Thought that these were stunning …

The re-imagining of the artworks of various famous painters as buildings by Federico Babino.

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You may have read our work announcing that O2 was plotting an immersive rugby experience using Oculus Rift kit to take the technology to the training ground. It was rather successful.

Well this week has been all about nailing the latest phase of our O2 rugby “Wear the Rose” campaign.

So having announced the fact that O2 and the England rugby team has been working with Oculus Rift to create an immersive interactive trainer, it was time to unveil the while shebang to media and get them playing with it for themselves.

Hence the Hope&Glory team found itself at Twickenham with head coaches, Chris Robshaw and a host of England stars … alongside a more than fair smattering of the Great British media – including the Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, Daily Express, ITN, the Standard and a host of tech and lifestyle titles.

With a spot of theatre, they were treated to a complete player experience – from pre-match warm-ups to post-match interviews.

And, as anyone might expect, the coverage has been spot on. There’ve been player interview pieces across The Guardian, Daily Express, SKY News, Daily Mail and the Standard.

Then the tech and lifestyle lot loved their Oculus Rift experience, with rave reviews from Daily Telegraph (er … twice!) Rugby World, Pocket-Lint, T3, Eurogamer, AskMen, Men’s Health, Stuff, Yahoo!, Aol. and ITN.

Spot on work altogether.

Love this: DHL gets UPS and FedEx delivery men to advertise them …

Apparently it came from a non-DHL agency who ran an internal competition amongst their creative teams, rather than the brand itself.

Which smells more than mildly fishy, but is also a great way for the brand to use some cheek while at the same time distancing itself from any fallout …

Another week, another rather successful piece of work with Barclays.

Following on from our quick and dirty PingIt story about someone who bought a house with a mobile phone, we’ve got all grown up and serious this week and have been helping them to promote their mortgages offer.

We wanted to find something that would really help them stand-out in the news pages – while at the same time we promoted debate, some argument and made sure that the brand positioned more strongly in the market as real experts in this field. So that’s just what we did.

As everyone who owns a home and has a mortgage will know, the big question right now is when the interest rates will rise.

But why?

Well that’s what we at Barclays set out to establish just how much homeowners would end up having to spend when the Bank of England starts to make changes to the rates we pay.

Working with the Centre for Economics and Business Research, we established that they would be worse off to the tune of £2.2 billion as a nation as a whole – or up to £5 billion if rates rise faster than is hoped for. A spot of Barclays consumer education later – calling on people to make sure they review their products to protect themselves from any rises to come – and we set off to media-land.

The coverage has been, quite simply, awesome.

There are pieces across the Daily Mail (twice given a belter on TIM), Daily Express, Standard, the Indy, City AM, Daily Mirror all those came out as print pieces as well and then there were additional news pieces in-paper with the METRO, Daily Star and The Sun. Then the weekends got involved with humdingers across the Financial Times, Sunday Times and Sunday Express.

Weird. But delightful.

Thought that this was relatively interesting.

Converse has taken over the Old Vinyl Factory – EMI’s former vinyl press – to “clash colour against the grey of the city in the name of promoting the vibrant range of Chuck Taylor All Stars. They hooked up with Agents of Change to transform the space. The result is kinda awesome.

The only reason that we say “relatively” interesting is because it hasn’t quite caught the media imagination yet. Couple of pieces (admittedly in the right places) and fewer than 100 views on YouTube so far couldn’t be considered a resounding success after all.

But conceptually it’s spot on and has some serious potential …

Remarkable news from this corner of the world as BIMM – or the British Institute of Modern Music – has become our latest client. Work has just kicked off and we’re looking forward to getting stuck in.

They are now to be found in Brighton, Manchester, Bristol, Dublin and London. And they’re the biggest institution offering courses in everything from performance to studio engineering, production, live events, songwriting, the works.

Basically, they cover everything that the modern music industry needs of those going into it.

We’re going to be working with them on their day-to-day “press office” – making sure that they’re in the music titles on a pretty regular old basis, supporting their events and helping to position them as one of the leading education institutions in the country. But we’re also going to be doing some brand campaign work and have a whole heap of lovely creative activations lined-up to happen as the year rolls on.

We are, as you might be able to tell from this rather gushing piece of prose, rather excited about it all.

This is lovely really. Simple. But lovely.

ArtFund is raising money to support hundreds of UK museums and galleries. The idea of the philanthropic bake-off asks people to create food-based works of art, with recommended recipes including a Mondrian-inspired Battenburg and a Pollock Krispie Square.

More here if you’re interested in getting involved.

Sometimes ideas are big and bold and brash. Sometimes, you get the simple but effective route. This one is the latter.

We’ve been working with HTC and their global agency, Nelson Bostock, to make sure that the “Future of Football” report scored all the coverage it deserved over the course of the last couple of weeks.

Predicting robot players, insect-like cameras, sensors on players, intelligent football boots, shirt-borne cameras and a host of others besides, the report was tailor-made to generate a spot of tactical coverage around the brand’s support for the beautiful game – as sponsors of the Champions League and Europa League.

And we did the job.

Lovely pieces in the Daily Star, Daily Telegraph and Daily Mirror were complimented by ShortList and Esquire articles, spots on msn and Trendhunter, amongst a host of coverage across the tech sites.

Another simple but effective piece of work.