Harvey Nichols X Jonathan Jay Lee Chinese New Year Campaign!

I love art (at least most art) and I am a huge fan of Jonathan Jay Lee's work, so when he contacted me to ask if I could help arrange a cooperation with him and Harvey Nichols for Chinese New Year I was overjoyed. This is exactly the kind of work I love to do - helping truly creative and highly skilled people (artists, musicians, directors etc.) to link up with forward thinking and creative brands to help them get their work out into the public eye!

So who is this Jonathan Jay Lee that I'm talking about? Well he is an extremely talented comic artist, illustrator, digital artist and painter who also happens to be the only Hong Kong born and raised comic artist I know of to be published by Marvel Comics! He was invited to draw his own version of The Punisher for the anthology comic book titled "Strange Tales" that Marvel releases every year. For this awesome project JJL basically did a Chinese Triad version of The Punisher set in HK! Now tell me that's not awesome?

You can check out a selection of Jonathan's fantastic artwork here:

Agent 88 Artwork for Heavy Metal Magazine

Cityscapes of Canton Road and West Kowloon

Original Artwork - Last Kiss

Live Painting for Hong Kong Jockey Club & Illustration for Kronenbourg 1664

Jonathan Jay Lee's Version of The Punisher & his original creation Wolf & Cub

Original Commissioned Artwork - The Drummer

So for this crossover job with Harvey Nichols, they were looking for JJL to specifically design a co-branded Jonathan Jay Lee X Harvey Nichols loyalty card for their most important VIP customers to celebrate Chinese New Year. The cards would be individually mailed to each VIP with a value of HK$888 pre-installed on the card for them to use at any Harvey Nichols store. For the card itself they wanted it to be an original artistic creation in Jonathan's typical style, but also to reflect traditional Chinese New Year values and artwork. This eventually led to a JJL's re-interpretation of a popular motif from ancient China the Boy and Ox in the field.

Have a look below to see what the final card looked like:

Can't wait to do our next collaboration project together! In the meantime you can check out the rest of Jonathan Jay Lee's work here: jonathanjaylee.com

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

Consumer Electornics Show (CES) with ALCATEL

I get to do lots of fun things in my life and this was a pretty new one for me, as I recently got flown off to Vegas to attend CES (the world famous Consumer Electronics Show) by ALCATEL ONE TOUCH as their representative for global PR. The show is pretty awesome and a big deal in the world of gadgets as it is generally the place where everyone from TV to camera to computer to car companies come to launch their latest and greatest products.

That is exactly what we were there for too - to launch a whole series of cutting-edge new smart phones. My job was to make sure that the message got out to the press and considering somewhere in the region of 400 articles appeared online, I believe the press did indeed receive the message and were very interested in the new line-up of ALCATEL ONE TOUCH smartphones!

One of the showcase products we got to announce at CES was the world's slimmest smartphone - the ONE TOUCH Idol Ultra - measuring in at a mere 6.45mm thin. You can check out Engadget's review of the phone below:

About Spencer Douglass