Marble Arch. The same evening I was in a kebab shop in Surbiton where I happened to learn that the kebab chef’s first English word was Elephant. OK, slightly random maybe but on closer questioning it turns out he used to live in Elephant and Castle. One of the girls at work started reading Water for Elephants. The Elephution seems to have begun….

So I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised when the other day I was walking down Carnaby St (again) and spotted one of our clients campaigning next to a sky blue elephant adorned in hand-painted clouds giving out T-shirts, balloons and generally signing up petitioners to support the Elephant Parade and save the Asian elephant. This ele-vision was brought to us by no other than salesforce.com. They beautifully married the cause with the product by creating a campaign to save an elephant named Cloudia. The relevance being that salesforce.com is all about the cloud computing.

As I registered my personal support I chatted with one of the salesforce team who enlightened me about their fantastic work scheme – every employee at salesforce is given six days a year which they can spend on charitable works of their choice. How lovely is that?

A fantastic cause, a great (and clever) partnership and a committed brand. THAT is what CSR is all about.

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