Our Logbook

So if you don’t know the story, here it is:

26th April. FIBA announced that, unlike the rest of Team GB, the British Basketball team had to win a series of games to earn their spot at the 2012 Olympics. Even though we’re the host nation!

We’ve got the best team in years. So with Sam Neter of Hoopsfix and Sillky Slim, hype-man, Albion are on a mission to fill those games with the biggest, loudest crowds ever. To inspire and give GB the boost they need to qualify for the Olympics.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks with British basketball. Sam and Sillky are running around the country. Meeting people, charming the public and going to games. Whatever they can. And people are starting to get behind the campaign. Including Lenny Henry, Keith Lemon and Jamelia!

Crowds at the game are growing steadily and are getting louder. People are joining the Facebook group. We’ve sold out of T-shirts – but are ordering more. The website backbritishbasketball.com is going strong, There are loads of interviews and videos and more importantly people are buying tickets.

And it’s working.

GB are 5 wins for 5! And it really feels like the fans are the one’s giving them that extra boost to win, what are very close games. The pride, energy and GB love is electric. Especially from Sam and Sillky. We have one final home game left in Liverpool. Thurs 26th August. Not long to go. But GB are playing better than they ever have. They’re the underdog team and they’re showing their worth.

We’ve created a film about the exploits leading up to the first game. And to introduce you to the players – they are top blokes, who clearly love representing the country. For anyone out there with a cinema we’d love for you to screen it.

We’ve started our own noise-makers with the Balldogs. People who receive free tickets to home games in return for creating an atmosphere. Something GB games have always sorely lacked. They even reside in the Dog Pound. And you can clearly hear them during the highlights, led by Sillky on his trusty megaphone.

Channel 4 even interviewed Sam and Sillky and it was broadcast on Sunday. Against the backdrop of a great win by GB against the Ukraine. With Deng pulling out all the stops during the final quarter. You can clearly hear the Dog Pound shouting the “Deng” chant, created during our campaign. And for eagle eyed amongst you, this handsome writer even pops up in the crowd. Skip to 25:48 for the BBB interview and 43:50 for Luol Deng’s clutch performance.

Also, Sam and Albion’s Creative Director Andre Moreira even got a mention in the Wall St Journal. Exciting. In an interesting article about the state of the British game. “British stink at basketball”? Well, we’ll show you. You big American journal of Wall. “Balls St” to that! Ha ha hum.

What we are seeing is that there are very passionate fans out there for British basketball. And people that are simply passionate about our nation and want British sports people to do well. Even President Obama is a fan of Britain’s Deng. Why isn’t our Prime Minister getting behind our team? Or the Olympic committee? Or even the UK press? Basketball could be the next rowing or cycling if we get into the Olympics.

So if you still have time after reading all that. Watch the film or buy some tickets. Or just click “like” on the Facebook page. After all, with our football teams cocking it up over the summer we should at least show some respect for the underdog GB team who are battling their way to an Olympics they should by rights already be in.

Our Team. In our Olympics. By any means necessary.

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

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.

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.