CREATIVE BRIEF:

What is required?: World War II is now upon us, so we need to communicate the need to stay calm.

Target audience: The entire population of Great Britain.

Media: Poster.

Deadline: ASAP

As briefs go, they probably don’t get more challenging than this one. But after being set by King George VI in 1939, the result was one of the most memorable posters ever produced.

Even though it never saw the light of day until 50+ years later, when it tipped-up in a box of old books in Northumberland, it was just the sort of ‘stiff upper lip’ message that was needed during those times. And it was a sentiment that influenced our guest edit of The Drum, which comes out today.

With messages like ‘current economic climate’ and ‘doom and gloom’ being force-fed to us all on a daily basis, it’s obvious why everyone’s heads are down at the minute. So we wanted to get people thinking positive and see all the good things that can actually come from a recession. Because there are some you know.

And to show that the credit crunch doesn’t have to restrict our creativity, we challenged ourselves to produce the issue under budget. OK, still nowhere near as hard as the brief by King George VI, but still pretty tough going.

Thanks to Bil Bungay, Russell Davies, Phil Teer, John Boam and everyone who got involved and wanted to say something positive. Mostly though, thanks to the unknown creative who came up with that poster all them years ago. After the events of this week, Keep Calm and Carry On is just the message we needed to hear.