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The much anticipated Matt’s House video content we produced for BE Broadband is now live! (You might still remember the pictures of our very own Mark and Gav from the shoot….)
It stars BE Broadband’s very own Forum Manager Matt’s genius is usually locked safely away in his brain. But we take a step not only through Matt’s front door, but into his mind’s eye, to see your internet connection the way he does. See if you can pick up some tips to make your connection faster in ‘Matt’s House’. See it at www.bethere.co.uk/mattshouse
This is the first content piece to come out of BE’s ongoing Real World Speed creative platform, which is an introduction to the world of hacking together the future of access – A ‘top-tips’ video series to educate BE Members (and everyone else) on how to seek out that extra performance from their copper wire.
It is the fact that many internet users don’t get the speed that their ISP has promised through their advertising that has led BE to adopt the Real World Speed proposition. Most people struggle with their broadband speed. They get much less than they were quoted for and they don’t have an active community within their ISP to get help. With these very creative online videos, we not only showed how enthusiastic BE Broadband is about, well, broadband, but also how people can maximise their speed with these simple 2-minute videos, even non-geeky types can optimise their speed.

As a digitally-minded agency, of course we love the Internet, and we do cool stuff on it whenever we get the chance. We love it so much that when it was time to produce and shoot online video content for our client that brought a router, the Internet and a master socket to life as people, we got very excited. So excited in fact that, before we knew it Albion’s very own Client Service Director and Technology Director (known to us as Mark T and Gav), were scheduled to be starring in these films. One as router and the other as the Internet.

Well, we realised on the day of the shoot that nothing could have prepared us for when Mark would be to wear Silver latex pants with Y-fronts and Gav would be dressed as a gold genie with a Haribo sweet glued to his forehead. .. Not even having read the scripts that our brilliant Creative Jon wrote, having seen them as storyboards and even having discussed the costumes with the Film Production agency beforehand…

The shoot was on a sunny Thursday, and as the clock hit 8am a film crew of 20 barged in armed with really cool filming equipment. But as we curiously looked over to the changing rooms, we saw that the Costume and Make-up artists were unpacking some really interesting stuff – from Aladdin-alike gold pants to silver body paint, from silver boots to shiny electronic hair… Our Mark & Gav stayed brave in the face of having to be the lucky ones who got to wear this lot, never knowing the Internet and a router could look this shiny and bright. Only at this point Gav realised what he got himself into, but it was too late.

However, it was a slightly different story with Mark. He got into the spirit of turning himself into a Router so much that he didn’t even flinch at the sight of one brave make-up artist coming at his nipples with sellotape.

Even more amazing is that once Mark and Gav (known to us now as our Albion actors) were pampered and dressed to go in front of the camera, they couldn’t have loved it more. Gav actually finished his scenes the quickest, giving a very convincing performance as the Internet. As he left the stage, he got a big round of applause for pulling off being a grumpy Internet-Genie Oh-So-Well!

This was definitely no ordinary shoot. The laughter was non-stop even after 12 hours. We’re really excited for the final edits on these videos, scheduled to go live and wild on the net at the beginning of July. In the meantime we are keeping the pictures of Mark and Gav, and congratulating them on their excellent performance, enthusiasm, and for giving us a lot to laugh about.

Watch out for these videos, you will never look at your router the same way again….

Nes

After a successful pitch to Albion’s Senior Management we are sending Senior Planners Hannah Yelin and Sam Ashken to Austin, Texas as the official reporters for Contagious Magazine and Brand Republic’s new Tech Blog, The Wall.

They will be flying out next Thursday to South by SouthWest, the most important industry conference of the year, as our man and woman on the ground, reporting back, in real time.

The best of all they encounter will be summarised in a series of films, blog posts, Venn diagrams and even T-shirts.

Check out the blog, here, which has already set the twittersphere ablaze since it launched last night. Follow them at @HannahYelin , @samashken and #VennSXSW.