#mry uk

[mry-uk]

Edinburgh Festival comes to MRY

Amidst a brilliant summer filled with the Commonwealth Games, the World Cup, our very own Summer of Love, loads of BBQs and of course the Edinburgh Festival, we were lucky enough to win a competition where the festival came to us! Forth 1 radio station were kind enough to host part of their show in our office and bring along 3 performers - check out the below for a taster:

Radio 1 DJ, Boogie, starts off a great show.

Up first for our own Edinburgh Festival show was Justin Moorhouse. A comedian known for TV appearances and generally being a funny guy all round. He was hilarious and was great at getting the crowd involved.

Singer songwriter/comedian extraordinaire - Johnny Awsum belts out some well written lyrics whilst getting our own Ali to help on the wooden block!

An amazing comedy show brought right into our office and a couple of beers over lunch makes for a very happy team. Thanks again Forth 1!

[mry-uk]

Kickstarter of the Week: AirDog

This week's Kickstarter is AirDog. An auto-follow drone for GoPro cameras. 

With sports enthusiasts, outdoor fans and movie makers in mind, the guys at AirDog have added a new dimension to extreme sports. Normally, you'd need a film crew or at least a buddy to help record the action. With AirDog, a GoPro is hooked up to a quadcopter and is connected to a Bluetooth adapter (AirLeash) making it simple to do it all yourself. 

The user wears the AirLeash connector on the arm and can manually adjust AirDog's height, distance and angle.

The fancy gadget also has an app for your smartphone. Through this you can programme it to avoid certain obstacles that it may come across on your ride.

We think this is an awesome piece of technology and rightly deserves our Kickstarter of the week place!

Find out more about the project here.

[mry-uk]

Summer Party Part 2

Setting: The River Thames 

On: A boat

Weather: Sunny

Who: A bunch of crazy awesome people

Combine all these factors together and you get MRY UK's summer party, part 2! And what an event it turned out to be. Check out some of the highlights:

Our transport down the Thames, the appropriately named - 'High Society'.

Barbershop... sextet? (Charles, Kris, Will, Gareth, Greg and Jakub)

Top dogs in Social - Analytics and Operations. Alex gets to work on Darcie's war paint.

A fusion of cultures. Gav, Gareth and Will portraying what MRY means to us.

Don't care where it goes, he just wants the alcohol... (Alex G, Gareth and Gemma)

The Edinburgh team showcasing some of their best Blue Steel poses. (Emily, Ash and Jakub)

Fantastic shot on the Thames with Charles, Gareth, Nads, Greg and Calvin.

Thanks for the party Anil, Gareth and Nads. Same place next year, can't wait!

[mry-uk]

Summer Party Part 1

We tend to do things BIG here at MRY and our company parties are no exception; we decided to have a few summer parties and not just one! London represented, Edinburgh represented and one massive bash for both! This one had a solstice theme with a mixture of white clothes, paint, photo booths, dancing, playing with fire and some of our male colleagues in some female attire!

Check out what we got up to:

Tony and Nads showing some leg with Gareth and Cirine getting in on the action.

We had a pretty fantastic day for it too.

Three of our top ladies Liza, Nads and Jacqui, all looking fab!

Quote of the day from Liza: "Are you using Prosecco as a mixer?"

Gav and Darcie hanging out, enjoying some Mojitos and good company!

Playing with fire at the Edinburgh party.

A painted up Calvin, about to get up to no good it would seem.

Roll on the next one - we're all excited to see what it brings.

Watch this space!

[mry-uk]

Meet The Team: Charles' Inspirational Go-Tos

Today we asked our Creative Art Director to share some of his go-to places for creative inspiration. 

Best ads on TV - my creative indulgence - great for the latest ad productions and interactive campaigns. 

Mashable.com - where I go for regular tech updates. I also subscribe to Financial Times tech email - great for the latest scoop.

Creativeapplications.net publishes the latest projects where art meets tech. Incredibly beautiful, bizarre and innovative ideas can be found here, some of which have inspired my ideas for digital campaign solutions. 

TED lectures app - love perusing this at the end of the day. Some unbelievable talks and performances and a LOT of inspiration.

[mry-uk]

Meet the team: Aisling's top 3

Aisling Thornton is our Senior Community Manager and is based in the Edinburgh office. Aisling shared with us some of the latest standout campaigns.

Pets At Home launched a heart-warming social campaign to collect some of the best pet clips from owners around the UK. They received a whopping 13,000 photo/video clips to create their very first crowd sourced TV ad crafted entirely from social media uploads from fans. I absolutely adore this campaign not just because of its simplicity but because it truly reflects the relationship between owner and pet and ultimately embraces the Pets At Home customer. Check out the video here. Great job, Pets At Home!

Marks and Spencer’s Instagram account will knock your socks off as it’s another stunning example of highly visual content which was created with their audience in mind. Their #Eggsperiment campaign was utterly fantastic, mainly due to their enticing content and creative competition approach. This campaign asked fans to either upload an image of an ‘eggsperiment’ they created or upload a drawing of an ‘eggsperiment’ on M&S’s social channels. If you were in doubt as to how to enter, they even created this little nugget to clarify how to decorate an Easter egg! Don’t we all love a bit of baking DIY, high-five Marks and Spencer’s!

Lastly, Greggs rolled out a pretty unique campaign earlier this year with the main aim being to promote their new coffee blend. They took to the streets in their #TopSecretCoffee van, holding blind taste test with participants who were asked to guess the coffee brand via Twitter using #TopSecretCoffee. The next day Greggs were revealed as the brand. It was truly a creative, imaginative and brave campaign to try to alter consumer opinions about the brand. It’s also a great example of a fun way to integrate social and develop brand ambassadors. Have a look at the campaign video here.

[mry-uk]

Racer: The Newest Chrome Experiment

Racer is a mobile chrome experiment which really impressed us over the weekend with how innovative it is. This Cannes Lions-winning game allows you to race your friends across multiple phone screens without the need of downloading any additional apps - all it needs is the Internet connection and Chrome mobile browser.

Fantastic idea and, believe us, great fun too. We also love the graphics and the soundtrack from legendary Giorgio Moroder.

Find out more here and test drive it on your mobile here.