We like..Smirnoff Original Nights

Smirnoff's Original Nights is a series of alternative events in London, involving (among other things) a bit of dressing up, plenty of dancing + a lot of drinking. Which is why it's got my attention!

Smirnoff invited London's Promoters to apply for a £10k bursary to host one of four nights in London as part of their Smirnoff Night Vision initiative. They then asked London nightlife experts; Shaun Roberts (Promotions Manager of Fabric), Simone Baird (Social Club Editor at Time Out magazine) and Crispin Dior (Promoter behind Field Day, Adventures in the Beetroot Field) to hand-pick who they considered to be the most exciting and forward-thinking promoters from those who applied.

The chosen four were then given the cash to create an event from scratch on behalf of Smirnoff. And they really do all sound incredibly innovative, unique + exciting.

Normal people like us can win tickets to whichever event takes our fancy by posting a comment on the discussion board for that chosen event. And it looks like it's going down really well with nearly 50k fans on the FB page + big numbers begging for tickets on the discussion boards. Pretty please, Gods of Fun, can I win tickets to the Hothouse Revue event, I've been practising my Lindy-hop like a good girl + everything:

People Are Germs

Bash Studios – Saturday 18th April

Juliette Hughes and Claire Bartolomeo - better known as People are Germs - are hosting a special, one-off party that dreams are made of.

A rollerdisco like no other, party-goers will be able to skate to their hearts’ content whilst enjoying cutting edge live acts Primary1 and Magistrates and DJs The Glimmers, Hot Chip, Foals and Nadia Kasabia.

Taking place in an East London warehouse space, the night will boast flashing disco lights, party-loving people with colours and scenery to make your eyes fizz.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=150223705719&ref=mf

DJ Flicks

The Curzon, Soho – Friday 24th April

The brains behind disco hub DJ History.com present DJ Flicks; a movie and a party rolled into one. Known as much for their web blogging and record digging exploits as their legendary Lowlife parties, Frank Broughton and Bill Brewster will be transforming The Curzon, Soho into disco decadence.

Showing new, rare and unseen films recounting the disco genre in all its guises, the night will morph into a unique club night, connecting one of history’s pioneering DJs to the exciting scenes they inspired. DJ Kenny Carpenter, a one-time resident jock from the much-lauded Studio 54, and modern day instigators Disco Bloodbath will be taking to the decks. With electro don Arthur Baker as host for the evening, films being screened will include ‘The Godfather of Disco’, ‘Pioneers’ and ‘Disco Godfather’.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=62496567524&ref=mf

Hothouse Revue

No. 5 Cavendish Square – Wednesday 29th April

UK festival producers and promoters Ben DeVere and Michael O' Shea are forming The Hothouse Revue, a 1920s night quite possibly bringing more elegance and decadence than the capital has witnessed for 80 years.

Inspired by the heyday of Berlin's Kit Kat club and Harlem's Savoy Ballroom, expect a brazen blur of burlesque, cabaret, swing-jive and lindy-hop, private lamp-lit tables, fine-food, intimate service, race rhythm, gypsy jazz, and all-round sass as Ben and Mike take over the grand No. 5 Cavendish Square venue. With no detail overlooked, it's the faded glamour of the pre-war roar spruced to a high sheen; so don't forget to dress up before you get down.

http://www.facebook.com/smirnofforiginalnights?ref=ts#/event.php?eid=59732993729&ref=mf

3D Disco… In The Round

Date and venue TBC shortly

The final promoters in the series are from NOVAK Collective, Adam Finley, Elliot Thompson, Andrew Nixon and Keith Daniels, the dynamic team behind the popular AV party 3D DISCO™. Not ones to rest on their laurels, they will be taking the 3D Disco concept they pioneered to a whole new level with 3D DISCO™ In The Round transposing the eye-popping, high-definition club visuals into a completely immersive environment.

The show will be hosted in an IGLOO tent which, as the name suggests, provides Novak with the 360° projection space they will require.

For your chance to win tickets, check out the Smirnoff Original Nights discussion posts http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/smirnofforiginalnights?v=app_2373072738&viewas=741085245

MWorks on blogging in .net this month

A slightly embarrassing large picture of my head, but what can you do?

This is an article I wrote for this month's .net magazine which talks about using bloggers to drive word of mouth for brands, following a campaign we ran that did just that for our client, Creative + Cultural Skills to launch their new site Creative Choices last year.

Visit the 'work' section at our site for more information on the Creative Choices blogger advocacy campaign.

That TMobile ad

I can't work out how I feel about the TMobile flash-mob / ad / act of genuine kindness (ahem)- whatever you wanna call it. So I wrote about it over here.

London's biggest snowball fight TODAY

..at 6.20pm at Trafalgar Square. Follow @snowballfight on Twitter for updates.

I can hardly contain my excitement, this snow is making me crazy.

Panasonic creates CES buzz using influencial bloggers

Panasonic recruited a team of influencial tech bloggers to help create buzz online around the products they showcased at this year's CES.

It's great to see that brands are starting to understand that to encourage conversations online around their brand and products, they need to work with those with the most influence and reach. And it seems like brands are feeling more comfortable about relinquishing a certain amount of control too, which is absolutely essential since it's not about 'controlling' conversations online, but kicking them off, fuelling them, listening and contributing. This is something that brands simply MUST get their heads around, because conversations about them are happening online with or without them - this is explained very well here.

For Panasonic this approach resulted in a strong presence across Twitter, various highly regarded tech blogs, forums and other social media environments across this period.

See the 'work' section of the MWorks site to see an example of a similar campaign we ran for Creative and Cultural Skills last year.

The 2 days of Christmas (baking)

It took 2 days, 2 hours per day, 2 calls to Head Chef Lee, 2 trips to the shops, 2 cutters, 2 kitchens and 1 Christmas jumper..but I got there in the end.

I had been thinking that the best thing to have come out of the ‘economic downturn’ is the trend for craft and in particular, that of making your own Christmas presents! Finally making stuff is cool…and I can make presents for people without looking like a cheapskate. So I was very excited to be making Christmas cookies for our clients this year. And although I definitely agree with the others on the whole ‘it wasn’t as easy as it should’ve been’ thing, it was loads of fun, totally put me in the Christmas spirit and has added to my (tiny) baking repertoire.

I hope those of you to have received some of our colourful cookies enjoyed them. And RIP to the 10 x Reindeer that sadly perished in my kitchen in the name of experimentation.

xKirsty



..ok, so I may have had a little help!

A sign of the times

Balham Woolies this morn :0(

Help Santa keep his job!

I love this, I love this!

Green Santa was originally created by Chief Productions who teamed up with MAKE (part of LOVE Creative) to create a site which educates kids on the climate change issue + encourages them to pledge to do things to help, all in a fun + engaging way. It's based on the premise that Christmas is at risk because global warming is melting Santa's runway preventing him from delivering presents to children.

Children can browse the site to see how global warming is affecting not just Santa, but other characters living in Lapland including Jack Frost, the Snowmen + the wooly mammoths! Children can also make a pledge to help such as turning off the TV when they're not watching it or walking to school + they can even write to Santa himself.

More like this I say!

Paying in spiders?!

With recession looming, why not save money by paying in spiders? PLEASE PLEASE READ THE WHOLE THING HERE

Google Android vs. Mobile Mac OS X

An extremely thorough + very useful article here comparing the 2 operating systems..

We're watching..

Vodafone Live Guy.

I like this. Vodafone has sent 'Live Guy' on a tour of the UK - stopping in a number of cities to give away a Netbook (with built-in mobile broadband) to the first person to find him in each location.

From today he'll be leaving clues as to his whereabouts within his various online environments including his Twitter feed, Facebook, YouTube + Google Picasa. His updates also feed into his blog housed at the campaign microsite, with highlights shown on the homepage.

The campaign is pushing Vodafone's mobile broadband product. And with mobile internet EVERYWHERE right now I like that it creatively demonstrates the benefits in an exciting + innovative way, interacting with people online as well as in the real world.

I WILL find him when he comes to London on the 28th..

Faris at Interesting on MASH-UPS

I'm fast becoming a HUGE Faris fan. At the risk of simplifying the content of this great presentation, Faris talks about mash-ups (the subject du jour in the MWorks office) + how everything is actually a mash-up, including our very selves. There's certainly loads in here for us to steal + combine with the other stuff we steal to create presentations to show our clients to explain why they should let us combine stolen things on their behalf.

This link takes you to a page which is effectively a mash-up of a video of Faris presenting at Interesting NY, with the presentation itself. Haha.

Thanks Faris.

The World in 2010

A great film from Faris Yakob on the world in 2010, explaining how with mobile technology evolving so rapidly, the internet will soon infiltrate every aspect of how we communicate in the real and virtual worlds and how soon there will be no difference between online and offline.

It explores how content will become so vast that people will no longer search, but will rely on recommendations from others within their niche groups..suggesting how brands might react to ensure they get noticed.


2010: Entertainment and Communication from Faris Yakob on Vimeo.

The TEEN commandments for brands wanting to 'do digital'

An interesting and insightful post at Ruby Pseudo which quashes many assumptions about how youth use digital

Surfing the web makes ya brain live longer!

It's true. Says so here.

Mmm mmm

It's Creative Director Lee's birthday today, so we treated him to some home-made fairy cakes. As you can see they went down very well indeed.

Snow-capped chocolate + raspberry cup cakes:

Ingredients
200g self-raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
200g unsalted butter , softened
4 eggs
200g caster sugar
3 tbsp milk
2 tbsp cocoa powder
zest of 1 medium orange
150g punnet raspberries, lightly crushed

For the icing:
1 egg white
4 tbsp orange juice
175g icing sugar
Fruit jellies, hundreds and thousands or whatever you can find, to decorate

Method
Heat oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Line a 12-hole muffin tin with paper muffin cases. Tip the first 8 ingredients into a large bowl and beat with electric whisk until smooth. Fold the crushed raspberries through the batter.

Divide the batter between the cases (they should be about half full) and bake for 20-25 mins or until golden and just firm.

Remove the cupcakes from the oven and allow to cool a little.

To make the icing, put the egg white and orange juice into a heatproof bowl, sift in the icing sugar, then set over a pan of simmering water. Using an electric hand whisk, whisk the icing for 7 mins until it is glossy and stands in soft peaks. Remove from the heat, then whisk for a further 2 mins until it is slightly cooled.

Spoon the icing onto the cakes, swirling it with a knife, then decorate with anything you can find. Leave to set then EAT!

Recipe cobbled together using two from from BBC Good Food

Mobile Youth talks about the future of mobile advertising

...thanks Mobile Youth

Chuck Levine's Mobile Presentation

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: mobile advertising)

The dramatic rise of branded content

To quote a recent article at Contagious, ‘After years of BMW films being just about the only example of branded content that was ever cited, there’s now a flood of sponsored short-form online TV series coming to a site near you’.

..how exciting! Online drama is something we at MWorks have been looking at particularly closely over the past 9 months...and it’s come a long way. The early stuff had low production values + pretty poor acting, but as online drama proves to be extremely successful at engaging with audiences, brands are becoming more confident and are spending more money. As a result we’re seeing big improvements in these areas. The production values seen in Sony Ericsson + Virgin Mobile-sponsored The Secret Life of Sam King have certainly moved on from those of Kate Modern, for example.

We’re also seeing more and more use of digital innovation within the online drama to increase the digital footprint + reach broader audiences. Sam King offers widgets to amplify and reach audiences outside of Bebo, Sofia’s Diary offers mobile updates to maintain interest offline, and the 2nd series of KateModern built Google maps into the storyline to get users interacting in other online environments.

Now the guys behind LonelyGirl15 + Kate Modern have moved things on by breaking away from Bebo to create their own social network http://www.lg15.com/. The LonelyGirl sequel, LG15: The Resistance will launch here in September, driving traffic in by distributing content to the various networks + channels. Definitely one to look out for.

It feels to us like the next step must be to deliver deeper interaction through viewer involvement. Particularly among the ‘yoof’ audience, interaction + engagement will increase when viewers are given some control over the narrative. Some have had a go already – the BBC online drama ‘To be continued’ currently playing out at Switch! offers viewers the chance to write + direct the next episode..nice. It’ll be interesting to see how popular it is.

Yahoo! is doing it slightly differently by asking viewers to text to vote for what happens next in their (cringeworthy) drama, Will Harry Date Sally? It looks like this one is designed to demonstrate to a slightly older audience how easy it is to use the internet on your mobile. It’d certainly be easier to bear on a smaller screen!

But finally, we’re reaaaally excited about Sony’s new crime drama, Coma which takes things to a whole new level. The fact that it stars Michael Madsen + George Hamilton gives it instant credibility and guarantees great acting (for once!). And the dark, comic book production values blow away everything that came before it. The drama which will feature careful Sony product integration, will play out through Sony’s Crackle channel + will be amplified across YouTube + Hula.