The Pothole Gardener plants in potholes and weed-filled patches in East London (where else). A brilliantly simple way to add a little magic to something that is otherwise ordinary. Part art project, part labour of love, part experiment – it’s all designed to put smiles on our faces. And boy does it.

Enjoy little holes of happiness…

1. Collaborate with more people & agencies

2. Blog / write / speak more

3. Embrace my inner geek

4. Avoid using buzzspeak (aka meaningless fancy words)

5. Take more risks (trust my planning gut)

1. Behind the scenes reporting

Fervent athletes at London 2012 have been given the green light to use their Twitter accounts during the games. There are rules of course – the International Olympic Committee has warned athletes tweeting for commercial purposes or using “vulgar or obscene words or images” (no pissing Paula), and only from the first person. However, athletes are “actively encouraged to take part in social media”, which even includes photos and videos (that’s rich media to you). There is no doubt in my mind that we will hugely benefit from having a direct line of communication to an amazing group of diverse people, all with unique opinions and experiences to share with the world.

2. Yoot engagement

Integrating social media into the heart of London 2012 has the power to bring it to a critical mass audience and increase its popularity – particularly among the younger digital generation (the yoot). Let’s face it – love it or hate it, it will be unavoidable in social media when it all kicks off. Could social media make the greatest difference simply by getting the yoot – first-timers – to engage with the games and their community? A far cry from this year’s riots. Olympic silver medallist and former world champion Roger Black, has said “London 2012 is a great chance to get kids and young athletes involved in technology as they enjoy sport”.

3. Sharing

The sharing aspect of social media will make it easier than ever to pass along talk-worthy Olympic content and stories to your friends, family, and the world. Who knows what it will be – highlights, lowlights, spoofs, whatever, but I’m expecting everyone to jump all over this one. Plus BT plans to increase the number of Wi-Fi hotspots in the capital to 500,000 in time for the Games, which will make sharing stuff in real-time even better.

4. Unpredictability

With an Olympics that everyone has been able to see coming for years, organisers and sponsors have had plenty of time to get their social media “ducks in line”. However, if they didn’t already know, that users of social media are anything but ducks; if you try to direct them to think in one way, they’ll go another. And then some. There is no telling what will go right or wrong, but we can be sure as hell that social will be at the heart of it all – fanning the flames and spreading the word. This is the really exciting part, and we don’t even know what it is yet.

(I’m the girl)

We had just 15 minutes each to pitch our idea (to reverse the decline in favourability toward advertising) to a daunting crowd, with the winners of each round being voted on by the crowd – via cool electronic keypads (epic). To top things off, there were three lovely (if not slightly intimidating) judges to scrutinise our ideas. It was like X Factor for marketers. Justin Gibbons was our Dermot, and a great one at that. I was probably more like Jedward.

Any who, my arguement was that the advertising industry are too self-orientated, too self-obsessed. We’re all like “me me me” and we don’t even realise it. According to the Trust Equation (by Galford and Drapeau), this is the most important factor in trust, and it takes away from your trustworthiness…

Trust = Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy /

                           Self-Orientation

I believe that the advertising industry operates within its own make-believe bubble. And we tend to look within the advertising bubble (ad blogs, previous awards winners, etc) for inspiration for new ideas, when really that is the last place you should be looking. One of the biggest problems with living in this bubble is believing that people care a lot about your brand. When in reality, they do not. Fact.

Quite simply, we need to lower our Self-Orientation by thinking of the advertising bubble less, and the real world more. It’s not about thinking less of yourself. It’s about thinking of yourself less, and others more. If you use your eyes to look out and not to be looked into (Stephen Fry’s wise words), then people will trust you in return, and unexpected opportunities will open up.

My ideas to lower our Self-Orientation (in short):

1. Hire misfits (Avoid gravitating towards people like yourself and hiring clones, instead, hire people from outside the advertising bubble with fresh ideas who challenge you.)

2. Get “out and about” (Spend less time at your desk during working hours, and more time experiencing new things and talking to the people you’re trying to influence – not other advertising folk. Simple, but it’s rarely done).

3. Abolish the Case Study Video (While they are “nice” at times, they are the epitome of Self-Orientation – they’re advertising about advertising for advertising’s sake. This is a plea to the awards people: we MUST get rid.)

And to bring to life point 3 (and the general ridiculousness of advertising’s Self-Orientation), I played the Pink Ponies case study – a satirical take on the case study video. Friggin’ awesome.

This years winners included myself (planning), my pal Be Pringle (creative), the smart Ashish Pathak (brands), and the charming Oliver Deane (media). The ultimate winner of the day was Tony Jiang, who was the winner of Huff Po’s open mic section for the under 25′s. A very fitting end to an incredible day.

You can check out the highlights and interviews with the winners over at Campaign here.

“You Fix” is a new type of tariff that let’s you fix your monthly bill (then top up once you’ve used up your allowance). Because nobody likes nasty surprises. This is a new sort of ad for T-Mobile – not only does it do a brilliant brand job, the focus is on a fantastic no nonsense product that offers great value for customers.

Watch this space for more advertising goodness from T-Mobile and You Fix

To excite consumers about the innovative new offer and to encourage downloads, Cake is implementing a six week experiential tour across the nation, starting today in London’s Victoria Station, and heading to Manchester Piccadilly, London Liverpool Street, Glasgow, London Paddington, and Leeds over the following weeks. Trained staff will inform passers about the key steps to download, and also hand out branded popcorn.

Film To Go movie rentals can be enjoyed at home (on a laptop, PC, or TV via a cable), or even out and about on an Apple mobile device – to watch whenever wherever suits them.

The experiential activity is designed to connect with people in the real world to drive adoption of the exciting new weekly film offer. We know that Orange customers already love to watch movies with Orange Wednesdays, but can’t always get to the cinema. Film To Go compliments Orange’s growing film portfolio, and answers this genuine consumer need. We hope that customers who have never previously thought to download a movie or watch one on the go, will now enjoy a whole new film experience with Orange.

It’s a smart move from Orange who are constantly looking for new ways to reward their customers. You can get more Film To Go details on the website here.

The partnership offers customers a rare opportunity to get their hands on a uniquely designed and stylish piece of limited edition footwear (albeit 100 shoes appears drastically limiting).

Gio-Goi have only recently opened a store in the UK, so (hopefully) the partnership exposes them to the right London crowd. This is Citroën’s first fashion collaboration in the UK, and may well do a job in communicating DS3’s performance, style, and exclusivity.

So is this a good thing? Probably. Heineken gets excellent exposure among its core target audience. While BT gets to excite pub-goers with their Wi-Fi hot spots (now 3 million in the UK) and no doubt increase business. And most importantly, customers get free Wi-Fi access and exclusive content. Everyone’s a winner then?

Well, sort of. Having played around with the London Heineken Hub Finder, the reach of the hotspots are very limiting. While the number of pubs offering punters like me free access to Wi-Fi is on the up, which let’s face it – weakens the proposition.

Have a nice day all!