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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What will Boris do?

 

Many Londoners are wondering the same thing I am, for better, for worse, for whatever. Boris Johnson is our new Mayor, and I’m looking forward to watching these things unfold, living under this new leadership:

Buffoonery

There is going to be a lot of it, and I get the feeling that Boris, in addition to outsourcing his entire professional team, is also recruiting a top comedy performance coach to keep his public laughing, as we get dragged along for this ride.

Comedy Sketch Shows

Can’t WAIT to see what the top British comedy talent comes up with. Will Matt Lucas step up to the plate on this one? There is plenty of material for him already.

Fancy Dress

Festival season, fancy dress parties (hey Americans, that means costume party) and club nights are going to be sprinkled with Boris look-a-likes. I suspect the fancy dress shops are now stocking up on floppy blonde haired wigs. Better get my order in.

Documentaries

I suspect that brainstorming is now in progress among Channel 4’s Dispatches, the BBC’s Panorama and all the other fantastic British documentary producers, who are planning for the next investigative piece about how and why Boris Johnson won the London Mayoral election. I’m looking forward to some hilarious ‘docudrama’ about the subject, and wondering who will be cast as the lead role for...Boris the West End Musical, or for Boris the Movie? Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis could dye his mop blonde, gain weight, and give a fantastic OTT moving performance, something he is great at, as a bonified card-carrying member of the Overactors Annoynmous. He won't take the gig though, as for him to play Boris, it would require him to do some actual acting.

Virals

I’m already seeing some citizen-created viral campaigns appear in response to this election, such as the folks over at I Didn’t Vote For Boris, who invite non-Boris voting Londoners to tag a photo with ididntvoteforboris and add it to the Flickrstream. The conservative viral online campaign viral Boriswatch, has had its day, and now I’m looking forward to other Citizen Journalist reports, such as the eye view of Sunny Hundal, from the frontlines of what may be a new sport in London of Boris Watching. Clearly with 2,000+ already signed up to the Facebook group, it will be a popular activity here.

Celebrity Commentary 

“Boris has as little knowledge of multiculturalism as I have of life on Jupiter. He used to go to this club in Oxford called the Bullingdon Club, full of snobs and creative conmen. The man has not only no physical ability to run anything, he is immoral and a bully. Boris as mayor would be like discovering you had piles and there was no cure for it.”

Vivienne Westwood

“In Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, there is a scene where a character is talking

about another who is a card player and he’s described as ‘a fucking liability’. That’s my idea of Boris. The mouth engages before the mind does. He doesn’t have any sense of diplomacy or tact. London is a cosmopolitan city. You can’t have someone who makes quotes like that [Johnson’s “piccaninnies” comment] representing London, regardless of the fact it was in the past [Johnson wrote the comment in 2002]. Of all the things people say about Ken, in my view he’s done a lot for London. When you go into the city it looks like a European capital now with all the regeneration, and it didn’t before. Trafalgar Square is a much more welcoming place.”

David Mitchell
Comedian, Peep Show

“Boris is mad. He wants to bring back bus conductors, but that’s never going to happen. I think he talks rubbish. He’s

out of touch and he doesn’t understand Londoners. People say Ken is obnoxious, but what can you do? One thing about him is he knows London.”

Charlie Brooker
Guardian columnist and Television Presenter

Thanks to this election result, I’ve now got a powerful retort to the next Brit who blames me for the conservative politics of George Bush, because clearly it can happen here as well, and I will not be surprised if David Cameron is this country's next Prime Minister.

 

I’m watching Boris,

-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