Beyond awesome news as we have been shortlisted for a beyond-all-hope-and-expectations five PR Week Awards.

We are properly over the moon, chuffed and very proud.

Our work for the Big Bang (this, this, this and this) is up for Best Not-for-Profit and Best Public Sector Campaign. Our work for Meantime is up for Best Integrated Campaign and Best Marcomms under-£100,000. And the agency team as a whole is up
For Best Small Consultancy.

Couldn’t really get better as far as we were concerned. So we will once again say a MASSIVE thank you to everyone involved in all the work that has landed this haul – but most of all we’d like to say thanks once again to the clients that backed our ideas with their money and the folk across the team who created some utterly memorable work.

This week we’ve been promoting The Royal Mint’s latest collection of coins. This time, a limited edition run of landmarks on £5 coins (although they may cost you rather more).

The coins are the first in a collection of coloured coins that mark major British landmarks.

Given the designs, it seemed pretty natural to us to come up with some cunning imagery to make the launch famous in the media. So it was that we worked with one of our favourite snappers, Mike Buck, and hit the streets of London to capture the perfect angle on the statue of Queen Victoria outside Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament and Tower Bridge.

He did us proud and we got some shots that fired the media imagination.

Along with a DPS piece in the METRO, we bagged pieces across the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Daily Express and Evening Standard. Alongside there were scores of lovely online and regional pieces with over 50 additional pieces thanks to the lovely people at PA who whacked the story out on the wires.

Amazing what a good piccie can do, eh?

We love a good timelapse movie here in the land of Hope&Glory. And this is a really cute example of just that artform … a minute and a half of loveliness to enjoy …

We’ve been working with the lovely people at Autographer for the last couple of weeks now and have largely been concentrating on our announcement of a new mount launch which went down rather well) and the set up of a storming consumer press office.

But this week we found some time to get cracking on a little idea we came up with to give an “unexpected perspective” on the world of cartoon art.

Working with acclaimed Marvel comics artist (and mildly eccentric Frenchman), the masked Mr Garcin, we created a timelapse movie that captures the process he goes through of making one of his artworks …

The video did just what we hoped and scored a cracking piece on tech bible Mashable, where the story has so far been shared 700 times. Following that with pieces on sites including the ubiquitous TrendHunter, Digital Spy and DesignCurial, Geek.com, Right This Minute … as ever, amongst others.

Happy days.

The Barclays team are big believers in putting in the hard graft to dig out stories from within the business we work with.

So it was that we came across an idea from a Barclays customer on the brand’s “Your Bank” platform where customers place suggestions and make requests.

The individual who would in the end give the inspiration for the Ping It Cabbie It was a London black cab driver who was asking about using a QR code sticker for Barclays Pingit, the innovative mobile to mobile payment app, inside their cab.

From that came the seed of the idea: could we work with a black cab driver to become the first to trial payment by Pingit in their cab?

The actual “recruitment process” ended up being easy as a host of cabbies wanted to give it a go, citing benefits from convenience to lowering the need to stop at cash machines to greater efficiency to fewer parking tickets.

With that out the way, we set about trialing Pingit for real for five days and doing all the media relations that go with a quirky, real, but ultimately, newsworthy activity

Media loved the whole thing, with an exclusive piece by Harry Wallop in the Daily Telegraph, pieces in the Evening Standard, Metro, Independent, MSN, Aol, Yahoo!, Time Out, Daily Mail Online … even the Herald … and many others to boot.

Oh, and the Australians seemed very interested as the story made national SKY TV news.

Crucially, the product was at the heart of the story and thus every piece carried key messaging for the app and also the innovation piece for Barclays. And, by the by, if you come across a cab driver called Ian who is telling you the virtues of Pingit, it isn’t a stunt … he’s for real.

Fantastic news to report this merry Monday morning as Hope&Glory has won a new brief for carbonated health drink Alibi.

We are going to be looking after their press office activity, alongside a partnership-led campaign to establish them with lifestyle sports and support their summer festival programme. The Hope&Glory team will also support the brand’s trade communications as alibi grows its presence in retail, having recently gained listings in Tesco and ASDA.

For those not already familiar with it, Alibi is a carbonated blend of spring water and fruit juices and is blended with a combination of 19 vitamins, minerals and herbs.

Launched in 2008 by Oliver Bolton while he was at university as an alternative to the unhealthy soft drinks on the market (containing high sugar or artificial stimulants), it now comes in three variants (Citrus, Blueberry and Pomegranate).

Although it was launched as a “pretox” drink with properties that would help combat the impact of a big night out, the brand has repositioned itself as a more general health drink. Targeted at an urban youth audience, the agency will help position the brand as the perfect companion for “big weeks and bigger weekends”.

The summer campaign will include exploitation of the brand’s partnership with Cornwall’s leading surf schools and appearances at a range of festivals including Secret Garden Party and Leefest alongside a series of events working with festival partner Chai Wallahs. It will also include a series of event partnerships with media titles encompassing health and fitness and street sports – as well as the development of the brand’s own experiential platform.

Awesome work all round and plenty to be getting stuck into I’m sure you’ll agree!

Need we say more …?

There are some nights when you wonder why you go to the trouble, expense and time of entering awards. Those tend to be the nights when you leave empty handed with nothing but a mild hangover to look forward to the following morning.

Then there are nights when you remember what it’s all about – rewarding a great team that delivered a fantastic campaign and saying a huge thank you to the client (Meantime Brewing in this case) that backed an often preposterous idea with their hard-earned cash.

Last night was the latter.

The Meantime team scooped a ridiculous (but utterly delightful) two high commendations, three category wins and then the Grand Prix at the CorpComms Digi Awards.

We picked up certificates for Best Digital Campaign and Best Integrated Campaign, taking to the stage in the process. But we also bagged the main prize in the categories for Best Social Media Campaign, Best use of Twitter and Best Evaluation.

To cap off an extraordinary night we made one final return to the stage to take home the Grand Prix for the best campaign overall on the night.

A cracking campaign, a great team, a wonderful client and one of Hope&Glory’s most glorious nights. Even if we do still feel a little embarrassed by our success.

Shopkeepers of the world captured on camera.

“The Guardians” is an on-going project by a photographer who goes by the name of Vladimir Antaki.

Apparently, he has set out to “document and pay tribute to these people, these guardians of urban temples that we meet everyday without really noticing.”.

We just think that they are utterly lovely images of quirky, interesting people in interesting places that in so many ways reflect their personalities and the personalities one suspects of their customers.

Almost certainly a cunning client campaign that we can concoct around these! In the meantime, hope you enjoy …

read more…

Just a quick one this time.

Following a shocking night at this year’s CIPR Awards (up for four, got bugger all), we’ve restored the positive feeling about awards we got from the Sabres (up for four, won four).

A handful of us headed to Brighton for the small-but-perfectly-formed PRCA Dare Awards to find out whether the trophy cabinet would feature any more engraved Perspex.

As it transpires, it now does.

The team were up for a bunch of awards and, of the ten gongs in total handed out on the night, we managed to bag three – with two shortlisted entries that remained mere also-rans.

Lovely to pick up an award for work on The Royal Mint (Best Public Sector) and a couple of plaudits for our O2 UpCycled campaign (for Best “Campaign Challenges” and Best Tech Campaign).

Now we head to the Digi Awards where Meantime Brewing Hops in a Box is up for a preposterous five nods from the judges and our O2 Refresh social campaign is also in the frame.

We shall report back with (we hope) good news as it breaks.