Sick Beats

When you see so much work throughout your career and as a Creative Director you see a lot - the good, the bad and the dam right ugly and then, a couple fall out of the bucket that come under the title; 'fuck me that is so bloody brilliant, oh my God what a fucking brilliant idea' title. 

Kids with cystic fibrosis have to go through a daily chore of airway-clearance therapy, it's not nice to say the least. 

So some smart people have created Sick Beats which is the world's first music-powered airway clearance vest. The prototype, a redesign of Woojer's consumer vest, syncs with a smartphone to pull therapeutic 40Hz frequencies from music and send them to the chest. Which helps clears the patients lungs of mucus. Bloody amazing.

Rightly it won awards but if I was the creative who came up with this idea, would I care it won? Not really but seeing the joy on the little girl's face after her treatment through Sick Beats, now that's worth its weight in gold. #hatTip team at Woojer and Area 23 FCB 

Sharing Creativity and Thinking

As a Creative Director with over 25 year's experience 18 years of that in pure play digital agencies one thing has taught me is that we all need mentors or teachers, even after all these years you can never stop learning, that is why I took my teaching degree at Falmouth University recently, spending long nights for over 26 weeks including weekends, all of this was online and while I was doing my day job. It was extremely hard and I now have a real appreciation for students currently studying, they get a bad rap sometimes and for the most part unfairly. One thing that taking this course has taught me is that you need people to talk and share your thoughts, collaboration is key to any form of working relationship either in the office or in the student halls, you need that interaction. Even though the course was all online, the platform we had gave us the opportunity to talk via forums and through weekly Hangouts, I didn't feel isolated far from it. I did however have one mentor behind the scenes a colleague I had worked with when I first started in advertising, the lovely Gail Parameter she's now a lecturer herself and I relied on her a lot, especially when it got a bit wobbly, tight deadlines, papers to write and lead pitches in my day job. So all students out there young or old, a word of wisdom find your mentor(s) we all need them from time to time. Have a great weekend.