About Thoughtplay
What is Thoughtplay?
Thoughtplay is a small creative team specialising for bright ideas for work and play alike. We're the people behind these popular websites, with the help of our business partners:
- www.whatshouldireadnext.com - a leading book recommendation site used 70,000 times a month
- www.thisonenext.com - its younger sibling, giving film and music recommendations
- qurl.com - an ingenious service for shortening web addresses - and, uniquely, tracking their use in detail (ideal for email newsletters, marketing campaigns, and even party invites!)
- www.whoshouldyouvotefor.com - the intelligent political advice quiz that almost a million people took in the three weeks leading up to the UK's 2005 general election (currently offline)
We've done lots of interesting stuff offline, too. For example:
- we've created games and puzzles for 800+ people at the annual Care Awards event in London for five years running; one involved a murder mystery in a pack of playing cards
- we created distinctive branding, a website, a regular newsletter and original book cover designs for the small press Reverb Books, which has received loads of positive press attention
- we've run a few corporate creativity sessions. After one of them, the British Heart Foundation said "Absolutely bloody brilliant! We had a fantastic time!"
- we've run numerous live events such as murder mysteries and treasure hunts for private groups such as stag and hen parties
What can Thoughtplay do for you?
We specialise in thinking creatively. Forget 'outside the box' - let's collapse the box and make something else altogether. We like coming up with ideas, whether solving business problems, improving marketing or simply making life a bit more fun.
We're often too busy running our own projects to be present at events now, but we'd love to help you come up with ideas for events, marketing, websites, viral message-spreading and more, or think of solutions to your business and creative problems. Do get in touch and we can take things further.
Meanwhile, read our 'Think & Play' blog for some of our latest ideas, as well as observations on current trends and new technologies for work and life. Do subscribe to our RSS feed.
Who is Thoughtplay?
Andrew Chapman has worked in publishing for more than 12 years and was one of the UK's youngest magazine editors at only 23. After a two-year spell on a weekly newspaper he went freelance in 1999, spreading his wings as a designer, as well as writing books and articles for Pearson Education, Dorling Kindersley, Future Publishing and Trinity Mirror among others on technology, history, culture and - well, anything. He founded Thoughtplay part-time in 1998, launching it as a business in 2003.
Paul Lenz ran an e-commerce business after graduating from Oxford University, and worked as a marketing manager in the retail sector. He has subsequently worked as a strategic marketing and e-commerce consultant, most recently for BT. Paul has a wealth of experience in marketing and communications, including branding and strategic development; customer insight analysis and relationship management; and he can escape straitjackets of all kinds.
The Thoughtplay team also runs ideas by a wide range of advisers from fields as diverse as astronomy, law and philosophy, as well as more traditional media experts.
Where is Thoughtplay?
Thoughtplay is based in Oxford, UK, but we work mainly over the internet. Thoughtplay Ltd is a registered company in England and Wales.