The Kindred blog

The kids are all right.

By Kindred's Creative Director, Ben Friend...

Teenagers...Always hanging around on street corners with nothing to do.

Stuffing meow meow or woof woof or whatever the latest thing is down their throats.

Failing their exams not getting into university and then just becoming fodder for the dole queue.

They just look like trouble don’t they? And you can’t understand a word they say and they look weird and they eat each other you know.

How many of you were nodding along there?

Obviously not many of you because you’re all very smart and have merely been interested observers of the rise of the demonisation of our children.

Tabloid myopia would have us believe we are being laid siege to by gangs of ‘Feral Children’, (copyright, any tabloid newspaper.)

We at Kindred would rather not buy into this bit of fear mongering. We’re all rather lovely people here and prefer to believe in creating opportunity not operating from a point of view of fear and paranoia.

Which is why we were overjoyed to get the chance to work for the National Apprenticeship Service. This important piece of work plays a key part in providing employment for young people and ultimately the chance of a better life.

A vital part of the work we did for NAS was making businesses think differently about apprentices and the contribution they can make to an organisation.

This obviously also has the effect of countering the distorted idea that all teenagers aren’t interested in contributing to the world and improving their lives.

And we know what we’re talking about. We have an apprentice here at Kindred – Adam has been with us for five months and has become an integral member of the office.

Our audience of employers was vast and complex, with organisations of different sizes covering hundreds of different sectors. We needed to make what we said relevant to as many businesses as possible.

So we came up with an assortment of stories that would be of interest: Everything from hard business news to success stories of apprentices and employers.

Did we make a difference? We think so and so did the 1,273 employers that got in touch to start apprenticeship schemes.

We also won a big fat shiny award. The first of many for the new style Kindred.

It was well nang as the kids would say.

Seen an iAd yet? Now you have.

We're loving the simplicity and UI of the new iAd platform the mighty Apple announced a few weeks ago.  Whether you like the ad itself (must admit we're not huge fans) the relationship dynamic between the user and the app/ad is undeniable.    What's your take?

Nike’s World Cup ad gets the chop. Result?

3 weeks to go and the World Cup TV ads have kicked off.

It’s Wieden and Kennedy’s new Nike spot ‘write the future’ that really grabbed my attention.

Okay, so in the advertising world it’s not the most original idea (Adidas had a similar campaign thought a few years ago), but it is beautifully executed and they’ve thrown a few pennies at it. Watch it and you’ll see what I mean.

In fact, the 3 minute spot during the Champions League Final apparently cost £1.5million. How do I know? Because ITV accidentally cut off the last 10 seconds. Whoops. There goes the logo and endline.
Nike are now, justifiably I think, demanding their money back. ITV messed up, and when a spot costs £1.5million...
Thing is, the mistake got them lots of free news coverage. One of the 7.6million people who have now viewed it on YouTube commented that it was thanks to the news he’d heard about it.

All that extra publicity and no mistaking it was a Nike ad anyway. Goal.

I should ask my PR colleagues if ITV can be persuaded to do the same for one of our brands.

CREDITS:
Music is by Dutch rockers Focus.
Directed (very beautifully) by Alejandro González Iñárritu.