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Air New Zealand sponsored the Kiwi day of this year’s Toast Festival on Clapham Common. They had two Premium Economy tickets back to NZ to win on the day. How best to promote it was our bag - with the one mandatory that we get an email address of anyone who entered.

So we built a 12m x 5m map of New Zealand. Apart from missing out Stewart Island, it was perfect. The winner would be the person placing their flag closest to a hidden Kiwi 10c coin. The winner chose Matua, at the north of the North Island. His name is Richard Middleton.  And he’s going home to see his Gran.

We had over 1500 flags put in the map which meant we also collected 1500 email addresses. Proof that sometimes doing something analogue is the best way of doing something digital.

Hello.

The nice people at Marketing magazine asked us to write one of their little ‘Brand in the News’ columns on Twitter.

They ran our ’sensible’ version, but here is the original version - written as a Twitter conversation, with 140 character sentences.

@glyndot Would you do Brand in the News on Twitter? It’s had lots of media coverage lately.

@MarketingUK Twitter *has* been in the news a lot, but for the wrong reasons…

@MarketingUK 2007 was 2nd Life. 2008 was Facebook. 2009 is Twitter. Any lame idea can get into the papers, as long as it involves Twitter.

@MarketingUK Or egomaniacal celebs sharing the minutiae of their lives.

@glyndot OK, but what are the right reasons?

@MarketingUK Customers are talking directly to real people inside brands and loving it. See #comcastcares

@MarketingUK See what people are saying about your brand in realtime. Try a Twitter Search for your brand: http://bit.ly/S1nM9

@MarketingUK Simple open system enables new communications opportunities e.g. Objects talking to people.

@glyndot Yes, but is Twitter a brand?

@MarketingUK It’s a great bit of brand*ing*. Great naming system, cute visual identity, clear what it stands for.

@MarketingUK But it doesn’t earn money, emotional attachment is low, and it’s not half as mainstream as people would have you believe.

@MarketingUK My verdict: Massively important, but for reasons that aren’t clear yet. Don’t experiment with it at your peril.

We’ve just completed our first piece of digital work for The Famous Grouse – a shiny microsite called ‘The Famous Dad Dance’ aimed at (you guessed it) whisky-loving dads. The site itself is targeted at their adult children, who can upload a shot of their dad and create a film of him doing a typically embarrassing dad-like dance, before sending it onto the man in question and sharing it with friends and family.

It’s all been done in time for Father’s Day this year (Sunday 21st June). It’s currently just running in the UK and South Africa but with users from as far afield as India and the US, we’re sure it won’t be long before other markets pick it up. A big thank you to a couple of our very own dads here at Albion, who leant us their mug shots to use in some tasty banners: Mark T and Clive – take a bow. You’re nearly as famous as the grouse… ish.

1. Amplify your history

Find an anniversary. 150 years. 100 years. 25 years. 3 months and 6 days since your CEO got some. Whatever. Grab hold of it. Design a commemorative logo. Revert to your old logo. Put it on a poster. Print it on some hand-screened bunting with your reissued product laid out in a wheelbarrow full of straw. Make it smell like 100 years ago. Don’t have any history? Get a corporate dog. Make it Twitter.

2. Give your customers access to the top.

Print your CEO’s direct line on your napkins. Print your CEO’s wife’s mobile number on your website. Invite criticism. Acknowledge your mistakes. PR your mistakes. Run an apology ad with a witty headline. Invite your biggest critic to an open debate. Invite them to dinner, with a film crew. Admit they might have a point. Don’t want to open yourself up? Get a corporate dog. Make it Twitter.

3. Give back to the community

Create an event. Create entertainment. People need entertainment. Make it free. No, make it cost a tenner but print a t-shirt and give the profits to charity; after you cover your costs. Make the event micro local. Have a street party. Now pump it global. Have a street party in every goddam street in every goddam neighborhood in every goddam suburb in the world! Sell street stalls to every multinational business on the planet. Too much hassle? Get a corporate dog. Make it Twitter.

3. Crowdsource your marketing

Find your fans. Give them the tools. Let them evangelise the shit out your business. 1000 monkeys, 1000 typewriters. Wait for art. Place the content in a Superbowl slot. Unbranded. With a 3 minute user generated content back-story. Don’t have fans?  Get a corporate dog. Make it Twitter.

5. Go green

Make your packaging compostable. Make your packaging factory compostable. Go carbon neutral. No, go carbon positive. Plant 6 rainforests for every sheet of A4 you company consumes. Get your customers to do the planting in exchange for green points redeemable against 6 participating green household utility companies. Now. Design a logo for it - make it look handmade. Crochet it out of hemp. Pump it on solar powered, ethically sourced, timber billboards. Happy pillaging the planet? Get a corporate dog. Make it Twitter.

6. Create a cause and effect

Selling batteries? Give two packs of batteries to the third world for every packet you sell. Hell, give the third world a torch and some batteries for every pack you sell. No, give the third world a torch factory and two packets of batteries for every pack you sell. Don’t need another cause? Get a corporate dog. Make it Twitter.

6. Give your minnows a voice

Find your lowliest minnow. Preferably middle-aged and a single parent. Give them a blog. Give them a megaphone. Make them the voice of the company. Let them construct a stand-alone customer service sub brand that hates your business. Or just make them CEO.  Don’t want to promote a minnow? Get a corporate dog. Make it Twitter.

7. Invent a new local product line

Everyone likes local. Even if you’re a global behemoth raping the planet, you can still do local. Time to add a new product line. Find a local business that makes things by hand, preferably hand-reared on their own property. Give the local community the profits to build a new library. Everyone likes books. But most importantly be OPEN about your involvement. You want to bask in the warm glow. And the locals need your authentically locally-laundered cash. Run out of new ideas? Get a corporate dog. Make it Twitter.

8. Create an unexpected product experience

Got High Street shops? Create a pop up tent in people’s back garden. They will like you and be excited by your spontaneity. Flogging a packaged good? Create a giant community version of it and let people suck the udders of your civic spirit. Can afford to be unexpected? Get a corporate dog. Make it Twitter.

9. Fail a little

People love to see others fail. And they especially like to see companies fail. So invest in some failure. Aim for the stars but really, aim to make a giant arse of your brand. People will like you for it. And it feeds back into Number 2. There are many ways to fail, but it’s most important that you give people something to talk about. Change your service. Make it more complicated so you can say sorry and recognise that the customer was right. Invest in a new corporate identity and completely ignore your product or service. Or sell your customer data. All great ways to appear to be more human. Prefer reliable success? Get a corporate dog. Make it Twitter.

10. Get a pet

Everyone likes animals. Have you seen the hits funny cats get on YouTube? Get a corporate animal. If you get in quick you can still exploit the cute cat/dog thing. Make it real. Make it open. But most importantly, make it Tweet.

We’ve just completed our first project with MySpace developing a series of banners running internationally (ex USA). The banners promote 5 improved aspects of MySpace: finding new friends, sign up, social and groups, enhanced profiles, picture upload, privacy & security. They are designed to re-ignite current users’ profiles and to engage with new users too in a fun and quirky way .They’re shot using stop frame animation with different toys and action figures playing the roles of different users and doing (how shall we say?) unexpected things – check out the doll beating up our action hero:

(daren’t call him Action Man as we’re not sure if he’s the real McCoy…).

He makes a pretty good recovery as you can see from the film featuring him  in his Y fronts and cowboy boots.

All our stars are safely back in the toy-box now – let us know which is your favourite. We’d love to hear from you…

A friend of mine, @hullrobbie just asked me a question, via Twitter: ‘My latest CorpID project is on Twitter. Menu changes every day, and we’re pushing content all the time. How do we get followers?”

I sent him a series of 10 DM’s back, but in the interests of digestability and sharing, here they are. I’m not claiming these are comprehensive, or will even work. But it’s what I do (#glyndot) and what we do with #albionlondon.

1. Make sure your profile features interesting and relevant keywords so people can find you through Twitter Search.
2. Tweet often and regularly. Stay on topic. Don’t be a brand, be a person.
3. Don’t just broadcast, but join conversations, with lots of @replies.
4. Be open. Why did you use a DM rather than an @ for your question to me?
5. Share lots of links (with Bit.ly URLs), especially photos (using TwitPic of course).
6. Be nice and follow back people who follow you (apart from obvious bots / spammers).
7. Say interesting things that people want to Retweet. Special / limited offers?
8. Use relevant #hashtags in your posts.
9. Link to your Twitter profile from everywhere else: Your website, LinkedIn, Facebook…
10. Possibly register in directories like Twibes (although I haven’t tried this).

Does this mean we’re a social media agency now?

This morning’s Albion Society breakfast was a look into the future with Joe Staton from the Future Foundation leading the session  and highlighting some of the big trends affecting how we do business in the first ever broadband recession.

Joe talked to us about the challenges for brands creating trust and loyalty and managing our reputations in a world where corporate inside knowledge is so widely available. He also identified interesting opportunities for communication in an environment where we are all “maximizing” our purchases and wanting to know much more before we decide what to buy.

Glyn wrapped up the session with some of the other communication implications and opportunities, and what some of our clients are thinking and talking about to make the most of the shifting opportunities this year.

Great to see so many people this morning – we had friends over from BT, Contagious, STA Travel, Sony PlayStation, Virgin and WPP. If you didn’t make it and you’d like to come along next time email katherine.jones@albionlondon.com

This month’s creative breakfast theme was “Stories wot could only have been told through digital”. Everyone was able to interpret theme as they wished, submitting a link (art or commerce) for discussion. Here are the highlights.

Apple’s one billionth app download is not a classic “story” but it’s certainly one that could only have happened via digital. We discussed why apps have only been popularised by Apple and not one of the other handset manufacturers years earlier. It’s a hard one: the apps work and they are useful.

Penguin’s We Tell Stories is a collection of 6 stories from 6 authors that have been written by authors to capitalise on the interactivity that only digital can bring to a reader. This one caused great debate. What was this trying to achieve for Penguin? Is it the future of publishing? The consensus was that the written linear story is a long way from dead. The hardback we are not so sure about. However the traditionalists amongst us are having nothing of the Kindle.

The Blair Witch Project is 10 years old this year. The daddy of word of mouth marketing. It’s hard to tell now if the website was deliberately crap or whether the internet was just crap in 1999. Either way we still admire how high it set the bar for story telling.

My Damn Channel is what happens when writers create stuff without the studios riding them like ponies. We love You Suck at Photoshop. This feels like the future of comedy story telling. Short form. Timely. Script over production.

The Whale Hunt has been much lauded by creative folk. It’s hard not love the beauty of the gore. Skip to the blood and guts, then wonder at the download speed for those images.

The Sopranos in chronological fuck order. Who needs the bits in between really?

Obama’s first 100 days in a Facebook stream. The media dissected this every what way. But none had the, humor, cut through and modernity of this piece.

Susan Boyle: she is the global story of the internet for the month of April 2009.

Cisco Fatty. We love it when the internet attacks. It used to be emails of sexual office liasons. Now it’s Twaux Pas.

One Red Paperclip One of first “Hey I’m doing something random, help me out” events to capture an online imagination.

The Disposable Memory Project is capturing the images from over 100 disposable cameras left around the world. Proving that sometimes people will make an effort to be involved in something that makes life more interesting. But mostly not.

AOL search results A few years back, AOL made public a stack of user search requests. Compilations were created that revealed some very interesting human stories. You can still find them floating about online if you dig.

Bryony Makes a Zombie Movie One of Teddy’s mates AKA Paperlilies. Is this the future of movie making?

Steve finished the session by writing a story completely in analogue form with nothing but a pen and paper. It’s too long to transcribe and besides, it’s already lost. But the story ended with the word “Google”.

The Albion Society is fast upon us - next Thursday (14th May ) is our first breakfast event. What better way to start the day than by joining us for a cappuccino and a thought provoking discussion?

Our guest on Thursday will be Joe Staton, a Director at Future Foundation and regular commentator on how the UK’s behaviour is changing as we head through recession and beyond. These are the guys that ponder the nation’s navels for a living and are one of the UK’s leading think tanks monitoring the impact of consumer change on business and brands. Joe will be covering some of the big questions of the moment drawing insights from their latest findings…

Expect a lively discussion over breakfast with some like-minded business people. Bring a colleague or a question. For more on the Albion Society there are blog posts on previous events where Richard Reed of Innocent Drinks, Saul Klein of Index Ventures, Clive Dickens from Absolute Radio and Gavin Neath from Unilever led some great discussions.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts and hopefully seeing you there. If you haven’t had an invitation and would like to come along then please email katherinej@albionlondon.com

The Albion pub quiz team ‘Let’s get Quizzical’ made their maiden voyage to the Cantaloupe in Shoreditch last night to compete for £100. We battled through rounds such as ‘Police dramas’, ‘Seas’ and triumphed in ‘things with the word “hop” in’ and ‘children’s games’ to come a respectable SECOND (out of 12). And we got some free chips and nachos. Well done to everyone who contributed: Phillippa, Petrina, Christine, Sophie, Liz and me. (Aimee Lewis)