Ingenious Ideas

Let’s meet at 2am in Lycra

Ingenious Ideas — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 14:17:41 +0000

“Hi, Dom. Can you meet us and a team of bleary-eyed assistants at the Summit of Dunstable Downs at 2:30am on your bike in Lycra?”

To your average person the response would be unpublishable. But Dom’s not an average kind of guy. He’s not average in his approach to business, or in his response to the question I posed to him in order to get the right conditions necessary, to shoot this – Ingenious’s first set of portrait photography – for his profession and sport.

Dom’s ethos is ‘maverick thinking’, and he specialises in innovation, high performance and personal mastery. I was asked to photograph him to produce a set of images which would be used on a new site and by his PR Team to befit – and aid – his reputation for international speaking and ultra-endurance events. He advises global brands on how maverick thinking can help ordinary people achieve extraordinary results in both business, and sport. And he’s got personal experience in achieving both to boot: He was the first person in the World to complete the Transpyr crossing on a single-speed bike, a tireless Ironman competitor, multiple marathon finisher and has just cycled from Lands End to John O’ Groats in 58 hours NON-STOP. That take real maverick thinking to even contemplate it.

So when I asked him to travel from Surrey to the Summit of Dunstable Downs, and be there for 2:30am, lyra-clad and on a bike. He casually said “sure”. And he was. Arriving with two clean bikes atop a muddy silver Porsche. “Why a Porsche??” “It’s a practical bike carrier, it has two boots, gets me from A-B faster, and is low so I can get the bikes off easily…”

Pushing personal limits is what he’s about, and we had to take the very same approach. Location lighting in precarious locations, hanging out of cars on country lanes to get the shot, pushing myself creatively. It was the least we could do…

Dom took on a challenge normally reserved for Olympians, and won. We took on a photoshoot normally reserved for traditional photographic agencies. And feedback tells us we won too.

[ Find out more about the Lands End – John O' Groats Challenge here on Dom's blog ]

They did the challenge to raise funds for The Magic Wand Appeal at NHS Foundation Trust, where Rodd is a consultant paediatrician. Donations can be made via a Just Giving page set up for the ride.

Quality is everything

Ingenious Ideas — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 13:01:50 +0000

Quality Week, Heathrow have been welcoming World leading contractors, engineers, architects, designers and a whole host of other qualiteers to the World Business Centre, to showcase the airports incredible transformation.

From the big idea to the finest of design detailing, everything as you’d expect, had to be considered and carefully crafted by Ingenious. Triumph, McLaren, Rolls Royce, along with many other icons of quality were paralleled to tell Heathrow’s engaging and compelling story.

All revved up

Ingenious Ideas — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 08:44:12 +0000

World Quality Week hits the road in November. As part of this global focus, Ingenious have been engineering a large scale event at Heathrow comprising of humongous graphic backdrops, compelling people stories and a host of celebrated icons of both stage and screen. Beautifully crafted, this unique show captures the defining spirit of quality and promises to engage the many thousands of ‘qualiteers’ expected to rock up. We’ll keep you posted.

Brand Republic

Ingenious Ideas — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 14:24:05 +0000

Of late, we’ve been working very hard with our new friends Republic to establish a compelling employer brand and find new ways to connect their people. With over 100 national stores stretching the length and breadth of the UK, it’s been about painting a picture of what is possible, through stories, images, symbols, textures, colours, sounds, whatever. Republic’s culture is really just a large, ongoing conversation. Telling employees that they are your most important asset is one thing. Inviting them into the ownership fold is quite another. Republic fully recognise that the way towards ownership is through dialog and empowerment. Our work has been about creating a platform to engage employees and involve them in the employer brand building process and has kicked off a new wave of entertaining, brand-building, and interactive communication across the business.

All under one roof

Ingenious Ideas — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:02:28 +0000

We’re proud to announce the launch of Travis Perkins Group’s new careers portal. This very clever site embraces the latest technology for online recruitment, whilst bringing together the recruitment of over 20 of its brands including TP, Wickes and Benchmarx, across several markets.

The candidate experience, uses ‘matchmaking’ technology similar to that used by leading dating and retail sites, to intelligently suggest cross brand opportunities to those less sure of what role they are best suited to. Tools and functionality are provided to help a candidate search, find, make comparisons, create short-lists and ultimately make decisions. Alternatively, experienced candidates can efficiently find exact roles of interest.

The online recruiting experience will enable Travis Perkins Group to capture data from all quality candidate enquiries and allow in house recruiters to search through the database for candidates to match to current vacancies, thereby reducing dependence on third party recruitment agencies and offering a more personal and informed service. The new portal will also achieve significant cost savings for the Group through consolidating many siloed recruitment sites, now all under one roof and available to view at TPcareers.co.uk

Ingenious appoint 12yr old Creative Director

Ingenious Ideas — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 14:38:59 +0000

Jonny Ascott is full of ingenious ideas. He takes the bare minimum of a brief and turns them into something quite incredible. You see, Jonny is fully free range in his thinking; not restricted by out dated creative processes or factory mentality. Being only 12 he sees the world for what it is and as far as he’s concerned ideas are only limited by your imagination. Shame Jonny has to go back to school on Monday really but, as you can imagine, has got on well with our incumbent 42 year old prodigy. Due to his awesome contribution to our business today we have appointed our new star as an honorary creative director.

The art of recycling

Ingenious Ideas — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 10:21:10 +0000

Heathrow airport has set some very challenging recycling targets for 2012. To kick-start engagement, we’ve created a roadshow format that can quite literally be recycled. The simple yet big idea is a series of commissioned sculptures made from recycled materials. These large format pieces of art provocatively communicate Heathrow’s compelling intent. To sustain engagement and relevance over the next year, a unique sculpture will be commissioned to pick up on a specific operational focus. The corporate story was powerfully expressed over a series of complimentary, minimalist display stands. At the first event, our artist friend built a 12ft A380 aircraft over the course of the day out of cardboard Costa Coffee cups. Employees were encouraged to take along their used cups to the event and witness the art of recycling for themselves. Other exhibits included a very cool 6ft Red Wing bird made out of office materials, a 1.5 metre cube of compacted rubbish and a life sized drinks can figure.

Once upon a time…

Ingenious Ideas — Fri, 13 May 2011 06:30:11 +0000

We’re really proud to announce the publishing of our first book. On the back of huge success in creating Gala Coral Group’s employer brand, we were inspired by our co-authors (our client) to put pen to paper and share this delightful rags to riches story. From begining to end, it has more twists and turns than something that has a load of twists and turns. If you’d like to know more, or get your hands on this compelling book, get in touch or just pop across to our studio, set in the epic Oxfordshire countryside.

Inspiring Republic employees

Ingenious Ideas — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 05:15:59 +0000

As the UK’s leading multi-branded high street fashion retailer, Republic offer customers the best possible mix of fashion, brands, quality and value. But that’s not all; they are unique and dedicated to giving their customers what they want. They don’t just sell clothes, they set out to inspire their customers giving them the freedom to find their own style, to play by their own rules so they can wear what they want to wear. As we’re sure you’ll appreciate, inspiring employees to create experiences that fit this quirky brand demands ingenious ideas. And that’s where we come in.

For the long haul

Lilly — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 15:34:46 +0000

Ingenious frame system

Finding innovative ways to sustain employee engagement is what we’ve built our reputation on over the years. Working with a leading UK acrylic partner we’ve been developing a nifty frame system that enables communication to be portable, compelling and to be honest, cheap. Our Ingenious frame system allows smaller, detailed images and messages to build the bigger picture. Easily updated and refreshed by our clients our innovation is being used for simple ‘walls of fame’ type communications to full-on planning and strategy walls. BAA have just started using them for engaging employees around safety; within corporate office areas, but primarily deploying them within operational environments, enabling even the most remote teams to get the picture and feel part of it.