Just thought that this was cute. I hadn’t seen it and so I thought that it was worth sharing around the place.

Pimkie, that iconic European fashion label, has come up with a cracking little app that will “forecast” colours in three major cities (Paris, Milan and Antwerp – how Anterwerp got into that list, the lord alone knows).

It scans people in fashionable areas and logs the accent colours that they’re wearing to show you which are “on trend” in each different destination.

Cute. Pointless of course. But cute.

A gentleman by the name of Nick Bertke has taken remixing pop culture to a whole new level.

He’s creating audio visual mash-ups (operating under the name Pogo).

Bertke, who is all of 24 years old, is travelling the world to film original video footage before slicing it and dicing it up to make real life remixes.

However, he’s cut his teeth taking elements of pop culture (from Lord of the Rings to Alice to Monsters Inc) to create new Remix audio and video.

“Boo Bass (Monsters Inc. Remix)” mixes video and audio clips from a well-known cultural work to create something that’s mind-blowingly new, not just nostalgic.

There’s one below. Another couple if you hit “read more”.

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There isn’t a huge amount to say about this. Other than that it had just about the right effect in the Hope&Glory offices today … Nearly made James and Carl have a little blub … Bless ‘em.

This is, to be honest, barking.

Ashton Kutcher has been filmed in four alter-ego driven YouTube videos pitching himself as rocker, Bollywood maestro, Lagerfeld-esque fashionista and hippy.

In each he is ostensibly pitching himself in a dating site video – supposedly for World Wide Lovers.

Now World Wide Lovers will re-direct you neatly to an app on the Popchips Facebook page where you can create a film in which one of the characters delivers a message to the friend of your choosing – standard messages of either love or break up – while holding up your loved one’s profile pic.

That can be posted to the friend’s wall, thereby spreading the love on Twitter.

Cute idea, we thought. Whether it will take off remains to be seen. With 300 odd views on each of the films, the jury is OUT.

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We’re on a bit of a roll in Hope&Glory this month.

The latest lovely client to join us is the fantastic baby carrier brand, ERGObaby.

For those not familiar with it, ERGObaby is the world’s best and most advanced baby carrier and makes carriers that are favoured by the likes of Orlando Bloom, Minnie Driver and Julia Roberts.

Hope&Glory’s brief is to build brand awareness for ERGObaby amongst parents through a mix of media and blogger outreach, alongside more “disruptive” consumer brand campaigns.

We’re looking forward to getting stuck into our new charge.

We’ve been out and about this week with D&AD.

One of the things that caught our eyes as we perused the awarded work was this film, for South African Spoeke Mathambo. Curiously, it picked up its awards for editing. We rather liked it because it’s an absolute belter of a tune.

The folk at Amplify have created this film-ette that looks at how people become fans and how fandom can be created.

It looks at everything from The Beatles to Fred Perry and from Kaiser Chiefs to PlayStation.

If you have a handy half hour, we’d recommend a watch …

FanCulture. The Evolution of Influence from WeAreAmplify.com on Vimeo.

Smart idea for mini car gets the point across … fast

This was just a Smart (ho ho) idea, I thought.

To show the acceleration in a Smart car, the clever people at BBDO Germany created a cunning stunt at the Frankfurt Motor Show for the 520,000 people who visit the city of the vehicular extravaganza.

Creating a game of Pong (because retro-gaming is as big in Germany as it is here, it would appear) where the cars are the controllers …

Why does it work?

Because it’s simple first and foremost … the game’s simple, the tactic is simple, the participation is simple.

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We launched the “Nation of Storytellers” for our self-publishing client, Blurb this week. We’re on the hunt for the country’s best stories in a bid to preserve amazing tales before they’re lost forever – whether stories of times gone by or of more recent events.

Together, we’re going to be creating a book of the best twenty stories, complete with professional authorship and photography, so that we’re doing our bit to help that process and make sure that these important parts of British cultural history are kept and can be handed down to future generations.

As well as a lovely piece from the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and The Sun, we also got this lovely piece from R5 Live …

The very talented folk who made the “Push Button for Drama” spot. Now officially the most shared piece of content of all time (or somesuch accolade) made the clip below.

Actually, they made it before they made the experiential ad that made them famous hit screens.

And very clever it is too. Highlighting an altogether more serious issue.

Some pretty amazing work all-round from the Hope&Glory team as we’ve been helping D&AD out with their fiftieth annual awards.

We ran a press office from Olympia during the judging process, with a full-service AV unit available to film video interviews for the roughly 15 media who made the trip down to talk to the likes of Sir John Hegarty, Dave Droga, Bob Gill, Tim Lindsay, Rosie Arnold, Graham Fink … and a host of others besides … We also released around 25 stories from the awards – with announcements pretty much live as they happened going out to the world’s media.

That was followed by a final announcement going out as live from the awards do on the Thursday night – with bags of number-crunching, image-grabbing … and Lord knows what else to make sure that everything was announced as it happened.

So far, around 150 pieces of coverage for the awards. Which isn’t bad work now, is it?

Now for something completely different … Say Hello(Style) to the new YouTube

There was really only one stunt in town this week.

The much-shared, often referred to, mammothly Tweeted, re-tweeted and Facebooked “push the button to add drama” film from TNT Belgium.

It’s a lovely piece of creative work and it caught the imagination with its combination of PR stunt, real-life stunt and real first person reaction to the drama as it unfolded. Fifteen million views (marginally more than the population of Belguim, one might observe churlishly), and counting.

So instead of writing about that again, I thought that I’d note something that, as a PR man, I thought was rather more significant: the launch this weekend of Hearst’s YouTube-backed HelloStyle Channel on the video sharing platform of global renown.

Because if this one works, it’s going to be an interesting new opportunity for all of us involved in the world of PR.
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James has been loitering about at the judging of the D&AD Awards 2012 – their fiftieth awards. That means that he’s seen a lot of the best creative work from across the globe.

When he got back, he showed this around the office. And we all fell in love. All we can say is that we hope that it delights you as much as it did us. Because we think that it’s one of the best ideas that we’ve seen for a very, very long time.

Er.

Well, the title sums this one up really.

Watch. Enjoy.

I just thought that this was vaguely cute.

Smart Argentina (or rather their agency) has created a sort of Twitter flipbook.

As an idea, it’s really cute. To be honest, as a user-experience, it’s a pain in the backside – you have to go to their Twitter page, load the whole damn thing up (about twenty pages of it) and then go back to the top and tap the J key a LOT).

Irritating.

That said, the theory of it is lovely …

And by the time the experience has been done properly and YouTubed, you kinda get a sense of what it should look like …

Those cheeky chappies at Castlemaine XXXX have pulled an almighty stunt that has gone global.

The Aussie beer brand has leased a small island (by the name of Pumpkin Island until its recent re-branding as XXXX Island) and is turning it into the “ultimate retreat for men” with “no women allowed” (which seems something of a contradiction if you ask me, but there you go).

To unleash this little gem on the public, they created this announcement video …

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Here’s the team. In Smithfield. Which we call home.

So finally, we thought that we ought to do our first set of introductions to the Hope&Glory team. So we’ve gone about making up our biographies page, which you can have a wee read of around about here.

Of course, as sure as eggs is eggs, since we got around to doing this, we’ve started working with another couple of folk who we just haven’t had chance to snap and get written up and online. So you’ll have to wait a week or three for that to happen … it’s fun though busy times here and our clients have needs that come first.

Anyway, in the meantime, have a read and do feel free to drop a line to say hello …

Well there’s some nice news to start the week.

As reported on PR Week, we’ve started work with UK start-up tech company, BaseKit.

We’re going to be looking after UK PR for BaseKit and we will also work alongside their growing global agency network (with existing PR partners in Spain and Brazil).

BaseKit offers small businesses the technology to set up and manage their online presence including a website builder, search engine optimisation tools and social media support.

It’s growing fast with over 40,000 new small business customers joining monthly.

BaseKit was started in the South West of England by two brothers – one of whom is still involved with the business day-to-day. It now trades in ten countries and is seeing rapid growth in Brazil, Mexico and India as it targets the 500 million small businesses worldwide.

We’re looking forward to getting stuck in.

Here’s interesting … Ssense, online fashion retailer, has created a “Shop What You See” video with Australian rapper Iggy Azalea, hip-hop duo, FKi and Grammy-nominated producer, Diplo.

It would appear to be the first music video you can make purchases “in”. On each frame, you can click the “S” icon (as you can see above) and it’ll open a page showcasing the products worn in the shot.

From there, you can hook yourself through to Ssense’s website and pick up some rather natty items of fashion. How lovely, eh.

See it all here.

Every now and then you get a piece that just makes you smile.

Most beer brands spend thousands – tens of thousands – to score coverage in some of the places that we have delivered pieces for Meantime Brewing. Now the truth is that Meantime is a totally different kettle of fish to most beer brands.

Monocle 24 came good with a lovely ten minute piece of beer and food matching in their latest show. Total cost? Sod all, bar a career of handy media contacts *smug* …

Hope&Glory has the sheer pleasure and privilege to work with Berry Bros. & Rudd and have pulled off a couple of great media campaigns for the 315 year-old vintners (to the Queen no less).

Well we just added another string to our premium drinks portfolio.

Last night saw the launch of Berrys’ newest whisky, bottled under their own brand, but made in this case by The Glenrothes, the brand that they also happen to own and the fastest-growing single malt in the world.

And this was no ordinary Whisky.

First of all, it is a limited edition (of 100 numbered bottles) of single Olorosso cask single malt. It’s a stunning dram – everything that a great Speyside malt should be and more on the basis of the tasting last night.

But there’s more.
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We thought that this ad, from Land Rover, showed some utterly genius creative thinking.

Give it a watch.

The script is just brilliant. Even though there isn’t a work on it.

But what is properly amazing is that the whole ad gets everything across that you need to know about the brand and the vehicle without showing a single mountain climbing scene, no hint of a 4×4 driving through muddy puddles and not the slighted suggestion of hacking through forests, fields, rivers or Arctic tundra.

Genius. We thought …

We’ve been doing some amusing work with O2.

At some stage we plan to do something sensible with them. That plan is currently on ice.

So to promote their new “On & On” tariff, alongside the nuts and bolts media relations work with the consumer tech and money page folks, we decided to launch the “On & On” handset.

That would be a brand new, O2 branded handset that allows a whole month of talk-time so that users of the new tariff could take full advantage of the benefit of 30 days unlimited calls.

At least it would be if it existed. Which, being an April Fool’s story, it, er, doesn’t.

Coverage was pretty pleasing, with pieces that included Daily Mirror, Gizmodo, PocketLint and Engadget. Which was nice.

This is proper amazing. Samsung has taken projection mapping to the next level and has done a cheeky wee ad that maps onto a bloke’s face. It’s hardly a giant leap forwards. But it certainly gives the whole thing a new lease of life. I’m still waiting for someone to projection map onto something that itself is moving. That’d be fun.

I’ve always loved an ad campaign that asks a question and then leaves you with a smug sense of self-satisfaction when you get the answer right.

Think Economist ads that asked a question and left you to answer the question for yourself.

Well Lego’s latest piece of work does that. Spot the characters …

(more if you hit the read more)

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Loving the Selfridges Film Project is an utterly lovely little project.

In essence, to mark the launch of their new women’s designer galleries, the iconic London store invited designers including AF Vandevorst, Comme des Garçons, Dries Van Noten and Gareth Pugh to each create a minute film inspired by captivating women.

The results are being screened at the Old Selfridges Hotel. And here …

Our favourites were the Gareth Pugh …

And the Alexander McQueen …

The O2 ad theme – Little Boxes – looks set to become something of a hit.

So I thought that this take on it – with cardboard instruments used to re-make the track – was a really cute way of promoting it through social media. Whether it takes off or not remains to be seen (though this will no doubt add a couple of views … O2 folk if you’re reading, we’re doing our bit!).

But either way it’s a lovely little tune and this is a cracking way of bringing it to life through social media (that will no doubt appeal to the hipsters out there who’re into Walk Off The Earth, themselves something of a social media creation) …

Thought this was vaguely interesting (hit “read more” below to see what “this” is).

On the one hand, it’s a sort of interesting infographic that shows once again – and as if it were needed – that there is a lot of shit available on the internet. And that a lot of people are consuming it every day of their lives. Or our lives, being as I am one of those consumers.

On the other, it also shows just how readily (and without question) so much of the data churned out by companies (from YouTube and the social networks to NetFlix and ) is promptly regurgitated as gospel fact in this sort of infographic – a piece of information presentation that gives it an aura of quasi-scientific “truth” and believability.

Funny old world really, isn’t it?
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Dunno about you, but I think that there is something distinctly romantic and childhood memory-inducing about making snow angels.

Which is probably why this appealed to such a degree.

Ice Angel, by Dominic Harris of Cinimod Studio, brings the idea of making snow angels bang-up to date – and makes it an altogether less wet and cold affair (admittedly losing something along the way in doing so if you’re a big kid like me).

It’s an art installation that uses a 3-D camera to track those who stand before it. As folk lift their arms, they grow a unique pair of glowing wings that emanate from a grid of pure white LEDs.

It’s pretty stunning. If you ask me.

Ice Angel from Cinimod Studio on Vimeo.

Thought that we would give this a shout because it’s been made by H&G’s favourite drawer of pictures and painter of scenes with help and assistance from sometime collaborator Emma “Miss Cakehead” Thomas. Illustrator, model-maker and man about town Pete Fowler has directed this slot for the Horrors’ Changing The Rain. Amazing …

So we’ve been working with the team at UKTV to help them promote their latest blockbuster, Alcatraz. Making its UK debut on Watch, the new series is a return to the small screen for J.J. Abrams, last seen on telly with Lost and with a host of great productions for the big screen under his belt in between.

The schtick is that in 1963, Alcatraz supposedly closed, its inmates shipped off the island and sent elsewhere. However, fast forward to the present day and it turns out that the prisoners are re-appearing in their cells. And that they would all appear to have aged not a jot since they were last seen.

At that point, a team of investigators set forth to seek the 302 former inmates out and to put them back where they belong.

To mark the launch of the series, we thought that we’d keep it simple.

So we launched Hotel Alcatraz.

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In reviewing my collection of favourite stunts from the week gone by, pondering which to write about while sitting, as I tend to, in Starbucks of a Sunday afternoon, there is one that stands out from the past seven days.

It might be the most obvious selection. But only because it is so damn good.

So it is that I come to highlight for those who may not have seen it, Paddy Power’s latest, epic-scale stunt: putting a rider on the White Horse of Uffington.

Now here we have a brand with a formidable reputation when it comes to cunning stuntery.

Perhaps with a nod to fellow countryman O’Leary, they have a flagrant disregard for authority and “the rules” in their approach to brand promotion. Paddy Power has been creating word-of-mouth since they launched on these shores in 2001 – indeed those with long memories might remember their opener: print ads “so brutal” they were banned.

They followed that with their “Hollywood sign” as a two-fingered salute to the official Ryder Cup sponsors (which, incidentally, they were ordered to take down, thereby creating yet more news for themselves).

They (or at least Taylor Herring on their behalf) have been at it again.

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As reported in PR Week today, we’ve been joined by the legend that is Adrian Chitty.

Adrian has arrived to become our third partner.

The move follows an eight-year stint at Good Relations, where Ades worked on corporate and consumer brand accounts.

Most recently, he was responsible for the agency’s comparethemarket.com and Honda accounts, and also worked on TalkTalk, Kellogg’s, Chevron and Southern Railways.
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Every now and then, a “job application” campaign is so stunningly clever that it goes viral to some degree or another. This is one of those occasions. These fellas – Australian creative team GrinterSpencer – have suffered just that fate.

Their “Creative Ransom” basically involved buying the URLs for the names of Mebourne’s top creative directors and then holding those pages “ransom” until they got a meeting.

This is their story (and it’s well worth a watch) …

There isn’t a lot to say about this. Other than that it’s a four minute film with various beats all edited to match the happenings on a street somewhere in Germany. But then really, do you need to know a great deal more than that? Course not …

Quick post this.

Amazing …

We are loving artist, Sonja Hinrichsen‘s “Snow Drawings” series.

She creates these ephemeral, temporary pieces of art across snowy landscapes using a team of volunteers in snow shoes to create epic images that take the breath away – before they are themselves erased by wind and further snowfall.

At some stage or another, we have little doubt, we will be thinking about how we could get her involved with one of our campaigns!

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Top class coverage. Wish we could claim to have orchestrated it. Lovely coverage for Meantime’s Yakima Red … in Yakima, Washington.

Odd.

That is all.

This is taking branded content to a WHOLE new level.

Converse’s collaboration with the Gorillaz guys, James Murphy and Andre3000 now has a spangly (actually, utterly un-spangly and pretty vile) video to go with the DoYaThing track. The idea behind the collaborations revolve around “Three Artists, One Song”. It’s up for download on the Converse website and the film has just gone live.

Came across these on a rare trip out East to see Hector Proud over at Idea Generation.

Band Dry the River has created a series of “listening post(er)s” that have been made out of the wires from battery powered speakers. Passers bay can stop, pick up the tin can and listen to one of the tracks from the album. There are twelve posters in all dotted around East London and they make up the album when pieced together as a whole

Just a stunning little idea that, really …

Sometimes, there’s a pretty solid argument that says, if you can find a great pun, work out the PR idea that might deliver it and you’ve probably got the makings of a great campaign.

There were two involved here.

First you have “March Fourth” as the name for an event that features people walking to support wounded soldiers that takes place on … yep, 4 March 2012.

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This is actually brilliant. Want to know how to appeal to da yoof with bugger all budget? This tells you most of what you need to know, we reckon …

Basically, remove big budgets, bands, celebrity, sex. Insert humour, a cracking little script, some tastelessness and a spot of the unexpected.

It’s … well … a snap …

This is one of those times.

This month’s Blueprint Magazine. Our client? D&AD …

Not I.

But this one is really cute.

BT Artbox celebrates 25 years of ChildLine by asking artists including Keith Tyson, Romero Britto, Giles Deacon, Zandra Rhodes and a host of others to decorate a fibreglass replica of Gilbert-Scott’s original phonebox.

The boxes will be “exhibited” across London before a gala auction is held at the National Portrait Galler where they will all be auctioned off for charity. Apart from this being a cracking little stunt, I was just dead chuffed to see BT exploiting its heritage and history in a really positive, bang-up-to-date and, above all, socially aware, way.
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Don’t really understand it, for I am a bear of little brain.

But these are really rather amazeballs (word of the week) …

High Wheel by Maider Lopez from maider lopez on Vimeo.

Buenos Aires – Inception Park from Black Sheep Films on Vimeo.

Nice news to be able to report in Hope&Glory as we can officially say that we’re working with the RSPCA Good Business Awards.

For those who aren’t familiar with them, the awards recognise those businesses across food (from grocery to pubs to restaurants) and fashion (retail and designers) who pioneer fair treatment of animals in their products.

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It’s not the world’s finest piece of film-making, it has to be said.

But I thought that this was a really lovely idea as part of BT’s involvement with the London Olympics. Culture outfit somewhere__ asked a series of young animators to come up with pieces that would play out on the BT Tower screens as part of the Games’ legacy.

The results are in the YouTube film below. And very nice they are too …

Now the folk I’ve asked are fifty-fifty on whether this is a stunt or whether this “rhino escape drill” was carried out in earnest.

My money is on stunt. And a belter at that.

For those who didn’t catch this gem (and if you didn’t, which rock have you been under lately?), a certain zoo in Japan has captured global media attention with its “drill” for the event that one of its rhinos figured out how to escape from its pen …

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This is what happens when you put iron filings into oil and then pass electric currents to magnetise screw threads in the pool of the stuff. And one day, it will make its way into a Hope&Glory pitch document, I predict!

Just really liked this. And thought that it was well worth sharing …

You may well ask what the hell all this is about.

Well, following the success of #o2santa, we were asked whether we might be able to come up with anything for Valentine’s Day. Duly challenged, we thought that Cuddly Cupid and Cockney (or Hunky) Cupid might get people chatting …

Here’s Cuddly Cupid (hit Read More for Cute Cupid) …

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Obviously, all client wins are equal in Hope&Glory. We celebrate them all and we work bloody hard to make sure that their choice to work with us is justified all the way.

But from time-to-time we get particularly excited when someone joins us. This is one of those moments as we heard today that we’re going to be working with London’s finest brewer, Meantime.

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The week before last I found myself writing about Super Bowl marketing hype.

Sadly, the VW ad that was teased so beautifully with the “dogs singing the Star Wars theme” should have taught the (non-PR) agency behind it that great talkability will never pay off when the sizzle turns out to be better than the sausage. In my humble, the final VW spot was pretty weak and the Star Wars reference a bit of a sop to get fans of the films talking.

Hey ho.

Refusing to be discouraged, however, I thought I would return to the theme as the topic of this week’s PR Antics.

Doritos (for those who aren’t already aware of their piece of marketing genius) makes an annual bet.

It lays down anything up to $1 million every year hoping that someone, somewhere in the US of A will come up with a great advertising idea.
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Flying Finns score a YouTube hit – even if the idea is a trifle hackneyed

There is a long and glorious history of airlines getting their staff to do odd things on-board in order to create YouTube “sensations”.

Air New Zealand stripped their crew and then body-painted them to get people clicking – around 6 million of them promptly did just that. Cebu Pacific managed to cause a stir – amid allegations of sexism – when they had their female air crew dancing their safety instructions. Their response was to record the same thing with a bunch of chaps.

Now, FinnAir has followed this well-trodden path with a lot of Scandiwegians putting on a Bollywood show at 30,000 feet …

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Always hoped that Heineken would do more with its ads – particularly socially.

Now, following the enormously successful The Date ad of last year, they have.

The top and bottom of it is that you use the Facebook app to create a wee video-ette that invites the object of your desires on a date. Selecting from the various options (from the type of date to the reason that someone should go out with you), the app spins-up a video serenade.

And quite fun they are too … here’s mine to H&G …

What’s more, if you are the recipient of one of these little gems, you can use the app to then respond with a yay or a nay to tell your admirer whether you will be reciprocating their affections.

Lovely work.

So Wouter van Buuren is a photographer.

But one who’s schtick is to scale utility poles, tip-toe across bridges, and climb out of skyscrapers to get fish eye shots of the world above.

The amazing thing is that he then takes the shots and puts them together to create what he calls “total landscapes”. However, this stitching together doesn’t take place in Phototshop. Rather, he lays out 100 pics and puts them together in a way that creates a single image.

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Not really sure what you call this. An animated infographic, I guess.

Pretty incredible stuff from YouTube. And a lovely site at onehoureverysecond.com

Every now and then, there is a piece of coverage that just makes us smile.

The bar is reasonably high these days – as are expectations.

But this piece on Monocle24′s D made the team grin from ear-to-ear. A full-blown fifteen minute piece on the D&AD at fifty years old with a review of the best work by CEO,  Tim Lindsay, design commentator Linda Relph Knight and Monocle Creative Director, Richard Spencer Powell, as they talk about “some of the most coveted awards in the industry”.

Big news from us as we’re getting stuck into some good books.

We pitched for … and thankfully won … self-publishing outfit, Blurb.

Already a big name in photography and graphics, we’re going to be helping them to start gently expanding their appeal to creative types – people who are probably already making beautiful things and photographing them, or writing great copy … but who haven’t yet thought about making them into a book.

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Lots of people will argue that this is not a stunt. That the subject of this week’s Antics Roadshow is in fact an ad. And they would be right.

But I would contend that my view, which is that this is an ad that is also a PR stunt – albeit one on a rather epic scale – holds equally true. And that it is my interpretation of this piece of work that points to a more interesting underlying factor in the happy world of our industry.

For those who have not seen it, VW has (repeating the runaway success of its The Force viral campaign) unleashed more Star Wars-related nonsense onto the web in the shape of this stunt (or viral, piece of digital marketing as you prefer) …

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Sometimes, just sometimes, I see an idea that involves a celebrity and think “that was a belting piece of work – a partnership made in heaven between a brand and a genuine ambassador”.

It doesn’t happen often.

Reading about Will King’s sponsorship of Team GB athlete, James Ellington, I got just that feeling (if you didn’t see it, try the Standard (made page three), or Telegraph pieces for a potted summary).
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Amazing news just in from us as we have been approached to work with the guys at retail design consultancy, gpstudio. We’re going to be supporting their brand across the trade, business and consumer media to raise their profile as a leading interior design outfit.

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We had the lovely Emma of Miss Cakehead fame in the office this week. Helping out with a couple of bits and bobs and coming up with some ideas together for a little project-ette or two.

If you’re interested in what creative type folks are up to and you haven’t read her blog. Well … you should.

We have a little file tucked away of “odd things that might trigger a less odd thought at a later date” around here in Hope&Glory. Just so that there are lots of connections to various ideas that all come together when the right brief lands. And because if you’re not willing to collaborate to do interesting things, it’s quite likely that a lot of the things that you do will be just a little bit less interesting than they might otherwise have been. In our book. If you see what we mean.

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Love, love, love this piece of work …

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G-Force attaches to Apple’s coat tails to make its story fly

There is a great tendency in PR to think around, think through and think over the eternal problem of “how do we get this fundamentally boring product into the news?”.

Sometimes, as iPad case manufacturer G-Form, has shown, it’s easier to think through said problem than waste time with all those tricksy creative routes that are going to look smart in a pitch room but end up over-contrived when they come to the sell-in. The obvious route, in other words, is also the best.

So if you make ballistics-grade cases for the world’s most talked-about gadget, what do you do?

You find the most extreme ways of showing that your precious piece of kit will survive all manner of G-Form-inflicted falls and tumbles.

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Really stunning piece of work from Virgin Money that made me question whether there is still life in the idea of doing 3D projections for launches.

The spectacle is pretty amazing – it’s creatively stunning. Really stunning. However, the fact that this is remarkable but has only had around 10,000 views is probably telling. That’s not a bad number, but it’s hardly the big numbers that these campaigns used to get.

Anyway, enjoy the view. It’s a beautiful looking piece of work …

Microsoft has been doing the unthinkable for some time now, embracing rather than litigating against those who have “hacked” its Kinect technology (which enables all manner of creative wonder based on their motion-detection software and hardware, for those who don’t know).

Came across this little piece of wonder and loveliness today: the Puppet Parade.

Basically something that enables kids to wave their arms around in front of a screen to trigger and then manipulate a couple of digital birds on a screen. It’s pretty lovely stuff …

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BTW, best gag of the day … “Today is Emile Heskey’s birthday. Someone had better tell him, otherwise he’ll miss it”.

Anyway, with that sporting japery out of the way, I rather enjoyed watching this cute piece of work from the good folk of ESPN. Snigger-inducing work from the US sports broadcaster that makes you smile gently at the pay-off …

Have always loved Red Bull’s Canimation campaign.

It’s a relatively simple idea to get the brand across through all manner of social media. And basically to get lots of really interesting people to create amazing ads for the brand.

The reason that I’ve always thought that this is more interesting than your average “help us to promote ourselves by entering a competition” campaign is that they’ve managed to pull off the always-so-tough trick of attracting some enormously talented folk to enter the thing.

Getting the right talent means getting the right content which means they get great press which means that they … well, you get the picture.

Great work from the team at (I’m assuming) Pretty Green Kingdom Collective (as it turns out, my mistake) …

There’s another film if you hit the “read more” link below. I think it might be my favourite. Certainly one of the most accomplished …
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It was a pretty quiet Christmas break for PR-land, at least based on my perusal of the papers through the Yuletide season. However, there was one little gem that I thought was worthy of a huge hat-tip in the increasingly eclectic column that is “Antics Roadshow”.

As anyone who loves their media (and their stunts in particular) will tell you, the regional media is an oft-overlooked outlet for some of the best PR stunts and japes going.

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There’s lovely … Someone who knows about these things has created a rather lovely mash-up of Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal matched against a series of Fred Astaire films to show “the master and his teacher”. One to file under “ephemera”. Again.

Loving the fine work of one Aaron Wood, who has made these rather lovely Social Media propaganda posters … a modern take on a bygone age. Available on Etsy.

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David Ogilvy

We took a little look back at what we’ve been up to over the course of the last month or so. And we were quite chuffed with what we found, though we do say so ourselves (which we do) …

There’s some lovely radio work for Berry Bros. & Rudd, some cracking international media work for D&AD, some hard-working media relations for School of Comedy and, of course, there was the fun and games that was the O2 Santa campaign that we wrapped up on Friday.

Here’s a little summary of that work, in video form …

We thought that it’d be nice to drag a variety of bits and bobs that we scribbled about on Spinning Around during the course of 2011 into one neat and easy place. Which means that, if you’re sitting in the office this week without too much to do, you can kill more-or-less a whole hour watching all of this nonsense. Which can’t be bad, now can it?

So … first off … The Royal wedding was the biggest thing to happen in 2011. T-Mobile’s viral the funniest thing to happen from a brand in its wake (we think) …

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We’ll stop shortly.

But the O2 Santa has rather dominated at least some of the team’s lives over the last week or so.

So a quick share of but one element of the work that we’ve been doing. In and amongst posting over 1,000 messages to the Twitter folk from across the world, we found some time to create a little Fenton/Benton parody featuring our very own #o2santa …

As far as businesses with little to lose when it comes to their reputations go, HMV has got to come pretty close to top of the list. And historically that has been in spite of rather than because of their PR – masterminded by the brilliant Gennaro Castaldo.

However, watching the HMV fiasco unfold over the last week, I was prompted to speculate over whether the whole “early release of Amelia Lily’s winning single” was really as much of a technical hitch as it has been claimed.

Now this is all purely speculation of course. There are no accusations or allegations of foul play. After all, here’s Amelia Lily saying how unfortunate it all was and how upset she was by HMV prompting all the speculation.

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As we mention in the post below, we’ve kicked off some work with O2.

We’ve created a Twitter and YouTube-based O2 Santa’s Grotto for them to spread some Christmas cheer for the brand during the festive season. We could go on about it plenty, but this should explain it all …

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I do like the Samsung spot for its Galaxy phone.

They are probably more than happy to take a pop at Apple in any available forum given the two brands’ by-now-infamous court actions against each other pretty much everywhere in the world. 

But as far as doing it in advertising … well, that’s a brave move.

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In new-agency land, to coin an over-used Wallace-ism, wins do not come better than this …

So we are over-the-moon delighted that we’re going to be doing a spot of social media and media relations work with mobile behemoth, O2. We came up with a cute little Christmas campaign which will see us having fun and games on Twitter (more of that anon).

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Get. It. In.

Something of a dream has occurred as we learnt just a couple of days ago that we are going to be working with the lovely Vicky Williams and the amazing team at Berry Bros. & Rudd.

If you like your booze (and we, in a PR sense, do in these parts), then BB&R is about the best retail brand you could find yourself working for. The 300 year old retailer my still be located in St James where they first opened their doors many moons ago, but they’ve moved with the times and the family firm are passionate about their social media, have a cracking, content-led website and are generally one of the more forward thinking in the industry.

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Put together a list of Lego-based stunts and it would be as long as your proverbial, from animated Star Wars re-enactments to a certain long-haired, car-loving, leather-jacketed gentleman giving them an hour or so of BBC airtime as he built a house out of his beloved bricks.

During this merry yuletide season Lego has excelled itself, building an epic little number.

They’ve partnered-up with everyone’s favourite train terminus to create a twelve foot Lego Christmas tree, timed ideally to get the brand across every paper I’ve looked at in the run-up to the big day.

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There will be a lot more about the happy world of PR at some point in the not-too-distant future.

We’re going to be scribbling a wee column-ette for the lovely people at PR Moment, so we might pop some of the thoughts that those pieces provoke up here. So lots more on stuff slightly closer to home.

Meantime … some mad Frenchness, where it appears that, in the name of  fine knitwear, there are now street dance-offs over Monsieur Lacenaire woolly pullies in Paris, it would appear.

Takes the idea of the fashion film to a wholly bizarre new place. Appropriately French …

I just thought that this was worth a share and a hat tip.

Harvey Nichols has got a sense of humour and has walked a whole bunch of fine lines with their Christmas campaign.

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We don’t plan to do all that much self congratulation around these parts.

But hell, credit where it’s due eh?!

James has reared his ugly head in PR Week this week … waffling on about all manner of ridiculous stuff, including the future of print media, whether there is a gap in the market for a News of the World replacement, how successful start-ups have generally had successful backers … and our plans for Hope&Glory.

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You need to be pretty sure of your blogger relationships to give this a spin – you have to know that they REALLY like your products and don’t mind the association being an intimate one.

But Lagerhaus was clearly confident of both. So they created Blog Up stores.

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Came across the marvellous James Beswick’s “Project Seduce Famous Ladies” stuff today. And thought that, it being Friday and all, it was worth sharing.

So basically, James is a copywriter of some considerable repute. He’s the man who wrote one of the most amusing CVs I’ve seen in many a long year when it did its rounds on Twitter at some stage or another.

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This is keeping us entertained music wise as we potter about the new space.

Anyway, quick big up to the very, very fine site that is Hitlantis.

It’s sort of an infographic (with its bubble diagram design), but in all truth it’s a fantastic online player for all sorts of unsigned acts and underground bands.

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Just thought that we ought to share this lovely little film-ette that has been created for our client, D&AD which showcases fifty years of the finest pieces of UK and worldwide creativity in just under two minutes …

We’re still playing spot the ad here in the Hope&Glory office …

You know how it is, you never forget the first time do you?

And indeed the first time is worth recording for posterity.

Well, here in Hope&Glory, this (front page, we might add) piece is our first. We’ve been working with D&AD on their fiftieth anniversary celebrations and, as is somehow appropriate for a design organisation, our first job has been to show off the identity they’ve had created (by Neville Brody no less) to celebrate …

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Thought that, for hardcore sports brand Asics, this was a proper lovely piece of work.

Top and bottom, race an elite athlete across a 60 foot ad screen to really understand just how fast the best runners are going – and thereby just how impressive these athletes are.

It’s got a bit of everything really, (relatively) low running cost experiential, digital, neat piece of outdoor, no doubt plenty of media opportunity. When it comes to thinking about sports campaigns that can go through the line, thought that this was a strong one.

Thought that this was a belting little social media campaign from Playstation, a brand which is, let’s face, having a tough time. Stuck between XBox’s mega-titles and Kinect and Nintendo’s domination of the living room, they have a battle on their hands.

Their answer has, quite clearly, been to go after their core gamer market. And this campaign does just that: in a sequence of beautfully written spots, their VP celebrates the achievements of specific gamers – calling them out by name and giving them some digital props for their fine work on the console …

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Berg and Dentsu are at the cutting edge of what’s next. You can pretty much guarantee that what they’ve created in the film below through play will become the new normal over the next short while.

Love them …

Media surfaces: Incidental Media from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

Sometimes I worry that I might be a bit of a geek when it comes to things like this. Then I get over myself.

It all happens quite quickly, so you needn’t worry.

Anyhoo … designer Mark Noad has been playing around with London’s Tube Map.

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I happened to find myself in Starbucks today. And while I was there, I glanced over and watched “a bit of something that looked vaguely interesting on Vimeo” – over someone’s shoulder.

It turned out to be this … A film created on the Nokia N8 (the same that W+K used for their very small and very large animations). It’s a winning movie in the Nokia Short Film competition.

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I didn’t actually have much to say about this to be honest. Other than that it’s well worth a look at the wonderfully whacky, curiously animated .gif world of the FAT “occupation” of the interwebs. It’s a rather wonderful place to go and have a poke about – perfect for the armchair anti-capitalist in so many of us …

There are some pieces of creative work that you come across along the way and think “hmmm … that’s nice”. That happens a lot around here. We tend to get about and see a lot of good stuff.

However, just sometimes, something comes along that makes you sit back and genuinely scratch your head in wonder at the creative loveliness, originality of application and the talent involved.

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We’re as pleased as punch to find that one of our founding clients is that bastion of British creativity, D&AD. For those who haven’t come across it, D&AD (or Design & Art Directors Club to give it it’s full and original name) recognises and fosters talent across the creative industries.

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Really, really in love with these. By Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg, they are elegant, subtly animated creations that are “something more than a photo but less than a video,” as John Pavlus puts it of FastCoDesign.

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