I’ve worked in agencies where ‘big fat creative space’ referred simply to the table tennis, dart board or bean bags that were exclusively reserved for creative ‘thinking time’. I’ve never heard it referred to as the space between the liquid and linked content, all encapsulated beneath the Coca Cola brand. But that’s what happened. And what’s more, I believed it.

Jonathan Madenhall had a big task – explain the Coca Cola brand to all levels of marketers via 30 dynamic slides in 20 mins. Tell us about the obstacles, issues, culture, and vision of the brand. But do it quickly as Doug Van Andel from Saatchi & Saatchi X is waiting in the wings to tell us how Radical Optimism helped Moshi Moshi communicate the story of their fishs’ origin, via a squid inked QR code.

And so it begins. The Annual Circus Festival of 2013. We were off to a great start and the case studies didn’t disappoint.

The after lunch, full tummy, generally sluggish session took a new turn when Craig Davis broke social etiquette by requesting we all took off our shoes and be present and aware. He then went on to break ‘creativity’ down into financial terms. Conscious capitalism, whereby we understand that ‘being creative’ has a commercial output to the client.

Rebecca Van Dyke (head of consumer marketing, Facebook) spoke about the speed of innovation being our competitive advantage – “Move fast and break things. But be aware and learn. Fail harder but fail smarter”. But most importantly for Facebook – be paranoid, someone else is thinking about it too.

The second day was a different kind of rewarding. We’d finished with the creative case studies and opened the stage to all types of creativity. Circus called it ‘The Battle of Big Thinking’. This was three speakers, singers, or performers that went into a 15min head to head, in an effort to win us over.

Ben Peacock explained how he gave the Bondi locals a reason to want to clean up. The Garage Sale Trail broke down the bigger global problem into a consumer benefit – ‘do you have stuff you want to sell?’. Which, in turn helped Bondi clean up. The same premise existed for his Grow it Local campaign with equally compelling results.

Clare Bowditch split the room into three, each with our own verse (we are all amazing) and was easily off to a clear win. That was until she was followed by Michael Hing. His “I haven’t done anything but tell you a story” approach to comedy was not entirely true, as it was his delivery that had the entire room in hysterics, but it did help him to secure the Round 2 win.

For me the clear winner of the day went to Farrah Bostic in her single-minded approach to all marketing activity. “I am not a small pink version of a man”.
Farrah looked at this from both sides of the marketing realm – How women are being marketed to, and how women work in marketing.
How output needs to be more aware of women as consumers (I may not be your target audience but I am your customer) but also how we need to try and change the ratio of women working in marketing. The statistics were powerful.

There were a lot of other speakers with equally tangible results and presentations. Overall, nearly all were inspiring in some way or at least, I managed to leave with a new consideration or appreciation for a brand or process. The sessions helped me to think about brands and the bigger picture and about having confidence in what we do. Especially as I’m a woman, working in marketing, in an agency that’s owned by a woman, whose brand colour is pink….

Download CIrcus Festival Field Notes here.

When is milk more than milk…when it is delivered by the hard-as-nails, really scary MF war veteran Sergeant John Henry!

This is definitely not kid-terriority! But it was great to get the chance to spend the morning with The Monkey’s Executive Planning Director, Fabio Buresti. A great case study in brand strategy meeting comms strategy and the need to rely on gut instinct when you just know the strategy is right.

The Monkeys hit the sweet spot when they saw the underlying mental confusion that we as humans face every day…am I hungry? or thirsty?

Key take outs:
1. Always look for the fresh angle to an old problem
2. Have a strategic POV on Tone of Voice. Be Consistent .. and that means ALL the time
3. Dont take the easy option and simply show your audience a mirror!
4. And above all … KEEP BEING CONSISTENT.

(PS: note to my kids .. Hungry? Thirsty? You are neither…you are just Bored! now get back to your homework).

Download here.

And we want our clients to know that they have an extra pair of eyes and ears looking out for them each and every day. Running a small business is a big task, especially as I also have two school age kids keeping me busy, so I was thrilled when I could bring Robyn Larkham into our team as a Senior Account Director.

Robyn joins the Decoder team with over 10 years’ of agency experience. She started her career at Lavender* NZ working on the Westpac account, and with a move to London, has gone on to work in some of Londons most successful Direct Marketing agencies. She brings with her a passion for results-focussed direct communication and an enthusiastic and inquisitive approach to delivering the work.

Decoder’s mission has remained unchanged for the past 8 years … we want to be Brisbane’s (no actually Australia’s) most recommended agency. Our new L2R scorecard works to deliver clients creative ideas that work wrapped in an experience that supports and positively challenges clients. With Robyn’s experience and great approach to the work, I can see us working harder than ever to give clients a reason to actively recommend us.

Featured in this weeks Campaign Brief, Cystic Fibrosis Queensland launches new fundraising campaign ‘The Great Aussie Breather’ via independent Brisbane agency Decoder.

Cystic Fibrosis Queensland (CFQ) this week launches its new fundraising campaign, The Great Aussie Breather conceived by Brisbane agency Decoder.

The campaign has now been brought to life by iformat and invites companies to register on the Great Aussie Breather website and then raffle a day off work amongst employees by donating ‘a day off work’ as a prize. Employees buy tickets from The Great Aussie Breather website, for the chance to win a day off.

Our head of strategy James said: “When we started work on fundraising initiatives for Cystic Fibrosis Queensland this year, we of course wanted to tell the CFQ story, but the brands that are winning hearts and minds are those that not only have a great story, but those that also enable their customers. By making action (and by that I mean donations) easy, we have developed a campaign for CFQ that not only communicates the brand story, but that also encourages our audience to share that story with friends through social media channels, and be rewarded for that participation.

“Our clients across all sectors are recording tighter budgets, so the traditional marketing model using brought media space is becoming more and more difficult. Whilst the upfront costs of creating our own media can be more expensive, the measured return through generating consumer conversation makes it more than worthwhile. By giving CFQ the right digital tools, it makes things a whole lot easier.”

It was a sea of “Suncorp Bank green” at this weekend’s Blackmores Sydney Running Festival, where the Decoder-created (and comically named) ‘bum seats’ proved a hit amongst competitors and supporters alike.

The bum seats, a hardy cardboard that was craftily cut and folded to act as a portable and environmentally-friendly seat, were just one way Suncorp Bank leveraged their runPositive sponsorship of the event. By offering a unique ‘support’ service (pun intended) to attendees, it proved Suncorp Bank genuinely lived and breathed its community values.

The seats encouraged people to hang around (something that didn’t happen at all the previous years) and some were even getting packed up and taken home! As a result, who knows? The Suncorp Bank branded bum seats might just pop up at other outdoor events!

One of the best decisions ADMA has made in recent years is to move the annual Forum away from the last/first week of the financial year. In the past, I’ve arrived in Sydney totally exhausted with no hope of re-engaging my brain. This year, the late August date is perfect. We’re well into the start of the year and the kids are safely tucked away at school. So now I’m looking forward to two days of learning and experiences that we can bring back and share with you all.

While the international keynote addresses arealways a highlight, I’m excited about the debate on Day 1 – Is marketing an art or a science? Decoder has always seen itself as an alchemist that brings the world of creativity and art together with disciplines of analytics and strategic insight. To us, you can’t have one without the other, so itwill be interesting to see what happens under the rule of ‘only one winner’.

On top of madly scribbling Field Notes for two days (and hoping my new Inkling pen works!), James, Tom and I will be will checking out the latest and greatest from the Trade Exhibition, and hopefully enjoying some team bonding – I’ve heard Tom is lucky when it comes to the casino. If he bets our travel allowances on the first night, we’ll be either dining at *est on Thursday night or McDonalds.

Stay close to our twitter feed over the next two days to pick up Fields Notes as they come hot off the press and let us know if you want a fully compiled set next week.

After seven years of watching Decoder grow and prosper our long time friend and consultant Mr Michael McGee has finally agreed to join the team, as Finance Director.

We first met Michael in June 2005 when he came to our office in Prospect Street to set up Jobbag for us. At the time we had around 12 clients, 20 odd suppliers, 6 staff and maybe 25 jobs on the go. Today we rolled into the new financial year with more than 30 regular clients, over a hundred of suppliers, 26 full time and contracted staff, and almost 200 jobs on the go. Throughout that period of growth Michael was always hugely supportive of Decoder’s financial philosophy and saw a bright future for us.

I know you’ll hear him around the office, and he’ll always be first out the door when beer is on tap, so from all of us at Decoder… Diddley dee Diddley dee … lets say cheers to Michael McGee!