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“Dubstep is defined as “tightly coiled productions with overwhelming bass lines and reverberant drum patterns, clipped samples, and occasional vocals” so, for an online florist to buy into a viral marketing concept built around this relatively new form of dance music requires something of a leap of faith. Fortunately, that’s how some of the best virals come about, that peculiar juxtaposition of two incongruous elements. In other words, a mashup.

Myself and my colleague Simon Wan come from the world of music videos and extreme sports but we’ve also spent a lot of time working with brands to help them express their personality through moving image. This is a slightly frustrating exercise sometimes as companies have an idea of what they’re about which is quite a long way removed from how their customers perceive them. Hence the awkward, cheesy corporate videos that have come to define the genre. We tend to think a little bit differently, particularly when it comes to consumer brands and, given our core competence is not filmmaking but entertainment, that’s usually the first place we start. The first meeting we had with Arena you could tell these guys had a much less restricted idea of their place in the world than most companies and it wasn’t hard to sell them on the idea of just doing something cool. For no other reason than it was just cool.

Dubstep “X” is a familiar title on YouTube with all manner of well-known commercial properties being given the dubstep treatment but we’d never seen it done with flowers before. Flower advertising has always consisted of beautiful, slightly hazy shots of the products looking all fresh and sweet and lovely, with some touchy feely music and a female voiceover. We were aiming this campaign squarely at the predominately male audience making their once-a-year Valentine’s day purchase. So, doing a grimy, music video inspired dubstep viral was a very exciting prospect.

Click here to view the embedded video.
We shot the video in about three hours in an underground car park in Hitchin, using minimal lighting, a small super 35 camera and a skateboard. The laser effects were all added in afterwards and that’s really all there was to it. Our poor sample flowers were completely destroyed by the end, so much so that we had to reshoot our pack shot a few days later. You have to make some concessions to the world of traditional advertising! In dance music a ‘fresh’ beat is one that has a very strong groove to it. We felt that was the perfect descriptor for Arena’s product so it was a match made in heaven.

And that’s how we delivered an experience for Arena Flowers.”

See more videos from Arena Flowers here.

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However, there are a few methods you can use to ensure that you aren’t the worst mother out there.

1) BECOME GOOD AT SKATEBOARDING – The key to winning control of your children is respect. This can be done through extreme discipline and long term psychological manipulation, but it is much easier and quicker to simply learn how to skateboard. Children like skateboards, they respect skaters such as Tony Hawk and Marty McFly. By picking your children up from school on a skateboard, whilst wearing ill-fitting clothing and talking in moronic turns of phrases, you will appear the coolest mum in town.

2) DON’T GET INVOLVED WITH THE RAISING OF YOUR CHILDREN – You can easily avoid being a bad mother by not being a mother at all. You can’t lose if you don’t play the game. I am not suggesting adoption, but rather that you shift most of your parental responsibilities to the grandparents. Your own parents will have more experience at parenting. They’ll know what works and what doesn’t, and they’ll be familiar with parenting tricks such as skateboarding.

3) FAKE YOUR DEATH – The hardest part of any child’s life is losing their mother. The best part of any child’s life is when their mother comes back from the dead. Your child will not want to waste a miraculous second chance and will become more loving and respectful of you.

4) LOSE AT ARM WRESTLING – It is important for your child to grow up with high self esteem. Self esteem can be easily altered by tricking your children into believing that they are not as pathetic as they really are. To maximise self esteem you should be seen lifting a heavy object such as an olden day television set just before any arm wrestling takes place.

5) HAVE MANY SEXUAL PARTNERS – This one is only applicable to divorced mothers. By bringing home a different man every night you will be exposing your children to wide range of father figures, each one with his own unique ideas, worldview and cultural background. This will help your child to grow up to be well rounded.

6) KEEP YOUR ROMANTIC POETRY HIDDEN – No child likes to find a romantic poem written by their mother. Seeing their mother’s bare emotions can leave a child scarred for life. If you have to write a romantic poem you must ensure that it is kept in a secure and secret place, such as the underneath of a bed or the top of a cupboard.

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In addition to being loved, it is also desirable for a child to become “the favourite”. Being the favourite child has a number of advantages. These include:

• First dibs on kidneys.
• Heavily weighted inheritance.
• The ability to commit crimes against your family without fear of punishment.
• Potential #1 Son/Daughter mugs, t-shirts, mousemats and other such memorabilia.

HOW TO BECOME THE FAVOURITE

1) BE AN ONLY CHILD: If you are lucky enough to be a firstborn you can use your early years to put your mother off the idea of having any more children. This can be acheived by:

Complaining a lot. Phrases like “This food is very dry.” can grate on the maternal mind. Nobody likes to hear complaints. She will not want to risk giving birth to another complainer.

Demand a lot of material possessions. Physical things can be a great drain on monetary resources. It is unwise to have a second child without the correct financial planning. You might even consider demanding items which are large in size. If the house is filled with large items then there might not be enough physical room for another child. Tip: A room can be made to look smaller by removing mirrors.

Manipulating the reproductive system of the mother. With enough forward planning it is possible to rewire the inner workings of the mother whilst still in the womb. If you adjust a couple of tubes you can set the mother so that any of her future fertilised eggs will be sent straight to the stomach and become digested by the process known as ‘digestion’.

WARNING: Being an only child will automatically make you the favourite child, but there’s also the downside of technically being the least favourite child too. Also, too much attention might lead to a career  in the hollow world of showbusiness.

2) FAIL AT LIFE: Evolution has programmed the mother to want be a mother for as long as possible. It is her innate desire to see her children fail in order to maximise the mothering period. Nothing pleases a mother more than hearing her 35 year old son utter the words “I’m getting a divorce, I’ve lost my job and I need to move back home.” Failing at life can easily be acheived by:

• Being forgetful of names, places and paying bills.
• Adopting a system of extensive tardiness.
• Reading newspapers.
• Spending a large proportion of your time on Twitter.

3) PLANT FALSE EVIDENCE: The biggest enemy of the non-favourite child is the favourite child. The favourite child can be defeated in a number of ways, the most effective being complete mental destruction. However, this method can take up to fifty years to complete. The quickest way is to simply deposit incriminating documents in the pockets of the favourite child which will later be discovered by the mother during laundry rituals.

• Parental emancipation forms filled out in the favourite child’s name.
• A list of the mother’s flaws.
• A death threat to the mother.

4) PLAY HARD TO GET: If you are fortunate to come from a broken home and have a father who has remarried, then the stepmother is a great tool for emotional manipulation of the biological mother. Playing hard to get typically only works on women, but a mother is a lot like a woman. By constantly praising your stepmother’s quality of character and spurning the advances of your mother’s home cooked meals, you will automatically become more desirable in the eyes of your mother.

5) BUY HER SOME NICE FLOWERS.

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Nowadays, mothers have become increasingly complex and can be divided into a number of classifications.

THE SOCCER MOM

Originating from North America, the soccer mom exists solely to further the cause of the MLS. They struggle to understand the appeal of the more established American sports such as baseball, basketball and football. They have a natural dislike to children, but sacrifice their lives to raising them in the hope of giving birth to the next Pele.

How to spot a soccer mom: The soccer mom can nearly always be found holding a football with a face painted onto it. It was this trait which inspired the character of Wilson in the hit film ‘Castaway’.

Suggested Mother’s Day Gift: Some nice flowers.

THE HEADMISTRESS

Cold, distant, an Orwellian monster. These are just a few of the headmistress’s attributes. She loves her children more than anything, but has no way to express her emotions. She keeps her distance in order to avoid rejection. It is not uncommon for the Headmistress to have a secret room filled with dolls where she can go to stroke their hair and sing nursery rhymes until the early hours of the morning.

How to spot a Headmistress: She will be wearing a t-shirt with the word “Discipline” on it.

Suggested Mother’s Day Gift: A hug. Or some nice flowers.

THE PIE BAKER

The Pie Baker never wanted to be a mother. Every day is a waking nightmare. She looks at her children and her heart feels so empty that it aches. She has but one dream – to become a grandmother. Her own children are simply a means to an end. She spends the first 30 years of motherhood perfecting the art of baking. Once her first grandchild has declared her baked goods to be “delicious”, the Pie Baker’s existence finally becomes validated and she is finally able to open her heart to her own children.

How to spot a Pie Baker: Flour under the fingernails, the scent of vanilla extract on her neck and a hollowed out tooth filled with marzipan.

Suggested Mother’s Day Gift: A grandchild. Or some nice flowers.

STACY’S MOM

Very little is known about Stacy’s mom, only that she has got it going on.

How to spot a Stacy’s Mom: Looks a lot like Rachel Hunter.

Suggested Mother’s Day Gift: Some nice flowers.

THE STEP

These days it is very common for a father to re-marry in the event of his wife’s death or theft. There are seventeen sub-categories of step-mother, but these are perhaps the most common:

a) The Evil

The Evil Step-mother is quite evil. She can often be found mimicking the voices of her step children and making strange faces behind them in photographs. She cannot be trusted.

How to spot the Evil Step-Mum: She will cast no shadow.

Suggested Mother’s Day Gift: Some nice flowers.

b) The Gold Digger

Often very young, the Gold Digger loves precious metals. It is common for men with access to large supplies precious metals to marry a Gold Digger in order to have someone to talk to about them. The Gold Digger is invariably very attractive and can be seen as more of a sexy sister than a mother.

How to spot the Gold Digger: Suspiciously large breasts, carries a metal detector, can often be seen whispering on the phone and frequently encourages her husband to take part in bungee jumps and sky dives.

Suggested Mother’s Day Gift: Gold.

Further Reading

Mothers – A Brief History

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Mother. It’s a word we hear nearly every year, but what does it actually mean? The dictionary describes a mother as something which is ‘full of moths’, but that barely scratches the surface of what a mother really is.

For centuries the mother was seen as secondary to the father in almost every way. The fact that there was no word in the English language for mother until 1796 shows how little they were regarded by society. They were simply called Female Fathers and were of the same social standing as a blacksmith.

However, that all changed in the early 19th century, when scientists discovered that it was actually the mother who gave birth to the child. This turned the whole family dynamic on its head. As reward for painful childbirth, women were allowed to become integrated into family life, often feeding the children and sometimes even clothing them.

This came at an ideal time for men – right in the middle of the industrial revolution. The world was fast becoming filled with machines. These machines caused something to awaken deep within the hearts of men. They lost all interest in farming, child raising and love. Why spend time with their families when they could watch a machine produce a hundred yards of linen in an hour? Or run their hands across the cool steel shell of a steam engine? The duties which had always belonged to the father were thrust upon the mother in their entirety, as fathers met in ale houses, comparing the processing speed of their tractors and the storage capacity of their trains.

In time, the machines became smaller and more complex, but man’s love for gadgets never tired. By the 20th century, men had forgotten how to raise children. Their breasts no longer produced milk. All they cared about was creating a machine capable of reaching the Moon. Meanwhile, mothers had conquered the art of raising children. They had perfected in 100 years what men had been doing and failing at for countless millennia. Children now had emotions, they spoke languages, they wore matching socks and their faces were free from dirt.

It was generally agreed that the mothers had done a good job. ‘Mothering’ became the new word for what had previously been known as ‘fathering’. Whilst the word ‘fathering’ came to mean ‘Observing from a distance – With or without the latest in video camera technology’.

In the next chapter we will be looking at the different types of mothers available in the world.

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United States: In America they do things pretty much the same as in the UK but obviously bigger, larger and with greater gusto. This is no bad thing but it wouldn’t really suit us in Britain. They like to be loud in America and all credit to them.

Australia: Like our American friends the Aussies like to celebrate Mother’s Day on the second Sunday of March. It isn’t celebrated as a public holiday and it is traditional to give your mother a Chrysanthemum as this flower is in season during this period ‘down under’, and funnily enough it ends with ‘mum’. Those Australians sure know how to be whacky for their Mums.

Another Australian tradition which is also followed in the United States is the wearing of a carnation.  A coloured flower indicates their mother is living whereas a white flower shows that their mother has passed away, sad.

In Australia it’s not only Mothers who get celebrated but Grandmother’s and anyone who takes an active part in rearing a child. Those lucky people can expect to get breakfast in bed and maybe some flowers.

Czech Republic: After the Berlin wall came down in 1989 the east became more westernised and traditions were embraced such as Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day.  This was officially started in 1993 and has carried on since then although there has been a rise in the popularity of Women’s Day (8^th March).  Women’s Day is now becoming just as popular and may exceed Mother’s Day.

France: Unlike any other country (trust the French to be a little different), Mother’s Day is always on the last Sunday of May. There is of course one exception to this rule and this is if the last Sunday falls on the 27^th in which case Mother’s Day is then switched to 3^rd June.

Another tradition is to bake a cake in the shape of a bouquet of flowers, sweet.

Germany: An interesting fact about Germany’s Mother’s Day is that it started in 1923 to help promote women to have more children.  This was done by the ‘Association of German Florists’, florists have slowly changed the world!

Indonesia: Mother’s Day is held on an odd day in Indonesia as it’s on 22^nd December.  In most western countries this would be too close to Christmas but in Indonesia this is not celebrated widely.

Some of the traditions include holding surprise parties and having competitions in cooking or Kebaya wearing. Generally people also allow mothers to have their day off from doing domestic chores, jolly nice of them on Mother’s Day.

Ireland: An interesting fact as to how Mother’s Day was started in Ireland is that it is held on the fourth Sunday in the Christian fasting month of Lent.  An early tradition on this day is that children were given a day off to visit their ‘Mother Church’ and worship the Virgin Mary. They would pick flowers on the way and present them at the church. Nice.

China: Again, carnations are popular at this time of the year in the country with the world’s largest population and so the most sold type of flower. However an organisation called the Chinese Mother’s Festival Promotion Society (catchy name!) asked to replace the gift of carnations with lilies.  In ancient times these were planted by Chinese mothers when children left home.

In China, Mother’s Day was created in 1997 to help poor mothers; however it’s yet to be recognised as a public holiday.

Mexico: Another country where the date of Mother’s day is slightly different to the rest of the world as it’s fixed on the 10^th May.  Traditions here include having a special mass organised by the church as Mother’s Day is taken to be more of a religious day than one just to celebrate mothers.  During the day an orchestra will play “Las Mañanitas” and distribute tamales and atole which is a traditional early morning meal to all the local mothers.

Pakistan: Here Mother’s Day is more sombre for those who have lost their mothers and is a time for prayer to pay their respects to the deceased. For those whose mothers are still living they do the usual thing of giving gifts and flowers.

Sweden: Mother´s Day in Sweden is celebrated the last Sunday in May. The reason for the late date is said to be because then everybody could go outside and pick flowers.

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Do you remember your mother taking you to school for the first time? Did she give you milk as a child?

If you answered yes to either of these questions you MAY want to send her some Mother’s Day Flowers

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On top of this, everyone who likes our Facebook page is automatically entered into our competition where you could win a free bouquet from our Mother’s Day range up to the value of £50.

Mothers:  All children are a little forgetful and need helpful reminders on what to get mum, be that a birthday or Mother’s Day. Sometimes inspiration can be a little lacking when deciding which gift is the most appropriate.  So when getting flowers and with so many choices at your disposal you need to give helpful reminders and hints.  With our app all you have to do is click the button “Mum wants this one” and then you’ll share that bouquet on your Facebook timeline. Easy for everyone to see and a nice little reminder for the forgetful ones.

Children: So many events in which to buy gifts and too many gift ideas to choose from.  We’ve got a great little app that you can send to your mothers to help give you ideas for Mother’s Day presents. No more will have to guess what mum might like, all she has to do is click the “Mum wants this one” button on our competition page and hey presto, that’s what you give on Mothering Sunday.  You’ll be notified as to which bouquet she wants by looking at her timeline on Facebook, simple.

So whether its Roses or Lilies your mum is sure to get a great bouquet when you tell her you can’t make if over on the day itself, well you don’t want to spoil her too much do you?

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One Valentine’s Day, in a bid to recapture the more traditional type of romance, I decided to take a lady for a daytime stroll along a cliff, (the third most romantic generic location behind a hilltop and a frozen lake respectively).

Knowing that hunger could very well be an issue in this isolated location, I prepared a picnic basket filled with the most romantic foods (Toblerones, Mint Aeros and Flakes). To increase the romance tenfold I decided to have the basket already planted there, which meant leaving it unguarded. This thought worried me. Although this was not a popular spot, I could not cope with the idea that some stranger might stumble upon my romance hamper. I did what I had to – I buried it. Precautious is my middle name and also quite a good description of my personality, so I buried it far deeper than I needed to. I also buried the shovel in a separate less deep hole, for fear that someone might find the shovel and decide to go on a random dig and unearth my love basket.

February 14th came and I found myself walking hand in hand with the potential love of my life. The Sun seemed to be burning brighter than ever before and a cool breeze kept the conditions perfect for a romantic stroll, because as you probably know, romance cannot develop at temperatures of more than 25 degrees.

Upon arriving at the cliff top a tiny lamb leapt into my arms and we both stroked it whilst laughing manically at the joy of such a thing. After the novelty of the lamb had passed I tossed it to one side and decided it was time to unveil the picnic basket.

“Look over there!” I yelled as I pointed at a bush. She turned away and I quickly got on my knees and began to dig with my bare hands. “Well, will you look at what I’ve found?” I said, proudly brandishing a shovel. “I bet there’s some treasure around here.”

I set to digging, as my potential wife gazed blissfully out at the sea. “Come see this view.” she said, her voice as soft the lamb I’d stroked a minute before.

“In a moment.” I replied “I think I’ve found something.”

Minutes passed, and I was still far from unearthing the picnic surprise. My date was losing patience. Half an hour had gone and the treasure was still far my grasp. I’d been too cautious with my burying. By this time I’d become quite manic. Her pleas for moving on or for conversation were met by screeches of “Leave me. Let me work. I’m onto something.”

The Sun began to set and the sky became a canvas of purple, violet and peach. “Come and enjoy this sunset with me. Please.” she begged, but I gave no reply. I was no longer a man; I had become a JCB born only to dig.

Night had officially checked in and the temperature was falling fast. It had already fallen below 7 degrees, which is the generally accepted minimum temperature for incubating romance. My offer of a jacket was met with silence. She’d gone. Not wanting the day to be a complete waste of time, I carried on digging.

If you’re expecting a funny twist, like I dug all the way to China or I’d been digging in the wrong place, you’ll be very disappointed. There is nothing funny about what I discovered after eight hours of digging – Someone had stolen my picnic basket. Maybe romance really is dead.

For our other posts in forTop Tips For Romance; Top Tips For Romance: Part One – How To Tell If A Girl Likes You, Top Tips For Romance: Part Two – How To Get A Girl To Like You, Top Tips For Romance: Part Three – How To Ask A Girl Out On A Date, Top Tips For Romance: Part Four – How To Kiss Your Sexy Neighbour

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