(Hang) Tough Times

Whilst the Snatch London blog has been quiet these last few months, we're pleased to say the opposite is true of our team.

Firstly, Jay, Suki, Bobbo, Dan, Dan, Dan and Max have all returned safely from their 3 month snowboarding secondment @ Snatch Helsinki (pics coming soon).

Likewise, Simiod, Beth, Dave K, Stef and the Planners Posse have valiantly resurfaced after a six week tour of of duty of Tokyo's most luxurious hotels, developing insight for a new range of executive iPhone apps ('nuff said).

The big news in the office however is the buzz surrounding our superstar placement team, Hannah and Jo (pictured).

At just 18, they were technically too young to qualify for last year's Cannes Lions. Still, we entered their Findus Crispy Pancake work anyway. Not only did it earn them a special jury commendation, but also an unprecedented 18-minute standing ovation. If that weren't enough, D&AD are already planning a retrospective of their work at the Victoria and Albert museum in May. And if you can't wait till then, check out next month's Campaign magazine, which is entirely dedicated to the work of one of the hottest creative teams EVER!

Sadly, times being what they are, we can't take them on at the moment. But we're certain it won't be too long before Hannah and Jo are making their crust agency side!

The Best A Man Can Get

Here's a preview of some new work we're doing for Gillette. We've had some great feedback so far.

Snatch Addresses Credit Climate Change - "Women, children, and designers first".

Last night Snatch HQ hosted an emergency summit on the future of the creative industries. Attended by almost 100 movers and shakers from the world of advertising, fashion, art, music and break-dancing, as well as a further 200 delegates from the world of business and finance, its aim was to send a bold and clear message to the world: that creativity is simply the only way to save your business.

Highlights of the night included a talk by Jake and Dinos Chapman about mergers and acquisitions, whilst Maurice Saatchi kept us all grooving till the small hours with an impromptu multimedia VJ set on practical strategies for mass redundancy. Vodcasts came from Thom Yorke on tracker mortgages, and Alan Yentob on the creative opportunities posed by privatising the BBC.

However, the focus of the evening was a speech by Snatch's Executive Creative Chairman, Simian Gladtrees:

"As Wall Street trembled in the wake of the Lehman's Bank catastrophe, Damien Hirst on the other hand made £111million selling dead animals at an auction - proof if ever it were needed that creative people know more about business than so-called experts.

"As many of you will be tightening your belts -perhaps around your own throats?- it seems the credit climate change is the greatest opportunity the creative industy has ever had. As tangible things like money and property become completely worthless, intangible, abstract things like concepts, brands and daydreams become increasingly precious. It isn't difficult to imagine a future economy that uses our FaceBlog friends as currency; where we communicate entirely through graphic design and where we dream about brands through an iPod... The sound of London will be everywhere as roads are made of music and champagne will be digitised...

"Creative media is the the only way to save your business. In the credit climate change shitstorm we need to put our women, children and web-designers first. Our creative future is in their virtual hands."

The night ended with the unveiling of Snatch/NY's new work for Dow Jones financial index - a 70foot animatronic Godzilla that barks share prices and stock market news from the corner of Wall Street in Japanese.

Planning Sessions @ Spitz

A quick reminder from Mowgli, our head of planning, that the jazz-planning nights return this Thursday @ Spitz (the Old Spitalfields Market end of Commercial Rd.) As ever it's a freeform jam with an emphasis on progressive rhythms and fusion. The guys from W+K are coming down with some seriously insightful saxophone developments on the new Nike account. Meanwhile, the digi-guys at Glue'll be riffing on the new brand guidelines for Playstation (apparently it's in 5/4 time so that promises to quite interesting). Any newcomers who wanna come down and solo on some of their own brand strategy needn't worry. These guys've done the audience research for you, so you're in safe hands.

Doors 7pm.
NOTE: We'll be warming-up with Hegarty's "Variations on a Brief From Audi".

Cousins

If you've eaten out in the city this week you might have noticed that as well as the pre-requisite knife and fork at your place-setting, there's also a mysterious, additional piece of cutlery: an extra spoon!

But don't call the waiter over just yet. Those "forgotten spoons" are just our new ambient campaign to launch the start of this year's London Cousin Week, a 5 day festival that promotes the inclusion of that most overlooked and "forgotten" member of our family, the cousin. In fact, London's been going cousin crazy for last few days, as anyone in the city'll tell you. There's cousin themed events popping up all over town, and Snatch is no exception. We're holding our very own Cousin Week in the office, inviting (and in many cases flying) our relatives over to the agency to join us for a whole 5 days of cousins based madness.

Snatch's Forgotten Spoon's project is at every restaurant across London, and was designed by Japanese silversmith Yoshimuki Po, the man who does all the earrings for Madonna's videos.

News From The Front

Apologies for the lack of posts. We've been at the Venice Biennale this week shooting a viral for BirdsEye. Luckily we've enlisted the help of our old friends GesTalt, the Dutch design collective behind the forthcoming Bang & Olufsen rebrand. That all kicks off in Helsinki next month with a specially commissioned ballet by Sigur Ros. But more news of that nearer the time.

Meanwhile, here's a sneaky behind the scenes peek at our BirdsEye work. If you don't recognise him, that's legendary fashion photographer Saxo Rothsrosburgkh, the man behind those notorious Dries Van Noten shoots. He doesn't normally do fishfingers but once he heard Snatch were running the show... well. Say no more.

About Us

Hi there.

I'm Simian Gladtrees, Executive Creative Chairman of Snatch London, part of the WpPP/Bang network.

We're an awards ridden multi-dimensional brandvertising digi-plinarian and creative consultant consultancy.

Here at Snatch, we've always believed that effective advertising comes through communicating multi-platformed brand essences through a shifting lens of challengingly diverse network strategies. Only by scrutinsing the specific spectrum of our client's understanding can we commnicate the production of heavily tailored solution methods with the broadest possible pallette of synergies.

MyBook and FaceBlog have revolutionised the way that brands interfere with peoples lives. Advertising's no longer about speaking to consumers. It's about consuming the speaker through a whole range of transsubstantiated media gantries - mobile themed search-engines and wifi gestures; ambient networks and eugenics. In short: we need to feed the media pony.

Only by distressing the competition can we disquiet the market and successfully out-warp the future.

Simian Gladtrees ECC

Here's to the future... The last one there's a bender!