This month my agency the Hai Media Group heads to Manchester, along with other digital media creative entrepreneurs from throughout the UK, for the conference bTWEEN08, where our agency is a finalist in the Branding Talent competition.

HMG has teamed up with media partner Isabella Hu, a designer, to develop this seed idea for an integrated promotional campaign to support Littlewoods, a popular online shopping site for fashion and house wares. We’ve presented the judges with our Rare Fruits concept, that invites customers to visit Littlewoodsdirect.com, to pick rare fashion fruits from the branches of trees, growing on islands. The virtual world concept wraps around what we’ve already been told about Littlewoods new branding initiatives to build excitement with a television commercial involving a desert island, scheduled to be aired in the 2008 holiday season.

Among our mentors for this experience will be 4Talent (an innovation arm of the broadcaster Channel 4), Aegis Media, Just-b (the creators and designers of bTWEEN08) and Littlewoods.

bTWEEN08's Sponsors

We join other finalists to develop our seed ideas into a full proposal for the client, during a conference workshop, and find out Friday, 20th June 2008, if our Rare Fruits campaign is a winner. We are thrilled to have the opportunity to work closely with our digital creative peers for bTWEEN08, and hope we have a good chance at winning the cash prize of £5K. You can see some screenshots of our Rare Fruits campaign concept below:

Check out our Rare Fruits entry here, which is up for public vote online, among other contenders:

http://www.just-b.com/btween/branding-tallent/rare-fruits

How do you vote? Please sign up to the bTWEEN08 online community, a helpful resource for digital entrepreneurs.

Creative Branding Inspiration

Hai Media Group hopes the judges will love our Rare Fruits campaign, a concept that aims to build website traffic by creating consumer excitement around exclusively available items from popular brands such as Miss Selfridges, Diesel, Love Island, Henleys, and other brands the retailer currently stocks. We've also suggested the possibility of offering prizes or products from the brand’s official spokeswomen Trinny & Susannah, who are leading fashion divas in the UK. We’ve been inspired by the successes High Street retailers have had in recent years by offering shoppers fashion lines from celebrities and designers, and see this new branding initiative as an opportunity for Littlewoods to capture the same excitement online.

Kate Moss, Madonna, Lilly Allen and others, have unveiled their collections at Top Shop, H&M and other retailers, but we think the best case study example is when Stella McCartney’s collection debuted at H&M in November 2005, which launched consumer fervour outside the Oxford Circus retail outlet on its launch day, with thousands of fans queuing for their chance to own an original piece of the collection. The store sold out within the first day, and remains a coup d'état moment among the fashion industry marketing types.

We hope to fuel similar excitement for Littlewoods, and offer busy women a new way to have a chance to own an original fashion item, that doesn’t require taking a day off from work, or raising kids, to queue for hours at a shop. In the run-up to our Rare Fruits campaign debut for Littlewoods, we’ve got integrated promotional strategies surrounding our campaign, to build buzz and excitement over an 8-week period in the run-up to the holidays, that we’ll be discussing further with the judges of this competition.

We are looking forward to working closely with other entrepreneurs, and media mentors to finalize our campaign ideas during the bTWEEN08 conference.

We join other finalists in a development workshop on Wednesday June 18^th June 2008, to develop our seed ideas into a full proposal for the client. We’ll find out Friday, 20^th June 2008, if our Rare Fruits campaign is an award-winner.

 

Hoping we've got a winner with the Littlewoods Rare Fruits campaign,

-Lisa

Who’s Lisa Devaney?

I head the Hai Media Group, a multimedia communications company based in London, offering client’s traditional public relations, combined with new technology marketing strategies. I also perform, creating original Cabaret-style comedy skits for festivals, theatre and parties. Find out more about me, and the talented entrepreneurs I collaborate with, by visiting: www.haimediagroup.com

Who’s Isabella Hu?

Hu is an artist and designer who works across the fields of interactive arts, motion graphics and new media. Her experience includes design consultantcy specializing in digital, film, and print media. She has screened her work internationally at various festivals throughout Europe, Canada, Asia, Australia and in the UK. Visit her portfolio here: Ecolocate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Friday, September 7th, London's animation rock band The Sancho Plan will take the stage at the premiere digital arts gathering, Austria's Ars Electronica.

They join hundreds of artists who make the pillgramage to Linz each year to experience and witness this massive showcase of  the most cutting-edge performances, thought provoking artist presentations and mind-blowing exhibitions of art and technology. For The Sancho Plan to be invited to perform at the opening night's gala, it demonstrates that much of their extreme forward thinking toward entertainment is beginning to catch on among savvy audiences.

Frequently told that they are "ahead of their time" this band doesn't need to wait for the rest of the world to catch up with it - because as trailblazers among lukewarm pop acts, the road they are traveling will likely wind further and keep them druming their way along the path, far, far longer than today's blip-on-the-map tabloid favourites. Girls Aloud will be deaf grannies, their musical career long forgotten in the Google trail of the future, but 30 years from now it is a band like The Sancho Plan that artists and musicians will research on Wikipedia for inspiration.

Instantly engaging, understandable and universally amusing, The Sancho Plan, in addition to live performances, create audiovisual installations that invite all to join in playful, interactive musical adventures. Combining animation, sound and music, they express a fantastical world, with the only motivation being to present entertaining, memorable journeys for audiences to experience. You'll smile watching them thump on a collection of drum pads that respond visually, connecting a varied collection of animated characters displayed on a screen, and mainipulated in real-time. Sonically – each sound they create represents a new personality, emotional expression or humorous situation. Who are The Sancho Plan? They are a result of the award-winning work of animator and musician Ed Cookson, musician and technologist Lewis Sykes and game designer and computer programmer Adam Hoyle. 

I rave about The Sancho Plan, who I've gotten to know personally over the last two years, not just because some of its members are mates of mine - but because the first time I saw them perform, I knew that I was watching the future of live music and entertainment. I first met the band's founder Ed Cookson in early 2006, through Cybersonica, and he attempted to verbally explain to me what exactly The Sancho Plan was. For a time, I got the name confused and kept asking him how The Rancho Plan was doing. This has been an evolving joke between us, with me always annoying him with stupid comments like "hey Ed, 'll bring along the dip when I come see the band, since The Rancho Plan will surely have the chips."  And other dumb ass statements that make me wonder why he puts up with me at all! But I guess it can be good for genius like Ed to have someone around who can dumb things down for the masses a bit now and then.

The fact is - at first, it was hard to visualize what Ed was on about in describing his band - he was talking about cartoon-like creatures that come to life as the band members play drum pads, electronically triggering the unusual characters to move about across giant screens above their head in synch with the musician's druming. Yep, I was like huh? Whhhhhaaaat are you talking about? The Sancho Plan is absolutely one of those things you just have to SEE to believe.

In honour of The Sancho Plan's debut performance at Ars Electonica I dedicate this post to them, and their phenomenal creation. In addition to the performance Friday night, The Sancho Plan has been a favourite guest artist with Ars Electronica. They installed an interactive exhibition for the public last year, one of the most popular attractions of the Ars Electronica artworks on view. The festival adores it so, that I'm told they are keeping it on view for another year, and possibly longer.Below, I have posted full details about The Sancho Plan, and I encourage you to visit the band's website and check out their next gig, now playing mostly in the UK (they were guest artists for the 2007  Future of Sound tour, a new artist collaboration that is led by 80s electronic music pioneer Martyn Ware, a founding member of Heaven 17 & The Human League, and is responsible for the timeless song Temptation). The Sancho Plan currently performs occasional gigs in continental Europe, and they hope to tour stateside in the future, having been a big hit among an American audience when they staged random performances at Burning Man in 2006.  Here's me hoping The Sancho Plan's fanbase expands globally, beyond Austria and the United Kingdom - so YOU can see them live. Be warned, viewing a show once becomes a real addiction.

The Sancho Plan Background

If Jamacia’s sound pioneer King Tubby worked with Germany’s abstract animator, filmmaker and painter Oscar Fischinger and Japan’s video game designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi, they might invent The Sancho Plan.  This  London -born  group is  rock 'n roll for the 21st  Century. 

A mix of musicians, animators, designers and computer programmers, The Sancho Plan presents audiences with an unforgettable, interactive entertainment experience. Immersive, surreal and emotionally moving, this rock ‘n’ roll band for the 21^st Century invites its viewers to come for a journey, taking them: Through a dystopian alternate reality of parallel animated worlds that reside somewhere between 'Fantasia' and 'The Animatrix’.

With Oscar Fischinger, Len Lye, Wassily Kadinsky, Salvador Dali, Terry Gilliam, Tim Burton, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, Toshio Iwai, Kruder and Dorfmeister and King Tubby as inspiration, The Sancho Plan’s creators have produced a fused representation of animation, music, sound, gaming, technology and live performance to produce real-time audiovisual experiences for modern audiences.

We see ourselves as part of a rich tradition of exploring the combination of distinct art forms to create a single work - in Wagner's words the "Gesamtkunstwerk" or the "total work of art"…fusing different media and genres into new forms of creative expression and transcending the boundaries between art and pop culture. –Ed Cookson, founding member

The Sancho Plan’s creative mission is to:

·   Focus on the live environment – delivering entertainment through physical, skilful and carefully choreographed performance

·   Explore real-time interaction between music, video and live performance and its potential for narrative and storytelling

·   Use cutting-edge technology – but, integrate it in such a way that the complexity of the machinery is almost invisible to the audience

The Sancho Plan performed its first live gig at the prestigious National Film Theatre in London in Summer 2005, and have since been appearing at festivals throughout Europe. They have performed at Ars Electronica (in Austria), Martyn Ware’s Future of Sound tour, The Big Chill and Bloom (in Britain), were commissioned to design a custom presentation for the Umbro European Championship VIP event (in Paris) and were introduced to American audiences at Burning Man 2006.

How The Sancho Plan Magic Happens

Current works use a range of electronic drum pads to simultaneously trigger sounds and control a cast of animated characters and virtual performers on an evolving musical journey through The Sancho Plan universe, where you’ll find: Singing Baritone Snakes, Cartoon Kyoto Drummers, Performing Robots, Amusing Blow Fish and Ball-Shooting Storks.

Center-stage, classically trained percussionists and drummers (one who was recently named BBC Young Musician of the Year) orchestrate sound, direct movements of the on-screen characters and mix in original compositions. Intended to be a narrative story, as much as a musical and visual performance, the audience connects with the adventures of the animated characters as well as grooving to a great show.

The Sancho Plan performances are made possible through striking, audio and visual experiences through a refined synthesis of tightly integrated:

• Sound design and music production

• Flash, stop-frame and 3D animation

• A custom-coded real-time control system that captures the performances of accomplished percussionists and musicians or input from the general public

The Sancho Plan’s Spacequatica

New works have become increasingly ambitious in conception, realization and performance. In 2007, The Sancho Plan have produced a new work for the Future Of Sound – a UK tour of innovative artists organized by music legend and pioneer Martyn Ware, founder of The Human League and Heaven 17.

Spacequatica is a 12-minute travelogue that immerses the viewer in an experiential, 3D, audiovisual journey in an imaginary underwater world. The piece was developed especially to accommodate Martyn Ware’s unique 3D audioscape facility – an immersive, multi-speaker, surround sound audio system.

Visually and sonically, the performance takes the viewer on a journey deep into a musical ocean. Viewers discover an underwater world where schools of small exotic creatures perform, much like xylophones are played. Pulled further, they find that deeper waters are populated by dark robotic sharks. Deeper still, in the world’s pitch black depths, all that can be seen and heard are rare, self-illuminating species, occasionally blinking in the darkness.

The Future for The Sancho Plan

Looking forward, The Sancho Plan plans development of its live performance potential – delivering audience experiences that involve a variety of vocalists, rap artists, dancers and choreographers, lighting, set and costume designers. We see:

·   Deeper, immersive environments, performed as theatrical stage shows

·   Customized instruments for use in performance

·   Addition of live performers spanning popular musical genres

Investment will allow The Sancho Plan to create sophisticated experiences for international audiences that have commercial potential. With goals  of:

• Showing audiences something they have never seen before
  
• Presenting new, real-time applications for technology
  

•  And putting on a damn good show!

 

When Cybersonica 07 took over the Tate Britain museum last week, a few thousand people came out to celebrate the festival's opening night. Among them were a couple of Vox readers. Thanks Liz and Lindajoy for making it out for Late at Tate last week.

I heard from Piers and Renster, who say they plan to make it to the next Cybersonica 07 happening. Glad you are planning to stop by guys, we welcome all of the London Vox.com community to come to our Soundwaves exhibition - a collection of sonic artworks to be on view at Kinetica Museum in London's Spitalfields market beginning 17 May, for six-weeks.

Right now the Cybersonica 07 judges are making the tough decision about what new artists and work will be selected for commissioning this year. Four new works will be on view for the Soundwaves exhibit at Kinetica, and proposals have been submitted from many of the international followers of Cybersonica. The commissioning of new works is made possible with support of the Arts Council England.

Cybersonica 07 also visits Cambridge this year for the Enter_Unknown Territories festival and Bradford for b.TWEEN 07.

Thanks for the support of the festival Voxers - and here is a highlight video from Opening Night at Late at Tate: