Ideashop - Just another WordPress weblog

Okido is a beautifully designed, art and science magazine for children aged 2 to 7 filled with quirky cartoons, games, puzzles and even recipes. Established by scientist Sophie Dauvois and launched in 2007, it is now stocked in The Tate and Waterstones, has received funding from the Wellcome Trust, and has everyone from Timeout to The Telegraph singing its praises and has some of the country’s leading animators on its roster of contributors.

But Okido is a youngster set for even bigger things:

1) The long term objective is to integrate Okido into the curriculum and see it used in schools as a teaching tool.

2) To grow the number of people who subscribe to Okido and

3) Increase the number of outlets that stock it

To help Okido on its way to success we recommended:

Outreach to the Mum blogosphere, education trade press and design community:

Although Okido had seen tremendous coverage in traditional print media and the lifestyle press another important audience to target is the Mom blogosphere. We suggested engaging with some key bloggers perhaps by offering a free year’s subscription or running an art competition online through one of the blogs to drive subscription.

Raising Okido’s profile within the Education and Teaching press and gaining endorsements from these outlets and Teaching Unions would also be an important way to establish it as an educational product and raise its credibility in this sector.

Okido are also keen to receive stories and input from more graphic designers, animators and cartoonists and so we also felt that publications such as Creative Review should feature on their radar as a way of reaching out to other artists and raise its profile with potential buyers and contributors.

Post by Clair Whitefield

Spike Spondike is a livewire American creative full of ideas but a bit unsure of how to go about getting a job in the creative industry in London.

She came to Idea Shop with a lot of ideas and even more charisma and asked us to go through her CV and portfolio to give her the best possible chance of getting a job.

We were really impressed with the actual work but gave her a few pointers on her CV to make it more applicable to the British market as well as giving her a few contacts and recruitment companies who may be able to point her in the right direction.

Her CV and portfolio were presented in a rather kooky, creative way. We advised Spike to save the quirkiness for elsewhere and let the work speak for itself. She had a portfolio of two halves, half amazing conceptual creative work, half other stuff. After chatting to her for a while it became clear that the conceptual work was what excited her – happily that was also where she really shone. (She really is very talented). We suggested focusing her efforts on that work, rather than selling herself short on something she didn’t really want to do.

We also suggested she use a site like www.carbonmade.com for her online portfolio. This would allow her to focus on the work and not worry about doing, (or being judged on), web design/development.

And then for the quirkiness. We felt that in additional to a more traditional CV and portfolio, she could use her considerable creative talents to create a buzz around her work.  We talked about various ideas for a blog to celebrate her love of creative generalism and design diversity. We talked about the lovely lovely example of Make Something Cool Everyday by Brook Davies

http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Make-Something-Cool-Every-Day-2009/171640

We looked into ideas for a sticker campaign leading people to Spike’s blog or portfolio. We also discussed various guerilla stunts. But I can’t share any of these with you because it would ruin the surprise.

We wish this unique creative talent all the best in her search for work. Check out her blog here http://www.spikethedesigner.blogspot.com/

Posted by Jason Scott



WorldEka is an example of how the digital world can make a really positive difference to the world. It is a social networking site with a difference – their aim is to provide a platform for charities and non-government organisations (NGO) to meet, network and share resources in synergy for the greater good of their individual causes. It is a platform that allows these small organisations to come together and pool their ever-precious resources.

WorldEka came to the Ogilvy Ideas Shop with the objectives of growth. They wanted to acquire more leads and organisations and increase customer engagement and dwell time. How were they to acquire these new leads was the challenge – would Twitter or other social sites be the key to gaining more awareness and drive for them?

The solution:

As a purely online company we suggested that they look the most important asset that they have – their existing customers. Very little profiling and analysis of their current users had been done, yet they could learn so much from these existing users:

Part 1:

-        Audit the current user base

-        Profile the trends of active users and highlight dormant accounts

Part 2:

-        Develop eCRM communications based on the above profiles to engage the users at different times to their lifecycle.

-        Develop a dialogue and become an enabler to making this network work.

Part 3:

-        Leverage this wonderful asset – They found that people willing to apply themselves to charity are very engaged. We suggested WorldEka to start using this to compile user generated content of video and imagery that can be shared throughout the site for other member organisations to use in their efforts to raise awareness of their plight. Making WorldEka a really useful resource for members to come back to again and again instead of being just an online lobby to meet people.

www.worldeka.com