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 Won 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.

High Five - This feature celebrates five pieces of great work in a range of themes and topics across advertising - to be chosen at your own discretion. You can see what's been covered so far on the High Five channel in the link. From use of colour, to comedy, or from OOH to working with animals, it's a good opportunity to focus your picks and give the article a nice edge. This requires a short first-person intro to your selection, your five top picks with relevant links / assets, and around 100 words on each choice. Please send your submissions or questions to hannahb@lbbonline.com.

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.

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. 

November

How Diwali Lights up Advertising around the World

The Hindu festival of lights is celebrated all around the world, from India to the UK, Singapore, Canada and beyond. We want to find out how marketers approach Diwali differently in different markets, and to find out how the way we think about the festival is evolving.This will include one section on the evolution of Diwali marketing in India followed by snapshots in other countries.We’re particularly interested in: UK, UAE, Singapore, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Indonesia but open to suggestions from agencies doing interesting things in other markets!

Submission Deadline: November 9, Writers: Tom@lbbonline.com (APAC), Nisna@lbbonline.com (UAE), Josh@lbbonline.com (Canada), Ben@lbbonline.com (USA), Alex@lbbonline.com and Zoe@lbbonline.com (UK and Europe)

Is the Ad Industry Backsliding On Its Climate Crisis Commitments?

2023 has seen the climate go haywire, with devastating wildfires across the world and deadly top temperatures becoming the norm in the height of summer. And yet the energy and commitment from some quarters has started to wain - notably with UK prime minister Rishi Sunak stepping down the country’s net zero goals. It’s been hard to avoid that the environment has also become a battlefield in the culture war narratives too. So how can brands and agencies reignite the conversation and get the momentum going again around Net Zero, energy transition and sustainability back to where they were in previous years? We want to speak to experts in campaigning groups and within agencies and brands too to assess the state of sustainability.

Submission Deadline: November 27th, Writer: alex@lbbonline.com

Painting By Numbers: Creatives Who Have Embraced Data and AI

We want to find the creatives who have plunged into the worlds of data headlong, to find out about the journeys they’ve been on, how it’s changed their thoughts on and approach to creativity. How has it fuelled their creativity - and where do they think claims around the role and importance of data has been overblown.We’re looking for the following: a photo of the creative and answers to the following. Please note that we won’t be able to use more than a couple of sentences per answer so don’t feel the need to write long essays! Before you got ‘into’ data professionally, what kind of creative were you? How did you first get into data and what did you do to educate yourself? How has working with data changed your approach to creativity? What do you think are the limitations of data as a creative person? Share a project you’ve worked on where data elevated the end product.

Submission Deadline: November 24, Writer: nisna@lbbonline.com

The Key to Lifelike CG 

VFX companies’ quest to create lifelike CG animation is beset by two seemingly untameable beasts. On the one hand, there’s the march of technology, allowing for higher framerates and sharper image quality on screens, creating fewer places to hide. And then there’s a monster of our own making - increasingly sophisticated eyeballs as people get used to better and better CG, they become even more discerning, with the slightest flaw plunging viewers into the uncanny valley. How are VFX companies keeping up with the arms race - or does the key to believable CG lie elsewhere?

Submission Deadline: November 17, Writer: josh@lbbonline.com

The Big American Music Tour

We want to make a really fun piece that showcases top music companies around the USA. For each company we’d like 200-250 words giving us a taste of what each company is all about - their brand, a little bit about their history, their highlights (projects they’re most proud of) and a sentence or two about how the music scene in their city inspires them.

Submission Deadline: November 23, Writer: ben@lbbonline.com

The Craft of Editing in the Social Media Age

Shrinking attention spans and the proliferation of short-form video means that when it comes to cutting for social media speed is of the essence. But what does that mean for the craft of editing and film that allows ideas to breathe? Is it all split-second snipping as we chase strobe light attention spans, or are there other ways to engage audiences online? And is there still room for Walter Murch’s carefully considered rules?

Submission Deadline: November 21, Writer: casey@lbbonline.com

Christmas and Commerce 

Writer: zoe@lbbonline.com

December

Op-ed Call!!! We’re looking for opinion pieces that either reflect on 2023 (what we’ve learned, trends that have emerged, what progress has been made or, perhaps, where the industry has disappointed us) or look to 2024 (predictions, resolutions, hopes). We are looking for something with a bit of meat, and not just a sales pitch of your 2023 greatest hits. Minimum word count 600 words. If you’ve got an idea get in touch with laura@lbbonline.com. 2024: A Year of Elections You can run, but you can’t hide. In 2024, there will be no avoiding politics. There is, of course, the biggie, the US election, which may well involve the return of Donald Trump (court case pending), but aside from that countries such as Mexico, India and Pakistan also have elections scheduled. And while there’s no official date yet, the UK should see one too. A lot has changed politically, socially, technologically and culturally since the last US election, with the culture war raging ever louder and AI holding the potential to shake the democratic process inside-out with fake images and videos. In such an environment, even the most benign and a-political brand can’t guarantee that it won’t be dragged into controversy and for ordinary consumers there will be no escape. What will this mean for advertisers? We’re looking for strategists to contribute 250 words with their perspective - particularly strategists from countries that will be holding an election in 2024. Submission Deadline Dec 12th, Writer addison@lbbonline.com 2023: The Year the World Realised AI Exists Don’t know if you noticed it, but one 2023 trend that might have slipped under your radar was artificial intelligence. We jest, of course there was no escape from AI in 2023 as platforms like Midjourney and ChatGPT truly democratised the tech. Within the ad industry there were countless op-eds about whether or not the robots were coming for our jobs and, depending on which side of the aisle you were on, leaders praised it either as a co-pilot for creativity or an endless versioning machine, with the capacity to pump out squillions of personalised blobs of content goop. The thing is AI really wasn’t all that new to either agencies or VFX companies. We’d like to find out what people think has really changed in the year that AI took over everything. We’re looking for 250 word submissions from creative leaders, technologists and production experts. Submission Deadline Dec 12th, Writer ben@lbbonline.com What I Got Wrong About 2023 Hindsight is, as they say, 20/20 and there are plenty of things that caught us by surprise this year! As much as the industry likes to make predictions, events in the market, in culture, in technology can still emerge from leftfield , and even those trends or events we can predict can evolve in surprising ways. From the trivial to the earth-shattering, we’d love to know how 2023 surprising you! 250 word submissions. Submission Deadline Dec 6th, writer alex@lbbonline.com Cultural Highlights 2023 2023 was the year that a Taylor Swift concert caused a 2.3 magnitude earthquake. Barbie showed that people really will pay to watch branded entertainment. The Last of Us and Mario proved that videogame adaptations don’t have to be terrible. And amid all the noise, Rick Rubin got us to stop and think about how we all approach The Creative Act. We’re looking for ECDs and chief creative officers to share their creative, cultural highlights from this year. We’re looking for about 250 words - and if you’re struggling to keep it to one, or want to mix it up a bit, we would also be happy for you to include one more highbrow and one more pop culture example. Submission Deadline Dec 6th, writer: laura@lbbonline.com Love Letters of 2023 We can’t get enough of beautiful visual design, particularly when it comes to lettering. This is a showcase of some of the best and eye-catching moments of the year. We’re looking for art directors to share their favourites of 2023, whether it’s wildly creative typefaces, bold hand lettering or artfully arranged typography with 100 words about why this is example is so beautiful. You can submit your own work but as it’s a curated piece there’s no guarantee of inclusion. Submission deadline December 12th, writer zoe@lbbonline.com On Set Moments 2023 We’d like to hear from producers and directors about their top on set memories from the past year. Whether it’s adventuring to an outlandish location, immersing yourself in incredible production design, experimenting with cutting edge tech, hanging with iconic celebs, let us know your production highlights. We’re looking for one submission per production company - 150 words explaining what was so exciting about the experience and a photo on set or behind the scenes. Submission deadline Dec 6th, writer josh@lbbonline.com