Hydraulic Workshop & Crane Repair

Alatas crane services worldwide is a large multi-national company that supplies crane parts and crane services from 8 different offices across the globe. This includes repairs of crane motors, pumps, winches and gearboxes at their hydraulic workshops. 

I was introduced to Alatas by my good friend Chris Wright who has a strong background in corporate video though he works primarily in recruitment now. At that moment the Alatas Hong Kong team were looking to put together a video that would give a good showcasing of their hydraulic workshop and it's services, especially focussing on their crane motor repairs.

One of the challenges of this project was that engineering in general and the servicing of cranes in specific, is not generally considered a very exciting topic, but it was very important to Alatas that we did not produce the sort of documentary style voice-over led video that is common among across the entire engineering industry. Rather they wanted something short, attractive and fast moving that would at the same time give a very clear understanding of all their services and key points of quality to even a person unfamiliar with their industry casually watching the video. Obviously hitting both of these aims simultaneously meant we had our work cut out for us. Luckily we were helped by the fact that they have a beautiful workshop which is kept in immaculate condition, as you can see from the photos below:

     

 

In any case we decided to go for it full throttle and set about shooting a relatively fast-paced video of the journey of a crane motor through the Alatas Hydraulic Workshop. The main reference videos we had to work with (representing some of the best existing videos of a similar nature) were over 20 minutes long, shot in a dull 70's Open University documentary style and accompanied by lengthy and incredibly boring explanatory voiceovers. We decided to scrap this format entirely and go for a 5 minute long, high energy, music driven video with just a few titles integrated into the scenes to act as extra guidance for what's going on. In general though, I think you can follow the linear voyage of the motor through the workshop from arrival to dismantling, cleaning, repairing, re-assambly and testing without needing to pay attention to the titles.

Well we think we did a pretty good job of taking what is quite far from being the most riveting and exciting subject matter and transforming it into a fairly fast-moving and engaging video, in the process altering the ages old documentary format of engineering videos. Apparently we're not alone in our general regard of ourselves, as over 30,000 engineers from all over the world have watched the video making it one of the most popular videos on the net from the crane repair / hydraulic workshop / hydraulic motor category. Have a look and see what you think:

Spiriteca - Some of the Greatest & Rarest Whiskies in the World

A few months ago, I was very lucky to come across a very interesting opportunity indeed. I was introduced to the head of Hong Kong's leading importer of rare and top-quality whiskey for a marketing and PR consulting job. Now, for anyone who knows me well you will definitely know that I am a HUGE fan of good whiskey and suddenly having the opportunity to work with and taste some of the best whiskies in the world was like a dream come true! 

The job description was pretty interesting too - they had recently been offered a space for a 3 month pop-up store in The Landmark, one of HK's oldest and most exclusive shopping malls, and they wanted to bring me on board to spread the word on this exciting first in Hong Kong. Needless to say I enthusiastically said "yes!". 

The first thing we decided to get to work on was a launch party to welcome in existing and new customers, so we booked the date, sent out the invites and off we went! Here are a few snaps of the party so you can see how it went: 

Drinks were very popular!

Sniff and sip

Lots to choose from

Golden liquid

Tasty canapes

Discussing the drinks

Me & Next Media Crew

Sean Fitzpatrick of Tatler Group

As you can see from the pics the event was a great success and the final result of all this fun and merriment was a lot of empty bottles of whiskey, vintage rum, cognac and more, as you can see here:

After the success of the launch event, we still had a lot to do to make sure that the 3 months in prime retail space would be maximised. After a bit of thought we decided that we should orgnanise a special "Get in the Spirit Walk" to take place throughout the gentlemanly location of Landmark Men. In order to make sure it would be a great success we decided to reach out to a series of partners who could help make this a great experience for the modern gentleman. The partners who came on board were: Thomas Hardy, Tassels, Gentleman's Tonic, The Armoury, Kelly & Walsh, Vero and Thomas Pink. The idea was that the shops would open much later into the night than usual and you could follow a trail around Landmark Men, stopping in each of these sophisticated stores to enjoy a dram of a different spirit, whilst doing so you would also collect a stamp from each location and at the end could enter into a lucky draw to win quality prizes supplied by each partner - what's not to love about all that?

Here is the final map that we put together for our Get in the Spirit Walk:

As you can imagine we had great feedback from this event, but it still wasn't the end of all the fun things we had up our sleeves! 

To keep the excitement and interest up throughout our whole tenure, we decided to set-up a free tutored tasting every Saturday and Sunday afternoon between 2pm & 5pm. This meant that every weekend we would open up a few really special bottles and you could just drop in any time after lunch to try several of the best whiskies you had ever tried in your life and get educated in their background, history and tasting notes. Lots of fun - I attended several of the sessions myself! 

There were still several other things that we set-up during our time in the Landmark and all of them were very enjoyable for us and hopefully for everyone who visited us too. And to see how successful the whole project was, check out some of the flattering articles we got in the press below: 

HK Magazine

HK Tatler 

Hip Hong Kong

The List

And you'll be happy to know that the story hasn't come to an end just yet! I've been talking to the guys at Spiriteca again recently and seems they have the next exciting plan already in action behind the scenes. Keep your eyes peeled! 

About Spencer Douglass

Mobile World Congress (MWC) with ALCATEL

Mobile World Congress or MWC as it is commonly known, is the world's largest mobile trade show held in March every year. In 2013 over 65,000 people flew in to take part in the event and over 1,500 mobile or mobile related companies exhibited at the event. As you can imagine it was quite a show and I was lucky enough to be flown over myself to help oversee the global PR campaign from mobile phone designer and producer ALCATEL. 

The event was held at the striking modern Fira Gran Via building which you can see here: 

 In the incredible, historical and picturesque city of Barcelona in Spain:

Lots of advantages of attending a conference in Barcelona - one being the incredible architecture and sights and another being the amazingly delicious food, which I've put a few examples of here: 

Well enough about the wonderful food, incredible environment and vibrant history of Barcelona (I didn't even touch on the football team...) how about the event itself? Well it was an enormous success for ALCATEL ONE TOUCH. We launched 6 brand new smartphones, which added to those we had previously announced at CES brought the grand total to 13 smartphones launched since January 2013. This very impressive feat, as well as the high quality and beautiful design of the new phones caused a large stir in the press and in all we counted over 2,000 articles about us in the press over the course of MWC.

The beautifully designed phones launched at MWC included the ONE TOUCH Star shown in Cranberry Pink here:

In addition to all the press excitement around the impressive new range phones, I also got my own little press buzz when someone recognised me in the background of one of the product videos as one of the hosts of Crazy from Kong - my youtube show where we review crazy Asian snack foods like Wasabi Kit Kat and Self-Freezing Coke. 

The video was a review of the Idol X by The Verge. I've put it below and if you go to the youtube page you will see the comments referring to me and my show: 

About Spencer Douglass