Where the hell is Doug?

You can also interact with him through the Doug Hub on Absolute Radio's site. They finally gave into his demands for his own page and blog.

Absolute Albion Society

We had a great Albion Society on Wednesday evening, with Clive Dickens and Chris Lawson of Absolute Radio.

As regular readers will know, the ‘Society is a forum where we invite entrepreneurs to talk to Albion staff, client and friends about what makes them tick.

Clive and Chris led a fascinating conversation about what motivates them, how they came to takeover Virgin Radio, and gave us some real insight into their back story and their ambitions for Absolute.

Some of the highlights were:

• Clive’s story about deciding to buy Virgin Radio when he accidentally drove past Richard Branson’s Oxfordshire home in January.
• Learning that Clive and his partners had been exploring opportunities in India, or partnerships with Indian companies, for years previously. A far cry from the oversimple ‘the Indians take over another British company’ story that the media tell.
• Chris’s background in online community marketing, whether for charities or Bauer, and the different perspective it gives him on what the Absolute brand needs to be, and how it needs to behave.
• Their simple measure of success: “If we’re still a radio brand in 12 months then we’ve failed”.

“Very energising” is the consensus from the people who were there. The Absolute story continues to build and build. we’re delighted to be part of the journey. We didn’t even mind missing the Keane gig they’d invited us to on the same night!

We’ll post some video highlights of the talk here soon.

That’s good, that’s real good

Our launch campaign for Absolute Radio breaks today.

The brief was to demonstrate their ‘discover real music’ proposition, in a way that stands out enough to instantly establish the new brand in the public’s mind. We also wanted to let people see behind the scenes at Absolute, continuing the ‘open rebranding’ strategy we developed for them.

So we’ve created a campaign that’s more like mini-series than conventional advertising. It centres around Doug, the fictional security guard at One Golden Square, and the self-appointed guardian of real music.

Doug is played by Jordan Prentice, who last week picked up a Loaded Lafta for the brilliant dark comedy In Bruge, in which he stars with Colin Farrell.

We worked in a really collaborative and agile way with production company Hungryman, director Stephen Pearson, and Jordan. Instead of setting out to film just a set number of highly scripted spots, we instead filmed as much as possible while the actors improvised around some pre-planned scenarios. We have also been filming extra online stuff with Bonney & Klein to capture even more content.

This means that we’ve got a load of content. The Guardian say there are “9 ads”, but there’s more. In fact we’re still shooting today and tomorrow. All this will be released onto the YouTube Channel in stages.

We hope the ads shown on TV are funny enough that people will want to go online to see them again. And when they do they’ll be rewarded with alternative versions, and extra content that deepens the characters. Real fans should have a good search around online; there are some hidden surprises out there.

You can see the media schedule for the first weekend here.

Thanks to Steve and Nick who created the idea, and Petrina, Simon, Sarah and Kevin who made it happen.

Is it just a Kiwi thing?

From today's Metro

This week our new work for Air New Zealand breaks online, outdoor and in print. We think we have captured the Kiwi spirit that sets them apart in the airline industry. What really struck us was the huge support we received from not only the marketing team, but people across the business that are still smiling and hugely enthusiastic despite trying times.

One of these people is  B747 Captain, Peter Clulow. He's flown for Air New Zealand for 35 years. When we went looking for someone to hand paint a headline on the largest portrait poster (12.22m wide x 20m high) in London, he was in. However once he arrived from New Zealand and saw the site he had to admit that he though it was 'not that big'. Peter is spending Tuesday and Wednesday (7th & 8th October) on  the end of a rope with a paintbrush and a can of green paint demonstrating a bit of Kiwi can do.

Thanks Peter. Rather more elegant than Jason, Nick or Keith on the end of a rope.

Goodbye Camille

Camille was our 8th full time Albionite, joining as a fresh-faced graduate from St.Martins. She brought a box of tricks and a sharp wit and also made tea that was acceptable for a Frenchy. Camille worked as a designer across all of our clients and could bring a sparkle to just about anything with her illustrative flair. We also liked the way she could put down anyone and get away with it; her parting email “Oh and if we're not friends on The Book yet, let's sort it out. Jason, I'll accept your request this time.” Nice.

As part of Goodbye Camille Week we did a bunch of things including a little party with way too many artificial colors and flavorings. The piñata was also a hit when she eventually hit it.

Good luck Camille. Enjoy your travels. We will miss you greatly.

You can see Camille’s work here. She is available for freelance assignments of the illustrative or design variety. Expensive, but you're worth it.