Examples of Outdoor Advertising

The third year Creative Advertising students recently participated in an ambitious project to promote Market Rasen as a place for local residents to do their shopping. The Market Rasen Business Improvement Group (MR BIG) project is part of the national Mary Portas initiative to reinvigorate interest in the high street and get the public to 'shop local' again.
Back in January 2012 a team of dedicated citizens from Market Rasen set out to pitch for funds to the Portas Pilot enterprise and were picked as one of the initial towns to benefit from the scheme. The team managed to secure £98 599 to help promote and improve their town through various energetic and thoughtful projects, this is where the University of Lincoln Creative Advertising course comes in.

Sara Scott, who is leading the Portas Pilot project for MR BIG, briefed in a project to the Level 3 Creative Advertising students who were asked to promote the benefits of shopping locally to customers in and around Market Rasen. The students had a week to come up with ideas for advertising and innovative marketing solutions which were then presented to the course teaching staff. The proposals were whittled down to six teams who then prepared their work for presentation to the client.


The presentations were held in the Lincoln Hotel and the judging panel consisted of three of the course teaching staff plus Sara Scott and Jackie Smith - MR BIG Markets Director. The shortlisted students all gave confident, clear presentations of their work and conducted themselves in a very professional manner which was commented on by the assembled judges. The students who made it through to the presentation stage were, Matt Slee, Jenni McDonald, Chris White, Sophie MacDonald, Kwan Naruporn, Lucy Eldridge, Liam Nicholson, Lily Hurst, Wil Blackburn, Amanda Elvidge and Lily Peters.

After much deliberation and some difficult decision making the judges finally concluded that the work of Amanda Elvidge and Lily Peters was the winner. It was felt that the girls' idea summed up the benefits of shopping locally in the most concise and effective way by focusing on the personal touches you get from shopkeepers who know their customers. So well done Amanda and Lily!

The concepts have now been passed on to the MR BIG team who will develop the press adverts and posters with a local graphic design company in order to bring it to print ready status, all with the help and input of Lily and Amanda, of course!


This project has been the second 'live' brief that the University of Lincoln's Level 3 Creative Advertising students have worked on in the last month and it shows how professional and motivated they all are to produce such effective advertising when working to such tight deadlines. Projects like the MR BIG Shop Local campaign are a great way of preparing students for the rigours of working in an advertising agency and the Creative Advertising programme places great emphasis on realistic work situations, so it's very pleasing to see the students click into action when they need to.

It has been a rewarding experience working with dedicated volunteers running a project as deserving as saving the high street. We all wish the MR BIG team well with their cause and will be bringing you updates on Lily and Amanda's work when it goes to print.

The Creative Advertising course's Cabinet of Curiosities has been changed to show an intriguing selection of cycling magazines.



With Wiggo winning the BBC Sports Personality of the Year earlier this week, we thought it was only right.

Last week saw the Level 2 students visit some high profile advertising agencies in London. Getting first hand experience of the ad industry is vitally important for the University of Lincoln Creative Advertising students, who focus a great deal on 'real world experience'. The agencies get to see the next generation of advertisers, and the students get to see how interesting an agency is. It's a win-win situation. I'll let the students explain in their own words how the visits went, first up Suzi Paddison who visited VCCP.

"On Friday morning Group A made their way to Victoria to visit the agency VCCP. We were all very excited knowing that we were going to get a glimpse inside the agency which created great ads for brands such as Compare the Market and O2. We were greeted on the 5th floor of Greencoat House by Josh Dando, a Creative Advertising Graduate who has been working there with his partner Steven Dodd since March 2011.


Josh then gave us a very insightful Q & A session where we learnt about their journey into the agency, what they have been working on and how the agency works together. To finish the visit we went to a meeting room where we saw a show reel of some of VCCPs most recent successful ads, a great way to end the visit.


Going to VCCP was really motivational for us all and we feel we all gained a lot of great advice on what to do after graduating, and especially as it was from someone who was in our shoes not too long ago. A big thank you to Josh and everyone at VCCP for being so welcoming!"

Whilst one group of students were visiting VCCP another group went to JWT to find out more about the agency, Emma Thomas gives us her impressions of the visit.

"For many of our second year this was their first agency visit and as we stood looking towards 1 Knightsbridge Green, you could sense the excitement and anticipation in the air. As the clock struck 10am, all eighteen of us had been handed our passes and were heading up towards JWTs reception. At the top of the escalators we were greeted with a floor to ceiling wall of multi coloured butterflies. Already people were commenting on how cool an office space they thought it was.

James Hobbs, an ex lincoln student, and his creative partner Jeremy took us to the the Bullmore Room where we began our insight into the world of JWT. After a brief introduction to the duo we took a group tour around the agency. Traffic, accounts and the creative floor were all a buzz with creative conversations of current briefs and clients.

Once the tour was over and we were back in the Bullmore Room, James and Jeremy shared with us some of JWTs recent adverts and some of their own work, guiding us through the creative process of Andrex from initial ideas to final execution. Being able to see this process was both reassuring and inspiring to all of us. After almost two hours, we'd been given a first hand insight into both JWT and what it's really like to be a creative in the industry.

As we headed back down the escalators and left through the turning door, we felt more motivated and inspired then ever before to pursue our advertising dreams."

Finally Jenni Trotter tells us how her group's visit to DLKWLowe went.

"In the afternoon of the agency visit trip to London, Group A were lucky enough to visit DLKWLowe in South Kensington. We were unsure as to what to expect from an agency going through a huge creative change at the moment, however greeted by a mix of patterned walls, huge velvet armchairs, giant lightbulb feature and gold framed televisions, the agency definitely had a welcoming and quirky feeling from the very start.

We were met by Lincoln Creative Advertising graduates Neil Ritson and Stefan van Zoggel who gave us a great chat about their journey as a creative team – from pairing up in their second year to the ups and downs of placements to then getting hired at DLKWLowe just over a year ago, going on to create work for clients such as Thorpe Park and Alton Towers. They also gave us a brilliant insight into how to create a great book by showing us their portfolio that they took to book critiques and giving us advice on how to create a book which sets your creative team apart from all the rest.

It was great to see a team from our own course who have gone on to create their own stamp in a London agency which is currently building a great reputation in the advertising industry. We all found it incredibly motivational to not only sample an agency atmosphere, but also speak to people who have once been in our shoes and are doing so well for themselves."


Visiting advertising agencies is always very motivational for the CA students but this year's trip was particularly nice because all of the agency visits were organised by former students of this course. It's very rewarding to see CA graduates who are now staff at the highest profile agencies and it's a great vindication of all that we teach on the programme.

The Young Creative Council have been organising their Unite evenings for a few years now and some of Lincoln's Creative Advertising third year students were shortlisted to attend, so they headed off to Shoreditch for a quick one-day trip, folios in hand.

The event is for young creative advertisers to show off their work in order to catch the eye of creative directors and make contacts with other creatives in the industry, senior and junior alike.


Work was on show from creatives currently on agency placements and those looking for placements. The night consisted of a small room, lots of people, a little alcohol, lots of portfolios and plenty of chatter and sound advice.

Our day trip visit resulted in catching up with fellow Lincoln Creative Advertising students, which helped us make even more contacts, as well as see how they were getting on.

Last week Lincoln's Creative Advertising third years were lucky enough to attend a workshop by advertising education guru, Dave Morris (pictured above). Here's third year student Mike Barber to tell you more:-

‘We didn’t know what to expect but after Dave’s visit last year we knew it would be incredibly useful. We learnt so much throughout the day, it would be hard to cover it all in one review. The overall theme of the workshop was creating convincing arguments, something that is important in all decent advertising. Dave set us a brief before the workshop, that involved making some very strange or difficult arguments. We presented our persuasive arguments in front of everyone and the feedback we received was very helpful. The arguments that we made in our presentations were continued throughout the day in a range of fascinating and entertaining ways.

Here's a post from Annie Richardson, Senior Lecturer in Design History and Cultural Contexts at the University of Lincoln, that provides some true food for thought:-


Food is good to think with. Of course, all humans have to eat to survive but food is also a key indicator of cultural differences and cultural change. Everyone eats, but cultures vary widely in what and how. So food becomes ritualised, a bonding mechanism, a way of expressing cultural hierarchies, in short, a symbol. Food enables us to think about what cultures value, and how they are changing. If Creative Advertisers need an exemplary topic to chew on (sorry!), this is it.

Our second-year Creative Advertising students went to some lengths to experience food rituals for themselves and engage in some primary research. One of the most arresting topics was competitive eating. Students Jade Andrews, Emily Collins and Christina Wornum for their Women v. Food project braved a local restaurant’s offer: ‘Eat your way through a giant pile of burgers and chips and you get your photo in their hall of fame!’ Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the girls failed the challenge.

What they did succeed in, however, was generating plenty of ideas. Does this hark back to earlier times? The earliest times when there was competition for food? Competitive eating contests in America – where the current popular sport appears to have originated – itself had its roots in pie-eating competitions in county fairs. But why is competitive eating popular now? In terms of TV entertainment we can see how food has become associated with the competitive elements in reality TV programming, not just Man v Food, the popular US show, but a range of other programmes such as those featuring celebrity chefs.

It’s easier to think about the more strictly commercial reasons for competitive eating than the cultural ones. Competitions attract custom to restaurants, branded sponsorship deals, groups of increasingly well-known eating champions, and high entertainment value. That part is not so hard to understand. It’s  developed commercial and media momentum.

But what if we try to explain it from a cultural angle? After all we live in ‘foodie times’ ever questing after the exotic, authentic and adventurous in our cuisine. We disparage waste. We have diet-awareness thrust upon us. On the other hand, as Jade, Emily and Christine pointed out, actually tasting and savouring real food is on the decline through grazing habits in contemporary family life and a continuous supply, no longer seasonally-based, of any type of food from all over the world.

Perhaps competitive eating is a symptom of that decline. Perhaps competitors appeal to us because they are ordinary people who just have this rather odd but special talent. Potentially anyone could do it and become a ‘sports’ champion without all the training needed for athletic prowess– and many are encouraged to try. Journalists examining the issue emphasise the sheer sickening horror and pain of the binge experience. And there seems to be an assumption that competitive eating won’t take off here in the UK, at least not to the same extent as in the US, that somehow British culture with its traditions of restraint will prove resistant. Of course, from the restaurants’ point of view, there are obvious advantages (at least, restaurants with a certain type of clientele in mind presumably.) So watch this space!

Whether you fancy your chances of winning a competition or not, you might enjoy watching this short film of the girls’ heroic efforts. Bon appetit!

One of the hardest things to do as a creative, but busy, individual is keep a strong momentum. You constantly need ways to stay creatively busy by changing the type of activities you do.

Doodling, for example, is lots of fun but also very stimulating and, when that doodle is with a large group can be a great way of connecting people who do not necessarily know each other that well.

The Creative Advertising Society are always coming up with ways they can bring every year group closer together and recently they held a GIANT DOODLE event.



Everybody took their shoes off, gathered round some huge sheets of paper and let all their worries slip away as they responded, pen in hand, to the various DOODLE INSTRUCTIONS they were given by the Society team on hand.



What resulted was somewhere between an explosion in a Sharpie factory and Banksy's first graffiti lesson but it was nevertheless energetic, momentum building and very, very social.

On a wet October afternoon the Creative Advertising 2nd and 3rd years took over the studio to run a session designed to help new 1st years feel at home on the course.

The session, organised by Emma Thomas (2nd Year) paired new 1st years with their elders in the years above so they could have a students perspective on what it's like to be a student in Lincoln and particularly on this course.

Who knows? This could be the start of a (few) beautiful friendship(s) and the people our 1st years connected with in this session could be the contact the one to bring them in on placement when they leave.

Thanks so Emma and her team for such a rewarding afternoon.

If you haven't sen the new St John Ambulance ad, Helpless, then we strongly recommend that do so now!

'We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths'. Walt Disney.


The most recent subject for the course's Cabinet of Curiosities is 'plastic', or more specifically, assorted plastic toys.

Creative team Philippa Beaumont and Artur Faria graduated from the programme last year and are currently on placement at some of the best ad agencies in London. They were recently shortlisted to be finalists in CREAM 2012 – the annual competition organised by creative recruitment agency The Talent Business and judged by Creative Directors from some of the World's best advertising agencies.