Our Logbook » Working Archive

If you haven’t heard of The Betfair Front Room by now, you can’t call yourself a real football fan. Our highly acclaimed integrated campaign which puts Betfair, the world’s biggest betting community, at the heart of football fandom, is now in full swing with a whole host of tantalizing TV adverts and online content under our belts. (check it out here)

But we’re not stopping there.  With our 5 über-passionate (bordering on obsessive) football fans feeling very comfortable on their inflatable Chesterfields, we thought it was about time we mixed things up, and so last night’s shoot was just a little bit special.

Enter Andy Gray, former international footballer, seasoned commentator and world-renowned Sky Sports pundit.

Yes, you heard it here first – this is an exclusive. So be sure to check out the first airing of Andy Gray taking on the Front Room lads in style during the coverage of the Champions League second-leg game between Manchester United and AC Milan at Old Trafford on 10^th March.

Massive big-up to all involved, especially to our clients at Betfair, and of course to our director Theo Delaney and the crew at Hotspur & Argyle. Finally, here’s one for the scrap book – our own Neil Potter and Matt Roskill rubbing shoulders quite literally with the big man. Although Matt’s jumper has either shrunk in the wash, or he’s choking on Neil’s excessive use of perfumed hair spray. In the words of Andy Gray: ‘Right on the money’.

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.

Yesterday we enjoyed our best Albion Society yet. We were filled to the rafters, with people having to stand at the back to fit everyone in. Those who couldn’t make it were following on Twitter, like @debkhan who tweeted “@albionsociety stellar panel -fed up to miss it-following up via Twitter love-in”. So massive thanks to all those in the audience who set the twittersphere alight with your quotes during the session. It’s not surprising that this was our most talked about Albion Society with a high calibre panel second to none.

Alan Rusbridger, Editor in Chief of the Guardian Media Group talked about a series of interesting binaries facing both journalism and politics now: Us Vs. Them; Open Vs Closed; and with direct  reference to Murdoch’s Paywalls, Pay Vs. Free.  ”If you are open that means you want to be part of the way the web works rather than simply on the web,” whereas, being authoritarian, top down and proprietorial, whether in politics and journalism, is ” just completely antithetical to the way everything is going”.

Justine Roberts, founder of the influential online community Mumsnet, hailed this as “ the first social media election. We have a  have a power in agenda setting, because all the journalists and therefore the politicians are all watching social media”. However she dismissed suggestions that this made communities such as Mumsnet the new block vote saying that if anyone tried to tell her members that they all had to do the same thing, they’d be more “like an octopus with PMT” all going their own direction.

Tess Alps, Thinkbox Chief Executive, praised the space for criticism provided by the  mediation of professional journalists: “I don’t want politicians and the public to always have a direct unmediated relationship because next time it will be Nick Griffin. I think Goebbels would have loved the internet for that reason!” She made an impassioned plea for us all to continue supporting professional journalism saying “Politicians without online communities would be worse, but online communities without journalism would be utterly meaningless.”

Dan Thain, Senior strategist at Bluestate talked about how digital campaigning doesn’t replace real world campaigning, rather it is a way of stimulating “real activism in the real world. The fundamentals haven’t changed. Peer to peer contact is still much more important and high value.” Digital campaigning however, enabled the two important elements to any successful political campaign “Money and Mobilisation” a strategy they’ve developed by “looking at participation, what matters, what gets results – seeing what works and focussing relentlessly on that”.

Read what the Telegraph and Brand Republic had to say.

Next time Albion Society gets together at Patisserie Valerie will be in June. Make sure we have your details if you want to be invited to come along.

What do Apps have to do with Affairs of State? When are Memes a Political Matter?

Whenever we plan our Albion Society events (where we provide the speakers and the big themes and the breakfast goods) we look for the most pertinent ideas in society and think about how they relate to what’s going on in our industry. And what could be more pertinent right now, than the looming election?

We started building a panel and have secured an amazingly diverse and relevant selection of heavyweights!

Politicians and Journalists have always been intimate (if sometimes antagonistic) bedfellows. Discussing that special relationship, how it’s been changing and the great paid vs. free content debate we have none other than Alan Rusbridger, Editor in Chief of The Guardian. We’re really excited to have him.

Something else we’d noticed to be a new theme in this election was the rise of coordinated blogging as a force with political sway. We were thinking that blogging seems to be the new lobbying and that online communities could be the new block votes (you know, like the Christian right is in the U.S.). To talk about this we know no one better than Justine Roberts. As the Founder of Mumsnet, she’s second to none when it comes to organising an online community and using their collective clout. Impressive.

Approaching the subject from the other end of the media spectrum is Tess Alps, Chief Executive of the television umbrella organisation, Thinkbox. We really wanted her involved because this will be the first election to have the televised debates that are traditional in the U.S. So among other things she’ll be talking to us about what our first TV election will mean. Interesting stuff.

This is all very “Post-Obama” and can be seen most in the way technology has enabled a different model of online electioneering. The expert in this is Dan Thain, from Blue State Digital. They’re the people who enabled the micro donations to Obama’s campaign, and Dan’s the man in the digital driving seat for numerous local and national campaigns including those for the Labour Party.

So that’s the plan. It couldn’t be more interesting than that. Now all that remains is to fill the very few seats we have left.

If you’re interested (of course you are) sign up here. But I warn you, we released places today and they’re nearly gone. So be QUICK!

I’m saving some seats for people who suggest the most interesting questions for our panel. All suggestions welcome, and if you’re really lucky, you might win a place to ask them in person.

Hope to see you there!

Digital Democracy, February 24th 8am (for 8.30 start) Patisserie Valerie, Spitalfields

Further information: http://www.albionlondon.com/society/
Follow us: @albionsociety

In the final days before any campaign goes live the working days tend to get longer as the t’s are crossed and the lower case j’s are dotted, but with a campaign as unusual as giffgaff Tool Hire it should have come as no surprise that they also got weirder.

And so it was, on launch day minus one, a crack team of creatives and one unfortunate Account Manager (who wishes not to be named Duncan) were dispatched to get some heart-warming photos of the giffgaff Gimp helping passers-by in central London.

According to the aforementioned luckless account man ‘you don’t know embarrassment until you have stood in a side-street in your pants trying to pull on a pink spandex gimp suit, while office workers crowd the windows above you to get a better look.’

The strangeness didn’t end there either.

With literally hours to go to launch it was decided that giffgaff needed a song.  Of course it needed a song (slaps hand to forehead).  It would have been remiss, nay, negligent to launch such a brand without a jingle.

Well, who needs Josh and his Superband (what is a Superband anyway?) when you have Youtube star Daveyboyz and an Account Manager who seems to have taken rather a liking to lurid spandex on hand for an impromptu gig in the corner of the Albion board room

They went on to rally the troops with a lovely bit of Roberta Flack’s Killing me softly.

Today we picked up the Flashtalking award for our new Air New Zealand online campaign ‘Personality Allowed‘.

And here’s our proud Albion team:

After watching the build up to Question Time on TV, we wanted to see how people felt about Nick Griffin so we put up an application called Slap Nick Griffin. The experiment has attracted 20 million slaps which we think is enough so the game has now been taken down.

We’ve been burning lots of the midnight oil to get here, but last Saturday saw the start of the teaser phase of our new integrated campaign for Betfair: The Front Room. You may well have seen a series of oddly intriguing 10sec TV spots in and around the weekend’s Premiership matches on Sky Sports…

The Front Room is a living, breathing microcosm of the Betfair betting exchange – a platform that allows people to bet against each other rather than against a bookmaker (as they do with the likes of William Hill or Ladbrokes).

To bring this to life, we’ve cast 5 passionate football fans who we’re going to film bantering, arguing and debating with each other about the week’s football events and issues, and ultimately agreeing to disagree by shaking on a bet. It’s all totally unscripted and we’ll be producing new content every week throughout the football season – more than 20 TV ads in total and a mountain of online content which will all be housed online at www.betfairfootball.com. To dial up the engagement online, the fans will also be tweeting, blogging and updating on all the major social networking platforms. And you’ll even be able to bet against them and their predictions for the upcoming games.

We’ve built the set down at Betfair’s offices in Hammersmith, where we’ll be shooting almost every week, editing the very next day and getting the ads on air by that weekend, in time for that big games. Everyone involved has approached this whole concept with real journalistic intent (check us out…!) to ensure the content is as topical, relevant and entertaining as possible – a week can be a lifetime in football!

It’s a massive undertaking and is only going to get busier through the season as the campaign takes off both on and offline, so a huge pat on the back goes to the team here at Albion and our very supportive client team at Betfair, and long may it continue.

The campaign proper launches just prior to the Manchester United vs. Liverpool game this Sunday 25th October. But in the meantime, you can access all the teasers on the Betfair YouTube channel.

You’ll notice that the 5th fan is still to be confirmed (hence the blacked out face with the big white question mark on the website!). One of our chosen fans dropped out at 5.30pm last Friday afternoon, prompting a last-minute scrabble to get his TV ads pulled and all his online content removed – just one of the things we’re all having to adjust to quickly given the live nature of this project. And no, it’s not Tim Lovejoy, David Baddiel or Frank Skinner… answers on a postcard.

A year ago we launched our first campaign for Air New Zealand.

This week our follow up work breaks under the banner “Personality Allowed”. Air New Zealand don’t have onerous rules that result in cookie-cutter crew, but trust them as individuals to uphold the brand and service values of the airline. For Air New Zealand, personality is allowed. This is what drives the great experience you receive as a passenger, and it’s the foundation for the new brand campaign this year. In fact the words were inspired by this tweet we saw from a passenger when we were in creative development:

We’re kicking off Personality Allowed in digital outdoor and online. You will see a selection of real Air New Zealand crew doing their thing on digital outdoor around the London underground. We worked with a commercials director Patrik Bergh, who’s great at working with ‘non-actors’, to get the best out of the crew. The shoot day was a long haul (sorry couldn’t resist) 12 hour session where they tried everything from kick boxing to Mick Jagger impressions in front of the camera. And true to form the crew remained up beat throughout.

The online executions in rich video and standard formats, showcase their personal opinions of the onboard product (such as food, wine and entertainment), and their recommendations for LA and New Zealand. Given they travel so much, the crew are micro-experts on these destinations and so we use video of them alongside Google Maps to showcase their recommendations. Sweet as. You can view a selection of the online work here.

We’ll be rolling out the campaign across consumer, trade and business audiences this year including some very Kiwi can-do executions. Watch this space.

The giffgaff launch has made a lot of headlines. Here are our top three new news stories:

First up is the coverage in Monday’s Independent.

Next is coverage from Marketing magazine showing that the launch was ranked second in their Most Read section last week:

And best of all, Mike the Gaffer’s live call into Chris Evans’ show. In true brand style it wasn’t from a plush recording suite but live from Albion:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.