Designers and Art Directors Wanted

It's not often that we get to do ads for ourselves and when we do, it's often done in a rush. Here was our attempt to get Designers and Art Directors to send in their portfolios. The ad was put up on adsoftheworld.com last week and since then we have had about 300 respondents.

If any client's are reading this, notice how big we've done our logo ;)

In the spirit of Ramadan

Music has the power to connect people, inspire, motivate, uplift and empower. At a recent visit to Sparrow Rainbow village, music began to fill a once empty room and the smiling faces of children, some as young as five began jiving to the beat of local South African hip hop and house music shadowing the reason which brought them all together to start off with, HIV/AIDS.

On a recent Velocity shoot for Sony with director Jeana Theron, Sony donated the incredible sound system used in the shoot and Velocity chose the Sparrow Rainbow Village as its beneficiary.

Sparrow rainbow village is the only HIV/AIDS dedicated hospice care-facility on the West rand of Johannesburg (South Africa). Through housing, education, training and counseling the Village cares for over 350 men, women and children who have been diagnosed with or directly affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The construction of a hall to be used for music, song and dance initiatives has recently been completed. The hall boasts drum kits, a full compliment of instruments for a marimba band, and guitars. The Villages’ motto is “Get up and live” and this is exactly what happened as the Sony Hi-Fi was plugged in and turned up to full blast.

Dawn Bell, Head of Fundraising and PR at Sparrow Rainbow Ministries was overjoyed and said, “the Sony Hi-Fi could not have come at a better time. It would be used in the official opening of the Music hall and later used for teaching dance and used in various Sparrow rainbow village initiatives.” The Hi-Fi apart from being a gift would go a long way to bringing joy into the lives of the adults and children at Sparrow Rainbow Village and was the perfect way to help inspire and uplift the children who face a difficult life each and every day.”

Thanks to Client: Sony Gulf FZE, Agency: Tonic communications, Dubai and Production Company Velocity Films, South Africa for an amazing end to a great shoot.

For further information or much needed aid:
Sparrow Village
Tel (011) 472-6628
Fax (011) 672-1000
E-mail : shospice@metroweb.co.za
Website : http://www.sparrowvillage.co.za/
004-335 NPO

AWOL

It’s not often that we go on holiday (because we love our jobs so much), but recently quite a few of us went on leave. Tonicians were spread on nearly every continent on earth and some weren’t even on this planet ;)

I love you not

We’re months away from Valentines Day, but there’s always some relationship drama in the agency. I thought these unique cards conceived and designed by Renata, our new creative soul, are brilliant. She wrote all the lines herself and hand painted each card in watercolours (I’d love to know where she got her inspiration from). I’m sure you’ll find them stocked at Magrudy’s pretty soon.

Fresh Meat

We’re always happy to see new faces at Tonic. This month three new recruits join our creative, media and client servicing departments. At least two of them are pretty good looking (a prerequisite to working at Tonic) no guesses as to which two I’m talking about :)

Anyway, Renata is a real Italian South African girl who I can only describe as a walking soap opera judging by some of the experiences she’s had in the past few weeks. She also has a fondness for chicken skin, killing bunnies and bleaching various body parts. With 9 years experience, her design skills will help take our creative department to the next level, unless FP7 poaches her that is.

Haytham joins the media department. He’s often seen walking around the office looking for a stiffy drive (don’t ask me what he’s doing with stiffy disks in 2007) otherwise he’s doing media stuff like cutting stuff out of magazines, playing solitaire and listening to George Michael.

Anu Parekh is an aspiring planner who joins us as a Business Exec. She’s so new in Tonic, that we haven’t even bought her a lap top yet (we’re waiting for Gitex). In the meanwhile, she’s doing quite nicely with the chalkboard she got in her Tonic welcome pack. Her hero or should I say heroine, is ice skating legend Tonya Harding :)