ACM’s Distraction In Action #7
Discover more from All Conditions Media
ACM’s Distraction In Action #7
Design gatekeepers, skate charities, and LSD: five links that are dominating our chat
Your new Distraction In Action email from All Conditions Media is here. Scroll away to get a look at the latest links and talking points from our team chat, so they can successfully distract you from work just as much as they did us…
1. STAY SANE IN THE WORLD OF SOCIAL
If you’ve been emailing our Charlotte TSP this week, please excuse any small delays - her hands are still healing from an absolute beasting out in Fontainebleau, where she pulled into a couple of huge 7a+ routes to cement her status as ACM’s Sandstone Sensei. This kind of team expertise in the outdoors - be it climbing, ultramarathoning, surfing, skateboarding, hiking, road cycling, snowboarding, or anything else, frankly - is what makes ACM totally unique, and the best at what we do. So much so that we actively encourage our team to use their weekends and our remote and flexible working structure to switch off, get out there, and hone the outdoor experience that we rely on for authentic and exceptional storytelling.
It brings us to a dilemma. While proudly boasting about the support we give our team to leave their desks behind, how can we expect our social media gurus to post on client accounts at obscure hours, and often through their weekends? It’s a scenario with big mental health undertones, and one that the industry doesn’t seem to be addressing. So we have. Check out last week’s newsletter to see how we’ve found a process that fulfills our out-of-hours client requests effectively, while keeping the impact on our digital team’s free time to an absolute minimum. Thanks to all the subscribers who have sent us great feedback on this one, too. We’re chuffed you enjoyed it.
We learned: So Solid Crew is still a thing?
2. APPLAUD THE SHACKLETON EXPEDITIONERS
Convincing the cream of the UK style, travel, and luxury media industries to take nearly a week away from their tighter-than-ever deadlines is a tall order. Doing it with the stipulation that they’ll be peeing in bottles on the trip, and that tall order turns moon-bound. Or not, as it turns out.
Last week, four top journalists returned from a taste of Shackleton Challenges - our luxury performance apparel client’s adventure experience programme designed by their in-house experts. The foursome embarked on a long ski tour through Finse, a part of Norway often used by polar explorers given its Antarctica-like climate and absolute nothingness, and we’ve loved seeing the social posts our frost-dodging journalists have put up since getting back to the land of fast coffee and 5G. We’re now taking bets on how many of their write-ups will feature pee-pee bottle anecdotes.
We learned: Escapism’s Molly Codyre had a pretty good time: “It might sound ridiculous, but the sheer challenge of it and recognising how much joy I gained from the adventure has inspired me to take on more equivalent experiences in the future.”
3. TAKE A SECOND HIT OF SURREALISM
Two weeks back, in our last Distraction In Action mailer, we shouted about the nightmarish cephalopod-based fever dream that PETA created to turn us all off our octopus dinners, and how it must have used the BBC’s The Mighty Boosh as reference material. Now, everyone’s favourite locomotive booking site, Trainline, has chugged on into Surrealism Station (late, of course), with a weirdy, beardy, hippy, trippy TV spot that seems to indicate microdosing has reached marketing. Out with infantilising talking animals in every advertisement, and in with LSD? Yes please, we’ll take it.
We learned: We wouldn’t be surprised if this year’s John Lewis Xmas ad is inspired by The League Of Gentlemen.
4. SKATE (VIRTUALLY) FOR A GOOD CAUSE
Obvious statement of the day: we’re huge, HUGE fans of Skateistan. An organisation using action sports as a force for good and empowerment - that’s absolutely our bag. We’ve been following Ollie Percovich and his nonprofit since the early days, through the establishment of their safe and skateable spaces in conflict zones such as Afghanistan, Cambodia, South Africa, and Jordan, to now, the latest chapter that involves a genius idea for raising essential funds. Play For Skateistan - think THPS with digital replicas of real-life kids from the Skateistan communities - raises funds for the org while spreading its message to a younger demographic. Download it, make yourself a desk brew, buy a couple of mods, and take your full lunch hour to have a roll around.
We learned: The investment we made in getting really really good at THPS2 was worthwhile after all.
5. LISTEN TO METALLICA
You’re probably sick to death of agencies emailing you with requests to listen to 90s thrash metal, but one more can’t hurt. Stick your headphones on and hit play on the above live, loud, and mullet-tastic concert video for the full experience as you read this. It’s a look at Metallica’s unexpected choice of the colour yellow for their latest album, 72 Seasons, and how it represents a much wider debate around brand identity, design gatekeeping, and fear of doing things differently. It’s written by Rob Campbell, a head of strategy at a big ad agency in NZ who happens to call Metallica a former client of his. Or, as we’d call him, the guy we want to be sat next to at a silly marketing awards dinner.
We learned: Master Of Puppets > Ride The Lightning > Kill ‘Em All > …And Justice For All > S&M. That’s the order.
CREW TO-DO LIST
Every fortnight, one ACMer reveals the tasks that’ve been getting their head cogs whirring, so we can all make sure they’re working hard enough introduce our super talented crew and showcase what they bring to our creative process. This week it’s the turn of ACM’s extremely talented, totally irreplaceable, and very hard-working writer of all our newsletters (including this one), Chris Sayer…
You made it all the way down here? Here’s a gift for your troubles:
END OF THE ROADER’S BONUS NUGGET
How was that newsletter for you? Let us know in a comment below