Latest news from St Luke's

It's been a pretty busy time at St Luke's of late, and not only in terms of new work launching. We've welcomed Rose Van Orden as our new Planning Director and she'd been thrown straight in at the deep end, with new business projects and planning strategy for Very.co.uk. Rose joined us from the BBC where she was a senior planner for radio and music, driving insight for stations such as Radio 1 and Radio 4. We're thrilled to have her on board, and she's joined at what is a thriving time for the agency.

We celebrated St Luke's day on the 24th October which marked our 16th birthday. As the UK's longest running independent agency, it is undeniable that there have been some tight spots over the past few years, but St Luke's day gave us the opportunity to celebrate what a fantastic year we've had in 2013. Everyone got up to present the work we've done over the past few months, and we had speeches from CEO Neil Henderson and MD Dan Hulse to keep our motivation and spirits high. Then it was time for the party, with a kid's themed birthday party in the agency then on for a steak feast at the fantastic Sophie's Steakhouse. 

Happy Birthday St Luke's - we're all raring to go for an even better 17th year!

Ding - we're at the top of the charts with Littlewoods Funfair!

We're delighted to have tied at the top spot in Marketing Magazine's Top 10 ads of the week.

The chart of ads is based on those which are most highly recalled for that week, and our delightful Funfair advert and its respective 10" cutdowns have raced to the top of the chart with 44% recall, alongside the anti-smoking campaign Stoptober.

We've received great feedback in industry press and on social media for the campaign, which you can watch below featuring Myleene Klass, Mark Wright and a track from the up and coming singer Arlissa.

Local Business Accelerator Awards announces 2013 winner!

The Local Business Accelerators was an idea born here at St Luke's for our client the Newspaper Society, as a partnership between local papers, fledgling businesses and established business leaders to give businesses a boost with free local advertising and the support of business mentors. When 32.9 million people read a local newspaper every week, making it the most widely read print medium in Britain, it seemed like a great way to encourage both local newspapers and businesses alike.

This esteemed initiative is fronted by national ambassador and Dragons' Den star Deborah Meaden and backed by Prime Minister David Cameron. Now in its second year, the 2013 LBA Awards took place this week, where the winning business The York Cocoa House battled against 2,000 local businesses nationwide.

As the 2013 LBA national winner, York Cocoa House will receive a year's business mentoring from Deborah Meaden, a local newspaper ad campaign designed by us at St Luke's and £10k cash from the Business Growth Fund.

It's party time with Very.co.uk

Before you know it it’ll be party season, and in every office across the land colleagues will be dressing to impress and celebrate the festive season.

Our latest ad for Very.co.uk, which launches today (17^th October), is set at a stereotypical office party. As you would expect, there are streamers, cheese and pineapple chunks on sticks and the obligatory festive mistletoe, but continuing from our recent Definitions campaign we present the girls in gorgeous, head-turning outfits from the Very collection to create a much more stylish party than your average office do.

The ad follows a series of vignettes, shot using a motion control camera, which culminate in a final end scene featuring Fearne Cotton. The impressive soundtrack is an original remix of Tainted Love sang by Gloria Jones and remixed by up-and-coming producer Ryan Hemsworth, and is sure to catch your attention every time it comes on your TV.

All the dresses, including Fearne’s from her signature collection, can be shopped online at Very.co.uk, so make your Christmas party a stylish one this year.

Get a sneak peek of the ad by clicking on the image, or catch it on your screens from tonight! Let us know what you think at @stlukescomms.

Roll up! Roll up, to the Littlewoods Funfair!

To sit alongside our current Autumn Winter TV campaign for Littlewoods, featuring Myleene Klass and Mark Wright, we have been busy creating and developing a social media campaign to encourage interaction and engagement with the Littlewoods Funfair this season.

The Autumn social media campaign kicked off on October 3rd and will feature a series of Funfair themed Facebook games that employ a mixture of platforms including Twitter, Pinterest and Snapchat over the next month.

Littlewoods are offering participants a chance to win a range of prizes, from the latest tablets to fashion essentials. The games themselves are all based on classic funfair games, each given the Littlewoods touch – such as ' Snap-a-mole, Hook-a-Duck and Test your strength.'

The first game was Test Your Strength, which received over 1800 likes, making 3 winners. The 2nd game opens today, and you can keep up to date with all the games and have your chance to win on the Littlewoods Facebook page, and you can watch our Autumn Winter adverts here.

Cricket gets the Strongbow treatment

As a team at St Luke’s, we believe in practicing what we preach. So when positioning Strongbow as the brand which “rewards men who step up to a challenge and get the job done”, the next step was to set up some live challenges to see which Strongbow drinkers really could live up to their name! 

                                   

The first, Cricket, goes live today and shows the story of eight finalists (picked from thousands) who experienced two days of intense training before the final winner was selected to face an over from Jimmy Anderson in front of a 200-strong crowd. 

Keen cricketer, Pete Moxom was chosen as the winner to face deliveries travelling up to 85mph from Anderson. All he had to do was last the full over. Watch Pete step up and EARN IT. as he takes on Jimmy in the first Strongbow challenge.

If you think you have what it takes to EARN IT. there is still time to sign up for the Comedy challenge.