Festival Annual Relaunches for 2010

IU has relaunched Festival Annual for 2010 with a new home on MySpace and a promotional deal with Absolute Radio who will be featuring Festival Annual galleries on their site across the summer. This year Festival Annual will be distributing more digital content across Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, with eChapters previewing more content from the book in an iPad friendly format.

MySpace has worked with Festival Annual to relaunch our page, with added features including festival playlists, a regular competition module, and a Twitter feed. MySpace will be supporting Festival Annual with regular homepage and run of site media across the summer.

Festival Annual is the user-generated book project launched by IU last year. Across the summer, festival goers share their photos and stories with the best content published in a book just after the festival season ends.

IU delivers Johnnie Walker’s latest Vodafone McLaren Mercedes F1 activation

Johnnie Walker has launched its Drive of a Lifetime campaign as part of its activation of its sponsorship of Vodafone McLaren Mercedes.

One winner will get the chance to drive a Vodafone McLaren Mercedes F1 car. All consumer facing aspects of the promotion, including visual design, competition mechanics and videos, were developed and produced by IU, working with Johnnie Walker’s sponsorship agency JMI.

The programme is active across several markets including Greece

and Australia – where it can be seen here (you will have to go through the age-gate to view).

IU stages EastEnders 25: The Exhibition for the BBC

Last night the BBC previewed EastEnders 25: The Exhibition at a special press and cast preview event. The exhibition was designed and created by IU and forms a part of the 25th anniversary celebrations for BBC One’s flagship show. Cast members and press got a preview of the props and costumes from 25 years of dramatic endings, including a chance to vote on the all time biggest EastEnders villain, and a gallery of wedding dresses from the show. The exhibition creates as many photo opportunities as possible, with photos uploaded to the BBC EastEnders Facebook page.

Cast and press previewing the exhibition in east London last night

IU Highly Commended for Social Media Innovation

eConsultancy has given us a Highly Commended award for Innovation in Social Media in their 2009 awards announced just before Christmas.

The award was for our Festival Annual project which relied on social media platforms to solicit all its content from festival goers, and to host all galleries. Our submission outlined how we had used Twitter to target different groups of festival goers and recruit them into the community, and then later in the summer used Twitter, Facebook and MySpace to preview the book and secure online orders from those in the book.

Winner of Best Fan Photo Announced at UK Festival Awards

Last night at the UK Festival Awards, the winner of the Fan Photo award was announced. Roxanne Royer won the prize for her picture of a man in a coffin from Glastonbury. The photo features in Festival Annual.

Roxanne’s prize includes a day with PA’s top entertainment photographer. The Fan Photo Award was sponsored by Festival Annual.

We have moved!

Under the threat of the Crossrail bulldozers we have departed Dean Street and relocated a few blocks further north. We have a new office that is mercifully a little further from the buses, perfume sellers and hare krishnas of Oxford Street. Full details and map are on the contact page. Telephone numbers stay the same.

Reuters features book launch

We were up early today touring radio stations and witnessing a Flash Morph ouside HMV in Oxford Street. Reuters were on hand to catch the action and you can view their report at this link.

The Flash Morph outside HMV Oxford Street, waiting for the shop to open

Festival Annual Press Launch

Last night saw us herald the arrival of Festival Annual with a press launch at Spitalfields store Marsh Mellow. In attendance were press, festival partners and a few of our Festival Annual contributors. The book hits the stores on Monday!

Guests at the Festival Annual launch get their hands on the book

IU seals retail deals with HMV, Borders, Waterstone’s, Liberty, Blackwell’s and Foyles

Festival Annual has been sent to print, and prior to its publication on 19th October, we have been busy sealing retail deals, and are pleased to have secured support from the cream of the UK’s book and gift retailers.

Orders from HMV, Borders, Waterstone’s, Blackwell’s and Foyles will ensure the book is available throughout the whole of the country, and an order from Liberty signals that Festival Annual is set to be one of this Christmas’ hottest gift items.

In addition, we have partnered with the Festival Awards, with Festival Annual becoming the proud sponsor of the Fan Photo Award.

While the book is printing, we’ve made use of the large pile of paper generated during the design and repro phase of the book, by turning it into these limited edition notebooks, each featuring a little piece of Festival Annual on the reverse of its pages.

Notebooks produced from waste paper generated during the production of Festival Annual 09

IU partners with Choose What You Read

We have formed a partnership with Choose What You Read, the group which offers commuters an alternative to the tonnes of free papers thrust at us each day, by giving out free books instead.

Choose What You Read was set up by our good friend Claire Wilson, and her good friend Alfie Boyd, as a reaction to the rising tide of free papers being printed and pushed at us each day. Its monthly book-drops are now well established in London, and have recently hopped over the Atlantic to New York City.

We will be assisting Choose What You Read with becoming a properly established non-profit company, raising their profile through PR, helping them to develop sustainable funding models, and with international expansion to more cities. You can keep up with the latest CWYR news on their blog, and show your support by signing up for their nice little email updates, complete with book extracts and reviews, on the website.

To mark the demise of The London Paper last Friday, we helped organise a photocall of a CWYR bookdrop as the last copies of the free paper were being given out.

Choose What You Read offers commuters free books as an alternative to the final edition of The London Paper

We’re proud to be assisting Choose What You Read, alongside our existing partnerships with The Eden Project and with RockCorps.