Euro RSCG & Sony Win Two AIMIA Awards

Hooray! Not much more to add to my previous post on the nominations, except to reiterate – well done to everyone involved at Euro and Sony.

It was the first time I’ve actually attended an AIMIA Awards night and I had a great time – caught up with some old friends, and met a few new acquaintances as well. Woke up with a spectacular hangover the next morning too.

Congratulations also to all the other award winners.

Update: Just added a few photos from the night.

Euro’s “Quantum Code” Campaign Nominated for 5 AIMIAs

Euro RSCG Australia has been nominated for five AIMIA awards for our work on “The Quantum Code” – the Quantum of Solace promotion for Sony. We entered the Bond promotion in the following five categories, and have been short-listed in all five:

• Best Advertising or Marketing
• Best Cross-Platform Content or Content Integration with an Offline Advertising Campaign
• Mobile Advertising or Marketing
• Best Use of Social Media
• Best Word of Mouth, Peer-to-peer or viral

The campaign was a cross-platform, cross-media alternate reality game (ARG) which utilised the web, online & mobile video, QR codes, social media sites (YouTube, Facebook), print and real-world locations. More info on Gizmodo and Euro’s website.

All up, there were 51 people who contributed towards the campaign across the agency. My involvement on the project was to manage development of all web & mobile content, and to develop the “Clue Confirmer” Flex/AIR application which was running in-store at the Sony Centre in Sydney, and allowed players to check their progress in the game.

I also led development of the 007 Bond Adventures site which the campaign promoted. However, credit must be shared with the rest of the UX Team, who worked tirelessly until the wee hours of the morning for several days in order to get everything over the line. Considering that this was the UX Team’s first exposure to Flex, it was a real accomplishment. Fingers crossed for the 13th March!

Grill a Bastard

This is a week or two old now, but I’m throwing it up here for posterity. Euro just launched an online campaign for the Australian Democrats (yes, they’re still around), called Bastardwatch. Created to coincide with the Australia Day weekend, part of the campaign was an appropriately BBQ-themed Flash game called Grill a Bastard. Got a bit of publicity too – SMH and The Age.

The game was built as an AS3 project in Flex Builder, with all assets sitting in a SWF created in Flash and embedded at compile time. Despite having nearly three years experience with Flex/AS3, this was my first pure AS3 project. It came together pretty quickly in around two days, although I did get stuck on one particular issue with SimpleButton for a bit. If anyone out there is still using AS2 and has yet to move up to AS3, I really recommend doing so. The display list and event system make things so much easier.

Check it out here.