The future is bright…

Last night I had the great opportunity to sit within a judging panel at the University of the Arts London (London College of Communication) where students had been asked to showcase their own visions for an advertising poster to promote the London 2012 Olympics.

Because I was approached by the Olympics’ social media team  few weeks ago for a bloggers’ tour of the Olympic Park (which was awesome) and also because being myself a big follower of the Games and a massive fan of their current actvities, it was rather odd, and of course a rare coincidence, to be judging on such topic!

With me on the panel there were Claire Tritton, Account Manager on Ford Europe at Ogilvy, and Deborah from ERM Recruiting (both ex-graduate at LCC)

We had around 30 entries in total to go over and analyze – which wasn’t too bad at all! While some tried too hard to impress, not exactly meeting the brief, and with some others not really getting a clear message across – the ones which stood out definitely had a very clever approach to the brief with some very good thinking/strategies behind them (some of them quite impressive actually).

Apart from the winner entry (picture above in the title) which had a very straightforward and insightful message above and beyond the simple concept itself (ask away), two very good ones I remember were a Blackberry Sponsorship-Ad trying to reposition the smart phone as an entertainment device (therefore fighting for a piece of the iPhone’s market share) and the ORANGE one, where the heritage of ‘Building a Brighter Future’ embodied perfectly both the brand and the Olympics’ values with an hopeful message in bringing people together in such horrible times (economic downturn)

Overall the evening was great, very good to meet some ex-graduates who are doing exceptionally well in the industry, a very good catch up with some ex-tutors, and definitely an excellent and hopeful glimpse into what such young talents have in hold for the future of our industry

I will be posting all the entries on a designated Flickr group once I have them all in, it would be great to hear your opinions

Any questions, give me a shout! To all the students who were part of it, a very well done to all of you out there and good luck with the rest of your course…

Cheerio and be in touch

Enzo

Vodafone – Meet LiveGuy

I am absolutely intrigued by this campaign, which i think is genius!

From Monday 17th November, Vodafone is sending this happy chap around few UK-cities with 4 Dell Mini-Notebooks with built-in (vodafone) broadband to give away everyday to four lucky people!
The Live Guy is going to send clues through Social Media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Picasa on his current locations…

The objective is for people to follow him, guess where he is and go snap a notebook from his bag – simple as that – great PR Story!  He’ll be in London on Friday November 28th, so switch your brain GPS and start following him...

I personally think this is a great offline-online reality-game which is, once again, going to set a benchmark for many brands to try and be more experiential in the marketing space
Real shame I am not going to be in London that day, but will be wondering the streets of 5th Avenue instead eh eh ;o)

I hope you can give it a go, and let me know if any of you lot gets lucky!

Over and Out, Enzo

The Hawyard – 15 secs of Fame

To promote the launch of the Andy Warhol season at the Hawyard Gallery in London, the Hawyard community has developed a website for users to gain 15 seconds of fame…  http://www.15secs.tv/

The idea seems pretty old to me, however they have good social media elements in there:

• They created a twitter page for the gallery fans
• They have a Facebook group page for each gallery within the Southbank Centre
• YouTube branded page, which includes exclusive content videos from the galleries
• and now the UGC competition… Together with a downloadable widget for your blog/SM profile

Once you upload your 15 secs video on the YouTube page (http://uk.youtube.com/group/15secondsoffame) you are in for a chance to win Andy Warhol goodies…

Favourites are showcased here

After talking at a Sunny Side Up session about the 7th Syndacate Bloggers’ activity for the V&A Cold War expo, I am kinda intrigued by how galleries are using more and more social media techniques to create buzz around their exhibitions – good on them …

E