National Design Magazine Computer Arts runs a very popular website called Creative Bloq that aims to provide insight and inspiration to the commercial creative community. Ella Taylor interviewed SomeOne co-founder Simon Manchipp to discover the story behind his first-ever creative brief. Turns out, he wrote it himself.
School and I had a curious relationship. Largely due to my complete and utter inability to understand why I was there. No one really explained to me why I had to endure days of listening to tortuous explanations surrounding hydrogen and where Guatamala was. So I mucked about, rudderless.
Like many of my generation, I was entranced by all things computer. They were new. Odd. Expensive and quirky. I loved computers. I had a raft of them. Commodore 128. ZX Spectrum 48k (and later a 128 with MicroDrive). Even an Oric Atmos 48k that carried it’s own language quirks. You could type in ‘zap’, and it would make a zap sound. Or a ping. Or a crash. It was crazy (and short-lived). I kind of understood how they worked and spent many hours concocting complex programmes in BASIC. Most of which didn’t work.
I’d noticed that the local ‘Curry’s’ electronics shop had a pretty terrible window display.
Currys in Reigate was a sorry affair. Four TVs lined up in the window stuck on the BBC. All night. As I cycled past on my Raleigh Bomber (the precursor to the mountain bike no less) I thought this was a desperately wasted promotional opportunity and so went about my first ever creative pitch. And controversially it was unpaid. (we now avoid these like the plague)
I wrote a program, in BASIC, On my rubber keyed ZX Spectrum that sent robotic men walking across the screen carrying promotional messages. Like ‘Computer Games £1.99’ – ‘VHS Tapes on sale’ and the winning ‘ALL TV’S 20% OFF’ the following Saturday I walked in armed with a cassette tape holding the data. I secretly loaded it up on their demo computer while my brother distracted them by trying to loudly play a new shipment of stylophones.
One up and running on screen, I politely asked to speak to the manager. When I showed him the work already running on his TVs and explained that this could be a way to advertise his wares, all night, on the high street, for free, he loved it, and asked me to go and create a series of Ads that would run over the next three months. I would turn up as they opened. Get briefed. Dash home. Code it up. Dash back, and have it installed ready for the evening. Sales went up. Everyone was delighted. My parents were mystified.
I was 14. So I couldn’t be ‘legally’ paid as I was too young to go on the payroll. I negotiated a hard line and got paid in computer games and tech.
By the end, I had all the latest games and duplicates for friends who had helped. I knew I wanted to do more of this kind of thing. Something I loved, and got paid for. From then on, everything started to click.
Decades later, SomeOne was lucky enough to be commisioned to create not only the window displays, but the entire brand for high street electrical legends, Maplin. Read more about that here.