These three fine additions are making CUBED a very exciting place to be.

Important introductions.

First up, Tim Cooper. Our new Finished Artist enjoys t-shirts with pockets in them, and has previously been working at Strike bowling as Junior Graphic Designer. After graduating from the Gordon in Geelong, Tim has also spent time working at Ghanda Clothing doing t-shirt design (probably explains the pocket thing).  What do we think about our new recruit? Command S.

Next we have Jacob Hewitt, our new Senior Account Manager. On Wednesday, Jacob stepped off a plane and onto our doorstep with a suitcase full of jetlag and suit experience. After accumulating a wealth of client-side experience working for numerous banking clients, Jacob then spent the next two years freelancing in agencies across London, working on clients such as The Times, Sky BSB, LovefIlm, Lloyds TSB and The Royal Bank of Scotland. Jacob had a relatively normal childhood and enjoys tweed jackets with elbow patches.

CUBED’s global recruits don’t stop there. Next off the plane, sorry, rank, is Tracey Soutar. Having built her experience across most of the world’s continents, Tracey’s resume no doubt looks more like an itinerary! Hailing originally from Scotland, Tracey co-founded and ran a through the line agency in Durban, South Africa, before moving to Papua New Guinea, back to Cairns, and then settling in at CUBED where we’re thrilled to have her. Tracey’s diverse experience encompasses FMCG, fashion, retail, education and charity accounts.

We can’t wait to see what 2012 will bring for the new recruits of CUBED’s rapidly expanding army.

Dear festival organisers,

Thanks for many fabulous frolics, jaunty jigs, mad-as moshes, and sultry siestas. You’ve been integral to many memorable summers.

So now, I think, as an old(ish) friend, I can tell you the following: Dude, you’ve changed. Sold out to the man a few hundred thousand young people wearing Ray Bans, and home made denim cut offs.

What’s worse is I’m not actually a disgruntled old rocker in a dirty t-shirt, rather my sentiments are shared by a majority of festival lovers.

After attending Harvest Festival on the weekend and reading the subsequent negative press, I was compelled to do some research: why are your music festivals performing so poorly?

Let’s rewind.  Remember lining up all night outside the record store to get your hands on the ticket you simply had to have? Or giving yourself RSI from excessive refreshing in the tense few moments before online sales?

We did this because good gigs sell out. But now, it looks like sell-out shows are becoming nothing more than greatest hits.

Many of your festivals this year failed to sell out, despite big-budget lineups. Last weekend’s Harvest Festival only sold its final tickets days before the festival, which is quite remarkable considering its lineup and the level of promotion around the festival circuit’s new baby.

Australia’s biggest festival, Splendour in the Grass, did not sell out this year, which is truly extraordinary considering last year’s festival sold out in just minutes. Even the Big Day Out followed a similar story.

So let’s look at a few trends in the ultra-hip music festival market.

Firstly, new festivals have been popping up like weeds. The last few years have made room for events such as Parklife, Stereosonic, Future music, Groovin’ the moo, Harvest festival and Summerdayze to name a few. And seeing as the Australian Bureau of statistics identified the majority of festival goers as students, getting to all of these $100 plus festivals would put a big hole in the pockets of their already ripped jeans.

With competition in the market this tight, each of your events is forced to put their lineup forward for best in show, where big acts mean big dollars. Of course, the costs of flying in these rockstars and their inflated egos really makes for inflated ticket prices. Let the lineup of this year’s Splendour in the grass be an example – Kanye West and Coldplay on the bill pushed tickets to $523.60! In light of this, declining ticket sales aren’t really surprise – very few students would have this kind of pocket money.

Adding insult to injury, to accommodate these skyrocketing costs, you bring in a convoy of sponsors when the competition doesn’t let you inflate prices any further. And there’s nothing like a great big corporate sponsor to cramp the style of young people bent on sticking it to the man.

Ok so sponsors may be a necessary evil, but it remains to be seen how organisers will balance their bank accounts without letting their festivals lose their charm.

According to ticketing company Moshtix’s State of Festival Market report, 46% of consumers stated their overall festival experience had worsened. Popular opinion amongst those who attended Harvest festival says that prices and queues for food, drinks and toilets tainted their experience.

Festival organisers, it seems you’ve got a lot to answer for. What used to be a celebration of youth, freedom and music, is now an overcrowded, overpriced, over-commercialized occasion, and frankly, we’re over it.

Luckily, not every festival has “sold out”, and as a result failed to actually sell out: longstanding sellout festivals, Meredith and Golden Plains, managed to sell out in a few hours again this year. With low prices, a lineup that caters specifically to a niche audience, no sponsors, reasonably priced food and plenty of toilets, it’s clear that festivals the old fashioned way, never go out of style.

So festival organisers, school’s out and no doubt this summer will have you hot under the collar as to how these students will spend their fickle dollar.

Sincerely,

Hannah

6:15 am. This morning. I was wrenched from a particularly pleasant dream where my house was an aeroplane which I controlled from my stairs, only to find that, this was, in fact, not true and I had to now wake up. I silenced my alarm, checked my Facebook, felt the superficial excitement of having 4 new notifications in 7 hours, and checked the news.

One particular news article has haunted me all morning. According to a recent study by Relationships Australia, I am part of the loneliest generation. Well excuse me, but my 600 Facebook friends beg to differ. Not to mention my Twitter community, my Google+ circles and my 10 or so friends that I text message to pass long periods of time on public transport. So yes. Not lonely.

But then I thought about it. I probably spend around 90% of my waking hours communicating. Working in the communications industry means keeping my head in the digital space, and then I arrive home only to ‘manage’ my own self-brand online through social media. Only upon reflection did I realise how exhausting this level of social maintenance really is. Furthermore, on the rare occasion that I have no notifications, no internet access, or leave my phone at home; it’s true, I do feel lonely.

So maybe that’s the crux of it. Gen Y feel comparatively lonely in their few ‘offline’ moments because the majority of their time is spent plugged in to the social media paradigm. I believe it’s this issue that houses the wedge that forces Gen Y apart from the Baby Boomers, who from what I can gather from my parents, revel in their few moments of peace and quiet.

The Baby Boomers, according to the same study, experience loneliness far less frequently. In light of this, I conjecture that social interactions ‘the old fashioned way’ may be of a higher quality. You may only interact with one friend on a Saturday, but the level of interaction may be a lot higher, as you’d focus solely on one relationship, rather than performing the juggling act of managing many.

If I dare to look at the calibre of messages I’ve sent to my friends over the past week, I’m sure I would be the perfect example of the social devolution occurring with the social media evolution. That is, if I could even remember who I’ve interacted with.

When it comes to the realm of social media, we’re for the most part stabbing blindly, so some words of wisdom from other generations may be worth a listen. And whilst Generation Y feel so content in our rightness on so many things, we should stop to remember, that good old fashioned face-to-face has been working just fine for, well, since the beginning of time… But you know, whatevz.

The misfits.

The rebels.

The troublemakers.

The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently.

They’re not fond of rules.

And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.

Because they change things.

They push the human race forward.

And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world… are the ones who do.

Today, on the screens of our iPhones, the world touched the news of Steve Jobs’ death, and was touched by the legacy of his life.

How he stopped the world with his every idea. How he made computers cool. And how he changed the way we communicate with everything from incredibly intelligent programming, to the meticulous simplicity of a small white box.

As advertisers, Steve Jobs’ ideas have made our ideas possible.

Thanks to him, our ideas can become apps, we can ‘check in to win’ and we can unlock content by simply taking a photo. Thanks to him, our ideas can become beautifully designed, and easy to design.

So today, at CUBED, we’re ‘mac-ing everything up’.

RIP Steve Jobs.  1955 – 2011

In the world of real estate, like many businesses, it’s the personal relationship you build with your clients that makes you a success. So we were specifically briefed by Greg Hocking Real Estate to create a billboard that showcased their experienced & trusted staff, some of which have worked in the area for over 20 years. The location of the billboard was in one on the busiest roads in Albert Park, the corner of Ferrars st & Albert Road. This was the outcome.

No he’s not a maths tutor on the side. But he is helping students in another way – by sharing his own experience of his time at the University of Ballarat. And how it helped to set him on the path to success.

The campaign, which spans press, outdoor and TVC, was launched on Friday, just in time for the nail biting game between Hawthorn and Collingwood.

The University’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor David Battersby, (who himself is a Sydney Swans supporter) has no reservations about using a footballer from an opposing team as the face of University of Ballarat. “This campaign is about inspiring our current and prospective students with Nick’s learning journey from student to leader.”

The campaign is off to a great start, having been picked up by Campaign Brief and Best Ads on TV alongside ads from across the globe.

With the weather man finally deciding to cut us some slack this past weekend, we at CUBED thought it was the perfect excuse for a road trip. All in the name of research.

The agency is in the process of creating a lifestyle magazine for one of our clients, Asteron Life. In the name of making our first edition everything the perfect magazine should be, Clare, our account manager, and I put on our journo hats.

On Saturday morning Clare, myself, two cappuccinos and Clare’s trendy yellow Volkswagen Beetle hit the road toward the Mornington Peninsula. As we’re preparing a feature on the Mornington Peninsula for our debut edition, we were determined to experience everything on offer.

Firstly, we’d heard that the peninsula is pretty big on it’s wineries, so our first stop was the beautiful Morning Star Estate. There Clare and I indulged in the truly breathtaking scenery with a glass of the estate’s own wine (Clare, our driver, only had half).

After doing our ‘research’ at the winery, we decided to experience a different facet of the Mornington peninsula: fish and chips on the beach.

Driving along the coastline, with nothing but some vague childhood memories and our smart phones for guidance, we found a fish and chips shop and a spot on the beach. The setting was idyllic. Children swimming and playing, chatty tourists, and of course, a small fan club of hungry, and vocal, seagulls. But our lunch was just too good to share.

After lunch we promenaded along Mornington’s Main street where we found we got a little distracted…by shop windows. Turns out, this old fashioned little town has very in-fashion clothes! A skirt, a pair of pants, a dress, a bag and a change room full of rejected outfits later, this minor (yet major for our wallets) deviation saw Clare and I looking fabulous.

Finally, as the sun started to set over the water, we enjoyed vanilla milkshakes from the local milk bar and headed back towards the car. A pretty awesome Saturday.

It goes to show, the best research is experience and I think our feature will carry with it the smell of salt and the warmth of the mid-afternoon sun. Look out for our article in the upcoming Asteron Life magazine.

Early last week I arrived home to my beautiful wife enthusiastically describing a letter she had received promoting a great offer from Specsavers.

In fact, not only was she impressed by the offer but equally by the letter that delivered it. So much so that she kept it as a shining example of a cool Direct Mail piece for me to take to work.

“Look at the glasses in the window face” she said, “they have my name on them!”.

“And check out the spinning wheel with all the brands to choose from; you have to take this to work…”.

At this stage, I must admit I was proud to tell my wife that this letter and spinning wheel were actually the work of CUBED and not only was she excited but the client was too!

Check out the Letter and Spinning Wheel below.

And last week we headed north to spend a day in a workshop with our new client and to be shown around the Gold Coast looking at some of the amazing properties that they offer in their lottery. We were all truly impressed by the quality and location of the homes, the sound of the sea on their doorstep and the beautiful Queensland sunshine.

But the excitement didn’t stop there, and on the Saturday night we joined Vanessa Amorosi to Celebrate 50 Years of BoysTown and the amazing work that they do for young Australians through Kids Helpline.

To find out more about BoysTown and their amazing lottery go to www.boystown.com.au

Anyway, the team were shooting Nick as a past student, telling his story about how he Learned to Succeed at the University of Ballarat. Following on from the successful launch of the brand positioning ‘Learn to Succeed’, this campaign will extend the positioning further. We won’t give anymore away just yet, you’ll have to wait until the campaign is in market late September.

Nick also had the opportunity to share his story with an auditorium full of present & prospective students before being whisked off for his acting duties in windy conditions…almost as windy as his early playing days for the North Ballarat team.