Audacity hit the track

“There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.”
Ernest Hemmingway

It’s thirty minutes until the race begins and the tension is mounting. The Audacity racers wait nervously by the pit lane in their racing suits. The stewards are beginning to take their places around the track and there’s excitement in the air. A few minutes later the drivers are ushered into the cars. Jane is stone-faced with concentration. George closes his eyes, mentally picturing his approach to the first corner. Rachael grips the steering wheel and readies her foot for the accelerator... and then they’re off!



One practice session, qualifying and a Grand Prix later, Audacity’s day of karting is complete. The winners celebrate on the podium with their trophies as the final times appear on screen. Team Audacity dissect their performance – the overtaking moves, the killer laps and the collisions. A great time has been had by all and Audacity’s third birthday has been marked in style!



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We spent last Friday evening at TeamSport’s revolutionary new Tower Bridge track featuring 800m of circuit split over two levels and super-fast carbon-neutral electric karts. We’d thoroughly recommend the experience. Thanks to everyone at TeamSport for giving us a fab time. Audacity will be back!

Malibu Summer ’11 Campaign breaks

Today’s blog entry is all about Malibu. It’s a tipple that divides opinion, but Dave and George have already grown partial to it judging from the dwindling size of our agency stockpile. Over the past few months we’ve been working with the lovely team at Pernod Ricard on various elements of their Summer 2011 campaign. Two of these have just gone live...

First off, the centre-piece of the campaign. The new Malibu Limited Edition Bottle (pictured below). We’ve been working with up-and-coming designer Nikki F to create the new design and we’re thrilled with the results. It channels the vibrant colours of the Caribbean to create a bottle with fantastic standout on the shelf. Coming to stores this week!



For another strand of the campaign, we’ve been tasked with communicating Malibu’s versatility. And what better way to do so than to physically demonstrate the beautiful refreshing drinks that Malibu can create at the point of purchase. We’ve produced four bespoke executions for bar screens up and down the country. They were shot in glorious slow-motion and we’re thrilled with the results. Take a look at them here: Malibu & Cranberry, Malibu & Cola, Malibu & Orange, Malibu and Lemonade.

Phew, all that gorgeous liquid is making me thirsty. I’m off for a Malibu and Cranberry...

Record breaking results and Mummy's Yummies

Take a bow Team Simple! Tracking results are in and the new campaign has scored the highest tracking results ever for this type of product. Not bad! The Rose execution was shown to have strong, clear and positive cut-through with creative ad recall rising to an all time high of 63% and the highest ever Prompted Ad Recall for Wipes. Wow.

Let’s hope Audacity’s newest client can be as big a success; we’re proud to announce that Mummy’s Yummies – the newly launched home-baking brand – has appointed Audacity to handle its integrated communications. You can find out more about the products here, but take it from us that the end product is fantastic. Personally, I think the mixes look so tempting that you could eat them straight from the jar!

Simple, slow-mo and sunburn

Gosh, to say the last few weeks have been busy is something of an understatement.

First off, our next Simple ad is on air this week. The ad features their fabulous new corrector pen which (as the name suggests) allows you to correct mistakes when applying eye make-up. It’s a great product, and this is the first time it’s been supported by advertising so much excitement!

Also this week we’ve just wrapped a rather unusual shoot for Pernod Ricard. Hopefully we’ll show you the results on this blog soon so we won’t spoil the surprise. But let’s just say it involved a super slow-motion camera, litres of drinks and mixers and a stepladder.

In other shoot news, George and Jane have just returned from a shoot in glamorous Miami. It was a busy schedule of filming by all accounts – so busy in fact that George didn’t find time to apply sunscreen. Unfortunately, George won’t allow us to put up a picture, but his skin is now the colour of our red pantone mugs.

Audacity's new campaign for Simple launches today

Audacity's new campaign for Simple, the UK's number 1 skincare brand, is on air from Monday 14th February.

You can view the ad online here

The campaign represents a step change for the Simple brand. The campaign uses iconic imagery of a pure rose, as an analogy with delicate skin, which is savaged by ingredients that are excluded from Simple's products: artificial colours, perfumes and harsh chemicals. The campaign challenges the conventions of beauty advertising to communicate Simple's philosophy of goodness, and its use of the purest possible ingredients to care for skin.

The first execution heroes Simple Kind To Skin Cleansing Wipes, the UK's biggest selling beauty product. Further executions will launch Simple's new Eye Make-Up Corrector Pen and support its Kind To Eyes Revitalising Eye Roll-On.

Behind the Scenes of Life’s a Pitch

For this blog entry, we’ve decided to take you behind the scenes of www.lifesapitch.co.uk - BT’s new football site for which we create and manage the content. The site has a rich tapestry of content including contributions from some of the country’s top sports writers.

The site hosts journalist blogs, fan blogs, podcasts, news, player interviews and more.
The premier pieces of content each week are the podcast. Four are filmed each week over two days. And because it’s football, we have to be able to react with our agenda to breaking stories and results sometimes just hours before the recording. We agree a set of topics to discuss on the morning of the filming and we then usher in our panellists. All are top football writers from the country’s press. There’s a quick briefing before each session and then everyone is sat down ready for the recording.

We only have one hour of time to records two podcast so the whole recording is done “as live”. We have a soundpiece in the ear of the presenter which allows us to give instructions and directions without interrupting the flow. The podcasts are filmed with three cameras and are vision mixed live on the day.

Once the two shows are filmed, we say goodbye to our panellists and head to the edit suite to put the finishing touches on the edit and add a final layer of polish.

The podcasts are then encoded and uploaded to the Life’s A Pitch website via our own CMS – all within the day. They’re live on the website before the evenings matches and are ready for the football-loving public to digest – either on the site itself or via iTunes.
You can see an example podcast here

An audacious start to the New Year!

Happy new year from everyone at Audacity! The last few days have been something of a frenzy of activity. No gentle start to the New Year for us. Half the office is occupied in gearing up for an epic four-day shoot for our new client Simple and it’s been casting and pre-production galore over the last few days.

Amongst our other projects, we’re still working avidly on the new Life’s a Pitch football site – we’re producing two video podcasts a week every week with a panel of expert journalists. The topics are diverse and the debate is lively. They go live on the site and on itunes every Monday and Friday so keep an eye out for them.

Continuing in football vernacular, we’re also pleased to unveil our new signing Emily Hoffman. Signed from Publicis United for an undisclosed fee, she’s already made her debut and she’s well on the way to becoming a fan favourite.

Stay tuned for news of more interesting happenings. Throughout this year we’ll be blogging from behind the scene of some of our campaigns to give you an insight into what goes in to making our work.

Until next time.