Found on Youtube - one young convert.
making a rainbow
By now, if you live or work in London, you will probably have seen our outdoor campaign launching new Lurpak® Lightest. It’s a hard one to miss. It’s everywhere. On everything. How very exciting.
The rainbow was lovingly constructed by hand (not Photoshop, fact fans) by set designer Nicola Yeoman and her team, and photographed by Dan Tobin-Smith. Built over three days, the structure was five metres deep, chock-a-block full of fresh, healthy produce. Over 60 different types of fresh vegetables, fish, grains, bread and fruit were used. Like logos on rugby pitches that are correct from the viewpoint of the camera, but skewed on the pitches themselves, we (and by that we mean Dan and Nicola) used perspective in a clever way to make a larger set but still keep close enough to the produce in order to enable the viewer to make out the detail.
It was important to us that as little as possible of the food brought in for the shoot went to waste. More than 1.6 tonnes of produce was given away at the end to a brilliant organisation.
FareShare is an award-winning UK charity that fights hunger and food waste in a simple and practical way. They redistribute good food (in-date and good to eat) from the food industry that would otherwise go to waste and get it to people who need it, benefiting vulnerable people and the planet. The charity serves 700 community projects such as hostels, day centres, women’s refuges and community breakfast clubs, providing a vital lifeline for disadvantaged people.
Last year, FareShare was able to provide enough food for 8.6 million meals and 35,500 people a day benefit from the FareShare service. For more information, visit www.fareshare.org.uk
Wieden + Kennedy wins 'best campaign of the year' for Honda at ANNAs
The other night team W+K went off to the bash for the 2011 ANNAs - the awards for the best advertising in UK national newspapers. We were chuffed to pick up the main award of the night: The ANNAs Hall of Fame winner for best press campaign of the year went to our 'tangential thinking' campaign for Honda.This pan-European campaign covers Honda products and innovations across cars, power equipment, bikes and marine and aims to explain how Honda's approach to solving engineering problems leads to innovative solutions. It's all about their belief in 'the power of dreams'.
Judge Gerry Moira said, "In a newspaper full of shiny showroom cars, these ads stand out. OK, they are not burdened with having to sell low APR rates and finance packages but they exploit and explain their brand messaging with great style."
Here are some of the ads in the winning campaign.
Well done to the W+K Honda team and to our clients at Honda. Work like this just isn't possible without a great client.
We're delighted to have won this one - it's our third time of picking up campaign of the year at the ANNAs in the last few years.
Wieden + Kennedy places twice in Creativity's best agencies of 2011
Creativity Magazine just published their 2011 Agency of the Year 'most creative shops' List. Wieden + Kennedy showed up twice in the top ten, with our London and Portland offices both getting a mention.
Of London they said, "Cats with thumbs, sexy butter and daring digital make for a creatively standout year."
Their verdict on Portland: "The agency follows a stellar creative year with. . . a stellar creative year."
Nice.
Lurpak special build
Under construction:
And completed:
Pics by Lurpak Creative Director Ray, who was so excited about this that she spent her Saturday going down to check on the build.
NESTEA Start 2012
Forget about resolutions, 2012 is all about starts! As part of our Start of Something Different campaign for NESTEA we have been asking fans to tell us what that something different is that they would like to start. Inspired by the responses, we have been working with Jeremyville to bring these starts to life on our NESTEA Facebook page each day throughout January.
Since the beginning of 2012 we’ve attracted over 25’000 new fans to our page; it seems our NESTEA fans really want to start something in 2012…
…and we’d love to keep inspiring them…
…however unusual it may appear…
Tell us what you’d start this year! Facebook.com/NesteaEurope
Making it count at 1948
Last night saw the opening of the #makeitcount exhibition at Nike’s premiere space in Shoreditch, 1948. The exhibition showcases high profile British athlete portraiture captured for the #makeitcount campaign.
Shot by reportage photographer Adam Hinton, the portraits portray the pure exhaustion experienced during their training and the pain these athletes go through to achieve their goals. The show features Mo Farah, Mark Cavendish, Harry Main, Jack Wilshere, Loul Deng, Paula Radcliffe, Perri Shakes-Drayton and Rio Ferdinand. The opening night included a talk from Adam Hinton and Guy Featherstone, one of our Creative Directors on the project, in which they shared stories of the challenges involved in capturing these short-lived moments.
Beside each large-scale print are each athlete's handwritten personal pledges for how each athlete is going to make it count in 2012. To accompany the show, guests were invited to make their own pledge and have their photo taken.
The exhibition will run for the next two weeks, so get down there if you can.
1948, Arches 477 - 478, Bateman's Row, Shoreditch, London, EC2A.
Honda's Impossible Dream in Detroit
Our former Honda client Simon Thompson was in Detroit for the Motorshow and visited the Honda stand to check out the new Honda NSX (pictured below - drool). He took the picture above to show us that Honda USA were playing our Impossible Dream commercial on the stand. *Proud*.
'Wonderful and wise' new Lurpak campaign from wieden + kennedy
We are delighted to announce the launch of our new campaign for Lurpak Lightest. Not only is it a new campaign, it’s a brand new product and Lurpak’s biggest launch in 10 years. It’s a hugely important launch for the brand, allowing them to compete with other low fat spreads on the market by offering health-conscious consumers a new low fat product that doesn’t compromise on taste.
Over a year in the making, we’ve been involved in this launch from the very beginning - developing the positioning, name and packaging for the product as well as the advertising creative. Here's the new pack:
With this campaign we want to banish the sad image of health food, and instead celebrate a colourful, textured and exciting world. The rainbow colour spectrum is the element that ties everything together. The poster (below) features a beautiful rainbow made from all kinds of fresh, healthy food. Dan Tobin-Smith did the rainbow photography and Nicola Yeoman did the rainbow design & build.
In the words of our Voiceover Maestro Rutger Hauer, ‘Whoever said green things are boring is so uncool’.
The 60” TV ad, directed by Dougal Wilson, breaks this Sunday, during Dancing on Ice. The 60” TV ad (above) was directed by Dougal Wilson and breaks this Sunday during Dancing on Ice.
It’s supported by a big outdoor campaign from 23rd January, including special sites like Imax and The Clapham Colossus (that's the really, really long poster site by Clapham Junction), as well as press, online and the biggest retail campaign the brand’s ever done. The Lurpak rainbow will be very hard to miss. Sites will look a bit like this:
Arla Foods have even stuck the rainbow all over their HQ.
Look for Lurpak Lightest in your local supermarket!
(Lots of press executions also to follow.)
retro mobile
Dannie Stewart proving that going back-to-basics with the iphone is the way forward.
Retro handset for all mobile phones – http://amzn.to/As76rB
make it count - more work
We blogged earlier about our new 'Make it Count' campaign for Nike. This is the year to step up and Make it Count. To celebrate Nike has launched a campaign which sees top UK athletes make their pledges for the forthcoming year, whilst inspiring people to be part of the movement and make their own pledges under the hashtag #makeitcount. Here's some more stuff.
Above are the print executions.
Here's how they're looking in situ:
And here's how it looks in the windows at NikeTown:
And inside Niketown:
If you go into Niketown Oxford Street you can make your own pledge, have your photo taken and turned into a visual in the style of the ads above.
A series of more personal portraits of the athletes capturing them at their most intense moment of training will be featured in an exhibition housed in Nike’s exclusive 1948 space from 18th January. Here are examples of those portraits:
new Nike campaign: how will you #makeitcount in 2012?
If you commute in London you may have seen yesterday's Nike cover-wrap on the Metro (above). This was part of our new campaign 'Make it count'.
January 2012 marks the beginning of a very important year. Not just for the cream of the sporting crop but for everyone. This is the year to step up and Make it Count. To celebrate Nike has launched a campaign which sees top UK athletes make their pledges for the forthcoming year, whilst inspiring people to be part of the movement and make their own pledges under the hashtag #makeitcount.
The above the line campaign showcases elite British Nike athletes through black and white action portraits while the athletes’ own handwriting brings to life their personal pledge. The athlete’s twitter handles sit on the execution along with the Make It Count hashtag to encourage online participation. Photographed by top photographer Adam Hinton, the campaign features action portraits in posters and online whilst a series of more personal portraits of the athletes capturing them at their most intense moment of training will be featured in an exhibition housed in Nike’s exclusive 1948 space in January. The exhibition will be open to the public from 18th January.
Photographer Adam Hinton explains, “We wanted to show the sheer hard work and determination these athletes put into the sports they love. To be at the top of their game requires enormous amounts of blood, sweat and tears and they train hard, pushing themselves to the limit to get there.”
Wieden + Kennedy named 'most viral' agency of 2011
Wieden + Kennedy tops the list of 'most viral' creative agencies in 2011, according to Ad Age's round up of the most-viewed videos in social media in 2011. Spots for Old Spice and Chrysler by W+K Portland racked up over 190 million views, more than twice as much as the next agency.
W+K Amsterdam also made it into the top ten, at number nine, with 29.5 million views for Heineken and Nike spots.
Wieden + Kennedy scoops ITV's 2011 Ad of the Year
It's a big thumbs up from W+K's Freddie Powell and Helen Foulder at the news that our Cravendale 'Cats with Thumbs' spot was voted number one best TV ad of 2011 by viewers of ITV, the UK's biggest commercial TV channel. ITV's top 20 ads of the year were featured on TV a couple of nights ago in a show called Ad of the Year. It has to be admitted that Freddie and Helen, who were interviewed for the show as representatives of the Cravendale team, do look slightly sheepish about being made to appear on prime time TV wearing giant furry cat gauntlets. But for the rest of us that moment above is TELLY GOLD!
Here's the extract from the show featuring the top of the poppermost Cravendale spot.
Some people find the Cravendale ad a bit scary, but I have to say I personally don't find the prospect of world domination by polydactyl cats nearly as unnerving as the luminous teeth of the man below. I couldn't pay any attention to what he was saying in the clip because I was distracted by his fluorescent chompers.
Also in the top twenty ads of the year were two more Wieden + Kennedy spots. At number 13, from W+K Portland, Old Spice's 'The man your man could smell like'. Apparently, according to the celebrity lady interviewed below, this causes 'an actual physical reaction when you watch it'. Mind-boggling.
And at number 11, from W+K Amsterdam, Heineken's 'The entrance'. Fantastic suggestion from the actress interviewed that a follow-up ad should be set in Coronation Street's Rover's Return pub.
Well done to all involved in making these ads and big congrats to our clients. And many thanks for your votes, ITV viewers.
carols and bin bags
Couple of mentions for us in year end round-ups. Our Choir of You Christmas message made AdWeek's top ten (above). And our festive bin bags made it to PSFK's top five list of best packaging ideas, (below).
W+K goes Off the Grid for Honda
To support the launch of the 2012 Honda Civic, Wieden + Kennedy London has created a unique 360º video experience that lets viewers venture into the unknown. Inspired by the Street View experience, ‘Off the Grid’ is an interactive film that explores incredible environments.
The Civic design team threw out what they knew and started afresh, exploring every path. Off the Grid reflects how rewarding a journey into the unknown can be.The experience takes users to places they’d never get a chance to see otherwise, or lets them experience familiar locations in an entirely new way. From a previously unexplored Alaskan ice cave to an underwater art museum where growing reef means the sculptures won’t be visible in a few months’ time.
From the afternoon of December 19th, Off the Grid will be live at www.youtube.com/hondacivicUK
Find out more about the locations and filming at http://hondaoffthegriduk.posterous.com/
W+K worked with Partizan and film director Michael Geoghegan to capture the stunning imagery, TTX for the filming and yellowBird for the 360º player.
Off the Grid is the final of three interactive experiences Wieden + Kennedy London have created to support ‘The Great Unknown’ pan-European marketing campaign. Like this latest experience, the web film ‘Happy Dog’ and HTML5 game ‘The Experiment’ each relayed part of the journey the Honda engineers undertook- how they got to the final design of the Civic and the lessons learned along the way.
The first phase broke online with the launch of a destination hub on YouTube www.youtube.com/hondacivicUK.This phase introduced the campaign idea and was car-specific: the content relates to the various improvements and enhancements of the Civic. The Civic launch television spots will air in January 2012.
W+K London's 2011 in review
I don’t go to many ‘industry’ get-togethers, but when I do I’m always struck by the relentless positivity of people in this business. Even when Soho’s burning, there are sten guns in Shoreditch and hungry wolves are running wild in the streets, the happy folk of adland talk about what a great year they’ve had, how business is booming and how they’ve never been busier, ha ha. But not so much this year. Most of the people I’ve spoken to over Christmas drinks admitted that 2011 was a tough year and that 2012 looks like being a slog too. People are tired. ‘Roll on Christmas and a few days off,’ seems to be the popular sentiment. And to be honest, here at W+K we too had a tough year in 2011. After a number of years of steady and even rapid growth, 2011 saw the agency contract as a result of economic factors and the parting of ways with Nokia, which had been our largest client. Of course, we’re still optimistic here at W2O and we’re hoping for a prosperous 2012. We recognise that we’ll all have to work hard next year to achieve that success.
In the meantime, here’s a summary of the year that was 2011 for Wieden + Kennedy London.
Creative highlights
Our ‘The Milk Matters’ campaign for Cravendale launched with ‘Cats with thumbs’. This was named one of the top ten ads of 2011 by Adweek and nominated for campaign of the year by ITV and Campaign magazine.
The thing that really made this campaign special was the integration of TV and social media, with Bertrum Thumbcat facebooking, tweeting and generally getting his polydactyl paws all over the internet.
The ‘Milk Matters’ campaign continued with ‘Milk me Brian’, a spot that asked the question, ‘Who first thought to milk a cow?’
The latest execution in the ‘Good food deserves Lurpak’ campaign was called ‘Kitchen Odyssey’. This suggested that even the humble omelette could make for an epic meal if done properly. (Properly, like with Lurpak.)
The TV ad was supported by posters celebrating the greatness of simple food and a range of on-pack foils following the theme.
There were a few interesting things for Honda this year. We launched the Honda Jazz across Europe with the ‘This Unpredictable Life’ TV campaign.
The campaign also included an innovative mobile app that enabled you to interact live with the TV ad.
And we did our first ever Motorshow stand for Honda at the Frankfurt show.
Most recently we launched the Honda Experiment HTML 5 game, which has been getting lots of positive buzz online and was named FWA site of the month.
Our Kaiser Chiefs bespoke album creation thing turned the concept of an album on its head and allowed fans to create their own version of the Chiefs’ new LP ‘The Future is Medieval’ and promote and sell their version. It was named ‘Best artist promotion’ of 2011 at BT Digital Music Awards.
Kaiser Chiefs The Future Is Medieval Case History from Wieden + Kennedy London on Vimeo.
Following on from ‘Dot’, the record-breaking world’s smallest ever stop frame animation, we created for Nokia ‘Gulp’, the world’s largest ever stop frame animation, entirely shot on a Nokia N8.
You can see how it was all done here.
Our campaign to support The Guardian’s Book Season contained lots of fun and thought-provoking elements, with the Big Book Swap at its heart.
The campaign even made it onto Russian TV.
Our campaign for soft drink brand Nestea rolled out globally.
Wales Wants Piers was an innovative campaign that used social media to get the people of Wales to create a proper holiday for one man (and his girlfriend).
We wanted to help shift entrenched perceptions of Wales by acting in a different, more progressive way. This campaign aimed to open up the conversation about Wales by giving the people of Wales and lovers of Wales a platform to talk about the stuff that they do or love best.
More info here.
Loads of work done on Nike this year and a ton more in production now for 2012.
Awards
Yeah, yeah, awards, blah, blah, etc. But we entered them and won some, so here they are.
- 5 x golds at BTAA (more than any other agency, er, I think)
- Nike Write The Future topped the Creativity League Table as most awarded campaign of 2011 (including Cannes Grand Prix + 2 gold lions)
- Webbys Agency Of The Year 2011
- Blades Digital Agency Of The Year 2011
- Creative Review Agency Of The Year 2011
- Marketing Week / Engage – runner-up Agency of the Year 2011
- APG Awards 2011 – gold, silver and special award
- Campaign BIG awards – 6 silvers
New biz wins
2011 was a tough year for new business. There wasn’t much around and what there was, was harder than ever to bring in. For the first year in a long time we lost more pitches than we won. (Must try harder in 2012.) But we’re very proud of the ones we did convert. We won the business for mobile network Three.co.uk earlier this year. We also picked up the Lurpak global account. This one was particularly sweet: we lost out in the pitch a couple of years ago, so it was nice to have the client come back to us, based on our work for Lurpak in the UK, and ask us if we’d extend that relationship.
And we’ve just picked up the US account for Kraft’s gum brand Stride. This will run out of WK London and will be our first work for Kraft.
Setbacks
It was not an easy year. After a turbulent time in which they faced unprecedented competitive challenges and went through massive upheavals, we parted company with our largest client, Nokia. There’s probably a book to be written about that whole story. We did some great work with them, sometimes, but we just didn’t seem to be able to implement the across-the-board reinvention and relaunch that the Nokia brand needed. We wish all our friends at Nokia the very best for 2012 and hope that they settle with an agency partner to do the work that this brand deserves.
As a result of parting with Nokia, we had to lay off a significant number of people. That was as tough and shocking as redundancies are at any company, and it perhaps felt even more difficult at somewhere as tight-knit as W+K.
The Guardian is another client that’s been through well-publicised commercial challenges. Like Nokia, they have seen many recent changes of structure and personnel in a time when technology is causing huge upheaval for their business. One result of this was a brand relaunch project that they decided to brief out. We held on after the first pitch, but a second pitch was called immediately after the first and we lost out that time round. That was a blow, I must admit.
Optimism
2011 is pretty much done. It wasn’t totally an ‘annus horribilis’ but it certainly wasn’t an ‘annus mirabilis’. Economic forecasts suggest that, despite the Olympics, 2012 will be another commercially challenging year. But difficult times are the times in which brands rethink what they’re doing and look to agencies for fresh ideas and new approaches from which to gain competitive advantage. We just need to make sure we are smart and responsive so as to take advantage of these opportunities when they arise. So, here’s to a happy Christmas and a prosperous 2012.
Have a good holiday break. See you back here again in the new year, rested, refreshed and ready for whatever 2012 holds, with an optimistic attitude, of course.
Wieden + Kennedy names four new partners
Here's the story, as reported by AdWeek:
Wieden + Kennedy, well-known for its careful selection in adding new partners, named four additional ones at the independent Portland, Ore.-based agency: Portland managing director Tom Blessington, London managing director Neil Christie, Portland executive creative director Mark Fitzloff, and global interactive ECD Iain Tait.
In a statement, agency co-founder Dan Wieden said, “We are very picky, slow, and deliberate when it comes to adding new partners. The truth is we have an abundance of talent throughout the network with new opportunities popping up quite regularly.”
The last two W + K execs to be given a stake in the shop was in 2009. At that time, Tony Davidson and Kim Papworth, executive creative directors in the agency’s London office, were the first new partners in 13 years.
The agency’s other partners are Wieden, COO Dave Luhr, ECD Susan Hoffman, W + K Entertainment executive producer Bill Davenport and global ECD John Jay.
Among the new partners, Portland managing director Blessington joined W + K in 1990 after working at Hill Holliday, Boston. Since then he has run the Nike accounts at W + K Portland and Amsterdam. He was group account director for Miller Brewing Co. and Coca-Cola in Portland and was the first managing director of W + K, New York. Blessington spent four years at TBWA\Chiat\Day before returning to W + K in 2006, when he assumed his current role.
London managing director Neil Christie began his career at ABM before moving on to Yellowhammer and Bartle Bogle Hegarty. He then spent eight years at TBWA, where he ran accounts like Nissan and Cadbury before he became client services director and then managing director. Christie joined W + K in London as managing director in 2004.
In Portland, ecd Mark Fitzloff joined the agency in 1999, working as a copywriter on the Alta Vista, Nike, and Coca-Cola accounts. He was appointed creative director on Old Spice, with the mandate to revitalize the brand, and has been associated with the brand’s prize-winning work in recent years. He was made an ecd in 2008.
Ian Tait joined W + K as global interactive ecd in 2010. He was previously a founder and creative director at London digital agency Poke, where he worked on accounts like American Express, Orange, and Yahoo. An initial initiative of Tait’s after joining W + K was working on the Old Spice “Response Campaign,” where Isaiah Mustafa, featured in the "Man Your Man Could Smell Like" pitch, responded to fans in a social media campaign.
Wieden + Kennedy wins Stride gum account
Great news! We have been awarded STRIDE gum’s advertising business in the US. Our responsibilities will cover the U.S. market and include digital and social media activity. The account will be led from Wieden + Kennedy’s London office. (That's us.)
Stephanie Wilkes, vice president US Confections at Kraft Foods, which owns Stride, says she is eager to partner with us. “(W+K's) understanding of the STRIDE brand and gum category is exceptional and we’re eager to see its creative be taken to the next level of success.”
For our part, we’re absolutely delighted to have the opportunity to work with Kraft Foods on the STRIDE business. And we’re looking forward to doing some great work together. We were gutted not to win the pitch for their Trident gum account, but we're chuffed about this appointment.
STRIDE, The Ridiculously Long Lasting Gum was launched in 2006 to give gum chewers a fun, unique and long lasting chewing experience. STRIDE comes in 11 flavors – Winterblue, Spearmint, Sweet Peppermint, Forever Fruit, Sweet Berry, Sweet Cinnamon, Nonstop Mint, Uber Bubble, Stride Spark and Whitemint. To find out more about STRIDE gum, its friends and what the brand is up to, visit: www.facebook.com/stride-gum
It's a nice bit of new biz news to see out the old year.
the man who gave us Santa
Mat Kramer writes:
If you’re like me, Christmas only begins when you see the Coca-Cola trucks ('holidays are coming') advert on TV. That’s when you knew you could start getting excited. It’s the subject of many a thrilled status update.
I’ve always loved that image on the back of the truck. It epitomises everything I think Santa should be. Big white beard, fat, red suit, rosy cheeks. Some of you may or may not know that we can thank The Coca-Cola Company for our modern day image of the big guy and credit one man, Haddon Sundblom.
Before Sundblom's 1930s depictions of the man, Santa was tall, thin and even green. Sundblom set to work, drawing on the work of the real inventor of modern Christmas, poet Clement Clark Moore, whose 1822 poem A Visit From St. Nicholas - better known today as ‘The Night Before Christmas’ - described Santa as follows:
His eyes — how they twinkled! His dimples: how merry,
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry;
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow
Soon, arguably the most famous advertising icon in history was born, as Sundblom spent the next 35 years painting the Father Christmas Coca-Cola still uses today.
After his services were no longer required at Coca-Cola, Sundblom took his association with the Santa character to Playboy. Below is his 1972 commission, one of only a few painted covers that the magazine ever published. He died four years later.
This week the 'Inspire Wall' in W+K's offices pays homage to Sundblom on Santa’s 80th Anniversary. Courtesy of our very own Mat Kramer.
You can read more about Haddon here:
Here is a picture of our aforementioned 'Inspire Wall'.
Christmas party
The agency Christmas party was last night. I'll just share this one image.
introducing Alphalabs
As part of the Nokia Lumia 800 launch, Wieden + Kennedy, Nokia and onedotzero collaborated to create alphalabs.cc, an experiment that merges technology and the arts.
This project started with the objective of getting Nokia’s new Windows Phone devices into the hands of developers. In the light of the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft, the mix of existing and potential developers for the new platform proved to be diverse, which created an exciting opportunity. Rather than simply sending the phones out to people, we identified one thing that we could help to encourage: creativity.
As an agency, creativity is what we stand for, and creative coding is something that we believe in and aspire to. So our goal became to create an initiative in which Nokia and Microsoft combine forces with the digital arts organisation onedotzero to encourage creative coding on their platform. The ingredients so far are a great new device, the potential in the Windows Phone 7 APIs, an inspiring setting, some amazing examples created by inspiring people, a website to showcase creative explorations, and an event and a competition to launch it.
So on Saturday 26th November we invited a selection of hand-picked artists and developers to attend the launch event at the onedotzero_adventures in motion festival at London’s BFI.
The event kicked off with Keith Varty, Head of EDX, Nokia UK/EIRE and Will Coleman, Mobile Product Manager at Microsoft UK, who introduced the new Nokia Lumia 800 and talked about why they were excited by the new possibilities that the partnership created. Will Coleman then led the crowd through the exciting creative, design, and technical opportunities that the combination of the Nokia Lumia 800 handset and the WP7 platform has created.
Shane Walter, co-founder of onedotzero, gave an inspirational talk about code as a medium for creativity, and showcased some exciting examples of this in practice. In order to highlight the diversity within the audience he asked everyone in the room to introduce themselves to the person next to them - everyone got carried away chatting to each other, which in turn demonstrated the interesting potential collaborations in the room.
Shane then introduced three experiments that had been created by selected teams of artists and developers for the purpose of inspiring the audience with real working demonstrations. The work showcases the creative possibilities of the platform and the phone, and was impressively developed in just two weeks.
First, Stuart Warren-Hill and Team Holotronica showcased Vequencer, the world’s first real time, multi-device audio visual sequencer. Stuart is one half of the ground breaking act Hexstatic who specialise in audio and visual experiences. He collaborated with a team of developers; Martin Caine, Simon Jackson and Matt Lacey, who are all part of the WP7 and XNA user groups and had worked day and night to create this impressive app.
Next, Max Hattler - a progressive moving image artist from London who worked with IndieSkies, an exciting young games development start up based in Derby, to create Kaleidobooth. Kaleidobooth is a kaleidoscopic camera inspired by children's toys and psychedelia. It uses the Lumia 800’s 8MP camera and microphone, as well as the Motion API to enable the user to create and interact with the visuals.
The last demo was Redshift, created by leading digital design studio Field.io and developers Treehouse Dev. Redshift is a prototype for a racing game through music videos. Although in its early stages, this demo is a visually stunning experience supported by a brilliant soundtrack from record label Numbers.
These experiments clearly demonstrated the exciting possibilities of the platform and how quickly experiments can be created.
To finish the day, Shane introduced the launch competition for alphalabs.cc, which is designed to encourage artists and developers with cash prize incentives to share the experimental apps that they create on the WP7 platform. Ten runners up will each win £500, while the winner will receive £5000.
After the event all attendees were given their free Nokia Lumia 800 as well as a complimentary pass to one of the onedotzero_adventures in motion festival screenings which went on through into the evening.
The competition is open for submissions until 09.01.2012, and will be judged by representatives of Nokia and onedotzero.
In order to enter the competition, entrants simply document their experiments, and submit them to alphalabs.cc after creating a profile in the site. The judges will be looking for prototypes and poof-of-concepts that demonstrate a creative use of the platform. This is about new ideas and experimentation and not necessarily fully finished apps.
For more information and updates on the competition please visit alphalabs.cc.
Attention, sesquipedalianists! W+K launches mobile game for you.
We have created Lexicon Devil for Nokia - a simple, fun and addictive word game that you can play on your Windows phone. The goal is to make the longest word with the eight letter tiles given to you at random. You play against up to 20 other people online. The player with the longest word in the shortest amount of time wins the game. Demonstrate the supremacy of your prodigious vocabulary with expeditiously polysyllabic solutions.
How the gane works:
• Simply drag the letters into the tray to create a word.
• Make the word as long as possible and as quickly as you can.
• You compete against other players online in real time.
• Check your stats to see how you’re doing, what your longest word ever was, how many games you have played and what your average letter count is.
The app has been developed for Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) or higher.
It's available now for free download at the Windows Phone marketplace.
Leanne goes Heston for mince-off
HR's Leanne made a stunningly visual entry to the W+K mince-pie bake-off with her fairy-light enhanced box of home-made festive pies. But despite the high quality of Miss Defrond's presentation, the judges' vote for best pies went to Miss Sophie Bodoh.
new work for Ivory soap
Nice, simple new work for Ivory soap in the U.S. from our chums at W+K Portland.
New work for the Guardian
On Wednesday the Guardian team went on a shoot.
We shot lots and lots of glass.
And via the magic of retouching we made this rather beautiful image.
Which went into this ad, which via the magic of some superb repro looks great in the paper this morning.
Which is to promote the Guardian's exclusive study of the England riots, which starts on Monday and runs for six days.
All shot by the wondeful Jonathan Knowles.
fight winter in new online game for Nike
A new online game for Nike, created by our chums at W+K Portland. You can play it here.
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