We would like to welcome the beautiful Chloe Molly Wilson into the world. Born at 8.51pm on Thursday 2nd May and weighing 8lbs 6oz, we couldn’t be more pleased for new parents, Account Director Adam Wilson and his lovely partner Rachael.

Adam has assured us that despite an emotional and exhausting experience, he is still keen to have 4 kids! Well I can imagine that would be tempting after seeing this little cutie.

In the words of the new dad himself, she certainly is a ‘perfect little angel’. Congratulations!

Transforming pop garden installations have been set up in the busy commuter stations of Liverpool Street and Waterloo, complete with live in actors depicting scenes all set in the garden, the room of your house you never knew you had! We’re saying no to gnomes and hello to beautiful outdoor furniture as we welcome in the (hopefully) warmer weather. Complete with the aroma of freshly cut grass, we’re helping IKEA welcome summer with open arms.

Fully branded IKEA ice creams vans are touring the country for a week to cover key target areas, giving away branded picnic blankets for an impromptu outdoor lunch, or, if the weather doesn’t hold, branded umbrellas, so we can stay happy and dry even when the sun isn’t shining. The May bank holiday weekend also sees a variety of activity taking place! There’ll be something for everyone with balloon modellers, face painters, bouncy castles, ‘mocktails’, summer themed workshops and BBQ style food in the restaurant (don’t worry, the meatballs will still be available!).

Videographers and photographers have documented the incredible transformation of the station installations through a time lapse video and will continue to capture the activity as IKEA travels around the country delivering smiles and ice creams to people to celebrate their new outdoor furniture range. And who can say no to a free ice cream!?

BWP Group have once again been shortlisted for a Marketing Week Engage Award, this year in the In-store/Shopper Marketing category for our Perfect Party Dress campaign. The activity rolled out across Capital Shopping Centres (now Intu) entire 15 site portfolio including Trafford Centre and Lakeside  treating shoppers to exclusive styling sessions with expert stylists and revealing the latest trends and secrets for the party season.

As well as securing local and national coverage, Primal also teamed up with fashion glossy LOOK magazine to cover the event with news, competitions and features appearing in its pages throughout the campaign.

As well as helping shoppers to maximise their figures the event also delivered some impressive stats of its own:

– £20,562 of sales generated with an average spend of £38 per person
– 704 people pre-booked and attended a personal styling session
– footfall increased across all centres during the campaign compared against the same period the previous year
– 94% said they would buy a party dress recommended by their stylist
– 62% said the event influenced their decision to visit the centre
– 66% rated the stylists 10 out of 10 with the remaining 34% marking the event 8 out of 10 or more
– 29% people visited centres purely because of the event
– 65% said their dwell time increased in-centre due to the event
– 31% redeemed their £5 gift card

Over 100 stores took part across the group and the feedback from retailers has been really positive:

“Fantastic event, we sold out of a number of lines in store featured on the pods which we were thrilled about.”
New Look, Lakeside

“Great event, we received a number of new customers who hadn’t shopped with us before due to Perfect party Dress”
Miss Selfridge, Eldon Square

Now, it seems some of our ladies may indeed be in the market for a new party look themselves… let’s just hope we’re celebrating by the end of the night. Fingers crossed.

The 21^st March saw the company give their high-heels a night off and head to the new karting track in Maidenhead for what was sure to be a night of energy, competition and, more than likely, a few mishaps.

The night started off well, 36 adults arrived full of giddy excitement and after a quick change into some rather fetching boiler suits and gloves, a quick safety brief and a stern warning about the ‘no bumping rule’ we were all ready to blow off some steam round the track.

The teams’ first driver’s got lined up in the pits and after a lot of whoops and hollers from the nervous crowd – they were off! Our Account Manager Kate soon found herself asking why she had volunteered to go first as she appeared to be racing with a track of very eager, very competitive men, including our very own Head of Digital James Richards who managed to get told off for misconduct by the officials merely 3 laps into the race!

One by one, the teams sent their other drivers in and it became clear who was there  to win, and who was just there for the pizza, quickly forgetting which member of their team was racing once they got a look at the extra-large boxes.

Luckily, everyone made it out unharmed, although our Deputy Creative Director Tim Davies did crash spectacularly into the barriers and had to be ushered off the track to get his visor reattached to his helmet! Our newest recruit, Nancy also managed to get wedged in a pile of tires on the track, so much so it took 3 ushers to drag her vehicle out, but luckily they were more than happy to help out our damsel in distress.

As the last few laps came around, things started to get tense as the leader board was pretty tight! Project Analyst Samuel got the only black flag of the race, cutting his dreams of F1 rallying very short, but the most memorable moment of the night has to be when our very own Kirstie Reed overtook our CEO Richard Beasley in the last lap, much to his horror and outrage!

After a tense wait, the winners were announced. Congratulations to team 6 which consisted of our Head of Finance Wendy Wade, Primal Director Louise Oakley, Deputy Creative Director Tim Davies, Head of Digital Strategy and Social Business Pieter Rademeyer and Junior Designer Chris Bannister.

Overall the night was a success with lots of laughs and team building. It was also refreshing to see that despite his best efforts and eager competitiveness, even our CEO Richard Beasley can’t win at everything with his team coming second from bottom!

Video to follow shortly so stay tuned…

I was recently asked to contribute something creative to our blog, more specifically in an area of design that inspired me. A few days ago I was looking for some interesting typographic posters to display in our reception (check them out when you get a chance), when miss Zambetti turned to me and showed me a shoddy looking typographic sketch. “Now, I want to see that looking nice” she said and after that it became pretty clear what my post was going to be about… creating my own calligraphic style. Knowing I would unlikely have the time to perfect the ink, I had the perfect medium to put any imperfections down to ‘stylisation’, thus giving me the chance to get a little messy.

Over the next couple of weeks i’m going to document the process of taking a piece of calligraphic type from ink through to computer, then back to ink again, so i’ll keep you updated.

On an unusually sunny Tuesday morning three ‘Evangelists’ shared Adobe’s vision for the future with a packed auditorium in the heart of London.

As part of the BWP creative studio, I work with their current suite every day and have loved their software since I was first introduced over 16 years ago. However their ideas for, and real-time demonstration of, the modern workflow certainly engaged my mind in a different way. I was impressed with their Creative Cloud and the way that Adobe have re-packaged their traditional offering in a non-linear way (where you have to buy updates every 18 months to stay on pulse).

Flexibility, collaboration, affordability and modern ways to create for print, web, apps, video and photography need to be considered – Adobe are proudly forging ahead in all these areas! Although so much new technology is available, I think the industry has a little way to go before adopting and fully benefiting from all that is at its disposal. We need days like these to show what is possible and plant the seed for changes and ideas to come.

Knowledge, passion for the product and a good dose of humour meant it was an easy and inspiring way to pass the mild March morning by. I conclude by saying that change is afoot – watch this space!

After indulging slightly too much over the festive period, a determined group from BWP have entered the Biggest Loser competition with an American client, Vox. The aim of the game is to lose the most % of weight within 90 days and the winning company will have $1000 to donate to a charity of their choice.

In a desperate bid to gain the upper hand, a box of brownies was sent to the client on the first day of the challenge. A giant pizza soon followed. Whoever said BWP had a competitive streak?

After two weeks in, and a visit from a nutritionist we have all made excellent progress towards our individual goals, replacing alcohol and crisps with green tea and carrots. Exercise buffs have braved the icy weather for refreshing runs, whilst others have turned to Weightwatchers, Insanity (the workout regime, not a state of mentality) and P90X to achieve their goal.

No more tempting chocolate lurking down the Account Management end* (sorry Bernie) and no more fatty pasties for Colin…hopefully.

With 64 more days to go and a total of 34% towards our group goal already lost, we’re all pulling our weight to win. Watch this ever decreasing space to find out who the Biggest Loser will be…

*for 3 months only

18 Abba tribute bands, 450 customisation workshops, 30,000 vouchers, a 25 day roadshow, 150 games of pass the parcel, 502 competition winners, 11,000 key rings and many entertainers later; IKEA saw the increase in footfall and sales during the event that they were after!

With fantastic results and one very happy client we can safely say the campaign was a great success and after a swift glass of wine to recover we’re working on the next big campaign for spring 2013 so watch this space!

Every event has its memorable moments so here’s a few of ours:

-          Jacey being woken up in her Newcastle hotel at 6am in between store visits to be told that she needs to move her car before it’s flooded and wading out in just an anorak and boots to save her beloved post-box red Citroën from drowning

-          A too cool for school 18 year old lad taking part in a Birmingham pass the parcel  game and winning a flowery apron

-          Jacey and Hannah going a bit delirious during a seven hour (should have been  four hour) car journey home which was doubled due to flooding

-          Our giant cupcake which sat outside the mobile showroom trying to do a disappearing act by being blown away by the wind

Last night saw a Livvy’s football team play in an eight team, indoor tournament as part of an annual ‘England Football Federation’ knockout tournament…….. and ‘Livvypool’ had a special guest player: ‘Richard!’

Mark Bowman (CEO of Livvy’s) and I were spectators, and I have to say it’s one of the funniest evenings I have had in a long while. Gus Poyet (ex Spurs and now manager of Brighton) was Livvypool’s manager and was competing against the likes of Gianfranco Zola, Dennis Wise, Mark Bright, Gareth Southgate and Stan Collymore who were managing The Met Police, The Armed Forces, Fleet Street and others. It was held next to the O2 Arena in the London Soccerdome.

Mr. Beasley (formerly known as super sub) charged around the pitch like an out of breath rhinoceros, knocking himself and the opposition over. They lost the first match 3-0 and Gus’ team talk after the match was unprintable, but legendary. They won the second match and then horror time struck ….. Richard scored. I immediately warned the whole office via email that we were in for constant renditions of ‘did you see my goal?’ from Richard, and to make matters worse I had videoed the flaming event, so the proof was there for all to see.  The team got through to the play offs which meant three 12 minute matches one after the other, by the end of it Richard (and the rest of them) were totally completely and utterly kna*$*£$£”. They lost 2-1 in the final.

We rushed out the Soccerdome as fast as we could to try and beat the crowds leaving the Rolling Stones/Eric Clapton concert. Now that should be the end of it, but it wasn’t. Supersub and Harry (who was picking us up) insisted on stopping off in the Edgware Road for a nice kebab. Something to do with getting fit for the next run out! Anyway in all seriousness, good on him.

Watch Richard’s goal here and Gus’ final team talk before the final is legend. Watch it here.

On a strange but serious note. When someone plays for England they give their match fees to the England Football Federation, a charity which donates all England match fees to good causes. Maybe it’s just me, but I didn’t know they did that i.e. play for free, how silly not to PR it. Footballers get a kicking (excuse the pun) they should be taking every opportunity to promote the good stuff. Anyway little plug for them, this is their website http://www.englandfootballersfoundation.com/

To see the FA write up and video of the event, which raised money for Cancer Research UK and the players’ Outreach Programme, click here

Chris Webb

On Sunday at 10am, a few select BWP elite athletes will be attending the 2012 Marlow Santa Fun Run. Organised by the Marlow Rotary Club, this years main charity is Guide Dogs for the Blind. It’s a great morning out for all and the atmosphere reflects this. There’s not many times you’ll see over 1500 Santas all in one place. Our team consists of Myself and Heather, Julie, Robin, Helen and Kirstie.

The run starts at 10am, but there is a big warm up from 9.30am where everyone prances around in their outfits looking stupid! It will take a while for everyone to get through the gates and onto the street, so there’s plenty of time to spot us. Some people opt to walk the route, finishing in about an hour but the front pro-runners finish in a matter of minutes!

This year I will be walking from the back with our four-legged friends Bob, Diesel and Cookie. Please drop by if you have a chance to wave us on and maybe drop a few pennies in the charity boxes.

See you at the end!

Marlow Santa Fun Run 2012 – Sunday 2nd December 2012, 10am Higginson Park, Marlow SL7 2AE