Issue 11

Paying tribute to three entirely different groups of people.

Firstly, to Georgia Malden and her team at Xtreme, who produced the first ten issues of Directory with what seemed effortless ease. Having produced just this one issue myself, I can now appreciate how very professional they were as well as how hard they must have worked.

Directory was very much Georgia’s vision. She wanted each issue to be more of a book than a magazine so that the work would look as good as possible. Her idea was always to celebrate the best of direct and I see no reason to move away from those intentions.

It was great fun working with her and I hope the new team at Directory, me, Jonathan and Dorte, can maintain the same high standards of content and production.

Record numbers

My second salutation is to all the agencies who submitted work for Issue 11. It was a record bag with 107 campaigns submitted by 54 agencies from Australia, Austria, America, Brazil, Canada, Dubai, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey and the UK.

Every campaign that was submitted was interesting. It’s just that there was a lot to choose from and in the interests of a balanced mix between strategically sound and creatively dazzling work, some really good stuff didn’t make it.

The ones that got away

DraftFCB London’s Shred-It campaign springs to mind. To encourage managers in the City of London to use Shred-It document shredders, they pinned hundreds of confidential and personal e-mails and memos to a poster-truck which they parked in key spots during the day so passers-by could read them.

Idea Lobe, a small creative consultancy in London had a great campaign for Amnesty, using public art as their medium.

Proximity Johannesburg had a terrific online campaign for mobile operator Cell C, creating an online community which decided within itself how best to allocate one million Rand to charity.

Singleton Ogilvy, Sydney, had a great idea using social media to encourage young Americans over to Australia for working holidays.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. But we are now publishing a fortnightly newsletter and many of the ideas that don’t appear in hardback will get an airing in our digital offering. (NB, if you aren’t on the newsletter mailing list but would like to be, ping an e-mail to [email protected])

Here’s to the crazy ones

My third tribute is to creative people generally. The square pegs in round holes, the awkward squad, the people who say, “How about?” and “What if?” every day. The people who want to do it different.

You are agents of change. And most organisations will resist you, even reject you. But the irony is, without you they would ossify and die.

Who was the person who first murmured, “Why can’t we get the well educated and well-to-do to educate the poor and the dispossessed?”

Who first asked, “Why don’t we get Oasis to come and teach street musicians their new songs?”

Who suggested putting up a video booth in an English town so women could be filmed watching films of other women?

Whoever you are at JWT Mumbai, at BBH in New York, at Chemistry in London, we’re proud to have your work in Directory. I hope it wasn’t too painful for you to get your ideas out into the world. But congratulations to you all, to everyone whose ideas are featured in this issue, congratulations for your ambition, persistence, stamina, dedication and passion. You are an inspiration.