Lip Service

It’s November, and at this time of year a young man’s thoughts turn to facial hair. Perhaps it’s a response to the Autumnal drop in temperature or maybe, just maybe, it’s ‘Movember’.

Movember is that most excellent event organised to raise funds for research into Prostate Cancer. Participants must grow a moustache from scratch during the month of November. Not only will this raise sponsorship for a deserving cause, it will mark a return to the good old fashioned virtues of good manners, brown tweed, pipe smoking and whistling jaunty tunes in public.

This year, Speakeasy is fielding a team from both our Southern and Northern offices, led by Sargeant Tom Cairns of the London Platoon (though by the end of the month, we expect him to resemble a Wing Commander). Rather controversially, our team also includes three female members. We have high hopes of success.

If you would like keep track of our progress or, better still, make a donation, you can visit our team page at http://uk.movember.com/donate/team-details/id/334888/searchTerm/Speakeasy

Captain Alex Insch (of the Speakeasy Editing Fusiliers) embarks on his Top Secret Top Lip mission.

Posted in Speakeasy Company News, Team News, Uncategorized Tagged ,

Roast Pheasant for Breakfast

On most shoots the crew are happy to start the day with a coffee and a bacon sandwich. So imagine how happy they were on our latest shoot, when we convened at the world famous Gleneagles Hotel, to shoot top chef Andrew Fairlie in action.

We were interviewing him for ‘The Land Of Food And Drink” a programme for the Scottish Government, promoting Scottish food and drink to the rest of the world. We know what you’re thinking, but absolutely nothing was deep fried for this programme: the watch word here is ‘quality’, and this was reflected in both the content and the way it was shot. The programme includes interviews with an Angus beef farmer, a langoustine fisherman, a salmon farmer, and a master whisky taster.

Over at Gleneagles, Andrew Fairlie has not one but two Michelin stars, but unlike his contemporary Gordon Ramsey, runs a calm kitchen. Not one pan (or expletive) was thrown –  at least, not while the cameras were rolling. We like to thank him and his team for making time (and roast pheasant) for us.

‘The Land Of Food And Drink” will be available on our Youtube channel in the new year.

www.youtube.com/user/speakeasyvideos

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Pirates

No not the dreadlocked, drunk, Jonny Depp style. More like the AK-47, grenade launcher and much less funny type, appearing in Speakeasy’s latest video for a large global defense company, as naval lasers save an oil tanker from these unsavory fellows. Early morning off the coast of Kent, zipping about on boats capturing it all is the Speakeasy crew. No rum involved, just anti-sea sickness tablets.pirate

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Round the world in 30 days

So one of the leading Private Equity Companies say to us, “We want a video made of all our main offices and sector leaders”, so we say, “Sure, where are they?”…And so starts a month of producing and filming in seven of the most glamorous cities around the world. A lot of air miles, plane food and questionable in-flight movies later Speakeasy have done the world in 30 days.
phileas-fogg

Posted in Speakeasy Company News, Team News, Work Completed

Using TV drama to engage employees on financial crime and AML

Using TV drama to engage employees on financial crime and AML

Do you know why we're here cinema card

Many employees don’t realise that any personal involvement in financial crime, witnessing potentially fraudulent activity, or failing to report suspicion of AML activities could result in a personal AML conviction by their employer. For a fraud team therefore, conveying the serious consequences of a potential personal liability to their workforce is a communication exercise that should truly engage both hearts and minds.

Speakeasy has worked with the financial crime and fraud team at Lloyds Banking Group for several years, and we are holding a private film screening of two award winning films, Do You Know Why We Are Here? and On the Inside, which have used compelling TV drama techniques to create maximum impact. Jim Oakes from the ACFE, and members of the Lloyds team will be on hand to share their experience and learnings from their work in this sensitive area of financial services operations. If you feel that this event is relevant to your own work we would really appreciate your involvement.

To reserve a place please email ruth.phypers@speak.co.uk or call 020 7836 0866

This event is free of charge. Breakfast will be served. More information: leaflet PDF

Posted in Industry Chat, Speakeasy Company News

Speakeasy Picking Up Something Shiny- It’s The Awards Season!

So the awards season is over, no great surprises to speak of. The King’s Speech and Colin Firth do rather well for themselves, Miss Portman deservedly scoops gold for turning into a Black Swan that actually resembled much more of an ugly duckling, Ricky Gervais offends a lot of Americans and Speakeasy scoops another award, this time at the IVCA Awards Ceremony.
Grosvenor House, Park Lane was the venue for the glamorous evening where the great and the good of the corporate comms world gather to gloat over the much sought-after awards, described as “the premier mark of excellence for effective business and public sector communications in video.”


It was in the ‘Industry Award for Effectiveness’ where Speakeasy – represented by Magnus Wake and Mark Turner (the snappily dressed smirking pair to the left and right in the picture) – swooped in to pick up the Bronze Award for the video-based online interactive, ‘You Be The Judge: A Guide To Sentencing’, for the Ministry of Justice (represented by Aidan Muller and Juliet Lopez-Real). The guide sought to demystify the sentencing process by giving members of the public the chance to sit in the judge’s chair, comparing their own sentence to the one dished out in reality.

While awards as prestigious as this are always good to get, what you can’t beat is a satisfied client, and we certainly had one of those, with the Ministry of Justice’s Director-General of Justice Policy, Helen Edwards saying: “This is a great achievement for the team. They have obviously managed to capture the public’s imagination and shed light on the complex world of sentencing.”

If you want to take a look at the videos visit http://ybtj.cjsonline.gov.uk/

Posted in Speakeasy Company News, Team News, Work Completed

Dragons’ Den?

Despite the tough economic climate Tom, Lucy and Sylvie may still invest

Despite the tough economic climate Tom, Lucy and Sylvie may still invest

It’s six o’clock on a bitterly cold January morning, the sun is yet to come up and I’m standing outside a warehouse in North London with around three hundred thousand pounds worth of fake £20 notes in a rucksack. This might seem abnormal and more than a little bit suspect, if it wasn’t for the fact that this particular warehouse is ‘The Dragon’s Den’, and this is where the Speakeasy team will be filming today.

Inside ‘The Den’ await the infamous Dragons; Mrs. Appleby (?), Mr. Singh (?!) and Mr. McCormack (?!?)…okay so it may not be the actual Dragons; Peter Jones, Duncan Bannatyne etc. but this is The Den, and this is our take on the popular television show for Lloyds Banking Group’s first episode of Connect TV 2011.

Inside, it is as authentic as the real thing, and the tension that exudes from the television show is there in bucket loads too (as demonstrated by the Speakeasy teams’ super serious glares). I can attest for this after having to stand-in for the employees pitching to the dragons, and spending five minutes getting stared down before making a hasty exit back behind the cameras when we’re ready to roll.

All the stops have well and truly been pulled out on this one, with more Connect TV content being shot in Belfast, Halifax, Cardiff, Bristol, Edinburgh and London all in the same week. This might lead you to question whether we are looking serious, or just very tired in the picture above. But it’s just another week in the Speakeasy life and very much worth it in the end.

Bring on Episode 2!

Tom Cairns – Production Assistant

Posted in Speakeasy Company News, Work Completed Tagged , , , , , ,

New business means new people!

I’ve been asked to write a blog about how busy we are thanks to a whole lot of business wins late last year and early this, how our production teams in both our Perth and Covent Garden offices are steadily growing, and how it would be great to hear from ready and able freelancer writers, editors, directors, designers – you name it – to help us out in both our offices, and how we’ve got a new online application for such people to streamline the whole process – but to be honest I really don’t have the time.
Perhaps when things quieten down a bit – which isn’t likely to be any time soon given that we’re also looking to recruit another business development person to help grow the business even more (jonathan@speak.co.uk). So I’ll have to leave it for the moment, perhaps have time to get something written later in the year. Hopefully not. Jes- Creative Director

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Speakeasy Highly Commended at IVCA LiveCom Awards.

Speakeasy’s Next Chapter Roadshow events produced for The Co-operative Financial Services received a Highly Commended at the IVCA LiveCom Awards 2010 in the Internal Experience category.
livecom-2010-highly-commended-logo
Now in their 5th year the IVCA LiveCom Awards are the only awards of their kind to focus solely on live event and experiential marketing and recognise excellence in both UK and international activity.

The Next Chapter roadshows were attended by all 12,000 staff of the newly merged CFS and Britannia Building Societies, giving the leadership team the opportunity to reinforce the company values, explain the benefits of the merger and motivate staff to make the very best of the unique opportunities open to them. Aside from the sheer scale of the production (two 2-hour shows, twice a day at 10 venues over three weeks) it was the overwhelmingly positive staff response which secured the award for the project. 10,000 feedback forms were completed, with 93% of staff reporting
they understood the strategy, 92% that they were excited about the opportunities, and 94% that they were proud of the organisation.

Marco Forgione, IVCA Chief Executive, commented “We were delighted with the record number of entries and exceptional levels of innovation and inspiration displayed by all the entrants to this year’s LiveCom Awards. To be shortlisted as a finalist is excellent and I would like to offer many congratulations to Speakeasy for its excellent and much deserved highly commended entry.”

Posted in Industry Chat, Speakeasy Company News Tagged , ,

End of year business wins

Speakeasy staff embarked on their Christmas break in higher than usual spirits thanks to a series of new business wins announced in late December.

In London our team has been awarded the contract to produce Lloyds Banking Group’s quarterly staff magazine video, ‘Connect TV’, with the first edition due to be shown in the third week of February. Which is round about when our Scottish team will be completing the first of eight monthly editions of the brand new Network News staff magazine show for Bank of Scotland, another new win. Learning and Teaching Scotland has commissioned a new series of online educational films to further promote its drive towards the Curriculum for Excellence, and Rothschild Bank has chosen Speakeasy to produce a landmark programme to reinforce its business values to staff across the world. Global private equity firm Permira and the Bank of Tokyo have also commissioned Speakeasy to produce videos in 2011.

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