As reported in The Guardian:

Our campaign for Honda to celebrate staff's return to work as its
Swindon factory re-opened has won an award for best national newspaper
campaign of last month.

The campaign featured poems in praise of workers at the plant, which closed for four months earlier this year because of the slump in car sales, against a background of images evoking factory life such as bacon, a cup of tea and an iron.

Honda's ad featuring the bacon rasher (below) has been named best national press ad for June in the Awards for National Newspaper Advertising.

All
five ads in the campaign have
been nominated for the national ad of the year of awards to be held in
January.

Judge Darren Bailes of VCCP said:

"The reopening could have been swept under the carpet all too easily
– the shutdown being seen as a real blow to the pride of the brand. But
thankfully client and agency saw sense. This recession is something
we're all in together, the workers and the manufacturers are all in the
same boat.

Bacon, irons and mugs of tea make it seem far more real than say,
the rebooting of a robot arm. Good news for the people of Swindon. Good
news for Honda. Good news for the guy who delivers the bacon."

For more info see the ANNAs site.

Also interesting to see that news coverage of the economic situation in the UK continues to refer to the "Honda effect".  Not that we coined this phrase, of course. We picked up on it following a reference by Bank of England Governor Mervyn King, in a speech at the Lord mayor's banquet. Sounds like a swanky affair where they probably weren't tucking into mugs of tea and bacon sarnies.

Early this morning, we
(Tony D, David, Eze, Sermad and Karen) participated in a press launch for the
onedotzero annual festival at the BFI on the Southbank.  onedotzero is a
contemporary, digital arts organisation with a remit to promote innovation across
all forms of moving image. Their international festival has been the largest
dedicated digital film festival in the world for the last ten years and
kicks off its global tour on 9th September in London.

Here is Tony just before things got under way:

We have been appointed to create the brand identity for this year's festival –
which we presented (despite still being something of a work in progress!) to
the gathered press. 

This year's festival theme of 'convergence and
collaboration' inspired us to take advantage of onedotzero's vast fan base and
constant, online conversations to create this new identity. We have harnessed
dialogue from twitter, facebook, etc, and have channelled the content via
specially produced software devised by computational design wizard Karsten
Schmidt through colourful 'ribbons' that move organically as if alive.

These ribbons gravitate towards invisible paths that then spell out
onedotzero's font and logo.  It's tricky to explain – have a look at the
teaser below!

It's ever-changing and
totally live – and by the time the festival launches, we will have created a
fully interactive installation that anyone can play with.

For more info, see this piece in design week.