The featured items include Lego, Hunter wellington boots and the Amazon Kindle, from John Lewis’ range of  “Top 30 favorite things for Christmas”. If an item is ordered before 7pm, it will be available for collection at the Waitrose store by 2pm the next day. The trial window display will be at the Waitrose store in Brighton until the end of December and could roll out to further stores if its a success.

ASICS installed a 60-foot video wall at the Columbus Circle subway station and challenged passersby to race against Ryan Hall, U.S marathon runner. Luckily nobody was hurt! (go knows how not!)..as people raced against the video of Ryan, and a few people even managed to keep up with his 6ft 10 stride length and 4:46 mile pace. Ryan even turned up to race against himself.

It’s a great way to bring a level of physical interaction with the brand to a subway, a space that is usual pretty subdued. It’s also great to see an innovative idea like this one used as a way to extend the sponsorship beyond the actual race

Starbucks are about to release a new app to activate unique Augmented Reality experiences triggered by their famous red xmas cups. The idea is to find, activate and share all 5 special xmas characters that appear randomly on the red cups.

The new app also happens to showcase special offers and provides an eGifting facility (nice!). While this might not be ground breaking AR, it will create a huge mainstream following, so it will be interesting to seeing how many people download the app and trigger the AR experiences… It has the potential to become the tipping pint for all sorts of future AR campaigns if this can get some solid traction!

For all you readers out there, here’s a sneaky peek of the work…but if you’d like to come in and see for yourself, our door is always open – just give Tanya Gabbitas a call on 020 7387 9888.

Congratulations to all the LPA Futures finalists, we’re already looking forward to next time!

Privileged: because we’d already exhibited last year’s crop of Futures work at Baber Smith and I knew to expect something really exceptional. I’d also had the good fortune to work with one last year’s most promising photographers, Laura Pannack.

Daunted: because out of a crop of 214 entrants, I could help change 5 young photographers’ futures. After whittling the long list down to my top 10, I was asked to join the other judges in groovy Shoreditch to pick the final five Futures entrants.

And what a pleasant afternoon it was – meeting some very nice talented, intelligent people and passionately debating the merits of some fabulous images. You can see my featured role in the proceedings here.

LPA Futures 2011 from Lisa Pritchard Agency on Vimeo.

To top off a perfect afternoon, we toasted the winning photographers with champagne and Ally from LPA asked me if Baber Smith would like to be the first agency to host an exhibition of this year’s Futures. I nearly fell over a strategically placed lighting gantry in my enthusiasm to say ‘yes’ (I blame it on the champagne).

The Futures will be showing in Baber Smith from 15 May to 20 June. If you fancy a peek, call Tanya on 020 7387 9888.

All the talk of the Social Media “revolution” over the last few years appears powerfully prophetic in the light of the role that social media has played in the unrest and regime change that has dominated the news recently.

When the Egyptian and Tunisian governments are actively blocking access to Facebook and Twitter, it’s obvious that they’ve become far more powerful weapons than baseball bats and the odd artfully lobbed rocks ever were.

And when even “sleepy London town”  (as Mick Jagger once referred to it) is inspired to embrace the Parisian student spirit of ’68 to protest against rising fees, you realise how seismically social media has shifted both personal and political action.

But what is it that has turned places where you once merely put up silly photos from the Christmas party and links to funny videos, into entities that have governments quaking in their military boots?

I’d argue that a principal reason is that they’ve brought back a sense of connectedness and collective identity. We know that the old-fashioned concept of community is a thing of the past and the Unions’ power has been battered and eroded over the years. But the advent of social media seems to have allowed people a chance to re-discover a sense that “we’re all in it together” and reminded us that when we choose to exercise our collective will, it’s a mightily potent force.

And when status updates go from “feeling bored : )” to “just brought down a government”, it’s about time we all started taking a bit more care in how we utilise this digital revolutionary that’s sat on our desks, patiently waiting to change the world.

Mark Blanchard, Creative Group Head

Being a bit of a branding enthusiast I was exited to see that Starbucks have just revealed the new rebranding of their logo. It displays them dropping the corporate lettering and giving greater prominence to the ‘Starbucks siren’.

They are yet another brand to follow the current trend of simplifying a brand down to the bare essentials. Just as Kellogg’s and Coca-Cola have proved (above), to distinguish their brand from the countless competitors you have to push the one unique element they own in it’s simplest form – which others can’t copy – the icon.

For years, Coca-cola added extra splashes, fizzies, water drops and extraneous graphics. The new Coke can design oozes with confidence. They acknowledged that we all know the product, so just drink it. In Kellogg’s case, they ditched the product image (a bowl of cereal – which similar supermarket brands could copy), in favour of pushing the iconic cockerel motif.

Starbucks have made a pretty brave move dropping the name completely but they are one of a few major brands with such Worldwide recognition to be able to pull it off. As briefed, it’s definitely less corporate and more consumer friendly.

I wonder who’ll be next?

Adam Ewels
Designer, Baber Smith

On Monday 6th December we held our first (and certainly not the last) Baber Smith bake off, lovingly titled ‘Baker Smith’ (eh, see what we did there…)

Our in-house garden was transformed into a Christmas fête – complete with bubbly, mulled wine tea and of course a mandatory golden doiley or few – and filled with festive cakes hand-baked by our very own Baber Smithians.

The official rules and comms

So did they rise to the occasion, I hear you ponder? You bet they did!

Everyone had been cooking on gas all weekend to bring in something tasty that they hoped would win them first place and the mystery prize. Offerings included such delights as ‘Sid the Snowman’, ‘Cherry Chocolate Storm’, ‘Rasta Christmas Cake’, ‘Gingerbread In Da House’, some ‘Last-minute Gifts’ and a stunning ‘Leftover Pie’ as well as many more delicious treats.

A selection of the treats

With our competetive streaks trailing around the office, the (oven) gloves were well and truly off as our special guest judges Simon Pitkeathley, Cheif executive of Camden Town Unlimited, Frank PR‘s Damon Kelly and advertising guru Martin Smith all tucked in to sample our efforts.

Our fabulous guest judges

And finally, with their waistbands contently expanded, the judges revealed their final scores. Each baker was awarded points on from 0 -5 in three categories; creativity, presentation and taste – skills every good Baber Smithian posesses.

Senior Account Manager Andy Wise devoured the competition with his ‘Gingerbread In Da House’, claiming 1st prize with a unanimous decision from the judges.

First prize for 'Gingerbread In Da House'

Coming in close 2nd and 3rd were Designer Adam Ewels for his new friend ‘Sid the Snowman’ and Senior Art Director Andy Lennard with his conceptual ‘Leftover Pie’ (which shortly after was savagely consumed by the ladies of the office for lunch!)

A huge frosted, sprinkled thank you with a cherry on the top to everyone who got involved to make this event a scrumptious success, especially our fabulous judges.

Baker Smith returns in the new year for another round of all things good and inspiring –  so watch this space.

Until then, have a sweet Christmas everybody.

Sarah_Jean Duggan, sweet-toothed Copywriter

Merry Christmas!

Our clients from American Express joined us for an evening full of tricks, treats, creepy cocktails and spooky surprises.

Encouraged to realise their ghoulish potential with some Halloween fancy dress, everyone really got into the spirit of the night…

…and of course, we lead by example!

The dry ice cauldron was a hit with the witches…

Tarot reader and fortune-teller Lady Rita spooked a few of our guests…

And the finger food buffet was delicious – as long as you steered clear of the, er, fingers.

A big thank you to all the clients that came along and partied, (particularly the ones who stayed late enough to witness Gavin’s fantastic break-dancing!) and to the excellent bar staff at the venue, b bar in Victoria, for helping us make the evening a real scream!

Sarah_Jean Duggan, Copyfrighter