What better way to spend St Patrick’s Day than watching England v Ireland at Twickenham with a pint of GUINNESS in hand? Well the rugby mad GUINNESS team here at Synergy certainly can’t think of one! So after another busy RBS 6 Nations tournament, it’s time to look back on our highlights from the GUINNESS Made of More campaign.

It all started back in January when a refreshed team of ambassadors were chosen to bring to life the new GUINNESS Made of More brand positioning.  The four ambassadors were picked to support the brand’s partnership as ‘Official Beer of The RBS 6 Nations’, as well as Official Partners of the home unions, England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The new (and one not so new) faces included Scotland’s Sean Lamont, England full back Ben Foden, Wales centre Jamie Roberts and Jamie Heaslip of Ireland who were all contracted to spearhead an integrated below-the-line campaign for the brand.

Working as part of a cross agency team with Ireland’s WHPR and Cybercom, Synergy co-ordinated the two day launch which included content filming, photography and media interviews. To really get rugby fans across all four home nations roused ahead of the tournament the Cybercom team created a spine tingling video featuring the ambassadors, which has since had over 100,000 views.

Synergy contracted the photographer, Hamish Brown, to create a selection of images that inextricably showed the players’ dynamism and power, also demonstrating that like the GUINNESS product, the brand’s ambassadors are made of something a little bit extra. Whether this is Ben Foden’s lightening fast feet or Jamie Roberts’ powerful charges through the midfield, we wanted to capture each of the ambassador’s individual traits which proves they are made of more.

The Synergy PR team secured national and regional coverage in England, Wales and Scotland across a range of sectors including sport and lifestyle press, online, radio and broadcast, with WHPR generating some great coverage in Ireland.

One of the key objectives of this campaign was to drive international rugby fans to the GUINNESS Facebook pages, and encourage a deeper brand engagement through the ambassadors providing a steady stream of exclusive content from inside their camps. The cross agency team also developed a unique competition for fans from each nation to win the chance to play alongside their hero in the GUINNESS Rugby Challenge at the end of the tournament. More on that later…

Throughout the campaign Synergy activated player and coach appearances including interviews with Wales front row Gethin Jenkins, Scott Lawson and Chris Cusiter of Scotland, as well as England (then interim) coaches Stuart Lancaster and Andy Farrell.

Throughout the championship, GUINNESS ran an off-trade competition whereby one lucky GUINNESS customer could win the chance to have an England legend come to their home and watch the England v Ireland match with their mates, whilst toasting St Patrick’s Day with a few pints of the black stuff! Former England star Andrew Sheridan stepped up to plate, and for our lucky winner Keith Roberts and his friends it was a completely unforgettable day.

Andy’s insight and running commentary throughout the game proved perfect considering the game was so forward driven, with the big man himself proclaiming that “all that passing nonsense is for wimps!” All in all, it was certainly an they will tell their friends about every time they have a pint of GUINNESS at the local pub.

After seven weeks of rugby the final weekend saw Wales aiming for a Grand Slam in Cardiff, but the final curtain was to fall at a sold out Twickenham on St Patrick’s Day, with GUINNESS there to join in with the craic. Thanks to the RFU, the GUINNESS St Patrick’s Day video was shown to over 80,000 England and Ireland fans live at Twickenham, in addition to over 1,000 GUINNESS hats given away to fans in the West Car Park.  All of which added up to the GUINNESS bar have its busiest day at the rugby ever!

With Paddy’s Day behind us, the Synergy team rounded off this year’s RBS 6 Nations with the GUINNESS Rugby Challenge. Winners, plus two friends, were invited to Twickenham Stoop to play rugby alongside our ambassadors, minus Sean Lamont who was gallantly replaced by Scotland’s Jon Barclay. The warm up was taken by England forwards coach, Graham Rowntree and fitness coach Calvin Morris who later went on to referee the touch rugby competition.

By Synergy on March 27th, 2012

Tags: Alcohol, Default, Event management consultants, Guinness, PR, Public relations, RBS 6 Nations, Rugby, Sponsorship, Sport, Synergy, Synopsis, Viral Marketing, YouTube

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Channel-hopping after Chelsea’s extra-time Champions League win over Napoli, I discovered Alien, the 1979 sci-fi horror classic showing on E4 HD.

One of the best genre movies of the past half-century, it still remains a touchstone for well-plotted tension and character-induced claustrophobia. On top of this it also has peerless design credentials, with its brilliant juxtaposition of the organic and the man-made in a dirty, decrepit vision of the future.

Not having been old enough to experience the movie at the cinema, now, in beautiful high definition, I’m confident that this is the best I’ve ever seen the film look. Such a crisp sheen makes it hard to believe that it’s really 33 years since Ridley Scott brought HR Giger’s xenomorph to the big screen, with the express purpose of scaring the bejesus out of cinemagoers everywhere. However, with the series’ original victim, John Hurt, having just received the 2012 BAFTA for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema, I guess it’s not just me that’s feeling old.

Aside from the somewhat diverting fact that man’s worst enemy was rather incongruously sponsored by man’s best friend (Cesar, the dog food-peddling West Highland Terrier), the film left me thinking about how much cinema has changed over the past third of a century – in particular, the way in which we are served and, ultimately, consume film.

With pressure on summer blockbusters’ anabolically-enhanced shoulders to recoup and exceed their production budgets – and thereby justify future investment in an inevitably lucrative sequel, prequel or threequel – the focus that studios put on the relentless media junkets preceding every major release is almost understandable. Any movie needs to wash its face, but these bad boys need to exfoliate, cleanse and moisturise too. The most recent example of this is Disney’s latest megalith, John Carter. Originally entitled John Carter of Mars, heavy focus-grouping saw the execs drop the Martian reference after it was deemed that this might…well…alienate any sci-fi haters out there. This may seem drastic, but given that the film needs to make $250m in order to simply break even, maximising your audience – even if that now includes a few disgruntled/confused rom-com fans – probably makes sense.

In spite of garnering largely inoffensive reviews, the film is already anticipated to end up being one of the biggest box office flops in history, especially considering the incremental $100m Disney spent on its marketing.

Let’s be honest though: the formal studio media push is rather like the tip of the iceberg in a James Cameron film – more or less the last thing people see before the movie’s big sink-or-swim moment…albeit supported by a fuller campaign somewhere beneath the surface. In today’s connected world it’s all about building audience anticipation in the months, even years, before a movie’s release, the bigger the scale, the greater the interest: fan forum gossip, illicit on-set photography, leaked scripts and concept art, inadvertently-revealing IMDB cast lists and, of course, the ubiquitous studio-sanctioned teasers.

I’m actually a big fan of the latter – when done well, that is. The Cloverfield teaser poster was a brilliant example of sizzle before the steak, as mentioned in a previous blog.

The idea of generating excitement by releasing a controlled set of production shots, a cryptic poster, or even a mini trailer is definitely a solid means of maintaining buzz around a long-lead production, and even guaranteeing a portion of its opening weekend gross. Peter Jackson unveiled a collection of on-set videos over a year before the release date of his adaptation of The Hobbit and Christopher Nolan showed the entire first six minutes of The Dark Knight Rises to select IMAX audiences the autumn before its summer opening. Indeed, wrapping multiple elements into a bespoke viral campaign – encompassing both online and offline touchpoints – has seen success for several major releases in the past few years. The Dark Knight was one such triumph, its ‘Why So Serious?’ viral campaign (along with a mesmerising performance from the late Heath Ledger and the bankability of the Batman franchise) making it the fastest movie ever to hit $450m at the US box office. It took less than a month.

Quality input: quality output. My concern is rather more about those films where the studio really hasn’t understood the delicate balance between show and tell, enthusiastically, or often greedily overstepping the line between sating and saturating their perceived audience. Fundamentally, how much information constitutes TMI (too much information)?

Anyone who’s seen the recent set of trailer releases surrounding this summer’s Avengers movie (or Marvel Avengers Assemble as it has been incredulously re-titled in the UK, to avoid any confusion with Steed, Peel, Purdey and pals) is going to be in little doubt over what they’ll be seeing come April: Thor! Hulk! Explosions! Costly CGI! Jeremy Renner with a bow and arrow! An inevitable second instalment! 20 million views in two weeks confirms that this is scheduled to be THE summer blockbuster.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with going into the cinema knowing what you’re going to see, but I still think there’s ground for a little mystery, a few elements of surprise, some opportunity for the film to shift gear. Clearly, there needs to be enough quality and underlying substance from which to draw without simply relying on a well-publicised set-piece, barnstorming one-liner or big, twisty reveal. Being able to view trailers and studio content whenever we want online makes holding something back all that more important. It’s the same story with brands trying to carve out their own piece of the marketing pie, as in some cases there are really only so many quality morsels to go around.

Which brings me inexorably back to the genius of Ridley Scott. His new film, Prometheus, starring the likes of Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace and Idris Elba, is the latest production to get the full viral treatment. Set in 2083, 40 years before Alien, the movie is not a direct prequel but is said by the director to “share Alien DNA” – a comment alone that caused multiple nerdgasms amongst the fanboy community. In the two months after its release, the teaser trailer had over 8 million views on YouTube.

Around the same time, fans were treated to the start of the movie’s creeping online viral activity. The team behind the campaign have opted to mine the rich – and, to date, notoriously murky – history of Weyland Industries, the nefarious organisation at the heart of the Alien canon, where it is known only as ‘the Company’. This has been done via its ‘company website’ – effectively a centralised drip-feed of teaser nuggets for ‘interested investors’.

One of the nicest pieces of content included on the site is an incredibly appropriate tie-in with an existing commercial brand, TED, as we are introduced to the company’s visionary founder, Sir Peter Weyland (played here with villainous ambition by Guy Pearce) at his own TED talk, in the year 2023. Viral rule one: tease but don’t tell.

Whilst this new movie may see Ridley Scott revisiting a universe he helped create, it’s worth pausing a moment to savour the original Alien trailer – a clip that teased before the concept was even formalised: no dialogue, no voice-over, and quite resolutely no alien. There’s not even any background music, unless you count the unsettling noises that crescendo to a dead silence and one of cinema’s most notable tag-lines “In space no one can hear you scream”. Genuinely eery.

The full trailer for Prometheus, went live on 18 March, accruing over 4 million views in just three days…and the viral campaign rolls relentlessly on. Great Scott, it’s going to be a big summer.

By Jonathan Izzard on March 21st, 2012

Tags: Advertising, Film, Sponsorship

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What happened

Remember that shop where you bought your school shoes? The place where you’d patiently sit and have your feet measured at the beginning of each school term? The smell of leather, the nostalgia…

Clarks are turning that perception on its head: ‘that little shoe brand’ has launched a new range, Clarks Originals and is looking to tap into a more fashion savvy teen audience. In its latest campaign, OriginalsLIVE, the brand aims to connect to its new demographic by tapping into the latest new music and giving fans money-can’t-buy experiences.

OriginalsLIVE is Clarks’ platform to showcase their connections, collaborations and very own creations in music and music culture. Every year they champion new ventures, providing unique content and experiences fans won’t find anywhere else.

The 2012 live gig series sees Joy Formidable (currently supporting the Foo Fighters on their US tour) playing unusual locations in Bristol, Manchester and London, with the actual venue not being revealed until 48 hours before.  Tickets are all released via Twitter, Facebook and the brand’s own webpage.

Locations like the Victoria Baths in Manchester, Factory 7 in London and Bridewell Police Station in Bristol have been used on the current tour. The use of unconventional venues further added to the surprise and delight element of the campaign – generating extra buzz in the host cities and online.

Exclusive content from the gigs is all available online along with regular updates from the artists themselves through video blogs and post-gig content.

Why we love it

Changing perceptions about a brand is no mean feat, especially for one that is surrounded by so much nostalgia. Tie-ups with one of London’s last independent record stores, Rough Trade East, and well known up-and-coming artists like Joy Formidable and Trojan Sound System, have added a sense of real credibility to a brand that is seen as reliable and even quaint to many of us.

The results speak for themselves: the brand has over 15,000 followers online and a constant dialogue with their audience through daily updates on Facebook – largely through tapping into Joy Formidable’s existing fan base. The gigs to date have been a resounding success with sell-out shows in Manchester, Bristol and London.

Perceptions don’t change overnight, though, and what’s interesting about Clarks’ approach is that it’s long-term; the campaign is now in year three, with plans already in the pipeline for late 2012 and 2013. This, paired with their collaborative approach with artists – rather than simply ‘badging’ existing gigs – only reinforces a reason for the brand to be there – they are the curator, not the sponsor.

By Oli Richards on March 20th, 2012

Tags: Default, Experiential marketing, Music

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What happened
On the eve of London Fashion Week underwear brand Björn Borg recreated the visual phenomenon of the Northern Lights as part of a Swedish spectacle to showcase its Spring/Summer 2012 collection.

Launching the ‘Björn Borg says Ja! to turning the lights off!’ campaign, Battersea Power Station was transformed into a Scandinavian-inspired winter landscape. In an event that steered clear of the predictable norms of London Fashion Week catwalk shows, the evening was a celebration of the label and wholly embodied the Borg brand’s unique persona.

The unquestionable highlight of the night was the seamless fusion between fashion and technology, which presented itself in the form of a 4D light show on the Thames. A short film created by award-winning director Paris Kain was projected onto a 25 x 50 metre wall of steam that rose from the river. The film merged moving images of the Northern Lights with models revealing the upcoming season’s glow-in-the-dark range of underwear, and clearly delivered the multi-sensory experience promised by Björn Borg prior to the evening.

Why we love it
The evening, far from segregating the catwalk and after-party elements of a brand’s customary London Fashion Week schedule, was a leap forward in the deployment of edgy branding activities pursued by Björn Borg. The brand has identified London as one of its most important expanding markets and a vital area in which to establish itself; and there is no doubting that the performances at Battersea had the level of impact required to drive forward Björn Borg’s international expansion.

Whilst the film projection itself was not the first to use water as a canvas (note the spectacular Nike ‘Explosive Water Projections’ for the launch of Jordan Melo M8 trainers in New York), this was a first for the UK, and raised the bar for fashion labels’ experiential originality during London Fashion Week. Not only did the Thames lightshow create another dimension to the evening, it remained in keeping with the core idea behind the Spring/Summer season’s ‘illuminated’ collection.

For those not able to secure a coveted invite, Björn Borg partnered with MTV for the night and live-streamed the event in seven European countries, helping to generate maximum awareness of the campaign. The visual quality of every aspect of the evening drove forward the brand’s digital presence, which resulted in a record boost for the brand’s Twitter and Facebook pages. Images from the night were also used as a springboard for the launch of Björn Borg’s Pinterest page.

By Fiona Watherston on March 20th, 2012

Tags: Art & Design, Default, Fashion, PR, Synergy Loves, YouTube

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Following the worldwide coverage for Prince Harry’s ‘race’ against Usain Bolt in Jamaica, Tim Crow comments in The Guardian on the multiplier effect for Puma of Bolt’s media visibility.

To read the article, click here

By Synergy on March 7th, 2012

Tags: Press Clipping

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Inside the Games covers the Socialympics event staged by Synergy and Jam during Social Media Week.

Click here to read the article.

By Synergy on March 2nd, 2012

Tags: Press Clipping

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Being ‘called up’ to travel with the Triple Crown was quite a privilege for an intern. Scottish hands haven’t got this close to RBS 6 Nations silverware since 1999, when it was only the 5 Nations.

After a brief (and slightly panicky) journey to Paddington station, I clambered onto the train for a two-hour journey to visit my Celtic brothers in Cardiff. First stop was Media Wales for a photo shoot. The building is in the shadow of the magnificent Millennium Stadium, which makes some setting; one can only imagine what it will be like for the final encounter versus France in the inevitable Grand Slam decider.

It was a massive weekend for sport in Wales, with the Western Mail sports editors bouncing about in the newsroom awaiting the arrival of both the Carling Cup and the Triple Crown. Bringing a smile to some faces of the those journalists that had once dreamt as boys (and girls) of winning this – alongside a Grand Slam – meant for making quite a few people’s day, especially when allowing them to hold it. The Carling Cup was quite a detailed silver ornament which is heavier than it looks; getting to be in the room with both trophies was very satisfying.

Second stop was BBC Wales, which ended up being really eventful. Again, the sports production crews were all rushing around, so a wait in the canteen lead to me tasting some genuine BBC cuisine. It’s up there with that of Engine’s own in-house restaurant; however, even more satisfying was that I got to share pud with broadcaster and ex-Wales player Eddie Butler…who was a top bloke. After discussing Scotland’s shortcomings and Wales’s potential with the man himself, I had to wait in the reception for contact with Lolo (pronounced ‘yolo’), the sports production editor. Talking away to security and reception staff led to a group photo and a tour of the Scrum 5 studio, which is a converted pub!

Various shots and video footage with the RBS ribbons in all their glory ended my day out, but not without another happy customer. The taxi driver on my way back to Cardiff station – after quizzing out of me what was in the mysterious steel case I was carrying – offered me a cab fare for the chance of showing it off to his mates, but all he got was a picture with it. The day ended with a handshake and a nap on the train back to London, after which I safely returned the plate to Synergy at Great Portland Street. Wonderful to see the Welsh passion for sport and the coverage the Trophy got in Saturday’s papers!

By Synergy on March 1st, 2012

Tags: BBC, Celebrity, Default, Football, Media, Public relations, RBS 6 Nations, Rugby, Sponsorship, Synergy

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