The selection will enable LBi to extend its existing relationship with Etihad Airways and work with the airline to link bought, owned and earned media to power customer journeys in a way that no other agency can.

Peter Baumgartner, Etihad Airways’ Chief Commercial Officer, said: “Etihad Airways is the fastest growing airline in the history of commercial aviation, so we sought out media agencies that can not only keep up with our pace of growth, but also help us bring our brand to a global audience in a more innovative and effective way.

“This is the first time we have split our ATL and digital media into separate contracts, which we elected to do simply to ensure that we are able to best leverage specialist agency strengths.”

Laurent Ezekiel, worldwide client services director, LBi, added: “Having partnered with Etihad since 2008 we are absolutely delighted by this appointment, which feels like a natural extension of our relationship, while underpinning our growth in the region under the guidance of MENA MD Amy McFarling.

“With the calibre of agencies in Etihad’s review process, our success is yet more evidence that our blended proposition is working and a point of difference in the market.”

MediaCom has been selected to manage above-the-line media planning and buying, with both agencies servicing the account globally from Abu Dhabi.

ENDS

About LBi

LBi is a global marketing and technology agency, expert at blending strategic, creative, media and technical expertise to build business value. We help companies of all shapes and sizes decide what’s next for their business – and then we take them there. Along with our media arm bigmouthmedia we define and execute transformational digital strategies for clients including BT, Coca-Cola, E.ON, Lloyds TSB, Play.com, SAB Miller and Virgin Atlantic.

Across our 26 offices in 18 countries, there are more than 1,900 digital specialists collaborating with brands to enrich people’s lives via service design, branded content, mobile, CRM and social media. We also set the pace in digital display, search, affiliate marketing, usability and analytics. There are many things that make LBi unique, but if we had to choose one it would be our ability to bring together diverse teams of experts to suit any brief. We call this blending, and it’s the reason why all types of organisations – from famous global businesses to disruptive start-ups – choose LBi to help make their brands desirable wherever, whenever and however people choose to engage with them. www.lbi.co.uk

The User Experience team is hard at work getting ready to put on our first What’s Next… event of the year on 29th February and it’s shaping up to be an ambitious one!

What’s Next… in Experience Design
Digital leaps forward

The event brings speakers in our Brick Lane space to lead a series of seminars around 5 themes:

• Mobilemergent
  The rise of the use of mobile devices, both in the West and in developing countries. Where is mobile taking humanity? Where are the glowing rectangles leading us?
• Businesstrategy
  The rise of disruptive business models. Darwinism goes digital – how will businesses adapt or die?
• Politicsociety
  The social and cultural impacts of the internet’s development. Ushahidi. The Arab Spring. #riotcleanup. The new possibilities for power. Has the revolution been digitised? What will the next phenomenon be?
• Creativitech
  Creative technology, home brew tech and 3D printing. The PC revolution began in enthusiasts’ garages. Is creative technology the new cottage industry?
• Gamentertainment
  Gamification, game theory and game design trends such as location-based services. Will our most difficult problems be solved through play? What’s next for MMORPGs? And what the hell will it take to make the telly interesting again?

Find out more about the event here.
The first 100 tickets were snapped up in just 2 days. But more will be released in the next few weeks, for tickets please watch our EventBrite page (The event is free, there are no speakers’ fees).

Keep an eye here and on our Facebook page for photos from the night.

Ta!

The hires strengthen LBi’s creative leadership and reflect an increase in demand for the agency’s blended approach to digital marketing.

Based in the agency’s Edinburgh office, Gavin and Gemma will be tasked with bringing their creative flare to LBi’s media arm, bigmouthmedia. They will provide creative guidance to global brands such as Skype, BUPA, Play.com and British Airways.

For the past twelve months Gavin has been working as Interactive Creative Director at Wieden + Kennedy. Prior to this Gavin and Gemma worked together at Agency Republic where as Executive Creative Director and Creative Director respectively they led the agency to win Marketing magazine’s Digital Agency of the Year in 2008.

Simon Gill, LBi’s Executive Creative Director, said: “We’re thrilled to have Gavin and Gemma join us. They have an enviable track record and are a fantastic addition to our UK creative team. Their appointment demonstrates our commitment to making LBi a renowned creative force, as we continue to put creativity at the heart of our blended offering across bought, owned and earned media for our clients.”

Anil Pillai, LBi’s UK Chief Executive, said: “Already 2012 is shaping up to be a great year for LBi with a host of exciting client opportunities on the horizon. Gavin and Gemma are both great characters and will be central to our constantly evolving agency culture.”

Gavin and Gemma added: “We’re really excited to be taking on this new challenge as LBi embarks on the next stage of its journey. We’re also especially happy to be teaming up again.”

LBi’s creative team has grown by over 20% over the last year. During 2011 LBi produced a raft of award-winning work for clients including Coca-Cola, Lloyds, Sony Ericsson, Peroni and Virgin Atlantic.

Contact

Gareth Jones
+44 (0) 207 063 6263
gareth.jones@lbi.com

Thanks to x-ray delta (James Vaughan)

In 2012… The internet is the 5th dimension

Everything is connected to everything, and people can interact with the internet easily and seamlessly.

The 5th dimension is the result of several trends combined: the rise of internet-enabled everyday objects, verbal and gestural interfaces, and contactless information transfer (i.e. NFC). These three trends came together to create a world in which smart functions live in the objects that surround you, rather than simply in apps on a mobile device, and interacting with them requires the wave of a hand and not the tapping of a finger (on a keyboard, a button or a touchscreen). NFC has helped to connect people to their smart objects, enabling smartphones to act as portable screens for everything else.

In 2012… We all work on the toilet

Cloud computing, the remote storage of information that can be accessed from any device with a working internet connection, has heralded a new era of productivity.

Our software and our documents, freed from their association with a single device, are seamlessly accessible as we move from place to place. This has allowed us to rid our lives of moments of uselessness, such as those spent in lifts, on public transport, or in lavatories. This trend, known sometimes as smart boredom, is not just about increased efficiencies in the workforce; it can potentially benefit anyone. The success of smartphone gaming has allowed people to fill their moments of forced inactivity with fun. The cloud expands these possibilities to include other useful tasks, be they for your home life or your work life.

In 2012… We live in a cloud-based commune

A side effect of the utility provided by cloud computing has been a shift in company business models from selling digital products, to leasing digital products.

With more and more physical possessions being replaced by digital counterparts, the impact of this change from owning to borrowing has been significant. The cloud has enabled companies to remove the burden of ownership from the masses. What was previously owned, the common man now receives as a service in exchange for micropayments.

In 2012… Everyone loves adverts

The use of personal activity data has made it possible to provide people with only the advertising and information that is relevant to their interests and contextual needs.

By collecting information from your activity in search, ecommerce and social media, and combining it with other contextual information, such as location, time of day and time of year, companies can now ensure that only the most interesting and useful information is presented to you. This has changed the dynamic of spam and advertising. Once seen as an irritant, adverts are now thought of as a service.

In 2012… We grow our own fridges

Companies collaborate with their customers to develop new ideas.

Instead of simply going out or online and buying a fridge, consumers now have the option to participate in the designing of their next fridge. This benefits both the company and the consumers, in that the products more closely reflect the desires of the consumers. Furthermore, the process of co-creation encourages people to become invested in the success of the product, which in turn can have a positive effect on brand advocacy. The very fact of being open to consumer participation and demonstrating that the company is interested in its customers’ opinions can help to increase public opinion.

In 2012… We play games without realising

Gamification has developed beyond the most obvious and colourful implementations to a more subtle use of the underlying psychology.

In 2011 most implementations of gamification (the process of using game design techniques to make other processes more engaging) have focussed on applying surface elements of games, such as badges and leaderboards. In 2012 gamification has moved on to applying psychological lessons from game design without the end product necessarily resembling a game. This has made it possible to gamify a broader range of processes, including ones that might not suit obvious game elements.

Our seasonal stupidity comes in the form of a GIFshop – a place to obtain some of the fairest animated creations this side of ruler bar. You can tweet it, like it, +1 it or even embed it. And if you really like it make a small donation to the charity its supporting. Visitors are also invited to submit their own gifs too.

We’ll match the donations (up to a total of £2000) and announce the winning GIF with much fanfare of course.

Because this Christmas it really is better to GIF than receive.

We also invited a few of the capital’s finest Creative Directors to submit – with all but one strangely declining to get involved – bar humbug. So many thanks to Ed Robinson and Rob at The Viral Factory for providing a few gems.

The whole project was concocted from a blended mixture of suggested ideas from our 5 UK offices to hopefully put a smile on people’s faces. A big shout out to the team that turned it quickly around.

It would seem the animated GIF meme was going strong this festive season with TBWA New York giving the World holidaygifgiver.com with added Chrimbo jumper, and Skittles providing their GIF rap (GifRapTheRainbow.com) courtesy of BBDO Toronto.

So as the line goes this Christmas this really is the GIF that keeps on giving.

Here are some of my highlights of Windows Phone:

User Interface
I just love the new UI in Windows Phone! The Phone team at Microsoft introduced a completely redesigned UI called Metro. Metro has been given a big thumbs up by the creative and user experience community through its use of simple, clean, tiled interface that does a good job of presenting lots of dynamic real-time content consistently on mobile/tablet devices, desktop LCD’s or television screens.
 

Metro is now being used as the UI on Microsoft’s highly anticipated new operating system Windows 8 and is already on its way to xBox. The picture below from winrumors.com shows Metro UI on Windows 8, Windows Phone and xBox Live.

Let’s get Social
A major new functionality, introduced by the mango software update, is the social network integration. This bring in social integration capabilities with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Windows Live and xBox Live.
I absolutely love this feature as my phone contacts list now has the likes of Charlie Sheen, Robin Van Persie, Richard Branson alongside my LBi colleagues and my mum
 

Apps and Marketplace
Let’s face it, a decent smartphone isn’t really decent unless it has the ability to discover, find and download applications…. and lots of them! There are now over 45,000 apps on the Windows Phone ‘app store’ otherwise known as Marketplace.

With the recent Mango update as mentioned earlier, the IE mobile browser got upgraded and now supports HTML5. That means Windows Phone now joins the other major phone players in the market for running websites that have been developed in HTML5.

Developers, Developers, Developers
The thousands of apps available to download across Apple App Store, Windows Phone Marketplace, Android Market, wouldn’t be possible without skilling up mobile application developers. Over the last 18 months Microsoft has made quite a large investment in the developer community by providing dev tools, learning kits, training and running developer courses and events globally.

Earlier this year, LBi was selected as the exclusive London digital agency partner to host the London Windows Phone Camps at our Truman Brewery offices. These dev camps have been very successful with the last camp reaching record numbers.

The Nokia partnership
2011 has seen a partnership between Microsoft and Nokia and the emergence of new Nokia smartphones running Windows Phone operating system. This was a very good move by both companies and exactly what they needed to compete with Google and Apple. The recent London launch of the Nokia Lumia phone shows just how serious Nokia are of the partnership and importance of gaining a market share in the smartphone race.

Well there you go, some of my highlights of Windows Phone in 2011. Windows Phone must be doing something right because just the other day I talked about some of the above with mates who are big time iPhone and Android fans and even they were impressed saying how Windows Phone had really caught up with the competition.

I think so too.

Thanks for reading and have an amazing 2012!

Riaz  (@TheRealRiaz)

Follow me…..    

Here’s my pick – a best of the best ofs.

Google’s Zeitgeist

2011 was a big year for Google. Not only did the world’s number one search engine continue its domination of that market, it rolled out its new social platform, Google+ and +1, its social bookmarking/recommendation system. However, Google remains a search engine to most and Zeitgeist is a compilation of the fastest rising search terms for 2011. Apple has made a big impact with iPhone 5 (which turned out to become the mere iPhone 4S), iPad 2 and the late Steve Jobs all making the list. Late Jackass Star Ryan Dunn makes it to number three; Google+ pops in at number two, and number one? How could it be anything else.

YouTube’s Most Viewed Videos of 2011

YouTube’s Trend blog recently published its list of the most viewed videos of 2011. Amongst cute animals, Nyan Cat and talking babies, we see music being a key driver to video popularity, with four entries reaching the top ten. Most interestingly, there was only one brand created video. Volkswagen’s “The Force” video was already a major internet sensation before it hit the air during the Super Bowl half time show and generated over 1 million views in the first 24 hours. As for number one it’s a Black day for music.

The Guardian’s – 2011 In Lego

This pictorial look at the year’s event may well be a very cunning product advertorial, but it captures the imagination, recalling key moments of 2011 through the medium of Danish plastic. With creative types sourced from Flickr, News-In-Lego makes my list due to ingenuity and nostalgia. Lovely stuff.

Twitter- What’s the Trend 2011

In early December, What’s The Trend published its Top 10 trending topics on Twitter. The list is available through Mashable and highlights the top 10 hash tagged topics throughout 2011. Analysis of the terms suggests that like, YouTube, music was a key motivator, with Britney Spears, The Jonas Brothers and Lady Gaga all featuring alongside eventual winner Justin Bieber. The interesting revelation from this may well be that, political events that claimed to have been driven by social activity, such as the Arab Spring, do not make the overall top 10.

BBC Magazine- 2011: The Year where a lot happened

The BBC’s look back at the year  is interesting and informative as it gives a good indication of the events which captured the attention of the site’s users. This is demonstrated by an infographic showing relative traffic levels to its news site during the calendar year. The events that most affected traffic to the site were the Japanese Earthquake, the royal Wedding and the London riots, the latter of which generated 15.9 million unique browsers.

So what?

One thing is certain, 2011 was a year of change. We can read what we want into these different best ofs/statistics and make judgements about the way people are using technology and their interests. Socially, politically and technologically we have all been a part of it through the way we have interacted online.

At LBi, we too are trying to change things a little, which is why we set up our GIF shop allowing the sharing of shiny home-made GIFs for a donation to one of our three selected charities (we’ll even match any donation up to £2000!). Please have a gander, choose the GIF of your liking and share away.

Hope you enjoyed our best of 2011. Stay tuned next week when we’ll bring you our own take on predictions for 2012.

Have a happy Christmas and a happy New Year!

@nickobeano

The mainstream micro – blogging service Twitter has launched a complete redesign of the site (you may have noticed) for both desktop and mobile. Not only is there a redesign but Twitter has introduced some major new features too – there’s now more focus on rich media, real time discovery and the opportunity for brands and advertisers.

The new Twitter design features four main categories, ‘home’, ‘connect’, ‘discover’ and ‘me’. The ‘discover’ tab is the biggest new addition, this will help users to discover the latest trending stories, with more of an emphasis on the content that drives the trending topics.

Brand pages

After much speculation Twitter has improved its platform for marketers, giving brands and advertisers the chance to create more of a unique branded offering through ‘brand pages’. Available to a selected number of partnered brands at the moment, the new brand pages include the ability to create your own banner at the top of the page. You can also favourite a tweet to the top of your timeline, so that you can show off selected content to visitors.

The introduction of brand pages will help to position Twitter into direct competition with Facebook’s brand pages as it becomes more of a media rich hub for on-page engagement. This may result in a shift where we see users spending more of their time on Twitter.

Google Currents

Google has recently released Google Currents, an application that lets you explore online publications and other rich web content in one neat visual place. The search engine giant has partnered with over 150 publications including Forbes and The Huffington Post to offer users full-length articles optimised specifically for the app.

Users can add their own RSS, video and photo feeds and public Google+ streams that they’re following. The app will place all this content into a well-designed layout that you can then scroll through online and offline – so when you’re out and about you don’t need to rely on picking up a network connection.

Google Currents is also offering publishers, (of any shape or size) the opportunity to design and customise their own web content specifically for the app – this part of the app is called Google Currents Producer.

Google Currents has positioned itself as an app that works alongside Google+ which leaves open the possibility that there might be plans for further integration with Google’s overall search experience. Unlike its notable rival Flipboard (who have dominated mobile content aggregation on iOS), Google Currents is available on both iOS and Android. Keep an eye out for when the app becomes available in the UK.

Facebook trial brand page messaging

Facebook have begun trialling a private messaging system that lets brand pages and fans communicate, much like the messaging system in place for Facebook profile pages. The private messaging system for brands does have some key differences including:

• At the moment brand pages can only reply to messages that have been sent to them.
• Brand pages can reply privately to individual comments that a fan has made on the brands wall.
• Users messaging a brand do not have to be a fan of the page. This could have a few implications for brands:
  • The messaging system may well become another response channel to manage – presenting a potential resource issue.
  • Brands will have to think carefully about how to prioritise communication between fans and non-fans, if it’s part of its Facebook strategy.

Overall the new messaging system could be seen as a significant plus for brands, as it allows them to deal with customer service queries in a private setting that does not affect the public reputation of the brand – unless you’re brand still has an open wall policy that is. Keep an eye out for this introduction as Facebook are testing the product in quieter markets before hopefully rolling it out to the masses.

You may remember seeing, hearing or reading about a real, live unicorn on Brick Lane a few months ago.

Erm, that was us.

We literally stopped traffic early one September morning as our Chief Creative Officer Chris Clarke (somewhat bashfully, it should be added) led the mythical beast through the East London streets and into our office.

Contrary to popular belief this wasn’t just an average day in the life of a Shoreditch digital agency. We were filming the opening scene of our new showreel, which we’re pleased to be unveiling here today after a lot of hard work from all involved.

We hope you’ll agree that it’s no ordinary showreel.

Our aim was to create a film that showcased to the outside world some of the work we’re most proud of, as well as giving people a glimpse of the creative magic makes us tick here at LBi.

Rather than a showreel, we wanted to create a ‘Show Real’.

It was important to us to create something that reflected the breadth of our services in the most interesting and engaging way possible. We wanted to show off our talented people, our skills and the unique way we blend all our expertise together to build business value for clients like Puma, Sony Ericsson and Skype.

To do this we created a narrative around the unicorn. To us the unicorn symbolises the never-ending quest for digital mastery. It represents our ability to help companies of all shapes and sizes decide What’s Next … and then take them there.

We’ve tried to bring this theme to life in our Show Real. Like most agencies these days we work mostly in digital, but for this project we stepped away from our screens, went lo-tech, and tried to do as much as possible for real.

To that end we’ve built up, propped up and acted out a series of vignettes representing some of our best bits. From a machine made of brik-a-brak to a projection mapping installation and a live unicorn, this has been a project involving lots of LBi people, lots of work, and lots of fun.

It’s been an adventure, and we’re incredibly proud of what we’ve created.

We hope you enjoy watching it as much as we’ve enjoyed making it because – in the end – you’ll be the judge.

Credits

Lead LBi Creative Team
Thea Hamrén and Emil Rydberg

Director
Fredrik Forrest

D.O.P
Simon Rudholm

Sound Design
Kungen & Hertigen

Producers
Ashley Cohen and Debbie Lee

+ all lost boys & girls that’s helped build, act out and make this film happen.