CENTREPOINT (NOTEPAD AUGUST 2000)
Centrepoint is a charity that helps young homeless people in London to get off the streets and was one of our clients at WCRS. It’s interesting to see on the brief that my art director Dave and I were the only team working on the job. Back then it was pretty much normal for briefs to be given to just one team. Looking at the timings we had around 3 or 4 weeks to work on it, which today seems a luxury, but in 2000 I suspect we probably complained that it wasn’t enough time. Ungrateful upstarts that we were.
The train destinations idea below eventually became a radio commercial, which went on to win bronze at the American One Show Awards.
This headline is okay: Spike was the first adult who ever had any time for Emma. Unfortunately he was a known sex offender.
Quite like this one, too: Great. You're in and out of homes all your life. You turn 16 and you can't find one.
I still think there's a nice thought in this underground cross track poster idea.
From the bunch of ads presented, the client bought two print ads, a one off poster stunt, a postcard mailer and the radio spot. Around this time we bumped into Graham Fink who we’d worked with a couple of times before. This was in his directing days and ever the zeitgeist he was babbling excitedly about something he’d just bought called a digital camera. By the time we’d finished chatting Graham had offered to shoot our Centrepoint campaign with his new toy.
You can see the campaign here. To create the gritty look Graham shot the pictures on his digital camera, loaded them onto his computer and then took close up shots of the images and copy on the screen. For the final artwork he stuck all the pieces together with tape. We just let him get on with it, he seemed to be having fun.
The campaign launched with a PR event at the site of our poster with a homeless girl camped beneath it. Shovell from M People turned up to say a few words. You can tell from the look on my face just how thrilled I was. And yes, I even had a beard back then.
Agency: WCRS
Client: Centrepoint
Art Director: Dave Lang/Graham Fink
Copywriter: Martin Gillan