We’re really pleased to have been appointed to work with Bullring on their new ‘Life Feels Better’ campaign. There’s a number of bits and bobs in the pipeline, all of which we’ll put up on the site as they happen.

383 have been appointed to undertake a number of local level events and projects in and around Bullring. So far we’ve helped organise a launch event of feel good films at the Electric, introduced Chris from Created in Birmingham to the project which has spawned a number of exciting developments (one of which is the new Created in Birmingham shop) and organised last Saturday’s live graffiti project with Mohammed Ali.

‘Tweeffiti’ blended live art with real time online contributions around the themes of Hope and Optimism. We built a microsite for Bullring which was displayed on screens at the event and allowed users near and far to contribute key words and messages via Twitter which were then interpreted by Mohammed and integrated in to his piece. The event was a great success and attracted coverage from BBC and ITV, as well as generating a big crowd throughout much of the weekend. Here’s a few snaps we took throughout the project….

In the first of a string of new portfolio updates we’ve just added two new interior projects for restaurants at Westfield, Merry Hill. Harpers and Napoli were redesigned from scratch as part of Westfield’s new ‘Eat Central’ food court.

Launching amongst established and well known brands such as Burger King and KFC, Napoli and Harpers have been designed to be contemporary and fresh spaces. We intentionally veered away from traditional in your face typography, plastered promotions and cheesy food photography, and aimed to create alternative schemes which would attract trade and stand out amongst the competition.

In the first quarter the two sites are the best performing units and plans are afoot for additional sites at other Westfield’s throughout the UK.

Just about the best CG you could hope to see. Highly recommend viewing this in HD over on Vimeo.

1st Prize is a Flip Mino HD Camera. This is going to James Griffin for his submission below. We liked the carefully considered collection of Muji Pens (+1) Classic design portfolio angled photography cutting mat (+1) and surreptitious Apple product placement (+1). Well done James!

2nd Prize is the Holga 35mm kit. This is going to Topaz23 on Flickr (real name tbc!) for her photo taken on Hove seafront. Clearly the best beach hut to choose!

Thanks to everyone who entered the competition – click play below to see all the shots. You made our December really fun!

Further to our last post on making the Style Birmingham Christmas TV commercial we wanted to post the final version up here on the blog and give a little more information about the campaign as a whole. Hopefully, you may by now have seen the spot which airs on ITV and Channel 4 throughout December. If not, there’s still a few days to catch it (or of course you can just click play on the video above!).

The campaign as a whole this year was developed to try and encourage shoppers to explore more of what Birmingham has to offer at Christmas. We recognised that many shoppers miss some of the highlights in the city, either due to time constraints, or not knowing where to look. As such, the ‘One Mile of Style’ campaign was developed to encourage visitors not only to ’shop’, but also to explore and experience other Christmas highlights in the city.

The concept behind the ad was developed in conjunction with the lovely guys at Fullrange and aimed to promote the mile and drive people through to stylebirmingham.com (which it’s been doing very well!). On the site, potential visitors can then explore an interactive ‘One Mile’ map and print off a synopsis of information about travel, independent retail, in-store promotions and festive fun, to take with them when they visit.

In addition, a number of users have been using the new dayplanner feature to generate personalised shopping routes and recommendations based on their age, brand habits and wish lists.

If you’re watching Dick Tracy, The Bill, Big Bang Theory or Deal or no Deal today then you may just catch it!

It’s that time of year when everything gets a bit Christmasssy at 383 Project and as such we wanted to share a new competition – the 383 Christmas album.

The premise is simple- find or create an interesting photo of a ‘383′, add a message and send it through to us. There’s more details of how to enter on the site.

In the new year we’ll pick a winner and runner up to receive a Flip Mino HD camera and Holga 35mm camera respectively.

There have already been some great submissions, so get going…

Over the last month we’ve been working with Fullrange to deliver a creative concept  which will run across TV and overlap online with a new area added to the Style Birmingham site. Working with Fullrange has been an absolute pleasure and we hope there’ll be more opportunities to collaborate on projects for other clients in the coming months.

Once the ad airs we’ll post some more information about the Christmas campaign as a whole, and of course, post the ad itself.

In the meantime, here’s a few teaser shots from the shoot – as you can see, it was a fair old setup, so hopefully the final product will be well received!

Best known for its coffee, Frasier (which incidentally was entirely filmed in LA) and the iconic Space Needle that shapes the City’s skyline, Seattle is also the home of some of the worlds leading tech and digital businesses including Microsoft, Amazon.com, Real Networks, Getty and Omni. No surprise then that the 8 companies forming our trade mission were made up of some of the leading innovators in the West Midlands. Amongst our consortium; Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, Screen WM, Advantage West Midlands and a mix of games developers and interactive agencies.

Along the way we met with Valve, quite possibly one of the most prolific creators of entertainment based gaming titles and games distribution platforms such as Steam. Similarly, we met with Big Fish Games, a company who’s frankly ingenious business model has generated some impressive and equally enviable financial results. Recently securing $38,000,000 in venture funding.

We talked extensively about why businesses like Big Fish and Real Networks have been so successful; because their products in themselves are something that I think you’ll see us as an agency working on more and more, something that Razorfish have coined; Social Objects. In short, a conversation starter, something that conversations and particularly chatter around social media should surround. It’s far more than viral, it’s something entire communities can be based on. The use of sites like Facebook and Twitter are creating micro-communities that are driving traffic to game preview sites at a rate that’s up to 6 times greater than that of traditional display advertising.

Razorfish, previously owned and operated by Microsoft, is now part of the Publicis Group and one of the world most successful digital advertising and engagement agencies, turning over in excess of $400,000,000 whilst handling everything from strategy and planning to creative and media buying across their network of 19 worldwide offices. Their client list is made up entirely of Fortune 500 businesses, on the rare occasion they’ll accept work with top 1000 companies, but only on the basis that a specific project or brief excites them.

I met with Matt Wood, Manager of Media Development at Razorfish. We talked through a number of principles that are integral to the successful running of any digital agency regardless of size and learned of some new processes that they had adopted since being acquired by Publicis earlier this year, some of which we’ll be exploring here at 383 Project. Amongst them, the use of Wikis as collaborative tool for designers, developers and clients, new methods for gathering trend data and the importance of white papers to their business development efforts. The most impressive of which being the 2009 Feed Report which you can view here. If ever there was a reason for Marketing Directors to start apportioning more of their budgets to online brand experience and not just display, this report is it.

One thing that can be said for all of these businesses is that they are all, without exception at the very forefront of their respective industries. As such, there has been much to learn, especially from some of the digital agencies operating in The States. These lessons are valuable but over the next 6 months prove to be invaluable. Stateside new business executives for example are reporting a significant decrease in their clients willingness to spend over online ad networks and display and are now far more focused on creating immersive online experiences and social objects.

Inevitably now in the UK, we will see these trends continue, particularly with the increase in sophistication of social media measurement and analytics tools. If digital agencies can embrace measurement solutions to help tweak, perfect and justify their increased activities in this space, the sector as a whole will doubtless become more trusted and credible with our respective client bases.

Seattle is a truly digital city, where they just seem to ‘get things’ quicker, this may be down to the fact that their agencies have client lists made up of huge corporations who can afford to be braver in their activities, it could be that with so much hot competition on the doorstep of game developers they need to be constantly investing in research and product development, or equally it could be that these businesses are effective at securing the finest talent from around the world to work in this booming sector. Whatever your take, I’m convinced that increased relationship between Birmingham and places like Seattle is vital as we aspire to be a ‘digital city’ within the UK.  For 383, the exposure to new thinking allows us to offer our clients and customers the latest and most effective solutions, increases our confidence in the relativity, longevity and value of our offerings and most importantly will ultimately work to keep our clients attracting and converting more online users into consumers in new and innovative ways, seamlessly.