Christmas is finally upon us and as we reach the end of the countdown, it’s time to reflect on the adverts that have defined our Christmas 2012.

As October leads into November, there is always the same sense of anticipation; who will make us cry? Who will make us laugh? And who will make Mr Jones from Norwich ring the ASA to complain? This year certainly didn’t disappoint; from walking snowmen embarking on a quest for love to talking aliens, we’ve seen it all.

However, as everyone’s Twitter and Facebook statuses acknowledge, it just simply isn’t Christmas until we’ve seen the iconic Coca Cola advert, making it the favourite ad not just this year, but every year.

Another company which has felt a great deal of pressure to follow the success of its previous hit is John Lewis. In 2011 we followed a young boy and his countdown to Christmas day taking us back to our childhoods and putting a smile on even the sternest of faces. This year the snowman advert did not let us down, but perhaps this is more to do with the popularity of the song ‘The Power of Love’ rather than the initial sentiment of the commercial itself? Nevertheless, it’s certainly a heart warmer!

Two brands in particular that received a great deal of criticism and complaints for their adverts are Morrisons and Asda, who (arguably) portray Christmas day to be more of an ordeal that mothers must suffer and endure. Asda’s strapline ‘Christmas doesn’t happen by magic’ has been considered sexist and offensive. Although the message may offer up some truth, no one wants to be reminded of that by a Christmas advert!

In comparison, the Morrisons advert tackles a similar subject but with a sense of humour, finding the mum in a boxing ring with a Turkey. Although the undertone emulates the sense of stress and dread that the majority of us face at Christmas, the advert provides a great deal of entertainment and humour; particularly during the cold and dark winter months.

Perhaps the most arguably unique Christmas advert of 2012 is Waitrose’s ‘Giving more this Christmas’. The advert is supposed to dispel feelings of commercialism by providing a reminder of those less fortunate, choosing to donate the money to charity than a big budget production. It’s very simple, but is its charitable simplicity enough to stand up to the competition?

The one viral that particularly struck a chord in the Turn Key office is Warehouse’s ‘Morning After Edition #SOS’ which brings a whole new meaning to the 12 days of Christmas. The viral campaign is witty and relatable, promoting the brand’s sense of humour and getting us in the mood for the party season! We’re certainly very glad our Christmas party is on a Friday this year…


Turn Key rocks

Turn Key designer Sean has been busy with some exciting graphic motion projects over the past few weeks. Here he talks about his work with metalcore band, Bring Me The Horizon, on the teaser video for their upcoming album, Sempiternal.

When we first heard about the opportunity to work with Bring Me The Horizon , we couldn’t wait to get stuck in. The band wanted to create a dynamic video for the forthcoming album Sempiternal, using the symbol of the cover’s artwork. Having such an open brief gave us a lot of creative freedom over the project.

To design an engaging two minute video that was basically just made up of circles, we had to be very creative and carefully plan each stage so that the viewer wouldn’t lose interest. This was the main obstacle for us and we relished the challenge.

From listening to the music we broke the animation up into three sections. The beginning needed to be slow and mystical to reflect the opening of the song, then progressively speed up, becoming more aggressive as the beat kicks in and singing starts. It all builds up to the ending when the symbol forms together just before the final bass drops.

Having the circles appearing gradually and slowly building up the symbol throughout the animation gave a feeling of depth and space. We managed to capture the mood and intense build-up of the music with the animation, which really grabs the viewer’s attention and doesn’t let go, fulfilling our brief perfectly.

For a project that was such a quick turnaround, we had a lot of creative freedom which gave us an opportunity to really show off our talent. Overall the client (and their fans) gave amazing feedback, everyone at Turn Key loved it and the internet hits have been phenomenal!

Check out the video here:


As many marketeers and creatives will know, The Drum recently launched a Pussy Riot campaign in support of freeing the Russian punk band from jail. As part of its continual quest to promote freedom of speech, the publication called out for designers and creative professionals to invent a quirky piece of merchandise to support the appeal.

At Turn Key, we love a challenge and our Junior Designer, Carl , quickly got to work. He came up with the incredible app, Angry Bitches.

The app takes on the legacy of the popular Angry Birds, aimed at the ever-growing demand of the casual gamer. The objective of the game is to wreak havoc for your rights in the name of feminism, using the ’slinky shot’ (cleverly entitled by Emma from PR!) to fire band members and disrupt the opposition. As the game develops you gather more power as you race through levels unleashing accumulated ‘Pussy Power’ in the form of speed, strength and other abilities.

As soon as we submitted the artwork to The Drum, it was uploaded onto the website as their ‘Pick of the Day’ and needless to say Carl was grinning like a Cheshire Cat for the rest of the afternoon!

The winning piece of merchandise will be transformed into an actual product and sold with all proceeds going to the Pussy Riot appeal. Voting opened on The Drum’s website last week and closes this Friday (28 th September) so PLEASE support us and vote Turn Key. Tell your friends, tell your family and tweet it to anyone who will listen and let’s bring Angry Bitches to life!

CLICK HERE TO VOTE!


We all like to muck in at Turn Key, so when we were asked to complete a photo shoot for innovative mobile accessory company, MyBunjee, our team literally jumped at the chance to get in front of the camera – as well as behind it! Throughout the shoot the team were jumping about on skateboards and snowboards and we finished the day not just happy we’d got some cracking action shots, but that everyone was still in one piece!

The shoot went really well and you will be able to see the fruit of our labour on a brand new website and a host of marketing collateral very soon. However, in the meantime, here’s a sneak peek behind the scenes.

Thank you to our models, Oliver and Olivia for doing a great job!


We have had a fair few questions recently about the new cookie law due to be enforced on the 26th May, so we thought it would be worth pointing out what our recommendation is and how it affects our customers.

Cookies are a type of file stored on your computer, phone or tablet and are used by most websites for things such as tracking users’ movements to social media integration. As most of our clients use Google Analytics all our sites use cookies, in this way, at the very least. What the law stipulates now is that site users must be made aware of this and give their consent for their cookies to be stored.

However there are a hundred shades of grey in terms of how people are interpreting this law and, as very few of the big companies have yet to make any changes, most smaller businesses are pretty complacent about updating their own site – especially when the addition of a clunky opt in box on the homepage could affect the end user experience and create a barrier between the customer and company/brand.

Our recommendation would be to update your website’s terms and conditions / privacy policies to include information about what cookies are and how they are used by the site in question. This, for at least the short term, should be obviously linked to from the homepage. This could be a designed graphic, if you wanted to do something personal / amusing (our approach – see www.turn–key.co) or a discreet pop up box which appears the first time someone visits your site and links them to the updated information.

As highlighted in today’s BBC article though most Government sites are also going to miss the deadline, let alone private businesses, so the general consensus seems to be that as long as you show you are making some kind of effort you will probably be ok.


1.  Technorati – It’s been around for years but as I’m been working on a social media listening piece recently, I’ve rediscovered how useful it is. Essentially it is a directory of most of the blogs out there in the blogosphere and a search engine to peruse each of them. What’s most useful is that it gives an ‘authority’ and ‘rank’ to any blog, both against the whole of the Technorati listings, and within its own specialists sector e.g. sports, medical, travel, etc. ‘Blog Authority’ is based on an algorithm of popularity, links, relevancy and frequency of content and is particularly useful when researching which blogs within a sector one might engage with to do a spot of online PR.

2.  Goodsie – This ‘create your own online store’ eCommerce platform looks just amazing and is inspiring us all to set up our own eCommerce businesses! For just $15 a month it provides small businesses with a great platform for their online store. Plus, I love the simple, modern design of the Goodsie website. Nice large font as live text, simple but clever navigation which keeps all the key info on the homepage … beautiful.

3.  Pinterest – Yes I know this was the flavour of last month but I finally got my Pinterest invite through and I think it’s fantastic. It’s now easier than ever to store all the beautiful and interesting images you might come across on your day to day web browsing, in your own personalised categories. It looks great too (even if it is a bit girly!).

4.  Responsive design – This is the next level in the technique of web design and build for multiple devices. By using some nice HTML5/CSS3 wizardry, and most importantly designing the best user experience for each device the website will be viewed on, means we can create a single website, laid out so as to be easy to read and navigate, whatever the device and screen size.My favourite example right now is Smashing Magazine . To see what I’m harping on about, grab the corner of your browser window and resize to smaller and larger screen sizes, right from smartphone, to tablet, to huge iMac type screen and watch in awe as the navigation and content moves to fit the screen size perfectly. We’re currently employing this design on some of Turn Key’s own upcoming sites.


Pinterest is possibly the most buzzed-about social media tool on the market and is set to take the online world by storm. For those of you who haven’t heard of the platform it gives users the chance to capture and organise images from the web onto their own “virtual pinboard”.

Considering that Pinterest is still an invite only platform, it’s has seen tremendous growth over the last two months. According to research company Shareaholic, Pinterest has over 4.9 million users and has driven more referral traffic in the last two months than Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube combined!

Pinterest has seen many players making use of the website with more and more American brands and even a few UK companies starting to recognise the platform’s potential. In the last week it has gained a rather well-known social media user; the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg himself! He has posted very little content so far, but if he’s interested then surely more will follow. I know that we are desperate to get signed up and are looking forward to seeing Pinterest grow and grow in popularity!


Innocent helps drinkers label their love

To celebrate yesterday’s day of love Innocent Smoothie s, renowned for its witty and imaginative packaging, got its drinkers in the mood for Valentine’s Day by offering consumers the chance to create their own ‘love label’ to wrap around their favourite smoothie bottle. After creating a heart-warming message drinkers could either print out their personalised label, or share it on and – a nice little idea to get those creative juices flowing.

Heineken celebrates Valentine’s Day with ‘The Serenade’ Facebook app

Heineken is well known for its engaging and creative social media campaigns, so it was no surprise to see them jump on the day-of-love band wagon and help internet users share the love. Heineken created the Facebook app to let consumers send personalised songs to potential partners, inviting them on a Valentine’s Day date.

They’ve also spread the word on , where millions of people from across the globe will be able to participate and create their own songs via this viral platform. Check it out

Spread the love

This year, Marmite teamed up with renowned artist Pete Fowler to create a series of e-cards for users to send to their loved ones this Valentine’s Day. After ‘liking’ the Marmite fan page fans got the chance to send three bright and quirky messages of love, these included – “I need you in my life”, “spread the love” and “let’s get together”.

This clever campaign drove people to the Facebook page and encouraged Marmite lovers to share recipes, videos and much more to win fantastic prizes – now that’s some serious social love!


I was having a clear out recently and came across some of my first pieces of work, which I created entirely using hand-drawing techniques.

In the early years of my career I set out to become skilled at every illustrative technique; fine-lining, Magic Marker, Airbrush and pencil. Once mastered, I learned how beautifully these techniques work with each other but since the invention of the Mac there is little demand for them commercially anymore and they have sadly been pushed aside.

I will always remember when I showed a piece of work to my dad; he looked at it and didn’t seem impressed or even interested, but I couldn’t understand why, until he explained that he thought I’d been showing him a photograph from a magazine and not my own handiwork.

My drawing of the plane bursting through the paper was not, as you may think commissioned, it was a punishment for throwing things in a school art class. I was told to complete an airbrush assignment in my own time, a task which turned out to be not so much a chore but instead the start of my design career!

So whilst Apple Macs have completely changed the design world and definitely make our lives easier I think it’s also important not to forget the traditional techniques which can create incredible pieces of artwork by simply putting pen to paper. It still is and always will be a passion of mine; now you know what I do at the weekends!


Another privacy furore or candid admission of defeat?

Places was always going to be a risky move for Facebook, for two reasons;

1. An incredibly chequered record on user privacy.
2. Incredibly focused, powerful competition from Foursquare and Gowalla, two location based social networks.

Still, they danced along the rim of the spinning wheel of chance and unfortunately have fallen flat on their collective faces. So why didn’t Places work for a network that has been so universally successful in almost every other respect?

1. Privacy
We all secretly, in the deep crevices of our minds know that Facebook is just one gargantuan marketing database, but we do not appreciate that fact rubbed in our faces when Facebook stretch the word ‘liberal’ to its very limit with a new privacy update.

This infographic (courtesy of Mashable / ) summarises the most salient issues beautifully

A History of Facebook Privacy Issue - Lisa Waananen

So we can now see how users responded almost a year down the line “No Facebook, no.”

Don’t be fooled however, you have always been able to restrict who can tag you at a location, it was a feature when . I believe the real reason that Places is getting taken ‘out back’ is because of incredibly poor uptake, which leads me nicely on to…

2. Competition
Facebook massively underestimated the strength of the competition in this arena. Anecdotally I don’t think that the Facebook audience was ready for location based functionality, I don’t think they wanted it and personally I got little or no added value from it.

I’ve been a member and user of Foursquare for the last couple of years ( come see me if you are too ). If I want awesome location based fun, that’s where I go. I have had neither the desire nor interest in sharing my location on Facebook in any way other than in a status update.

Here is a little peek at the titanic growth that Foursquare drove through 2010

Foursquare Growth 2010

Check out the full amazing infographic here .

Where Facebook and Foursquare differ however is over our old friend privacy. Foursquare doesn’t leave every option as ‘Opt In’ or allow people to speak for me. It simply empowers me as a user to tell people where I am, what I’m doing and who else is nearby. It is the location based marketing tool, Facebook really, really wanted to have and just failed to launch.

While Foursquare has totally understood concerns about privacy and continue to flourish in location based social marketing, Facebook has sailed past the lighthouse and crashed on the jagged rocks of failure.

So why has it taken Facebook users so long to be concerned about the lack of control over location (as well as photo based) tagging?

The reason I believe it has taken so long for this basic privacy concern to come to light is that social networks simply didn’t feature in the public eye until recently. The increasing amount of interest social networking has received over the past two years has seen internet interaction grow from a furtive, socially unacceptable back room activity into a perfectly acceptable mode of communication, no more exciting than sending a text.

As social networking (and the Internet as a whole, let’s be honest) continues to spill into everyday life, it is becoming the subject of everyday concerns and particularly in the UK, privacy is a big one.

Inevitably during a paradigm shift in the way we interact, there will be some teething problems. This kind of openness takes some adjustment in the public conciousness and privacy always will be a concern. We have seen that for years with the Government , with Google Streetview , and recently with the phone hacking scandal .

As we become more data reliant, we must ensure that the people we give our information up to use it responsibly.

So Facebook; I applaud your diversification, I love your network, but please, please learn from the last six years of privacy misery – let me do the opting in.

Kthxby.