Just a quick news post to say that the articles may not come as thick and fast as they have been in recent days as my annual leave is about to come to an end. Has been relaxing sleeping in until noon and going fishing… until the spool broke and made my reel a knotted mess. Anyway, will get it fixed and be back squidding in no time. I have written some articles which I am happy with recently but still yet to tackle the data merge articles that i’d like to write, but have to make sure that i’m not breaching any proprietary techniques that my employer would like to keep to itself. Watch this space for that.

In the meantime, I was watching ABC’s “The Gruen Transfer” on 18 August and during the part of the program called “the pitch” noticed a familiar name… “The Kingdom“. The name is familiar to me as an old colleague of mine is working there, so it was with great interest that I watched this part of the show.

For those not familiar with The Gruen Transfer, it is a panel-style discussion on Australia’s ABC1 featuring comedian Wil Anderson and regular panelists from George Patterson Y&R, Russell Howcroft, and from Leo Burnett, Todd Sampson. The show is aimed at outsiders looking into the world of advertising and is split into three acts: how to sell, which normally focuses on a product or service and how it is or should be marketed; “The Pitch” which allows two competing agencies to tackle an impossible pitch; and the last act is left for current trends or issues.

In this instance, “The Pitch” was, based on the fact that people buy bottled water, to try and sell bottled air. Previously, many agencies appearing on this segment have resorted to using this time to generate a spot of sketch comedy along with gratuitous swearing and lewd references. On this occasion though, I was delighted with the pitch presented by The Kingdom and felt that not only was the advertisement well filmed, but the brief was taken seriously and by the end of the piece, felt like a real commercial for a product on shelves right now – it was believable.

On that note, well done everyone at The Kingdom responsible for this professional piece of communication, even if it was fictional and the only prize was a plastic Gruen trophy!!!

Onto other matters at hand, for those interested in learning more about preparing PDFs for print, I will be hosting a presentation for the Adobe User Group SA on the second Monday of September. There is a limited number of attendees for this presentation and is only open to members of the Adobe User Group SA, so if you’re not in it… hard cheese.

That’s about it for now.