Coming up for air

I feel like I've just come up for air! Maybe that's just a big city thing - whenever you ask a fellow Joburger how they are, the standard response is: "Fine, thanks, just very busy." Anyhow, I really mean it.

Over the past four weeks, the team at VWV has worked on final round pitches for Fan Fests at Nelson Mandela Bay, Polokwane and Cape Town. We're also concluding a massive deal which we can`t tell you about just yet... but what we can share is that finally, after a seven year drought, we've just won our first BMW pitch - hopefully the first of many!

This is a really, really big deal for us. It's imperative for an agency to do great work for great brands and BMW is just that.

Talking about great brands - we had the privilege of producing the 50th MINI birthday celebrations in Clarens mid-October. Over 1000 people from all corners of our country descended on Clarens in their MINIs. It was without a doubt one of the best weekends of my life. MINI and I have had many... but on this particular one, MINI took over the normally sleepy village of Clarens for the entire weekend and something special happened.

I've always thought that MINI has successfully created a sense of community that differentiates itself from other car brands out there and this assumption was ‘driven home' for me at this particular event.

I was lucky enough to be loaned a John Cooper Works convertible for the weekend and I can't tell you how ‘revved up' I was cruising to Clarens in the company of literally hundreds of MINIs all road tripping toward the Maluti mountains. [Yup, indeed it did! I still miss Clare, my MINI Clubman S for the weekend... - acting editor]

MINI and VWV would really like to make this an annual pilgrimage for many more MINIacs in the future - so watch this space, or should I say, watch this road!

Prior to MINI's 50th was the Loeries in Cape Town, but my intentions of blogging about it was ‘overtaken' by talking the torque. I have great respect for the Loeries and it has proven to be a sustainable award ceremony for the advertising industry.

You might know that VWV was awarded with its 102nd Loeries award - these industry accolades span the past 15 years. Our 2009 addition was a bronze in the live events category for the launch event we staged for the new MINI convertible in Jozi's CBD earlier this year. [Which was a seriously awesome event, too - acting editor]

It appears to be a general consensus that the criteria for the experiential category needs more work, as well as requiring better industry representation. My intention is to gather my industry peers and meet with the Loerie committee to work out a way that offers the experiential industry an avenue to proudly showcase its work and share best practice.

The march continues.