‘The extraordinarily high level of energy, creativity and commitment coupled with attention to detail and broad industry contacts meant Creative Nation were the best event partners we could have hoped for.

Even when we faced seemingly insurmountable challenges, Creative Nation remained un-phased and focused on delivering the best possible result.

The team that Creative Nation assembled specifically for our event created a perfect balance of disciplines and skills and together we delivered an event which has become a real talking point in our industry.

We are very much looking forward to working with Creative Nation again and would happily recommend them.’

Sophie Walker
Senior Account Director
Fox International Channels

Creative Nation loves a shindig! Not only do we like to attend them, but we like to create them too, especially when we are tasked with educating as well as entertaining our clients and their best friends. During the last few months we have had several opportunities to utilise our network of fab talent to produce fun, yet also powerful, brand immersion events. Here’s a selection.

Fox House Event for Fox International Channels

Creative Nation produced this brand immersion event for Fox International Channels and 300 agency guests in central London. Working closely with our clients and their content, we produced sets, lighting and sound design and sourced and managed actors and performers to reflect Fox’ key programming across both their broadcast and online environments. Mrs Fox (Jonny Woo) welcomed guests into her home which included Mad Men and Fangtasia bars, a Wisteria Lane garden complete with Adam & Eve, a CSI crime environment, a Mode/Ugly Betty catwalk and a DJ/VJ performance of Fox’ content from the Kleptones. Creative Nation also introduced Stila makeup (via Glorious Brands) who provided products for the catwalk and Hi Sushi events who provided beautiful food on the night as well as hosting Sushi Making workshops. Other generous sponsors included Russian Standard, Meantime Brewery and Dominos. A good time was had by all, as demonstrated by the guests feedback which included;

‘Such a great party… one of the best of my media years for sure!’

‘So fun, not your usual corporate party, more like a cool house party….’

‘Meant to stay for 15 minutes and ended up staying for 2 hours!’

‘I’m sure this will be one of those parties that will be talked about for ages’

See more photos on our flickr page.

Two VIP events for Discovery Networks

Creative Nation undertook end-to-end event production, sourcing venues and activities alongside facilitating brand immersion exercises with Discovery Networks VIP guests from Russia and Eastern Europe. Guests were tasked with being undercover ‘reporters’ for key channels including Discovery, Animal Planet and TLC whilst attending Royal Ascot! The reports that the guests filed were of amazing quality (and comedic value!), proof that the guests really took to their task, enjoyed it and got under the skin of Discovery’s content and channel brands!

There is plenty of time for us to help with any Winter Warmers and Christmas events that you may be planning. We can conduct end to end event production for you, or just handle key elements such as content creation, party videos or helping source suppliers, entertainment etc. Let us know how we can help!

We have been a bit quiet on here as we have been putting our clients first, and it has been a very busy summer so apologies for not being in touch! Here’s a snapshot of what we have been up to and news of upcoming projects (some of which require participation) at the end of this missive.

Our summer’s work has included;

• TLC sales reel for Discovery Networks- Creative Nation created a sales reel for TLC to target local platform operators across CEEMEA. The purpose of the reel is to provide an introduction to the channel, its target audience and performance success. A full creative production project, we created the script, offline edits of show footage, motion graphic elements, V.O recording and sound design. See it on our vimeo channel.

• An all assets branding project for an international schools project- this is under NDA at present so we cannot share the work itself just yet! We created;

Branding for the project- including naming it (in consultation with the teenagers themselves via focus groups, also run by us)

Generated all printed assets for launch, promotion and the project tools themselves

Created the website with our partners at Wireworks ensuring it would work across continents, provide online project administration and present metrics in an appealing and user-friendly format.

We are really looking forward to seeing how this project develops through its trial period and hope to be able to share it with you soon.

• Numerous pitch videos- we have travelled through the pitch season hand in hand with our agency clients and have produced videos for pitches as diverse as Muller, Panasonic, Bel and Ferrero – many of which have resulted in significant wins for our clients.

• Aegis Plc conference video- our video for the Aegis conference in Boston earlier this year was so much admired throughout their portfolio of agencies that we re-versioned it for Aegis Plc’s conference too.

• A series of high profile events for broadcasters- we will be blogging about these shortly.

Upcoming
Creative Nation is having a makeover!
We have spent some time reflecting on how we have grown and developed over the last 2 ½ years and decided it is time our look better reflected US. We cannot wait to share it with you so keep your eyes peeled for our new identity and website to match!

Our new ID has been created by the talented Jon Daniel who has also produced a breathtaking exhibition at the home of stamp collecting, Stanley Gibbons this month. The exhibition focuses upon stamps from the African Diaspora and includes beautiful and unique stamps, which will appeal to everyone with an eye for history, traveling, storytelling and stunning imagery. Pop down if you find yourself in London’s West End or take a look here.

2012 is the 50th Anniversary of Jamaican independence.
Creative Nation is working on an exciting project to create a brand platform to represent Jamaica and its cultural influence and impact on the globe. This project will include both a unique online environment and a series of high profile events in the real world. We WLTM companies, organisations and individuals with an interest in or passion for Jamaica to come on board. Please contact us for more info.

We have started to update our vimeo channel with more video work so feel free to have a nose!

We look forward to catching up with you all over the coming weeks. As ever, we welcome your calls, ideas and news.

All at Creative Nation x

We are not sure if it is the seasons changing, but we have found ourselves pondering how Creative Nation seems to have its own microclimate in terms of work!

The end of last year was broadcast heavy. Here is some sponsorship work that we had forgotten to show you from last year;

Back of the hoop!
Creative Nation was very excited to be asked to create the sponsorship idents for the new Michael Jordan version of the #1 selling NBA game -NBA2K11 from 2K sports.

We were responsible for all Creative and Production (within our friend Ofcom’s guidelines) whilst showcasing the realistic computer graphics to maximum effect.
 The Jumbotron (scoreboard) was recreated in 3D to match gameplay footage with VFX added in After Effects. We then placed real gameplay footage onto the Jumbotron to keep as true to the game as possible.
The sound design featured a bespoke Snoop Dogg track with sound effects taken from actual gameplay again.

Both versions were screened on ESPN and ESPN Classic.

As 2011 (finally) got going, and through this season, we have mostly been Mad Men, working collaboratively with our Adland clients as ‘tis the season to be pitchin’.

We have produced a variety of content to support pitches to some diverse brands and have created filmic mood films to fully-fledged test commercials.

We are also delighted that some of these pitches have resulted in very big wins for our clients! You know who you are, WELL DONE!

Reinventing the way brands are built

Creative Nation was very happy to be asked to produce the opening film for the Aegis Media’s Global conference, to ‘warm’ the stage up for Jerry Buhlmann, their CEO’s opening address.

We were tasked with exciting the curiosity of the audience with a video that exuded quality, savvy and delight- no mean feat when the audience contained some of the most talented global agency leaders!

The conference was held at MIT in Boston and played on a video screen that once and for all demonstrates that size DOES matter! A staggering 65 ft x 15 ft and in full HD (there were also 2 side screens of 40 ft) the system dictated that we got really creative with it and had to be above and beyond perfectionist.

Our 3D talent created a dynamic fly through sequence, which ran across the screens, encompassing the conference themes and branding. Within this 3D sequence we also created a video to reflect the key themes of the conference alongside agency work. We hope to be able to share it with you soon.

That’s probably enough explaining why you have not seen nor heard from us much of late. We also took some time out to visit our lovely friends at Graig Wen for a creative retreat. We cannot recommend it enough- the perfect location for both inspiration and relaxation!

This season looks to be shaping up to be all about online and events.. we will keep you posted. As ever, we would love to hear your news and look forward to seeing you soon.

Pass the Pimms!

All at Creative Nation

So far as we are concerned, Valentine’s Day provides a great excuse to show those around us that we care. And that includes you, our lovely clients and friends! We love you so much that we are dedicating Valentine’s Day 2011 to thinking warm thoughts about how much we adore working for and with you. We love you so much that today really is all about you!

To this end, we are using this caring and sharing day to introduce our first ever survey. As we enter our third year and are busy developing our business, we are keen to find out how you are faring. Is the much-maligned ‘current climate’ making you work differently? Do you have all the support that you need in order to be the best you can be?

The survey is aimed at buyers and commissioners of content. It only takes a couple of minutes to complete and we will publish aggregate data and share it with you. Our aim is to provide us all with a real and meaningful picture of how we can best work together to meet our business objectives. If you feel that this is not relevant to you, forgive us and please forward this to your colleagues and friends. For those who are unfamiliar with Creative Nation, we include our company presentation and showreel below. We will close the survey on 3rd March.

As an incentive we are offering one company a complementary audit meeting to review either their use of video and film or their social marketing activity. The lucky winner will be selected at random and the audit conducted by a member of our senior management team. Please take a couple of minutes to visit our survey here.

By way of further thanking you, and in the spirit of this romantic day, we thought we would share this little piece of hippy heaven with you.  Enjoy Peace and Love here.

Wishing you chocolates, red roses, champagne and kisses…or whatever rocks your boat! Love Everyone at Creative Nation x

Sarah Clancy
Events Manager, AoC Create
www.aoc-create.co.uk

Happy New Year friends! We hope 2011 is being kind to you thus far?

Our December was really busy, with year end wrap up videos for our agency clients, and pitches.. to the point we had to force ourselves to stop on Christmas Eve! Many of our Christmas parties ended up being working parties; we filmed a fabulous 40th at the Bloomsbury Ballroom and witnessed a Lesbian Avatar Wedding whilst filming with Discovery at Café de Paris! Oh yes, in classic Creative Nation style it was all rather random whilst being wonderful fun!

We have made a collective New Year’s resolution to get even better this year, at everything, in every way!!

What’s yours?

We are currently working on an internal communications video for a FTSE Top 100 company; preparing to launch our first piece of research in February and collating our work and populating our Vimeo channel, finally!

Head over and have a look? Start here with our video we made for the Association of Colleges, AoC Create who exist to represent and promote the interests of Colleges throughout the UK. This video represents an integral part of their recent rebrand and we believe it positions them as very unique within the education sector.

We would love for you to brighten up the grey days so please get in touch and tell us what you are up to! Now 2011 is in full swing, have you identified any gaps in your marketing comms or any content that needs creating? Give us a shout!

Best wishes
All at Creative Nation

Please enjoy this, we made it especially for you!

If you would like an ecard making, there’s still time, please contact us!

Love from

Everyone at Creative Nation x

Rob Tierney

TV Futures Controller, BSkyB

Hello All

That is an example of a little bit of the work that has kept us silent for the last month! We produced a series of 5 and 15 second sponsorship bumpers for Titleist’s sponsorship of the Dubai World Championships on Sky Sports HD, which go to air today. Creative Nation took existing assets into edit and created titles, sound and voice over.

What else have we been up to?
Well, it’s been the usual diverse range of projects, here’s a taster;

• We have created internal communications assets for a large ad agency, which are private so unfortunately we cannot share them! This involved us getting under the skin of their internal communications process; branding this as well as generating all print-based manuals and online resources for their global group of agencies. It was great to work with clients from different parts of the agency and to learn more about how they work and what makes them tick. It’s always a privilege when we get to work this closely with our clients and to contribute so tangibly to their day-to-day business.

• We are neck deep in the world of film financing as we are working with our friends at Biscuit Town Productions on acquiring funding for a fab feature script written by Director Rupert Such. We hope to have news for you soon about this as it is shaping up to be just the kind of collaborative creation we love! There will be opportunities for cluster funding; innovative social marketing and community building and music collaborations, so please get in touch if you have ideas or experience to bring to the project.

• One of our Directors, Alice, has recently been invited onto the Advisory Board for Sing! London which means that Creative Nation will be directly contributing to their projects, including street pianos and street Ping-Pong amongst lots of other exciting stuff. Our first task is their website and we will let you know when that is up and running. We will be asking for participation in these activities, so please do join us on our new Facebook , or Twitter or LinkedIn as we often use these to look for people and things!

We are now bracing ourselves for the Silly Season and already working on video greeting cards- give us a shout if you would like to see what we can do.

On the subject of feeling somewhat prematurely festive, we are participating in the Bold Vision pantomime in South London this weekend. Being the community minded types that we are, the Creative Nation house band has created the music for this! If you are in South London and would like to join us, please go here to get your ticket!
It’s for a good cause people and we would love to see you there!

Until next time, keep warm and cosy!
All At Creative Nation

It is a crowded marketplace. We are faced with multiple choices. Trust plays a big part in our consumption decisions. Trust is built up through meeting, and ideally beating, expectations. Couple this with innovation, strategy, development and that most elusive quality, creativity and you will enhance brand value. This translates to the bottom line, as Interbrand’s top 100 brands of 2010 demonstrates.

Yet in many organisations, strategy and creativity are antithetical. Analytical, logical, numeric, linear and verbal left brainers control strategy whilst creativity is the preserve of intuitive, emotional, spatial, visual and physical right brainers. Given this dichotomy how can you create a charismatic brand, a brand with no peer or substitute?

The 5 principles of brand building

Be different. Stand out in a crowd and save consumers’ decision-making time. Answer conclusively the 3 key questions – Who are you? What do you do? Why does it matter?

Be collaborative. Collaboration is about survival, it’s why we are all here. Use networks of creativity, talent, research and analysis to develop convincing core brand values and extensions.

Be innovative. Avoid doing the same thing over and again. Embrace ideas that challenge you. That is how you get an outstanding name, with packaging, a website and integrated communications to support your brand.

Be inclusive. Big brands and big ideas come to fruition by involving their audience; making the leap from monologue to dialogue. Focus groups and quantitative studies are all well and good in the right place and time and for the right reasons. They are not substitutes for checking if your potential audience can verbalise who you are, what you do and why – are you still distinctive?

Be a cultivator. Harness, train, educate, civilise and naturalise creativity to create a living brand. In short, develop a pattern of behaviour which doesn’t close the door on innovation, creativity, difference and collaboration.

Why should you do this when you can hire an agency to do it for you every few years? For that matter why, as a creative consultancy, are Creative Nation encouraging you to embrace this approach?

There is nothing worse than an imposed idea or model. For a branding exercise to live, breathe and deliver ongoing results it has to be collaborative. There is nothing in it for us, or you, to carry out triennial branding exercises. It is an unnecessary cost and sends out the wrong signals to consumers and competitors.

Know what you do, how and why you do it and believe it and nurture it. Your consumers will love you for it. Speaking of things that are lovable, here is a re-versioning of a Drontal commercial we worked on for Nat Geo TV.

Re-versioning of existing Drontal commercial for Nat Geo channel. Quick turnaround of 5 and 15 second idents with creation of new V.O. for sponsorship of The Dog Whisperer on Nat Geo channel through Bskyb.

As part of the navel gazing we told you about last month, Creative Nation have been doing exactly this (whilst gathering our nuts!) and have lots of exciting news and developments to share.

In line with our listening to our customers, and their customers, and in noticing our increasing workflow from the digital arena, we realised we ought to develop our offering in this field. For a while we have noticed that whilst we work with our clients to develop sparkling content they don’t always maximize their R.O.I. in terms of how they distribute it. We aim to make your content really useful, so we want you to use it! So, we are very excited to introduce you to a new member of our senior management team! Meet Sanjit Chudha, our new Digital Director!

Sanjit’s digital experience is considerable, spanning strategy, social, SEO and everything in-between. He is currently busying himself with getting to know our freelancers and clients and in developing possibilities for them. You can learn more about Sanjit here or introduce yourself via email. Sanjit will be more than happy to explain what and who he knows in order to bring value to your comms and marketing efforts.

We will soon be in touch with our new showreel to demonstrate what we have been up to over the summer months.

In the meantime, we invite you to join our new Facebook page

We are on the lookout for new freelance talent at present so please share!

You may also wish to subscribe to our news bulletins here . It only takes a minute and we shall not bombard you! Our news will be generated by this blog, so twice a month only. Our intention for these is to delight, inspire and keep in touch. We welcome contributions from anyone with relevant material to share. Please email hello@creative-nation.co.uk to get involved.

Keep happy and well and we all look forward to catching up soon.

All at Creative Nation

Recently, they ran a couple of creative sessions for us with our VIP EMEA clients. Our clients had a fabulous time recreating our content and making adverts for our key channels, with Creative Nation’s support and guidance. These sessions made our client’s visit to the UK memorable and fun as well as helping them to get to know the Discovery brand better, which is just what we wanted to achieve!

Being that our workload is often diverse and fast paced, the fact that Creative Nation always take the time to look at our requirements carefully and work with us to meet our budgets and timescales is of enormous benefit to us…

Chantal Bindley, Events Manager, EMEA Marketing Communication
Discovery Communications Europe Ltd

After a fabulous 20 months, Creative Nation is taking some time to look at itself in the mirror; pat itself on the back, slap its wrists where appropriate and plan for the future. This is no mean feat!

It has always been our modus operandi to be as flexible as possible whilst maintaining high standards of quality and professionalism. We have succeeded in this through only working with the best, professional freelance production talent without restricting what type of projects and clients we are open to.

During the course of this process, we have remembered quite how diverse our work and clients are, so thought we should start to share some of things we do that may surprise you…. did you know we do things like this?

Last month we worked with Discovery’s events team on a couple of events for some Very Important People- their affiliates from all over EMEA.

Discovery wanted to show them a good time, whilst helping them to better understand their channel brands and content.

Creative Nation;

Analyzed their brief, took into account the other activities and schedule of their clients whilst in the UK and decided that a practical, active and fun creative session would work best.

Created the creative session, working with existing channel content, assets, key messaging and objectives and working alongside key Discovery staff members.

Designed a logo for the event and generated all print based assets including a programme for their visit, display boards, name badges, and worksheets for the day.

Produced reels of channel content relevant to the regions from which the clients came.

Facilitated the day providing a trained facilitator, cameraman, photographer and editor on site as well as all props/materials and an on site studio, complete with blue/green screen.

‘Played’ with the clients, encouraging them to get really creative and helping them to produce some very high quality and entertaining footage.

Edited their footage on site for display after dinner that same day, which raised lots of smiles and enabled a ‘feel good factor’ that lasted beyond the event in the form of the takeaway DVD that we produced for all attendees.

Booked and arranged the after dinner entertainment in the form of The Gents (we could almost brag we introduced the Contemporary Cockney Knees Up to Eastern Europe!).

How did we manage to fulfill so many aspects of this event for our clients?

Because;

The tried and trusted network that we brag about really does exist and it works!
We provided a dedicated Producer to ensure the smooth running of the event from pre production through delivery.
Our clients trust us, as described above!

The future? Help us to best serve you!

We will be in touch soon with our new show reel and ideas. In the meantime, we welcome your participation in our thinking and would love to hear about your challenges, wants and needs both as a client or a freelancer.

Please contact us at hello@creative-nation.co.uk if you would like to participate.