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The Woodies have a blog. It’s a kind of collective. Not sure we’re about to start a revolution baby, but we might kindle a small debate or two and perhaps raise a smile. Anyway, rather than just blogging corporate Woodreed by fielding our top Woodie (as so many other companies seem to do in a thinly veiled attempt at impressing with their profundity), we wanted all our individual voices to be heard. An agency’s most valuable assets are its people after all. Everyone’s got something to say here and with us everyone’s ideas and opinions matter.

Each week someone different will be blogging. It's mostly about stuff that rocks our world as well as the flipside – the things that just don't cut it with us. We'll blog about inside and outside – inside this glorious industry where we work and outside in the real world.
It's a bit of an experiment, so go with us on this one.

Hope you enjoy.

Tuesday 31 January 2012

The most important visual is you?

Body language is an important part of communication. We use it everyday to convey how we feel, what we want and often what we need. Gesture, movement and facial expression contribute to helping our audience grasp what we want to say.

In business, an experienced presenter will be aware of certain presentation pointers that will help him/her appear confident, knowledgeable, sharp and in control. Well rehearsed presenters will use body language to manipulate and capture the audience interest. The theory is people buy you not what you're selling. This is why it's believed that the most important visual is you, not the presentation or dazzling animation.

So the next time you're meeting a client remember a few things:

1. Leaving your hands resting at your sides diminishes your listeners ability to appreciate your ideas

2. When gesturing keep the gestures in proportion to the size of your audience

3. Always look your audience in the eye.



LOOK! Things I think are dire : The way politicians are media trained


What is it with politicians on the telly and radio? It’s media training gone mad I tell you. It all started with Tony B and his never ending helicopter style gesticulating. If that wasn’t annoying enough the tourettes-style hand movements are now joined by the never ending command to ‘Look'. They start every sentence by telling the interviewer and therefore me to ‘Look’! But Mr/Mrs Politician, oh where am I looking? Who am I looking at? You are on the radio, I cannot see you. I am driving; if I look I might crash.

Look is frankly a rather rude way to get someone’s attention at the best of times (unless you are walking around the supermarket with a 2 year old in tow and trying to distract him from grabbing at the seductively placed 2 year old eye level kinder eggs by diverting his attention to the man in the dinner jacket spinning round the supermarket singing ‘sorry to bother yoooooou’.)

It’s really as annoying as anyone who has an annoying professional repetitive verbal habit (um, sort of, you know what I mean, basically and so on) but a little bit more so because a) they are politicians and high up there on the annoying scale anyway and b) on the radio and telly all the bloody time IN MY FACE TELLING ME TO LOOK!

Can I be the only person who is perturbed by it? I say no, so I ask Jo, she agrees big time “So very patronising” she asserts. I Google it and lo there’s a whole community of anti-lookers. Ha, I knew I wasn’t alone.

So please media trainers of Great Britain, get out your thesauruses and help the poor parroty politicians of Great Britain get over their look addictions.

Friday 20 January 2012

The gift of a book

At Woodreed we always have a tradition at Christmas to play 'Secret Santa'. For those of you who do not know what this game is, you pick a folded piece of paper from a batch which has one of your colleagues' names written on and you traditionally buy a silly gift for them which is then opened during the Staff Christmas party/meal.

This year it was decided that we wouldn't go for the silly gift but for something that could be useful and enjoyed by the person receiving the gift. I felt a bit dissapointed that we couldn't go with the norm but when we did get to open our presents I was so pleased that it had been changed this year as I was given a lovely book (not a paperback) but a hardback one, with a beautiful cover sleeve. I am currently reading my gift during my train journeys to and from work and for once the trains appear to be running to time (this being a good thing for getting to my destination on time but not for having only ten minutes in the morning and evening to read!!).

I don't get a chance to read as much as I would like to and I'm really enjoying my book as I can relate to the main character and aspects of her life and am hopefully going to make some changes, as I'm sure she will, for better in life.

Thank you my 'Secret Santa' you could not have chosen a better present for me :-).

Wednesday 18 January 2012

Painter at the court of Milan

Leonardo da Vinci at The National Gallery - what a once in a life time exhibition to attend. Seeing as he is sometimes know as the 'false starter' it was surprising just how many pieces were intact. Beautifully displayed in a contradictory, hovering and elusive way the curators matched my vision and expectations of Leonardo - precise, intense control against the inquisitive, remote and sometimes disturbing artist. Simplicity was the key, with one or two portraits to view in each room and the lighting superbly matched to that of the pictures themselves, it made his pale figures loom out of the darkness giving it a very mysterious feel. With clever positioning, the portrait of Ludovico Sforza's wife giving an evil stare to the beautiful Cecillia Galleranni, Sforza's 16 year old mistress on the other side of the room was a wonderful way to showcase the work of such a visual thinker.

It is in his drawings that Leonardo truly comes alive for me, trying to interpret what you see is often overshadowed by the presence of his work. Sketches, studies, meanderings, jokes and notes are in abundance which remind you of his enquiring and lively mind. He would sometimes begin a drawing close to the edge of the paper, leaving himself no space for its completion. It is as if he had so many thoughts that in his hurry and enthusiasm he sometimes missed the paper!

The first piece of work you see, potentially his greatest drawing - his vision of how the mind works in 1486 - beside his portrait of a musician, you see the true master. The musician's eyes are painted as glinting spheres, all vitality and inner perception. Leonardo sensed the connection between the mind and the eye, 'to see is in some sense to know' he wrote. Astonishing.

We are never likely to see so many of Leonardo's work brought together again in our lifetime and as they seemed to carry Leonardo's thoughts with such intimacy it felt like an honour to be in their presence. But there was a sense of something missing, something going on that you couldn't see, simply put I wonder what was really going on in Leonardo's mind back in the 1400's - I guess we will never know.

Image taken from www.nationalgallery.org.uk

Tuesday 17 January 2012

Who wants their own memory palace?

If you fancy your very own memory palace, just like Sherlock, then don't despair we all have it within ourselves to build one.
By chance on Sunday I picked up a supplement from this week's Guardian all about memory.  It began with some simple tests to assess my memory (simple in format, not simple to do) and then gave a whole raft of techniques to learn for ways to improve it.
It was fascinating and believe it or not I found myself able to memorise all 40 of the Bard's plays in order of publication.  And I did it in little over an hour.  I even managed to learn a smattering of Estonian vocabulary.  Of course that in itself doesn't have a great deal of use outside the pub quiz fraternity but the skills are so easily translatable into daily life - especially that challenge we all face of being introduced to a number of people all at once and then promptly forgetting their names.
Take a look and you'll see just how simple the techniques are at http://bit.ly/wzmEot  And of course I'm happy to demo my Shakespeare trick to prove it - amazingly 3 days later I still can recall it!
(picture courtesy The Guardian)






Tuesday 10 January 2012

Bibliotherapy and books that inspire


Anyone heard of bibliotherapy? I certainly hadn’t until I heard a fascinating programme on radio 4 (where else) about it. Bibliotherapy, is an expressive therapy that uses an individual's relationship to the content of books and poetry and other written words as therapy (apparently).

It got me thinking about books that had left an impression on my life and why, so I thought I’d list some of them here:

1. Enid Blyton – Famous Five and Malory Towers, in fact all of Enid Blyton’s books
I was a voracious reader as a child and I’d always have about 4 books on the go at any one time. I totally lost myself in the vivid worlds Blyton created. My 8 year old daughter, much to my delight is now reading the Famous Five herself (the original versions full of Dick, Fanny and lashing of ginger beer of course) and I am loving how engrossed she too becomes in the adventures.


2. Sylvia Plath – the Bell Jar

Couldn’t get Plath out of my mind for a long time after I’d read this plus her poetry. Such a complex individual who shared her innermost feelings through her writing.

3. Aldous Huxley – Brave New World
I read this when I was about 17 on a post A level girls’ holiday to Ibiza (how very incongruous) and was blown away by his vision of the future (in between the sangria, sand and….lack of sleep).

4. Khaled Hosseini - A thousand splendid suns
Cried, cheered, could hardly bare to turn the page on occasion. Learnt so much about the culture and people of Afghanistan.

5. George Orwell – 1984
I read this initially at university and then again recently in my book club. Meant so much more to me second time round and saw so much more meaning in it as an adult rather than the relatively naive politically unaware critique of my 18 year old self.

6. Thomas Hardy - Tess of the d’Urbervilles
Another uni text, I think I was left feeling frustrated and depressed for poor old Tess as well as introducing me to the odd sounding literary technique of ‘pathetic fallacy’ (which you probably need to be careful how you say, which is perhaps why I haven’t forgotten it!)

7. Jeanette Winterson – Oranges are not the only fruit
I love the way Winterson writes and love her honesty and wit in her semi-autobiographical novel. Also in awe that she wrote it at just 25.

8. Jilly Cooper – Riders
I was horse crazy as a child and teenager and totally fell in love with Rupert Campbell Black and the racy Cotswold horsey life Jilly portrayed in this book.

9. Elizabeth Taylor – In a Summer Season
The writer, not the actress, who I am ashamed to say I’d not heard of before a programme about her on radio 4. Heralded as 'One of the most underrated novelists of the twentieth century'. Immediately bought this book and marvelled at the subtleties of her characters as she exposes the often suffocating repression of the middle classes of the early 1960s and the age old contradiction between what people say and what they really think.

10 Irving Stone – “Lust for Life” and the “Agony and the Ecstasy”
Two works of ‘faction’ (rooted in fact but with fictional elements and an imagined dialogue) about Vincent Van Gogh and Michelangelo respectively that I implore you to read. I honestly never wanted to get to the end of either of them. Transports you to their worlds in technicolour and allows you to climb inside their heads to witness their genius in a way that is utterly captivating.

What books have left a lasting impression on you?

Friday 6 January 2012

New Year's Resolution

Starting a new year is exciting. It's a time to draw a line under the things we wish we could have changed and look forward to what delights lie ahead; It's a time to reflect on the changes we want or need to make in our lives; It's a time to make plans and promises to ourselves. With the best intentions I keep a list in my diary of the things I would like to resolve in the new year.

My list this year:

Be more patient
Swear less
Read more
Learn Spanish
Help more in the kitchen (my husband does the cooking)
Explore music
See Italy
Buy a sewing machine

Do you have a New Year's resolution?

Tuesday 3 January 2012

The long and the short of it

"I did not have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one instead" 
Winston Churchill



Melvyn Bragg has been talking about social media and his view that far from dumbing down our communication skills it will in fact deliver the opposite by giving people who previously haven't found a way to communicate a media they feel comfortable using.


I have to say, with the obvious exceptions of those Tweeters who simply spout vitriol and abuse, that  I agree with him.  The discipline of 140 characters is powerful - it takes the classic 'elevator pitch' to a whole new level (see what I did there?) and forces the writer to focus on what they are really trying to say.


I've always valued the famous quote by our most legendary wordsmith, Winston Churchill.  I somehow think he'd have embraced Twitter too.