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
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
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
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.
Festival Annual has now passed the landmark of 10,000 friends on MySpace, with over half a million photo views to date! The success comes of the back of an intense period of festival activation that saw teams at T in the Park, Lovebox, Latitude, Secret Garden Party, Camp Bestival and Global Gathering in July.
This phase of the campaign has included the launch of the consumer focused PR effort, which has secured coverage in The Sun and The Independent (which you can view here) as well as an online gallery with The Guardian and extensive regional press coverage.
We’ve started selling copies of our user-generated book Festival Annual – well in advance of its publication in October. A special early-order discount is available on our MySpace page, alongside galleries from Isle of Wight, Download, Rockness and Glastonbury.
Festival Annual now has 4770 MySpace friends, a fast growing email database and 620 followers on Twitter.
We been mentioned on blogs including Brand Flakes for Breakfast and Data Transmission.
Over 950 photos have been uploaded to MySpace by users, in addition to the thousands added by Festival Annual’s photographers.
IU’s Festival Annual project has begun building a significant community of festival goers on the eve of the UK’s largest festival Glastonbury.
In a little over 10 days, we have recruited over 2,000 MySpace friends and over 500 Twitter followers – and all of this comes before we launch the PR campaign and online partner media for the project.
We have had dozens of festival goers upload photos to MySpace and tag them as Festival Annual, and have recruited a bunch of eager Glastonbury goers to take and share their photos. In addition we will be there to capture the pictures of the #Twisto group of Twitterers who are planning to meet at Glastonbury.
Festival Annual is the first ever user-generated book documenting the UK festival season.
IU’s innovative Festival Annual project has secured a partnership with MySpace which will see the social networking site become its official online home. Festival goers will be encouraged to upload photos to MySpace and tag them “Festival Annual” for inclusion in the book and online galleries. All those who submit photos or stories will have their names included in the printed book, due out in October.
We have also today launched a Twitter stream for Festival Annual, which will this weekend be at Isle of Wight, Download and Rockness. All festival reviews including the #FA tag will be considered for inclusion in the book, with prizes for the best festival related tweets.
IU today announces it’s latest venture project: Festival Annual – a unique book and online community celebrating UK festival culture.
We’ll be out documenting the festival summer, and inviting festival goers to submit their stories and photos for inclusion in the first ever user-generated book.
More details will be announced shortly.
Smirnoff GB have announced their next Smirnoff Experience show at Matter on July 10th. The night is called UR the Night and allows the audience to participate in shaping different elements of the event.
IU, together with our sister company CC-Lab and Ben Turner at Graphite Media, have booked all the main stage musical talent with a stellar line-up of Pet Shop Boys (live), Hot Chip (DJ), Little Boots (live) and a unique performance from Tom Middleton where the public will vote on which set Tom will play.
