We joined Warner Bros. representatives from around the globe, as well as key local partners and guests from the local licensing trade.

Guests were treated to visionary speeches, a dazzling array of fashion shows and an exclusive three minute look at the forthcoming 2013 blockbuster movie ‘Man of Steel’ as well as snippets from The Hobbit and Dark Knight Rises.

Managing Director Preston Kevin Lewis was joined at the mic by representatives from his team as well as special international guests including Jeffrey Whalen, Senior Vice President and General Manager, LATAM, AsiaPac for Warner Bros. Consumer Products.

WBCP Summit

The Coffee Club teamed up with Australia’s number one dating site, RSVP, giving over 2,000 Aussie singles the chance to find romance and become record-breakers.

Taking place at 57 selected cafés across New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory last night, The Coffee Club attempted to break the previous world record of 1,240 speed-daters set in Sydney in 2008. To beat the record, each event had to begin simultaneously and each participant had to hold at least 20 ‘dates’ with each one lasting for five minutes. Even though the record was not officially broken, The Coffee Club easily beat the figure in terms of the number of participants taking part on the night.

Dozens of matches were made after couples were paired up and in some instances it appeared there was some immediate romance with some couples going out on ‘second’ dates as soon as the event had finished.

John Lazarou, Director of The Coffee Club, said: “After months of meticulous planning and encouraging people to get involved, come out and have some fun, we’re delighted that so many people participated in the event. We want to thank everyone for taking part – and we look forward to hearing about some love matches very soon! I know I saw a few couples walk away together!”

Melanie Dudgeon, spokesperson for RSVP, said: “We were thrilled to get involved in this record attempt and that our members got to meet each other face to face. Every day, RSVP helps millions of Australian singles connect and last night thousands of people had the chance to meet – we hope that there are lots of second dates being planned this weekend.”

The event follows The Coffee Club’s announcement earlier this year to expand their business both nationally and internationally over the next 12 months with an aim to open a new store every fortnight for the next five years, targeting 500 stores by 2020.

For pictures and video from the night and to keep up to date with news of special offers and events, go to www.facebook.com/tccau.

Adam Freedman joins the Sydney team as an Account Manager.  Adam joins us from House PR (formerly Henry’s House) in the UK where he worked for four years. His clients included FHM Magazine, Tourism NZ, AOL, Sailor Jerry Rum, Discovery Channel and the BBC.  Adam was responsible for delivery of numerous innovative social media strategies for his clients, including the award-winning ‘A Message from Earth’ campaign that enabled the Bebo community to create a digital time capsule and made history when it was beamed out into space.

Alexandra (Lexi) Penfold joins the Sydney team as an Account Executive. Lexi joins us from SeventySevenPR, the consumer arm of Fishburn Hedges in the UK where she worked for a year as an Account Executive. Here she worked on a variety of consumer brands including  Peroni Nastro Azzurro, Grants Whisky (global team, First Drinks Business), The Balvenie (First Drinks Business), lastminute.com, Holiday Autos (sister company to lastminute.com) and Jersey Tourism. Lexi’s career highlights include the Peroni Nastro Azzurro’s Masters of Style Exhibition at Somerset House, which involved securing six of the most influential fashion designers to take part in the first ever exhibition to showcase  the designers advertorials all together.

Sara Zucchi joins the Melbourne team as an Account Executive. Sara joins after graduating from RMIT with a Masters in Communications and undertaking an internship with the agency for close to one year. During this time Sara has worked on a range of clients including Hilton Melbourne South Wharf, The Age Run Melbourne, Motorclassica, Warner Bros. Consumer Products, La Dolce Italia and Aegis. Previously Sara worked in the Marketing Department of Swinburne University assisting with the development and strategy behind campaigns aimed at attracting students into the undergraduate courses.

James Wright, MD at Red Agency, said: “We are really excited to have personalities like Adam, Sara and Lexi join our agency. Their enthusiasm and experience help us to continue to deliver ground-breaking and inspirational campaigns for our clients.”

Working with sister advertising agency Euro RSCG, the team developed a brand loyalty campaign using Mortein’s mascot of over 54 years, Louie The Fly. The Mortein range of products is now so innovative and high tech we posed a question to the Australian public – does Louie still represent the brand?  We let the great Australian decide whether or not Mortein should kill off its brand ambassador from their advertising campaigns for good. Fans were encouraged to cast their votes to save or kill Louie via his Facebook page. On Facebook, Louie came to life by providing regular updates to his community on how he is trying to convince Mortein execs to keep him on. Louie later headed off on a three-month roadshow around the country over the 2011/12 summer to drum up support. The photography and video content from this tour would also further fuel the Facebook site.

The Kill or Save campaign involved developing a Facebook strategy, content calendar, community management plan, digital activations/promotions and a TV an online display advertising campaign. All this was supported with an overarching PR strategy which included traditional PR collaterals i.e. media releases, photo alerts, interviews alerts for print, online and broadcast, and an experiential activity across New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland.

This is the first major fully integrated social media activity undertaken by Mortein’s parent company, Reckitt Benckiser, in this market. The result was over 850 items of media coverage across TV, radio, print and online, a media audience reach of more than 121 million and a roadshow reach of 690,000. The ROI from the PR activity resulted in an 8:1 against its advertising equivalent value. After 4 months, the Louie the Fly Facebook page had over 210,000 fans, 5000+ comments, 30,000+ likes, 2,000+ shares. In October 2011 we received 17.8 interactions per thousand fans (the All Blacks in their World Cup winning month received just 4.4!). The page at its height was receiving over 1,000 new fans each day and is still counting. The campaign won the internal marketing award for being Reckitt Benckiser’s most effective campaign of 2011/12.

Factory closure: Towards the end of our campaign in January 2012, Reckitt Benckiser (RB), owner of Mortein announced plans to close their factory in Sydney. This announcement received significant media coverage and many people headed to our Facebook page to vent their frustrations as this was RB’s most high profile social media asset. We had no prior knowledge of the announcement and so had to act quickly, we received 400 fans made negative comments in 48 hours and lost over 1,000 ‘likes’. Our strategy was to three fold: firstly, to end the campaign because it was not appropriate to run a fun campaign about Louie’s fight to save his job when some 190 people faced that very real prospect at the factory; secondly, we would allow people to have their say on the page – as we had nowhere else to drive them, there is no RB company Facebook page in Australia – and manage the posts of those that acted outside the house rules were banned (using profanity, personal attacks etc); finally, we would look to bowl the negativity off the page with Louie posts, that we knew would engage people and that we would begin again after two weeks. We went into this final part of the strategy eyes wide open, knowing that in our initial posts we would still get some negativity, but that we needed to ride it through. After two days the main outrage died down, although we saw 10 or so comments per day the following week, to less than 3 after ten days. The strategy worked and now after 6 weeks we have more than 12,000 fans (from 212,000 to 224,000) than we did when the announcement was made, despite the loss in ‘likes’ at the time, positivity on the page is over 95% and we are back to the same levels of engagement.

“Fantastic response to this campaign, amazing media pick-up and an overwhelming response on Facebook. It has blown our expectations.”

Katja Thiess, Category Manager, Pest Control, Reckitt Benckiser

Louie the Fly in Melbourne

The launch events in the two states were attended by a range of media outlets including TV and radio broadcast channels, consumer tech news sites and influential gaming YouTube channels and blogs. Red Agency welcomed over 30 journalists across Sydney and Melbourne to experience the AR.Drone 2.0 first-hand – and the overwhelming consensus was that the AR.Drone 2.0 was definitely a gadget that they’d like to review.
Already the flying quadricopter has generated positive coverage on The Daily Telegraph, Capsule Computers, Gizmodo, Australian MacWorld and Computerworld Australia to name a few, and the phones at the Red Agency office are still ringing off the hook with media enquiries and requests for review units.

AR.Drone 2.0 Launch Video

Try our video maker at Animoto.

OpenMarket has offices in Sydney and Melbourne and aims to capitalise on the growing trend of engagement with consumers via their mobile phone.

OpenMarket spokesperson Jonathan Morgan said mobile marketing is becoming a huge industry.

“Major brands, retailers and start-ups are increasingly seeing the benefits of using mobile messaging, such as SMS, MMS and Push Notifications to interact directly with consumers and drive new business,” Mr Morgan said.

“We have seen a massive growth, particularly over the past year because messaging solutions are an ideal fit into almost any organisation’s existing marketing strategy.”

Mr Morgan said Red Agency was the perfect choice to promote our company. “Red Agency understood what was important to our business immediately, and came up with practical ways to help generate business from the word go. Furthermore, it has extensive experience in the technology sector and a great track record in raising awareness of companies new to the Australian market.”

Principal of Red Agency Melbourne, Grant Titmus, said the agency was excited about working on such a rapidly growing area of mobile technology.

“OpenMarket’s technologies will benefit so many different sectors. Whether you are a national food franchise wanting customers to pay via text message, a bank wanting to remind customers to pay their bills on time or a retail outlet keen to text special offers to VIP customers, OpenMarket is able to help any organisation directly access their target audience.”

OpenMarket is a pioneer in mobile payment technology and is already the number one mobile payment provider in the UK and the US.

For more information visit the OpenMarket website

Red Agency worked with Humax last year to launch the company and its range of digital TV recorders onto the Australian market. This was extremely successful with extensive media coverage.

Humax has re-engaged Red Agency to raise the profile of the brand through ongoing PR and promotions. Humax is one of the world’s largest makers of digital set-top boxes exporting to more than 90 countries. It is the No.1 sales leader in the UK and Germany.

Humax PVRs have already impressed in Australia winning two awards this year – Sound & Image magazine’s best PVR and also the Smarthouse Smart Awards 2012.

Bryce Russell, Managing Director of Humax Australia, said: “We were incredibly impressed with what Red Agency was able to achieve through our media launch last year. We have seen a consistent flow of coverage in the interim period, and hope that our continued relationship with the team will result in an increasingly high profile for Humax across Australia throughout 2012 and beyond.”

Red Agency Melbourne Principal Grant Titmus, said: “Humax is considered a world leader in the PVR market. It is a fantastic product that we are certain will continue to develop an ever strong foothold in the Australian marketplace.”

“The image of rail travel in Australia tends to be associated with older travelers, and yet young Australians use trains a lot when they’re traveling overseas. We’re looking to help make rail travel sexier,” Red Agency account manager Sam Watson told Mumbrella.

Queensland Rail Travel GM Max Kruse said: “When we set out to engage a PR agency we were looking for a company with extensive contacts in the consumer travel and trade media as well as the creative flair to take our messages to a broader audience. Red Agency certainly fits the criteria thanks to its considerable history in working with clients in the tourism industry. The fact that they have offices in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne is also a great plus for us.”

Red Agency already works with travel and tourism brands including Accor, Tourism Australia, Hilton Melbourne South Wharf, Stayz and Avalon Airport.

Satterley Senior Development Manger Jack Hoffmann said the day was a huge success.

“With so many young families moving into their new homes in the past year we thought an Easter Egg Hunt would be a great way of getting the community together for some fun,” he said.

“It was great to see so many residents coming together again, after our first community event, the Plenty River Family Fun Day in February.

“Above all, it’s important to us that we maintain a strong relationship with the community. Our aim is to continue creating an environment that everyone is proud to call home.”

Since the launch of Plenty River and Riverstone (in September last year) more than 560 lots have been sold.

So far more than 250 families have settled into their new homes and Satterley expects to welcome many more as construction wraps up on most of the blocks in the final stages of the Plenty River precinct.

Once completed, the Plenty River and Riverstone at Plenty River estates will contain more than 1,200 homes with residents having access to nearby retail outlets, sporting grounds, walking trails, bike paths, an onsite primary school and more than 40 hectares of open space right next door to Plenty Gorge National Park

For more information call 1300 955 529 or drop into the Sales & Information Centre and meet Estate Manager, Natalie Tekin.

At this exclusive launch guests were the first to hear why the very best in Italian food & wine, fashion, arts & craft, sport and travel & tourism will be converging on Melbourne in 2012.

The launch was held on Wednesday February 29 at exclusive Southbank cocktail bar The Den. Entertainment included a four string quarter, an oyster shucker, DJ icon Tim Nixon, runway models dressed by Robeto Cavalli and an Italian soccer player who charmed guests with amusing soccer tricks.

La Dolce Italia will overtake the iconic Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne this August 10, 11 and 12.

The event will become Australia’s premier celebration of the Italian lifestyle – in a city where Italian culture has flourished for almost a century.

La Dolce Italia will attract all generations. Families can wander through while their children are entertained in the Bambini Playground. Others will pay $495 for a six-course VIP luncheon and $850 for a nine-course VIP dinner. Art lovers will be able to see the work of renowned Italian/Persian artist Howtan Re for the first time in Australia.

La Dolce Italia is the brainchild of event directors Dario D’Agostino and Connie Paglianiti. D’Agostino is a well-known chef, a qualified Australian Culinary Federation judge, the youngest ever president of the Victorian branch of the prestigious Executive Chef Association Les Toques Blanche. Paglianiti is an accomplished event manager and the driving force behind the La Dolce Italia street festival held in Lygon Street in 2010 and 2011.

“Our goal is to enable attendees to experience everything Italy has to offer without leaving the city. It’s a fantastic way of bringing together the community and celebrating Melbourne’s prolific Italian culture” Dario Says.

The event is endorsed by the Italian Consul General of Victoria and Tasmania, the Italian Chamber of Commerce and Industry for Victoria and The Italian Institute of Culture.

25,000 people that are expected to attend La Dolce Italia.

La Dolce Italia Launch Video