The charity and fundraising foughts of Ian Atkinson


Monday 25 January 2010

For goodness sake

About 10 years ago, the second agency* I nearly worked for was a small independent in Bristol.

They were founded by a copywriter and art director team. The interesting thing was, the copywriter was colour-blind and the art director was dyslexic.

So they really did rely on each other. The perfect complementary team. They offered me a job but I declined – the fact that the guy interviewing me smoked throughout put me off.

But I always wished I’d had chance to see the two of them in action – and nowhere since have I found a dyslexic art director / colour-blind copywriter team (though I’ve seen it the other way around – copywriters who can’t distinguish between “its” and “it’s” and art directors with all the colour sense of a footballer’s decorator).

Anyway. At the agency I chose over theirs, I worked with a talented, very funny art director whose motto was, “I like it... cos it’s done.”

I’m a big fan of maxims, slogans, aphorisms, mottos and motivational quotes.

You remember those Athena posters from the 80s? The ones with a picture of a mountaineer smiling with perfect American teeth and the line, “If your ship doesn’t come in, swim to it”. There’s one at my gym in fact. A poster of a woman doing a pole vault I think.

The line is, “You don’t ask for respect, you earn it”.

Awesome. I’d paper my whole house with such wise and pretty posters if I could.

And I use these great pearls of wisdom all the time. “It’s easier to destroy than create,” for example, is the one I use whenever someone wants to amend my concepts.

“If you feel in complete control, you’re not going fast enough,” is the line I use whenever people complain about my driving.

And I’m always humming, “A mars a day helps you work, rest and play” at 11:30 when the sandwich lady arrives, dishing out chocolate bars with more relish than the Child Catcher. 




But as I say, the art director I worked with, his favourite line was, “I like it cos it’s done.”

In other words, if something we’d done was good enough... then it was good enough. We could stop and move on to the next thing.

The next thing usually being a game of table football.

I mention it because it seems like he must be doing half the charity communications out there right now. So many of them seem to have been created with a “I like it cos it’s done” attitude.

I got a mailing from UNICEF the other day that was a prime example: extremely bland, utterly formulaic. My shopping lists are better written. My timesheets are more creative. And if an agency can’t create compelling work for a cause as powerful as UNICEF’s then they should be delivering the mail rather than creating it.

That art director’s favourite saying must have really stuck with me. Because the contrary line I sometimes use when looking at a piece of creative we’re doing at the agency is, “Good is a good start.”

And yes, of course people roll their eyes and shake their heads like I’m a cliche-spouting cheese-ball. They’re absolutely right, of course. I am. But I don’t mind at all, as long as it means better work.

Talking of which, I should get back to polishing these pitches.

After all, as Henry Ford (may have) said of his success, “Yes, I am lucky. And I find the harder I work, the luckier I get.”




*You’re right, I don’t look old enough.

Monday 18 January 2010

Well heeled



I mentioned last week that I’m walking everywhere, since my girlfriend’s icecapades ended with her crashing my car into a police car.

At the weekend, I was walking around town with her. And she was complaining about it.




Complaining about walking. Even though it’s her fault (or the policewoman’s fault – the insurers are yet to decide) we had no car.

Trying to give her a sense of perspective, I recanted the Oxfam case study I read last week about a woman who has to walk 22 miles every day, just to collect water.

“Yes,” replied my girlfriend, “but I bet she doesn’t have to do it in high heels.”

Anyway, as I also said last time, we’re in the middle of two pitches at the moment. So I’m working on them every waking moment. Rather than writing a longer, more interesting blog.

Maybe next time I should recount the experience of working on a pitch in an agency.

At the moment, I can describe it for you in two words.

Exciting.

Knackering.

Monday 11 January 2010

Snow joke


I’m not very good at analogies.

Or metaphors. Or similes. Or, as I discovered over Christmas, yo-yos (I haven’t yet mastered ‘the sleeping dog’, which is the core move behind most tricks, according to a You Tube yo-yo master).

Anyway: analogies. I can’t do them. Unlike Jeremy Clarkson, whose writing is usually more laden with analogies than a... a... well, there you go.

But the incredible blanket of snow that stretches out before me at the moment feels, for all the world, like a metaphor for this fresh, new, unblemished year that’s stretching out before us. 


I really think it’s going to be an exciting year for anyone in fundraising – there’s just so much clever stuff going on right now, to reach audiences that are simultaneously growing both larger and more sophisticated.

And at Tangible, we’re in the middle of two big pitches, which is definitely very exciting.

There’s nothing like the adrenalin rush of a big pitch to keep you warm on a cold winter’s day. And working on not one but two... well, that’ll keep you warmer than the too-tight Christmas jumper your nan knitted you (sorry, another poor analogy).

Especially as, in this case, both pitches are for very switched-on clients who really know their stuff and have ambitious goals for 2010. So, fingers crossed.
 

However. My fondness for snow came to an abrupt end this weekend.

 

When my girlfriend skidded on ice and crashed into an oncoming police car. You can probably find it on You Tube – lots of people with camera phones found the idea of smashing into a police car pretty entertaining.

I should say, no-one was hurt – just my no-claims discount. While the car is now languishing in the intensive care wing of the nearest auto repair garage.

But it does mean I’ve gone from walking through the snow as a novelty to walking through at as a necessity.

In theory, the footsteps are the same. Yet now, it doesn’t feel like I’m crunching through powdery white fairy dust in Narnia. It feels like I’m pulling my snow-laden boots through a scene from ‘Alive’. That film where they crash in the Andes and eat each other.

Anyway. Here’s to a happy new year in fundraising, with charities coming through the recession like the first snowdrops pushing through this long-lasting snow.

Oh look. Another poor analogy.