Eventmercials - A first for Vitamin Water and London Fashion Week

What’s the next, best-place medium in the ever-evolving media universe to offer symbiotic sponsorship relationships to commercial clients?

Fin have partnered with media owner CBS Digital to introduce mass audiences to the natural fit between London Fashion Week and Coca Cola’s Glaceau Vitamin Water, creating an industry first, a series of daily updated Eventmercials! Appearing from this week across the capital’s Tube network, we’ve created a unique, near live, topical advertising campaign, the first of its kind in the UK.

        

Running over a fortnight using cutting edge CBS/Fin developed XPT (Cross Platform Technology), the campaign will be seen daily on 64 platforms on the London Underground, by hundreds of thousands of commuters and visitors.

Revealing some of the must-see collections before and after they’re revealed on the catwalk - with Countdowns, What’s On, Highlights and Best Of slots in 20 second bites – our 19-execution series provides a stimulating front row view of one of the world’s big four fashion events for busy Londoners to cheer up their commute.

While waiting for your train this week look out for one of our programmes.

Andrew Newman - Marketing Manager
If you want to know more call me 0207 292 3670

Matt Monro Rocks for Fin

Although music for most of our productions is scored and performed by our in-house composing and recording team (and published by Fin Tune Ltd), licensing commercial music for Fin projects, particularly commercials, is great fun - and a real mix of creative and business. We negotiate with music publishers, composers, artistes and record companies – all these have to clear different parts of the rights - via Fin's music associate Tony Orchudesch. Tony knows all the key music biz people from London’s Tin Pan Alley to LA’s Sunset Sound!  During a chase for a track we'll often talk or email 20 times a day. It's complex and tense, as over a period of days we can get all the way to the price and rights our clients want, only for one of the parties, say the original writer in a distant American state, to refuse usage permission.

In the last few months, we've licensed 3 songs - a dreamy Hawaiian-style instrumental from guitarists Richard Hawley and Hank Marvin (for Sekonda Summertime idents) , a near acapella Leona Lewis cover of the 1972 Roberta Flack classic 'First Time Ever I Saw Your Face' (for Fin’s pre-Christmas Seksy watches commercial, which you can watch here) and most recently an upbeat Matt Monro lounge number 'This Is The Life', for our upcoming Siemens Home Appliances TV ad, which airs from mid January.

The original choice of track suggestions usually rests with Fin, but must of course be approved by our clients. With ‘First Time’, during pre-production we were able to convince Seksy’s brand director and his agency to use a quiet ballad as opposed to something clubby and upbeat (Seksy watches are aimed at young women), feeling that the haunting emotion of the song would give the ad more ‘stand out’ within the noise and clutter of a typical commercial break.  Since this was agreed at storyboard stage, we were able to pre-plan the shoot very precisely around the track. 

Siemens was a totally different process.  We edited non-sequentially, so that the visuals would work with a variety of music.  Tony & I came up with a long shortlist of 25 numbers which we whittled down to 7 on a cost, creative and permission-likelihood basis.  We then track laid these 7 different songs onto the same visual edit for the client to select from. Each track gave a totally different feel and implied brand message, and we figured our client knew better than us precisely what this was!  We had our favourites of course (for me a Paul Weller piano ballad, ‘Invisible’) although Siemens, liaising with European colleagues and their UK media agency, plumped for the happy, relaxed and classy feel of Matt Monro circa ‘66.  Born in Shoreditch, not California as you’d think - and what a voice. Enjoy!

Tim Graham

How to make a Take That watch

This year, Fin Creative Director Darian Weir details how he aims to match his success with last years unprecedented run on the Sekonda 'Electra' watch on 'An audience with Take That' and make the Seksy designer watch - 'Eclipsed'  - this years Take That watch! 


Broadcast 13th Nov on iTV, Take That's come back documentary 'Look Back, Don't Stare'.

The ever-developing series of Sekonda Seksy idents is a job I always look forward to. This is not just because we get to work with fabulous Swedish model Tess Montgomery, the face of the Seksy range, but because it's a perfect project to show off the creative capabilities and digital power of fin’s Flame suite.

Flame suite 'Ops' window

While we've evolved the Seksy look and story stylistically since its TV debut in 2006, there has always been a regular challenge: to make the watch the star, the focal point, the desire - and with the beautiful Tess in frame this can obviously be quite a task!  To focus the viewers’ eyes to the watch and away from Tess, I use a number of visual effects, some of which I developed myself, some classic and others borrowed...

The most prominent effect is the use of optical layers, like sparkles and flares, to pick up the detail and highlights around the face of the watch. I also apply vignettes to darken and subtly defocus parts of Tess’s face and body, a technique which distances her away from the watch. With the new ‘Eclipsed’ watch ident, we've also introduced subtle, esoteric backgrounds like cityscapes and party marquees, counterpointing these with additional foreground optical sparkle. Inspired by the nighttime worlds featured in the Seksy commercial we’ve made with creative agency Springetts (which also airs through December), these narrative and technical developments produce a dream-like quality to the sponsorship campaign.

You can see the here Sekonda Case Study here

When should you wish someone Happy Birthday?

Over the years, I've often scanned my colleagues’ half-blank birthday cards as they landed on my desk, reading the wishes for inspiration and trying to out humour them. Then, to realise that I don't actually know the person and that my written wish will just have to fall back on a 'Happy Birthday – you're looking great'.

For those employers who insisted that each employee’s birthday gets a surprise celebration, I've actively tried to hide my birthday. How can it be a surprise for each person? You know when the phone call is about to come when the office starts to empty in unison and your colleagues gather for the obligatory ten minute dry cake eating contest.

How does everyone paint that same surprised look upon their face when they walk in the room? I just can't do it. It similar to the same unified answer, ‘I’ve got no change’ when the birthday envelope does the rounds.

Today, my birthday wishes for Fin and my friends here could not have been any warmer. The cake could not have tasted sweeter.  At six years old, Fin is at a new stage of its life - we started out as a Production Company on the Southbank and we are now known as a Production Agency in Soho square, working for some the UK's most enviable brands. Over the next year, I aim for Fin to be increasingly known for its quality of work and values.

I suppose the next cake will have to be even better - but who bakes a better cake than Patisserie Valerie?


Happy 6th Birthday Fin

Written by Andrew Newman (I'm holding the cake)

Twick Twock - Always Posting No.1

Oh for the days when a gentleman could wear a blazer to the airport and not be mocked by feral children...when one could enjoy a leisurely Dunhill in a hansom cab, one’s club was not infested by laptops and the squares of our fair city not blighted by bike parks. A time when an intrepid reporter could enjoy sweet nothings over Camparis with a millionaire’s wife, and not be misunderstood by the grubbier end of Fleet Street. And when ‘reality television’ meant a five-hour cigar lunch at Scotts with charming Lord Grade. It is for these reasons that Fin humbly brings you a wistful homage - via a regular series of video Blogs - to TV’s eternal man of the world (and imaginary Fin Chairman), Alan 'Twicker'...

Fin film on-line series for the UK’s coolest brand*, Aston Martin

Personal notes from co-director Paul ‘Dutch’ Denchfield on his experiences tracking the 2-year creation of the amazing £1.2 million Aston Martin One-77

(*CoolBrands Council, Sept 2010)

As a 5 year-old child, walking to my grandmother’s house, we’d pass an Aston Martin showroom. Peering in until wrenched away, I stood consumed by the sensation of looking at a mindboggling, unfeasibly large Rocket Ice Lolly. For my best-est possible thing ever was the Rocket Ice Lolly. And now I was looking at a fantastically distorted popsicle, wherein the sheer epic proportions of automotive beauty had become a literal Gob-Stopper!  In a rare moment of an infant boy exercising self-calm, I steadied myself by calling it simply… a Super Rocket.  It therefore seemed entirely logical, later that decade, that the term ‘Super Car’ was coined. 

Progressing through enthrallment at Bond driving his gunmetal DB5, like all small British boys I came to totally adore Aston Martin for its mystical promise of an even more exciting life to come. And – if I’d known the words then, and if you’ll forgive my use today of the brand’s legend - for its power, its beauty and its soul.

35 years on, Super Cars have really achieved their Super Rocket status, for surely 200 mph-plus machines are not merely ‘cars’ anymore? So, I was a little taken aback on my first arrival at Aston Martin to film the fledgling One-77, the finest Super Car creation by my all-time favourite creators, to find I was looking at a clay model, roughly 4 foot long, with crudely cut-out, photocopied pictures of wheels stuck on it!   

Standing there with my co-director Dan ‘Six’ Constantinou, we silently faced Mission Impossible: We were to make a series of on-line films about the most expensive, most amazing …clay model ever built. In a time-tunnel contra-zoom moment, I was back in that early 1970’s showroom – but the child’s toy was now looking at me.

But here we were in 21st century clay city: On the other side of the futuristic design studio, protectively flanked by a 60-foot high, 150-foot long wall of glass – the secretive, inner sanctum of Aston Martin where dreams are born, nurtured and coaxed towards explosive life - clay doors were being sculptured. Just across was another block of clay being worked in from the middle out - the interior being crafted. Then at the opposite end of the space was a life-size clay model of the car, its body bizarrely being fitted in a giant pinstripe 'car suit' (for the Geneva motor show) by a team of tailors up for the day from Savile Row.

I dimly realised in those moments that between wonderment and reality is creation. Following that first day almost 2 years ago, what Six & I have witnessed over filming the development of the One-77 project is the core beauty of that creation process: From clay modelling, to the welding of aluminium, to defining the engine position, pitch & performance…every tiny, exquisite detail.

The one sense we really wanted to convey in the series of films we made for Aston Martin along this journey was that this is a marque where artistry is at the very centre of creation. I hope you enjoy them - and somewhere I hope a 5 year-old is watching them through the window of their computer screen with the same wonderment I had then, and now. 

            Film 1                                                                        Film 4

Our films can viewed at:

http://www.astonmartin.com/eng/gallery/videogallery

Be the first to see the Aston Martin One-77

Macho directing duo Dan ‘Six’ Constantinou and Paul ‘Dutch’ Denchfield have just returned from filming the £1.2 million Aston Martin One-77 at a secret test track location. The resultant promo – already a massive You Tube hit, is a teaser for the latest instalment in a series of on-line brand films commissioned by Aston Martin from Fin, following the car right through its development to launch later this year.  Check back soon to see episode 4. 

One-77 Promo