Extra Salt & Sauce

As part of our work in the community we try to come up with smart thinking to help local enterprise.

One such thought we had was to support the Leith Festival, the badly behaved cousin of The Edinburgh Fringe.

The festival runs at the beginning of June every year and has suffered from a lack of profile. So to help generate a bit more publicity we’ve decided to twin Leith with the mother of all carnival cities

We produced a sign, stuck it up at the entrance to Leith, invited representatives from both Rio and Leith to attend, summoned a collection of journalists and Aye Caramba we’re now twinned.

For those interested in seeing the latest addition to Leith’s forest of signage you can find it at the corner of Pilrig Street and the Walk.

Viva Leith.

Photograph © Ryan McGoverne

The Agency was the main sponsor of the Film Strand of Leith Festival (www.leithfestival.com) this year. As part of this, we set up and ran a Short Film Competition which culminated last Friday night in an Awards presentation to the winners.

We had 9 finalists and we decided to award two prizes on the night. First prize went to David Hutchinson, a local Leith man who submitted “Carousel”. We also awarded a special prize to Callum Bird Neilson, a local 10 year old who put together “Star Wars IV – A New Morning”.

But many thanks to all the budding film producers who took part and made the evening such a great success.

We were also delighted to introduce Jason Stone of David Reviews (www.davidreviews.com) to the Festival this year as a guest speaker. Jason spoke initially about short film-making in general and then proceeded to take the audience on a retrospective journey through the last year’s most recognisable ads.

He was accompanied on stage for this by a Panel comprising of Simon Mallinson of MTP, Gerry Farrell of The Leith Agency and Rory Rooney, Director - and a very interesting Q&A session ensued between Jason, the Panel and the audience.

The evening continued into the “wee small hours” on the top deck of Cruz and a good night was had by all – at least that’s how it felt the next morning!

The very first Taste of Edinburgh took place this weekend and Stripe managed the entire marketing campaign in Scotland, so it gives us great pride to say it was a tremendous and successful event.

All the hard work was worth it as we have an overwhelmed and extremely happy client heading back down south.

Visitor numbers saw a staggering 20,000 people attend the event over four days - 5,000 more than anticipated figure. 85% of the exhibitors have already re-booked for next year and the Council, VisitScotland and EventScotland partners could not be happier.

Taste of Edinburgh is officially the most successful Taste launch in the history of Tastes.

The Stripe team pulled off a fantastic VIP party on Thursday evening with 700 VIPs descending on the meadows and not being put off by a little bit of rain...which thankfully only lasted 45mins and the sun shone for the majority of the weekend.

Stripes responsibilities at the event included looking after the 15 Edinburgh restaurants, some top guest chefs including Antony Worrall Thompson and Jean-Christophe Novelli and making sure all the media (over 40 journalists in 4 days) in attendance were happy.

Few brands that we work on generate the depth of genuine affection that is enjoyed by IRN-BRU.

And in these days of Web 2.0 and UGC, that affection manifests itself in all sorts of interesting ways.

Here are a couple of recent favourites. The first one shows that it does the job for our Aussie friends.

And here's a funny piece of opportunism from the IRN-BRU hunters.

Finally the IRN-BRU community on frappr is worth a look. Lots of people across the world, particularly the States, united by their love of the brand.

Here's an extended edit of the IRN-BRU Goth Holiday ad, with loads of extra footage of the Goths trying to drink IRN-BRU on the Revolution. It's a case of extreme G-Forces 1, Goths nil.

The actors in the commercial, one of whom is a genuine Goth, have been really good sports and we've given them extra bits and pieces to show their friends and post on their Myspace pages. One of them had posted their casting session on YouTube. Here it is.

A somewhat belated post to confirm that the Blonde website is up and running. Blonde is a full service digital agency and a sister agency of Leith within Cello Group. Blonde is currently collaborating with Leith for clients such as Grolsch, Scottish Executive, First Scotrail, Velux, Coors Light, Sol and Standard Life.

I managed to trick my way onto the invite list for the preview show for the Edinburgh Art College end of year show a couple of years back. And have delighted in attending since.

This year’s exhibition features a surprising quantity of urban photography (industrial buildings, lampposts, depressed looking people in down at heel garments), some lovely theatrical costumes, the usual mix of impractical looking scraps from the fashion students and some pretty run of the mill painting.

Having written it off so sweepingly, I gather that our Mr Farrell (whose trademark green Hibs jacket could be seen haunting the corridors) was pretty impressed by the animation and some of the TV. Which I had skipped in favour of the jewellery. (A typical girl.)

And I did see some very lovely illustrations / paintings from a chap called Kristian Evju. Well worth a look in my humble opinion. If exotic names are an indication of anything, he should go far.

Here's our new TV commercial for Strathmore Spring.

Strathmore is an A G Barr brand, and this is clearly very different to anything we've done for IRN-BRU.

The ad was written by Mark Davies and Mikey Kinlan and directed by Martin Wedderburn of MTP. Post production was done by Smoke & Mirrors.

We shot the ad in a disused warehouse in Govan, Glasgow and it features the ace Belgian double dutch crew DDF. Here is a bit more of DDF in competitive action .

The music for the ad is by Scottish musicians Martyn Bennett. and Martin Low. The track is called Spree and is used with the kind permission of Martyn Bennett's wife (Martyn died in 2005).

There's another ad in this campaign which should be completed in the next couple of weeks. Watch this space.

Who are Red Bee Media?

The reason I ask is that yet again they finish 2nd to us in a league table of the most highly rated agencies in the UK. 6 months ago they were snapping at our heels and they're still there buzzing around.

The league table is compiled by davidreviews.com - "the UK's most foremost adwatch site"* and is based on the quality of ads produced by agencies across the UK (we're in Edinburgh, not London)

So I dug around and discovered that they're the in-house agency at the BBC (Red Bee, geddit) and do all those groovy idents - including that great Radio 2 ad featuring a host of musical legends.

It feels good to know that an agency like ours can share a podium with the vast creative and production muscle of the beeb.


*Campaign (mag read by ad folk)

My trips to Waverley station a couple of weeks back (to take a train, I hasten to add. I’m not a spotter…) were much brightened by the fact that two of our recent campaigns were occupying pole position on the ultravision sites above the main station concourse.

To the left (just above WHSmith) we had our brilliantly successful campaign for s1jobs.com, entreating passers-by to post their CV on the s1jobs database. (Feel free. You never know what might happen..?)

And to the right, above Boots and the baguette shop, we had the third execution in the series of posters launching parclife, a new housing brand in Edinburgh, named, designed and now promoted by ours truly. Looking gloriously sunny amidst the early morning station gloom.

To say it was the icing on the cake when the s1jobs animation appeared on the screen that runs the news headlines alongside the train times, might make you worry for me. But it was 7:30 in the morning and it did brighten my day.

Passing through again yesterday, I’m sorry to say that the s1 campaign has had its moment in the sun at the station for now. But you can still catch the parclife campaign. Enquiries to their website are going great guns as far as we can tell. Feel free to boost the traffic figures by clicking here.

On the hunt for visionary insight into what will be bugging the youth of tomorrow, I came across a lovely little bit of film put together by MTV Asia by the three billion project (3 billion people in the world today aged under 25. A not insignificant target audience!).

The video offers up 36 facts about the majority of these 3 billion currently residing in Asia. Neatly put together (and conscientiously packed with sources), the soundtrack is as entertaining as the content.

My favourite stat suggested that 45% of young Japanese women said they were in love. Only 30% of young Japanese men said the same.

The Water of Leith path runs from, surprise surprise, Leith to just down the road from the Blonde office. How convenient is that? It runs alongside the river on what used to be a railway line. It makes for fast, easy and safe cycling twixt Leith and Blonde and is helping me to save about £1,500 a year in taxi fares up and down the hill.

Lovely Hamish has just spent a month with the planning department and penned this before he left for the South of France. (I didn't pay him to do it, honest!)

It’s been 40 years since Jimi Hendrix posed this question to us students. These days, we’re warned, it’s the favourite enquiry of graduate employers. That’s why almost everyone I know approaching their last years at uni, spends each summer desperately seeking out work experience placements, and that’s why students these days spend the summer months in firms across the country putting files in order, data into spreadsheets and the kettle on.

Not so at The Leith Agency, where I’ve just finished a month’s paid placement. From the moment I was introduced to the planning department I knew that here, things would be different. Maybe it was Clare Falconer’s ready smile, the firmness of Paul’s handshake, or the friendly efficiency of Lizzie and Brie’s greetings. Perhaps it was the warmth of Claire Wood’s hello or the glint in Alan Ainsley’s eye – but it was immediately clear that this was a department that worked hard and played hard.

I’d drunk ten cups of coffee before I made one, and I needed them. I was put to work from the off, making clumsy but welcomed contributions to various projects across the IRN-BRU, Grolsch, Sol and Scottish Executive accounts. I can only assume the agency’s filing system is in perfect order, because no-one asked me to alphabetise anything.

Everyone in the department made time to explain their role to me in detail, and I even got an audience with David ‘the master’ Amers in my final week. By the time Sarah returned from her honeymoon, I was snowed under with work and hell-bent on meeting deadlines. By the time Kenny arrived, I could almost work the printer.

And that taste in my mouth? That, I think, was a genuine taste of what it was like to be a Leith Agency planner, although it could have just been IRN-BRU.

So it seems I really got what I asked for when I enquired about work experience at Leith. Many thanks to everyone for having me, and especially to Ed for taking me on.
Best wishes, Hamish.