Hive Health

Our Luke pinged me this.  Tight scriptwriting, great acting and a relevant story.

I saw a great candidate last night for a first round interview. Watching this made me think that alongside the CV, interview notes and discussions with people in the know, we are increasingly assessing candidates by who they are online. In the old days we might do a quick university phone around, or chat to someone whose experience had crossed with the candidate’s CV. Later this moved to  a quick Facebook check to see whether the candidate was fun, and you know, well, sociable.

These days we pretty much audit a future one of us online. In days gone by this was prorata by seniority; the bigger the kid the more we would expect but now it’s an even assessment regardless of level. A slot in the diary figuring out who we have in common, what they have worked on, whether we cross over on an occasional dragon and their day to day social media interaction and level of connectedness

This film asks the question whether that is fair, whether its important to know whether a colleagues has a penchant for spending most of their free time drunk in fountains (you know who you are). O

A couple of months ago Tom, an eBee intern, gave a very interesting presentation on why men aren’t as health conscious as women. Although men are more likely to be overweight and to drink and/or smoke more than woman, 36% of men will only go to the doctor when they’re extremely sick. It seems that men have more of a repair than maintenance approach to their health.

So how do you motivate men to maintain their health? Or, even more challengingly, how do you get them to check for prostate, bowel and testicular cancer before they’re extremely sick? In 2008 prostate cancer was the second most common cause of cancer death in men (10,168 deaths), accounting for 12% of all male deaths from cancer. Colorectal cancer caused 8,758 deaths in men in the same year, accounting for 11% of all male cancer mortality.

The Male Cancer Awareness Campaign (MCAC) is trying to get more men to take a maintenance approach to cancer by educating them on how to detect early stage symptoms. The campaign is about cancer, but it’s also about culture. In addition to providing specific information, it also aims to reduce the embarrassment that surrounds men’s attitudes towards their health.

While MCAC has created some great campaigns, such as the Near Naked Man, they recently created a viral video that makes checking for cancer sexy. JWT London teamed up with world famous photographer Rankin and model Rhian Sugden to create a video that goes a little further than your run-of-the-mill cancer campaign.

The black and white video is intimate and elegant, and the ending might just leave you stunned. It’s a smart little video because it takes what some might find embarrassing or uncomfortable and makes it seductive. I’ve already sent it on to most of my male friends, and while their reactions have been mixed none of them failed to mention it when they next saw me. And many of them, in turn, have forwarded it on to their friends.

The ad’s executed so well that if I were a man, it would make me want to put my thumb and index finger between my balls and massage them—to check for cancer of course.

A couple of weeks back I went on a D&AD course called Taking Ideas for a walk. The course tutor was an extremely enthusiastic graphic designer called Malcolm Kennard, who proceeded to do the obligatory ice breakers and then talk in depth about his experiences and the ways in which he tackles a typical brief. All very enlightening, especially when he spoke about finding inspiration by observation, sometimes in the least likely places! I appreciate that going to galleries aren’t the most original places to go for inspiration, but I’d never dreamed about finding it in a Turkish bath in Budapest!

The day progressed with a number of small uni style briefs, with few restrictions and constraints but a whole lot of scope – lovely! The aim here being to get us back into that early mindset we all use to have, before the commercial world took a firm grip and creative expression became more of a challenge to channel through all the rules, regulations and pressured clients!

Our final task of the day presented us with a mop and bucket and the brief headline Work, Play and Rest! A mop and bucket already works, so it was how I reflected the latter two aspects in my creation that would be assessed. My solution is pictured above.

Being a kid for a day again was truly inspiring. Tapping back into that freedom of expression was really refreshing, and is something that I’ll be aiming to do a lot more often!

One of Hive’s benefits is time off to spend volunteering through Team London – fantasic! On behalf of Team Cla(i)re…here’s our story:

We signed up to spend a day at a primary school in North Tottenham, working with City Year London to help regenerate their outdoor space to improve the children’s play areas. It’s called their ‘Physical Service Day’…so being sporty and too tight-fisted to spend money on our oysters trekking across London…we decided to add an extra element and cycle the 22 mile round trip from Brixton to North Tottenham. If nothing else, we are now familiar with the A10.

So setting off on our trip earlier (and somewhat scruffier) than we would on a normal work day, with 3 pages of google maps for support – we arrived magnificently on time and felt very cultural having explored what felt like most of london! On arrival, we were greated by a friendly gang of City Year workers – all donning their red jackets and excited about the work we were going to do. After a warm-up session (which didn’t help our post-cycle cool down) we were given some gardening gloves and set to work! Our job was to paint all the fences sky blue – not your typical wednesday task! We worked alongside volunteer students and the City Year Corps gang, trying not to paint leaves and get it all over ourselves. (We both came home resembling smurfs…(Pearcey started it))

All in all, a great day helping out this community! Definitely signing up for the next one!