Please see below for LBB editorial contacts, regular editorial features, our editorial calendar and upcoming features, and the interview series we've created for LBB members.

The LBB Editorial Team:

Laura Swinton (editor in chief, brands & global) laura@lbbonline.com

EMEA

Alex Reeves (EMEA editor & deputy editor) alex@lbbonline.com

Nisna Mahtani (EMEA reporter: MEA & DACH) nisna@lbbonline.com

Zoe Antonov (EMEA reporter: UK, CEE) zoe@lbbonline.com

Americas

Addison Capper (Americas editor) addison@lbbonline.com

Ben Conway (Americas reporter) ben@lbbonline.com

Josh Neufeldt (Canada reporter) josh@lbbonline.com

APAC & ANZ

Casey Martin (APAC/ANZ reporter) casey@lbbonline.com

Tom Loudon (APAC/ANZ reporter) toml@lbbonline.com

Please send all press releases to the content team at newsdesk@lbbonline.com and if your company is a member of LBB they will be published.

If you are a managed package member, you can send all work for the archive to the library team at archive@lbbonline.com

REGULAR EDITORIAL FEATURES

These are features that LBB's Editorial Team run throughout the year. For the most part, there’s no hard and fast calendar, these are features that we run on an ongoing basis and editorially we’ll be trying to balance out international representation and industry sectors and overall diversity. It’s worth mentioning that particularly for features like 5 Minutes and The Directors we are keen to use the platform to showcase female and marginalised talent. We also spontaneously do plenty of off-the-cuff interviews and stories that don’t conform to any formula. Inclusion in these features is not guaranteed. See 'Members Interviews' for series with guaranteed coverage. Please download the specifications for pitches by clicking on the title of the feature.

5 Minutes with... Interviews with the top people in the international advertising, marketing and creative industries

Advertising 101 - We’re going to be breaking down different roles and specialisms across the industry - from planning to compositing, UX design to colour grading.

Behind the Work - Behind the scenes on some of the most exciting creative campaigns. These can be traditional film campaigns but also digital projects, experiences, and category-defying activations too. What we care about is the insight, creative and production stories.

Brand Insight - Stories and interviews with marketers about their brand’s recent direction and future plans. This tends to be broader than just one campaign. We are open to stories where we speak to both the marketer and agency about work they’ve done together but the marketer/client must be involved in the interview.

Dream Teams - Trust and teamwork are at the heart of creativity and the industry is bursting with incredible partnerships. We want to profile and showcase the tightest twosomes in the business – how you met, why you work together so well, and what you’ve learned from each other – and advice for people navigating their own working relationships. This can be art director/copywriter pairs, directors and editors; MDs and ECDs; experience designers and creatives; character designers and animators… ultimately it’s all about those enduring professional collaborations and friendships.

Film Club - Production companies do more than just commercials and often their really creative short film projects get overlooked, so Film Club is a place to talk about new shorts.

Into the Library - ‘Into the Library with…’ is a trip down memory lane with the most exciting directors working in commercial production and music video, and leading adland creative directors. We’re looking for these top creative talents to share 7-10 jobs that have meant the most to them in their career, from early experiments to bombastic blockbusters and everything in between. If possible, it would be great to get a mix of old and new, and one or two wildcards mixed in with the more famous pieces.

One of our journalists will interview the director, talking about each piece in chronological order to find out what it is that makes them so memorable. This interview can be done as a call or via email, with the director choosing their favourite pieces and writing up their reasons for choosing them - please pitch to the editorial team if you’d like to put someone forward.

Making Music - Making music is a series where we talk to the composers, producers and supervisors of some of the best new and classic commercial soundtracks.

Trends & Insight - Stories with a bit more depth that don’t conform to any template.

Uprising - Spotlights on the up-and-coming junior and mid-level industry talent making amazing work and shaking up the future. One of the most popular features on the site when it comes to traffic!

MEMBERS INTERVIEW SERIES

(Devised by the editorial team, filled out and sent in by you. For LBB members only. Click on the title to download

These features are designed to put the power in your hands. You can platform your talent and work whenever you like. And the great news is, we've devised the concept and format for these feature interviews already, so all you need to do is pick your talent, choose a relevant feature for their job role and get them to fill in their answers.

To take part, simply download the brief and questions by clicking on the titles below in bold. When you or your talent have answered, email the document and any images or videos you'd like included in the article to newsdesk@lbbonline.com for publishing.

There's no strict guidelines on schedule. We leave that down to you - but one hot tip to get more views and clicks is to spread the publishing out over regular intervals.

All Disciplines and Company Types

Essential List - A fun listicle piece about the kit, culture and cuisine that keeps the industry’s creative folk going!

My Biggest Lesson - This is where experienced ad folk and production people can share the pearls of wisdom that have shaped their career and can help those making their way to avoid the same pitfalls.

My Creative Hero - This piece explores the creative inspirations behind the industry’s talent. This usually means non-advertising creative heroes, allowing participants to explore their broader influences.

The Work That Made Me - The best way to understand a person’s career is to look at the work that made them. Their first campaign. The campaign that someone else did that made them jealous. The campaign that taught them some painful but useful lessons. The work that they’re proudest of. This is also a great feature as it’s a chance to share older work and work from different markets that readers around the world may not have seen before.

Thought Leaders - This is our channel for opinion pieces. We find that pieces that are closely aligned with newsy or timely topics perform particularly well, whether it’s a big sporting event or a hit new Netflix show that everyone is talking about. We’ve mapped out a few events that we think will prove to be talking points to get you started.

Business & Leadership

Bossing It - Leadership doesn’t come easy and everyone has their own views about what makes an effective leader. In this series of regular features we interview leaders, founders and entrepreneurs and creative management about their journey towards leadership and their own lessons and insights. Specifically for CEOs, COOs, MDs, Founders, EPs.

The New New Business - The creative industry wouldn’t be able to create without the people bringing in business and closing sales. As the industry evolves, so too is new business and sales. We want to speak to the people making the gears of the industry turn, whether they’re at agency, production, post, tech or media platform, to share their insights with those struggling to close the deal.

DE&I: Accelerating Change - We want to interview the industry’s DE&I leads to find out about their perspective and how the wider industry can take responsibility for transforming the industry for the better.

Creative, Account Management, PR & Strategy

Creativity Squared - A creative profile with a difference – psychologists have distilled creativity down to four factors, and we’ll be exploring those with copywriters, art directors and creative directors to get a 360° view of who they are and how they work.

Magic Numbers - Data-driven creativity is something that brands and agencies all over the world are investing in and banking on - but what does that really mean, what are the best practices and potential blindspots? This feature is for brand and agency data experts.

Problem Solved - This is a new feature about agency projects that go beyond campaign work and use creativity to solve business problems. These can include digital transformation project, product development, employee engagement initiatives, ecommerce platforms and behaviour change initiatives.

Planning for the Best - The intellectuals of the industry, planners arm their creative colleagues with the human insights and hard data to make sure their ideas are founded in truth. We want to celebrate the planners and strategists and pick into their processes and thoughts about the evolving discipline.

The Art of Account Management - A piece for account managers/execs to discuss the subtle art of bringing clients, creatives and everything else together.

Creative Marketing Interview series - We’re looking to talk to innovative and creative marketers who are the drivers behind brilliant work, to find out how they think about and enable great creativity.

What the Flack - A series profiling the communications industries’ communicators, the PR and comms leads and agency Chief Marketing officers.

Film & Content Production

Camera Obscura: Production Obsessions - This is a piece for anyone involved in craft and production, from directors to animators, compositors to composers, cinematographers to sound designers. We want you to nerd out about an element of your craft that you are absolutely obsessed with. It could be a particular kind of camera lens or shooting format. It could be aspect ratios. It could be a particular tool that feels like it’s become your right hand. It could be a part of the process that you just always find incredibly fun.

The Directors - This feature allows directors to go beyond their reel to talk about their thoughts about the business of directing and how they like to work, giving potential clients and collaborators a clearer idea about their problem solving and working styles.

Meet Your Makers - Interviews with producers specifically aimed at production, post and service companies all about the business of content and commercial production, insights into an evolving industry and some career advice for those making their way.

Production & Technology - This is an interview series for producers with a passion for technology and innovation. Here we’re diving into the technological innovations that are changing production, or at least broadening the demands on and possibilities for production.

Producing Tomorrow’s Producers - This feature is for producers, particularly those in leadership roles (EPs, senior producers, heads of production) who are keen to develop the next generation of producers, make sure that skills and expertise are passed on, while also learning from the up-and-comers of the creator economy.

Production Line - Interviews with agency and brand in-house producers talking about the challenges making work that works while navigating and integrating new channels and technologies and helping brands to solve their problems.

Sustainable Production - This is an interview series for producers with a passion for sustainability and who have been working to reduce the carbon footprint and environmental impact of their productions. It is intended to highlight best practice, share helpful pointers and also discuss some of the challenges moving forward. It’s a feature that’s appropriate for producers working in agency, production, production service, or even in-house at brand.

Photography, Animation & Design

Animate! - Animators are the magicians of filmmaking - to animate means, quite literally, to bring to life after all. So we want to celebrate the animators who fill our eyeballs with pure wizardry with this series of interviews.

Picture This - In which we ask a photographer to break down one of their favourite commercial photographs, revealing the story behind it. It doesn't have to be a recent project, in fact, famous/iconic advertising image would be most welcomed here!

Style Guide - This piece is for any sort of image-making artist working commercially. It could be illustrators, photographers, graphic designers or animators. It best suits those with a really distinctive flavour and style...

By Design - We want to talk to a range of the industry’s design experts about their careers and views on what ‘good’ design looks like. This series is open to everyone from UX designers, CX designers to product designers and graphic designers.

Production Service

Location Spotlight - Interviews and guides with production service specialists from around the world about inspirational locations and practical production issues.

Editing & VFX

Finely Sliced - We speak to editors about the art of the cut and explore the knife edge between good editing… and great editing.

Making the Grade - The grade is one of the most fascinating parts of the post process so we want to talk to talented colour graders about how they practice their craft.

The VFX Factor - This feature is a place for the visual virtuosos of advertising, the VFX artists, to discuss the trends in their role: the technological advancements revolutionising the way they work, the beauty of ‘invisible’ post, and trends in craft.

Music & Sound

Sonic Boom - Sonic Boom is a series on creative and technological innovations in sound design.

Thinking in Sound - We want to delve into the minds of the industry’s fantastic music and sound specialists to show just how creative this part of the industry is. We want to really dig into what inspires you and how you approach your work, while also getting a taste of how the music and sound part of the industry is changing.

Writing Your Own PR - Not everyone has the resources to justify a full-time PR person or agency. But that doesn’t mean you can’t reap the benefits of being a Little Black Book member. If you have a piece of creative work to share or someone new joining the company, check out our News Guide.

LBB Editorial Calendar

Please check out the topics we’re planning to write features about in the coming year. These are outside of our regular features (please see above), which we write all year round. Moreover we do endeavour to respond to news developments in the industry and more broadly in our features. As the year progresses, this document will be updated and expanded throughout the year. As we assign writers and develop briefs we will contact LBB members.

September

Copywriting’s Most Pundamental Debates

Punderful or punfortunate? Forget the culture wars, if you want to find topics that rend us asunder, there are few topics more contentious and divisive than homophonic humour. To pun or not to pun? That’s the question we’re putting out to the industry’s copywriting experts. We’re looking for people with strong opinions on both sides (where’s the fun in ‘it depends on the contect’?) We’re looking for 200 words of punditry from punning linguists and pundamental deniers, about why puns are fun or the worst thing to hit copywriting. Do share some of your favourite (or most hated) punning ads or headlines to illustrate your point.

Writer: ben@lbbonline.com, Deadline: September 15

Illustration Ideas to Inspire

What’s going on in the world of illustration? We want to speak to experts about emerging visual trends and up-and-coming illustrators that prove that, in an age of eerily samey AI-generated art, human creativity is the key to delighting our eyeballs. This is a listicle style piece that we hope will be highly visual. If you want to suggest a style or trend we want to know why it is particularly relevant or useful for brands and creatives, with some examples that we are allowed to publish. If you’re suggesting some illustration talent, please make sure to include links and some biographical info about them. Please only send us images that we have the right to share on the site.

Writer: addison@lbbonline.com, Deadline: September 18

UX Design and Creativity

When it comes to user experience design, what’s the key to creating experiences that are delightful, surprising, creative and unique to the brand while making sure that best practice is observed? Is there a place for experiences that subvert expectations? And how do designers think about the potential tensions that arise from the need to create streamline and familiar experiences with building rich, branded environments.

Writer: alex@lbbonline.com, Deadline: September 18

Accessible Design: tips for marketers

We’re looking to create a digestible guide for brands that are looking to take their first steps towards becoming truly accessible to people with disabilities. If you’re an agency or brand that’s already been building up your accessibility practice, we want to hear from you if you have any words of advice on the following:How to decide which areas of accessibility to start with; How to get buy in across the business for accessibility; How to center people with disabilities; How to find tools and advice to get you started; How to make an honest assessment of where you’re at; Any other key ‘first steps’ or advice on other early challenges that might arise. If you have any words of advice on any of these, please let us know. Please be mindful that we want this piece to be relatively short and digestible so we will likely only include short answers or short excepts of answers. If any of those topics have inspired you to write at greater length, please do feel free to develop longer thought leadership pieces on these. Accessibility is a topic that we are looking to support and which readers are looking for advice on.

Writer: laura@lbbonline.com, Deadline: September 15

Can Pop Up Experiences Be Sustainable?

Nothing quite beats the personal connection and delight of in-person brand activations and experiences. as brands look to reduce the waste and pollution of their marketing activities, though, how are they ensuring that their pop-ups and activations are truly sustainable and don’t leave a negative impact on the planet? We’re looking to speak to experts in in-person experiences who can share their insights about solutions (both the straightforward/low-tech and innovative( and examples of projects they’ve worked on that have put sustainability front and centre.

Writer: nisna@lbbonline.com, Deadline: September 22

Sharp New Talent Showcase

We want to showcase editors who are coming up and bringing new ideas and fresh cuts to the industry. We’d like to feature people who have graduated from edit assistants in the last two years and have started cutting music videos and projects for commercial clients. To pitch someone to take part, we’d like to see their bio/CV, examples of work, awardsetc. Please keep in mind that we’re looking to ensure that we’re featuring a truly representative and diverse showcase.

Writer: josh@lbbonline.com, Deadline: September 15

Animation Advice for Marketers

Most advertising campaigns contain a bit of animation, whether that’s motion graphics or some sneaky CGI work disguised as live action. But when it comes to projects that have more substantial animation at their core - particularly animation that’s analogue or that involves experimental styles or techniques, what advice do animation producers have for marketing clients navigating ambitious animation?

Writer: laura@lbbonline.com, Deadline: September 21

How the Role of VFX Supervisor Has Evolved

From AI to virtual production, technology is shaking up visual effects pipelines and bringing in a whole new set of toys and tricks for directors and VFX creatives to play with. So what does this all mean for the people at the heart of it all, responsible for making sure that the director’s vision, the on-set action and VFX magic all comes together? We want to speak to VFX supervisors about how their roles have transformed in recent years.

Writer: zoe@lbbonline.com, Deadline: September 22

October

Black History Month UK

EMEA Editorial Team (see above)

Art Direction Inspiration in the Spooky Season

Halloween is a season that abounds with visual cliches so where do the industry’s art directors like to look for inspiration that elevates spooky season visuals beyond the Universal movie monsters and run of the mill cob webbed, haunted house. Perhaps it’s a look to history, to the art world, the bowels of horror, the terror of nature or even the existential dread of the mundane to create unexpected new takes on Halloween or to enhance and elevate the standard cast of witches, skeletons, cats and bats. We’re looking for art directors with a love of the gothic, the spooky, the weird and the arcane to share their favourite Halloween art influences and inspirational looks. We’re looking for 200 words or so on why this particular visual reference works so well for you.

Writer: josh@lbbonline.com, Submission Deadline October 20

Strategy Feature

To be Confirmed

Writer: zoe@lbbonline.com

Cricket World Cup

We want to use the cricket World Cup as a chance to look at the way that cricket is evolving and to find out how brands are finding new opportunities to get involved. We’re looking to speak to marketers and agency experts, particularly in Australia, India and the UK about how things are changing and why, and to find out which brands are bringing creativity to cricket.

Writer: toml@lbbonline.com, Submission Deadline September 29

What Haunted Houses Can Teach Us About Building Amazing Experiences

To Be Confirmed

Writer: addison@lbbonline.com, Submission Deadline October 20

Creating Perfectly Imperfect VFX

The real world is far from perfect, so when VFX specialists want to create believable visuals, pristine CG geometry can stand out like a sore thumb. So how do the experts bring a bit of quirk, chaos, wonky imperfection to their work? And what new tools and advances in tech are helping to bring new levels of realism to complex projects?

Writer: nisna@lbbonline.com, Submission Deadline October 13

Cinematography All Stars

Who are the DPs everyone wants to work with right now and why are directors, producers and art directors so in love with their visuals? We’re looking to showcase some of the most exciting cinematographers working in music video and commercial right now, both established names and hotshot up-and-comers. Format - name, photo, downloadable MP4/.mov of reel, bio/why people love them.

Writer: alex@lbbonline.com, Submission Deadline October 13

In the Studio with Adland’s Leading Sound Designers

To Be Confirmed

Writer: laura@lbbonline.com, Submission Deadline October 20

Colour Grading

To be Confirmed

Writer: ben@lbbonline.com, Submission Deadline October 13

November

Diwali (Nov 12) - How the Diwali Advertising Has Become a Global Affair

Singles Day - China

Sustainability: Ad Net Zero Global Conference// Cop 28

Commerce: Commerce and Christmas

Creative/ Data: Creatives Who Have Embraced Data and AI

VFX:

Production:

Music: Big American Music Tour (showcase of music companies around the States’ musical heartlands)

Editing: The Craft of Editing in the Social Media Age

December

Q4 LBB Industry Index - 18th December

2021 ‘All Stars’ - regional ‘who’s who’ heroes of the year across production, agency and client

Annual trend pieces

Look Ahead to 2024

VFX

Production

Sound

Colour Grading

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CREDITS

Michael Parenteau

Stept Studios

News from Stept Studios

Work from Stept Studios

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