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After the thrills and spills of a highly entertaining production, tomorrow sees the launch of our fantastic new ‘Middleman’ campaign for Betfair.

It’s Betfair’s biggest ever marketing campaign to date (see this article on Brand Republic)  and we’ve been really lucky to work with a cracking international client team in Hammersmith and Malta in our bid to position the brand as ‘The World’s Biggest Betting Community’ (yes, we’ve even got that claim through those lovely people at Clearcast).

The idea’s a simple one: on Betfair, you cut out the middleman which means you bet direct against 3 million other people. And that of course means better odds and much bigger wins (than all those traditional high street bookmakers).

As you’d expect for a brand like Betfair, it’s a fully integrated campaign with a massive online push that kicks off this weekend with the first ever YouTube takeover by a betting brand. A massive coup for all of us involved and a nice little cameo from Andy Gray of Sky Sports, so watch out for that from midnight on Saturday…

We’re also going to be on TV throughout the season’s live sport coverage (football, horse racing, golf, cricket, you name it…) with a couple of hilarious ads showing how middlemen (yes, it’s those traditional bookies again) get in the way of people trying to betting and add no value.

A big well done and a massive thank you to everyone involved at Betfair, all our partners and of course here at Albion (too many to mention in this post, but you know who you are).

Look out for it over the weekend.

Here’s a sneak preview for you:

Since its launch two months ago Draw and Fold Over is still going strong and yesterday we were contacted by Mark Sinclair at Creative Review who had just stumbled across it. In his words ‘I love it, lots of fun‘ – read more on his blog post here and if you still haven’t had a go yourself, you really should. www.drawandfoldover.com

This week some of the Albion team are out in Auckland shooting a campaign for Air New Zealand’s new long haul product. The shoot is happening at “Hangar 9″, a place that for 3 years previous, had been a secret to the world and even most of the company itself. Inside this Auckland warehouse is a full scale replica of a 777-300 – the only one in existence outside of Boeing.

The hangar is now a pretty sophisticated media briefing center. More akin to a museum than a development facility. The walls are lined with the development story and there are mock ups of all the new seating plus some versions of the ones that didn’t quite make it along the way.

In every way the site has the ability to function like a plane on the ground. There are onboard ovens, in-flight entertainment units and even aviation power generators. Although Air New Zealand take delivery of the new planes at the end of the year, every detail of the product is still being tweaked inside Hangar 9 – food menus, cutlery design, carpets, curtains. Nothing is being left unscrutinised.

What’s evident is the commitment (and – ouch! – the investment) the company has put into the project. What we love most about working with Air New Zealand is the way they approach everything they do with a sense that anything can be achieved. And for the first time the customer has been put first in the flying experience. The new long haul planes fly LON-LAX from April 2011. In the mean time we’ve posted a couple of interesting vids below about the design process and a walk through of the product in Hangar 9.

We in the middle of shooting a bunch of online banners for Air New Zealand. One placement is quite tricky as it uses a video overlay between two banner spaces which needs to be shot in camera without any forgiving flash animation.

After many different attempts to map out the action to fit the space, we cracked the solution: two holes in a bit of paper pasted to the preview monitor. Proof that when going digital, sometimes the best approach is analogue.

We’ve just finished making the promos for Channel five’s Don’t Stop Believing. If you are a Glee fan you’re in luck. If not, you may well dig this show too. It plays out live, starting late July and is five’s biggest investment ever in creating an entertainment program. Unlike most talent shows, the interest wont hinge on the cruelty of putting down the rejects. Each week 6 groups of auditioned people go through heats. The groups will be made up all different ages, shapes and sizes of at least five people, but some will contain over 100 individuals.

Our promo aims to capture to capture the upbeat, uncynical nature of the show. We cast over 1000 people for the spot. The real challenge was that we couldn’t feature any of the groups competing in the show as we didn’t want to show favoritism! Some of the groups we have put together ourselves(Simon Cowell eat your heart out), and some of the groups came to us as a team. The yellow group is actually a gospel choir – keep an ear out for Cathy’s voice who is the blonde girl who leads the group – absolutely stunning. The blue team are a barber shop quartet; eh, well actually we ended up making them a triplet. Within the main group at the end is The Choir With No Name made up of homeless people.

You’ll notice a pianola at the beginning of the spot that Emma Bunton activates. We managed to find the only living person in the UK who is able to program pianolas with the original paper-style script. He told us that suitable paper is becoming increasingly hard to find. The scrolls are hand-perforated although he does now use a computer to map out the notes. The 80 year old who owns the pianola doesn’t know that his keys were carefully rainbow-ified with colored film. Looks pretty cool though.

The spot was beautifully crafted by Kim Gehrig (and her ever patient producer Dom) at Academy. With music by the audio wizards Nick and Ollie at Soundtree.

Earlier in the week you might have heard that we won the Jose Cuervo account, one of the oldest most recognised and awarded Tequila brands – worldwide.

To celebrate we thought what better place than a Mexican bar along the road where (guided by a knowledgeable barman) we tested out a number of Cuervo cocktails. The girls had some rather large pink ones (very SATC) and the boys went more macho with shorts followed by an odd looking green chaser (which the barman claimed to be good for you).

We think our night out has put us in good stead to work on the Cuervo portfolio of products and has given us an insight into the product to help us deliver an international brand positioning and creative platform.

One thing we learnt during the night is that Tequila definitely makes you happy!

Work will roll out later this year.

…a question pondered by many and only answered by a few brave souls. It could be anything – a piece of film or animation, an image or photograph, even a story or piece of juicy gossip.  But how do you recognise when something has the potential to be shared by hundreds, even thousands of people?

In true Blue Peter style, here’s one we made earlier. Yesterday in fact – and it’s a great case study on how things explode at the speed of light with the power of online word-of-mouth.

Before we start – it’s worth noting that we (Albion) did not create this image. It was sent to us. All we did was help it on its way to thousands of people via the interwebs. If YOU created this image, then give us a call and come in for a cup of tea and a chocolate digestive. You deserve it.

So, our ‘go viral’ mantra (case study of the ‘England Muppets’ image):

• Launch at exactly the right time. For the tiny percentage of the country that didn’t know, the England football team were playing yesterday and every man and his dog were acting like true football pundits on the social networks. We posted the image just at the right time when people were truly engaged in all things England and all things football.

• Make people want to share it. We laughed out loud at the irony in this work of art. To many, the England football team are a bunch of Muppets – so sticking their heads on to a team photo was perfect comedy value. It got our attention, made us smile and made us want to send this on.

• Make it simple to share it. Twitter is great for blasting out 140 characters quickly and easily, so we posted it via TwitPic with a shortend URL and tagged on the appropriate football hash tags that were trending at that time.

And finally…

• Hit the influencers – this is often easier said than done, especially if it’s branded content, but in this case, our picture was picked up organically by some heavy hitters on the key social networks. You need to know who you’re targeting; or just know that where you’re promoting the viral content, people will be interested in it.

In our minds, the ‘England Muppets’ image ticked all of the above criteria, so when it achieved over 300 views in 9 minutes, we knew this was viral gold. And it’s still going strong, achieving way over 2000+ views in less than 24 hours – and you can check out the original link here.

If you haven’t heard yet – Albion are going to be working with FIVE to help them launch a new TV show ‘Don’t Stop Believing’, with an integrated advertising campaign.

The show is due to air later this summer and will see FIVE scan the UK for groups that can sing and dance who will then be choreographed and judged by a team of industry experts, with Emma Bunton hosting along the way.

If you’re a Glee fan (or Journey) you’ll already be familiar with the title and this could be an opportunity for you to achieve fame as the show also offers the chance for the public to join a specially created DSB Supergroup who will represent the UK in the international Glee club circuit in the U.S.

We’re all very excited in the office about the show (and the competition).  Some of us have already been warming up our vocal chords, stocked up on honey and lemon and are even thinking of turning one of our meeting rooms into a studio so we can practise our singing and dance moves – we’re ready to pop, lock and drop – are you?…

Last night a team of Albion’s Account Handlers were lucky enough to attend the last IPA 44 Club ‘Big Achievers’ event with Johnny Hornby. Johnny is a true Account Man to the bone, a founding partner of CHI and widely known as one of the most respected Ad Men around. We were in for a lesson in 20 years of Account Handling experience, and he didn’t disappoint.

Johnny talked through some vital aspects of what, in his opinion, makes a really great account handler. He explained how the ‘old school’ measures of traditional account handling still firmly had their place – or sharp pencils and clean note pads, as he put it. When commenting on his days on the Ogilvy graduate programme, he spoke fondly of ‘The University of Advertising’, and how he originally had wild dreams of becoming a creative.

Interestingly, Johnny divides the Account Handler stereotype into 2 halves – those who are on-the-button organisers with great project management skills, and those who are born relationship builders who thrive on inspiring creative people and giving confidence to their clients. He admitted he himself was the epitome of the latter  – even going as far as to say a previous boss had once stated ‘We need to get you a number 2 fast….or fire you’.

As Claire Beale, Editor of Campaign, probed Johnny with questions on his ‘playboy image’ in the Ad world, he was quick to dismiss this as the way to go for young account types, adding that ‘working hard and playing hard’ is the measure of his success to date. Even stating categorically that although he loves mixing business with pleasure, this doesn’t always work out the way it’s intended.

To sum up a great 30 minutes with one of the industry’s top men – Johnny hit the nail on the head by saying that to be really successful in the often self-indulgent Ad world, you must really love what you’re doing. ‘Our industry is going at 120mph’ he added, and pointed out how we must be constantly listening to our clients; knowing what’s going on in the industry in every media channel; and never forgetting that the over-supply of agencies wanting to take your breakfast is even more apparent now than ever before.

One of Johnny’s best quotes of the evening is still ringing in my ears – ‘I’ve always wondered where average Account Directors end up…probably not in a good place.’ Inspiration and motivation were the order of the evening, and we certainly got served a plate full. Thanks Johnny.

Yesterday (Monday 24^th May) a few of us popped along to the Big Draw event being held at the British Museum.

The Big Draw this year celebrates its 10^th year and is an event that runs for the whole month of October which encourages communities to come together to do simply that – draw.  The event yesterday awarded artists and communities for their contributions in 2009 and was truly inspiring. There were lots of activities going on around the venue including people making paper flowers, calligraphy writing, bug drawing which we each got the chance to add our contributions to on a display of ladybirds, though Nick’s turned out to be more of a ‘manbird’.

Albion heard about The Big Draw when Jon (one of our creatives) explained what they do. Inspired, we wanted to create something that helped fulfil the Campaign for Drawing’s mission of getting more people to draw. So Jon created ‘Draw and Fold Over’, an online adaptation of the traditional parlour game ‘picture consequences’. The idea is to combine the feeling of drawing by hand with the social benefits of the internet. Families and friends can draw together from countries around the world. The game naturally encourages you to send it to your friends, meaning more and more people enjoy the rewards of drawing.

The game was launched by The Big draw yesterday who got 4 artists onboard including Posy Simmonds to give it a go with a live on stage demo – thankfully the wifi worked!  And this was the outcome:

Following on from this www.drawandfoldover.com is now live.  You should have a go and pass it onto your friends – it’s great fun and will take you back to your childhood we promise!