Helping to mother nature

At Wunderman we do everything we can to minimise our impact on the environment. In Melbourne we try to print with Finsbury Green, Australia's leading environmental printer. This year, thanks to Finsbury, we have reduced our CO2 emissions by 26,751kg. Which, when you stop to think about it, is a hell of a lot of greenhouse gas.

Image by Sam Huang.

Happy Hanukkah

Here in multicultural Melbourne we never miss an opportunity to celebrate. This week is Hanukkah and marvelous Mishy has organised some traditional treats from our favourite Jewish bakery. Yumm!

What did you want to be when you grew up?

That's the theme for Wunderman Sydney's Christmas party this year. The invites were sent two weeks ago to much aplomb. Our clients love them and are very excited about our shin-dig to be held this Thursday night at Sydney's old School of the Arts, better known now as the ArtHouse Hotel.

The invites took the form of old school pencil cases, purple of course, covered in hand-drawn doodling and complete with the recipient's name in the letter pockets. A Wunderman badge added a touch of branding.


One of our client's loved it enough to post it on his facebook wall...


Inside, you found some purple bubblegum, a couple of pencils, a christmas chocolate and a personal note "For Your Eyes Only". Unfolded, the note torn from a schoolbook bore the invite details surrounded by elaborate hand-drawn doodles.


The invite directed recipients to whatyouwanttobe.com.au where they could RSVP, get advice from our online Careers Counsellor, and graffiti on the desktop when teacher's not looking. Unbeknownst to users, the graffiti function actually recorded their scribbles to be projected onto a large screen at the party alongside the artist's name. We're secretly hoping to see some very interesting... doodles.

The office is abuzz with everyone asking, "What did you want to be when you grew up?" with many keeping their costume secret until Thursday night.

Wunderkids painting the town ... purple!

It's the time of the year for award shows, Agency of the Year festivities and Xmas parties. We have no favourites, we love 'em all.

Here are some Wunderkids out for a pre-event drink looking glam and basking in a balmy Sydney sunset.

Balls. Big purple balls.

Will.I.Am Morgan, our young gun Account Exec in the Sydney office, has been steadily growing his upper lip fuzz for Movember. We challenged him (through the bribery of very generous donations) to dye his mo' Wunderman purple for the final day of the charity month. A task made all the more onerous since today is Microsoft One Brief day in which the entire agency/client team gets together to discuss all the current work. And Will must attend.

This morning he showed up in fine form, his grape-coloured mustakka matching a Vegas suit (apparently the bequest of 'a buddy' but most likely his regular Saturday night attire).

So dig deep people and pitch in some moolah to match the enormity of Will's dedication to Wunderman and the support of Movember's month-long celebration of the moustache, highlighting and raising charity for men's health issues, specifically prostate cancer.

Hard work recognised

A couple of hard earned accolades for the Wunderman team this week. First up a couple of Bronze awards at ADMA. One each for Melbourne and Sydney.

Then our resident blogger Stanley found out his BrandDNA blog had been named in the Top 50 Marketing Blogs To Watch in 2010 list.

Wunderman is also shortlisted for Victorian Agency of The Year in the B&T Awards, which will be announced at the end of next week. Fingers crossed!

Snap Happy

Wunderman has shown their creative spirit by claiming two of the five Judges' Picks in the inaugural Corbis Creatives Behind the Lens photography competition. Corbis recognised that many creatives are capable photographers in their own right and held a competition to find the most talented shutterbugs.

Some 40-odd winners from around Australia were selected to appear in a touring exhibition, launched at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney on 12 November.

Wunderman Sydney's Paolo Meucci (Senior Art Director) and Matt Batten (Creative Director) both received the honour of a Judge's Pick.


Paolo Meucci's "Mum"


Matt Batten's "Lighter Than Air"

Corbis will take the exhibition to Melbourne soon. Check with Corbis Australia for date and location details.

The story has appeared in MuMbrella and Campaign Brief:
http://mumbrella.com.au/corbis-unveils-winners-of-photography-competition-11569
http://www.campaignbrief.com/2009/11/corbis-announces-winners-of-cr.html

Young talent time

Stan may spend a lot of his time sitting grumpily in the creative department, but he's not grumpy all the time. In fact he's always nice to aspiring creative talent. Well that's what he says anyway!

Yesterday he put on his best happy face and joined some of Melbourne's top creative talent to judge the end of course folios of students from the ADMA Creative School.


From what Stan tells us there's a couple of half decent copywriters about to graduate. Problem is he can't remember any of their names!

Tilt-shifted Wundercrew

Our creative guys in Melbourne have recently been dabbling with tilt-shift photography. Obviously they must have had a bit of quiet time today, because they've given a recent staff photo a bit of a tilt-shift makeover. It's kinda cute, don't you think?

To create your own tilt-shift photos click here.

Extreme Pumpkin Makeover

In celebration of Halloween, Wunderkids across the globe have been carving pumpkins to enter in the Wunderman Extreme Pumpkin Makeover Challenge. The winners were announced earlier today and our very own Kirsty MacCulloch managed to snare a very impressive 2nd place, with her tropical twist on the traditional pumpkin. To check out all the entries click here.

First day on the job

We welcome Paul Hayes to the Wunderkid clan in Sydney. He's our gun print producer and has hit the ground running. Look, he's already making calls and sorting stuff out:

When the dust has settled

Celebrated several birthdays today and the agency devoured the chocolate mousse cake like a flock of angry seagulls on a discarded Bondi chip. I almost feel sorry for the cake. At least, I would if it weren't so yummy.

Ben & Jerry & Matt

Sprng finally arrived in Melbourne yesterday, blessing us with a sunny 28 degree day. Which of course resulted in the Wunderkids contemplating an agency ice cream run.

Problem was the gelati shop across the road had recently closed down. As has the Trampoline outlet up the street. Leaving us a little lost when it came to ice cream.

Enter the lovely Laura Newman from our sister agency HMA Blaze, who very kindly gave us access to a huge tub of Ben & Jerry's.

And who better to taste test a tub of chocolatey creamy goodness than new kid on the block art director Matt Stoddart? As you can imagine, he gave it the thumbs up.

Babies on the way

Our building in Collins St is an old department store. As you can imagine, it has lots of hidden nooks and crannies.

Kelly Swan sits by a window that looks out onto one of those nooks, where she spotted a pigeon nest with not one but two eggs! Ah the wonders of springtime in Melbourne.

Did you send that email?

Hardly a day go by where someone at Wunderman asks why their internet is so slow. Given the amount of wiring it has to travel through, is it any wonder?

A cheesy anniversary

On Friday the ever smiling Kelly Richardson notched up 12 years as an employee of the PattsY&R/Wunderman family. That's certainly an impressive achievement and an anniversary worthy of celebration. And what better way to celebrate, given it was Fromage Friday, than with a cheese for each year of service. Congratulations Kells!

Amazing Installation at Art Gallery NSW

We had a meeting at the Art Gallery of NSW on Tuesday. While there, we had a peek at an installation exhibition that is out the front of the gallery. It totally blew our minds. For anyone even remotely interested in creative thought, this installation is an absolute must-see.

To each side of the gallery's portico stand enormous bronze statues of figures on horses titled 'War' and 'Peace'.

Currently they are ensconced in scaffolding and what appears to be a temporary room built around them. At first, I assumed it was for restoration or cleaning. But it is the work of Japanese artist Tatzu Nishi.

********
SPOILER ALERT!
For those who will take my advice and visit the gallery, read no further.
********

If you are unable to attend or a complete unculturati, then amuse yourself with my poor description and photos.

Visitors walk up the scaffolding ramp to enter the structures and find a perfect replica of a home interior with the statues now inside the room. It was wisely recommended to us that we enter the left-hand structure first and then the right.

In the left is a small lounge room with chairs, coffee table and small cupboard. The coffee table appears to have a large bust placed on top, but it is in fact the top of the giant figure of the statue protruding through the table top. And opening the cupboard reveals the horse's enormous head, artfully concealed. Not only has the room been built around the statue, but the coffee table and floor rug have been seamlessly constructed around the sculpture. It's not simply a matter of cutting a hole in the base of items and dropping them over the top, but carefully piecing each item in parts around the sculpture without appearing to have done so.

After the initial surprise and humour, we went to the other installation.

Much larger than the first, we were awestruck upon entering. This room, a bedroom, completely encased the whole horse and rider so that the horse was stepping upon two dishevelled beds, the pillows cast aside and the doona sprawled beneath it's gargantuan bronze hooves. The rider, high amongst the room's chandelier, reached for the ceiling with his staff. Over 20' high, the rider and steed appeared to have simply trampled into the house and set up watch over the bric-a-brac.

A Bachelor of the Arts, I've been a semi-regular attendee of AGNSW, and have been to the Guggenheim, Louvre, d'Orsay, Tate Britain and National Gallery of London, amongst many other smaller galleries here and in Paris, London, and Italy. In all those halls in all that time, I have only had a handful of experiences that left me feeling as inspired yet also as creatively inferior as Tatzu Nishi has left me.

Thank you Art Gallery NSW. Thank you Tatzu Nishi.

Snacks are here kids!

There is an air of excitement and positivity in the agency today. Everyone is itching to get their hands on some of the savoury snacks that arrived this afternoon. Except for Ian, of course, who'd much rather tuck into some dry and tasteless cardboard disguised as a corn snack.

Work Experience Mayhem

The Wunderkids are all for helping talented youth get started in this industry we love. From Stan's work with Junior, to DM Creative School, to work experience kids.

But when the latest 2 year-old intern does this to the bosses 'puter. That is a step too far!!

They're up to something

What exactly are Anna and Mel up to, sitting by the window in an office that doesn't belong to either of them? Mischief most likely.

Agency mystery

These beautiful roses appeared this morning on the desk of one of our young ladies in account service. We have no idea who was responsible for them, nor would we tell you if we did. What we do know is that the recipient of those roses currently has a warm 'n fuzzy glow about her.

Attention Human Scum

Wunderman Sydney have turned an initially ordinary eDM letter brief into something extra special. Instead of sending out more of the same marketing material in long copy to the Xbox database about the new Halo 3: ODST game, the team have created an extension of the fictional universe, capitalising on the Halo franchise's cult following.


For Xbox fans, the Earth's communication grid was infiltrated by the evil Covenant aliens to deliver an ultimatum. Surrender, or die. The eDM clicked through to a vidcom message in which a Covenant Elite warrior shows his vehemence for the human race and demands complete capitulation in the face of certain death.

The vile being does offer one option though: join the Orbital Drop Shock Troops and face them on the battlefield where you can earn a warrior's death.

Thanks for the cake Cass

When our data man Dan Wilson told us he was bringing in a treat for us, we were expecting one of his famous data visualisations.

Turns out his wife Cass had decided to put their excess carrots to good use and the treat was this mega carrot cake. Despite its size, it disappeared pretty quickly.

Sydney Dust Storm

It's an unusually eerie day in Sydney today. An inland dust storm has filled the city air with a spooky orange glow. But this is no ordinary dust storm...

Chairs aren't us

I was at an offsite meeting the other day and spotted this stack of broken chairs. Wonder what happened to them? One or two broken chairs I can understand, but a whole stack? Somebody better call quality control and fast.

Nice art direction

We have the pleasure of the company of art director extraordinaire Jane Wong this week. And why do we love working with Jane? Because she's a bloody good art director, obviously, but also because she brings us sweet treats. Like these oh so yummy macaroons.

C-ya

Our Jill-of-all-trades leaves us today and it's like we losing 9 people instead of one - traffic manager, illustrator, editor, videographer, flash animator, personal assistant, producer, creative services co-ordinator, and all round helper.

Carla's penance for moving on was to wear this ridiculous hat but it didn't seem like she took it as punishment. She'll be sorely missed. But remember, once a Wunderkid, always a Wunderkid.

Come back Stan. All is forgiven.

Our man Stan has been out of action for a few days. Hopefully he will be back on deck on Monday to address the pile of briefs building up on his desk.

Accessorise, accessorise

As any twin-set wearing socialite will tell you, nothing goes better with a tiara than a string of pearls. Oh so Melbourne.

We love numbers

We have just spent a special moment together after the recent 12.34.56pm on 7/8/9.
Today was even better, and included a call to Kirsty Mac's sister in London to tell her the time and date here...

Some people are born a Princess

And then others just behave like one from time to time.

Here in Melbourne we now play 'Pass the tiara'.

Doesn't look a day over 40

happybirhtdaydtoyouhappybvirthdaytoyou
happybirthdaydearstubbsyhapybirthdaytoyou
hiphiphhoorayhpihpiuhoorayhiphpihoorra

Tweedledum and Tweedledummer

We don't know which one is which.

The smouldering expressions are reminiscent of the classic buddy cop shows of the '80s, but that's as far as we can go with insight into this shot.

If you can look beneath the ridiculous beanies that even St Vinnies rejected, you'll notice two muppets. One is Stubbsy, our resident Head of Copy, and the other is freelancer Zed.

We have no idea what goes through their minds. Oh, wait... probably nothing.

Snow Leopard at play

The Snow Leopard is so rarely seen in the wild it has attained almost mythical status. The same can be said for our digital CD Jon Paul Jacques. In fact Jon Paul is so hard to find some days, that he has been christened the Snow Leopard by the our account service team.

This weekend some incredible footage of our Snow Leopard in his natural habit have begun circulating online. This footage is so rare we are unable to post it to the blog. Click here to go take a look.

Before you click we should warn you that this footage is really not suitable for people under the age of 18.

Hey there's Anna!

Each and every month the Wunderkids of Melbourne gather around the table for lunch. As you can imagine, a fun time is had by all.

Well almost all.

Believe it or not Anna White has never been able to make it to lunch. We won't bother you with her excuses, but suffice to say today she joined us downstairs at Tazio.

Aaaarrggghhh

Avast, ye landlubbers. It's Wunderman Sydney Pirate Day. Why? If ye has ta ask, then ye must be a scurvy dog. Ye should be askin' "why not?". Everyone loves a pirate. 'Specially us pirates.

Now get back to swabbin tha jibs and hoistin' tha decks or whatever it is us pirates do with all tha piratey things. And sing a good shanty while yer at it. Yeaaarrrrrggghhh

It's ME new campaign

Here's some of the latest ME Bank work from our team with GPYR.
Congrats to all, especially Mel, Libby and Ron.

Here's Libby.


And here's Ron.

The big breakfast

David Ogilvy said many years ago that agency staff should always use the products they work on. Lucky for us one of our clients is Vegemite. And what better way to kickstart your day than with a slice or two of toast and a bucket of everyone's favourite Australian icon.

ADMA Awards 2009

It's that time of year when we all put our best work forward for the ADMA Awards and hope we collect some funny shaped trophies.

We took this photo two weeks ago of all our entries piled onto the trolley before despatching, but wanted to wait until well after the deadline had passed before we let our competitors see just how much good work we've got.

Discover the power of your voice

An interesting read from @jojobickley talking about Social Media, tribes and showing off some of our clients in Ford and Nokia who are listening and participating.

Social Media 101: Discover the power of your voice

View more presentations from Joanna Pena-Bickley.

Sydney, 7 August 2009

The view from Wunderman Sydney's office.

It's that time of year when the Sydney sunsets are marvellous. And there's something extra special in the air tonight. A storm looms, the full moon is rising, and an eclipse is due.

And then came the rainbow.

All tied up

Judging by the tie, our planning guru Ian Sawers had something important to do today.

But what?

A job interview? An appearance before the magistrate? A visit to the bank manager? Now that would be telling. Now wouldn't it?

And the winner is...

Ever wondered what happens when a competition comes to an end and the prizes need to be sent to the lucky winners? You're about to find out.

Those hands belong to our intern Kasia, who has been tasked with mailing out $100 Bunnings Gift Cards to some very lucky competition winners. Hope she remembers to put it on her resume.

Contours shoot

We had our first photo shoot for Contours last Thursday. The campaign uses six real women from Contours' gyms in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, who were selected from a list of hundreds who responded to the invitation to be the 'face of Contours'.

The ladies were flown to Sydney, put up in a hotel and given the star treatment. They were all lovely and performed like professional models while having fun and making new friends at the same time.

The campaign will be rolled out from August.

Wunderman ... the Great Australian #2

There are great brands, great Australian brands ... and then there is Australia's greatest brand - VEGEMITE. Wunderman is lucky enough to work closely with Vegemite on many projects and the launch of the 'Name Me' promotion and digital work is a great honour.

Always remember ... It's Vegemite, but Different. Check it out at vegemite.com.au

Wunderman ... the Great Australian #1

There are important sporting events like the FIFA World Cup, the Olympics, the Tour de France, etc ... but we all know that nothing rivals The Ashes. And Wunderman has done it's patriotic duty in bringing The Ashes to the people with some of our latest digital work for Cricket Australia on the scoreboard for www.cricket.com.au

Go Aussies!