Bye, bye Colchester giraffes

Tall story: a decorated giraffe

It was a sad day in town today as we noted that Colchester's much loved Stand Tall giraffes have been moved on.
For the past couple of months Colchester has been dotted with an array of fibreglass statues of giraffes decorated by local artists and school children. The initiative is to tie in with the 50th anniversary of Colchester Zoo and to raise funds for its conservation work - the statues are now to be auctioned.
The campaign resembles Cow Parade and Spirit Bears in the City which have used a similar approach. However Colchester Zoo and its agents must be congratulated for an ambitious approach that has really brought a lot of fun to the town over the summer.
It has worked on a number of levels. Firstly, I think it's great that a town as relatively small as Colchester has got this off the ground in the first place. The other campaigns mentioned have been in larger cities, and as we all know, despite its best efforts, Colch still resides in the town category.
There were 29 2.5m tall giraffes and 82 smaller, 1.3m versions. The simple logistics of finding willing parties to decorate the statues, distributing and collecting them, and making sure it was all done to a timetable, must have been quite daunting.
The statues were dotted around Colchester and some outlying towns such as Clacton and Romford. The most interesting aspect of the campaign is how it used social media and a Stand Tall app to encourage 'collecting' of all the giraffes. This was done through scanning a QR code with your phone. Throughout the summer, children of all ages have been busily tracking down the giraffes using an app map and swiping them. It was very addictive, and a great activity for parents and children to share. It encouraged you to get out and explore our town and has led me to parts that I was unfamiliar with (but then again, I still think of myself as a newbie).
A further layer of engagement was added by a number of third party deals from local businesses - free coffee, free toys, free use of meeting rooms, free paint testers etc - that has hopefully provided them with a bit more footfall at a time when they could all do with it. It won't save the high street, but it has given people another reason to be there. Retail theatre, they call it.
The large giraffes are being sold as a fundraiser, but the smaller ones will go back to the local schools who decorated them. My son was very excited to point out the leaf that he painted on his school's giraffe - he did find it! 
So, to recap, Stand Tall has:

• raised awareness of Colchester Zoo's anniversary
• raised funds for its conservation work
• given a showcase to the area's artists
• provided a fun summer activity for parents and kids
• brought something different to the town centre
• encouraged us to get out and see more of Colchester
• given schools a nice hook for learning
• brought more people into local businesses.

I don't know if all of these were on the original brief, but any marketer would be proud to stand up and present that list to his or her superiors. I hope the hard stats make as good reading. And I hope that the Zoo realises what a potentially award winning piece of activity it has on its hands. They should be preparing the award entries now and looking forward to more plaudits in future.

Cat!

I exposed Jamie to some art this week. We met up with a friend of mine at Tate Modern for lunch. He was very well behaved and the staff in the cafe get a big thumbs up for child friendliness. They brought over a high chair, swept the buggy away to a less crowded part of the restaurant, brought him some crayons, and even heated up the soup I had brought for him. Well done the Tate!
As usual, Jamie was insatiable, so as well as wolfing down a whole banana, a clementine (or satsuma - at any rate, his fruit of choice at the moment), a yogurt, and his soup, he started begging for food from my plate. I feel bad about giving him chips, but at least they were fat chips, which are healthier, right?
After my friend had gone back to work, I thought it was probably a good idea that he worked off some of his dinner so I took him to the turbine hall, where the large exhibits are held. The last time he was here, he was still a babe and slept all the way through Shibboleth, as the massive crack in the floor was known. I took some fantastic video of him sleeping through this which I keep meaning to put to suitably atmospheric music - one of my pending projects alongside more pressing ones such as fixing the stair gate at the top of the stairs, and putting up shelves in the living room, and... oh, don't start me.
This time round he was a lot more lively and loved the space that the Tate affords and the glass walls that separate the turbine hall from the main body of the museum. The main installation was particularly interesting. The hall was screened off with opaque, coloured plastic strips which he loved pushing through into a hall filled with lots of yellow and blue bunk beds - a bit like an Ikea warehouse. His favourite exhibit however was a large scale (about 20 times actual size) skeleton of a cat. After he'd noted this he ran around like a small, demented robot, shouting "Cat! Cat!" which was particularly amusing as there was a group of arty types being given a lecture on its meaning. Well, it was obvious wasn't it, it was a massive cat!
Personally I thought his analysis was particularly insightful.