Examples of Outdoor Advertising

It sometimes feels like the good news never stops coming and this week the First Years are keen to get in on the act.

Every year at around this time we welcome a host of excited, eager students who are about to get on a rollercoaster they hope will drop them in the centre of the Ad Industry three years from now.

It's a special time, welcoming a bunch of new faces into our family, and what better way to welcome people into your family than make them prance up and down wearing T-Shirts with their name on?

And what's even better than that?

Taking pictures of them and plastering them on the internet, of course.

So, here we go. A few of our new intake, looking very cool indeed.

In order to be good at Creative Advertising you need to be able to construct a good argument. Constructing good arguments requires looking at things from all sides and only when you fully understand your subject can you create innovative and persuasive advertising strategies.

That's why the Creative Advertising course holds an annual Great Debate competition between the Level 1 and 2 students. The students have to know the subjects they will be debating inside out and be able to present an equally good case for and against their subject matter. The students don't know which side of the argument they will be promoting until they enter the 'debating arena' and only have a couple of minutes to compose themselves before the battle of minds begins. Preparation is key and the students that have done the most extensive research will inevitably progress the furthest in the competition.


The competition runs at a hectic pace with second years and first years squaring off against each other whilst the third years sit in judgement and decide which teams proceed into the next round. The questions range from the esoteric to the plain bizarre and a successful debater doesn't allow their personal feelings to enter into the discussion – it's all about creating the strongest argument.

After much heated debate thirty six teams were whittled down to just two, Joe Lovett & Becky Cartey Vs Harry Price & Alicia Job making up an all first year final. After a titanic struggle Joe and Becky emerged as this years Great Debate champions and will get the chance to defend their crown in next years competition.


All this debating is great practice for developing a sound advertising brain and keeps everybody sharp. Now, which is best, poster advertising or social media?

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.

This week we received a boatload of new first years, all eager to prove they have what it takes to make it in Adland (the industry, not the advertising related theme park, with such rides as the Barclays Waterslide et al.).

As usual we put them through their paces with a round of form filling and photographs followed by the greatest pub quiz  of all time, complete with miming, choirs and a little bit of Pictionary to boot.


From this point on the fun does not stop but the focus is turned dramatically towards rewiring their brains in the way only we know how.

Stay tuned: eager, hungry, energetic young minds have checked in for training.

We're all about sharing on this course. But not sharing for the sake of it, no sir.

Last week the first year went out into Lincoln to buy a book from a charity shop, one that they would absolutely love to read, be it novel, recipe book or comic.

Then, when they returned, they wrapped them and turned into CA's version of Santa Claus by handing out random books to their classmates.


Well, I hear you thinking, what's the point?

We know what we like to read. In fact we know it so well we can sometimes buy the same stuff over and over again. From time to time breaking that pattern and reading something we would normally skip can be a good way into another mindset. Fun too.

'Swapping books, try it! You just might learn something new'.

Regular readers of this blog will know that 'Lincoln Ink' has become an annual Creative Advertising student party, epitomising the key themes of the programme: creativity, commitment and marker pens (often permanent).

This year's party organisers took the opportunity of combining the tattoo theme with raising awareness of the programme's splendid Movember efforts, growing fine moustaches to raise funds and awareness for often overlooked men's health issues. You can visit the CA team's Movember page here.

Everyone knows that students love to have a party.
And its pretty common knowledge that Creative Advertising students love the brilliant TV series Mad Men.

So, it's obvious, isn't it?

Here are some photos from last week's Creative Advertising students' Mad Men party.

Every year we welcome a new bunch of hopefuls into the Creative Advertising studio. Each of these young apprentices arrives with dreams of greatness and all are ready to be moulded into future creative warriors.

So, how do we test them out on day one?

Well, we make them prance up and down in T-Shirts they have designed themselves so the second and third years can film them, of course. But not any old T-shirts, no, these were T-shirts they had designed to communicate something about them, their values, hometown or background.



Let's call it an initiation and a valuable one to boot.

By abandoning their fear of looking silly and throwing themselves into the action they quickly dropped barriers and, unbeknownst to them, have now started the journey to becoming creatively open.

There is a method to this madness.

Congratulations to Kieran Clayton and Masha Shukkore who designed the winning T-shirts.