Last Friday was a pretty dismal evening for the England football team… but that didn’t stop Speakeasy cracking open the champagne!

As well as being a night not to remember for English football, it was the Institute of Internal Communication Awards in London. So suits and ties (for some) and dresses for others, were donned and we headed down to the Hilton Park Lane.

Two of Speakeasy’s videos had been shortlisted in the same category and we had our fingers crossed that one might come away with the prize. The evening started with a drinks reception and photographs with our certificates, before a delicious three-course meal. For the avid football fans amongst us, there was a handy big screen at the side of the room, and the really clever ones had the match streamed to their iPhones.

Promptly after the match finished, our host, Alastair Campbell stepped up and assured us that it was only a game after all… which wasn’t a popular statement with everyone in the room. He carried on with the jokes, probably for a bit too long and then moved onto the awards…

It was soon the turn of our category – Best use of Video / DVD / Webcast / TV. I couldn’t quite believe it when they read out Speakeasy’s name – we were absolutely delighted – and went up to the stage in a bit of a daze to collect our award. Luckily, no-one fell over, we smiled for the cameras and we made it back to the table in one piece! “On the Inside” produced for Lloyds Banking Group had just pipped the NHS Leicester film to the post – but everyone on the Speakeasy table was still smiling… especially when the champagne came out.

The IoIC Award is the fifth award “On the Inside” has won this year… it’s other accolades include a Gold World Medal at the New York Festivals and two awards at the US International Film & Video Festivals.

Lucy Trendle - Producer

MarkM Speakeasy Company News, Team News, Work Completed

Last week Germany experienced some of the worst flooding in 30 years, but that didn’t put me off attending the international IMEX conference, the event you must attend if you don’t want to be left standing at the sidelines of the event industry. The annual meetings industry exhibitors event this year was attended by a record number of well over 2800 hosted buyers from more than 60 markets, and had a visitor total of nearly 9000 people.

Every year I do my best to go to IMEX, which allows me to meet industry partners and try out cutting edge developments in technology and global trends within the events and meetings industry. This year Corinthia Hotels hosted my trip to IMEX, where Corinthia were proudly showcasing their new 5 star London Hotel (which just so happens is around the corner from the new Speakeasy offices in Covent Garden!) The Corinthia Hotel Group and the Intercontinental Hotel Group in Frankfurt were excellent hosts, and the service was second to none.

Lots of views were discussed at the three-day event. The big topic on everybody’s lips was the recent volcanic ash cloud. The ash from the Eyjafjallajoekull eruption affected everybody to some degree, and the snowball effect it has had on the events industry, in particular how we have all been forced to rethink our concepts, strategies, costs and processes, produced some very interesting discussions.

Healthcare remained as the primary industry sector, with an increase in business in the corporate, science and engineering sectors, but interestingly government commissioning of events decreased this year.

At IMEX I got to discuss burgeoning trends with industry colleagues who all have something to bring to the table. One of the trends that has become apparent is that customers are now expecting greater transparency through procurement processes. Green concerns also continue to grow, with issues of sustainability in the event industry on everybody’s minds.

Like every year, I enjoyed meeting fellow colleagues, networking and exchanging ideas, meeting new people, reconnecting with industry colleagues and networking with the best global suppliers. Perhaps the most important part of attending IMEX is listening to the concerns of the event industry as a whole. This year there seems to be a greater sensitivity towards costs, a greater pressure to justify our actions and a greater demand on ROI.

There was a fantastic atmosphere at this year’s show, with exhibitors attending from all over the world. I am already looking forward to next year!

Catrina Cochrane-Mills - Events Producer

MarkM Speakeasy Company News, Team News, Tech chat

Chris will testify that I know very little about the beautiful game. It’s not that his near-constant trivia questions fall on deaf ears, just that beyond remembering important things like Eric Cantona’s birthday, Sieb Dijkstra’s full name and Michael Owen’s debut goal for England, I struggle to keep tabs on it all.

Mirroring my ineptitude for football knowledge is my playing ability. Despite my height, I am utterly useless in the air. My ground game is similarly shambolic, with a first touch more like Marco Boogers than Marco van Basten. However, like one of the Neville brothers, none of this stops me playing, and this weekend I gathered a ragtag bunch to play in a charity Five-a-side tournament at Gussie Park, Dundee.

Driving through from Perth, Clare’s boyfriend Jason regaled us with tales of meeting Jason Scotland, and bragged about his new move; the ‘Bee Sting’ (he can only do it once, it results in his death). Meanwhile, Graham promised to bust out the Cruyff Turn, and I ensured everyone I would celebrate any goals scored with the robot. Then I broke the passenger side window, and we had to rely on the good people of Dundee to protect the car while we unleashed fury on the pitch.

We were nearly playing in the shadows of my beloved Tannadice Park, but as the sun was directly overhead and there was zero cloud cover, a refreshing shadow was nowhere to be found. It was scorching. Cue some very laboured stepovers, a few dozen shots from well outside the box and minimal tracking back to defend.

In the end, we couldn’t justify our price tags (or sponsorship money) and it wasn’t until the final game of the afternoon that we gelled as a team and ran home 7-0 winners. Graham was undoubtedly man of the match, but I bagged a couple and managed to emulate the great Peter Crouch by dropping the robot to a cheering crowd (of two).

Alex Insch - Production Assistant

MarkM Team News

Speakeasy producer Mark Turner was joined on stage by Tim Hadfield, Head of Employee Engagement at Co-operative Financial Services, to deliver a presentation on the landmark roadshow events produced for CFS to mark its merger with Britannia Building Society last Autumn.  As a sponsor of Melcrum’s 6th Annual Employee Engagement Conference Speakeasy had the opportunity to present our creative solution to 150 of the world’s most prominent internal communicators.

The roadshow, entitled ‘The Next Chapter’, included 21 events at five different venues, and reached nearly 12,000 delegates over a 3 week period.  Themed around books and story telling, the captivating centre piece was a 15 ft high book, complete with turning pages, onto which the speaker support visuals and videos (9 in total) were projected using the ground-breaking Pandoras Box projection system.

Last year Britannia and CFS seized the opportunity presented by the collapse of public confidence in the banking system to create a new force in financial services, one that is member-owned, customer-led and ethically guided.  Their merger is a tribute to what can be achieved when two like-minded organisations work together.  The overwhelmingly positive evaluation feedback from the roadshow events is a tribute to what can be achieved when you add a third (that’ll be us).   An average of 90% of respondents said that they had a better understanding of the organisation’s strategy, were excited about its vision and proud of the business, with a clear 95%  wanting to be part of its future.

Now that’s co-operation for you!

Jeremy Hewitt - Head of Production

MarkM Speakeasy Company News, Team News

It was a pretty nice day on Saturday (17thApr), sunny, a bit of nip in the air but a good day for the footie. So I had decided to go see the super Saintees (from Perth) take on another bunch of Saints (the Mirren variety - from Paisley) and give them a sound whipping. As it transpired we were lucky to get one point out of the encounter. So I should never take anything for granted. However just as I was thinking about making my way out, (I was doing some emails in at Wildwood), we got a call from a client who had a very important business person who needed to travel out to the far east to make a presentation on their behalf but the mountain dust had kept him firmly in his place. His place was in Northern Perthshire. So could we make a film of what he had to say so that they could play it at the conference and Sharon, one of our new producers, said “sure of course we can.”

So I kinda got roped in, my own fault really, by saying I’ll fix that up. She’d already phoned Simone but Simone was busy being the vice-chairperson of the PBN (Perthshire Businesswomen’s Network) so I thought that was a bit unfair so I should just fix it up – football being an unneccessary distraction from serving our clients. We needed camera, lights, sound, autocue and to get an edit done. By this time Maggie had made her way up here and very kindly offered to edit any bits that needed to be done. We hoped that with the autocue there would be none but suspected that some black magic may be necessary. Then when she heard how long the piece was to be she thought “No way can we get that onto an ftp site, and so she set about devising how to make the file size smaller. Which, of course, she did.

So then I phone up Jackie to try and organise autocue; everybody phones Jackie when they want autocue, but her phone’s off, I leave a message, and she calls me back a wee while later and in an unusually ‘soto voce’ tone she says “ hi Jim were you looking for me? “ she doesn’t say “hi Jim it’s Jackie” but Jackie never needs to say it’s Jackie. Her voice is totally unmistakable, and I said “yeah where are you?” she says “I’m at the match” “what match?” I said, she says “the Celtic match”, I said “what on earth are you doing there?” She says “I’m working for Sky” “Oops” she says “I’d better go but I cannae help you this afternoon”. No probs’ I said so I had a fish around and I found another name inside the Bubble (our MIS), Ros. So I phoned Ros.

I said do you do tele-prompt and she said yeah. I said you won’t know who I am but my name’s Jim from Speakeasy. She said “sure I know who you are, we work for you frequently through your London office and up there with Simone and Sarah” Oh do we have an account with you?” She said “yeah”, I said “ok can you get me somebody this afternoon?” “Where’s the shoot?’” and I told her . “She said I’ll try, I’ll definitely get back to you”. Then I thought I’m kind of running out of options here and I phoned Fraser, who’s an old pal, and his phone rang as if he was in a foreign country which indeed he was - on holiday and stuck in Puerta Fuerteventura because of the mountain dust. Oh no! more seafood and Bacardi – what a shame – but he suggested a name and Frank it was who came up trumps. Later in the day to be fair Ros phoned me back to say she could get somebody but they’d have to come quite a long way so we stuck with Frank who did a sterling job for us and the shoot went ahead, the gentleman did his piece; it was shorter than we thought so the compression problem was not what we’d expected. It duly went online and our clients were jubilant.

I heard the last 10 minutes of the super saintees game on the radio and I was less than jubilant. We were 2-0 down then grabbed one back to make it 2-1 and then in the 93rd minute we got a penalty and then the wizard who is Paul Sheerin spotted the ball and slotted it into the onion bag to give us a share of the points. I suppose I should accept that even though we have thrashed Rangers 4-1, Hibernian 5-1 and had several others such results this season, the other saints are quite a decent team. There you go that was the Saturday job.

Ps. The super saintees were celebrating their 125th anniversary this year and Speakeasy produced the commemorative DVD. There might be the odd copy left if you hurry.

Jim Adamson - Managing Director

MarkM Speakeasy Company News, Team News, Work Completed

One thing Tom Crawford, Head of Internal Communications at E.ON, probably wasn’t expecting as he took to the stage at Melcrum’s Internal Communication Change Conference in the Connaught Hotel on Tuesday was that he would be upstaged … by a rodent. Even quite a large one (which it undoubtedly was).

But that is exactly what happened when a mouse took to the floor roughly five minutes into his presentation, causing havoc around the front tables before setting off on a grand tour of the stage area, including the podium where Tom battled valiantly to retain his composure. Just think - an entire conference of the UK’s most accomplished business communicators reduced to a giddy rabble by a dashing four-inch fur ball. Forget bottom-up. Forget top-down. Forget Al Pacino in “Any Given Sunday”. This was live entertainment at its best. Unplanned, Unpredictable. And completely uncontrollable. Even when the entire event management team applied itself to containing the beast. They were despatched in search of mouse traps - the ‘humane’ variety they reassured us when certain members of the audience showed signs of sympathizing with the tiny tyrant.

All to no avail, and we were all ushered out while (I assume) the team engaged in frantic negotiations with the creature to stop it monopolizing the remainder of the event. And in this they were successful, because it never came back.

So if you happen to come across a mouse with an uncanny grasp of change communication and handling uncertainty in the workplace you’ll know where it was last Tuesday.

One of the speakers quoted psychiatrist and holocaust survivor Victor Frankl who wrote “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves”. Know what I’m saying? (no, me neither - but it’s a neat quote isn’t it. Please take it and make it your own). Oh, and in case you’re wondering what this has to do with Speakeasy - we sponsored the event. But not the mouse.

MagnusM Speakeasy Company News

Following its takeover of Orchard Communications last Spring, Speakeasy has announced that the acquisition is to be fully integrated into the Speakeasy family and brand. The team will shortly be moving from its Woking premises into new offices in Covent Garden, from where it will offer an enhanced video and events production service.

Speakeasy MD Jim Adamson is bullish about the prospects of the Group’s London operation. “Our intention is for the Covent Garden team to at least double in size over the next 12 months, allowing us to provide a more comprehensive service to our growing portfolio of London-based clients”.

The name change and office move is expected to take place at the beginning of April, with the new production office open for business from day one.

MagnusM Speakeasy Company News speakeasy orchard merger

I almost never get time to take all of my annual leave, so I’ve started taking off a day or a half-day, here and there, to indulge my passion for cooking.  This week I have made broccoli and Stilton soup with a big chunk of cheese I got from a pal. Pretty easy: Stella and I had it for supper with fresh-baked crusty rolls - and a few bowlfuls left for the freezer. (This has been a winter for soup.)  Having about a kilo of the cheese left I thought I might make an improvised or “invented” dish with the remainder.

Tomato with Chickpeas and Stilton soup;

Here’s how I made it:

Ingredients

• 10Floz Vegetable Stock
• 6 cups of water
• 4 tins of plum (or chopped) tomatoes
• 2 tins of chickpeas
• 3 Tablespoons of rapeseed oil
• 1 Red pepper
• 7 cloves of Garlic
• I teaspoon each of White Pepper, English mustard powder,
• Thyme and Oregano (both dried).
• 2 rashers smoked back or streaky bacon
• I handful of roughly chopped Basil (and some to garnish)
• 700 gms of Stilton
• 600 gm chestnut mushrooms
• 2 -3 Tablespoons of double cream

Method

1. Pour 2-3 tablespoons of rapeseed oil into a big soup pot or stockpot.
2. Add the chopped bacon and fry until crispy.
3. Add the chopped onion and Garlic, Carrot, pepper, and sliced mushrooms.
4. Add the herbs and the remainder of the rapeseed oil. Put a lid on the pot and sweat this lot down on a lowish heat until they’re cooked.
5. Pour in the vegetable stock. Add the chickpeas and the tomatoes along with the 6 cups of water.Bring the whole lot to a rolling boil and then on a low heat simmer for about 45 -60 minutes.
6. When it seems ready blitz it either with a hand blender or transfer to one of the bigger processors and return the contents to the pot. Crumble in the Stilton and stir over a low heat until it has all melted in.
7. To finish remove from the heat and stir in the double cream.
8. Serve garnished with a few bits of Stilton and ripped basil leaves.

Yum!

MarkM Team News

Cramming 125 years of footballing history into 90 minutes was never going to be an easy task. But from the very first mention of the St. Johnstone Anniversary DVD, I knew I wanted to be involved…  football is near-enough all I think about anyway, so having a legitimate reason to do it all day at work was a major coup.

As with all great DVDs, we started with a script - adapted from the Official Club History - but brought bang up to date to include Saint’s latest triumphs (including a Challenge Cup win and promotion back to the SPL). With that in place and a temporary voiceover recorded by Speakeasy’s resident Saintee (Jim) we plundered the Scottish Football League’s archive for some goalmouth action.

With St. Johnstone being established in 1884, a bundle of goals from the last couple decades was never going to be enough. So we rustled up some key figures from Saint’s progress, including John Brogan (their record goalscorer) and Alan Main (who holds the record for most appearances made) to add some commentary.

200 photographs, 25 tapes and 8 interviews later, we nearly had ourselves a feature length production worthy of any Saints fan. The icing on the cake came on a drizzly Saturday night, when we filmed Stuart Cosgrove’s presenter links at McDiarmid Park after a game.  Filming went on late into the evening, but the resulting footage tied the video together into a neat little stocking filler for any St. Johnstone fan.

MarkM Team News

We’ve worked with all sorts – actors, doctors, cooks, bankers… but it’s not everyday you can say that you’ve worked with a group of young people who are truly inspirational…

We were lucky enough to meet some of Britain’s Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls for London 2012, on a recent shoot for Lloyds Banking Group. We spent a day each with four athletes on the Bank’s Local Heroes scheme - Tom Gibbs, a gymnast, Harriet Owen, a cyclist, Jonny Hay, a runner and Alan Mansell a paralympic Basketball Player.

Shooting on the RED camera system for the first time, we produced stunning slow motion footage of each of the athletes training and performing their sport. All four young athletes were unbelievably talented and an inspiration to watch. The hard work and dedication they put into their sport is incredible – and should be an example to all of us!

We wish them all the best for their preparations and training on the road to 2012.

Lucy Trendle - Producer

MagnusM Speakeasy Company News, Work Completed