AdBands 6

Once you start working you'll find that creative departments always seem to be populated by people with passions other than advertising. You don't have to look too hard to find a half written screenplay or someone who is just aching to get behind the camera.

There's an event coming up which seeks to take advantage of the numerous closet rockers roaming  creative departments all over the city. This annual event not only invites people to squeeze into their favourite pair of red leather pants, but it does so for a good cause.  All of the proceeds go towards The Tennyson Quance Foundation for Autism.

AdBands is now in it's sixth year and is organized by Craig Brownrigg, a Director with Radke Films.

Check out the hilarious promo video written by CABA alumni, Andrew Livingston.

Another big win: Grad takes Young Lions GOLD

It's a big year for 2009 grad Andrew Livingston. Back in March he took top honors at the 2009 YoungGuns Competition. And just last week it was announced that he won Gold in the Globe Young Lions Competition. That means he will be part of the team representing Canada at the Cannes Advertising Festival in France, June 20-26.

Along with partner Kyle Lamb, Andrew created this award winning piece for Parkinson Society Canada: click here.

The Focus Group Says

One of the joys of working in advertising focus groups. There's nothing quite like driving out to London Ontario after a long day at the office and sitting behind a one-way mirror while regular everyday people wax poetically about your ad. The problem (one of many) is that when you give people $50 and a can of lukewarm pop the feel like they have to say something. Anything in fact. No matter how absurd: “You have to know me. I’m very jaded when it comes to toilet tissue” and "I feel like the peas and carrots are too sexual" are two fine examples.

Most of us will laugh it off and hope the client ignores the bizarre suggestions. 2009 grad Andrew Livingston took it one step further though and created a hilarious Facebook Group and Twitter Feed to chronicle the absurdity.

And if you enjoy The Focus Group Says, you'll probably get a kick out of Research Hell, linked below. It comes to us from Burn Back, the infamous rockers who brought us Make the Logo Bigger.

Grad strikes gold and becomes the hunted

We've spent a lot of time talking about finding that 'big idea'. Since a great campaign isn't just a series of ads that kinda sorta sit together, but instead a series of ads/communication pieces that are woven together with a big idea - a unifying concept that transcends media.

A perfect example of that comes to us in the form of the winning entry for the 2009 YoungGuns competition from Andrew Livingston - a graduate from this very program. The brief was simple: create the call for entries for YoungGuns 2010. Andrew, along with fellow john st. creatives Kyle Lamb and Omid Amid, submitted an entry called 'Become the Hunted'.

It's an idea so strategically sound AND creativly rich that you instantly know what it's all about just by looking at the name. It conjures up dark horror movie-esqe images of creatives on the run after winning the 2010 competition. Simply brilliant.