Bard of Bray
Humour & Wit
"Laughter is the is the shortlest distance between two people," said Victor Borge, and I ask myself whether if he'd had a good tug on a bottle of helium before saying it, people would have taken his comment more, or less, seriously. If you make people feel good, they hang about. Laughter and smiling makes people feel good.
LAND SECURITIES CRS
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Hat-Trick Design Consultants
Serious matters are often better communicated if you can raise a smile.
KSEG ACCOUNTANTS – BROCHURE
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Kino Design
And serious people in serious professions can certainly win you over by not taking themselves too seriously.
FARMER FOILED
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Radford Wallis
And Christmas? Well that's only serious if you're a turkey. Radford Wallis had come across the true story of a turkey that had escaped its abattoir truck and been saved. The idea was to turn the story into a Christmas card, embossed onto a roll of aluminium foil. The recipe for success? Wring everything possible from all the gobble-related words in the dictionary, pepper with half-baked puns, emboss, roll, seal, garnish with a first-class stamp, and serve.
MUSTARD
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Mustard
I suppose you can afford the odd moment of levity if you have so many great creatives on your books. Mustard’s communications have tried to strike an irreverent, tongue-in-cheek attitude from the start, to reflect the agency's own cheerful, no-nonsense approachability to the way they work – one of the key reasons why they attract so much top talent – and such big brands.
CTRL PRINT - BROCHURE
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Dowling Duncan
And seriously effective online services don't need to get all heavy to make their point.
JOHN THOMPSON AND PARTNERS – SIGNAGE
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Hat-Trick Design Consultants
John Thompson and Partners take sustainability very seriously – in fact they put a whole series of measures in place to make their building the greenest around. The signage, which helps explain all the various measures, was intended to put a smile on the face of anyone who visited the building, not just the environmentally conscious.
JUICY LUCY'S
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'Aricot Vert
It’s amazing how far you can go if you really want to clarify just what you mean by freshness, goodness and smoothness. Juicy Lucy’s is a café at Manchester Airport.
TOM & OTTO
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Together Design / Trickett Associates
They’ll do anything to convince us otherwise, but Tom & Otto have only one passion. And it’s not even each other. It’s paper.
RADFORD WALLIS – RECRUITMENT ADVERT
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Radford Wallis
The aim was to capture something of the good-humoured atmosphere at Radford Wallis to attract a higher proportion of suitable applicants. I also wrote a serious legal email disclaimer| for RW, too, to prove they've got a hard side.
KIMPTON CREATIVE – PENCIL WALL CALENDAR
Kimpton Creative
This is not funny ha-ha, true. But there's an element of wit here... (somewhere)... it's... what's the word... sharp. Boom boom!
NO 1 WOOD STREET COCKNEY HOARDINGS
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Radford Wallis
Would you Adam and Eve it? No 1 Wood Street sits within the sound of Bow Bells. Cue Cockney rhyming slang hoardings whilst building work went on. This merited comment from the Daily Telegraph: “an irresistible opportunity the marketing wonks couldn’t ignore”, they hurrumphed.
BOSS PRINT
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Hat-Trick Design Consultants
How could we turn the reputation of printers for making excuses to the benefit of our client, Boss Print? By making a big deal about them. 60cm x 84cm to be exact.
BT OPENREACH
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SAS London
These interactive YouTube films are aimed at improving efficiency internally by encouraging people to take the responsibility to not 'drop the ball'. We made the films lightly humorous by taking this literally. Click the thumbnail to see the films.
THE VIEW PENTHOUSE
Hat-Trick Design Consultants
Several million pounds worth of luxury, but how to put a different spin on luxury? The copy became the voice of a potential owner who demanded seemingly impossible, poetic, magical things of their dream home.
TRENT FM
Hat-Trick Design Consultants
Trent FM wanted to plug its stars, the breakfast presenters Jo and Twiggy. By turning the ‘J’ round in ‘Jo’, Hat-Trick reflected how integral these two were to Nottingham culture, kick-starting an irreverent ‘Nott’ campaign all around the city.
80/100 VICTORIA STREET
Radford Wallis
Multiple choice is God’s gift to humour, since it always allows you to put at least one amusing option in. Since these were selling two key buildings right opposite Victoria Station, the amusement level in this case was, naturally, rather more twitch of the lips than side-splitting.
URBAN REMEDY
Urban Remedy remove things from the to-do list, giving you time to do the things you want. A splendid opportunity, then, to have some fun with just how mundane, irksome, and bone-grindingly grim the to-do list can be.