Mike Fletcher: The Journalist Files

London announces plans for 2013 cycling festival

2012-01-27T09:37:00.001Z

This week saw the announcement of the first mass participation event, to be held in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park after it reopens to the public following the London 2012 Games.
The two-day cycling festival is an ambitious undertaking to kick-start an events legacy for the park and encourage more cycling in London.

On a Saturday in August 2013, a family-fun-free-ride will take around 70,000 participants passed many of the UK capital's famous landmarks.

The following day, an elite race and amateur cycle challenge will comprise a 100-mile route, which is intended to start in the Olympic Park and finish in central London. Some 35,000 riders are expected to take part.

The Olympic Park Legacy Company will also organise a full weekend of wheel-based activities on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park to support the festival of cycling. They will aim to bring local communities together through events, competitions, workshops, music, food and film.

Below is a short video of the press conference to announce this Olympic legacy initiative and to call for an events delivery partner to come forward. If you can't see the video, please click here to access it on YouTube.

London's year as sporting host

2011-12-29T15:13:00.000Z

As 2011 draws to a close, 2012 will truly be a year of sport for the UK capital.

But it's not only the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games that will have sports fans jumping for joy. There's a host of other sporting events planned, many of which will be held at official Olympic venues from January all the way through to Games time on 27 July.

Oympic test events and qualifiers will enable the public to experience sports ranging from gymnastics to diving whilst new fixtures for London include a Grand Sumo tournament, taking place at the Royal Albert Hall from 13-17 June.

The British Swimming Championships will take place at the Olympic Park Aquatic Centre from 3-12 March and a National Lottery Olympic Park Run will test the park's capacity for large crowds on 31 March.

High profile international events returning to London during Olympic year include an NFL clash at Wembley in October and the Heineken Cup Final at Twickenham on 19 May.

Tickets for the London Prepares series of Olympic test events can be purchased from Ticketmaster.

To download a full calendar of sporting activity in London during Olympic year, click here.

London wins bid to host 2017 Athletics World Championships

2011-11-11T17:28:00.001Z

London has been chosen as the host city for the 2017 World Athletics Championships.

The International Association of Athletics Federations selected London ahead of Doha at a bid presentation in Monaco by 16 votes to 10, earlier today (Friday 11 November).

It will be the first time that the World Athletics Championships are to be held in the UK and marks the first major tournament confirmed for the Olympic Stadium post London 2012.

Speaking from Monaco, The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said: "Despite an excellent challenge from Doha, the London team put together a cracking bid which has paid off. With the 2017 championships now in the diary, next summer’s London Games is just the start of a long and active life for our magnificent stadium."

Over the last decade, London has transformed itself to become recognised globally as a leading city for major sporting events. Other successful bids for major sporting events post 2012 include the 2013 UEFA Champions League Final, the 2013 ITU World Championship Series Triathlon Grand Final and the 2015 Canoe Slalom World Championships.

Based on the success of London 2012’s International Inspiration Project, London 2017 has revealed the international legacy programme that will now be launched following the city's successful bid to host the 2017 World Athletics Championships.

LEAP 2017 has been designed to engage two million children in athletics across 17 developing countries over four years.

A huge congratulations to everyone involved with the successful London 2017 bid.

London's sporting legacy is put to the vote this week in Monaco

2011-11-07T10:21:00.002Z

In Monaco, on 11 November, the 27-strong IAAF voting panel will decide between London and Doha as the host city for the 2017 athletics World Championships.

In October, my bosses at London & Partners hosted the evaluation committee of the world governing body for track and field, on a two-day visit to the UK capital to assess our bid to stage this prestigious event.

Whilst in town, IAAF Senior Vice-President, Bob Hersh heaped praise on London's ‘world-class’ stadium. Importantly, he also lauded the city's passion and commitment for hosting a successful World Championships.

Recognising our passion and commitment for staging major sporting events is important for London. The city takes sport seriously. It has been working hard to build a sporting legacy that goes beyond next summer’s Olympic Games and includes a £30million Sporting Legacy Fund to attract grass-roots participation into every bid secured.

London's success stories to date include securing the 2013 Triathlon World Championship Grand Final in Hyde Park and the 2015 Canoe Slalom World Championships, which was the first major event to be confirmed for an Olympic venue after the Games.

Other bids currently on the table and awaiting outcomes include a Track Cycling World Cup in 2014/15, the 2015 Hockey European Championships, the 2016 Swimming European Championships and the Table Tennis World Championships in 2017.

This year, London has hosted the Yonex BWF World Badminton Championships at Wembley Arena and one of the seven-legs of the Triathlon World Championship Series.

Individually, these two events showcased London to a far reaching global fan-base. Combined, they generated more than £5million of economic impact.

London also staged the UEFA Champions League final at Wembley Stadium in May this year. A crowd of 87,695 well behaved football fans from Spain and Manchester created a carnival atmosphere that was supplemented by a week-long Champions Festival in Hyde Park.

According to a report backed by MasterCard, the football match itself was worth around £326million, which included an economic windfall for London of €52million generated through spending in restaurants, bars and at the stadium.

London’s reward for the spectacular success of the Champions League final is to host the event again in 2013. It will be a record seventh time the match has been staged in one venue.

London will also stage the 2013 UEFA Women’s Champions League final and the XXXVII Ordinary UEFA Congress in the days leading up to the final.

The UK capital appeals to the American version of football as well. On Sunday, 23 October, at Wembley Stadium, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers took on the Chicago Bears in the last of a three-season NFL International Series game agreement.

The popularity of American Football in the UK and Europe has rocketed ever since the Giants played the Dolphins in 2007. Over half a million people applied for tickets for each of the subsequent three seasons.

London sees no reason why its association with the NFL should end here and even harbours aspirations to stage a Super Bowl final one day.

Right now though, everyone is focused on this Friday's announcement where, once-again, a committee has to decide upon a host city for a major sporting event.

According to a ‘Global Major Events - 2012 & Beyond’ survey, revealed at SportAccord back in April, a World Athletics Championships was voted the second most popular sporting event to attract consumers into London. The Greatest Show on Earth was, of course, voted top.

Let’s hope, come Friday, there’s two upcoming reasons a new generation of UK athletes can become inspired.

BT British Olympic Ball raises £700,000 for Team GB

2011-10-13T17:11:00.000+01:00

The British Olympic Association (BOA) has confirmed that the 2011 BT British Olympic Ball, which took place last Friday (7th October) at Olympia in Kensington, raised over £700,000 for Team GB, far exceeding the fundraising target for the event.

The star-studded, sell out evening, which I attended as a guest of EC&O Venues, saw more than 2,000 guests from the world of sport and entertainment rubbing shoulders with Olympic legends and Team GB hopefuls in Olympia’s stunning Grand Hall.

In total, the winners of over 140 Olympic medals, including more than 80 gold medals, were present in the room, making it a truly unique and special celebration of British Olympic success.

Among those to walk the glittering gold carpet were three-times cycling Olympic gold medallist Bradley Wiggins, 400m hurdles World Champion Dai Greene, triathlon world number one and two Alistair and Jonathan Brownlee, Olympic rowing legend Sir Steve Redgrave and a host of celebrities including Downtown Abbey’s Dan Stevens, former Spice Girl Melanie Chisholm, model Nell McAndrew and singer Katie Melua.

HRH Princess Anne was guest of honour on the evening. An Olympian herself, the Princess Royal delivered a speech calling on the entire nation to unite in support of the greatest team Britain and Northern Ireland will ever have sent to an Olympic Games.

As part of the evening’s entertainment, guests were treated to performances by Sir Tom Jones and Tinchy Stryder. The event was produced by agency Fireball. The menu was devised by Michelin starred Executive Chef Tom Aikens.

Hosted by Stephen Fry and Miranda Hart, the evening allowed guests the opportunity to bid on once in a lifetime London 2012 hospitality packages donated by Prestige Ticketing, including the chance to watch the finals sessions for track cycling in the Velodrome, swimming in the Aquatics Centre and perhaps the most coveted seats of all: the men’s 100m final.

Andy Hunt, Team GB, Chef de Mission and BOA Chief Executive said: “The 2011 BT British Olympic Ball was bigger and better than ever and we are delighted with the tremendous level of support expressed for Team GB from the 2,200 guests in attendance. Raising nearly three-quarters of a million pounds from this event is a fantastic outcome for Team GB and we are really grateful to everyone who supported and participated in the event.”

London's events legacy revealed at Beyond 2012

2011-09-20T17:46:00.000+01:00

London’s events industry gathered at the BFI IMAX on 19 September to hear an update on legacy plans following the 2012 Olympic Games.

Three speakers representing the Mayor’s office, London & Partners and the Olympic Park Legacy Company briefed 500 delegates about the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park’s event spaces and the continued efforts to pitch for major sporting events beyond 2012, including the World Athletics Championships in 2017.

Clive Little, Director of Events and Programming at the Olympic Park Legacy Company said: “By 2016, we’re aiming to see more than 2,000 events held each year in the Park. The south end will have a real focus on sport and entertainment and include areas such as a 2,000sqm event lawn and possible temporary venue for exhibitions and conferences. In total, there’s potential for spaces of up to 60,000 capacity across the Park.”

Little added that the 3,500-seat Aquatic Centre could be transformed into a dry venue courtesty of rising floors which reduce the depth of water in the pool, and that the Orbit sculpture next to the Stadium could host events for up to 300 people on its viewing platforms.

“In October, we’ll consult with the events sector and ask what they might want to do at the park so people are engaged in the plans,” Little continued. “While we’re still in the strategic planning phase, we can adapt our offer to suit the response.”

The Beyond 2012 event was hosted by Unique Venues of London, London & Partners and the International Special Events Society.

Iain Edmondson, Head of the Major Events Team at London & Partners discussed the capital’s plans to pitch for future sporting events and congresses. Then, Dan Ritterband, Mayor Boris Johnson’s Director of Marketing confirmed that the Mayor’s Office wholeheartedly supports the work being done to bring mayor events into the capial and is working on a funding model to ensure London remains competitive with other nations.

To hear a snippet of Dan Ritterband’s address to delegates at Beyond 2012, click here

Limited edition London: What to expect in 2012

2011-09-20T16:47:00.001+01:00

I was asked recently to write an advertorial for a Spanish consumer travel title on what to expect in the UK capital during 2012.

Seeing as the piece is being translated into Spanish, I thought I'd reproduce it for you here in its original written language form....

It’s a magical time to be in London. As the UK capital prepares to welcome the Greatest Show on Earth in the summer of 2012, the Olympic spirit can already be felt on every corner of every street.

An electric atmosphere of celebration and togetherness is building and London invites you to come and experience the city as you've never seen it before.

Attractions, hotels, bars and restaurants are rolling out the red carpet and visitors are about to discover a host of unique experiences that will only be available in the run up to the London 2012 Games.

From September through to June, London will be awash with festivals, exhibitions and major events that will bring colour, culture and creativity to these famous streets.

Before the world’s elite sportsmen and sportswomen go for gold in the Olympic Stadium, London will first celebrate The Queen’s Jubilee. After the spectacular wedding of her grandson earlier this year, it will be the turn of Her Majesty the Queen to take centre stage as the whole country celebrates 60 years of her reign across a four-day weekend at the beginning of June.

One event that is sure to form a key highlight of the Jubilee celebrations will see The Queen lead a flotilla of 1,000 boats along the River Thames. Fireworks and music from the past six decades will accompany the procession and more than a million people will line the banks of the Thames in celebration as the flotilla sails past.

The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee festivities will continue throughout the year as well, marked by a series of exhibitions and events.

The National Portrait Gallery will stage The Queen: Art and Image from 17 May to 21 October whilst photographs taken by former royal photographer Cecil Beaton will be on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Visitors planning to come to London during January, April or May are also invited to book guided tours of the beautiful and opulent State Rooms at Buckingham Palace whilst The Queen takes her residency at Sandringham and Windsor.

Meanwhile, Shakespeare’s birthday, which falls on 23 April, will be celebrated by a kaleidoscope of 38 international theatre companies staging each one of William Shakespeare’s 38 plays in a different language at the world renowned Globe Theatre.

This series of plays will be the most ambitious multilingual Shakespearean project ever attempted and presents a fantastic opportunity to view Shakespeare in Spanish, at The Globe - an authentic restored theatre from the time of the Bard.

Visitors can embrace the multiculturalism that makes London one of the most diverse and fascinating cities on earth by planning a trip that includes the Chinese New Year celebrations in Trafalgar Square on 29 January. Or why not plan your visit around World Pride 2012, promoting gay and lesbian issues with two weeks of festivities and cultural activities during June and July.

London’s museums and galleries (many of which are free to enter) will also be putting on a show throughout the year.

Not-to-be missed highlights will include Damien Hirst at Tate Modern from April until September, Pablo Picasso’s lifelong connection with Britain explored at Tate Britain from February to 15 July and Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, which runs at the National Gallery until 5 February 2012.

There is no doubt that 2012 will be an Olympic year for London but it also promises to serve up a host of limited edition, once-in-a-lifetime experiences that visitors won’t find anywhere else. The entirity of 2012 in London is sure to be more magical than ever before. So don’t miss out. For more information and to plan a trip, visit www.visitlondon.com

How to win events business during London 2012

2011-09-06T14:55:00.000+01:00

The London 2012 Olympic Games will bring some 100 private sector sponsors, 26 international federations, 205 competing nations, 560 domestic sporting bodies and the world’s media to the UK capital. Not to mention a host of consumer brands looking for an unofficial association with ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ plus a range of local businesses, all eager to harness some of that Olympic spirit to motivate staff and win new business contracts.

With just over 300 days remaining until the Opening Ceremony, a number of venues and agencies have already secured events and hospitality contracts. However, there are many others who still strive for their opportunity to work with an Olympic related client.

Zanine Adams, head of sales and Event Solutions at London & Partners is keen to stress to those who are still searching for London 2012 business opportunities that they should remain focused and proactive.

“Venues should be looking at the bigger picture and away from simply marketing themselves as potential hospitality houses for National Olympic Committees," she says. "We believe there will only be around 60 of these NOC hubs as many countries have decided to adopt a national presence in London and form part of an International House, West African House, Latin American House or Oceania House for example. Agencies and venues need to assess all activation opportunities and be aware that deals will continue to be done right until the last few days of the countdown to the Games.”

To help events businesses consider the full range of opportunities available to them, I have worked with Zanine to compile the following advice:

1) Inspire
Do you have a clear London 2012 business message? Is there a dedicated area on your website providing details of Olympic packages? Ensure you have available itineraries, sensible rates and packages and that they are being marketed to their full capacity both online and offline.

2) Look closer to home
Have you consulted your regular client-base or local businesses? It’s likely that many companies are only starting to consider their Olympic action plan now. Discuss ways in which you can help to entertain their guests or motivate internal staff with or without access to tickets.

3) Partner Up
Is there an associated business which would strengthen your offer? Consider partnering up with a hotel, meetings venue or restaurant or team building company, agency or entertainment supplier and go to market with a complete package.

4) Set your sights
Many international sponsors are planning Wave Programmes that will see them fly guests into the UK capital on three-day rotations. Agencies are therefore in need of incentive and itinerary ideas. Can you offer reception space, dining amenities or transport?

5) Think laterally
Does your venue’s roof terrace provide a stunning media backdrop? Maybe, your out-of-town location would provide a good stop-off lunch point for airport transfers? Just because your venue space has always been used in a particular way, why not do something different and transform that courtyard into a pop-up restaurant or offer a brand gallery space where once sat meetings space.

6) 2012 lasts longer than a fortnight
There are so many fantastic events taking place throughout next year including the Cultural Olympiad, Charles Dickens’ 200th anniversary, the Shakespeare Festival and the four-day Diamond Jubilee. Do you have offers and packages aimed at driving business around these Olympic alternatives?

7) Don’t forget about the Paralympics
What can you offer those brands, sponsors, media and athletes involved with the Paralympic Games? Do you have dedicated Paralympic packages and rates in place? How are you marketing your offer? The Paralympic Games will afford a large amount of business opportunities, some of which will require specialist packages and bespoke offers.

8) Communicate
If you’re not using social media channels to build relationships and promote your offer, you can guarantee that your competitors will be. Now is the time to speak to your supplier network and industry peers. Share knowledge, discuss ideas and form partnerships wherever possible.

9) Stay focused
Lead times have grown shorter and the Olympic Games has always traditionally turned into somewhat of a sprint towards the summer. Now is the time to focus on helping clients to make decisions through consultation and keeping yourselves visible. If decisions are to be left until the last minute, those companies will need to remember you and your offer in a positive light.

10) Keep abreast of developments
There are a number of conferences, exhibitions, websites and magazines whose remit is to help you make the most of the Olympic opportunity. Engage and embrace them all. London & Partners has teamed up with The International Special Events Society and Unique Venues of London to host one such event on 19 September at the BFI IMAX cinema where we shall be discussing London 2012 and Beyond.

The Giants of Badminton

2011-07-14T11:33:00.000+01:00

Two chalk giants had a game of badminton on Primrose Hill on 13 July. Their giant shuttlecock then set off around London to promote the YONEX BWF World Badminton Championships, taking place at Wembley Arena from 8-14 August.

The 50 foot badminton players were created by specialist environmental agency Curb, using natural chalk. Drawing began at 6am and took four hours to complete.

After leaving Primrose Hill, I followed the giant shuttlecock, manoeuvred by humans, weighing over 30kgs and measuring almost 10 feet tall, over to Regent Street in London's West End.

As it travelled from Oxford Circus tube station down towards Piccadilly Circus, I took up a position on the roof of the office block opposite the Omega store to shoot video footage and capture some great shots of one of London's most iconic streets.

This vantage point is sure to feature as a prime broadcast location during London 2012.

The YONEX BWF World Badminton Championships, hosted in Wembley Arena from the 8-14th August, provides an opportunity to see the world’s top Badminton players in the same venue as the 2012 Games a year early.

All my video footage and images from the day can be seen on my dedicated Facebook group for the World Championships. The two viral videos are also embedded below.

London 2012: A V&E How-to guide on Hospitality at the Games

2011-06-30T19:20:00.006+01:00

In the Summer issue of Square Meal Venues & Events I've written an in-depth piece on everything you need to know in order to plan hospitality around the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Below are some key questions answered and a section on five things buyers need to know.

For the full six-page article, jump to page 179 in the digi-mag.

Key London 2012 Hospitality Questions Answered…

What can we expect from the catering at official Prestige hospitality?
We’re told that the food served to corporates and their guests will be high-quality British produce, with an emphasis on provenance and sourcing food from multi-generational providers. Expect this ‘Great British Experience’ to be a big part of the sell – the country will be basking in patriotism after the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. Prestige is currently in the process of appointing catering companies for each location, and promises there won’t be a celebrity chef in sight.

Why is there no hospitality being offered at venues such as Lord’s (archery)?
Any venue with poor sight lines to the action or deemed to have limited group appeal has been withdrawn from offering official hospitality packages.

What about all the fighting and table tennis action happening at ExCeL?
The likelihood is that Prestige Ticketing will come up with packages for the Olympic action at ExCeL as the venue has been told it can’t produce its own. No package details were available at time of press.

Will corporates be able to access the Olympic Park for picnic entertaining during the Games?
It is anticipated that there will be restrictions put in place to prevent access to the Park without an event ticket, but this may simply involve buying day passes. Agencies are also advising clients that restrictions on taking alcohol and food into the Park may also be imposed to protect sponsorship rights holders. That said, Square Meal V&E understands that LOCOG is looking into granting permission to provide non-sponsor-branded food within the Park after complaints in Beijing that the only snack available was McDonald’s.

Which brands are likely to feature heavily on the hospitality circuit?
The Worldwide Olympic Partners signed up for London 2012 are Coca-Cola, Acer, Atos Origin, Dow Chemical Company, GE, McDonald’s, Omega, Panasonic, Procter and Gamble, Samsung and Visa. LOCOG then has seven domestic Tier One Partners - Adidas, BMW, BP, British Airways, BT, EDF and Lloyds TSB. And seven domestic Tier Two Supporters – Adecco, ArcelorMittal, Cadbury, Cisco, Deloitte, Thomas Cook and UPS. With a further 24 domestic Tier Three suppliers and providers and Sainsbury's signed up as the one domestic Tier One Paralympic Games Partner, there is sure to be a host of activity from everyone involved.

Will Olympics hospitality cause a decline in the sale of packages at other sporting events such as Wimbledon?
Ted Walker of hospitality agency Keith Prowse is confident that there will be no impact on hospitality at annual blue riband sporting events. ‘The fact is that we are blessed with a decade of iconic sporting events for which the demand for hospitality will be high. It started with the Ryder Cup at Celtic Manor and will include the Rugby World Cup in 2015 and the Rugby League World Cup in 2013. Clients are allocating their budget to buy into not just London 2012 but the whole decade of sporting excellence in the UK.’

Should companies be worried about how the Bribery Act will impact on their 2012 hospitality plans?
No. Section Nine of the Act makes it clear that corporate hospitality, which seeks to improve the image of a commercial organisation better to present products and services, or establish cordial relations, is an established and important part of doing business. It is not the intention of the Act to criminalise such behaviour.

Things buyers need to know…
1. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) cracked down on black market ticketing at Beijing, with many companies left stunned when they discovered they’d purchased unofficial packages. London 2012 will impose even tighter controls.

2. Prestige Ticketing is using three authorised sales agents in the UK. They are Sportsworld (Tel: 01235 555 844), Keith Prowse (Tel: 020 3137 7420) and IMG (Tel: 020 8233 5854).

3. Re-selling Olympic tickets is illegal and applicants who receive balloted tickets will not be allowed to re-sell them on eBay or as part of unofficial hospitality offerings. Anyone caught illegally trading could be hit with a fine of up to £20,000.

4. When buying packages for team sports such as football, hockey, volleyball and handball, be aware that there is no way of knowing at this stage when your country of choice will compete.

5. A levy placed on Prestige Ticketing hospitality will pay for a Ticketshare scheme, enabling 125,000 school children to experience the Games. A further 50,000 tickets will also be distributed to schools across the UK under the same guidelines and 25,000 tickets will be allocated to other goodwill causes such as Tickets for Troops.

See sold out Olympic sport one year early...

2011-06-23T08:58:00.002+01:00

London will be warming up for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in August by staging the BWF World Badminton Championships and ITU World Championship Series Triathlon.

Both Championship events will form part of an exciting week of international sport, with spectators having the chance to see the Triathlon for free and Badminton for as little as £10.

The BWF World Badminton Championships will take place at Wembley Arena from 8-14 August and the ITU World Championship Series Triathlon will be in Hyde Park on 6 and 7 August.

More than 1.8 million people applied for tickets in the first-round of the 2012 Olympic ticket phase and both Badminton and the Triathlon sold out. Next month however, Londoners and visitors to the UK capital will have the opportunity to see the top athletes from each sport in action, with less than one year to go before they battle it out during London 2012.

Mayor of London, Boris Johnson said: “For these two great international events to be sold out already is glorious testimony to the huge sporting enthusiasm that exists in the capital and throughout the UK. We couldn’t send out a better message to the world's sporting federations that if you want to fill seats, hold your event in London. And I am particularly excited that our world famous Wembley arena is hosting its first ever World Badminton Championship, a perfect dry run for the 2012 Olympic Badminton events."

Held at Wembley Arena (the venue for Badminton and Rhythmic Gymnastics at the London 2012 Games), this will be the third time England has hosted the World Badminton Championships, but only the first time they have been staged in London.

The London leg of the ITU World Championship Series Triathlon will be held for the third time in Hyde Park and feature the world number 1 triathlete, GB’s Alistair Brownlee.
Access for the event, also supported by the Mayor of London and part of UK Sport’s National Lottery funded World Class Events Programme, is free to spectators throughout the weekend.

Iain Edmondson, Head of Major Events at London & Partners added: “The Badminton and the Triathlon world championship events signify key milestones for London as an ever growing sports events destination. Both events feature globally recognised and highly popular sports which have chosen London as host for their world championships. These events not only give us the invaluable opportunity to learn how we can host other major events after 2012 but also give young people in London more chances to be inspired by top class sport.”

For more information on The Yonex BWF World Badminton Championships at Wembley Arena, join my Facebook fan site or visit the official website.

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Nice day for a Royal Wedding...

2011-04-29T18:57:00.008+01:00

Speaking as someone who once strained filter coffee through a pair of stockings belonging to a friend’s wedding outfit, (it seemed a good idea in the absence of a coffee percolator), I wasn’t that concerned with the finer details of Kate Middleton’s dress on her big day.

My take on the Royal Wedding was how London, as a city, would perform, hosting the first major event in a series which, over the next 18 months, will include the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the Olympic Games.

With an estimated two billion worldwide television viewers and one million spectators on the streets of the UK capital, the day went off seamlessly well.

Even the sun shone, despite every weather report predicting rain.

And if that minor miracle wasn’t enough, there was also a ‘Good Service’ reported throughout the day on every London Underground line. I know!

As the world witnessed the wedding guests arriving at Westminster Abbey, I was mingling with the crowds in St James’s Park, taking photos which I hope capture the colour and character of the day.

My base was the London Media Centre at St Ermin’s Hotel.

The four-star hotel next to St James’s Park has just re-opened following a £30m refurbishment and it’s looking really smart…. not as smart as David Beckham in his wedding clobber mind, but well worth checking out nonetheless...

Events and hospitality are aiding economic recovery

2011-04-10T16:52:00.000+01:00

On 10 March, my article on the value of corporate hospitality and events appeared on the centre pages of the Times newspaper. Published in conjunction with Raconteur Media, I am now able to post it here, in its original form, with kind permissions.

If you would like to access the entire supplement with two further articles by me, please click here.

The UK’s events and hospitality industry is a major contributor to the domestic economy. Its tentacles extend into areas of retail, tourism, sport and leisure and its extensive supply chain consists of catering, farming, floristry, logistics, production, venue management, entertainment, staffing, accommodation and many other small-to-medium sized British businesses.

According to a lobbying body called the Business Visits and Events Partnership (BVEP), the core of the sector is worth £36.1billion to the country’s wealth.

The BVEP is chaired by Michael Hirst, OBE. He says: “It’s a vibrant part of the visitor economy but also has an active role in the creative industries, trade development and in encouraging cultural appreciation.”

The conference and business events market on its own contributes £18.8billion. This includes spend at venues and in the wider destination by delegates and organisers before, during and after an event.

Industry association Eventia arrived at this figure after conducting its 2010 UK Events Market Trends Survey. The annual survey is based on data supplied by 403 venues from across the UK. Further key findings show that 94 million people attended an estimated 1.32 million events in 2009 and that hotels currently hold the majority (61 per cent) of all business events in Britain.

The BVEP calculates that, exhibitions, conferences, meetings, corporate hospitality and incentive travel, together form an economic contribution of £30.3billion. The remaining £5.8billion is made up from sports events (£2.3billion), music events (£1.4billion), festivals and cultural events (£1.1billion), plus other outdoor events (£1billion).

All these event types contribute significantly to tourism, creative enterprise, trade and export development, as well as to the exchange of information and knowledge and to community cohesion. By bolting on the hospitality sector’s far reaching services such as restaurants, contract catering, hotels and other accommodation providers, consultancy Oxford Economics estimates that the overall economic impact could be closer to £46billion.

Mike Kershaw, chairman of event services firm the Concerto Group says: “Events are one of the most efficient means of keeping money within the UK economy. Retail spend has maybe a three or four-time multiplier before it leaves the country. But spending money on an event will see transactions multiply along a more extensive and predominantly British supply chain. With 20 per cent VAT on every transaction heading back into government coffers, plus the amount of people being kept in employment, the hospitality and events industry should be championed, when instead it is often thought of as frivolous.”

In an independent study carried out last year on behalf of the British Hospitality Association (BHA) - a trade body, which includes event management within its representation - Oxford Economics determined that the wider hospitality and events industry directly contributes 2.44 million jobs and another 675,000 jobs through multiplier effects along the supply chain. Two-thirds of these multiplier jobs involve the manufacture of food, beverages and tobacco, agriculture and business services.

The BVEP says that there are some 550,000 people employed by more than 25,000 businesses with a core remit to stage or supply events. These businesses include event management agencies, venues, suppliers and destination management companies.
“The sector is resilient and events provide real recreational and motivational opportunities for communities,” says Hirst. “During the recession for example, whilst corporate meetings inevitably fell back in line with lower levels of business activity, attendance at UK festivals, sporting, cultural and music events grew by up to 20 per cent.”

The BHA states that, with the wider total of 2.44 million jobs representing around 8 per cent of total employment, this makes the hospitality economy the UK’s fifth biggest industry in employment terms. It places it ahead of other broad sectors such as financial services, transport and construction, and gives it a similar scale to education.

Like the BVEP, the BHA is also focused on forming closer links with government, in order to achieve a shared goal of sustainable economic growth.

“Given the right framework, there is real opportunity for hospitality economy jobs in Britain to rise to 2.76 million by 2015 and 3.09 million jobs by 2020,” says BHA chief executive Ufi Ibrahim. “Hospitality and events create jobs at local level and impact upon regional regeneration schemes. At a time when the Government’s spending review has lead to redundancies and job losses, here is an industry that really can make a difference.”

At the end of last year, the BHA put forward a partnership proposal to government, which asks for, amongst other things, a permanent cross-cabinet committee for hospitality and tourism.

Ibrahim says: “Our fragmented industry is affected by policy decisions taken across many government departments. By engaging senior cabinet ministers, this will help to ensure that the decisions of individual departments do not hinder David Cameron’s pledge to make Britain one of the top five tourist destinations in the world as well as the industry’s potential contribution to job creation across the UK.”

In June 2010, the opening of the UK capital’s International Convention Centre, the ICC London ExCeL immediately created 1,000 new jobs in this regeneration area of east London.

The venue’s director of conferences and events James Rees anticipates that a further 3,200 local jobs will be created as a knock-on effect of the ICC by the end of this year.

“The build represented a private investment of £165million but the projected economic benefit stands at £1.6billion by the end of 2011,” he says.

Both the ICC London ExCeL and the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in the heart of Westminster work closely with convention bureau Visit London to pitch for large international congresses, which bring delegates to the UK capital from all over the world.

Ernest Vincent, chief executive of the QEII Conference Centre estimates his venue contributes around £200million a year to the visitor economy.

“The role events play in the development of the tourism industry needs much more recognition and encouragement. It can readily be one of the engines to rebalance our national economy,” he says.

But it’s not just purpose -built venues that rely on the full impact of event spend. Visitor attractions, heritage venues, museums, art galleries, stadia and a host of other dual-use facilities all depend heavily on the business of events.

The Concerto Group’s Kershaw says: “Where would London’s museums be without the revenue generated from holding corporate and private events? At the Government’s door with cap-in-hand, that’s where. The business model for hotels doesn’t stack up with beds alone. They all need conference and banqueting business to survive. And I don’t believe there is a single restaurant in London that could exist without hosting corporate dining and events.”

Kershaw’s claims are backed up by Lisa Hatswell, the corporate sales manager of the EDF Energy London Eye and chair of marketing consortium, Unique Venues of London (UVL).

She says: “Our 73 members collectively generated £68million from events held in 2010. With a mixture of charities, free public attractions and heritage sites, many rely on a secondary events revenue stream to maintain their architecturally renowned buildings, grounds or exhibits.”

Kensington Palace, Hampton Court Palace, the Victoria & Albert Museum and ZSL London Zoo are all UVL members.

Charlotte Winship is events manager at Kensington Palace, which is managed by independent charity Historic Royal Palaces. She says: “In hiring venues like ours, clients are providing valuable support to the conservation of our country’s heritage. We receive no government or Crown funding and therefore rely on income derived from visitors, donors and venue hire. All revenue received from venue hire directly contributes to the conservation of Kensington Palace.”

Next year, events and hospitality will play a major role in the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. It’s reassuring to know that not only does Britain already have a gold medal-standard industry, but that its impact is driving the country’s economic recovery as well.

Life's a beach at Rosa's

2010-10-01T15:42:00.005+01:00

London Restaurant Festival gets underway on Monday 4th October. During its two-week stint, there's some 250 restaurants throughout the UK capital offering Festival Menus for as little as £10. To book a festival menu, just visit the LRF website. This week I went along to one of the participating restaurants in Soho to continue my series of Street Level blogs and report on a Thai evening at Rosa's.

Street Level: Life's a beach at Rosa's
The best nights out are often those that produce the unexpected. Catching up with an old friend over Thai food in the heart of Soho was always going to result in stories of surprising and often salacious gossip. What I really didn’t expect however, was to discover some of the best Thai cuisine in London from a restaurant I must have walked past a thousand times and never acknowledged was there.

What’s even more surprising is that Rosa’s doesn’t exactly blend into the Dean Street brickwork. Its bright red frontage is hard to miss when you’re actually looking for it. Even on this cold and rainy evening, in-the-know diners sat outside under the awning, no doubt drinking green teas whilst watching the Old Compton Street characters and chaos unfold.

On opening the bright red door, you half expect a bell overhead to ring akin to an old curiosity shop but instead, you enter a modern Thai family eatery, designed to resemble a Phuket beach hut. Wooden benches upstairs are made for sharing and the wooden wall paneling has interspersed coat hooks or rather, hooks to hang your towel on if this really was a beach hut on a Thai island.

After ushering my guest onto the bench and taking my seat on the wooden stool opposite, we order a bottle of red before I head downstairs to dry myself off after getting caught in the torrential downpour outside. The basement is a darker, more mood-driven bar dining area and the toilets are communal, adding to the rustic ambience Rosa’s sets out to create.

Back upstairs, and I discover we’d been moved to a more intimate wooden booth towards the back of the restaurant. These booths should be requested when booking in order to keep confidences private and to allow greater room to spread out the Thai delicacies as they arrive.

For starters, we shared a mouthwatering deep fried soft shell crab topped with thai herbs, shallots and spicy fresh chilli sauce and a Som Tam papaya salad with prawns. It may have been the beach hut surroundings, but we both opted for more seafood with coconut rice as our main course.

I went for grilled squid, pan fried tiger prawns and scallops stir fried with mixed spices and yellow chilli. My guest ordered a thai chilli seafood mousse, baked in half a butternut squash which, when served, looked more like a tropical cocktail than a main course but tasted divine.

Thailand is known as the ‘Land of Smiles’ and our waiting staff didn’t disappoint, maintaining friendly fast service without interrupting the flow of our conversation.

When we left, the rain outside no longer mattered. We could have been in a tropical monsoon as we’d just dined on Thai seafood which I was more than happy to believe had been line-caught fresh from the pier at the front of our Phuket beach hut.

Rosa’s is running a Festival Menu as part of this year’s London Restaurant Festival.

Street Level: A series of restaurant reviews

2010-09-03T10:36:00.010+01:00

A slight decline in the regularity of blog posts on here can be somewhat explained by the fact that I've been busy blogging for the London Restaurant Festival, which takes place across the UK capital next month.

Part of my role is to post restaurant reviews, which for someone who has never professed to being a food critic, seemed at first a little daunting. Fortunately however, the job doesn't call for an in-depth critique (I'll leave that up to the Evening Standard's Fay Maschler, the festival's creator). I simply have to experience each restaurant and produce a creative write-up from a 'Street Level' perspective, thereby showcasing the restaurant's offer to the public.

I thought I'd share with you three such write-ups, not only as an overdue way to update my blog but also to highly recommend three top London restaurants. I hope you enjoy reading my recommendations and for updates on next month's festival, join the Facebook page or visit the website.

Street level: An invitation to Sam’s place
It’s not often that I venture from zone two for an evening’s dining out experience. But when Sam Harrison, the man who partnered with Rick Stein to open Sam’s Brasserie in Chiswick, invited my guest and I to dinner at the duo’s second eatery in Balham, we headed for the gateway to the south.

Harrison’s has been around since October 2007. On occasion I have spent a lazy Sunday afternoon nursing a bottle of red with Balham friends in its relaxed bar. But I’ve never graduated to the 90-cover restaurant, taken my seat underneath the circular brown lampshades and perused the simple menu of classic brasserie-style dishes with a modern twist – until now.

I should point out here that Sam Harrison didn’t actually join us for dinner. If he had have done, we probably would have tried harder to stifle our giggles when my guest asked our waitress what type of bread we were being offered and received the polite friendly reply ‘brown’. She did redeem herself however by explaining to my australian friend what kind of fish sea bream is and the fact that a poussin is a young chicken, without feeling the need to add the rather gruesome fact that it has to be younger than 28 days at slaughter to be classed as such.

For starters, we opted for the sharing platter but added a side order of chilli and garlic grilled squid because you can always tell the quality of a restaurant’s food by the texture of its squid (it obviously helps to eat a lot of squid at various different restaurants to aid the comparison).

The sharing platter was furnished with morsels of buffalo mozzarella, cheese croquettes, pâté and other butcher’s delights, served with flat bread (we resisted the urge to ask again what type of bread this was although the answer would have been both accurate and just as funny).

I’m pleased to report that the squid was tasty and succulent and went extremely well with a mid-priced Argentinian Malbec. It’s also pleasing to report that tap water was regularly topped up throughout our meal and the service was always friendly, attentive but non-intrusive.

For our main course, I couldn’t resist choosing from the Harrison’s Classics section of the menu. I opted for the aged Scottish rib-eye steak which came beautifully presented on a butcher’s board with fries in a pot and bearnaise sauce in a small pan on the side. To me, this choice was in keeping with the relaxed picking and dipping nature of our meal and the steak was cooked to perfection.

My guest experienced her first taste of english sea bream and enjoyed it. I’m sure though she was eying up the amazing looking cheeseburgers delivered to our adjacent table with envy. She consoled herself by giving in far too quickly when our waitress suggested ordering the hot chocolate fondant for dessert. The 15 minute baking time this pudding takes is well worth it but unfortunately it just wasn’t enough time for either of us to have found enough extra room to fully enjoy it. Full to bursting we were both forced to admit defeat and decided to walk the long way back to the tube, determined to return again another day and finish that goddess among desserts.

Street Level: An evening with Andrew Edmunds
I spend far too much money on eating out. It’s one of the inconvenient pleasures of living in a city with 50 Michelin-starred restaurants and hundreds of secret hideaway eateries just waiting to be discovered and then savoured.

Despite a constant urge to try out new places however, I always find myself returning to one of my favourite Soho establishments, Andrew Edmunds on Lexington Street.

Admittedly, Andrew Edmunds receives most of my custom during the winter months. It’s somewhere familiar to escape the drizzle and swap the falling temperatures for the warm dark glow of intimate candle-lit tables, plain white tablecloths, great British food and an extensive red wine list. I wasn’t entirely convinced therefore that I’d made the right choice when, on one of the warmest days of the summer so far, I reached for the phone and booked a table for two downstairs at this charming gourmet bolt-hole.

Maybe I opted for a table downstairs so we could pretend that the balmy summer’s evening unfolding on the street outside was actually a dark winter’s night as we swapped stories over a naked flame and drank a 2006 mid-priced bottle of Argentinian red.

Actually, the real reason I requested downstairs is because that’s where my preferred table is located (the only restaurant where I actually know which table I prefer). Tonight, table 22, side on to all the other diners so that you’re not distracted by their food choices or over-heard snippets of conversation, was available and ours for three straight hours.

My starter choice was the same starter I always go for at this home away from home diner – Dressed Crab (superb). After our very amiable Kiwi waitress Katy had joked about the hand-written menu and then translated the hieroglyphics, my guest went for Lincolnshire asparagus vinaigrette with thin slices of Pecorino cheese.

For main, I went for the Calasparra risotto with squid, mussels, prawns, clams, chorizo and langoustine whilst my guest plumped for the poached wild sea trout, accompanied by Jersey Royals and a watercress mayonnaise. I had definitely plumped for the more flavoursome dish as my seafood arrived infused with chili and was extremely satisfying with just the right amount of heat. The trout looked a tad boring but I was assured that it tasted very nice.

I rarely go for dessert but was quite happy to sip my expresso whilst my guest pondered long and hard over whether to have the peach and almond tart. With no decision reached and a cursory look round to see that most of our fellow diners had departed as it was approaching 11pm, I requested the bill and inspected the damage.

Our meal for two, with wine, coffee and 12.5% service charge came to a very reasonable £79. It was only after the tab was settled that Katy returned to our table with a slice of peach and almond tart and two forks. “There’s only two slices left and I know you were tempted so you have this one and I’m going to save the final slice as a treat for when I finish my shift,” our waitress said with a smile.

It’s service like that which will keep me returning to Andrew Edmunds all year round and sets London’s restaurants apart, in my view, from those anywhere else in the world.

Street Level: Circus has come to town
It’s easy to walk straight past Circus on Endell Street, Covent Garden, if you’re not paying attention. There’s no big top entrance, or street entertainers juggling or hula hooping outside. In fact, there’s nothing to betray the entertainment that awaits within, only a polite doorman who ensures you have the correct destination and bids you a pleasant evening as you enter a short corridor with a cloakroom at the far end, guarding the main doors to the restaurant and cocktail bar.

Since opening in January 2010, I’ve walked through those main doors on two other occasions. My guest for this particular evening had never seen what lies beyond the cloakroom. Her interest was immediately peaked by the Californian-sounding model attendant who took our coats and led us through to the main dining area with its catwalk showpiece table that doubles up as a performance stage.

Aware that the circus-style performances wouldn’t begin until after 8pm, I encouraged a visit to the bar before we settled down to eat. Circus’ bar cocktail list is designed by Henry Besant and the Worldwide Cocktail Club – the team responsible for the bars at Bungalow 8 and Notting Hill’s The Lonsdale. It’s a short but encyclopedic menu of cocktails from which my companion chose a Kumquat & Almond Caipirinha. Unable to decide, I asked the barman to surprise me with a bourbon-based creation. I already knew my drink would taste amazing however it was created so the requested surprise must have been its bright pink coloration when poured into a martini glass.

For dinner, I had the special of marinated steak in a tiger prawn and chorizo dressing whilst she opted for the cajun sea bass (I would have opted for the highly recommended 24 hour slow roasted beef short ribs if the special hadn’t changed my mind). For starters we shared baby squid and chicken and prawn satay skewers. The Circus menu is Pan-American (just like almost all the staff) and, just as on both my previous visits, the baby squid and steaks are divine perfection.

The first indication that a performer is about to take to the stage is the open kitchen’s shutters going down along with the lights. If you’ve timed your food order correctly this will coincide with the end of each course. If not, then it’s a straight choice between melt-in-the-mouth steak in the dark or an aerialist, performing on a hoop above the catwalk table.

On each of my previous visits the performances have been different so you never know what to expect. On my first mid-week visit, we stayed all night and witnessed the acts grow ever-more burlesque as the evening draws on. This time however was a Friday night and the DJ was playing more to the bar crowd than the diners who wished to talk. So after a hula-hoop girl, a fire-dancer and the aerialist, we settled the bill, saved our vocal chords and made our escape.

Thankfully, with Circus now catering for weekday and weekend brunch menus and quieter mid-week sittings, there are better times to plan a visit to ensure you get the full performance and dining experience in Covent Garden’s unique cabaret restaurant. The popularity of this particular Circus has ensured that it’s not about to leave town any time soon.

Summer Eventia sets new standard in Glasgow

2010-07-12T11:35:00.011+01:00

Over the past eight months, I've been working with Eventia to pull together the speaker programme for their annual conference, aimed at professionals working in the events, destination management, conference and incentive travel sectors.

The Eventia Summer Conference took place at the Glasgow SECC from 4-6 July and, I'm chuffed to say, has been widely hailed as the best of its five-year history. The programme was split into two days, with the economy acting as a major theme for day one and brand communication forming the key trend for day two.

Speakers included Dr Dominic Swords who gave an insightful and relaxed keynote on the current and future economic landscape; Andrew Barke from Google who presented the power of YouTube as a marketing tool for brands and, Claire Smith from the Vancouver Convention Centre who gave a fascinating account of what happened behind the scenes during the Winter Olympics and the lessons businesses should apply to London in 2012 and Glasgow in 2014 during the Olympic and Commonwealth Games.

Every single one of the speakers over the two-days of Summer Eventia performed to the highest standards and I'm exceptionally grateful to all of them for dedicating so much time and energy.

If you missed the 2010 Summer Eventia, next year's conference will be held in Cardiff and is sure to raise its game again in order to beat the standard set by all those involved this year. For highlights of the Glasgow event, check out the video by DRP Group embedded below. Highlights from the 2010 Summer Eventia can also be found on YouTube here or on the Eventia website here.

What I did on St George's Day

2010-04-26T17:19:00.012+01:00

Apparently, it was more by luck than judgement that the inaugural British Inspiration Awards fell on St George’s Day. No matter, as this new set of awards were such a success that an annual event is surely now on the cards and deserves its place in the diary alongside England's Patron Saint.

The brains behind the idea for a set of awards celebrating the best of the UK’s creative, artistic and scientific talent is the UK managing director of Nintendo, David Yarnton and Simon Harvey, managing director of Barrington Harvey Public Relations.

I confess, I’ve been to many an awards ceremony in my time and seen far too many fail to live up to expectations due to poor production, an unprepared host or dire catering. Before walking through the wrought iron gates of the Brewery, I maybe feared the worst, that this event wouldn’t have the pulling power in its first year to attract the people it was looking to celebrate and it could just be a very nice lunch, with lots of ‘sorry they couldn’t be here’ acceptance speeches at one of London’s leading events venues.

I’m glad to say how wrong I was (apart from the bit about a nice lunch. An imaginative menu of blackened salmon, welsh lamb followed by ring cake and huge portions - apparently a trademark of the Brewery’s event catering).

The British Inspiration Awards not only attracted 350 paying guests but it also saw Philip Schofiled, Ant & Dec, Michael Eavis, Elisabeth Murdoch and host Richard Madeley tread the red carpet. Entertainment came from the pipes and drums of the Welsh Guards, hip hop dance troop the Smash Bro’z, the Graffiti Kings and Sheffield indie rockers Reverand and The Makers.

The set and stage was a far higher quality than one would imagine for a debut event, mainly because someone had had the vision to recycle it over two consecutive events (possibly the real reason for the date decider). And if anyone is looking for a professional host, edgier that his onscreen persona and surprisingly funny, then I’d happily recommend Richard Madeley.

As for the winners, well, Philip Schofield collected a design award on behalf of Sir Terence Conran, Matthew Bourne collected his award in person for his contribution to the arts and Ant & Dec presented a special recognition award to Glastonbury festival creator Michael Eavis.

Other winners included Elisabeth Murdoch (Television), Nick Park (Film), Sir George Martin (Music), Alexander McQueen (Fashion), Sir James Dyson (Innovation & Industry), Baroness Susan Greenfield (Science & Technology) and Ian Livingstone (Interactive Entertainment).

Congratulations to everyone involved for an excellent idea in support of some worthwhile charities. I know where I’d like to be celebrating England’s dragon-slayer next year.

Photos by Rick Bronks.

Integrating Social Media into Conferencing & Events

2010-04-21T15:09:00.008+01:00

Last week, I gave an after-lunch talk to marketing and events professionals, hosted by the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre. The feedback was positive so I thought I'd post some of the key insights and tips on a couple of events industry blog sites. The posts have since been tweeted and re-tweeted so many times, I must have struck a positive chord with event planners. So, I've decided to post my talk highlights one more time, here... I hope you find it useful.

My talk went something like this…

I firmly believe that online marketing and communication channels such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and FlickR are enabling event planners, venues and suppliers to develop longer-term interaction with event attendees.

These online tools are allowing us to grow the conference or event beyond the physical and to keep people talking about their experiences and our event content long after the last delegate has left the building.

Social Media is nothing short of a communications revolution. It’s a means to amplify our messaging, build community, gather feedback in real time, ask questions of our audiences, research our markets and gain business referrals from our new online friends and followers.

One-way marketing messages, whereby a newsletter or piece of email marketing is sent out from an email address that says DO NOT REPLY are becoming obsolete. The communications revolution is all about Conversations, User Generated Content and Interacting with the online community.

We can no longer control what is said online by people attending our events so we need to understand how to engage with the conversations that are already happening, build loyalty amongst followers and provide good Social Media Value.

So I’m just going to give you a few tips on how to start thinking about integrating Social Media into your marketing or event strategies.

If you’re not using Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, the best way to understand their benefits is simply to start using them socially. Once you get to grips with the simple mechanics of growing online conversation, such as Hashtags, Fan Pages, Tiny URLs, TwitPics etc, you can then start to see how it can be applied to your every-day business or event planning needs.

When integrating Social Media into Event strategies, consider how it can be used to engage with delegates or attendees at an earlier stage. A lot of exhibitions now use Twitter as a free marketing tool to communicate the latest confirmed speaker, or encourage registration sign-ups. But what about creating user groups on LinkedIn or Facebook and crowd sourcing what topics delegates wish to hear about or allowing them to vote on panelists, or even something as simple as the theme of the gala dinner. By engaging your audience at an earlier stage, you will secure their buy-in and reduce the number of no-shows or drop-outs.

Every event has a website but, by creating multiple event pages across different online streams you’ll be casting your net wider and enhancing your search engine optimization at the same time. This is especially true if you then link your blog, Facebook Fan Page, YouTube Channel and LinkedIn discussion group back to your website.

In the run up to the event, launch Twitter competitions awarding free registration or tickets. A simple way to do this is just to ask people on Twitter to Re-Tweet a chosen message. A winner can be then drawn from the pile of Re-tweets that appear in your @Replies Folder. This is a good way to track the reach of your marketing messages across Twitter and to see who is willing to engage with the event. Maybe you can reward the most loyal advocates in some other way at a later date.

During the event, launch a HashTag on Twitter and encourage people to use it so that attendees and remote watchers can follow what’s happening. Putting a HashTag before a word simply creates a link to a new page. This page then shows the full conversation stream of everyone who has used that chosen HashTag – enabling a simple way to follow a particular conversation subject.

If you then stage an unofficial Tweet up (networking event for people engaged with Twitter), it’s a good way to spread the word of your chosen HashTag and get likely content creators motivated and excited.

Broadcasting the conversations that people are hash-tagging, by running a live stream on a big screen on the main stage at your event, is perhaps a risk too far. Human nature dictates that somebody at some point will publish something offensive. But, why not use smaller screens in seminar rooms to help facilitate real-time Q&A sessions whilst the speaker is presenting?

You’ll find that some audience members will be able to answer the questions before the speaker does. If this is deemed too distracting for the speaker then technology offered by companies such as Crystal Interactive allow audience members to text in questions during the presentation, which are stored and can then be shown on screen and answered during an allotted Q&A slot.

Your aim with Social Media should be, to spread as widely as possible, content generated, either for the event by those directly involved, or by participants, advocates and remote watchers.

There’s so many web-based applications available to allow you to stream video, share speaker presentations, merge all Hash-tagged Tweets into PDF documents, create graphs and charts to measure the Return on the Objective of HashTags, launch user generated photo galleries, broadcast audio and so much more.

If you’re not doing any of these things, just think how much more engaging your events could be – if only you’d invested the time in discovering what free Social Media can do for you.

London Restaurant Festival unveils its plans for 2010

2010-04-13T21:34:00.009+01:00

Plans for the 2010 London Restaurant Festival were unveiled to celebrity chefs, restauranteurs and food critics at The Club at The Ivy this evening (13 April). As this two-week festival is my new Events for London project, I was also in attendance, drinking Mumm champagne in amongst the throngs of foodies and quickly realising that, apart from Ramsay, I wouldn't know a celebrity chef even if he started a food fight.

What I can tell you however, is that The Club at The Ivy is incredibly swanky. Oh and I can also give you the low-down on this, the second outing of an event, created in 2009 by restaurant critic Fay Maschler and her business partner Simon Davis (along with Visit London and Single Market Events).

So, this year’s festival, which runs across the capital from 4-18 October, will be held in partnership with American Express. Festival menus will be rolled out across an anticipated 800 different restaurants across the capital, enabling visitors to dine out for as little as £10.

As well as the Festival Menus initiative, supported by official booking partner toptable.com, five major events were revealed at the launch, planned to run across the fortnight.

Covent Garden’s Piazza will be transformed into The London Restaurant Festival Supplier’s Market and will see a range of famous restaurants showcase their produce, cooking techniques and flair via live demonstrations (you'll also be able to buy stuff).

Returning for a second year and extended into Shoreditch and Soho, The London Restaurant Festival Gourmet Odyssey will see diners travel across the capital to sample a different course from one of three chosen venues. The Merlin Entertainments London Eye will turn one of its pods into a ten-seater ‘pop-up’ restaurant, hosted each night by a celebrated chef. The London Restaurant Festival Big Food Quiz will offer foodie-fanatics a chance to test their knowledge during a three-course meal at a top London eatery. And The London Restaurant Festival Awards will form the grand finale and take place on the 18 October. The awards are exclusively open to participating restaurants and will be largely focused towards highlighting the best Festival Menus of 2010.

According to the organisers, more than 350 restaurants have already pre-registered to take part in the event. To achieve the target of 800, restaurants and chefs are invited to pre-register at www.londonrestaurantfestival.com.

And there you have it. I will no doubt be blogging more updates as and when I know them but if you'd like to follow my London Restaurant Festival Twitter feed, find me at twitter.com/LRF2010

PS - London Restaurant Festival tickets go on sale at the end of June.

Comedians stand-up for Great Ormond Street Hospital

2010-03-17T14:59:00.008Z

On 30 March, the biggest comedy line-up in history is coming to the O2 to raise money for a truly amazing cause, the work of London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Channel 4’s Comedy Gala has seen an all-star cast of comedians volunteer their services for free. Monies raised will help to pay for two new anaesthetic rooms allowing parents to stay with their child right up until they enter the operating theatres.

If you’ve not been able to get a ticket to this one-off gig, it will be televised on Channel 4 over the Easter weekend. In the meantime here’s an exclusive interview with Michael McIntyre to whet the comedy whistle.

What do you do to stay fit?
Just standing up I’m out of breath, which is really unfortunate as when I’m on stage I have one of those mic things on my head where it is right in front of my mouth so you can hear how out of breath I am. It’s no secret.
I have actually got myself a personal trainer now, his name is Matt. I don’t know why I pay him. I do all the work and all he does is count. 1, 2, 3, 4… that’s all he does!
It seems all you need to be able to do to be a personal trainer is count. I could have got my accountant to do it – it would have been cheaper.

What are your top tips for looking and feeling good?
I like to look at the day as two days. You wake up, have three meals and then go back to bed. Then wake up in the afternoon, have three meals and then go back to bed. And that’s how you do it, that is how you become happy and fat.

Have you ever had to stay in hospital? How was it?
I was there when my wife was giving birth but I just sat there in stunned silence.
I was also in hospital myself when I dislocated my shoulder but I don’t remember it. I have been told about it, and apparently I was really arrogant. I was out of it on morphine and all I would talk about was my tour. I don’t remember a thing about it.

What is your advice to children and young people who have health problems?
Oh, no. I can’t give out advice. Not someone like me.

Would you have liked a health website written specifically for teenagers when you were younger?
It would have been lovely. All we had was the little red book under my mother’s bed. It can be dangerous to Google injuries so it’s good to have something like this to trust. You go on some sites and it’s terrifying.

Do you have any other health advice you’d like to share?
I’m not the one to be giving out health advice. I was told that if I exercised I would have loads of energy and look good but that’s not the case. I only still go because I paid in bulk. I exercise and now I look terrible AND feel terrible.

Meet the Market introduces ISES members to event buyers

2010-03-01T17:17:00.009Z

It was a busy few days last week as International Confex got underway at Earls Court. On the show’s first evening, I had the privilege of hosting and playing compere at a ‘Meet the Market’ event, which brought together more than 300 corporate buyers to meet with UK members of the International Special Events Society (ISES).

Meet the Market took place at the recently refurbished Wyndham Grand London hotel. More than 25 ISES UK member companies showcased their services from exhibition stands in the hotel’s new ballroom.

ISES UK members were able to spend the evening networking with client buyers after the trade association teamed up with Confex and Visit London hosted buyer programmes.

During the evening, corporate buyers were entertained by The Globe Girls and two West End theatre performers. Raffle hospitality prizes were donated by Sandown Park Racecourse and Lord’s Cricket Ground. Buyers who visited the ISES member stands were also given a passport stamp, which entered them into a competition to win a bottle of Dom Perignon 2000.

Meet the Market concluded with a discotheque and casino table entertainment supplied by Sharper Solutions.

Watch my video blog from the evening below and to see more photos, courtesy of Simon Lane Photography, click here. If you’re unable to view the video below, find it on YouTube by clicking here.

Brits lose their French appeal

2010-02-17T11:37:00.013Z

Has the main after-party at the Brits become another victim of recessionary times or has designer Bruce French simply run out of ideas?

Last night the Brit Awards celebrated its 30th anniversary at Earls Court with a star-studded ceremony, elaborate set and stage designs and the obligatory rock ‘n’ roll moment, which saw organisers having to plead with the pit full of baying teens to hand back Liam Gallagher’s microphone during commercial break.

But once the cameras stopped rolling and sing-a-long with Robbie was finally over, it was time to head next door for what should have been another year of Tim Burton-esque party theming.

Down the years, Bruce French has produced some spectacular backdrops, which would regularly make it onto the covers of my former magazine RSVP.

In 2005, the Brits celebrated its 25th anniversary with a Silver Jubilee Cockney Street-party, complete with East-end pub, whilst on Valentines Day 2007, revellers partied on Love Street complete with its own Elvis Chapel.

I first heard about his work from those that remember the fully blossomed pink and white trees he once installed at the Brits. So in 2004, when looking for a cover story to launch RSVP, I headed to his two-tier Heaven and Hell themed extravaganza.

Being the 30th anniversary, this year should have been special so I was shocked to discover that Lady Ga Ga was better dressed than the 2010 after-party.

Earls Court’s Brompton Hall looked like...well..it looked liked the Brompton Hall with dodgems, an out-of-place over-sized crazy golf course and a Rockeoke stage inviting wrist-band holders to screech out their favourite song whilst a band tried desperately to keep them in time.

It was achingly bad and budgetary issues aside, I know a hundred different events agencies that could have done a better job. Maybe it’s time that the Brits organisers put this annual party contract out to tender. Let theatre designer Bruce French be remembered for his legendary Brits work and next year, give this after-party contract to the UK’s creative events industry.

Decade of Sport demonstrates a raft of event opportunities in the lead up to 2020

2010-01-29T14:18:00.010Z

More than 200 events industry professionals gathered at Somerset House on Wednesday 27 January for an exclusive opportunity to learn about major sporting events planned for London and the rest of the UK over the next ten years.

Decade of Sport, staged by ISES UK in association with Visit London, was the first major conference to detail opportunities that exist for venues, suppliers and agencies around significant sporting occasions planned and confirmed until 2019. These included the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, a possible FIFA World Cup in 2018, the NFL’s competitive American football matches, ATP Tennis Finals and many more events outlined by the four speakers.

Hosted by me, the conference and subsequent networking event took place in the Embankment Rooms at Somerset House, staged with the assistance of key ISES member companies Fisher Productions, Sound By Design, Thorns, Simon Lane Photography and Leith’s Catering.

Speaking to a packed auditorium, Visit London Director of Business Tourism Tracy Halliwell and 2012 Director Mark Howell updated delegates on London’s plans for 2012. With just over 900 days left until the greatest sporting event on earth comes to the UK capital, both keynote speakers urged delegates to proactively seek out business opportunities and, be talking now to potential clients about a full-range of satellite activity including live sites, fan festivals, media hubs, broadcast points, destination houses, hospitality programmes and auxiliary events.

Following a coffee break, during which delegates could discuss the enormous amount of detailed information they’d just received, Decade of Sport resumed with a session from Iain Edmondson, Senior Projects Manager for Events for London.
Iain provided the lowdown on how this specialist division of Visit London works to attract major events to the capital and some of the ways it can help organisers to unlock the city’s full creative potential in order to stage spectacular stunts such as Robbie Maddison’s death defying back-flip over Tower Bridge to promote Red Bull’s X-Fighter event last year.

Iain concluded his session by describing London’s role in becoming one of the host cities in England’s 2018 FIFA World Cup bid. He was then followed by the bid’s Accommodation and Hospitality Consultant David Hornby, who talked about the national set-up for bringing the FIFA World Cup to UK shores in eight years time.

ISES UK President Zanine Adams says: “Through our collaboration with Visit London and England 2018, we’ve been able to offer ISES member companies true value and provide an afternoon’s worth of invaluable business advice. I am so pleased with how much relevant content we’ve been able to deliver during this event and it’s a strategy we are working hard to maintain for all ISES member activity.”

Jedward tear it up at the NTAs

2010-01-21T18:53:00.009Z

In a month when The O2 has been named the world’s most popular music venue after selling 2.3 million tickets last year, it was only fitting that the celebrity world should descend en masse on the docklands arena for the National Television Awards.

In the days leading up to Wednesday’s showpiece ceremony, all the talk on Twitter was about the X-Factor’s Jedward performing their dubious version of ‘Under Pressure / Ice Ice Baby’ alongside the original Vanilla Ice.

From my vantage point alongside a bevy of celebrity boozers and movers, it looked like a few extra post X-Factor rehearsals have done the twins the world of good (although that may have been the free beer!).

I was going to post just a one-minute highlight from their performance but come on, you know you want to relive the whole shebang! And if you missed it, here’s a chance to catch this instantly forgettable moment of pop history. It’s definitely not one for the O2’s British Music Experience exhibition but it did add to a fun night of celeb spotting and hospitality courtesy of The O2’s Comms team. Enjoy!

A decade to be done with?

2009-11-30T17:14:00.007Z

As we enter into the final month of the Noughties, most events businesses will be glad to see the back of the opening decade of the 21st Century.

For many, it began with the irrational fear that the Millennium Bug would wipe computer systems off the face of the world. It will end with the very real threat that event budgets, purchasing power and creative execution will never be the same again.

In event terms, the Noughties will be remembered as a decade when humans were given the power to stop talking all together. Instead, we could tweet, poke, MSN or Skype. How event management companies adapt and integrate this communication revolution into their face-to-face strategies will determine their success in years to come.

In world affairs, the Noughties introduced us to terms like global warming, tsunami, Jihad and Jedward. At first we were too scared to travel, then we were too green to travel and now we are too cash-strapped to travel.

'Staycation', 'carbon footprint', 'procurement' and 'phoenixing' are all words that event and incentive planners would rather consign to the archives. Instead, these words are now cemented into language by Wikipedia editors and for a while, resulted in pretty decent Scrabbulous scores.

In Milan last week, I chaired a conference round-table discussion between event agencies from France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Portugal. In front of a European audience of around 200 suppliers, venues, agencies and planners, we discussed if the events industry would ever be the same again.

The outcome across Europe, as you may expect, was not wholly positive but, there were some things to look forward to once this decade of death and destruction is done with.

Hardship brings forth collaboration and entrepreneurship so creativity will win out in the end. Client relationships are more important than budgetary spend and so, business will grow more personal as networks grow ever more promiscuous. The economy will recover (the majority forecasting green shoots towards the end of 2010) and reckless bankers will be prevented from ever bringing us to the verge of bankruptcy again. And, despite all the options to the contrary, people across Europe still prefer to do business face-to-face. Besides which, here in the UK we have the Olympic Games to look forward to!

Westfield welcomes the BT Visit London Awards

2009-11-08T13:46:00.012Z

Whilst most of the country were out celebrating the discovery of Guy Fawkes sitting on twenty barrels of gunpowder in a cellar under the Houses of Parliament, London’s tourism and events industry came together at Westfield Shopping Centre to celebrate the 2009 Visit London Awards, sponsored by BT.

Staging an awards ceremony in the heart of the capital’s newest retail centre, with the shops remaining open until mid-way through the awards, was always going to draw a crowd.

But what if guests disappeared during the pre-awards drinks reception to grab a bargain? Had we been asked to don black-tie just so store security could recognise and return us to our seats should the urge to begin our Christmas shopping early grow to strong? And what would have happened if one of the actual shoppers that stopped to peer down on us from the balconies above had suffered a fit of excitement at the mere sight of host Neil Fox, outstanding achievement award winner Tony Hadley or cater Rhubarb’s amazing sticky toffee pudding?

I suspect that, at times, the 700 guests gathered at tables in a basement mezzanine area at the heart of Westfield, probably felt a little exposed to an over excited housewife throwing her La Senza purchase off the balcony in the direction of Foxy.

Heavens forbid, a depressed shopaholic X-Factor fan should have decided that this was the perfect moment to end it all and, in the same final breath, extract revenge for Britain’s Got The Pop Factor….And Possibly A New Celebrity Jesus Christ Soapstar Superstar Strictly on Ice.

Thankfully however, the shoppers on the balcony above simply looked on with mild curiosity as London’s attractions, people and businesses were rewarded for their hard work and dedication.

This was my first visit to Westfield. It’s a truly modern and first-class retail complex and made for a uniquely fitting setting for the annual leisure and business tourism awards. I can’t wait for Westfield Stratford to open closer to my doorstep in 2011.

Congratulations to all the winners of the 2009 Visit London Awards. The full list is outlined below:

Outstanding Achievement Award Sponsored by BT
Tony Hadley, lead singer of Spandau Ballet
Visitor Attraction of the Year Kindly supported by Visa
Gold: National Maritime Museum  Silver: ZSL London Zoo Bronze: Imperial War Museum London
Best Tourism Experience  Sponsored by Smiles of London
Gold: National Maritime Museum for International Year of Astronomy 2009 at the Royal Observatory Greenwich  Silver: Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms  Bronze: BBC Tours
Best Consumer Event of the Year  Sponsored by Cake
Gold: Greenwich+Docklands International Festival Silver: Winter Wonderland  Bronze: Westminster Council for West End Live
Best Corporate Event of the Year  Sponsored by Conference & Incentive Travel
Gold: ExCeL London for The London Summit; Growth, Stability & Jobs  Silver: The Brewery for Glaston-Brewery  Bronze: Maybourne Hotel Group for Event Organisers Party at The Berkeley 6th April 2009
Business Venue of the Year  Sponsored by Confex Group
Gold: ExCeL London  Silver: Natural History Museum  Bronze: Cavendish Conference Venues
Small Hotel/B&B of the Year  Sponsored by SML Marketing & Events
Gold: Bingham  Silver: The Colonnade  Bronze: SACO Holborn/SACO Serviced Apartments
Large Hotel of the Year  Sponsored by OMD
Gold: Grosvenor House, A JW Marriott Hotel  Silver: InterContinental London Park Lane  Bronze: The Athenaeum
Budget Accommodation of the Year Sponsored by visitlondon.com
Gold: Generator Hostel London  Silver: Palmers Lodge Boutique Backpackers  Bronze: Think Apartments Limited
Outstanding Customer Service Award  Sponsored by British Airways
Gold: The Operations team at The Cavendish Hotel London  Silver: The Meetings & Events team at Royal College of Physicians  Bronze: Nicholas Babbs at National Maritime Museum
Sports Tourism Award  Sponsored by BT  
Gold: England and Wales Cricket Board for ICC World Twenty20 England 2009  Silver: Arsenal Football Club, Emirates Stadium for Emirates Cup 2008  Bronze: Chelsea Football Club for Chelsea Football Club Stadium Tours & Museum
Sustainable Tourism Award  Sponsored by Heathrow Express
Gold: Cavendish Conference Venues  Silver: ExCeL London  Bronze: The Cavendish Hotel London
Accessible Tourism Award  Sponsored by OpenLondon
Gold: St Martin-in-the-Fields  Silver: Greenwich+Docklands Festivals  Bronze: The British Postal Museum & Archive
Best Gastronomic Experience  Sponsored by London Restaurant Festival
Gold: Bingham  Silver: Paternoster Chop House  Bronze: Vinopolis
Marketing/PR Campaign of the Year  Sponsored by Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R
Gold: Natural History Museum for Darwin Exhibition  Silver: Historic Royal Palaces: Tower of London and Hampton Court Palaces for Henry 500 - Henry VIII: Dressed to Kill and Henry VIII: Heads and Hearts  Bronze: Westfield for the launch of Westfield London
People's Choice Awards
London Evening Standard's Best Family Fun  Wicked – The Musical
London Evening Standard's Best London for Free Experience  Natural History Museum
Kiss 100's Hottest Music Event  West End Live
Magic 105.4's London Hero  Emma De Souza

Keeping Britain Talking

2009-09-21T16:33:00.012+01:00

Keep Britain Talking is the awareness campaign run by VisitBritain to encourage business in the UK to keep communicating through meetings and events, and also to support the UK meetings industry by holding those events in the UK.

I played my part this week by jumping on a double-decker routemaster bus with the Business Tourism and Event Solutions teams from Visit London.

The purpose of our extreme bus ride was to have a lengthy meeting, lasting from Paddington station to the Birmingham NEC, whilst promoting the new Visit London business branding along the way.

The Global Radio Big Events Bus also served to remind those pointing and taking photos of us as we navigated our way out of London, that there's a host of quirky meeting spaces available to event planners in the capital.

Keep Britain Talking is the campaign theme for National Meetings Week, which runs from 21-27 September. It coincides with the NEC exhibition Event UK so, the bus has another role to fulfill this week as it turns into Visit London's exhibition stand.

During National Meetings Week, key partners and supporters will be getting across the message that the meetings and events industry in Britain is worth more than £22billion. Around 80 million people attend 1.5 million conferences held annually in the UK and business visits and events account for some 5.3million jobs either indirectly or directly.

Check out the video embedded below for more information or go to the Keep Britain Talking website.

London Twestival turns up the tweets

2009-09-11T11:43:00.011+01:00

London Twestival (or @LDNTwestival as it’s more commonly referred to on Twitter) took place last night at Vinopolis (or @vinopolislondon - you get the idea).

The wine attraction near London Bridge in Borough Market, gave over its four main cavernous event spaces so that the tweeting masses could party in aid of ChildLine.

More than 700 Twitter users bought tickets through the micro-blogging website, with all the proceeds going to the UK’s free 24-hour helpline for children in distress or danger.

Everyone involved with the Twestival event gave their time and services free of charge and the result was a party, rich in content and flowing with free booze.

Fresh from their tour supporting U2, The Hours joined a line-up of bands that included Newton Faulkner and Sound of Rum.

For the £15 charitable donation, guests could experience zones dedicated to arts and crafts, face-painting, DJ sets and collaborative story telling. Free drinks all night were supplied by Magners Pear Cider and Barefoot Wine.

Vinopolis is no stranger to hosting bands with the Friendly Fires and Scouting for Girls having played the venue in the recent past. But, this was a conveyor belt of talent performing on its main stage throughout the night.

Vinopolis excelled itself and transformed the overall Twestival backdrop with its stunning in-house lighting capabilities. Twitter folk are, by nature a sociable bunch. This is one event that will be talked about online and offline for a long time to come.

For more of my photos from London Twestival, check out my Facebook Album.

London's warm-up weekend of sport allows two Olympic venues to shine

2009-08-16T14:39:00.021+01:00

A school basketball court is the scene of my most embarrassing moment. I had just scored after coming on as a sub following a time-out and was standing under the basket, my 16-year-old arms aloft, wondering why no-one was celebrating my amazing dribble and dunk from the re-start. The reason no-one was sharing my elation was because the time-out had, in fact been half-time and the teams had swapped ends. I’d been sent into the game unaware and had promptly scored in the wrong basket.

No surprise, that was the end of, not only my basketball career but also any future interest I may have developed in the game. I should add that I went on to achieve at every other school sport but I never returned to a basketball court, until last week.

Game On at the O2 was a four-nation tournament that began on Friday 14 August. It kick-started a Warm-up Weekend of sport that would be the UK capital’s first real test for two 2012 Olympic venues.

Whilst Turkey got the tournament underway with a comfortable 85-69 win over Israel, my Melbourne accomplice was still crying with laughter as we'd swapped the opening game for happy hour on the O2’s entertainment avenue and I’d told her of my embarrassing school tale.

I tried to distract her from recalling my teenage sporting failure by asking how she thought London would measure up as an Olympic host city in 1076 days time.

I was heartened to hear that, compared with her own 2006 Commonwealth Games host city, she believes London already has a much cleaner and more reliable transport infrastructure. I elected not to tell her that the Jubilee Line would be closed from Green Park to Stratford the next day for engineering work, thus significantly reducing the chances of a high-turn out for the tournament’s final day.

The game we’d come to see was Team GB versus Poland. So too, it seemed, had most of London’s youth Polish community and the sounds of ‘Polska Polska’ reverberated around the arena.

We took our seats in amongst a band of passionate Polish supporters who, throughout the game, depending on which team had the ball, kept up their cries of ‘Defense!’ or ‘Polska!’.

When taking free throw penalties, both sets of supporters tried feverishly to put the opposing team off by booing. It proves, in my view, that ‘extra man spectator tactics’ is simply a part and parcel of sports banter worldwide and it only added to, rather than detracted from the overall atmosphere.

It didn’t help the Team GB cause however as their line-up, apparently depleted through injury and unavailability, could only match the Poles until half-time.

A 17-0 run, wrapped around the half-time break, set Poland up for a 70-56 victory. If only my school had put on a half-time show, half as good as the dancers and slam-dunking trampolinist that entertained the crowds at the O2, maybe I’d have paid more attention to what stage of the game we were in all those years ago.

Unsurprisingly, with its wealth of experience for hosting major events, the O2 (or the North Greenwich Arena as it will be referred to during the Olympics) sailed through its 2012 test. It’s already a world-class venue and will prove a fitting arena for 16,500 artistic gymnastic fans and 20,000 basketball supporters in three years time.

The next day it was the turn of Hyde Park to test its Olympic credentials.

One of the Royal Parks of London, Hyde Park is more famous for its Speakers’ Corner than it is for holding large capacity sporting events. In 2012 however, it will stage both the Olympic Triathlon and the 10km Open Water Swim and have grandstand seating for 3,000 spectators.

On Saturday, 15 August 2009, it staged the London leg of the ITU Dextro Energy Triathlon. Participants swam the Serpentine before cycling 40km and running 10km in laps around a park that was created to satisfy Henry VIII’s passion for hunting.

Britain’s 21-year-old Alistair Brownlee was the sporting hero of the day as he stormed to victory, underlining his status as an early gold medal favourite for London 2012. Earlier, in the women’s race, Britain’s Helen Jenkins was edged out into bronze medal place after a dramatic sprint finish.

For me though, one of the most inspiring aspects of the day, on a par with the British triathlon performances, was the aerial broadcast footage, beamed onto big screens and aired by global television networks as it followed the athletes as they made their way around the course.

Hyde Park is a lush green space surrounded by famous London landmarks. On a sunny day, and filmed from either the air or ground, it makes for an amazing setting. When you consider Hyde Park alongside other Olympic backdrops including Horse Guards Parade for the Beach Volleyball and Greenwich Park for Equestrian and Modern Pentathlon, the picture of just how stunning the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games will look on a global television stage begins to really take shape.

There ain't no party like a Smirnoff party

2009-07-13T12:44:00.012+01:00

You know it’s a going to be great party when you have to visit the Fortune Teller to find out the location of the secret garden room and, all of your earlier wardrobe choices, made for a night out at superclub Matter become irrelevant as you rummage around in the dressing up box for a fish-net glove, top hat and a fake mustache.

This was Smirnoff’s U.R The Night party, held at the O2’s nightclub last week. The party’s content was devised and voted on by the fans of its Facebook group, who had been sending in their ideas by the bucket load for a chance to win free tickets.

The results, as you may expect, ranged from the clever to the comical, stopping off at inspired and good-fun idiocy along the way.

After a visit to the dressing up box, guests could either sit in the tattooists chair or head straight to the DIY cocktail bar, where you could create your own Smirnoff-based jumping juice.

A digital graffiti wall enabled guests to upload their masterpieces to Facebook in one click whilst a make-up station resulted in the art appearing on your face.

If you found yourself standing next to one of the KGB agents hiding behind their newspaper, you would be given a secret mission. If you stood next to an usherette you’d end up with another item of clothing to wear.

In the club’s second room, The Underground Rebel Bingo Club staged a game of...er..bingo, which then turned into a game of swapping clothes. The room was finally taken over by Bristol club night, Monkey! Flash! Light! and everyone was given a torch for a night vision rave.

On the main stage, Little Boots and the Pet Shop Boys provided the headline half hour live sets whilst DJs Tom Middleton and Hot Chip kept the crowds jumping until the wee small hours.

It was a truly ridiculous evening that will have won the brand a lot of fans. It continues the Smirnoff Experience series, which has already appeared in Moscow, Shanghai, Paris and New York. The events celebrate originality in nightlife by bringing to life original concepts, forming one-off collaborations and championing original drinking experiences.

Congratulations to the team at RPM for making it happen and if anyone wants any of their stuff back, I appear to have an oversized Hawaiian shirt, a sun-visor, top hat, white feather boa, red fish-net glove and a lot of fun memories from a truly original club night.

Talking social media at Summer Eventia

2009-07-08T12:26:00.011+01:00

Brighton played host to the Eventia Summer Conference this week so I headed to the south coast for three days of stimulating sessions on events industry trends, fun networking and a community programme that saw delegates painting a local school’s playground. (see more of my photos included in C&IT's 48 hours at Summer Eventia slideshow)

I was also there in my capacity as an events industry speaker. At 9.30am on the conference’s second day, I joined Simon Burton, MD of Exposure Communications and Rob Shimmin, MD of Shimmin.biz, to talk-up the benefits of social media to businesses.

The session drew a lot of interest from an industry that is still quite slow to embrace the opportunities presented by an ever-changing media landscape so I’ve decided to use this blog to repeat and expand on some of the key points.

Firstly, the events and hospitality industry needs to stop thinking of Twitter as a social tool for online conversation and start viewing it as a marketing and business channel that can be used for: amplification, community building, feedback, research, awareness and to build brand advocacy amongst business and consumer audiences.

Statistics that show how Twitter has transcended basic social networking include:

The total minutes spent on Twitter rose by a staggering 3712% from April 08 to April 09. (Neilson)

88% of marketers say they are using some form of social media to market their business with Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook, in that order, forming the top 4 social media tools used (mediaplanner.com)

The average age of a twitter user is 35-49 (Neilson)

Twitter has more than 32 million users, an increase from about 2 million a year ago

Some Internet measurement services show that figure increasing 50% to 100% month over month. (Wall Street Journal)

Twitter is now growing at a mind-boggling 2,565 percent

Twitter reached more than 13 million people in the US during April 2009 and that’s just on its website (i.e. - not counting 3rd party applications and mobile) (Mashable)

The top two brands mentioned on Twitter as of May 2009 were Starbucks and Google

In a media rich and time poor environment, more and more people are selecting channels to allow for filtering of vast quantities of disseminated information. People want a lot of information instantly but need to find ways to focus on what’s useful or interesting or relevant.

This means that if an audience has a genuine interest in your proposition and has chosen Twitter as the key channel by which to filter their information, they are more likely to engage with your messages and click through on provided links than they are to engage with, say a newsletter that appears in their email inbox daily, or a piece of direct marketing that’s landed on their doorstep.

My example of the potential reach of Twitter made during the conference session:

I recently did a marketing consultancy exercise for an events industry client which involved live Tweeting from an event they were staging. They wanted to know the worth and potential reach of Twitter so that they could decide how to use it as an effective communications tool.

During the course of the event (one hour), I sent 10 Tweets with relevant key words and Hash tags:

The Tweets were Retweeted 17 times across the world

The furthest away was Retweeted in New Zealand

Of those 17 Twitter accounts that repeated one or more of my messages, the potential reach was 18.109 people

We exist in a world where content is accessible and free. The days of being able to control or manage that content are long-gone. Seeking the removal of online messages will now legitimize and simply bring further attention to any negative sentiment.

Brand communication strategies have to focus on engagement. And the engagement needs to be long-term, from senior players in the business (rather than PRs) and abide by basic ‘Netiquette’ principles.

By banning social media from your business, not only are you making a statement about your brand’s unwillingness to engage, but you’re also cutting off a key research tool that allows you to see what others are saying about your business in real time.

Do you know your brand’s perception according to the Twitterverse?

Footnote:
Remember, just as so much content is free, so too are the applications that allow you to broadcast or access this information.

I’ve recently discovered AudioBoo - a free iPhone application that allows you to record five minute segments of speech before immediately publishing online.

Here is five minutes of Rohit Talwar, CEO of Fast Future, predicting the future trends for the events industry at the Eventia conference:

Listen!

Celebrity Wine Tasting with Oz Clarke

2009-06-14T14:09:00.009+01:00

This weekend I joined around 150 wine enthusiasts at London’s Vinopolis for a celebrity wine tasting, hosted by Oz Clarke.

For those that don’t know, (and I confess I didn’t) Oz is best known for his recent television wine adventures with James May.

As I’d not seen his television appearances, I didn’t know what to expect. What I quickly discovered was a wine expert who gets his message across via a not so subtle blend of directness, wit and audience banter, combined with an expansive knowledge that spills out in unique rambling non-pretentious monologues that had the whole audience gripped from the moment he began talking.

The session, during which Oz focused on five wines selected from his new book, was only meant to last one hour. An hour and a half later, audience members were still asking questions, eager to press another story from this walking wine encyclopedia.

So what did I learn? Well, amongst other things, I discovered:

Dom Perignon did not invent champagne:
In 1662, almost 40 years before the Benedictine monk, an English physician called Christopher Merrett presented the Royal Society with a paper in which he had documented the addition of sugar to a finished wine in its bottle to create a second fermentation. This is the method for making champagne.

A Chilean Merlot is a safe bet because it’s not really a Merlot:
It’s a Carmenere (at least its blood-line stems from former French Carmenere vineyards used to make fine vintages such as Rothschild’s Chateau Lafite.)

In 1850 the valleys around Santiago were planted with vine material from Bordeaux including a lot of Carmenere mixed in with Merlot. After phylloxera wiped out most of the French vineyards, the French opted to replace Carmenere with the more robust Cabernet Sauvignon or traditional Merlot, (Carmenere ripens several weeks after Merlot and often produces yields lower than Merlot and the French were desperate for guaranteed harvests).

Chile meanwhile was relatively isolated from international wine markets. Carmenere to the rest of the world became an old forgotten or extinct wine grape.

As more Chilean 'Merlot' found its way onto the world markets during the past 20 years, someone noticed the 'Merlot' had stronger and spicier flavours than Merlot from anywhere else in the world. In 1994, Professor Jean- Michel Boursiquit of Montpellier's school of Oenology identified the Chilean 'Merlot'. Using DNA mapping he showed the world the Chilean 'Merlot' was really Carmenere and was identical to Carmenere vines found in France.

The difference between Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay:
Sauvignon Blanc is recognisable by its green flavours such as pepper and gooseberry. The Chardonnay has a more golden colour, possessing more oak, mature flavours such as nuts and honey.

I also learned that Oz Clarke is a fantastic orator and would be ideal for after-dinner speaking. If you'd like to discover him for yourself, he returns to Vinopolis on Saturday 10th October for another celebrity wine tasting. For more information visit www.vinopolis.co.uk/meettheexperts

This is Oz explaining why we no longer drink Chardonnay:

The British Music Experience at London's O2

2009-06-09T12:48:00.011+01:00

For anyone that hasn't yet made it down to the British Music Experience, here's a case study I wrote for Visit London after the O2 staged an evening to showcase the Bubble's latest interactive exhibition along with its Finale events space.

What was the event?
On Wednesday 13 May, more than 150 corporate planners flocked to London's newest events space and interactive exhibition, the British Music Experience (BME) within The O2 entertainment complex.

How is the BME set up?
Hundreds of artists feature in the exhibition from The Beatles to Iron Maiden, from Cilla Black to Elastica, and from David Bowie to Motorhead with in-depth looks at musical genres from Skiffle to Reggae, from Rock n' Roll to Blues, and from Punk to Grime.

The BME uses RFID technology throughout, meaning that traditional tickets are replaced by a Smart ticket which allows visitors to activate the interactive elements of the exhibition and also to register further interest in specific features.

The exhibition is split into nine zones around a central core that explores, amongst other areas, the history of playback, transmission and dance music.

The core's Dance the Decades feature allows guests to learn one of 12 dances from the past 70 years including The Twist, Disco, The Loca-Motion, Voguing and even Rave. A virtual dance instructor shows off the moves and a swipe of the Smart ticket on the Smart ticket sensor point outside the booth, allows guests to record their own choreography and become a virtual dancer in their own video.

Around the core's perimeter, the zones are split into music decades beginning with 1945-62 and going right through to 1993 to present day and a glimpse of the future. The Gibson Interactive Studio, also situated on the core's perimeter, offers visitors an opportunity to play on various guitars from the Gibson family, Singerland drums and Baldwin digital pianos, plus a mixing desk and vocal booth. Visitors are given step-by-step video tutorials on beginner, intermediate and pro-tutorial settings.

How would the BME work for event planners?
O2 Head of Sales Caroline McNamara explains: "When event planners hire the 347m² Finale Space, their guests get to tour the phenomenal exhibition before ending up in the events area. Within this Finale Space, we can host 288 people on round tables, 350 people for a conference or 400 for a standing event. The audio-visual technology available allows corporates to create a special visual experience across the walls of the space, and we also offer a BME corporate or individual exhibition membership scheme."

What happened during the showcase evening?
Guests gathered for a drinks reception in the Finale Space, which is available to hire seven days a week and can be transformed into a variety of set-ups in just one hour.

Food was provided by Compass Group and guests were treated to an introductory speech by Curator Paul Lilley before heading off to explore the exhibition.

Lilley said: "Britain has been at the creative forefront of the worldwide music industry for well over half a century now so it's always struck me as strange that there has never been a British music museum. Popular music is often thought of as something disposable, great entertainment or escapism. It is all these things but it's also something more, a part of who we are and our history. This is why it gives me great pleasure to introduce you to the British Music Experience, here at the world’s most popular music venue.

"Museums collect, preserve and interpret. We have collected and preserved iconic memorabilia but, where we differ to other museums is in the interpretation. The BME is an experience and its Smart ticket system allows guests to get involved with many of the exhibits and take a part of the experience away with you when you leave. You can download your guitar playing or singing. As you go around you can learn dance moves or explore music time lines. You can interrogate the Thatcher years or look at how music playback and broadcast have changed over the decades. It is a combination of the most cutting-edge memorabilia with this high-end, state-of-the-art interactivity. What a perfect backdrop for an event."

What did the corporates think of the BME?
Reaction from those client event planners who attended the BME open evening was overwhelmingly positive. Jennifer Campbell, Senior Consultant at Style de Vie Unique said: "It's an excellent venue and I loved the fact that corporate hire of the Finale Space included access to the exhibits. It is a fantastic space for live events but also stylish and effective for private hire - just the type of venue we'd be interested in using from a bespoke perspective."
Linda Wadkin, PA to the Chief Executive of Courthaulds said: "It's amazing, I don't want to go home. It's really interactive, I love the smart tickets and I can't wait to recommend it to my bosses as an events space."

For details on hiring the O2 Bubble featuring the British Music Experience for events click here

Magazine cover designed using iPhone app

2009-05-25T18:10:00.004+01:00

It’s enough to make Vincent yank off his ear, Tracey to throw her soiled knickers around her bedroom and Banksy to vandalise his local street corner. Artistic expression has entered a new age and now needs nothing more than a £2.99 iPhone application to produce something worthy enough for the front page of a top US magazine.

Artist Jorge Colombo took an hour to fingerpaint an intricate Times Square scene using Brushes on his iPhone and The New Yorker magazine has deemed his handy work front cover material for its June issue.

According to sources that know, landing a New Yorker cover is the kind of honour that would define an entire career for many illustrators. So how exactly did Colombo achieve it?

Conspiracy theorists point out that the Conde Nast publication has been running full-page iPhone App Store ads on its back cover for weeks now. But however the deal was struck, you can’t argue with talent and the art world has found a new canvas.

Check out how the magazine cover was painted below.

Experience Marketing Conference line-up: Part 2

2009-05-12T17:25:00.013+01:00

My 2009 Excite! conference agenda has gone live. Having spent the past few months putting this programme together, I'll be chairing both days at Earls Court on the 24th and 25th June. Thanks to all the confirmed speakers for agreeing to take part, and impart what promises to be some great insight. The seminars are free to attend. To register for Excite! visit the show website.

24 June
10.30am
The true test of experience marketing
O2 Head of Events John Worthington and Sledge CEO Nic Cooper (pictured) discuss the value of experience marketing in a recession. With many above the line marketing budgets slashed, what are the benefits of bringing brands to life? How should sponsorship be effectively leveraged? And what are the experiential pitfalls to avoid in order to see a continued rise in event budgets?

11.30am
What’s the point of Twitter? Developing more integrated campaigns using social media
Social media Viking and Head of Information Architecture, London at Agency.com, Kai Turner has been crafting digital brand experiences for more than 13 years. His agency was responsible for Mars brand Skittles using a live Twitter search feed as its website home page whilst Kai himself has launched successful Twitter and Facebook campaigns and designed the British Airways Great Britons social website. Kai will deliver a greater understanding of social media channels and how they can be used for more integrated event marketing campaigns.

1.45pm
Getting a return on your event marketing investment
ID Client Services Director, Nicola Jordan explains how experience marketing delivers Return On Investment by showcasing the tools used and methods developed during the agency’s 15 years staging live campaigns.

2.45pm
Launching live!
EA Head of Retail and Experiential Marketing Penny Humphrey and Circle Agency Managing Director Claire Stokes provide an exclusive insight into staging a long-term live product launch campaign using creative brand experiences and celebrity involvement. This exciting launch planned by EA will take place just one month before Excite, so delegates will be the first to discover how it went and what results were achieved.

3.45pm
What next for automotive?
In the absence of a British International Motor Show and a tough climate for the worldwide sales of cars, what future role will experiential play in automotive marketing strategies? Was it the correct decision to cancel a biennial London motoring exhibition? What are the alternatives for engaging dealers and consumers to drive brand advocacy and the sale of cars worldwide? Jamie Gladstone, creative director at Imagination, Michael Wyrley-Birch, client services director at TRO Group and Robin Carlisle, managing director of Mobile Promotions (pictured) discuss the future of automotive events.

25 June
10.30am
Experience marketing makes good business sense
The strongest business brands are those forging a unique, engaging, and personalised relationship with their customers. Think Apple, IBM, Cisco, P&G. These brands know that creating and sustaining authentic, interactive, and consistent brand experience is the key to brand integrity, strength, and longevity. George P Johnson explores how leading brands are increasingly using experience marketing as the cornerstone of their overall brand strategy. Vice President and Managing Director EMEA Kim Myhre will share case studies on how brands are using both live and online experiences to drive business success.

11.30am
Clearly Smirnoff
RPM's Dom Robertson (pictured) and Rob Wilson explore how experiential can work at the heart of a brand's communication platform by presenting Smirnoff's Original Nights, a truly integrated programme. This session is a must-attend for client event organisers keen to discover what an agency expects from the agency / client relationship. It will provide a strategic insight into managing the expectations of both the client and nightclub / bar promoters. Discover how RPM works with PR, above-the-line and digital to create this series of brand-owned Smirnoff consumer experiences.

12.30pm Close

Tweetup at SEA Life London Aquarium

2009-04-16T12:41:00.018+01:00

I co-hosted the first Events Industry Tweetup earlier this week at the new SEA Life London Aquarium. It was a great evening with an unexpectedly high turn-out of more than 100 event professionals.

On arrival, guests marveled at the sharks, swimming beneath them as they ventured across the Shark Walk. They could then communicate with scuba divers in the tank, watch the Green turtles from the new glass Ocean Tunnel and network with fellow Twitterers including deceptionist Sav, and look-a-likes Marylin Monroe, Madonna and David Beckham.

Myself and fellow host Peter Kerwood also used the event to announce the launch of our online Twitter directory. By registering your Twitter name on www.eventweeps.com, it'll make it easier for others to find and follow you.

Thanks to everyone that made the Tweetup such a fun night. It was fantastic to meet so many of the personalities behind the twitter profiles and interesting to hear the stories of how Twitter has benefited business and network connections.
Follow me on Twitter for other crazy schemes and tweet updates. For more photos from the evening, click here.

Experience marketing conference line-up: Part 1

2009-04-10T12:33:00.009+01:00

Following the success of last year's Excite! conference, the good folk at Exposure Event Creations have asked me to pull together the experience marketing seminars for this year's event, taking place at Earls Court from 24-25 June.

I wanted to improve upon last year's programme by consulting with key agency heads and getting buy-in from brands who advocate live marketing strategies.

With over half the programme now complete, I can safely say that it's shaping up nicely. O2 head of events John Worthinton and EA (Electronic Arts) head of retail and experiential marketing Penny Humphrey are both confirmed speakers.

O2's Worthington will team up with Sledge chief executive Nic Cooper to discuss the value of experience marketing in a recession. Whilst EA's Humphrey will take to the stage with Circle Agency managing director Claire Stokes to provide an exclusive insight into staging a long-term live product launch campaign using creative brand experiences and celebrity involvement.

A high-profile product launch, planned by EA and currently under wraps, will take place just one month before Excite! Delegates will be the first to discover how it went and what results were achieved.

Other highlights of the 2009 Excite! conference programme so far include a session entitled, “What’s the point of Twitter? Developing more integrated campaigns using social media”.

Kai Turner, from the agency responsible for Mars brand Skittles using a live Twitter search feed as its website home page, will deliver a greater understanding of social media channels and how they can be used for a more integrated approach to event marketing campaigns. Thanks to the British Interactive Media Association for its support of this session.

Tackling the issue of experience marketing Return on Investment will be ID client services director, Nicola Jordan. She will showcase the tools and methods used by the agency over a 15-year history of staging live campaigns.

I'm now waiting on confirmation from a major drinks brand and to find out if the head of brand experience for a major automotive client will get permission from his bosses to fly to London and take part in a panel debate on the future of automotive live marketing strategies (I have a good feeling he'll be there).

Confirmed panelists for the debate, planned in the wake of the cancellation of the British International Motor Show, include Jamie Gladstone, creative director at Imagination , Michael Wyrley-Birch, client services director at TRO Group and Robin Carlisle, managing director of Mobile Promotions .

More details of confirmed speakers and seminar times will be announced shortly. In the meantime, put the Excite! dates in your diary because it's shaping up to be nothing short of exciting.

Las Vegas: A city of contradictions

2009-03-29T16:11:00.018+01:00

I’ve been to Las Vegas a few times but never really scratched beneath the surface. After all, what could I expect to find? A lot of sand and the decaying corpse of Bugsy Siegel, the american gangster who convinced his mobster associates to build the Flamingo, the very first Vegas casino?

The Flamingo opened unfinished in 1946. Within two weeks, the gaming tables were $275,000 in the red and the operation collapsed in January 1947. On the night of 20 June, 1947, Siegel was assassinated in Beverly Hills. Bugsy Siegel was played by Warren Beatty in the 1991 film ‘Bugsy’ and his character has been the inspiration for, among others, Moe Greene in The Godfather.

On this trip however, I had more reason to look beyond the poker rooms and the sounds of the slots. I’d been assigned to write a business travel article on a city that President Obama had specifically warned bailed-out US corporate business not to visit on the taxpayers’ dime.

What I found after a ten-hour flight with eight UK corporate event buyers, was a city that’s been cut but not wounded.

Las Vegas is full of contradictions. Everyone from Wall Street to our limo driver has been speculating that MGM Mirage, the Strip’s biggest casino operator, could be facing a bankruptcy filing if it can’t renegotiate better repayment terms with its lenders covering some $7 billion in loans, and yet the company is forging ahead with the massive $9.1 billion CityCenter resort, due to open at the end of this year, next door from my suite at the Bellagio.

Hotel occupancy across Vegas is down, but compared with the rest of American C&I destinations, it’s still in pretty good shape.

Hoteliers queued up to tell me about their environmental policy (one even discussed it, with no sense of irony, as we stood on the balcony of a penthouse suite at night, gazing out across the cityscape, lit up 24 hours-a-day like a Christmas tree). And yet, every element of CityCenter has been carefully thought through from a sustainable perspective, from the use of reclaimed water to on-site power generation.

The city’s annual gambling revenue of $8.4 billion is exactly the same figure attributed to the economic impact that conventions contribute to the Las Vegas coffers. This has meant a rise in on-Strip properties such as the Palms and Mandalay Bay offering non-gaming outlets attached to the casino hotels and off-strip resorts such as Red Rock and Green Valley gaining increased prominence.

Again, the CityCenter project, located at the heart of casinoland will also feature luxury non-gaming hotels including Las Vegas’ first Mandarin Oriental and Vdara Hotel alongside Aria, a 61-story, 4,004-room gaming resort.

For me therefore, Las Vegas will always be a crazy place that has been responsible for some bizarre and monumental memories over the years. But the Nevada city in the desert is now gambling with creating a greener, more sustainable future with emphasis on a business offer that can be distanced from the casino experience.

The leaflets advertising girls delivered 24-hours a day are still distributed along the Strip like confetti but the marketing message ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas’ has been replaced with a tourism strategy that now promotes the city as a short-break destination.

The message that the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority is now striving to get across is that it’s no longer just a city built on gambling losses and sin. Las Vegas is trying to secure its future by alerting winners to the fact that Vegas, now more than ever means business.

Nightmare on Tooley Street

2009-03-14T22:19:00.007Z

An event which sees guests happily pay £60 a head to sit in complete darkness, in the cold dead of night with only make-your-own tea, coffee and biscuits for catering, would seem implausible. And yet, Ian Shillito has made a success of this same formula by adding one vital ingredient - the very real possibility of experiencing paranormal activity.

On Friday 13th, I joined the London Paranormal society as it staged A Nightmare on Tooley Street, the hunt for ghostly goings-on in the London Dungeon.

Ghost hunters from across the UK gathered at the museum of historical horror hoping to experience for themselves paranormal activity sometimes reported by attraction staff. Beyond the mutilated dummies, torture equipment and dark corridors are stories of children in the plague area, a silent figure appearing between the dummies in the mortuary or gliding around the Great Fire of London exhibit.

General poltergeist activity has been encountered when doors rattle, open and close, whilst knocks and raps are heard, especially in the Jack the Ripper area.

Armed only with my wits (somebody forgot to mention to bring a torch!), I accompanied Group A to its first hour-long vigil - a table tapping experiment in one of the Dungeon rooms.

My fellow ghost hunters and I joined our host around the table and delicately placed finger tips on the wooden surface whilst one of the London Paranormal team set up amplified microphones and room thermometers to check for sounds or changes in temperature.

I soon realised I wouldn’t be needing the torch after-all as guests were instructed to turn out the lights and our host began calling out for any spirits to come forward and make themselves known.

It didn’t take long for scrapes and knocks to start replying from the darkness. Suggestions from our host were greeted with agreement and confessions from around the table of feeling cold or touched.

One person to my left even came up with a name for the spirit as if she’d been psychically informed that he was called Mikey. I wondered if actually he was calling out my Twitter name (@mikeyfletch) as I’d been updating followers on the micro-blogging site as to the ghostly goings-on, but I decided to keep my thoughts to myself.

After an hour of standing in complete darkness, in the company of Mikey, who we established was a child because his little hands had been placed on the hips of our host, I had experienced tingles, shivers and a desire to find a toilet.

When we returned to the coffee area to prepare for the next vigil, other groups had witnessed moving tables and whispering voices. Something was definitely going on here - apparently we’d arrived during rush-hour for the ghost’s nightly commute around the venue.

I wanted to experience the moving table phenomenon for myself but first, my group would spend another two vigils sitting in complete darkness with the temperature dropping, this time experiencing nothing but the clairvoyant readings of Ian Shillito on my fellow guests as we awaited more ghostly activity.

On 17 February, 1941 the arches in which we were sat were being used as an air-raid shelter when they received a direct hit by a bombing raid, killing 68 local people. The bodies of two children were never recovered. Could one of these children have been Mikey?

To be honest, I was beginning to no longer care as tiredness and the cold began to take over. Perhaps sensing the growing apathy from our group, Shillito went off to check that the room with the wandering table was free for us to move into. This, I decided would be my final furore before I made my own ghostly exit. Unsurprisingly it did not disappoint.

The spirit with a penchant for interior design sent vibrations through the table and into my fingers before flipping one end and physically moving the entire table a good two-feet across the floor.

The showpiece concluded with two loud knocks on the wall directly behind where those ghost hunters not able to get a seat at the moving table were sitting. A very considerate spirit to ensure that everyone in the darkness could experience his presence.

I guess it's this table tipping experiment that has formed the basis for my conclusions. If you want to guarantee seeing the big five animals in the wild, go to the Masai Mara - it’s set up to ensure tourists get what they pay for. With a strong dose of suggestion provided by London Paranormal’s team, together with some unexplained goings on, a London Paranormal ghost hunt will also guarantee a successful night, but only for the avid believer.

Events 2012 & Beyond: Full conference report

2009-03-03T18:02:00.007Z

The first official conference to focus on the opportunities for the events industry around the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games took place at Earls Court's conference centre on the opening day of International Confex.

Events 2012 and Beyond was organised by Visit London and VisitBritain in conjunction with the Events 2012 Development Group, and produced by UBM Conferences.

Chaired by BBC Breakfast host Bill Turnbull, the day promised insight from key Olympic stakeholders and first-hand advice on the opportunities that 2012 will present to the UK events industry.

The enormity of the task ahead was outlined by Greater London Authority Director of Marketing Dan Ritterband. Drawing on his experiences of being in Beijing for the 2008 Olympic Games, he confessed that the Chinese missed a great opportunity to enhance the overall visitor experience and feel of the city. He then urged the UK events and hospitality industries to ensure all opportunities to maximise the visitor experience were seized upon.

"At this point in time London is ahead of the curve compared with past Olympic host cities. The logistics of holding the equivalent of 38 World Championships across 17 days are huge but for us, this is the opportunity to position London for the next 50 years. It's important that we improve our level of service, our professionalism and show our ability to put on big events," he explained. "We need visitors to have a fantastic experience whilst they're here. London should be a place they're going to want to come back to. We know that visitors love to come to London, and we need to raise our game on the business and events side of things as well. We need to get the message right and bring the whole city with us in the lead up to 2012."

Ritterband was the first to take to the stage after opening remarks from David Sharpe, Events 2012 Development Group Chair and Managing Director of the London Eye. Ritterband was also the first of several other speakers to urge the industry to sign up to the city's Fair Pricing and Practice Charter to ensure that unfair venue hire and supplier cost hikes do not feature in London's Olympic legacy.
"Any profiteering during the Games will be to the detriment of the city for the next 50 years because if people feel they've got stung in what they already perceive as a relatively expensive city, they're not going to want to come back," Ritterband said.

The first indication of the opportunities that will arise in the lead up to 2012 was outlined by Visit London Commercial Director David Hornby and VisitBritain's Head of Business Visits and Events Joss Croft.

Providing a sense a scale, Hornby stressed that the Games would be more digital than ever before and content would be broadcast across multiple platforms. This was later reiterated by Davies Tanner PR Managing Director Robert Wright in a session on how the media will change over the next four years.

Hornby then broke the Games down into numbers – 205 nations, 147 Paralympic teams, 10,250 athletes, 100 sponsors, 26 international federations, 560 domestic sporting bodies and 26 test events that will take place in the summer of 2011 and spring 2012.

Croft gave the statistics a wider context. "The Games are the world's longest commercial with the biggest global television audience of 4.7 billion viewers," he said. "The UK volunteer programme will start in 2010, the 2012 torch relay will take place solely in Britain, and we expect 34 official live sites around the country providing big screen Olympic viewing parties. We will welcome the world, engage the customer, extend our reach with new partnerships, win new business and leave a lasting legacy."

The plans for live sites were later outlined by Mike Gibbons of the London 2012 Organising Committee (LOCOG). Supporting Ritterband's earlier comments about Beijing, Gibbons told delegates that there had only been 17 screens around the Chinese city. "There will be 21 permanent big screens around the UK by April 2009 and more than 30 by 2012. It will be a ten-year legacy providing an interactive opportunity for brands and requiring content all year round," he said.

A real coup for the conference was securing two Olympic top sponsors to join two major Olympic agents in describing to delegates what their requirements and expectations of London 2012 will be.

Daryl Jelinek, General Manager, London 2012 Olympics for Coca-Cola and Barrie Howard, Vice-President Global Sponsorship, Olympic Office for Visa International shared the stage with SportsMark and Sportsworld Group UK.

Coca-cola recently extended its eight-year Olympic Top Sponsorship until 2020 and is already planning its London hospitality and events programme for around 8,800 guests.
Jelinek said, "We will use the Games to inspire change and our strategy will be based on sustainable activity. Venues and suppliers need to be 'gold medal' planning and putting standards in place that will align with sponsor's requirements on pricing, flexibility, quality and sustainable solutions."

Visa's Howard told delegates that the moment the torch relay begins in Britain, the Olympics will ignite and a raft of event activity will ensue. SportsMark Director Olympic Operations Walter Dobrowolski, who manages client programmes for Olympic Top sponsors concurred. He stressed that corporate guests will visit London for short day-long itineraries, whilst Sportsworld Group UK Director Len Olender urged delegates to be focused on relationship building for the next 18 months as his ticketing and tour operator wouldn't be ready to start purchasing until 2011.

Some Olympic contracts are ready to be awarded however. Mike Mulvey, Chief Executive of the London Business Network, which manages the CompeteFor.com website urged the events industry to use the portal as an official route to market. To date, 59,000 businesses have registered with CompeteFor.com and 18,000 of them are based in London.

One way suppliers can stand out when competing for Olympic work is to ensure full compliance with the sustainability guidelines published by LOCOG.

Head of Sustainability at LOCOG, David Stubbs told delegates that the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games would be the most sustainable games to date and all venues, suppliers and event solution providers will have to demonstrate a high level of sustainable practices to win official contracts. "Sustainable and ethical sourcing of goods and services for 2012 will change event industry procurement forever by setting new standards," Stubbs said.

Mark England, Director of Olympic Operations for the British Olympics Association set out Team GB's medal aspirations to win 60 in 2012. Drawing on his experiences of Beijing he told delegates that all 205 nations and their Olympics Associations (NOC) will need to acclimatise before the Games. This will result in an influx of activity prior to 2012 with the NOCs gravitating towards their embassy locations in central London.

The rest of the day was made up of question and answer sessions in which the main concerns for delivering a successful Games were discussed. These are transport, pricing and security. On the issue of transport, Visit London's Hornby added, "There is some real ambition within Government bodies to use and maximise the river’s potential for transportation in the run up to 2012."

Towards the end, delegates were given a glimpse of future plans to bring other major sporting events to the UK. England 2018 Commercial and Marketing Director David Magliano presented England's World Cup bid and told the conference how we are better prepared and have learned lessons following the failed bid in 2001 to host the 2006 competition.

With Visit London's Hornby promising that the Events 2012 and Beyond conference would now be an annual, possibly bi-annual event staged during the next three and a half years, it is certain that the UK events industry will also be better prepared for what’s in store when the greatest show on earth comes to town.

A few days in the Algarve leads to award-winning article

2009-02-18T21:04:00.005Z

At a dinner held at the Portuguese Embassy in London last night, the Association of Travel Organisers to Portugal hosted its fourth media awards. The awards, nominated by ATOP and representatives from the Portuguese National Tourist Office, recognised the work of the media in the promotion of Portugal throughout 2008.

I was nominated in the category Best Travel Trade Article along with TTG magazine and ABTA magazine. Other categories included Best Newspaper Article, Best Consumer Article and Travel Writer of the Year.

I’m delighted to announce that I won my first journalism accolade since turning freelance. The article entitled, ‘Coastal Splendour’ appeared in Luxury Travel magazine last April after I’d spent a few days touring the Algarve’s five-star properties and luxury spas.

The result was completely unexpected and a real surprise. The awards organisers did a really good job in hiding all indication that my nomination had been successful whilst hosting an enjoyable dinner in sumptuous surroundings. I’d therefore like to use my blog to thank everyone involved in the nomination and judging process and to show my appreciation for the trophy and prize hamper full of Portuguese food and alcohol. Result!

What's the point of Twitter? Building our brand online

2009-02-12T23:00:00.013Z

As individuals, many of us embody a brand that we develop online. Maybe yours is an extension of the firm you represent or you have a professional reputation you’re keen to enhance. You may simply strive to be popular within a social group or you'd like to be talked about in positive terms.

What was referred to in the days before social networking sites as status, credibility, reputation or popularity, has now evolved into something millions of us nurture online every day.

This evolutionary development began in August 2003 with the launch of MySpace. In the UK however, the importance of a site where friends could share, message and stay connected took longer to filter into our conscious day-to-day lives.

It wasn’t until September 2006 and the availability of Facebook to anyone with an email address, did we really begin to evolve our online brand image.

Facebook is now the world’s default social network with 17 million unique users in the UK and 250 million unique visitors worldwide.

The speed at which it has developed is best seen when comparing page views with MySpace. In May 2008, the sites were about the same size. Facebook has since more than doubled and currently attracts 84 billion worldwide monthly page views, compared with 57 billion for MySpace.

In the UK, one million of us connect and nurture our professional brand personas via Linkedin, whilst 3.5 million of us share our brand visuals by posting photos on Flickr.

The majority of 18-24 year olds still use MySpace, whilst Facebook is more popular with 25-35 year olds. Unsurprisingly, it’s the 25-54 age bracket that connect via Linkedin.

But now, there’s one more ‘not so new’ social networking tool that has infiltrated our evolved and conscious need to connect online and develop our brand identities.

Twitter, the micro-blogging service has been around since March 2006 but was used predominantly by tech developers to share ideas. It allows users to post up to 140 character updates via text, email, Twitter’s website and a host of third party applications.

As a journalist, I first discovered it as an extra online feed to track breaking news and eye witness accounts of major events. The often mundane chit-chat that occurs between followers and recipients was of little interest and I didn’t feel the need to take part.

That changed when a digital PR challenged my perception of Twitter and asked if she could prove to me its power and effectiveness as an online communication tool. She persuaded me to set up my own Twitter page and then she posted a tweet to alert both her followers and the open ‘Twitterverse’ that I was someone worth following.

The initial result was instant, and overnight I gained a small audience of followers. I was intrigued that if a crowd of strangers were following my brand communication (Tweets) based on a referral, what could Twitter do to build online communities?

After all, Jonathan Ross was using it to keep his fan-base, plus the Daily Mail interested whilst he served his suspension from the BBC. And other celebrities soon saw the power of being able to communicate their brand on a more social level and have been signing up in their droves ever since.

One of my first tweets was a request for events people to reveal themselves and Kate O Neil from Cocktail Stars answered my call.

Since then, we’ve built a network that includes, among others Conference and Incentive Travel magazine, Visit London and Simon Burton, the founder of industry social network Event Crowd. Others have joined following a blog post by head of marketing for events at Merlin Entertainments, Peter Kerwood on Event magazine’s website. And by twittering key words, agencies such as Jack Morton and George P Johnson in the US have found me and opened a global channel of live marketing conversation.

I’ve proved to myself that Twitter also works as a crowd sourced Q&A tool. I did this by posing research questions to the Twitterverse instead of turning to Google. The Tweets have resulted in worthwhile help and advice from complete strangers every time.

The fact is that people who Twitter are more likely to engage with one another both online and in person. This can lead to business conversations, referrals or opportunities we would otherwise have missed.

In fact as I write this, more than 175 cities around the world are hosting Twestivals, bringing together local Twitter communities in face-to-face environments for one global evening of fun and to raise money and awareness for Charity: Water.

We are still the early adopters of Twitter but its growth is predicted to be faster than Facebook. As a powerful new way to communicate, track conversation and converse with others, what benefits could it deliver for your brand?

Agencies invited to help shape Excite

2009-02-01T16:45:00.007Z

The last time eight experiential agencies all sat together around the same table, it was probably something to do with the ill-fated Live Brand Experience Association, set up in December 2004 to try and maximize the impact of live activity as part of the overall marketing mix.

The association limped on for two years, before folding due to insufficient interest in a membership fee structure and to this day, experiential marketing is still a discipline with no dedicated collective voice.

It was heartening therefore when the leading agencies each accepted my invitation to come together at the offices of BEcause to discuss content and an involvement in an experiential conference I’m putting together for June.

Last year, as part of the Exhibiting Show held at Earls Court exhibition centre, I chaired the debut Excite conference. This year, due in part to the overwhelming success and interest in the conference element, Exhibiting Show organiser Simon Burton has rebranded the exhibition as Excite and repositioned it to be more focused on live brand experiences.

My role is to now produce a day and a half worth of educational content that will assist brand managers to develop live event strategies and help agencies to share best practice and achieve growth in this economic recession.

The 2009 Excite will take place at Earls Court’s Brompton Hall from 24-25 June. Last week’s initial meeting was a great success and I’m confident that the conference will be a true reflection of a collective input from the live marketing sector. I am keen to continue receiving content suggestions and expressions of speaker interest from brands or event agencies specialising in brand experience. If you would like to get in touch, please email me at the address listed on my blog page.

Salmon smokery opens with event space overlooking Olympic stadium

2009-01-16T12:23:00.012Z

One of the first signs of a 2012 legacy was official opened today by London Mayor Boris Johnson. H.Forman & Son's salmon smokery relocated to Fish Island in the Lea Valley after a compulsory purchase order, served by Boris's predecessor, forced it from its original site to make way for the Olympic stadium.

Following a four-year battle over land, H. Forman & Son's impressive new home now overlooks the development of the Olympic Stadium from the other side of the River Lea.

The multi-purpose factory will carry on the traditions of the 4th generation family owned salmon smoker, established in the East End in 1905. But it has now added an on-site restaurant and two event spaces with capacity for 200 and 600 respectively.

After my visit this morning to hear Boris's unveiling speech (embedded below) and to sample the smoked salmon delicacies on offer, I can testify that the new home of H.Forman & Son has unbeatable ringside views of the Olympic park. Excuse the pun, but it's a great leap forward for the regeneration of the East End and the first stage of what event organisers can expect from unique and unusual venues in the area. Former Mask managing director Arthur Somerset is handling event enquiries.

Pizza with Mad-on-a-Brink

2009-01-12T11:23:00.006Z

One of my many resolutions for 2009 is to continue meeting interesting, creative and inspirational people. After all, that's what has largely kept me ambitious and focused throughout my journalistic career and it sure makes the world a more intriguing place in which to hang out.

I got off to a good start at the weekend at a pizza party hosted by Evelyne Brink. Regular readers of this blog will remember Evelyne as the Madonna impersonator who had a short-lived starring role on the BBC's The One and Only show back in January last year.

Her party guests included actor, magician and screenplay writer Leon Metcalfe and Angelina Joly look-a-like Sienna Taylor. Leon, as it turned out, has recently starred as the mentor character Terry in a stage-based version of Boy A, written by my mate Jonathan Trigell. Small world, full of coincidences eh?!

For the event organisers out there, both Evelyne and Sienna Taylor are available to hire as Madonna or Angelina-alikes. Check out Sienna's website here .

Evelyne's latest project is Mad-on-a-Brink . It sees the material girl writing comedy including a parody of Madonna's 1992 hit 'This used to be my Playground'. Check out the video for 'This used to be my Husband' below. I'm happy to pass on all comments and feedback.

What happened next? A look back on my travels to Thailand and Israel

2008-12-31T14:41:00.007Z

As 2008 draws to a close, I hope you’ll allow me the small indulgence of reflecting on two of my personal highlights - travel writing assignments to places that have subsequently experienced significant world events.

As I flew into Bangkok's new international airport, Suvarnabhumi and marvelled at its unique architectural design, I never imagined that five months later, it would form the backdrop for anti-government protests that resulted in more than 300,000 travellers becoming stranded.

I went to Thailand to write a series of articles promoting it as both a C&I destination and luxury tourist destination. The Thai people are the friendliest and most hospitable I’ve ever met. The idyllic landscapes, turquoise waters and distinctive cuisine all add to the appeal whilst, my experience of river bathing an elephant at the Baan Kwan Chang camp up in the hills at Klong Son is one I shall never forget.

However, the eight-day airport shutdown that followed, battered the country’s tourist-friendly image amidst a political storm that appears to be worsening with the Thai parliament now under a new blockade.

In September, I found myself in Jerusalem, for Luxury Travel magazine, attempting to make sense of a country, which throughout history has been torn apart by religious and cultural differences.

My guide went to great lengths to show me that, today, Israelis and Palestinians live and work side-by-side in harmony. But, the scars of gunfire in the city walls and the underlying religious tension across a city that has such significance to so many, is a constant reminder of how quickly the melting pot can boil over.

On 11 November, brawling priests and Israeli paramilitary police careered through the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The fight erupted when a Greek Orthodox monk posted in Jesus’s tomb blocked the path of Armenian monks participating in a ceremony to mark the 4th-century discovery of the cross on which Jesus was crucified.

I had stood in that spot where the fists went flying and had remarked on the religious tension of a Roman Catholic church situated adjacent to a muslim mosque that was broadcasting prayer and drowning out the words of my Jewish guide.

At the time, the ceasefire between Israel and militants in Gaza had been in place since June. It lasted until November, when it began to break down with violations on both sides. Its recent collapse has resulted in the latest Israeli bombing campaign, which so far has killed in excess of 360 Palestinians.

Behind the scenes, Israel’s tourist industry is working hard to consign the country’s past to history and look to a future, which in 2009 includes Tel Aviv’s centenary celebrations. The hotels, guides and destination management companies face an uphill struggle. But it’s a fascinating country and whilst there, I acquired a wealth of knowledge that has broadened my world view. And for that, I’m grateful.

There have been many other memorable moments of 2008 as I’ve pursued freelance writing opportunities that have taken me in varied and diverse directions. I hope the blog posts along the way have been worth reading and I appreciate the support of everyone that’s followed me on this site throughout the year. I’m looking forward to the year ahead and I wish you all a prosperous and happy 2009.

Now that's what I call viral

2008-12-19T16:52:00.011Z

Digital whizz-kid and mate Alex Tew is better known to internet historians as the Million Dollar Homepage creator. At the age of 21, he paid his way through university by selling one million pixels of internet ad space for $1 each.

Three years later, and following the shoe throwing antics of Iraqi journalist Muntadar Al-Zaidi, Alex is once again making headlines of his own, this time almost by accident.

Alex is the creative behind Sockandawe.com - an online game which allows users to recreate Al-Zaidi’s antics during last Sunday’s press conference by throwing shoes at US president George Bush.

Alex was quick off the mark. Sock and Awe was live by Monday 15 December. Within 24 hours, five million shoes had hit Bush in the face, thrown by 250,000 unique users.

By the end of 16 December, another 110,000 people had found the site. The next day, news agency Reuters ran a story about the game on its front page . The technical team at Alex’s four-man start-up (still in stealth mode) PopJam.com recruited much-needed help from the social network for gamers Playfire.com as they struggled to keep it online.

By the end of 17 December, over one million unique users had thrown more than 18 million shoes at a ducking and diving Bush in the cartoon game.

That evening, Alex put Sockandawe.com up for sale on eBay . Just 24 hours later, it was sold to entrepreneur Brendan McLoughlin for £5215. It had been live for just four days, it had attracted more than 2.7 million visitors and more than 21 million shoes had been thrown.

The cash from the eBay sale will go some way to funding the launch of Alex’s eagerly awaited comedy site PopJam.com . But the PR generated by a simple idea, executed quickly and effectively is priceless.

Footnote: Today, British journalists including the Guardian’s Nick Davies sent a letter to the US Embassy in London calling for the release of Muntadar Al-Zaidi. The Iraqi journalist has been charged with “aggression against a president” which many suspect is a law made up on the spot in the post-occupation mayhem of Iraq. As a fellow journalist, I join the calls for the US to guarantee Al-Zaidi’s safety and secure his release.

Behold! The all-new FHM.com

2008-12-11T18:27:00.010Z

For the past month, I’ve been working with the digital team at FHM to relaunch the website of Britain’s best selling men’s magazine.

Following 244 cover girls, 407 free online time waster games, the world’s 100 sexiest women, the 100 best places to shop online and more than 200 interviews with everyone ranging from Keeley Hazell to Katy Perry, the new FHM.com is now live.

For me, the ride has uncovered both porn and Hollyoaks actresses I never knew existed (honest!). I’ve developed new-found respect for the writings of FHM's Lee Coan and columnist Grub Smith, and I’ve bagged enough HTML code to last me a virtual lifetime.

To help guide you through the FHM.com labyrinth, check out my links below. These are my top five contributions it was my duty to bring to the attention of the FHM adolescent. They are safe for work (just), they will waste your time and no, I won’t take the blame. Enjoy.

No. 5: Tangerine Panic
Tangerine Panic. Comedy stick man is caught in a downpour of tangerines. Avoid the fruit and stay alive.

No 4: Kylie’s ad for Agent Provocateur
This is a good few years old now. Meaning there’s a whole generation of guys that don’t know what they missed, until now. Still a classic.

No 3: Britney goes commando
The YouTube video is a great tribute to Britters and her bonkers phase.

No 2: Dave Grohl Quote/Unquote
Many of Lee Coan’s interviews made me laugh out loud. But this Q&A with the Foo Fighters frontman is hilarious. Just proves that quality interviewing is all about asking the right questions, such as ‘Ever been in a poo fight?’

No 1: Boomshine
The most addictive and yet tranquil game on the web. It was a good day when I found this.

Sir Michael Caine wins London's Favourite Londoner

2008-11-28T15:26:00.003Z

The highlights of the 2008 Visit London tourism awards included being in the presence of greatness. Sir Michael Caine was voted London's Favourite Londoner. He was on hand to pick up the award. Check out his acceptance speech below.

The Royal Albert Hall looked amazing and really impressed as an awards ceremony venue. As did hosts Johnny Vaughan and Lisa Snowdon, who formed a great presenter double-act.

From my box at the ceremony, I was able to snap some photos,which today have been published by Conference & Incentive Travel magazine. To see the snaps of the venue, entertainment including Right Said Fred, plus the presenters and party Click Here

For a full-list of the winners, as published on the Visit London Website, Click Here

Euro event award winners

2008-11-23T19:45:00.006Z

As promised back in October, I can now reveal the results of the European Best Event Awards. I headed back to Turin last week for the ceremony and to chair two sessions of the adjoining conference. After speaking to a mainly Italian audience on the impact the economic recession will have on the UK events industry and then discussing the options for European event associations to work together, it was time for the awards.

So, in third place: Portuguese agency Desafio Global Ativism claimed the bronze for reinventing the Cinderalla story in Lisbon's coach museum on behalf of Dior for the launch of its perfume Poison.

The runner-up: The Most Majestic Espresso Experience by Italian agency Promoconvention.

And the winner: Congratulations to German agency insglück Gesellschaft für Markeninszenierung for the opening ceremony of the 2008 CeBit exhibition in Hanover.

The Italian publishing company, ADC will shortly be uploading to its website, articles I wrote for them on the winning entries and the awards. So for more details, keep an eye on the Mike in the Media links on my blog homepage.

A Hard Days Night in Liverpool

2008-11-10T16:22:00.012Z

A stay at the Hard Days Night Hotel in Liverpool guarantees three things - The Beatles immortalised on every wall, the sounds of John, Paul, George and Ringo always playing on the lobby's Yellow Submarine juke box and great guest service.

A hotel concierge working anywhere in the world with more than a five-year exemplary service record, can be recommended and then put through the rigors of a tough interview to join a little-known society called Les Clefs D'Or. This organisation, referred to as The Golden Keys, derives from the hotels of Paris in the 1920s.

Spotting a concierge today who has gained membership is easy - they wear golden keys, one on each lapel of their uniform jackets. The UK only has 280 members, many of whom work for London's Park Lane brands such as Hilton, Dorchester or Mariott. The independent boutique Hard Days Night Hotel, which opened in Liverpool's Cavern quarter in February 2008, has three Golden Keys concierges.

Our concierge gave me and my nosey party the full hotel tour, stole bathroom products off the housekeeping trolley for Charlee and fellow Aussie Trish to take back to Melbourne and even retrieved Ian's lost Liverpool FC season ticket - tracing it back to my bar entourage after it had fallen out of his pocket.

The hotel itself is housed within a Grade II listed building with a frontage of imposing marble columns, on top of which perch statues of the 'Fab Four'.

Inside, a spiral staircase provides gallery space for black and white Beatles photography whilst a glass elevator provides the viewing platform as it transports guests to five floors of chic designed rooms. Behind each door a painting of either John, Paul, George or Ringo dominates the room from above the bed (Mine was George Harrison).

Liverpool has changed dramatically since I lived there. Its status as the 2008 European Capital of Culture coincided with more than a £1billon of investment. Back-street warehouses and churches have been converted into bars and restaurants. The city centre now connects to the Albert Dock's galleries and boutiques via a new shopping mall, (it apparently held the title of the UK's largest until Westfield opened in West London earlier this month). A conference centre and arena have been added to the waterfront whilst a museum of Liverpool is under construction. And everywhere you look, buildings have been sand-blasted back to their original splendour.

Last Thursday's MTV Europe Music Awards capped 12 months of cultural, artistic and performance based events that have attracted acclaim from locals and outside observers alike. On Saturday, the finale of the city's year-long Homotopia festival saw the 'Liverpool is Burning' vogue ball held in the ballroom of the Aldephi hotel. Performing arts students shared the catwalk with drag queens as a bemused army of Eastern European boxers, staying at the hotel after their fight tournament and who'd wandered into the bar for a drink, could only look on aghast. Only in Liverpool! The city may change but it's good to be reminded that the Scouse craziness never will.

Glastonbury and The Ting Tings clean up at UK Festival Awards

2008-10-30T23:43:00.007Z

On an evening, which coincided with AEG Live packing up and moving from Canary Wharf to new offices in London Bridge, the girls took time out from tipping the contents of their desks into crates to attend the UK Festival Awards.

A big thank you to Emma Reynolds for inviting me to join them for an awards ceremony, which saw Glastonbury and The Ting Tings scoop a hat-trick of accolades each.

The awards, organised by Virtual Festivals took place at AEG's Indigo2. Within the plush surroundings of a live music venue that, this year alone has hosted everyone from Gary Numan to the Brand New Heavies (with Shakin' Stevens and the Bootleg Beatles still to come before the year is through), the great, the good and the crusty of the festival scene gathered.

They drank jagermeister, ignored some unknown compère whose day-job is at BBC 6 Music, swapped stories of mud and chemical toilets and stood only to applaud Michael Eavis before booing his suggestion that Jay Z should return next year.

Some 55,000 people voted for the winners of these awards. The 2008 hall of fame is as follows:

Best Major - Glastonbury Festival
Best Medium - Lovebox Weekender
Best Small - Secret Garden Party
Best Dance Festival - Glade Festival
Best Line-up - T In The Park
Best New - Camp Bestival
Grass Roots - Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival
Family Festival - Larmer Tree Festival
The Greener Festival Award - Waveform Festival
Best Toilets - The Big Chill
Yourope Award for Best European Festival - Oxegen
Best Headline Act - Kings Of Leon
Festival Rock Act - Biffy Clyro
Festival Dance Act - The Prodigy
Festival Pop Act - The Ting Tings
Festival Feel-Good Act - The Mighty Boosh
Best Urban Act - Dizzee Rascal
Best Newcomer - The Ting Tings
Anthem Of The Summer - The Ting Tings – 'That's Not My Name'
Innovation Award - Standon Calling: Hosted the UK's first festival underwater dance arena in a swimming pool
Most Memorable Moment - Jay-Z mocks Noel Gallagher with a rendition of Oasis' 'Wonderwall' at Glastonbury
Outstanding Contribution To Festival Award - Michael Eavis

Visit London's award winning website

2008-10-17T14:56:00.005+01:00

Congratulations to the Visit London digital and business tourism teams. The website I'm contributing editor for won Gold at last night's Meetings Industry Marketing Awards for Best website. For this and other event stories, check out the now award winning visitlondon.com/business or see below for details.

Visit London's business tourism website has scooped Gold at the 2008 Meetings Industry Marketing Awards.

Beating stiff competition from the Brewery, Henley Business School and Mango Event Management, visitlondon.com/business won the coveted MIMA at a ceremony, held last night at the five-star Landmark London hotel.

The website won the MIMA following its re-launch as the official event planner's digital portal for London in April 2008.

The site was re-designed to offer an advanced venues and services search, improved and enhanced supplier listings, a three-way proposal submitting process, a call-back request, an enhanced planning toolkit with downloadable resources, industry news and a London events calendar.

In the two months after its launch, the number of unique visits rose by 17% to 12,723 and the number of page views rose by 20% to 45,656.

Visit London Business Marketing Manager Severine Ougier said: "This is great recognition by the meetings and events industry for the hard work of the Visit London digital and business tourism teams. In re-launching the website back in April we wanted to ensure event planners had all the right information and tools to find out more about our city, and ultimately choose London.
"We surveyed hundreds of international and domestic event organisers, consulted key suppliers and industry partners, and benchmarked main competitor websites to really understand what a destination website should provide."

Europe's event offer & trouble in Turin

2008-10-04T17:24:00.010+01:00

Last week I was invited to Turin to judge the European Best Event Awards. Organised by Italian publishing company ADC, this set of awards brings together agencies from Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, France, England and Eastern Europe to compete for a string of event accolades.

There are very noticeable cultural differences in the way each country organises its events. Outside the UK, creative content and the spectacle of performance out-weighs the need for return on investment. The results are often spectacular and over-the-top but the European events arena is a hot-bed of creative ideas. UK agencies should take these awards seriously, for inspiration if nothing more.

I of course, can’t divulge who the winners are as yet but, come November this blog will be the only place to find out which European agencies should be tracked and which one country in particular UK agencies should be aware of for its rapidly growing and innovative events scene.

In the meantime, a quick story that occurred during the two-day judging. An Italian experiential agency sent fake Rolex watches to every member of the jury panel judging the Italian-only categories. Many of the judges sent the watches back not realising that instead of a bribe, it was in fact a promotional campaign. Some however accepted the fake watches, realising the nature of the activity (I can only assume).

On the first evening of the two-day judging session, two agency representatives turned up to the Hotel Principi di Piemonte and staged a demonstration outside. They announced via megaphone that the awards were fixed and that judges had taken bribes. Members of the ADC organising team franticly tried to defend the integrity of the awards and make the protestors stop. Fortunately, they eventually saw the funny-side when they realised what was really happening.

It reminded me of the campaign to promote the second series of Dexter on FX by Portuguese agency Torke. A team of street actors caused international outrage (especially from the UK tabloids) when they played dead on the sidewalks of Lisbon covered in blood with knives protruding from their backs. Irresponsible or a creative idea to die for?

2020 vision

2008-10-04T13:09:00.010+01:00

The November issue of Stuff magazine is out now. It includes my 2020 article on the future of gadgets and technology in communication, the home, fitness, transport, lifestyle, computers, gaming and the rise of robots. Thanks guys for some cool layouts, illustrations and so much space on the flatplan (nine pages!).

My brief was to track down real possibilities as opposed to fantasy flying cars etc. It was a lot of fun to research and put me in touch with designers and inventors from Tokyo to San Francisco, offering ideas ranging from the obscure to the brilliant.

Karl Kempf, an Academy Award winner for his work with the special effects team that made Superman fly in the first three original movies, talked to me about the future of film. John Sosoka, head of tech innovation at the robotics company best known for the Pleo - a robot dinosaur capable of emotional response and life-like human interaction, answered my questions on the future of robotics.

Due to copyright restrictions, you'll need to duck into a local WH Smith's and pick up a copy in order to see my published predictions for what the world could look like in the year 2020. But my research went beyond what was required by the magazine. So here are three of the concepts that you won't find in this month's Stuff (my very own DVD Extras!):

The Origami DVD Player
The screen uses the paper folding technique to expand and collapse automatically as the device is opened and closed. The concept addresses the need for larger displays without sacrificing the small form factor.

Daylight Window
Philips’s bedroom window won’t wake you up with a cup of tea but it will filter daylight through your own personalised window display. It’s like a visual snooze button, waking you up gently as the patterned animation disperses, allowing more light into the room. The window’s alcove provides blue-light therapy to ease jet-lag so the concept is most likely to debut in hotel rooms.

Madeleine Time Machine
Designer Charles Blanca believes that the closest we'll get to travelling through time in the future will be via sensory experiences. His time machine, Madeleine offers to help us find the smells we have lost because of the evolution of our living environment. In other words it'll transport us back to the school dinner table, grandma's moth balled wardrobe or any number of other places we'd rather forget.

Iris Experience takes centre stage at Event Awards

2008-09-28T11:30:00.006+01:00

Congratulations to Iris Experience, who walked away with the top prize at this year’s Event Awards.
The agency, whose clients include Sony Ericsson, Sony Electronics, PlayStation, Amnesty International and Unilever, was placed in four other categories at this year’s ceremony.

Iris won Creative Event of the Year for Sony Ericsson Night Tennis and Best Brand Activity at a Festival or Public Event for Ibiza Rocks with Sony Ericsson. It also achieved two finalist spots for Best Brand Experience Campaign and Agency of the Year.

The Event Awards 2008, organised by Haymarket Events and my former employer Event magazine took place on 26 September at London’s Hilton Hotel, Park Lane. Some 600 guests gathered to see trophies handed out in 24 categories ranging from venue awards to Caterer of the Year and Exhibition Organiser of the Year.

Winners included GSP for Agency of the Year, Brand Events for Exhibition Organiser of the Year, Zafferano for Caterer of the Year and Private Drama Events for Entertainment of the Year.
The Innocent Village Fete, which takes place annually in Regent’s Park won its agency Sledge the award for Best Brand Experience Campaign. The Metro Ski and Snowboard Show at Olympia won organiser DMG World Media an award for Most Improved Consumer Exhibition. And agency Sprout (pictured) won Best Use of a Blank Canvas Space for the launch of the Infiniti Europe luxury car brand during the 2008 Geneva Motor Show.

The venue awards went to The Brewery for Best Conference or Purpose Built Venue, Sony Colour Rooms for Unique Venue of the Year and the Sheepdrove Eco Conference Centre, which won the Green Award. London’s Royal Parks walked away with Venue In-house Events Team of the Year and Stage One won Supplier of the Year.

Tiger Beer's mash up of art & music

2008-09-26T15:17:00.006+01:00

I’m sure RPM managing director Hugh Robertson would rather I was blindfolded and led through the backstreets surrounding Liverpool Street station to have reached the Tiger Translate party. As it was, I don’t think I could ever find again the underground car-park that RPM transformed into an asian fusion indoor mash up of art and music on behalf of Tiger beer.

Normally, I wouldn’t hesitate to reveal the whereabouts of RPM’s hidden venue gem and recommend this blank canvas concrete jungle as an event backdrop. But if I had to draw you a map? Well, we passed a giant sculpture of a voluptuous woman laying on her side outside a bank behind the mainline London station, found ourselves in a dead-end where the buses turn around, climbed over a fence, along a maze of passage ways and into an East End side street where every warehouse door most likely hid cartons of cigarettes, meat freezers and speakeasies.

We must have chosen the scenic route as more than 1,000 other people easily found the free party on 20 September. On a small budget, RPM created an artist’s workshop in the midst of a nightclub bunker. The crowds were treated to artists with names like Pure Evil, Monorex and Eine, hard at work adding paint to canvas. Whilst on stage, an asian rock band and a series of DJs had the car-park jumping long into the night.

Visitors engaged with Tiger beer brand values via the overall party theme - Voyage. The artists and acts had been asked to visualise the journey that each bottle of Tiger takes from its home in the Far East and to capture the vibrancy and intrigue of Tiger’s enchanting Far Eastern heritage.

Highlights included a hackney cab painted in Tiger brand colours (which now acts as a meeting room in RPM’s offices), an art wars competition between graffiti artists (check out my video below to see who won), headline DJ the Patchwork Pirates with the Nextmen tearing up the mic, and emerging beatbox talent Reeps 1 (also filmed for You Tube and posted below). All this washed down with plenty of Tiger beer.

The next big thing in corporate entertainment?

2008-09-18T16:01:00.008+01:00

This week I've been in Birmingham for Event UK . The exhibition, formerly known as the National Venue Show hosted a two-day talent contest for unsigned corporate entertainment acts and I was asked to be one of four event industry judges.

Called the Next Big Thing, this X-Factor style competition gave new talent the chance to perform on stage during the show. Myself and my fellow judges, Izania Downie, Matt Storey and Adam Sternberg, each did our best Simon Cowell or Louis Walsh impression after each act and the gathered audience then voted with interactive keypads. The prize on offer was £1,000 and a contract with Sternberg Clark entertainment agency.

Congratulations to The Red Bullets who walked away with the lucrative contract after beating The Big Beat in the battle of the covers bands final.

The standard of unsigned talent who entered the contest was extremely high and even included singer songwriter Wesu Wallace who had made it into the last ten acts of Pop Idol 2.

For anyone in the business of hiring entertainment ranging from the silky footballing skills of Extreme Fooball Freestyle to the down-right bizarre masochistic behaviour of drag act Chrysalis, all the semi-finalists are listed and linked below:

Yildiz Hussein
Extreme Football Freestyle
Michael Douglas as Neil Diamond
Chrysalis
Hannah Dallas
Raven Dance Company

In search of Top Gear's tank

2008-09-01T14:41:00.006+01:00

This morning (1 Sept), Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and Captain Slow, James May thundered across London's Tower Bridge in a tank to promote their upcoming world Top Gear Live tour, organised by Brand Events. The tour kicks off at Earls Court on 30 October before moving to Birmingham on 13 November. It then travels to Dublin and from there, takes in 10 cities around the world.

To help promote the tour, Event Solutions - a division of Visit London set up to help organisers with some of the logistical problems of staging events in the capital - worked its magic to close off Tower Bridge to traffic, presumably so Clarkson didn't try and crush anyone on the way over. I was there to capture it all on video and this is my debut video blog.

Bono's plans for the Clarence

2008-08-11T20:41:00.015+01:00

As I write this, I'm on a whistle-stop tour of Ireland and awaiting room service during a one-night stay at Dublin's Clarence hotel. Rock royalty Bono and U2's guitarist The Edge bought and upgraded this place in 1992. The U2 boys are now set to embark on plans for a complete transformation that could see the Clarence become one of the most talked about hotels on the planet.

On 23 July, Ireland's planning authority ruled against objections from heritage campaigners, effectively giving the green light for an ambitious €150 million (£118.5 million) redevelopment plan. This 49-room boutique hideaway in the heart of the Temple Bar area is to be transformed into a futuristic 150-room five-star luxury landmark.

Bono has brought in Lord Norman Foster's crack squad of architects to do the designs and from what I'm told, they're best described as viking sci-fi.

At the heart of the project is a sculptural "sky catcher" which, apparently "embraces the main public spaces and pulls daylight deep into the base of the hotel." Shaped like a vertical viking longboat, this sky catcher will emerge at roof level to form a skyroom and viewing terrace.

All being well with the red tape, the redevelopment will begin next year and open in 2011. It just wouldn't be Bono if the plans didn't also include ambitions to be the most sustainable and environmentally friendly mixed-use hotel, spa and conference facility in Europe.

Only the quayside facades of the existing hotel and adjoining buildings - all of which are protected structures - will be retained, although the oak panelling from the Clarence's Octagon Bar is to be salvaged for re-use. Well, it was where Bono and The Edge spent most of their time before deciding to buy the place. And it was probably where they hatched this crazy plan to turn the spotlight on an under-invested area of Dublin. This is definitely one to watch.

Visit London Awards: Deadline 20 August

2008-08-10T21:07:00.010+01:00

London’s tourism businesses have less than two weeks left to complete their entries, which close on 20 August. The awards, which are free to enter, have 14 categories to showcase innovation in marketing, new product development and excellence in customer care, or action taken to reduce carbon footprint.

The awards span a whole range of industry services including: accommodation providers, restaurants, events organisers and attractions. The deadline for the awards is 5pm on 20 August.

The Visit London Awards, are running in association with the Enjoy England Awards for Excellence and are the highlight of the tourism calendar which recognise and reward excellence in London tourism.

The 2008 awards include categories such as Best Business Venue and Best Business Event of the Year. There are also more tourism-related awards such as Best Budget Accommodation, Best Tourism Experience and the highly coveted Visitor Attraction of the Year award. Businesses can enter as many categories as they feel relevant.

A large panel of London experts have been invited to judge the awards (I was a judge last year - still waiting for the call!) with each entry having up to three awards per category: Gold, Silver or Bronze. A complete list of award categories and entry requirements can be found on Visit London's website.

The winners will be announced at an Awards Ceremony taking place on Thursday 27 November at one of London’s most iconic venues the Royal Albert Hall.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I'm the contributing editor for Visit London's new Event organisers website.

A Wacky festival of speed

2008-07-11T21:17:00.006+01:00

Today was day one of the 2008 Goodwood Festival of Speed.The conversation in the Mercedes hospitality structure, hosted by the car marque's events agency Mobile Promotions, wasn't the Forest Rally times or saloon car legend John Cleland's 'off' in his Super Touring Vauxhall. It wasn't even Dougie Lampkin riding his motorcycle through Goodwood House (although it's pretty cool - check out the video below). Instead, all the talk centred on a guest appearance from the characters of Wacky Races - the timeless cartoon series from Hanna-Barbera, about a group of 11 different cars racing against each other in various road rallies, with each driver hoping to win the title of the "World's Wackiest Racer."

We all remembered Dick Dastardly and Muttley in the Mean Machine and Penelope Pitstop in the Compact Pussycat. And it's difficult to forget The Ant Hill Mob in the Bulletproof Bomb led by Clyde. But when it came to naming the other competitors, we struggled.

So, thanks to the wonders of the internet, here they are:
- The Slag Brothers in the Bouldermobile
- The Gruesome Twosome in the Creepy Coupe
- Professor Pat Pending in the Convert-a-Car
- Red Max in the Crimson Haybaile
- Sergeant Blast and Private Meekly in the Army Surplus Special
- Lazy Luke and Blubber Bear in the Arkansas Chuggabug
- Peter Perfect in the Turbo Terrific
- Rufus Ruffcut and Sawtooth in the Buzz Wagon

Phew, that's another mystery solved. Right, for anyone wishing to head back down memory lane, check out the detailed Wacky Races entry on Wikipedia .

Otherwise, check out twelve-time international trials champion Dougie Lampkin promoting this year's festival by riding through Goodwood House.

Ibiza Rocks

2008-07-10T14:47:00.004+01:00

As exclusively revealed in my I'm with the b(r)and article for Media Week, Sony Ericsson is bringing the Balearics back to the UK this summer with four Ibiza Rocks parties. Now, here's the detail:

Agency Iris Experience has developed what I believe to be a unique advocacy driven ambassador programme. A competition has been launched via online music community Xtaster to invite budding promoters to submit their ideas on how they would host the ultimate Ibiza Rocks party. The winners will receive full support to bring alive their very own random rock-fest. Sony Ericsson will also challenge each winning host to capture the action on Sony Ericsson handsets.

Highlights from the parties will be seeded through a network of more than one million youngsters via mobile and online social networking sites, where the best party and content will be voted on. The party hostess with the most-ess will be rewarded with a trip to the Ibiza Rocks closing party with five mates.

Also, starting on 21 July, Channel 4 and its digital offering 4music will run weekly half hour long shows broadcasting footage of the gigs, behind the scenes interviews and action from the island. Iris Experience has also created a social network style microsite off-shoot and online seeding programme as part of the campaign's digital strategy. A digital input has seen the four-year-old Ibiza Rocks event brand come of age.

Next generation Wireless Festival

2008-07-07T10:29:00.009+01:00

The thing I rate about O2 Wireless is that it's a constantly evolving festival. On Saturday, I headed down to Hyde Park to see Fatboy Slim and to find out what has happened to the O2 Blueroom concept.

Previously, only O2 customers could gain access to this central VIP area. Over the years, customers have been rewarded with access to performances from unsigned bands, guitar tuition and even a hot tub one year. The Blueroom experience reinforced brand advocacy from those that were allowed into its inner sanctum and brand envy amongst non-O2 customers, who could only imagine what secrets the O2 bubble held.

This year however, there was no sign of the blue bubble tent in the middle of Hyde Park. In its place stood an extra stage, open to everyone and rammed with festival goers catching preview performances from artistes that would later play the main stages. Live Nation, O2 and its experiential agency Sledge had listened to feedback that suggested envy marketing gives off both wanted and unwanted brand perception. The resulting changes saw enriched festival content, accessible to everyone.

But what about the rewards for O2 customers? Following my last post, a group of friends registered for O2 Afternoons. They received a barcode which could then be swapped for food to the value of five pounds between 12pm and 4pm. This got people to arrive at the festival earlier thus improving the overall atmosphere of the day. It may also pave the way for cashless festival technology (a concept that was piloted in Hyde Park this year) to be rolled out in 2009.

Registered O2 customers were also invited to take part in Secret Sessions. At 5pm each day, invitees gathered by the side of the main stage, waiting to be taken back-stage to experience an acoustic gig, filmed live for MTV. The group I joined had no idea who they'd be watching. Looking around at the cross section of ages that crammed into a room behind the back-stage kitchens, I was beginning to wonder how many would still be non-the-wiser once the secret artiste had been announced.

But, as Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip entered on cue, the majority gasped, applauded and, I suspect gave silent thanks for having chosen a mobile phone network that really knows how to engage the festival audience. How many other festivals give off the impression that the customer experience is an afterthought? Wireless, I salute you - my only grumble (and this applies to all festivals) is why put a band that everyone wants to see on in a tent that holds only a small minority? Underworld should have been on a stage. Fatboy Slim rocked!

I'm with the brand!

2008-06-18T17:36:00.015+01:00

As the 2008 summer music festival season gets underway, here are a few of the rumours and recommended brand experiences to keep an eye out for:

Sony Ericsson Ibiza Rocks UK parties
Iris Experience will bring Ibiza Rocks to the UK this summer with four Sony Ericsson sponsored parties. These underground events will be promoted through relevant social networking sites and promise surprise guest bands including a Foo Fighters rumour. If you're heading to Ibiza this summer, check out the mayhem at Sony Ericsson's new Ibiza Rocks hotel. Personally I couldn't think of a worse place to book a room for a fortnight's R&R but the Manumission pool parties every Friday night look like they'll be fun.

O2's new improved Blueroom
The exclusive Blueroom for O2 customers only, at Hyde Park's Wireless festival will be open to all this July. O2 customers will still receive priority treatment, extra pampering and freebies but apparently you'll no longer have to leave your mates outside. Register for O2 Afternoons, turn up between 2-4pm (12-4 on the weekends) and O2 will buy you lunch. And if you're one of the first 1,000 through the gate, you'll get a SanDisk memory card loaded with songs by Wireless artistes.

Carling's Cold Beer Amnesty
Swap your warm beer for ice cold Carling at Rock Ness (7-8 June) and the V Festivals (16-17 August). Agency Cake will be roaming the campsites offering visitor's the chance to ditch their tinnies and trade them in for a cold pint.

Strongbow's Bowtime Bar
When you see the yellow roofs, head to Strongbow's new Bowtime Bar, appearing at this year's V Festivals. Agency RPM has kept the live acts and exclusive DJ sets of the former Cider House and added raised dance decks, chill-out seating, speed bars and a photo wall to capture that Bowtime moment of self-reward. Rumour has it they'll also be roaming the campsites offering campers total first pint refreshment for putting up their tents. If you're not a cider fan, you can always swap it in the Carling Cold Beer Amnesty.

innocent Village fete
Now in its second year, the innocent Village Fete will be returning to Regent's Park on 2-3 August. A retreat from the beer tents and the summer headliners and a chance to detox on smoothies. Artistes include The James Taylor Quartet, The Boy Least Likely To and The Ukulele Orchestra. Sledge, the agency behind the fete is planning a welly coconut shy, a huge farmer's market, arts and crafts, a vegetable tent and a cake tent hosted by the Women's Institute.

When there's no better feeling than dancing in a field in the sunshine, it's good to have a few brands around to enhance the experience.

iPhone: The second coming

2008-06-11T09:11:00.013+01:00

There's only a few brands I would consider myself an advocate for. Apple is one of them. If Apple designed kitchens, mine would have Air work surfaces constructed from 0.76 inches of sleek, sturdy anodized aluminum. My oven door would have the Apple logo embossed at its centre. And even my kettle lead would be the classic white design of the iPod headphones.

It's for this reason, I've been avoiding calls from my Orange network dealer, informing me that my phone contract needs renewing. I've been waiting for the second coming. I know where my nearest O2 dealership is and i've even been following the online rumour mills that have speculated on design and possible features. I am, of course, talking about the second generation iPhone.

For anyone that missed the hype surrounding Steve Jobs' announcement this week, let me bring you up to speed - it's here (almost). And it's affordable (in the UK) - twice as fast at half the price. Available in 22 countries on July 11, these are the basic relevant features for your average user:

3G Network compatibility (speedy internet)
Extended battery life based on previous iPhone.
Now comes in black and white.
More memory. (8GB & 16GB)
Flush headphone jack (No more headphone adaptors)
Full GPS (never get lost again…ever.)
See you at the Apple store, Regent's Street, one month from today.

Getting excited about experiential

2008-06-07T11:43:00.007+01:00

On 25 June, I'll be chairing a one-day conference on experiential marketing. The Excite conference takes place at the Exhibiting Show, Earls Court. Both the exhibition and seminar sessions are free but you do need to register as places are limited. This is the line-up:

Wednesday 25 Jun 2008
10:00 - 10:45
The Ten Commandments Of Experiential Marketing

10:45 - 11:30
The Best of Both Worlds: Harnessing The Power Of Online And Live Experience

12:00 - 12:45
Experiential Roadshows: The 10 Things You Need To Know Before You Hit The Road

12:45 - 13:30
Experiential Marketing In Fifth Gear: What Other Brands Can Learn From Bringing Car Marques To Life

14:30 - 15:15
Hitting All The Right Notes: Engaging Brand Advocates Through Music

15:15 - 16:00
Everything's Possible: How To Unlock London’s Secrets For Event Planners

16:00 - 16:45
Focusing On The Future: An Eventia Panel Discussion On Key Event Trends

After helping to bring together the speakers and programme, I was asked to do my bit for the promotion of the sessions. This resulted in myself and event director John Sanders being interviewed on camera by Events Review. I've only ever done a small number of pieces to camera and I confess, it's never something I've been comfortable with. After cringing all the way through the resulting footage, I can say it's an improvement on the ones I've attempted in the past. I guess practice does have its merits but I'll still always prefer to be the interviewer rather than the interviewee. The full video can be seen here. I start cringing around the 2 minute, 35 second mark.

Howards Way Walk

2008-06-03T15:26:00.006+01:00

Last Friday, I joined key players from the events industry at the Riverbank Park Plaza Hotel to raise money to fund pancreatic cancer research. The evening's charity auction, gala dinner and entertainment was inspired by Howard Kerr, an events stalwart who is suffering from pancreatic cancer at the age of 47.

On 18 April, Howard Kerr and 12 colleagues from Gallowglass, Land Rover, RPM and Eventia completed an 87-mile walk across The Ridgeway, from Hertfordshire to Wiltshire in three days. The footage of the Howards Way Walk, filmed by Events Review was shown to the room on Friday. It brought into focus not only the scale of the endurance, which is traditionally walked in five days rather than three but also the compassion, enthusiasm and strength of will from an industry that always seems to pull together when it matters most.

Congratulations to everyone who participated in the walk. I felt humble just being a part of the gala dinner. As it stands, the walk raised £35,126 and the dinner raised £40,899 which gives a total so far of £76,025. According to Matt Storey from Gallowglass (the lead company driving the initiative), there's a friendly London versus Henley fundraising cricket match at the end of the month which is likely to add to the total. If you'd like to help support a poorly recognised cancer in desperate need of research funds, please visit Howards Just Giving page.

Kimble faces flack as Clarion acquires defence shows

2008-05-29T15:44:00.011+01:00

Within minutes of Clarion Events confirming it had acquired DSEi, ITEC and LAAD defence exhibitions from Reed Exhibitions today, managing director Simon Kimble got his first taste of the level of animosity towards the shows. A blogger calling himself Johnny Void posted a scathing attack on the largest independent exhibition organiser in the UK and urged people to write to 'laughing boy' Kimble to let him know how they feel about his latest acquisition.

Last summer, Reed chief executive, Crispin Davis, announced that Reed would sever ties with the arms industry by the end of 2007. The decision was in response to pressure from anti-arms-trade campaigners and writers at Reed Elsevier's scientific journals. "The sale of these three exhibitions to Clarion Events completes Reed Exhibitions' withdrawal from the defence-exhibitions sector announced in 2007," Reed said today in a statement.

It was always going to take a brave man to take on the ownership of DSEi, Europe's largest arms fair. In 2005, The Independent newspaper discovered that an exhibitor was offering cluster bombs for sale. Clarion Defence has acted swiftly to announce on the DSEi website its decision to ban from display, publication, offer or marketing in any form, all munitions and references to them, that can loosely be described as Cluster Munitions.

This move, however welcome, will do little to silence the Disarm DSEi movement. But it does indicate that Kimble is readying himself for the long diplomacy battle that lies ahead. I know Simon Kimble. He's an ambitious business savvy entrepreneur who is moving into waters deeper than he's ever swum before. Asked by the Guardian about ethical concerns over the acquisition, Kimble said today: "The events we have acquired are thriving with full government support, serving only the legitimate global defence-and-security industry. Exhibitors and visitors must adhere to the highest regulatory scrutiny, not just complying with but exceeding UK and international law. Defence and security is a legitimate business like any other and we will apply the same very high standards, rigour, experience and skill to organising events in this sector as we do in all of our others."

The next DSEi runs in September 2009 at Excel. Between now and then, Kimble will be forced to face some of the toughest personal and professional challenges of his career. That in itself will determine his diplomacy and bravery. I hope, along the way his passion for every event he manages will help tighten and regulate further an industry that could otherwise so easily spill blood on his hands.

Behind the headlines: Excel & Mask

2008-05-24T16:21:00.019+01:00

Whilst I’ve been sitting in the editor’s chair at Revolution, my former editorial team on Event magazine has been chasing major breaking news. First, Excel London, the exhibition centre in Docklands was sold for £321million to a UK subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company.

This summer, the venue can finally begin phase two of its long-awaited development plans. The £150million second phase will take Excel London to around 100,000sqm of flexible flat floor exhibition and conference space. It will represent a major investment in providing event facilities of world scale in London, as well as supporting the capital’s ambition to host an increasing number of high profile domestic and international shows.

The sale has resulted in the departure of chief executive Jamie Buchan – replaced by former deputy CEO Kevin Murphy. Jamie joined Excel in February 2002, a year after I started on Event magazine. He wrote to tell me he was stepping down and to thank me for my ‘friendship and support’. Shortly after his appointment I criticised Excel for its cold appearance. On my next visit, Jamie had lined the venue atrium with palm trees. He was always ready to listen, had a real passion for the future success of the venue and would go out of his way to acknowledge everyone in a room. As the race now gets under way to complete Excel's development before Olympic year, I sincerely hope Jamie is able to retain his non-executive status on the Visit London board and I wish him well in his next venture.

Mask , a 20-year old party agency run by Arthur Somerset has sadly been less fortunate in securing its financial future as an independent agency. The Concerto Group was called to its rescue this month and has now added Mask to a portfolio that includes rival agencies the Ultimate Experience and Event Wise, as well as caterer Create, team building provider Business Pursuits and structure supplier Witney UK.

Mask’s principal contract to provide parties at the Truman Galleries in November and December remains unaffected and I understand Arthur has joined the Concerto Group as a consultant for the next two years. Arthur is one of the industry’s more colourful characters. During my seven years as editor of Event and RSVP magazines, his support and ‘Ask Arthur’ agony uncle advice was always appreciated whilst his maverick bad-boy behaviour and strong opinions set him apart from his rivals. I wish him well.

Ecocho: the green search alternative

2008-05-20T16:29:00.005+01:00

Sticking with the subject of online search, the guys at experiential agency Sledge have discovered Ecocho. Powered by Yahoo!, Ecocho is a new search engine trying to make a difference for climate change.

For every 1000 searches users make on Echocho, the Australian-based company will offset a ton of greenhouse gases by sponsoring two trees. It's a free service, trees are grown via official Government-accredited projects and KPMG is auditing the scheme on a quarterly basis. Switching to ecocho.com doesn't alter or slow your search. Search results are displayed via Yahoo! technology and it's one of the easiest ways people can change their everyday behaviour to make a positive impact on the environment. For further information on Echocho click here

View from the editor's chair: Search wars

2008-05-13T16:50:00.009+01:00

My first week in the editor’s chair at Revolution has been all about online search. As Yahoo! crawls from the wreckage of a failed $47.5bn merger with Microsoft, I was interested to find out how all the major search engines were faring. On the day I filed my copy, the Financial Times declared Google triumphant in the battle of the search wars. The FT article however, fails to speak to Microsoft or even Yahoo! for that matter, before declaring that war is over.

It’s true that by next year, half of the world’s online advertising – set to reach £28bn in total - is expected to flow through Google’s systems. And that Google has 87% of the UK’s search share compared with Yahoo’s 4% and MSN’s 3.7%. But for Microsoft, the fight is a long way from concluded. It now has a mulit-billion dollar war chest and new armies could be recruited from AOL or social networking tie-ups with Facebook.
Since the doomed merger treaty, MSN has already made huge improvements to Live Search including a really cool video search mechanic that plays the clips whenever you scroll over them.

A Yahoo! insider promised me that it’s search results will start to look completely different in the coming months. Digital agencies are split between fearing the writing may be on the wall for Yahoo! or predicting a return to the negotiating table.

Meanwhile, Chris Dobson, Microsoft acting general manager, Consumer and Online International UK told me that Microsoft has a history of playing the long game to win. Whilst Google has become the ‘search verb’, Microsoft has achieved verb status in Instant Messenger. I predict that the search battle lines will now be redrawn around chat and video.
“This is still an early dawn in the search world and the fight is by no means over,” says Dobson. I agree.
The full article appears in the June issue of Revolution

View from the editor's chair: Digital marketing

2008-05-06T19:53:00.014+01:00

Digital marketing magazine Revolution is getting a new editor. Gareth Jones takes the hot seat on 2 June. Until then, I'm steering the good ship Revolution for one issue only. Last month I wrote about the digital landscape I've now inherited (as featured in Revolution's Digital Media Buyer's Guide).

The digital landscape is a complex and often confusing place. By its very nature it’s fast moving and therefore difficult to analyse. And yet there are a total of eight different research providers and studies, which all employ different methodologies and produce largely non-comparative data.

The need for information on site traffic, user trends and online advertising has never been more important. At the turn of the year, Group M, the combined media planning and buying operation owned by Sir Martin Sorrell’s WPP group predicted that UK internet advertising spend will overtake TV, which has been the leading advertising medium for a half a century, in 2009.
By the end of 2008, according to Group M, the internet will account for 24.8% of UK media spend, just behind the 26% share held by the TV ad sector. UK internet revenue is likely to climb by 30.8% this year to £3.4bn compared with just 1% year-on-year growth in TV ad spend to around £3.56bn. It’s not hard to see what will happen if both internet and TV revenues continue to grow at this current rate. And it’s easy to appreciate why online data is rapidly becoming the holy grail of the media and marketing strategy.

So what do we know? In 2007 there were 29.8 million people online, which accounted for 63% of the total UK population. Now, there are 32 million people online – 67% of the total British adult population.

According to the BRMB Internet Monitor August 2007, more than 85% of UK internet users have been online for at least three years. And sites where people can buy products or services are still proving to be the most popular online destinations along with checking the weather forecasts.

The power of Google remains dominant. Marketing strategies that use the search engine’s advertising products can relax in the knowledge that in February this year, 27.3 million British users visited Google, which accounts for 84% of the active UK internet population, according to Nielsen Online.

The average internet-related time spent per person during February was 17 hours and 46 minutes. And according to the BRMB August report, the most popular online activity is still the use of email. But at 28.2 million users, three million more of us do it compared with the 25.2million email users in 2006.

More than 13.2 million households in the UK now have a broadband connection compared with 9.9 million in 2006 according to Continental Research. This accounts for 90% of all internet users, up from 84% the year before. According to a report by Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Broadband penetration is expected to continue rising and is predicted to be in 75% of all homes by 2010.

BRMB states that 58% of internet users are now going online every day and Nielsen Netratings’ report in September 2006 measured the average length of each user session to be 53 minutes.

Online advertising
UK online advertising spend increased by 38% last year to reach £2.8bn, according to research published by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Pricewaterhouse Coopers on 7 April. In just three years, online advertising spend has increased by £2bn and looks set to justify the predication by M Group at the start of 2008. The medium now has a market share of 15.3%, up from 11.4% in 2006 and is already larger than press classifieds and regional newspapers.

IAB chief executive Guy Phillipson says: “To grow 38% from £2bn to £2.8bn is a very powerful performance and with 15.3% market share of media spend, the UK is head and shoulders above all other major world markets. It’s clear, marketing directors now recognise the value of online to drive their business and more and more are using rich media and video to build their brands, just as they do on TV.”

Total internet display advertising spend saw a 31% year-on-year increase whilst the core formats – banners, skyscrapers and embedded rich media including video – grew by 45% to £592m. Furthermore, spend on embedded formats has doubled during the past two years to account for 79% of total display.

Paid-for search marketing is maturing as marketers become more sophisticated in their use of the medium. In 2007, search grew by 39% in line with overall growth to £1.6bn compared with £1.2bn in 2006. Its market share however remained largely the same at 57.6% compared with 57.8% in 2006.

There’s no doubt that brands are now using search more intelligently, getting a greater return on investment through key phrases and more accurate targeting that reflects consumer behaviour. According to the IAB findings, classified advertising saw a 54% year-on-year growth and was worth £585.3m in 2007 as consumers and marketers recognise online’s reach, flexibility and immediacy.

The breakdown of industry categories in the report reveals that the recruitment sector continues to lead with 25.7% market share, up 0.9 points on the second half of 2006. Second is automotive with 11.9% while technology at 10.4% has overtaken finance at 10% for the first time to take third spot.
Other sectors experiencing high online ad spend growth include retail, which increased by 1.7 points to 5% as a result of a buoyant e-commerce sector and consumer goods, which increased by 1% to account for 5.3% of spend. For the first time, the property sector broke into the top five with a market share of 7.9%.

The key driver for growth is obviously the increased UK online audience. But maybe more surprisingly, the over 50s make up 30% of internet users compared with 21% coming from the 25-34 age range. As the population continues to get older and stay older for longer, it’s this demographic that will fuel the next wave of online advertising spend.

Under the bridge with Banksy

2008-05-04T12:11:00.006+01:00

For three days only, a disused tunnel next to Waterloo station formed a canvas for hundreds of stencil works created especially for the Cans Festival.
Banksy joined 30 graffiti artists to create an exhibition of urban art. For me, it was the perfect opportunity to put my new Canon IXUS to good use. For aspiring Banksy artists, they were invited to bring a stencil and contribute to the display, making this a truly open and community based art fest.

Click here for part one of my photos from the Cans Festival
Click here for part two of my photos from the Cans Festival