Just when we thought Summer had been and gone, the girls at Rock-A-Hula brought everyone a wonderfully vintage beach party with all the fun of the fifties to London’s Bloomsbury Bowling.
Awarded a £10,000 Smirnoff Creative Grant, Rock a Hula! delivered one tiki tidal wave of elvis glasses, palm trees, live music, vintage DJs and cabaret. There was plenty of honolulu rock n roll from the The Bikini Beach Band and a live performance from the cream of rockabilly and rhythm and blues, Jessie & The Orbits.
To see more pics from the night and other Creative Grants events, click here!
Summer may be officially over now, but here at Splendid we’ve been busy seeing the season out with some style and there’s still a ruddy glow on our faces from all the great stuff that has been going on. First out of the blocks, despite wearing high heels, it’s the Dollyrockers with Kangaroos:
How do you rock your Roos?
The Dolly Rockers have teamed up with Kangaroos to launch a dance competition where fans send in their videos to have the chance to win a day with Dolly Rockers. You can enter on www.bebo.com/mykangaROOS or watch the video here:
Next up, something a little fruity from Smirnoff…
Smirnoff Flavours
Five ice sculptures were installed in 5 UK cities on Friday as Smirnoff launched two new flavored vodkas in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh. The huge sculptures were up to 14m long and 3.5m high and took 2 months to build by the world famous Hamilton Ice Sculptors. The new Smirnoff apple and lime flavored vodka is now available in shops and bars across the UK.
The Flavours ice sculptors at work on a replica of the Forth Bridge
The model of Manchester’s Urbis building
The London skyline in ice
And finally, no news roundup would be complete without a pic of David Walliams in denim shorts and ski goggles
Smirnoff Black @ The GQ Man of the Year Awards
Smirnoff Black sponsored this year’s Most Stylish Man award (won by David Walliams) at the GQ Men of the Year Awards – one of the most talked-about and glamorous events in the celebrity calendar. Guests were served sophisticated Smirnoff Black cocktails at the star studded after party from the Smirnoff Black bar.
Perperami is inviting the public to create their next print and TV ad that will be an unapologetic, unexpected and incredibly memorable piece of communication. The overall winner gets $10,000!
If you fancy yourself as a bit of a creative, then you can see the full brief by registering here - http://www.ideabounty.com
Only 500,000 limited edition cricket ball shaped jars of Marston’s Pedigree Marmite have been released to celebrate the summer of cricket. If you’ve been lucky enough to pick one up and fancy earning some extra cash, it might be wise to keep yours in a safe place! 21st century iconic consumables with a distinctly British heritage have never been more desirable and items such as limited edition Marmite often become sought-after and greatly prized collectables. Top TV presenter and collectibles expert Jamie Breese has a wealth of experience turning knick knacks into notes. Here are his top tips for identifying collectables that could be hidden away in your home:
7 – time Tour De France winner Lance Armstrong decided to invite the people of Scotland on a bike ride around Paisley yesterday via Twitter. Armstrong, placed tweets on his page the days leading up to yesterday and then he stopped traffic in the little town just north of Glasgow! He mentioned that he was actually in Glasgow to come and watch U2 and confirmed that he was going to compete in Ireland later in the year. Click the image for the full story:
Last week a rare thing happened as the whole of Splendid vacated their desks and left the office for an entire day (well, rare unless you count weekends and Christmas). The purpose? Our annual agency planning day, this year held at a rather nice hotel in the beautiful but vaguely Hot Fuzz-esque town of Painswick in Gloucestershire.
Suffice it to say that much crucial planning was indeed done, but the real fun came later on as we stretched our creaky limbs and learned some basic circus skills. That’s right, for a few hours Splendid swapped juggling clients for juggling balls, and balancing budgets for balancing on each other. Big thanks to the guys from Circus Space for taking us under their rather limber wings and showing us a thing or two!
Below you can see the result of all our hard training in the form of the Splendid human pyramid (although technically that shape might be more of a trapazoid?)
There was a lot of excitement in the Splendid office this morning as we gathered round the television to watch our very own Alfie on BBC news being interviewed about his new Bus.Tops project. After looking at the picture below of Mr. Dennen in action, we think you’ll agree that he looked rather dashing (did you demand makeup Alfie?). Alfie has also recently had his handsome face plastered across the pages of The Guardian and The Evening Standard among others.
The Bus.Tops project aims to place LCD screens on the roofs of bus stops around London, on which artworks created online by established artists and the public alike will be displayed. A completely city-wide public exhibition for the digital age, if you like. Bus.Tops has reached the shortlist for receiving a grant from Artists Taking The Lead, which is part of London 2012’s Cultural Olympiad. If like us you think Alfie’s idea is brilliant and deserves to be made a reality, you can add your support by commenting here.
We like to keep busy here at Splendid and recent times have been no exception, with a lot of great stuff going on involving everything from credit cards to cocktails and canapés.
First up it’s the return of the Smirnoff Black Screenings:
Smirnoff Black has paired up with Bluebird to celebrate Holywood’s most debonair modern gentlemen actors with weekly film screenings of both classic and modern films throughout the summer. Guests can purchase a ticket for £25 which includes a main course and dessert from the restaurant, a stylish cocktail from the exclusive menu (each cocktail inspired by one of our distinguished Hollywood stars) and a ticket to the film screening.
Film schedule is below:
12th August The Dark Knight starring Christian Bale
19th August The International starring Clive Owen
26th August Catch me if you can starring Leonardo Di Caprio
2nd September Casino Royale starring Daniel Craig
Still with Smirnoff, it’s time for Night Vision:
The last week has seen the latest round of national Night Vision events, and they certainly offered up an original array of entertainment! Circus of Oddities hit Manchester on Friday with Whatever the Weather, the promoters behind the event, bringing together some of the UK’s best musicians, artists and oddballs for a one of a kind extravaganza. Dollop rolled into Nottingham’s Stealth for a night of electro, tech, house and dubstep with the added bonus of vintage dressing up boxes and complimentary one-of-a-kind abstract masks created live on the night by Matthew the Horse. Back in Manchester, the Museum Sessions took over the Manchester Museum for a night of live acoustic music surrounded by all manner of animal specimens from round the world, including a whale skeleton suspended from the ceiling! Finally, Twitgigs merged live music and social networking with a ‘battle of the bands’ at Brick Lane’s Vibe bar where punters and fans all over the world were able to interact via a live Twitter feed projected onto the venue’s wall. And all that despite the best attempts of the world’s hackers to bring down Twitter!
Circus of Oddities Dollop Museum Sessions Twitgigs
And finally, onto news of the Escape MasterCard Prepaid Card and the Neon MasterCard Prepaid Card:
We just launched the two highest value prepaid cards to the market led by classic PR and community outreach via social networking. Escape MasterCard Prepaid Card will be aimed at ethnic minorities and subprime groups; Neon MasterCard Prepaid Card will be marketed to 13-18 year olds.
Coverage so far has included the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mail and Marketing plus we’ve got anticipated coverage coming in from Woman’s Own, Essentials and Reader’s Digest amongst many others.
A highlight has been producing 4 different videos targeting very different markets that act as a ’how to guide’. These are being used online and we’re just about to start radio activity with Choice FM and Sunrise radio.
We’re getting very excited here at Splendid because tomorrow night is the Twitgigs Experiment; a truly unique, interactive, entirely Twitter sourced, live music event.
It’s organised by up and coming music blogger and avid Twitterer, Nisha Lakhani, who’s making waves in the London music blogging circuit. Nisha has been awarded a £2,000 bursary by Smirnoff Night Vision for her original nightlife concept happening at Vibe Bar on Brick Lane and is supported by ‘Essay Like Nephew’, ‘Seal Cub Clubbing Club’ and Mike Dignam who have all been sourced to take part in the music clash via Twitter. Each of the artists appearing on the night has also provided an untitled track which the Twitter public will name on the night.
Limited tickets can be purchased on the door at £5, but to avoid queues and disappointment, might be an idea to get your tickets in advance from www.twitgigs.eventbrite.com
Follow Nisha, Twitgigs, Essay Like Nephew, Seal Cub Clubbing Club and Mike Dignam here:
A haggis recipe was published in an English book almost two hundred years before any evidence of the dish existed in Scotland, a historian has claimed. Not only are the Dutch and Japanese claiming that they invented Golf instead of the Scots, but now it is being shown that the culinarily challenged English created Haggis!
Historian Catherine Brown said she found references to the dish inside a 1615 book called ‘The English Hus-Wife’. The title would pre-date Robert Burns’ poem ‘To A Haggis’ (which brought fame to the delicacy) by at least 171 years. Former world champion haggis maker Robert Patrick however insisted: “Nobody’s going to believe it.”
‘Popular in England’
Ms Brown said the book by Gervase Markham indicated haggis was first eaten in England and subsequently popularised by the Scots. The first mention she could find of Scottish haggis was in 1747. She said: “It was popular in England until the middle of the 18th Century. Whatever happened in that period, the English decided they didn’t like it and the Scots decided they did. “We had Robert Burns come along who saw in it a very practical dish using up the odds and ends and making something good out of them. “Obviously the English turned up their noses at it and ate their roast beef, and the Scots for 350 years have been making it their own.”
‘Scottish product’
Mr Patrick said the idea haggis originated in England was akin to claims by the Dutch and Chinese to have invented golf.
He added: “Anything that’s to do with Scotland, everybody wants to get a part of.”We’ve nurtured the thing for all these years, we’ve developed it, so I think very much it is a Scottish product.
