In my last post, I shared 22 D&AD award-winning bits of work for every year I have graced this planet. Shamefully despite doing this I had somehow managed to miss my all-time favourite piece of work. This work has set the standards of what I consider ‘great’. I’m sure right now you’re dying to know what this mystery work is, and because I’m in a generous mood, I’ll tell you. 

Date Rape Awareness Umbrella (2006) TBWA

Now you’ve seen the work for yourself I’m sure you can understand why I admire it so much. At school, we often speak about seeking the most relevant place to speak to our audience, and it goes without saying that using the medium of a cocktail umbrella to warn people about the dangers of date rape drugs and spiking is simply genius. In all honestly, this is the exact project that made me want to be in this industry. 

At school, Marc often tells us to test our ideas and has subsequently given us a range of tools to help do this. In this blog, I thought I’ll share one of these tools and use it to evaluate the success of the above project that I am so fond of. Conveniently this tool I’m about to share is called the S.U.C.C.E.S test, this stands for Simple. Unexpected. Concrete. CredIble. Emotion. Story. For each category, I will give the work a score out of 10.

Simple: 10 – 

Unexpected: 10 – If I could go higher on this score I would 

Concrete: 10

CredIble: 10

Emotion: 10 

Story – 10

Surprise, surprise the work has received a full house from me. Although I must admit I’m not normally this frivolous with dishing out 10s, Especially when it comes to my work. Nonetheless, using a tool like the S.U.C.C.E.S test is a great way to evaluate your work and makes sure you can clearly see where your ideas need to be working harder and where, if you’re lucky, you have nailed an idea. I am yet to produce a piece of work that has received 10 across the board but when I do, I’ll be for sure dedicate a whole blog post about how great I am 😉

@OMiltiadous