prettyuglyfurniture.com

International brand BoConcept has come up with a pretty good campaign. The campaign encourages prospective customers to take a photo of the most ugly piece of furniture they own, submit it and enter the draw to win new design furniture worth up to €5000 or a runners-up prize worth €1000.

To win, the participant's furniture item has to be voted by the public as the most ugly. Voters may also win prizes worth €200 to buy new design from BoConcept.

Schweppes Burst: We love it!

Product : Schweppes
Agency : George Patterson Y&R, Melbourne
Editor: Jack Hutchings @ The Butchery
Executive Creative Director: Paul Catmur
Creative Director: Ben Coulson
Music Supervision: Level Two Music
Track: To Build a Home, Cinematic Orchestra

Nomads Magazine

Today we got to see the new addition to the local print family: Nomads magazine, distributed free with The Times of Malta and published by BMA Ltd. More about BMA in BLAB's 'Agency Insider #1'

Tomorrow: Business in Art [1]

In my University days I had dreamt about a project which would empower artists to make a living out of their art. SIFE, which stands for 'Students in Free Enterprise' had adopted this project and following the good feedback it received from other SIFE members world-wide, decided to take it forward (even now that I am totally out of it). I am glad to blog about the first of a series of sessions related to Artist Want it. From the press release:

Artists Want It is an initiative that tries to bring closer the often conflicting worlds of art and business. Through a series of seminars we seek to instill in artists, hailing from all the creative fields, a sense of entrepreneurship. Your passion for art can be sustainably transformed into a real money making business, and as surreal and platonic as they may sound, we truly believe that all forms of arts offer such an opportunity.

The first of these seminars will be held this Thursday 13th March, starting at 7:00pm sharp at Q Bar (Valletta Waterfront) and to show you how nice we are, its even FREE!

Bookings are open as from today, so now all that's left for you to do is decide who of your friends you're going to take with you and give us a call on either 79065256 or 99274674 or if its easier for you just drop us an email on sifeumt@gmail.com Otherwise should you need more details you could visit our website www.artistswantit.com

New Carlsberg Bottle

Carlsberg has just launched a new bottle design which features prominently in many bus-stop adverts. My facebook profile has just learnt that TGIF is also holding a promotion during the Inter vs. Liverpool match, celebrating the new bottle design. From the event invite:

At T.G.I.Friday's, we will celebrate this NEW introduction before the match Inter vs Liverpool by offering a FREE bottle when purchased with a meat plate. This offer is available only on the 11th of March and during the football match which will be screened live on the big sreen and 6 TVs around the Bar Area.

Conditions Apply. Ask at the bar.

Photoshoot by Briangrech

Interesting photoshoot by briangrech in this Saturday's Bliss Magazine.

Agency Insider #2: ChooseMalta.com

Just at the beginning of March, allow me to post the second of the 'Agency Insider' series of posts. This time, BLAB got in touch with Jonathan Shaw, agency insider and founder of the ChooseMalta.com brand (which over the past years has triggered a number of other ChooseToTravel sites). Below is BLAB's email interview.


In brief, what did kick-start ChooseMalta.com and how did it develop to become a global initiative – ChooseToTravel.com?

I was working and living in New York when I realised that the way forward for any business is the internet and also that Malta lacked a real-time, Malta specific travel portal. I recall flying to LA for a meeting and spending 4 hours writing potential domain names. ChooseMalta.com was eventually available and I registered it. That same night, I woke up at around 3am and decided to register other available countries. We now have over 60 country domain name with the Choose branding.

Having no IT background, teaming up with one of my partners Chris Knights proved to be instrumental to our development plan.

How important is the users' experience on your online websites, and hence how important are analytics and statistics that measure that?

The user’s experience is crucial. I don’t come from an IT background so I always automatically think like a customer would do.

Chris Knights then has the difficult task of creating an output which is workable for a customer yet solid and functional from an IT point of view.

Analytics and stats are important yet they are only a tool in the whole business. How one can interpret these results to generate a competitive advantage for the business is another issue and it’s not always easy.

What is the feedback you get from hotels and other advertisers on ChooseMalta.com / ChooseToTravel?

We sell hotel accommodation online and real-time and different hotels have different performances. In just 3 years we have become Malta’s leading travel website and we are still experiencing huge growth.

We also just launched ChooseItaly.com, we have a Sales Representative in Milan and we are currently signing up hotels in Italy, it’s not easy but feedback is positive.

Any plans to grow further and who shall I speak to if I have a related innovative idea to put forward?

The plan is to launch all of our choose destinations and have substantial online traffic and bookings. The model has worked for some of other destinations and it’s now a matter of time & resources until we launch and manage all of our domain portfolio.

What in your opinion makes you different from other travel websites?

In my opinion we have 3 main criteria that make us different from the big travel sites: The Choose branding is rather catchy; We focus on one destination (per site) and provide concise travel info; Our system is easy and very transparent to use, no hidden fees, etc.

Nonetheless, the internet offers a huge platform to reach a huge market with no boundaries. Our aim is to have quality traffic and a consistent clientele that use our services for the various travel sites. We plan to focus on delivering a good product and service and we are confident that the numbers will add up in due course!