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We’ve just developed a brand identity for  ‘Bridge the world’ a  digital holiday brand from STA travel which specifically targets the +50 market. The identity will run across all business comms.

You can read more about the concepts and ideas behind this new brand here on Figaro Digital

Today (Monday 4th October) sees the launch of a campaign that we’re particularly excited about for our client Epson.

The campaign ‘Engineered for Speed’ launches the new Epson Stylus Office inkjet printer (BX625FWD) specifically targeting small businesses with its high quality printing and incredible speed – it can print up to 38 pages per minute.

We wanted to create a campaign that would engage a business audience on a rational and emotional level (not your normal B2B campaign). As  a result we created the ultimate product test and our team really got to have some fun with it as they set out to test the speed of the inkjet printer alongside one of the world’s fastest accelerating cars – an Ariel Atom which travels 0-60 mph in 2.7 seconds (super FAST).

The two products were combined for the challenge as engineers from Epson and Ariel worked together to form a unique partnership and then raced the printer against the car around Rockingham race track (in the UK) to see whether the Epson printer could print a map of the track faster than the car could drive it.

It’s a really exhilarating Pan European campaign that spans across several platforms. These include a film of the race (housed on the campaign microsite), online banners and EDMs  and it will also run across point of sale and PR.  It’s our first big campaign for Epson and we’re really proud of it.

Thanks to all the team involved – you know who you are.

Watch to see who wins here…..

Yesterday Thursday 23rd September the Albion Society breakfast brought together a panel to discuss Gen Y – shorthand for 16-25 year olds.

Untitled from Albion London on Vimeo.

First up was our Planning Director Sam Ashken, who presented a brief summary of a thinkpiece which can be downloaded here. The argument is that teenage and early adult years are for Gen Y not a time of rebellion but of personal aspiration.

Eliza Robeiro, the seventeen year old founder of the Lives not Knives project and campaigner with Battlefront comprehensively floored the room with her drive, activism, intelligence and precocious self-assurance.

Emi Gal, founder of online video advertising company Brainient, and a comparative oldie at 23, charmed the audience with three stories explaining his entrepreneurial drive.

Robin Klein VC of The Accelerator Group sagely analysed the differences between Gen Y and earlier generations of entrepreneurs.

Mike Butcher Editor of Techcrunch Europe showed that the Gen Y can-do spirit is a European as much as a British thing. A number of key themes emerged from the panellists. Gen Yers tend to be driven by personal mission, don’t sit around waiting for permission to do things and are unconcerned by the cynicism of older generations or the fear or failure.

Gen Y-ers’ innate drive, the panellists agreed, is accelerated by an environment in which it is easier than ever to get hold of tools and capital, and equally easy to make direct connections with contacts and partners all over the world.

All of which makes a Gen X-er wonder whether it’s possible to be a born again Gen Y-er…

The quote of the day was from Eliza who, when asked how much common ground there is between her community and young entrepreneurs like Emi responded in jest that, “A lot of the kids in Croydon are good at business, just the wrong kind of business!”.

Last week I spent another amazing few days helping out at Seedcamp, running one of the marketing panels and meeting/mentoring the finalists.

By a long shot, it was the highest standard of entrepreneurs to date and demonstrated the massive potential of creating the competition and fund. My guess is Seedcamp is going global. Its started its focus in Europe but has no reason to narrow its search in EMEA. Most of the finalists have fully functioning businesses with near proven business models and I was particularly excited by the next gen ecommerce businesses and fresh thinking on how to use customer data.

I also got together with my good friend Saul Klein, Seedcamp founder and we had a chance to look back at why we all got involved.

My main conclusion is about the opportunity to learn new stuff from some of the brightest business upstarts in Europe. For me, its all about looking for insights into how to create and build businesses and I get more out of a couple of days at Seedcamp than the more conventional business education I’ve done in the past.

We are pleased to announce that Mike Butcher, Editor of Techcrunch Europe will now be joining our Albion Society breakfast on the 23rd September.

The Albion Society brings together a panel of gen Y gamechangers – a group of very special 16-25 year olds; Eliza Robeiro a young campaigner and Emi Gal an entrepreneur. Both demonstrate that this generation understand how to take on big challenges, that they are opportunists, positive and hopeful for the future.

Robin Klein Venture Partner at Index Ventures and founding partner of The Accelerator Group and Mike Butcher, Editor of Techcrunch Europe both join to give their expert advice on Entrepreneurism and how Gen Y are shaping the future.

Sam Ashken, Albion’s Planning Director will host the event and introduce you to our panel with some fundamental research that we’ve been carrying out here at Albion. He’ll then hand you over to the panel and let you determine if this is the generation who are already making a big difference and whether these are the people that will shape ‘The Big Society’

There are still some tickets available for Gen Y – Activists & Entrepreneurs and the death of teen rebellion, a breakfast discussion by the Albion Society. Places are strictly limited and will run out fast.

Reserve yours by entering your details here

If you haven’t seen this week’s Campaign or today’s brand republic as yet then you won’t have read about our appointment by Adstream.

We’ve been selected to help develop their communication strategy which will be launched through an integrated communication campaign later this year for the Adstream 4.

Thanks to all those that worked on the pitch and helped us win this business – you know who you are.

Yesterday I was one of the judges on the Campaign BIG Awards “Digital” category panel. The panel itself was an interesting mix of agency peeps (Albion, Dare, VCCP, CHI), clients (Coke, Google) and media agencies (Mindshare). Although I can’t talk about the actual work or opinions on specific pieces, I can talk about some of the themes which consumed the judges.

Face recognition
There were quite a few entries that used face recognition technology either within banners or within branded experiences to give surprising, intuitive experiences. We are just scratching the surface and when you imagine a world that can detect not only your face, but your mood, we are headed towards some exciting stuff so long as it is used for good, not evil.

AR mobile apps
Holdy-uppy-printy-outy webcam AR codes are last year’s news. Mobile apps overlaying info and visuals went down well with the judges. This feels like the future, but expect a “seen it before” reaction from judges and the public if you put the technology before the experience when developing branded AR apps. It needs to be genuinely useful or entertaining to make the cut.

Facebook Connected films
We’ve nearly reached saturation point with customised films that import photos from Facebook profiles. Expect punters to be feeling the same fatigue as yesterday’s judges after a plethora of wonderfully executed “OMG I’m in a film with a famous person” pieces. There’s still plenty of life left in Facebook Connect though.

Branded alternate reality games
ARG’s were big news yesterday and some very iconic brands were forging ahead creating games that captured imaginations on a global scale. Some of the games entered were awe inspiring. Some were just down right unusable and a monumental waste of marketing budget.

Online/Offline mash ups
Many entries explored online participation that drove real world activity. There were some hugely ambitious projects offered up. The main challenges for entrants seemed to be A: Can you drive scale and genuine mass participation? B: With the costs associated with this kind of activity, can you build enough buzz in a short period to create something that people remember? A couple of entries did both questions fared well.

iPhone Apps
It’s clear that from a judges perspective the mobile app is here to stay as a media channel. Unlike some of the other technologies we saw, apps remain as fresh and engaging as the execution.

But is it “digital”?
Is a linear piece of film on a page digital? Does something need to be interactive to be defined as “digital”? The room weighed heavily towards thinking that interactivity defined work as being digital. I disagree. Why the freak do we keep saying “digital”? Is it any good? Did I engage with it and remember it? Was the content most suited to being viewed online? These are the questions for me. Work foremost needs to engage people and some linear pieces of content we saw clearly did a better job of engagement than pieces that struggled with complicated, nonsense interaction.

Is it viral?
Should effectiveness stats be provided for a viral piece? There was heated discussion around pieces that were effectively TV ads without a TV spend entered as viral entries. Around one piece we checked the Youtube views and were staggered to see 12 million hits for something that we all considered to be just a quite nice ad that shouldn’t be called “viral”. Should viral entries be judged on views or number of shares? I think not. As awards Chairman Damon Collins eloquently put it “Beavers on trampolines get hits.”

Is it relevant?
The most fundamental question of the day. Many of the entries put relevance down the list behind interaction. If it’s easy to make a 30 sec TVC that defies comprehension, this can be multiplied for digital experiences. Too much of what we judged was trying to be clever clogs instead of making the user feel something for the brand. And by the end of a day spent in a room with no windows, the lesson was clear. People aren’t robots. We don’t just get off on “new”, we get off on being entertained, informed, moved, educated, persuaded. Digital work that does this effortlessly, defies even being labelled as “digital”.

Tickets are now available for Gen Y – Activists & Entrepreneurs and the death of teen rebellion, the next Albion Society breakfast taking place on the 23rd September 2010.

This Albion Society brings together a panel of gen Y gamechangers – a group of very special 16-25 year olds; Eliza Robeiro a young campaigner and Emi Gal an entrepreneur. Both demonstrate that this generation understand how to take on big challenges, that they are opportunists, positive and hopeful for the future.

Robin Klein Venture Partner at Index Ventures and founding partner of The Accelerator Group joins to give his expert advice on Entrepreneurism and how Gen Y are shaping the future. And Sam Ashken, Albion’s Planning Director will wrap up the event by presenting some fundamental research that determines that this generation are already making a big difference. These are the people that will shape ‘The Big Society’ and they are using every possible modern marketing technique to negotiate their ambition.

Places are strictly limited and will run out fast. Reserve yours by entering your details here

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