Author / danielfmstone

by danielfmstone

The Cycle Of Cool

I put forward the hypothesis that places can only really be cool for a few years. 

The Shithole

All cool places start out as shitholes. It’s a fact. Think of a cool place in a big city. Within the last twenty years or so it would have been a shithole.

A shithole can be described as boasting high crime rates normally centred on domestic abuse and drugs, scary-as-fuck staffies, betting shops, babies with earrings, an average tattoo count of 6.7 p/person and a local Farm Foods. Residents include Wayner, Trish and MC Pickaxe.

The populace is witty, brutally honest, and boasting a strong sense of community in stark contrast to their feelings for outsiders. They’ll make you laugh whilst they rob your phone.

It might be tough to truly identify a shithole because anyone who’s ever read a blog has never actually been to one in its embryonic form.

The struggling creative types 

These guys have names like Noah or Jasmine. They’ve received decent educations but refuse to work for the proverbial ‘man’. Skilled with their hands but emotionally unstable – a combination of weed psychosis, alcohol dependency and unwavering millennial angst.

They complain about society but their solutions don’t stray much from backing the Greens or lofty, unactionable communist ideals. Their parents are upper middle-class and holiday six times annually.

Hunting as they do in packs, these struggling creative types soon find a cheap studio at the heart of the shithole. They make hideous pieces of art and jewellery from other people’s waste. Nobody buys them and the struggle continues.

But after about six months, Jasmine’s Dad relents to selling off part of his City insurance firm, giving her the cash to pursue her ‘dream’ – opening a vegan café called Zion.

Zion causes a frenzy in the shithole, becoming a pillar for the new community. The creative types flock in their droves to drink coffee wearing headphones, share quinoa recipes on Web WhatsApp and smoke rollies outside on their own. Conversation – “what’s the wifi?” – is electric.

Similar groups arrive and more and more businesses spring up. While Wayner’s spoon is only getting greasier, the refurbished boozer next door has started serving skin-on fries on upcycled bin lids at only six quid.

Soon the wave of new arrivals don’t just come to work. They actually live in the shithole.

Unbeknownst to all, but the Cycle of Cool is in full motion.

Cool kids

Cool kids can be split into two sub-groups. Tragically, the genuinely cool kids account for only about 3 % of the demographic to which they lend their name.

They like cultural stuff like photography, skateboarding, graffiti, for the simple reason that it genuinely interests them.

They eat healthy food but party way too much but that’s fine because they work hard and pay their taxes.

They dress well or, at least, they dress naturally because what unites them is the fact that they’re oblivious to the fact that they’re cool.

Soon, the cool kids visit the shithole because they appreciate the not-completely-shit creativity starting to manifest itself.

Another year passes – the cool kids, the creatives and the indigenous shitholians living blissfully side-by-side.

Business is booming. Sourdough sales are through the roof. Now, perhaps two years into the Cycle, this place is no longer a shithole. It’s actually pretty cool.

The area will be miscommunicated as ‘up-and-coming’, first by the digital press, swiftly followed by politicians and your parents. In that order.

However, it’s not up-and-coming at all. It’s the opposite. And disastrously, this means it’s too late.

We’ve reached peak cool. 

The ‘cool’ kids

Meet Monty.

Monty arrived approximately 0.01 seconds after the peak of cool. How can we be sure? Because his mere presence is proof of its decline. He doesn’t just arrive at the tipping point – he is the tipping point.

You see, Monty belongs to the other 97%. He’s a ‘cool’ kid.

It wasn’t always like this of course. When he first begins frequenting this place he was not even ‘cool’, let alone cool.

Monty, from a proud upper-middle-class family, wears expensive clothes but had zero taste. You know the outfit; pale-blue shirt with white pinstripes, coupled with mustard chinos so long that they pretty much envelop his shiny brown brogues.

Poor Monty soon realises that, although he was one of the biggest jokers on his house hockey team, he’s got nothing on these state school kids.

But soon, a spark…

Monty remembers how loaded he is. And with money, he knows he can become cool pretty much overnight.

Soon, he dresses the same as the cool kids. Well, 97 % the same. The nuances are at once subtle, at once alarmingly obvious. New Era cap position 20 % too far,  the skinny jeans just a little too tight around the arse. The genuinely cool kids know it instinctively and deep down, poor Monty does too: he’s still not cool.

A year after his transformation, he still can’t roll a spliff or truly appreciate trip hop. He can’t shake his understanding for voting Tory.

In fact, the only reason this sub-class even exists is because there are so many of his brand of dickhead constantly validating one another’s ‘cool’, namely through use of terms like #winning.

And so begins our slow descent.

The Cycle is dead. Long live the Cycle.

It’s Zion’s 5th birthday party.

Simon and Jasmine announce that they have signed on their first property together. MC Pickaxe, now behind bars, accepted a £900,000 offer for his two-bed ex-council house. Monty lived in the semi-detached London Brick directly opposite.

Once shit, then ‘cool’, now just fucking spenny. This Cycle is long since dead.

But what of the new wave of creative types? And the cool kids? Where will they go?

Well, you tell me. Because there’s a new cycle in motion, right now, in your city.

From Stokes Croft to Shoreditch, Mitte to Williamsburg, shitholes are never transformed in isolation.

Multiple cycles spin simultaneously across locations, all over the country, throughout the continent and across the world.

You should check them out – they’re really up-and-coming, serve great coffee, and will soon be pretty damn ‘cool’.

by danielfmstone

Two Birds : A Poem

Because I’m so alternative, I wrote a poem summarising my life and times. If non-discernible, it’s about throwing parties in my youth and now essentially doing it for a living.

This tale unfolds on Gloucester Road
A place of magic so oft bestowed

On moped all-black, locks painted white
Our zebra armed with the gift of the night

For twas the dawn of dubstep and heaven forbid
A bracelet of entry for only three quid!

A startup? Stop there! Yet was certainly lean
As don’t tell Lakota that him only sixteen

So why share this fable? Why should it ring true?
For this is first bite of an appetite grew

Post-study up North, all goblets o’ booze
And a year off-shore that had all Toulouse

Him settle in London, new family FRUKT
A voyage to greatness, his cabin be booked

Who knew back then when chasing dat paper
He could combine dem skillz with dem of Don Draper

Those imprints of youth, in more mature hands
Still selling the night but now it’s for brands

cropped-screenshot_2020-04-14_at_18-removebg-preview.png

Danny ‘Two Birds’ Stone was my boxing name. The robin is synonymous with my late Mother’s family and, being a life-long Bristol City fan, this adds yet further meaning.

 

by danielfmstone

Typecast Tim and the Copy that Stole Christmas

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This morning I was reminded of my first ever advertising planning meeting.

I was 18, on my own in bedroom and wearing just my pants.

I’d recently launched my first-ever business — a free football magazine — that was seeing little to no success through its primary marketing channel, selling b2b ad space.

A full two weeks into the launch plan, I decided to do change tack.

It was time for something drastic. It was time for our first consumer play.

Backed by a modest budget of about £280 (production, media etc.) it was clear I needed to tap into the ceiling-less potential of organic digital.

In short, I needed to go viral.

To be honest, I needed a fucking miracle. And for millennial non-trepreneurs like me, in lieu of true divine intervention, I took a pew at the church of St. Google.

Armed with the creative lethargy normally reserved for buying sink sponges, I duly punched in ‘how to make an ad and go viral’ to the search bar. No Google, I wasn’t feeling lucky.

And yet, to my great surprise, I was met with a treasure-trove of hints, tips, lists and general must-read advice on the subject. Looking back, I can only presume these were all published by previous exponents of highly successful viral ad campaigns? I was doubtful.

And my suspicions were seemingly supported as the majority of links weren’t pointing to separate pieces of work, but seemingly just to one. An ad, I would soon learn, that in viral terms was the pioneer, the daddy, the holy grail – all rolled into one. It was, of course, the famed Dollar Shave Club ad.

 

I watched the spot in awe and in that moment, in my head, I wrote my first ever creative brief. It went something like: “Well let’s just do that then!”.

Ever written a brief wearing only briefs?

I watched the video back, pausing at regular intervals, excitedly scribbling my scene-by-scene interpretation which, in fact, took the form of unbridled thievery:

· I walked myself through my magazine printing house

· I bantered my way through a couple of key product benefits

· I even made a left-leaning immigration gag

However, I soon come to the abrupt realisation that what I was doing was shit and scrapped the campaign — its cycle lasting a full twelve minutes.

SO…

What’s the point of all this?

Well this morning it was raining – the only time I dare get the tube to work. I hate the tube.

But one saving grace from the misery-faced, coffee-on-your-crotch, bad-breath-down-your-neck drudgery of the Central line are the ads – I feel slightly more culturally in-tune once cuddled from all sides by star-studded film releases, chart-topping pop albums, and even those shitty English crime novels called something like ‘He Watched Her Leave’.

I feel a subconscious sense of being both in the know and in the now.

I feel inspired.

But this morning, one ad this morning caught my eye for a slightly different reason.

Let’s play billboard spot the difference:

To the left, an example of the pretty much the most omnipresent advert currently in circulation at tube stations, from Jack Daniel’s.

Uniquely bold form (copy-heavy, they often take a couple of minutes to fully digest), famous enough that there’s even a VICE article written about them, and effective enough that I actually read the buggers.

To the right, a very similar advert from Timothy Taylor’s Landlord.

Here they are in-situ:

Spotted: JD + TT / Master and Apprentice

Make your own mind up. But for me, when such a celebrated work shares the same backdrop, design structure and TOV whilst telling the same type of story, in a similar category, in the same place, it begs the question of whether someone, somewhere, has spouted that famous line: “Well let’s just do that then!”

Either way, it got me thinking about how certain types of ads look and feel so similar to one another:

· ‘Shiny new car driving around the Swiss alps’ TV spot

· ‘Hollywood A-Lister looks nice so must smell nice’ perfume ad

· (Sadly) 90 % of all TV charity ads

· Every radio advert ever made

Perfume ads: the Hollywood of Homogeny

It was early in my career that I realised how generic consumer insights can drive generic brand or campaign strategy.

It was the 2014 World Cup and three ads in a row told me (me the archetypal independence-and-empowerment-yearning millennial) to go ‘All in Or Nothing’ (Adidas), ‘Risk Everything’ (Nike) and then, most bizarrely, that my Dorito’s were in fact only ‘For The Bold’.

Without strong creative executions, the manifestations of these messages may be blurred and their effectiveness lost.

Jim Carroll, BBH’s former London Chairman, discusses this as an example of ‘wind tunnel marketing’: the thinking that, as approaches to strategy and measurement have become more sophisticated and standardised, we find ourselves in a culture of codification that has ‘lost faith in the power of difference’.

The upshot of this is, in his words, a ‘numbers game, where the scale of resource wins’.

Using the perfume example, the consensus is that brands like Chanel or Dior can afford to create adverts in the pursuit, principally, of ongoing brand awareness and recall. In short, they can afford to be ‘ignored’ because to our subconscious, in truth, they’re actually not.

A 2016 report from management consultancy firm A.T. Kearney supports this, finding that an annual spend of £647 million in fragrance marketing changed very little in terms of cut-through: four out of five of the top-selling fragrance brands have remained at the top for five years.

So, for relative small players in the marketing world such as Timothy Taylor’s Landlord, let this be a cautionary tale.

The risk of being complicit, either consciously or not, in a homogenized [insert brand here] advertising culture, is unlikely to be as forgiving, not even at Christmas. As my girlfriend reminds me repeatedly, Timothy Taylor is not Chanel.

Further, consumers know when they’re being sold to, especially when they’re being sold to badly. There’s inspiration, there’s imitation, and then there’s downright intellectual property violation.

I often have to remind myself of Mark Ritson’s first rule of marketing: “you are not the consumer” which is true — I will undoubtedly look at these things in a different way.

Time will tell if the Timothy Taylor ads will be effective or not but, somewhat ironically, I can call upon my own experience to make a case for brand recall.

For that very same morning, sodden from the rain but with my mouth frothing from lamentations of the state of modern marketing, I had a sudden urge for a drink.

“Shit!” I thought…had my marketing peers successfully got into my head? Was I playing the role of unwilling consumer? Was this their plan all along coming to fruition?

At 8.58am, on a Tuesday, I walked into an off-licence and I made the most unprecedented of moves:

“Bottle of Jack Daniel’s please mate”

by danielfmstone

Jagerhaus : The Story So Far

Featured in Campaign

At this year’s All Points East, a 10-day music festival held in east London’s Victoria Park in May and June, German spirits brand Jägermeister staged the most ambitious version yet of its “JägerHaus” – a multilayered venue featuring immersive elements, live music, bars and dedicated areas for experiences such as cocktail-making classes.

This year also marks five years since the JägerHaus concept was first unveiled, at Field Day festival in 2015. Designed to bring friends closer together through music in an edgy environment, the experience also aimed to promote the brand’s serves, such as its Ice Cold Shot and long drink Root56. Jägermeister wanted to deepen brand engagement among its core target audience of 25- to 35-year-old men.

While the activation has remained true to its roots, it has also evolved over the past five years, in line with the brand’s – and consumers’ – changing needs. Jägermeister has worked with Frukt for the past five years on the concept, its build and its evolution. For Jim Robinson, managing director at Frukt, one of the biggest challenges has been making consumers aware that there’s more to Jägermeister than the Jägerbomb.

“The JägerHaus is now widely respected as one of the best brand experiences at festivals – people look for it, spend time with it and return to it again and again,” Robinson says. “It continues to achieve what we wanted it to do. People tell us that their favourite things about the JägerHaus is the atmosphere that it creates and the music, with visitors able to see exciting new talent, combined with interesting, established artists on a small, intimate stage.”

Samantha Green, Jägermeister UK’s event manager, adds that the JägerHaus is an integral part of the brand’s marketing strategy. “It offers us an opportunity to engage with our core consumers and for them to experience the very best of the brand, alongside new talent and our key drink serves such as Jägermeister Ice Cold Shot and Jägermeister Mule,” she explains.

Green attributes the activation’s success over the years to a combination of consistency, in both approach and messaging, and the ability to make small tweaks based on customer feedback, delivering a more memorable experiece overall.

JägerHaus’ first five years

2015-2017

Its first inception was at Field Day in June 2015; between then and 2017, the JägerHaus travelled to 13 festivals, making appearances at the likes of Bestival, Kendal Calling and Reading. Guests could visit a number of areas within a massive structure, each with its own look and feel.

Spaces included the Lodge and the Backyard, where festivalgoers could enjoy a Jägermeister serve and participate in interactive games; the Warehouse, featuring live music; and the Loft members/VIP bar area, located on the upper floor. Each space was connected via luminous and aromatic tunnels to ensure a fully immersive experience.


By 2017, Robinson says the brand had increased its investment in programming and enhanced the sound and lighting, as well as introducing a bespoke DJ booth in the Backyard area. The list of cocktails available in the Loft was expanded, too, and the area was also reserved for a Berlin-themed brunch at some festivals, attended by the media and consumers, with each course paired with a Jägermeister cocktail.

For 2017, the brand also upgraded the Lodge space by introducing phone-charging stations, while it also improved the view of the stage from the Backyard and enhanced the artist experience on stage. The Loft space was overhauled to increase its VIP look and feel, enabling it to effectively showcase key Jägermeister products. A basketball hoop, dubbed “Give it a shot”, was also added to the structure.

2018

At 6pm every day, Jägermeister introduced the Ice Cold Hour, where trays of Ice Cold shots in glasses made of ice were gifted to consumers by brand ambassadors. Coveted Jägermeister merchandise such as bandanas and hip flasks were also given away. This was repeated in 2019.

2019: a new direction

Fast-forward to this year’s All Points East, where JägerHaus went even bigger, spanning seven areas within the structure instead of the previous six. The Lodge was transformed and renamed Basement Bar, reimagined as an underground Berlin-themed industrial space, aiming to immerse visitors in Jägermeister’s brand values. Wood panelling gave way to concrete-textured walls and bespoke wallpaper made from ripped JägerHaus line-up posters from the past five years covered the bar.

A new back bar lit up by “Ice Cold Shot” in neon lights enticed consumers to try the Jägermeister drinks on offer, while a specially commissioned stag mural encouraged visitors to capture and print their own memories from the JägerHaus via a “selfie spot” photo booth.

Basement Bar: new for 2109

Those who could access the Loft were rewarded with a prime view of both the Warehouse and the Backyard spaces – which featured new furniture painted with Bauhaus-style patterns. Visitors could indulge in games such as shuffleboard or fußball on bespoke tables and enjoy complimentary Jägermeister drinks.

The woodland-themed tunnels of previous years were reimagined, too, with the neon tunnel, which linked the Basement Bar to the Backyard, refitted with neon tubes and overlaid with silver caging, in keeping with the new underground theme. The effect was so striking that the area became an unofficial selfie spot, with multiple photos of the space spotted across social media.

There was also a night tunnel filled with red, blue and green lights, with each colour revealing a vibrant set of images printed on the walls. This year, custom-made graphics were created for the walls in Bauhaus style, with hidden “ice cold” messages that were revealed intermittently as the lights drew visitors towards the next space.

The fences of the Backyard enclosure became a gallery of images showcasing the best of the music talent from All Points East 2018. Alongside classic Jägermeister drinks, the activation also featured the first-ever festival-specific beverage called All Points Passion – a cocktail of Jägermeister, passion fruit and grenadine – that was developed and served across the site.

What’s in store next year?

Green says the JägerHaus will be back next year and, judging by its 2019 iteration and feedback thus far, it is likely to keep to the “bigger and better” concept. For Robinson, listening to consumers and making adjustments has been crucial to keeping the activation fresh year on year.

“It’s easy to overthink how consumers will connect with what you produce – keeping it simple, fun and high-quality are what matters,” he says.

JägerHaus in numbers

  • In 2015, JägerHaus appeared at five festivals and received just over 82,000 visitors.
  • In 2016, it toured four festivals, reaching out to just under 65,500 festivalgoers.
  • 2017 saw two festival appearances, with more 61,000 guests, while in 2018 just over 60,000 visited the experience, again at two festivals.
  • Thus far in 2019, JägerHaus has appeared at two festivals, with just under 84,000 music fans taking part.
by danielfmstone

Red Bull : Thank You For The Music

Featured in Campaign (Ghost-written)

Given Red Bull’s symbiotic relationship with the music industry over the past twenty years, the news of the much-heralded Red Bull Music Academy being dropped by the brand has sparked much intrigue and surprise by fans and speculators alike.

On a macro level, a clear provocation is whether this is a curtain-call for Red Bull in music, with a loftier conversation also worth of discussion around what this means for the brand and music landscape in totality.

We look closer at Red Bull and the branded entertainment landscape to provide answers to these questions, as well as some predictions for the future.

Red Bull x Music

Having bulldozed their way into the space with their multi-market, ownership model, Red Bull has become a key player in the global music game, spawning iconic properties such as RBMA and Red Bull Culture Clash, that has helped it maintain an almost unrivalled level of awareness and authenticity for a non-endemic brand in the music space.

In a wider sense the energy drink powerhouse has been a pioneer and flag-bearer for both passion and experiential marketing, and their activity continues to serve as inspiration and best practice across these disciplines.

But an ownership model comes with a hefty price tag. Maintaining owned events, academies and radio stations, to name but a few of their assets, requires significant and ongoing outlay across aspects such as management, production and promotion.

Alternative approaches, for example a sponsorship or partner-led approach, sees equity borrowed from existing and often bigger and more relevant music entities, sharing and reducing costs in the process.

Whilst this leads to a dilution or reduction in exclusive assets or IP, this represents a much less risky road for brands seeking to leverage music on a shoestring, or whilst trying to find their dancing feet.

Having invested so heavily in music over the years, and with a vast array of best practice platforms and activations in their arsenal, we see Red Bull’s move as being more strategic and operational than existential.

As time passes, we anticipate that they will leverage this significant equity in a more targeted way, through focused and locally-led initiatives over global properties, enabling them to meet different objectives with culturally nuanced and multi-dimensional activations in-market.

Brands x Entertainment

So what does this mean for how other brands leverage the music industry? It’s certainly a valid question but the short answer, seemingly, is not a lot.

In truth, we’re living in somewhat of a gold rush in terms of branded music activity. As such, a more pertinent question FRUKT has been asking recently is whether we’ve in fact reached saturation point, with primary challenges to address around quality and effectiveness, rather than those of quantity or full extinction.

Reacting to an increasingly cluttered digital world, the experience age has seen brands upping their experiential budgets year-on-year in a bid to engage with audiences IRL, with music a key battleground.

And for mass-market brands especially, passions have been employed successfully as a means to segment their audience and marketing activity.

This has seen brands building up wider entertainment strategies, for example Red Bull’s growing presence in gaming building on their historic associations with music and sport.

Interestingly, a more recent trend has seen the convergence of these individual passions, bringing together, for example, music and sport, music and gaming or even all three.

As with any marketing activity, the quality will simply be defined by the quality.

Our recent report on brand partnerships reveals a universal audience desire across passions – that word we all know – purpose.

Of course, ‘purpose’ is a much-uttered and oft-maligned term in marketing parlance – we all know that audiences will prefer brands who authentically stand for something.

So in lieu of claiming your caffeine-hiked energy drink is going to ‘save the world’, experiential activations, the lifeblood of entertainment strategy, provides a natural home for brands to tackle and assist with targeted, real-world challenges and tensions without shoe-horning a loftier brand purpose. Examples include giving back to the gaming community, providing a platform for aspiring musicians, saving decaying venues or providing spaces for a kick-about in communities where this is currently out of reach.

Conclusion

To conclude, for Red Bull – the show will go on. Given the great job they’ve done setting themselves up for future success, we’ll continue to see a lot of great work from them in music, as well as other cultural spaces.

And for the industry, this is merely indicative of a chapter-change in the ever-evolving entertainment marketing story.

by danielfmstone

Foot Locker x PAQ

Challenge

FRUKT were tasked to help inspire and engage consumers from pan-European markets with Foot Locker’s key black styles.

Catalyst

Following the success of our previous Summer Rotation campaign, we once again partnered with Kyra TV – YouTube channel, arguably the world’s foremost youth-orientated fashion entity and home to the multi-award-winning streetwear show PAQ, dubbed the “Top Gear for Fashion”.

We’d identified PAQ as an ideal partner for Foot Locker, boasting a highly relevant and engaged audience as part of their uniquely transparent model that offers overt but authentic brand integration and creative collaboration.

How We Pressed Play

FRUKT challenged the PAQ boys to each create product-centric video look-books that represent their creative interpretation of what summer rotation means to them.

To supplement and build out from the master episode that lives on YouTube, we created additional bitesize content deliverables for use on Foot Locker channels:

Deliverables

Master Content 

·      1 x full length PAQ episode on YouTube (24 minutes)

Foot Locker content 

·      1 x cut down trailer video (15-30 seconds)

·      4 x talent digital lookbooks (60 seconds each)

·      1 x longer form edit (2 mins)

·      1 x shorter form edit (60 seconds)

·      1 x Instagram story teaser video (10-15 seconds)

·      36 x stills

Foot Locker Brand Integration:

·      All content presented ‘In partnership with Foot Locker’

·      Animated front tile including Foot Locker logo on YouTube content

·      Branded mid-roll utilising talent from the show (30 sec duration)

·      Authentic product integration where agreed

by danielfmstone

Mastercard X League of Legends – Mastercard Nexus

Challenge

Hot on the heels of Mastercard’s first-of-its-kind, groundbreaking global agreement and multi-year partnership with Riot games for League of Legends Esports, FRUKT was tasked with conceptualising and producing an experiential activation to establish the brand as trusted and authentic sponsor at the 2018 World Championship held in South Korea.

The goal was to curate a platform to provide unforgettable Priceless Experiences for fans of League of Legends Esports, the largest Esport in the world.

Catalyst

Mastercard’s platform is built around connecting with people through their passions. The aim was to bring this positioning to the world’s largest Esport, engaging fans with Priceless Experiences and benefits.

The world of League of Legends Esports has a unique relationship with its fans, who have helped build the Esports scene from the ground up. Every League of Legends fan has played a pivotal role in their passion’s meteoric rise, and is directly invested in its culmination at the World Championships.

Mastercard recognises that League of Legends Esports fans are inherently active contributors to their community, and champions this positive connectivity though shared Priceless Experiences around the League of Legends World Championships.

How We Pressed Play

The Mastercard Nexus was based in The Kunsthalle, a modern industrialist venue made up of 28 recycled shipping containers, seen as an epicentre of cultural and artistic innovation in Gangnam Gu, downtown Seoul.

The three-day experiential pop-up featured a number of ways that fans and members of the public could get closer to the Esport they love, including:

Experiences

  • ‘Become a Champion’ through social, shareable Augmented Reality experience
  • Play on high-performance gaming PCs and experience Riot Game’s Snowdown Showdown 1v1 game mode that is used exclusively at the All-Star Event
  • Customise your very own Mastercard Nexus Jersey
  • Watch the final at an exclusive streaming party
  • Be in the chance of winning Priceless Surprises including:
    – Opportunity to play 1v1 with a pro player on the Nexus stage
    – League of Legends merchandise and in-game skins
    – Tickets to the World Championships final
    – Behind the scenes tour and a rehearsal viewing of the Opening Ceremony
    – Opportunity to watch a game with a League of Legends pro player from VIP seats
    – Participate in an on-stage playtest of the gaming PCs the pros will compete on during the World Championship Finals at Incheon Munhak Stadium

Education

  • Learn “how to stream” – from basics to advanced – at Twitch’s Creator Camp

Inspiration

  • Meet pro players and teams
  • Have your photo taken with Cosplay Characters
  • Watch high profile Twitch influencers stream live Engage in shoutcaster appearances, Q+A, meet and greets and autograph session
by danielfmstone

PlayStation – Players Village

Challenge

Attended by over 80,000 people year-on-year, EGX is the peak annual exhibition for brands in the gaming industry in the UK.

In 2018, PlayStation returned with their biggest stand yet and, following a successful pitch process, FRUKT were tasked to enhance and optimize on previous years to ensure it was the stand of the expo.

One overarching aspect of the brief was to incorporate an overarching theme, something that had been lacking in previous years, in support of their overarching brand message to to ‘Celebrate The Players’.

Further key point of the brief was, of course, around gameplay – with our response needing to ensure comfortable yet striking areas were created to accommodate 17 key game titles and 6 PSVR releases.

Catalyst

The tension we worked from was the how gaming had transcended from the virtual world back into the real world, with its huge prevalence taking it into wider culture, from football celebrations to gamer influencers, celebrity gamers and even Hollywood blockbusters.

Thus, ‘real world of gaming’ become our springboard for creative.

How We Pressed Play

Three ‘real world’ iterations were considered, before deciding on ‘The Players Village’, a look and feel inspired by the olympian-like commitment of PlayStation fans, and the togetherness and spirit of competition of EGX.

Spanning 2011m², FRUKT created an open-plan or ‘open-world’ area with  9 exhibition-stylized gaming zones.

The Players Village theme came to life through a neighbourhood-style layout, with distinct wayfinding segregated by olympic flags that championed both PlayStation and their players.

An emote (celebration) photo opportunity gave people the chance to on their best game-faces, before sticking their photo to our Players Wall of Fame before, unbeknownst to them, seeing their photo showcased on 7 hanging flag-inspired screens surrounding the stage for all visitors to see, truly putting them at the crux of the activation.

Our central arena focal point was an elevated stage hosted by the PlayStation Access team but powered by the fans. Attendees could take part in and observe exclusive gameplay, group fun activities like FortNite floss-offs, all wrapped up in giveaway sessions. One highlight featured the retro gameshow-inspired ‘Ultimate PlayStation Quiz’ hosted by the access team, where one lucky PlayStation fan was presented with the grand prize of a special edition 500th Million Edition PS4 Pro Console. We also created a bespoke, designated area for PSVR inspired by our Spring Showcase work – 14 pods showcasing 6 game titles, with guests welcomed via a large 3D VR headset at entrance.

by danielfmstone

Nando’s – Music Exchange

Challenge

Back in 2014, Nando’s had a long-term vision to fuel the music industry both creatively and literally by giving back to the music community and feeding artists. Additionally, they wanted to raise awareness and create connections between the UK and their South African heritage – where the brand started and the famous Peri-Peri chilies
are grown.

How We Pressed Play

As a result we created the Nando’s Music Exchange, a platform where artists from both UK and South Africa could exchange musical influences and cultures. The aim is to inspire and facilitate collaborations and give up-and-coming musicians unrivalled access to the best musical talent (who also happen to be Nando’s loyalists). For three years running, the Music Exchange has held a workshop that sees 20 young musicians from London and 5 from South Africa brought together for a production workshop day hosted by top artists such as Stormzy, Example, Little Simz and Toya Delazy. This is hosted at the London Roundhouse where Nando’s continue to sponsor part of their studio space.

Their aim is to work collaboratively to create an original track from scratch using sounds from both countries. The established artists field Q&A sesssions over lunch (Nando’s, of course!) and during the afternoon, they drop-in to each of the groups to give them hands-on-advice about their tracks, with final feedback at the end of the day.

Results

  • 5 amazing new tracks
  • Participants from 3 countries
  • 1 track played on BBC Radio 1Xtra
  • Coverage from The Line of Best Fit, Music News and Digital Spy