Wednesday 30 March 2011

RPM Reporter - Rooftop Rainforest at Westfield

We've teamed up with Sky to launch Sky’s Rooftop Rainforest at Westfield, London. The rainforest celebrates the premier of Sky’s Rainforest Week programming, during which the broadcaster will showcase a week of rainforest and conservation programming. I got the guided tour from one of our BCs, where I ended up right on top of the viewing platform, giving me the opportunity to look down upon a massive expanse of rainforest! The Rooftop Rainforest, which houses tropical flora and fauna, has been developed with urban ecologist and wildlife expert Dusty Gedge, in order to raise awareness of both Earth Hour and the importance of the long-term conservation of the world’s natural habitats. Both the campaign and Sky’s Rainforest Week aim to raise public awareness for the issues facing our planet today and how we can help protect it. In addition to the Rooftop Rainforest, a Rainforest Rescue Pod has been built in the North Atrium at Westfield, within which consumers can learn about the rainforest through interactive touch screens and projections. If you're around Westfield, it is definitely worth a look!

Tuesday 29 March 2011

Blogging vs Newspaper - which Prevails?

Like all media, regional press has had a turbulent time over recent years trying to deal with the falling circulation figures and the demands of an ever-evolving digital landscape. However, recent figures have shown that in light of all this, traffic to Britain's regional and local newspaper sites increased by 23.5% over the past year, according to the audited figures released this week by ABC. When considering the ‘community’ nature of social media and the ever-fragmenting digital landscape, it would make sense that regional publications should retain their position as one of the priority destinations and point of reference for villages and towns across the country. The pressure is now on for these sites to ensure that they stay ahead of local journalists turning their hand to social media, as the blogging community challenges for the role of town crier!

Monday 28 March 2011

Red Nose Day - Total Raised £674!

The final count is in, and RPM raised an amazing total of £674.20 for Red Nose Day. Thank you so much for your generosity. Considering our target was £250, this is a phenomenal total! To put this money into perspective, here are a few stats from Comic Relief so that you can understand what this money can do to help those in the UK and abroad. £8 could pay for ten Ugandan children to be tested for malaria so they can get a quick diagnosis and receive life-saving treatment. £10 could pay for an hour of valuable job training that will help someone with mental health problems to find work. £20 could pay for an hour of specialist counselling for a young person who has been sexually exploited in the UK. £25 could provide regular access to clean water for a family living in the slums of Kenya. £90 could provide a group of 30 primary school children in war-affected Uganda with enough exercise books to last a whole year. £240 could give six young carers a much needed break from their caring responsibilities at home with an activity day where they can unwind and socialise with other young carers. Thank you to everyone who donated and took part in the various activities organised for Red Nose Day.

Monday 21 March 2011

E.ON and Smirnoff Sensations Coverage


On August 13th, we'll be activating the Smirnoff Sensations Dance Event at the 02, a huge dance party with stage shows, acrobats, performers, awesome light shows, lasers, fireworks and the world’s top DJs. The event is going to be huge: 10,000 tickets will go on sale on April 8, 2011. More information on booking is available on www.facebook.com/smirnoffgb. Check out the coverage on Popsop.com.

We also have some great coverage this morning for our E.ON Energy Fit Experience on Marketing online. The Experience helps and educates consumers on how to save energy in the home, enlivening the stand using E.ON's sponsorship of the FA Cup.

Friday 18 March 2011

Tea For 150 Please!




I couldn't resist the temptation to upload a collection of photos of the board fulfilling their Comic Relief promise to make tea for us all today. As well as our sweepstake, cake sale and sponsorship of Kikku wearing red jeggings(!), we're well on the way to raising well over £400 for Comic Relief.

"Oi! Dom! One sugar please!"





Thursday 17 March 2011

Comic Relief Tea Auction


This afternoon, we auctioned off the entire board - Hugh, Dom, Lee and Robin - to be tea 'ladies' for a day. But, wait for the good part: they'll be wearing red sparkly tea deeley-boppers at the same time!
It was a tense auction, with teams fiercely competing for the very worthy prize, and we SMASHED our target, raising £308! We'll also be hosting a bake sale tomorrow to carry on raising money for Comic Relief (NB - the board will also be distributing the chosen cakes to the winning teams). Ha Ha.



Wednesday 16 March 2011

Lynx Ambush Campaign


Lynx has come up with this nice ambush campaign, following on from its ATL Angels advertising. In the middle of Victoria Station, the brand placed a large square on the floor that asks people to look above to a large screen. At the same time, a 3D virtual angel falls from the sky, which the crowds can 'interact' with. The initiative invited lots of attention from passersby, as you'll see in this clip, and it was a great way to engage with the brand.

Monday 14 March 2011

The Young Creative Council's Bang Bang Briefs



We're excited by the work and energy of the Young Creative Council, who we hope to be collaborating with in the near future. Check out their blog about the last Bang Bang Briefs event, which took place last week...

"I’ll be honest, it’s difficult to know where to begin.

I guess the best thing is to just give you a little bit of background on what it was all about, before we get into the nitty gritty…

The Bang Bang Briefs are [soon to be] a series of events where young creatives are given the chance to tackle a brief, in a short interactive burst of creativity. This is no ordinary brief. And you don’t work in a traditional ad team, but in groups of eight. This makes for some serious idea generation of epic proportions, working with some of the finest young creative minds in the business.

It’s a night for ANY students or graduates with a problem-solving mind and anyone who wants to come up with behaviour-changing ideas. Think on the level of ‘Earth Hour‘, the ‘WWF file format‘, or even the ‘Blackle search engine‘.

We were inundated with applications right up until an hour or two before the event, even though we closed entries a week beforehand, so thanks for that. Unfortunately, as ever, we were limited by space and not everyone could come along. We asked people to submit ‘Something Brilliant’, one great piece of work they’d done, and it was that piece of work that gave us our final attendees.

The night saw The YCC team up with ‘Do the Green Thing’ over at Pentagram’s offices in Notting Hill. As Pentagram is a legendary design agency and doesn’t simply shut up shop come 6 o’clock, we crept through the doors and into the back of the agency to set up. All hands were on deck, shifting tables, chairs and setting up shop in our new temporary home for the evening. We even roped in a couple of helpers from the keeno early birds [thanks for that btw, guys!].

Once everyone had mingled and eased their early evening nerves with a cheeky little tipple, the evening began. A brief intro from us and, well, you all know what we do, so we kept it brief. A fantastic intro from Naresh about Do the Green Thing [we'd suggest taking a look at their website - some brilliant ideas] and of course the reason we were all there: the brief.

Teams were put together and began to debate, discuss and conceptualise together for two hours, before presenting final concepts to the panel at the end of the night. The big issue they were considering was ‘Meat Moderation’: how can we encourage people to eat less meat?

Take beef. To produce 1kg of the stuff [enough for a spag bol for you and five mates], a whopping 34.6kg of CO2 is created and 15,000 litres of water used. And our beefy pals are a windy bunch. Farm animals [particularly cows] are responsible for 37% of global methane emissions, a gas 23 times more harmful than CO2. A serious problem of global proportions.

Throughout the night our judges Naresh [Do the Green Thing and Pentagram], Dan and Ray [Creative Directors at W+K], Matt [Co-founder at Friday] and Mike and Dani [YCC] mucked in with the best of them, helping to nurture ideas and generally push for the best, biggest and most diverse creative throughout the night.

Each of our eight teams was headed up by a ‘YCC Monkey’ and a representative from a brand. They were joined by five other buzzing, enthusiastic creatives. With Asahi beers being handed around and Absolut Vanilla Martinis in full flow, the ideas were bouncing off the walls.

After two hours, the teams were given five minutes to present their best idea to everyone else. There was a huge range of ideas, and I think fair to point out that it was nice to see work that lived outside of advertising constraints and focused media. A few giggles, meaty puns and a short deliberation from the judges meant that there were two ideas that encapsulated what Do the Green Thing was trying to achieve on the night. Teams #2 and #7 took the coveted trophies of meat, veg and champagne with a joint 1st place."

Friday 11 March 2011

RPM Supports Red Nose Day

In order to kickstart RPM's support for Red Nose Day, our Social Monkeys were welcomed down to the Comic Relief offices this week, dressed in their Vivienne Westwood-designed Red Nose Day T-shirts, for a photo shoot.

In order to help raise funds for Comic Relief, we're implementing a number of fun challenges and activities for the whole company to get involved with. These include the Maltesers Challenge, the winners being those who can blow their Maltesers into the air for the longest time; a 'Board Tea Lady' auction, where staff can vote for a member of the board to be 'tea lady' for a day; as well as a large bake sale. To find out more about the charity, and how you can get involved, check out the Red Nose Day website.

Thursday 10 March 2011

The Social Media Invasion = Unengaged Audience

Someone likened adults Tweeting during a conference to children sitting distractedly in a classroom. As the teacher conveys her pearls of wisdom in monotonous tones, more attention from the listeners is spent on scribbling secret notes and paper-planing them to friends on the other side of the room.

The only difference is that this type of communication - Tweeting - is now acceptable, and if you aren't doing it, you worry you're the odd one out. A classic thought might be, "Am I a nobody if I don't have 500 Twitter followers?" The answer that most believe is, well, yes.

As we grow steadily more addicted to satisfying our online communities, 'checking in', 'liking', 'updating', 'Tweeting' and 're-Tweeting' are arguably getting in the way of real-life, face-to-face communication, and more importantly its effectiveness to an audience. How truly engaged are we when half the time we're eyes down to the screen, instead of eyes up to what's in front of us? I've been particularly amazed to find colleagues Tweeting to their followers during the same conference, in the same room, without having a clue who they are!


Instead of an eager audience, eyes up to the podium like in the days before this social media invasion, all we're seeing now is extra large thumbs tapping in statuses like "@tammyp When did they say the tea break is? Boooooorrring!", or "@mike_r Is it just me, or is that dress far too short for a speaker like her? Put the legs away! LOL".


Conclusion? If you want to be truly engaged with what's being said, switch those phones off, or if you really want a conference that keeps the audience off their phones, speak to our Corporate department. They'll show you a thing or two about Engagement!

Wednesday 9 March 2011

Artist Engages Communities All Over the Globe




Anonymous artist 'JR' takes engagement to the max. A worthy winner of the infamous TED Prize (awarded to an individual who 'wishes big enough to change the world'), JR has created a large-scale participatory art project that uses photography to enable the public to discover, reveal and share the untold stories and images of people around the world.

JR and his team have travelled around the globe, taking black and white photographs of locals and digitally transforming these into posters. The posters are then sent back to the community to be placed around the town, and the locations for these exhibitions are limitless, ranging from abandoned buildings, to the tops of trains, to crumbling village walls.

JR's pervasive art spreads uninvited on buildings of Parisian slums, on walls in the Middle East, on broken bridges in Africa and in favelas in Brazil, and people in the communities featured in the exhibit, those who often live with the bare minimum, find themselves at the centre of each display. Elderly women, for example, become models for a day, and even kids turn into artists for a week.

Friday 4 March 2011

Coca-Cola Teams Up wIth Maroon 5

On March 22, live from London, Coca-Cola and Maroon 5 are bringing fans from around the world together for an unforgettable moment. For one epic session, fans will be invited to inspire the band as they compose an original song from start to finish in just 24 hours. Enabled by innovative interactive projection technology, web users will be given a virtual all-access pass to the studio by visiting www.coca-cola.com/music, where they will be able to interact with the band — send in words, pictures and comments — and lend their creative inspiration to lyrics, riffs and rhythms for the new song. They’ll get to contribute throughout the process and, at the end of 24 hours, will have helped inspire a hot new Maroon 5 track to share with the world.

The 24hr Session is part of ‘Coca-Cola Music,’ an innovative new music program from Coca-Cola that will give teens the inside track on the creation of music and the opportunity to view the industry’s leading artists at work. Adam Levine of Maroon 5 comments, “The band all remembers when we were younger and making music in our bedrooms, trying to imitate our heroes. To be part of something global like this that gives an insight into what happens behind closed doors is really exciting. We’re looking forward to being part of the ‘Coca-Cola Music’ 24hr Session and welcoming the world into our creative process.”

Activating the brand’s extensive global fan network, the 24hr Session will be promoted to over 20 million consumers via the Coca-Cola Facebook page. The @CocaCola Twitter account will be used to keep fans informed about what is happening in the studio, invite inspiration as well as post updates and questions from the band. Also helping to spread the word and encourage participation, bloggers from nearly 20 countries will be onsite to keep their followers informed and involved in the process.

Source: popsop.com

Wednesday 2 March 2011

Undercity - by Michael Datchens, RPM Junior Creative


Beneath the streets of London town you’d expect to find a community of mole people or a landfill site, but actually it’s home to the Southwark Gallery, where Crossroads Films was honouring a new film by American director Andrew Wonder. Undercity is the journey Andrew took when he followed urban explorer Steve Duncan through the underground to New York City. At first I was expecting a documentary about the foundations of New York and the history behind it, but instead the film was a suicide mission underneath the city: dodging trains, scaling buildings and navigating underground canals. Awesome.

Andrew told us he met Steve through an internet dating site for urban explorers, and with his help he was able to make a film that he’d been researching for a few years. This wasn’t going to be a standard shoot and needed some more radical film techniques, for example, when running through a train tunnel following your guide there is little time to look down the lens and focus. This is why Andrew learned each focal length for his lens by touch, allowing him to be running or hiding and still have his subject in focus.

What I really admired is that Andrew didn’t just find out about the underground of New York; he actually experienced it, which left me thinking, 'would I have the balls to go exploring the tubes of London?' Probably not. I'm fairly sure it would lead to a short case of death, but still, it’s interesting to think how many ideas we’ve all let slip away because we just didn't turn our brains off and give it a try.

Check out Undercity below or more of Andrew’s work at his website

http://vimeo.com/18280328

Tuesday 1 March 2011

RPM Visits Glug


Our Junior Creative, Reuben, went to GLUG last night: a regular after-work creative drinks and 'notworking' event for designers, clients and friends. Here's what he saw....

"Yes, we were all having a glug at Glug, and at the same time being overwhelmed with some truly amazing things that are going on in the world of making and doing. First up was a man named Pieres with a cool hat, floral shirt and a claim that he and the people from Creative Block single-handedly started the creative Shoreditch we know today 14 years ago. With their most recent project, Creative Block sent nine people into the woods to make a film about chairs. Not a Blair Witch-style film, more of a, "we’ll give you these old crappy tools, with no electricity and no light, and you have to go and fashion a chair each, only using what nature supplies you with." Not so boring after all, and even more amazingly one of the chairs is now being sold in Ikea.

Next up, a guy that really caught my eye was Mark Davy and the work he is doing with Futurecity. Their take is really very interesting indeed, because what they do is go to a council before budgets have been allocated. These are budgets for things like bus stops, bins and chairs that are normally pretty standard designs. Once they've secured a budget, they get an architect or artist on board and make something original and amazing.

In the picture [above], you can see a 'bench' that was designed using funds from a local council. The chair seats 15 people as they relax and look to the sky all at once. Just ask yourself, why should bus stops look like bus stops? Or bins look like bins? Lets get a bit more imaginative with the world.

I’ve been down to Glug twice now and truly recommend it to anyone whether you consider yourself creative or not!"