At Magpie we’re always looking for new ways to add value to our relationships and put our creativity to good use. When our designer, Anna, said ‘Why don’t we run an Ideas Hack day for our clients?’ she had us at ‘Ideas Hack’. A whole day of coming up with creative ideas for speculative briefs for our clients? Yes please!
We set about getting speculative briefs from clients, these could be projects clients have been thinking about for a long time but not moved forward with, or pipeline notions. However, we would only accept a brief that posed a problem and not a solution. We received a great range of briefs – from clean air campaigning, to nice neighbourhood scenes, to A&E behaviour change – and, tooled up with knowledge and passion, we were ready and raring to go!
On the day we dedicated resource of 11 team members and set about 7 hours of blue-sky thinking, throwing the box to one side and putting our creativity to the test. With one day to get our ideas pitch perfect, to go from initial ideas to a fully-formed solution, we knew we’d have to mix it up and work together to ensure success. We took a step away from our desks, out of our comfort zones, and banned any working in our usual studio spaces.
After a day of sharing, strategising and sketching, our teams were ready to share their solutions.
Here’s a sneaky peek!
It’s no secret that communities no longer interact with each other. With loneliness, stress and mental health being a rising problem in today’s society, health is deteriorating and it’s time to act. Nice Neighbourhoods aims to create a social movement where people are empowered to help others around them. We took inspiration from Neighbourhood Watch (the biggest voluntary community movement in the UK). Unlike this, which is focused solely on crime and less on community support, we wanted something that is just as easy for people to do and be involved in but created more of a community. As part of this idea, a Nice Neighbourhood pack will be delivered to every house in the neighbourhood encouraging everyone to be a nice neighbour.
Too many people go to A&E when they should seek medical help from a different service – 30% of people who visit A&E don’t need to be there. Serious, simple and straight to the point, the campaign will be copy-led with the message ‘Life threatening? 30% of people who go to A&E don’t need to. Find the right service for you.’ The aim is to grab the audience’s attention and make them stop and think ‘Do I actually need to go to A&E, or would another service be more suitable for my issue?’
Residents in Leeds are suffering because Leeds’ air quality is not within legal limits. But the only way to decrease air pollution is if people change their behaviour. We need to give car users a reason to change their behaviour to create a cleaner, greener Leeds. Clean Air Zones will be positioned in the hotspots around Leeds to stop people leaving their car engines ‘idling’. This will immediately decrease air pollution in the key areas by making people change their behaviour. Thought provoking billboards and air quality meters will be placed around Leeds encouraging the audience to start thinking about the air they breathe and how this will affect both their own and their families health.
The feedback has been fantastic and we’re excited to see how these ideas can develop further. If you have a problem that you’d like the team to work on, look out for details of the next Ideas Hack, or get in touch with hello@wearemagpie.com.
