Tonight is the night the Brit Awards rolls into London’s Earls Court with; Lady Gaga, Lily Allen, Florence and the Machine, Pixie Lott and JLS all in the running for a possible hat-trick of awards.

As the UK’s biggest music award night, viewers will be treated to performances from Lady Gaga, Kasabian, Cheryl Cole, Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, while Prince Harry has recorded a message for the live show, as the ceremony celebrates its 30th anniversary.

The somewhat unlikely host, Peter Kay, is the latest host of the famous awards which began back in 1977. Two special categories have been created to celebrate the best of the Brits over the past 30 years - the best Brits performance and the best album since the ceremony began.

If your organisation fancies an award ceremony of its own, you don’t necessarily have to dress up as Peter Kay, but you do need some quality personalised awards. One quality engraved award supplier is Gift Selection, who have supplied top end engraved awards to all sorts of organisations.

A quality award will make your order staff really feel appreciated, where as one that looks knocked together my result in a mass walk out. Gift Selection can engrave all sorts of popular award styles, such as globes, shards, prisms and stars – but unfortunately no Brit Awards.

Larger louts, not normally known for their eco friendly stance may be becoming more green then they first realised.

Over the Christmas period the upmarket beer Stella Artois hopes to save one million rainforest trees through a digital ‘Send a Card, Save a Tree’ campaign, which invites their fans everywhere to send a free, augmented reality cards. For every digital card sent, Stella Artois will saved a tree in the threatened Atlantic Rainforest in Argentina’s Misiones Province.

If you live in London you may have seen a sustainably-sourced Christmas tree in the ‘Winter Wonderland’ in London’s Hyde park, which details the progress of their campaign.  You may have taken your decorations down last weekend, but it isn’t too late to check out their site. The Agency Bright Spark Digital created the eCards, so keep an eye out for more innovative work from them.

Did you know that the first recorded history of Stella Artois is in 1366, when records of taxes exist on Leuven’s Den Horen Brewery, a brewery that is still in existence today? Anyway, if your business is looking for some innovative eco friendly promotional gifts, then keep an eye on ecoproducts2order who have a great range of printed promotional merchandise that Mother Nature would approve of.

You would be forgiven for associating London’s Leicester Square with all the glamour of the film industry. However yesterday saw the prestigious spot filled with computer game fans for the premier of much anticipated and catchy titled Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

The hardcore (some might say sad), gamers were treated to a fanfare of martial music and Jeeps. While US Marine look-a-likes took the invited audience down a camouflage carpet into the Vue cinema, while the crowds leaned over the barriers.

For those who don’t know, Modern Warfare 2 is set five years after the conclusion of Call of Duty 4. Despite the efforts of the Marines and the SAS, those pesky Ultranationalists seize control of Russia and start a reign of terror across Europe!

If you looked really hard you may have seen the promotional umbrellas that were there too. The organisers rightly decided that branded AK-47s wouldn’t be very tasteful, and decided having some promotional umbrellas made would make for a smart marketing tool.

If your organisation is in the market for branded umbrellas, then contact Umbrella Store, as they did a fine job of supplying the promotional umbrellas for the Call of Duty event. For that particular client, a branded Bedford umbrella was chosen, but all different models of branded umbrellas are available.

Printed promotional umbrellas make a great corporate gift, as they are both practical and stylish. They can work for any organisation – even for a computer game!

The official “cool list” for hipsters to keep an eye on by Cool Brand’s, reveals a new but unsurprising champion in the shape of the Apple iPhone. Despite the so called credit crunch, the unprecedented success of the iPhone this year, which has sold five million units between March and June, led to it rising from second to the number one spot.

The last three previous years, Aston Martin has been the coolest kid around, probably as the luxury car manufacturer is immediately synomous with James Bond. The shortlist for the survey is compiled by 2,500 voters. The final twenty are voted on by a panel, which includes DJ Edith Bowman (I’m not entirely sure why she’s on it) and Adam & Eve founding partner James Murphy.

Technology was the dominant field, with BlackBerry and the BBC’s iPlayer being new entries into the top 20. The only real exception was kooky high end fashion label Vivienne Westwood. Other category winners include Channel 4 and Vogue, which took the title for top radio and TV station, and magazine respectively, while Google’s YouTube was the number one online brand.

Stephen Cheliotis, chief executive of the Centre for Brand Analysis, which administers the survey, said: “The iPhone is something everyone has been talking about. There has been so such a buzz around it and people who haven’t got one, want one.”

The Mayor of London’s office wants to rebrand London and is inviting agencies to tender to create the new image.

Mayor Boris Johnson and his team have allocated a budget of £600,000 to create a new logo and identity for the city ahead of the 2012 Olympics, and want to have this in place by next spring.

The Mayor’s office is inviting agencies to tender for four contracts related to the new identity: designing the logo; brand activation, which could include advertising and experiential activity; tracking; and evaluation and events.

Dan Ritterband, the director of marketing at the Mayor of London’s office, described the activity as “strategic” and said that it was separate to the current £30 million activation business for bodies such as VisitLondon and ThinkLondon, though the new logo is likely to appear in this activity.

The Mayor’s office is also looking to sell London sponsorship packages to advertisers in key areas such as “culture”, “transport” and “sports”.

The creation of a new identity is seen as a way to build London’s image both in the UK and overseas ahead of the 2012 Olympics.

Ritterband said: “We always realised that there would be a right time for a rebrand before the Olympics to get the messaging right, now we’re three years out from the games there is an opportunity to look at the London brand.”

Starting tomorrow is the 17th year of the popular ‘internetworld’ three day event. The series of seminars and exhibitions will be held at Earls Court 2, where over three hundred exhibitors and seven theatres will be buzzing.

Internet world brings together Europe’s largest collection of marketing, IT, digital, ecommerce professionals, which will give you a great chance of meeting and connecting with like minded individuals within your industry.
  

I myself will be pottering around, hopefully learning a thing or two, so I hope to see you there tomorow bright and early!

The Brit awards has had a solid track record in providing eyebrow raising television. Whether it be Geri Halliwell’s revealing dress back in 1996 or Kazakhstan’s most famous export calling the Pussy Cat Dolls prostitutes, the Brits has had its fair share of iconic moments.

My personal favourite was when a young Jarvis Cocker paraded his pale cheeks, when he invaded the stage when Michael Jackson was performing Earth Song. Good Times. 

With all this glitz and glamour on the box, it may inspire you to have some promotional awards and trophies made up for your own business. There is a great selection available to the consumer whether it be lead crystal or glass that your looking for. Giving a promotional award or trophy is the perfect way to add some sparkle to your office, and is a great way to represent the achievements of your business or staff this year.

For those of you who missed the BAFTA’s last night, the new king of The British Academy of Film & Television Arts is Slum Dog Millionaire. The rags-to-riches story, hogged the stage last night at the Royal Opera House, winning seven out of eleven nominated awards.

Interestingly last year, BAFTA was the only precursor to correctly predict all of the acting winners at the Oscars, so it looks like this could be a vintage year for British cinema.

If all the glitz from Covent Garden last night, has got you in the mood for some glamour for your own business, then one could invest in some quality promotional awards and trophies.

Gift Selection has a great selection of promotional awards, trophies and presentation bowls. These eye catching corporate gifts are available in both glass and lead crystal, and can be either engraved or printed. I don’t think BAFTA style masks are available, but a great range of personalised awards are such as globe, iceberg and triangular style awards are.

 A few weeks ago I brought you news of an unprecedented marketing campaign by the Atheist Society, who were (and are) promoting their controversial but optimistic message of Atheist propaganda. Well it seems the saga continues, as the three heavy weight Christian groups are set to retaliate with a promotional campaign of their own.

It is the Christian Party, the Trinitarian Bible Society and the Russian Orthodox Church who have organised the campaign which is set to be spread onto fifty of London’s bendy buses. The first message that Londoners will be exposed to is: “There definitely is a God. So join The Christian Party and enjoy your life”, I personally would have appreciated more of a hard sell, something like: “Repent…Or Burn in Hell for Eternity”.As much as I admire the enthusiasm of these Christian groups, I can’t help feeling that there absolutist claims of a God ‘definitely’ existing to be a bit on the dodgy side.

“THERES PROBABLY NO GOD. NOW STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE”

Do you find this offensive? Or does it fill you with optimism? The more eagle eyed of you will have seen them on the side of buses or on the tube, in the latest marketing campaign by the British Humanist Association. The ad which is meant to make people feel good about themselves, is bound to cause offence to some people. The view held by prominent Atheists such as Richard Dawkins who personally donated to the scheme, is that we have Bishops seated in the House of Lords so atheists should at least be aloud to market there beliefs.

In the news today was reports of a bus driver in Southampton who refused to drive the bus and just went home! Ron Heather, 62, an evangelical Christian from Southampton, refused to drive a bus bearing an advert from a national campaign aimed at persuading more people to “come out” as atheists. Although he later bravely said, “I’m not going to let passengers down because of my feelings.”

How do you feel about the scheme? Is it right for Atheists to market themselves, and advertise their godless morality? Do you respect their liberty, but disagree with their message?

The ASA are looking into the matter, as they have received nearly 150 complaints (although that doesn’t strike me as being that many). Interestingly Stephen Green the mouthpiece for ‘Christian Voice’, argues that the advert breaks the advertising code on the grounds of a lack of truthfulness.

The case continues…