Just before Christmas we finally booked a meeting with a real player in the integrated marketing space, an agency that we wanted to represent and include in our stable of awesome agencies, broadening the career scope for our candidates. We’re as ambitious as our candidates to work with the very best, and not having this agency as a partner was a little embarrassing.

After a thorough and uncompromising grilling by the HR Director, jaded by hyperbole and unfulfilled promises, we were told in no uncertain terms that she only gave agencies one chance.

So, with brief in hand, we retired to London Bridge and got on with the brief. Five months, five briefs & five placed candidates later, we have maintained a 100% placement record and are delighted to be fulfilling our promise. We’re grinning like cheshire cats!

Richa Arora, Experiential and Events Junior Consultant, talks about the power of education by making it fun, immersive, creative and interesting!

Winter, 2010 - As my internship at Dylan was drawing to a close, I decided to earn a few extra pre-Christmas pounds by teaching students who took GCSE and A-levels in Science and Mathematics during after work hours (I am geeky, yes!) . I loved it, purely because it is a very fulfilling profession. The thought of imparting knowledge is very satisfying and, most of the time, it's not one-way. I learnt so much myself while in the process of teaching these really bright kids.

In preparation for each lesson I looked for innovative ways to engage the students and fuel their imagination whilst I taught them about otherwise subjective topics as fluid mechanics or renewable energy. I always looked forward to these tuition sessions, encouraged by the fact that my students emailed me regularly stating how their classroom teaching wasn't practical enough and they enjoyed the interactive learning so much; this all from lessons I based off BBC classroom resources and my own practical demonstrations, very much within health and safety boundaries of course! I always thought that it was of utmost importance that students have a solid foundation of concepts in their early years as the prescribed curriculum is not just to score good grades but also to learn theoretically and practically. These lessons, besides helping students with their further education, come in very handy in all spheres of life e.g. I am guilty of using simultaneous equations to plan my monthly lunches - big and small ones to stay within budget and shop with the rest of the money. And it's not just that; percentages, physics and general knowledge make one a well-rounded individual.

Spring, 2011 I was introduced to National Schools Partnership as one of my first clients at Dylan. I've researched them ever since and I can safely say that their work is truly awesome! I absolutely adore NSP as an agency and am so proud of their work. The agency specialises in providing schools with detailed resources and lesson plans, which make the learning process more interactive and infused with practical knowledge. From personal experience, I know how much kids love learning through fun! These resources are branded with NSP's coveted client-list. These clients in turn are able to build an unprecedented foothold within the school/family market. Their resources adhere to educational guidelines and standards and cover not just what is there in the books, but go a step further to pump creativity into them. The children are educated and the brands reach out this audience through a truly integrated marketing approach which covers branding, digital, promotions and experiential.

Rocket science? Not at all! It's a simple idea which has actually been incorporated by someone (http://uk.linkedin.com/in/markcfawcett). Founded in 2004 and 25,000 schools later, NSP today is a benchmark in changing the way education is imparted. I am so proud to be working with them, they're bloody cool!

Ah well, it's Tuesday again, but this Tuesday comes with a twist, it's Movie Night! My very first as it happens so I was probably much more excited than others, although the team were really looking forward to it. With no clue from this months organiser, Jules, guesses flowed including Rocky 4 and American Pie from Ant, Scary Movie from Seb and Life is Beautiful from Sophie. The only hint we could go on, "it will make you cry!"

So, with the promise of finger foods and wine, we all rushed to our local pub, The Garrison, and were ready to go by 6:15...including Rob, post cheeky wink at himself in the mirror, beer in hand.

Located in their really cool cellar cinema, I coined the phrase, we spent 20 minutes listening to highly embarrassing and very funny anecdotes about the Mashers, our sister company (www.mashmarketing.co.uk), as they celebrated their recent win of Staffing Supplier of the Year, resplendent with bouquets of flowers for all and massage vouchers to Cowshed! Pre celebration out the way, hands stuffed with fish finger sandwiches and chips, lights off, the movie...

'WASTE LAND': A movie that talks about the lives and struggles of 2500 pickers in Rio de Janeiro, who spend hours in acres of trash, making $16 a day, whilst the city brightens and entertains the tourists.

A very emotional film (I grew up in India and have witnessed first hand the pickers earning less than 20p a day and it's heartbreaking). Real locations, real people, hard work and genuine outcomes – the movie evokes emotions in almost all frames. I don't know about IMDb, but DMDb (Dylan Movie Database) rates the movie 4.5/5. http://www.wastelandmovie.com/

Here’s the pictures of that night:

Engaging with the end consumer is an art and not many companies can hit the right notes at advertising their offerings. In fact some of them are so off-the-note that they are voted as the 'most annoying campaign of the year' and have to switch to an all-instrumental background score on Spotify! On the other hand, experiential campaigns can be a winner with the crowd. A recent flashmob celebrated homecoming at an airport's international terminal, bringing tears of joy to the masses.

Appealing to the absentees of the experiential activity is no easy feat. Choice of channel, air times and the media space are quintessential for successful propagation of the marketing activity across media. While some campaigns employ opera singers or famous international stars (famous internationally, in a single nation!) supporting a comparison site, OR anorexic supermodels exercising by Swiss lakesides propagating low calorie yogurts, OR animations of red and blue cars for a chocolate or a family made out of clothes (?) for laundry products, some creative minds have figured the missing link. In this ever changing world of perceptions and priorities, experiential is the new byte in the advertising codes. After a long day at work, I like some good dinner, my prime time TV and my couch! And occasionally, it happens that even during the commercial breaks, I'm hooked to my idiot box, like the Disneyworld Florida advert, with home videos of overwhelmed kids when they're told they going to see Mickey, or the T-mobile 'Welcome Home' guerrilla activity at Int'l terminal, Heathrow. With the physical activity translated to TV spots, the audience cover is only widened and the opportunity to get a brand associated with a shared moment of euphoric experience for hundreds, even thousands of their target audience is like finding the gold dust

However, according to Nielsen's survey last year, “The number of people who watched Internet video from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Friday rose 14% to 62.4 million from March 2009 to March 2010, and viewership from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. rose only 1% to 45.4 million". But overall viewership has only gone up with the advent of internet TV. With prime time TV viewing dropping YOY, premium advertising on Internet TV is a dependable push channel to broadcast the experiential activity. For high street retailers, restaurants and food chains, in-store TVs will do the trick that the former won't. In the last few months, a few impressive campaigns have caught my attention and I've provided links for them. The first example you can see at the top of this post, and here are 2 more…