Sledge Blog

Bandstand

Not being English, it took me some time to figure out what Corsa (as in the car) meant when they invited me to “an eccentric, eclectic festival” in London’s Old Billingsgate.

On May 3rd, Corsa presented ‘Bandstand’, an evening described as the Mad Hatter meets a traditional English tea party, put on by the people behind Bestival, headlined by Rob da Bank and Mark Ronson . The event’s website is great and set high expectations – illustrating a magical park-like world with fauna, animals and surreal characters. This identity ran through all communications, including actors playing characters from Alice in Wonderland and uniquely branded Corsa cars parked outside. The Old Billingsgate interior was dressed with park benches, super sized teacups, quirky signage and eccentric look-alikes. Bringing Bestival to the city while targeting the core market for Corsa – urban dwellers in their (early) twenties.

Except from a few cars outside the venue and their name on the Bandstand logo, I’m not sure how much there was in it for Vauxhall. With close to 8000 sq meters they could have been a lot more innovative in how they integrated the cars and the brand and still have accommodated the audience, who unfortunately seemed to disappear under the beautiful arches of this listed structure.

It was a great club night out in London and I love the idea of turning a music event into a journey of discovery, exploring secret gardens and hidden corners. Unfortunately though, the event was too spread out to achieve the intention of creating an “intimate” indoor festival. Was it truly individual and totally different as the website claims? Alice in Wonderland seems to be a repeated theme across events recently, and I hoped to experience a more unique and surreal world - more Monty Python and less Mad Hatter!

Present like Steve Jobs

The rather brilliant Presentation Zen  is a goldmine for anybody wanting to put together a great presentation, containing information on everything from where to find great images to information on the 'art of the slide' show. A great place to start is to watch the below analysis of a Steve Jobs presentation.

Are you qualified?

Sometimes you just wonder if you are really have what it takes to work in this industry. Russell Davies has unearthed a rather daunting wikipedia entry for Experience Design.

The Power of Disorientation

I was lucky enough to get a ticket for Punchdrunk's The Masque of the Red Death at the Battersea Arts Centre on Saturday night. I'm not normally a big fan of theatre, I find it hard to suspend my disbelief and buy into the conceit of actors on a stage (this says more about my shortcomings than those of theatre in general). The Masque of the Red Death was a very different evening, it is audience involvement theatre. You plot your own path, explore a myriad of rooms and come across different scenes as you move through the space. Whenever you feel like it you can even pop into a David Lynch like cabaret show and have a drink before exploring further.  No two people have the same evening because of this you end up spending a lot of time afterwards comparing notes and trying to combine knowledge to understand the story.

The success of the evening was in large part down to something that it is really important to think about when designing brand experiences - the power of disorientation. On arrival the venue looks shut, you are directed down a side street and enter via the fourth fire exit on the right. Everyone is given an identical masque to wear and told not to talk. You walk through five or six small dark antechambers, separated by big black curtains and from then on in you have no problem suspending your disbelief. Complete immersion in an amazing experience.

Henry Moore sculptures in the dark at Kew

Pecha Kucha Night

Over the last few years there has been a lot of discussion about how business presentations are configured and delivered. In the past we have posted about the clever ways in which Al Gore used Keynote within his Inconvenient Truth talks and also about the innovative ways that events such as Battle of the Big Thinkers have been structured to ensure more engaging content. Another development are Pecha Kucha Nights  (Pecha Kucha is Japanese for the sound of conversation).

Set up by architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham these events were created as the perfect forums for creative work to be shared in. The intention was to establish some rules that would ensure designers wouldn't endlessly witter on. The basic structure is that each presenter has twenty slides each of which are shown for twenty seconds, giving a total presentation time of six minutes forty seconds. Imagine how much more enjoyable the world of work would be if this became mandatory for all business presentations.

If anyone fancies seeing the concept in action, the D&AD are hosting a Pecha Kucha digital night featuring interesting work by some of the top digital agencies on the 17th April.

Julian Opie Dublin

I had always wanted to see Julian Opie's  walking sculptures so it was brilliant to find four of them along Dublin's O'Connell Street this weekend. To get the full effect and to appreciate the craft check out some of the videos that people have posted here.

Greening of the Desert

Brand experiences are overtly resource intensive. Typically something is built, exists for a short period of time and is then removed. The environmental impact tends to be large. We are working with our clients to look at ways of decreasing this, whether it be using bio-diesel generators, providing recycling bins or encouraging the use of public transport. That said we have never thought as deeply about the issues as the organisers of Burning Man. This gathering of 40,000 people in the Nevada desert has always been dubbed a 'leave no trace' event, that is to say the desert is returned to its natural state, but last summer they really tested what this meant and explored it as a 'closed loop' (like the planet) event.

Some of the innovations included; reducing solid waste by 50%, using bio-diesel generators run on french fry fat from Reno, and having a cafe that was powered by its own waste coffee grounds. Much of the audience for Burning Man are drawn from the San Fransisco area with a high number of tech-heads attending, and at the heart of last year's event was the world's largest expo of open source green energy solutions. This  podcast from the archives of the environmental website Tree Hugger really brings to life the passion and sense of possibility with which Burning Man have sought to find solutions to greening the festival.

What I particulalry like about it is the sense of exploration, of not claiming to have all the answers, of having a go and of having fun at the interface between art and science - the carbon neutral flame thrower sounds pretty cool. Too often in the world of branded events we feel that everything has to work perfectly, that there isn't room for experimenting with new stuff.

Son of Dave

Great stuff. For more on Son of Dave

Race Night

Great night out with our friends from Mash. Beeby led from start to finish.