Here’s a cracking campaign that never saw the light of day. The idea was that if you lived in London you could join your local council gym, and automatically gain membership of every council gym across the whole city. It would mean that you, the consumer and commuter, could use the gym at the end of your road, and the one nearest your work. It would encourage use of council facilities, and help people on lower incomes because council memberships are far lower than for private gyms and health clubs.

But it didn’t happen. The initiative required too many people to buy in to it, and just never got enough momentum to become a reality. Nice ads though. More after the click

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s 2009 and  the word free is everywhere right now.

Free gift!

Free(dom) from payments for a year!

Kids go free.

Buy one get one free.

Free. No obligation. Guarantee.

No surprise really when one considers that we appear to be in the bleakest of economic midwinters.

So what of free thinking? Open source creativity? Well, we’ve been heartened by two things recently. Two people in fact. Paul Arden and Kevin Kelly.

Read the rest of this entry »

Driving back from a client meeting the other day we listened to the radio. On almost every commercial station various campaigns were running for the big UK supermarkets. Most of the ads were about booze. In one, for a supermarket we won’t embarass by naming, they shouted about the amazingly cheap price of their ‘pallets’ of lager. Pallets. Not a four pack. Not a six pack. A pallet. Of wife beater. Just what you need for Christmas.

Now there’s nothing inherently wrong in buying booze in bulk.

Read the rest of this entry »

Before we came up with the Green Eyed Monster, we also had one of those instant hit ideas based on a very famous photograph that we remembered.

On seeing it, the prospective clients laughed out loud, said how fab it was, and then came up with some very dull reasons about why they couldn’t run it. Ho hum. 

Still - cracking ad, even if we do say so ourselves…

We recently had the chance to work with one of the UK’s leading motorcycle magazines and websites. As some of us are bikers it was a fantastic opportunity.

We had a quick meeting with them, did lots of desk research, and then pinged this back over to them.

Read the rest of this entry »

Back in the summer of 2007, before the UK housing market started to slide ever downward, we were approached by a chain of estate agents here in Bristol. The brief was a simple one:

Read the rest of this entry »

Price Comparison websites. They’re everywhere. We worked with one whose advertising and marketing could be said to be a little, well, dull. So we tried to shake it up, and give them a brand character based on a consumer insight. We created a monster. Why? Read on…..

Read the rest of this entry »

A while ago, long before the words credit and crunch had become permanently joined together we talked to a building society. In keeping with their mutual status, and provincial heritage, what became very clear was how important community was to their members and to them as a brand. Here’s their brand vision (which is on the website and available for all to see, so no confidences broken)

Read the rest of this entry »

To The Free Thinker. To find out more about us and what we offer, please visit the pages ‘Free Ideas’ and ‘How it works’.

Today is launch day - so the number of ideas posted will be relatively few. But over the next few days, weeks and months we hope to produce a steady stream of interesting and stimulating strategic and creative ideas for the marketing and communication sector.

We hope you enjoy what you see - and if you want to get in touch, please e mail us on info@thefreethinker.co.uk