Our very own cork board sibling Phil teer writes:

Now I get zeebox. At first I couldn’t fathom why Sky would buy a business which is effectively an app that allows you to chat with your mates while watching TV. Surely you could already do that with Twitter? I’d missed the point. Chat is a by-product. The real power of zeebox is that it allows you to see what your mates are watching and so to make up your mind about what you want to watch. We tend to watch what others are watching. We follow the recommendations of critics, ads, viewing figures or what everyone is talking about because we don’t want to miss out on what our friends are doing. Zeebox cuts out the middleman. And this is valuable because telly viewing is about to get even more fragmented as connected TV’s roll out and give us YouTube, iPlayer, Now TV and all the rest on our main set.

Anything that helps us choose what to watch will be useful and valuable. Frictionless sharing works in the same way – you read a newspaper article online and your Facebook friends are alerted. Since introducing this feature, the Guardian has seen Facebook overtake Google as the biggest driver of traffic to its site. This is the wisdom of crowds made personal: the wisdom of your crowd.

Meanwhile, the zeebox ad has divided opinion in the Agency. Well, when I say “divided opinion” I mean it has been publicly trashed by Cam: “In the tags on YouTube they forgot to put “POORLY DEVISED” “BADLY EXECUTED” and ”TOTALLY SHIT”.”

Judge for yourself, Click here

Our very own corkboard sibling Phil Teer writes:

Johnny Marr did a lecture the other week at the University of Salford. He argued that artists and outsiders innovated and built markets, not industry. Artists like Les Paul, the Beatles and the Sex Pistols were all initially rejected by the record business and, working in isolation, developed their sound and fanbase – or product and market. He has a point – industry doesn’t innovate, it spots trends and markets the innovations of outsiders. The passion, romanticism and idealism of outsiders creates movements. Artists lead the way, then the dream catches the popular imagination and the rest of us come tumbling in. It can be the blues or punk, gothic novels or romantic poetry, Manhattan lofts or Berlin squats, vintage clothes or retro furniture. Whatever. Someone dreams, the dream catches on and a market is born.

Guest corkboard sibling Phil Teer writes:

On first viewing I thought it was just a remake of their famous “Points of View” ad from the 1986. It’s not. It is actually about how open journalism allows us to follow and affect a story as it evolves.  I understood it better after hearing Guardian CEO Andrew Miller talk about it at his paper’s Changing Media conference last week. Open journalism is central to the Guardian’s strategy for making their business profitable in the digital age. It is the opposite of the paywall, which News Corp favours. It means that Guardian content is free to access online and from mobiles. (But not, in a piece of slightly iffy logic, from the iPad which apparently, is different. I guess because iPad users are willing to fork out a tenner a month.) The ad is intelligent and insightful and makes a lot of sense if you are close to the brand but from the outside, it is not immediate clear what it is all about. Which is a bit like the paper: bright, smart, occasionally iffy in its thinking and irritatingly self-referential.

Legend has it that the Points of View ad was loved by the readers but failed to grow circulation. I suspect that Three Little Pigs might turn out to be the same story.

Danielle Sherson writes: Looking back on my afternoon of speakers and debates at The Guardian Changing Media Summit, there was one standout thing in that makes me feel particularly excited. It’s probably not new news to some, but it is big news!

Microsoft’s Two Way TV using Xbox Kinect is coming soon. Sesame Street and Nat Geo are the first to partner with the technology co to bring their content into people’s living rooms in a different and more enriched way.

Imagine playing games with Elmo or even putting yourself into his world. Probably much cooler if you are under five, but the principle is very cool. Interesting to see how they work the Nat Geo content. There are also rumours that Disney are in collaboration.

I’m pretty sure this won’t stop with TV, I can see interactive books on the horizon…

Our kids are going to grow up in a pretty cool world.

You can check it out here!

Left to right (from top) Tim, Liz, Liam, Jack, Cameron, Andy, Jon, Sophie, (from bottom) Aaron, Will, Mark, Elliot, Wen, Josh, Mel and Kevin.

Drink it in, people.

Here’s a photo of our creatives as of last week. There’s quite a few of us now.

It’s kind of exciting being a creative company on the rise. 2 new people started last week. 5 more starting on Monday.

Onwards and upwards.

All we need now is a bigger office.

And a stylist, by the looks of things.

Mr Kevin Brown has just returned from his adventure at SXSWi in Austin, Texas.

We are jealous but also super excited about hearing what he saw and heard out there.

Plenty of learnings for our 2012 ambitions, which include: developing our own character worlds, interactive publishing, 20% projects and future storytelling models in  general. Bring it on.

That’s right folks we are planning another one of our legendary parties. This ‘do’ will be in celebration of The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee [*coughs* "bank holiday" *coughs*] and will help to support our efforts to build a maternity ward in Mali.

So make sure you save the date because it’s going to be a right Royal rave-up. Keep your eyes peeled on the blog, twitter, facebook etc for regular updates. But slam it in the diary. Consider yourself told / booked / invited / wanted. Repeat to fade.

This week’s cork board sibling, Helen Robertson, takes to the blog:

Later today I shall be flying off to Dublin to attend OFFSET 2012, a weekend of creativity including lectures and workshops with some of today’s most influential creatives, such as Stefan Sagmeisters, Shepard Fairey and Kyle Cooper. From tomorrow until Sunday, I’ll be tweeting the day’s events via @broandsis so look out for that, but in the mean time I wanted to draw attention to one of the name’s just mentioned; Kyle Cooper, and the area of design within which he works.

I’m particularly excited about hearing this man speak as he essentially has the job I want. As the founder of Prologue, Cooper is responsible for creating the title sequences for films such as Seven, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Spiderman. As someone who struggled to choose between a career in film or design, designing title sequences for film has become a quiet ambition of mine. Changes in fees put a stop to an MA in Motion Graphics, however my recent training in After Effects, as well as my current Battersea Tattoo Project, have re-ignited my passion for the subject.

It goes without saying that Saul Bass is a big inspiration of mine, as he is to many graphic designers and film title admirers, however there are many great title sequence designers out there, both current and past. One of my favourite sites to get lost in is http://watchthetitles.com/, which hosts 175 title sequences, arranged by designer, title and year, from 1958 to 2012, with work from over 90 designers.

You only need to spend 5 minutes on this site to see how much enthusiasm there is out there for creating what could be described as a film within a film. We may only recognise the names of Kyle Cooper and Saul Bass but there is some amazing work being done all over the world, from students to long serving professionals, it’s definitely worth a look. I recommend Madagascar 2.

http://watchthetitles.com/articles/00106-Madagascar_Escape_2_Africa

This week’s cork board sibling, Helen Robertson, takes to the blog:

As guest editor of our shiny new website this week, I thought I’d kick off with a little update on the 20% project I’m currently working on.

As you may or may not know, the lucky people at Brothers and Sisters have been given the opportunity to work on a non-client project and, provided the brief is approved, are given one day out of their busy week to work on it. Hence 20%…

I’ve been fortunate enough to be the first one to do this and have spent the last few months developing what I’ve simply called the ‘Battersea Tattoo Project’. You may have read about this in a previous entry but for those of you who haven’t, the basic idea is that I wanted to get a tattoo of Battersea Power Station but didn’t know what to get.

So I asked various artists and illustrators to help me. After many submissions, I selected a design and went down to the Family Business tattoo shop in Farringdon to have the piece transformed into a tattoo by the very talented Steve Vinall.

The day finally came yesterday to get it done, and between the hours of 12pm and 5pm on March 4^th, 2012, there was literally blood (see below), sweat and tears… and a little bit of laughter…

Look out for the upcoming short film/documentary. Big thanks to Mike Whelan for volunteering his photography services.
www.m-whelan.com

A correspondent writes:

“Dear Brothers & Sisters,
I believe you were responsible for the new Sky F1 campaign, I wanted to say how much I like it.

However, yesterday I nearly crashed my car looking at one of the billboard posters, it was amazing. The picture featured a red Ferrari (I think) parked on the twisty bend on the cote d azur Monaco track and you could see the harbour and buildings in the background.

I was wondering if you could email a jpeg of the image as I cannot find it anywhere, I’d love to have it as desktop wallpaper.
Also, being a creative myself, I would like to recreate the shot using the Gran Turismo 5 photo mode on PlayStation 3 for a bit of fun.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, whatever your response congratulations on a nice campaign.”

As you were.