My Name is Zahid Anwar, and I go by the Twitter handle @zedtrafficker. I have been part of the One Minute Briefs community for over 4 years now.
I first found One Minute Briefs after I was searching for a place to heal. I had a torrid time as an NHS whistleblower, which affected my mental health and gaining any form of a job opportunity.
When I found this community, I was recovering from a suicide attempt as I felt worthless as a human being, as I was denied job opportunities because I was a whistleblower.
One Minute Briefs helped me rediscover my love for creativity, and found it a great way to repair my mental health issues. I was very nervous at first, as I have a mental scar from trying to find work in the creative industry as an ethnic person.
This is how I ended up in the NHS as I couldn't get a job in advertising. Other whistleblowers and I were part of a group that petitioned parliament for better justice for NHS whistleblowers. We contributed towards the Francis review, which found that all NHS whistleblowers were victimised, and part of the review was that all whistleblowers must be reinstated back into the NHS.
And that's how I found myself back in the NHS; I worked in procurement and scan for safety, where I train doctors and nurses on how to use scanning technology in the operating theatre.
I have always been a creative person, and you find me contributing every day with creativity within One Minute Briefs. I have got better with my ideas, thanks to One Minute Briefs, and I have won many awards and just recently won a chip shop award for my WWF campaign, which can be found at my website zedtrafficker.com.
The latest competition I won was for designing a wine label. I wanted to take an alternative route, as I found from my experience in working shops and stores that labels are quite similar and frankly quite boring.
So I wanted to refresh the notion of what a wine label should be, and after the year we have had in 2020, it would be great that we can all refresh ourselves as rebuilding our society is thirsty work.
Zahid Anwar @zedtrafficker
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One Minutes Brief ran our #The6000Project brief on June 10, 2020, receiving 340 entries. You can consult all entries here or read the initial brief here. We took the top 10 entries from the 340 to run for the final competition here.
A special thank you to all #OMBLES who participated! Your daily creativity is nothing short of amazing!
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When things started to get tough, we started to daydream about a chaotically perfect scenario where people surround themselves by their friends and loved ones, sitting around a table sharing a moment of joy while eating, drinking, laughing, and chatting. That is still our dream!
For that moment, we wanted to put a bottle of our Prosecco on people’s tables, one that would speak to them, that would help them feel more connected, but most importantly, that would help start a conversation to create more happy memories.
After 74 amazing designs, and almost 3500 unique votes, the people have voiced not only their preferences, but mostly their state of mind, how they feel, and how they would like to feel when the year ends.
The three finalists represent a wide range of feelings that we can all relate to, and they all tell a story about the different depths and layers of our emotions this year.
We want to feel hopeful by restarting and pushing that invisible “Refresh” button to help us cope and move on with life. We also often want to say, “Fuck You 2020!” and release our frustrations by showing a “Middle Finger” to it, but we also want to protect ourselves and live “In A Bubble” where everything is perfect.
Here's to letting go of the hard emotions of 2020, to feeling more hopeful, and to moving on, with a “Refresh”-ed sense and appreciation for life! That’s what most of you voted for!
Congratulations to all three designers and thank you to everyone who submitted designs, participated by voting and sharing, and bought the wines without knowing what label would win the competition! We really appreciate your support!
Thank you!
Reka & Pier
]]>When people ask us how we are, we are quick to reply, “we are okay!” But frankly, dig a bit deeper, and you’ll find that no one is truly doing that well.
Five months into this Covid-19 world, while the wine trade is discussing “clean wine,” many smaller winemakers are trying to avoid the worst - bankruptcy. In our province of Treviso, Italy, local newspaper headlines forecast that almost 200 wineries will go bankrupt. Our aim is not to be among those 200.
I remember when we were into our 4th week of lockdown in late March. We were worried about the long-term economical and psychological effects of growing anxiety and uncertainty. Travels for wine tastings got all canceled, already booked tastings at the winery got canceled, global logistics took a hit as borders closed, and orders weren’t picked up due to lack of shipping containers. Emails after emails of only bad news, just like the one coming from a US importer who couldn’t take his previously placed order because his business was also going under with COVID.
In this entirely new situation, nobody knew what to do. I remember thinking that I wished my grandparents were alive so I could ask for their suggestions. They lived through WWII and the uncertain times that followed for decades to come. I longed to listen to their wisdom just once more. I would have asked them, “What should we do now?”
Small wineries don’t stand a chance when big-name importers try to beat down wines’ prices because they know there’s surplus. I was so desperate for something concrete.
After countless sleepless nights, it finally clicked. A rush of adrenaline ran through my body as I was walking up and down suckering the vines. And then I looked at our stock. I knew what to do. We did have something concrete. We had our wine.
The 6000 bottles of unlabeled Prosecco bottles sitting here at the winery, a pre-COVID order that got canceled during the lockdown, turned out to be the only sure thing we can count on right now. These bottles are physically here. And we need to sell them.
This was the starting point for The 6000 Project, a project we launched to try to get us through 2020 while creating space for creativity to shine. Because these bottles don’t have a front label, we saw an opportunity to do something different and start a creative competition to design a new limited-edition label for this year; a label that represents the hardness and harshness of 2020 but also the joys of kissing it goodbye.
This is what The 6000 Project is about. It’s the certainty of a small family-owned winery that is trying to avoid bankruptcy. It’s a creative outlet to keep us moving forward because creativity fuels innovation, which then feeds progress. None of this would be possible without the support and engagement of the creative world.
Incredible designers from around the world picked up the challenge, and we have received 74 artwork submissions that are now open to the public to vote. You can browse the brilliant designs in our Design Gallery. Which one will be featured on our limited edition 2020 Prosecco? We decided early that we are leaving it up to you! To cast your vote, you just need to register to receive the password a link to the page where you can cast your vote for the designs that you love.
Pre-orders are also open. For orders of two cases, shipping is for free to all countries in the EU, UK, and Switzerland. For the US, we can ship to 34 states, and we recommend group-buying 5 or 10 cases at which the price/bottle (shipping, and customs clearance included) is € 24 and €21 respectively – a fair price for vineyard-to-door delivery across the Atlantic. We also found that businesses are buying these bottles as their Christmas corporate gift. If you’re interested, please consider pre-ordering some of these limited-edition bottles on the Pre-Order Wine page.
We all need some comfort and joy instead of thinking of the pandemic, politics, the cracking economy, social unrest, and the impact of all of this on our kids. In addition to the crazy of them following classes from home. We like to think of giving this year a beautiful send-off with the idea of joyful moments with family and friends.
We don’t know how 2020 will end. But we know we will need bubbles to celebrate closing the door on it. We want to transform this unfortunate situation into one that represents happiness for many of us. That moment of joy is the end of 2020. We believe every single person in this world is looking forward to that moment, and we have the right bottles to pop for those who enjoy wine directly from a small producer.
Thank you for reading, for your support, and for your participation.
Reka & Pier
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A longer version was published on The Buyer on July 27, 2020
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