Leith is who we are.
Leith is where we are.
The Leith Agency's weblog.

An amazing lady called Lori Idlout popped in to visit us a couple of weeks ago, courtesy of clever Suzie at ’see me’.

Lori works for the Embrace Life Council in Nunavet, the most northern and most recently established province in Canada. The community living in (huuuuge) Nunavut numbers some 32,000 people. The median age of this community is 22. They speak 4 languages, one of which is English. Historically, a nomadic community, they were settled at last some decade in this incredibly inhospitable landscape (dark for three solid months of the year, beating sunlight for three months of the year and something in between the rest of the time) and urged to apply themselves to adhering to the same governing principles as the rest of that fair country. As you might imagine, it was all a bit of a shock to the system.

The suicide rate in Nunavut is incredibly high. Whether due to the clash of cultures, the remote land, the uncompromising weather or, as Lori suggested, the sudden exposure to slivers of a Western culture that offered aspirations that could never be realised for many of the community members. The Embrace Life Council was set up to explore how this had come about - and how this attempted suicide rate could be slowed if not ceased.

So Lori has been working away on improving the mental health of the young people up there. Similar to what we’re doing with ’see me’ down here - kind of. She outlined their approach to tackling the situation, the work they’ve been doing with young people locally and showed us some of the materials they’ve produced as part of all of this.

We see a lot of people talking in this here job. I’ve still to write about Malcolm Gladwell (thanks to Hamish’s nagging) and John Grant. Both of which were fascinating. And it’s hard to describe why Lori was so remarkably unusual without sounding trite. But she was humble, hopeful and imaginative in her approach to a situation which would overwhelm many more people with the scale of the challenge.

She offered three pieces of advice in essence to her young people:

Learn about what you feel about your identity

And respect your relationships

Wisdom that would not be out of place for people that aren’t 22 and living in Nunavut.

She finished with a lovely thought:

“When you’re going through such a hard hard time, you forget to see the things that are beautiful.”

Let’s not preach. But you could do worse.

At dinner that night, she was so kind as to present me (me!) with an Inuksuk, a stone figure that played a practical and spiritual role for the Inuit people. Jim took a rough looking photo of our lovely thing.

It occupies pride of place in the planning department. I’ll be happy to show and tell when next you’re passing.

Marketing Society Star Awards on Friday night. We did really rather well (oh how arrogant) with a couple of golds, seven silver awards and five bronzes between us and our tangible cousins.

Our esteemed Scottish Government client - for whom most of the above awards were collected - won Marketing Team of the Year which was very well-deserved.

IRN-BRU’s storming Can Clan event last autumn carried away one of the above silvers which was equally well-deserved.

But far and away highlight of the night was our very own Planning Director and my personal master, Mr Amers, winning Agency Star of the Year. Here he is looking modest. Though he hardly needs to.

Words of wisdom in The Scotsman from our illustrious leader. (Richard Marsham, I mean, not Victoria Raimes.)

The following blog post from Steve Henry on brandrepublic (or maybe MediaWeek) is a bit of a copywriter’s rant (note the telltale short sentences and giant spaces to give his art plenty space to breathe) but still, a great take on lazy advertising vs. advertising that works.

I saw a cracking show last night. Wall of Death by the National Theatre of Scotland. For those of you unfamiliar with the fairground attraction, motorcyclists crazily race around the innards of a vertical drum at marvellously horizontal angles. The NTS have kidnapped one of the last touring troupes of “Wall of Death-ers” and built a bit of show around them.

This isn’t the place for theatre pedantry so I shan’t muse on how successfully it serves up a theatrical experience. But there’s a nice little storyline knitting it together: performance artist Stephen Skrynka sets himself the challenge of learning to ride the wall. There’s a dollop of history: how the wall first came about and then survived the ensuing years. And there’s charisma in spadeloads from head of the troupe, Ken Fox, his brave (and beautiful) two sons and oldest son’s fiancé, super cool (ex horse-riding instructor!) Kerri Cameron. And then the shamefully visceral thrill of whether or not they’ll topple when they take to the Wall itself.

It’s an hour long. It’s on at the Royal Highland Centre. Two shows a night at 6:30 and 8:30 til Friday and then a few scattered over the weekend. And then that’s it. They’ll set off on their touring way again. It’s lovely stuff. If you can’t make the show, check out Gary Margerum’s photos here (one of which I stole to sit here - thanks, Gary). But if you’ve ever had an inkling to run away and join the circus, could be best to avoid them…

I’m just looking through some online qual research that the fine guys and girls at face have engineered and moderated for us.

The qual was conducted with the Young. And I’m looking through various blog posts and wondering why now and again, they feature a capital D for no particular reason at the end of a sentence.

And then I look again at one particular cap D and I realise to my ageing horror that it’s a : D

Specifically:

Reminds me of when i was a kid

How to make yourself feel old.

Leithal Thinking are doing a bit of work at the moment for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. So incredibly benevolently, have offered us a handful of tickets for some of their concerts.

Tuesday just gone, Brie and I went along to what they call their CL@SIX. Classic pieces I suppose at six o’clock. It’s a great premise. Potted culture for the home-going workers.

My classical music tastes are populist at best. I like a little Bach, love the Queen of Sheba, Zadok and Mozart’s Requiem. All the ad / movie soundtrack stuff. In no way can I claim to be any kind of master. Perfect audience then perhaps for the CL@SIX.

The concert was delightful. We had a little Strauss, a Suite in B Flat. A perky little thing that skipped along but dwelt romantically now and again to make us feel a little bit melancholy. And then a wind serenade from Dvorak. I could pretend I heard the eastern European overtones in his march but I doubt I would’ve without the programme notes.

It took place in St Cuthberts, a church I’ve never visited before and am now glad I did. A lovely venue with beautiful accoustics. I would and will try such a cultural hometime foray again. £12 if you’re paying real money for an hour’s probable loveliness. On a filthy night such as Tuesday was - or even on a nicer one - this in my book is money well spent.

A few months ago, over what Julie Allan describes as, a “casual cup of coffee” with one Karen Andre (but I wonder if this is a code name for “bottles of wine at the local” - no offence intended) chat arose about the need for the company to do a bit more for charity. The outcome of this, was a small team getting together and discussing ways in which we could raise money for the lovely people at Erskine, who are not only a great client, but a great charity. They have recently opened a brilliant care home/hospital to help in the rehabilitation of returned service men (http://www.erskine.org.uk/) and the money that we would raise could go towards the purchasing of much needed equipment for the hospital.

Our goal was to hold a few events (something for everyone), and try and raise £3,000 across these events.

Well that’s the background info…

October 2nd saw us hosting an fun filled and eventful Race Night!! The stakes were low, but the banter was high, and the amount raised even higher!

Last night was our ladies night on the trusty Leith barge. We had the boys from Mix Sensations (http://www.erskine.org.uk/) making some superb cocktails, and some delish canapes supplied by Stan Andre (and assembled by his wife our very own Karen).

But is wasn’t all about the drinking & eating, we also had Laura Nolan (http://www.lauranolanbeauty.co.uk/) giving beauty therapy advice and hand massages. Carrie and Lousie giving us all some great tips on choosing the right red lippy and how to perfect the smoky eye. There was also Patzel Jewellery (http://www.patzeljewellery.co.uk/) and some hilarious comedic talents from Ailsa.

Both nights were a huge success, and so far we have raised nearly £2,000.

I look forward to hearing how the golf day, rations lunch and afternoon tea go.

A huge thanks for all those who have supported us and made donations.

As usual, I’m reading a business bestseller (in this case, Nudge) at least a year after it got popular. However, as a consequence, I was unusually interested in the following from BrandChannel as it provides further ammunition for Messrs Thaler and Sunstein. Apparently, if neighbours are aware of their fellow residents’ energy consumption, they’re more likely to reduce their own. It’s interesting stuff though hidden away here in a slightly rambling article.

Morgan Stanley this summer decided to engage the services of a 15 year old summer placement boy to write a review of teenage media consumption habits.

Whilst perhaps a little thin on an insight front, it does contain some nice observations about the things that really matter when you’re 15 and 7 months. Really big TVs for example. Fancy, unused app laden mobile phones. Pirated movies. And free music. Adverts on websites on the other hand are “extremely annoying and pointless”. Read it and remember being 15 all over again.