And so we built it!
Innis & Gunn turned the cloud harvested moisture into a beer called 'Sky P.A.'
And we built that too!
Kozel created a series of videos showing off the concept which built on their existing campaign.
And we did that too!
Papa Johns delivery drivers sported Pumpkin Helmets this Halloween as part of an Instagram competition.
Years of
facilitating
madness
Our clients are innovative and international
Communications
Influencers
Videography
Inventions
Activations
Spin Out
Activations
Inventions
Inventions
Fabrications
Design
Inventions
Design
The Radical Collaboration:
Art Director
Influencers
Client:
CeX
Hey Strange Thoughts, we're looking for an agency as crazy as we are..."
4 years ago we were taken on as a creative agency for high street tech retailer CeX. After a bit of back and forth on how to actually pronounce their name (hint: it rhymes with flex and the C sounds like an S) we got down to the real business, creating larger than life branded content which makes viewers question what the hell they’ve just watched. We’ve been busy, getting them tens of millions of views on YouTube, ideating and producing TV and radio ads and creating frankly mind boggling animations. Check out some of the highlights below:
HOW TO BREAK A DRONE
THE BEST YOUTUBE HAUL EVER
GUNSHIP DRONE RACING
TV ADVERT
PRE-ROLL ANIMATIONS
The Radical Collaboration:
Power Kite Specialist
Product Designer
Master Brewer
Client:
Innis & Gunn /
Manifest LDN
IN ACTION ABOVE EDINBURGH
Hey Team Strange Thoughts,
We’ve had a weird idea. A client of ours is wondering what a beer made from the clouds would taste like. Reckon you could find out for us?"
Manifest LDN approached us with this idea when their client, Innis & Gunn, were in the process of crowdfunding £1,000,000 for their expansion. The award-winning craft brewer, founded and based in Edinburgh, were on the lookout for an eye-catching innovation to get people talking about their crowdfunding campaign.
For this campaign to work, it became apparent that we would have to work with commodities that Scotland had in abundance - big hills and water-rich clouds. But how to suck all that moisture? It was time for a radical collaboration.
The campaign gained press recognition across international publications including BBC News, NBC and The Independent. Innis & Gunn smashed their crowdfunding target, raising a total of £2.37 million from 1914 investors.
Through our network of brilliant minds, we found that a power kite would be the easiest way to access the clouds. Good job we had a specialist on our doorstep in Bristol. Next, a slick bit of product design to navigate collecting that sweet cloud water and voila, the world’s first handheld Cloud Harvester was born. It was hill-climbing time. We ventured up Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh, surrounded by Highland Cows who were oblivious to the brewing history they were about to witness. A couple of hours and 10 litres of collected cloud water later, we had our prize. Innis and Gunn had their water and began the brewing process for the world’s first cloud beer - Sky.P.A.
The Radical Collaboration:
Mad Neuroscientist
Inventive Roboticist
Cicerone-Certified Beer Maestro
Client:
Marriott International (at first)
No one ever uses neuroscience for anything fun... like pouring beer”
These were the fateful words muttered by our Founder and Chairman Seth Jackson as he waited in a queue for the bar on a rainy night in Bristol, circa 2016. He was at his local with two of his associates - a slightly mad neuroscientist and the West of England’s leading roboticist.
Beers in hand and back at the table, he posed the question - “why can’t we build something which allows you to pour a beer without the use of your hands?”
HOMER 1.0
Beers in hand and back at the table, he posed the question - “why can’t we build something which allows you to pour a beer without the use of your hands?”. A few drinks later and some quick radical collaboration-esque ideation and they settled on a solution - the world's first mind-controlled, beer-pouring robot. Most pub chat stays in the pub, but this was an exception. 6 months later, with the addition of a Cicerone Certified Beer Maestro to the team, the first prototype was built and aptly named Homer (after the Simpsons character, not the author of the Iliad (though I’m sure he would’ve loved it had he got the chance to try it)).
Homer used EEG technology, in the form of a headset, to track electro pulses passing through a participant's forehead to ascertain how focused they are. The more focused they are, the better their pint is poured. A simple premise; a frothy mind = a frothy (and slightly embarrassing) pint.
After 3 weeks spending all his time honing his mind-controlled pint-pouring skills, Seth realised that it might be a good idea to give someone else a go. Homer was a huge success at beer conferences and networking events across the UK (it’s not that flattering really, we were giving out free beer). Regardless, Marriott came knocking and wanted us to develop the robot into a slicker model for a series of TedX events across Europe.
The Radical Collaboration:
Model Maker
Table Games Fabricator
Client:
Camden Town Brewery
Arsenal W.F.C
W Communications
Hey Team Strange Thoughts,
We’ve had a bizarre thought. You know Foosball Tables? We don’t think any exist consisting of female players... fancy making one?”
This was an email that we received in early 2020. No female foosball tables? A shocking thought, but after a little research we found that this was in fact true.
International Women’s Day was fast approaching and Camden Town Brewery wanted to celebrate their official beer partnership with Arsenal W.F.C in style. They wanted to build a female foosball table to encourage gender equality in pubs, with more than half (53 per cent) of Brits thinking women’s football is underrepresented in UK pubs and bars.
There was more. Arsenal wanted one of the teams of the table to look like Arsenal W.F.C, and Camden Town Brewery wanted the other to look like their own female football team. No mean feat, with a tight turnaround of 3 weeks.
We got down to work, finding a table games fabricator and expert model maker who could create lifelike models of the Arsenal W.F.C and Camden Town teams. With a bit of elbow grease and two weeks of designing, modelling and intricately painting the characters, the table was released to the world.
The custom made foosball table made its home in The Victoria Tavern in Islington for the month of March, and Arsenal W.F.C invited down two top Women from Emirates Stadium to be the first to play it - Office Manager, Jo Harney who began working at the club in 1986 , and opponent, Legal Counsel Kelly McAuslan is only two weeks into her new job.
The table now resides in the Emirates Stadium, available for fans to enjoy for years to come. Cheers to that, we say.
The Radical Collaboration:
Animal Psychologist
Dynamite Developer
CAD Superstar
Client:
Fetch Petstore
Hey team ST,
We’ve had a crazy idea. Everyone around us has a new phone or games console, but our pets are stuck with the same life our parents' pets had. Can we do something about it?”
Everyone gets to enjoy the latest gizmos and gadgets. Everyone except our pets - and Ocado didn’t think that was very fair at all. Fetch, their online pet store, wanted that to change. They asked us to help them launch the Petnology Centre, dedicated to launching pet tech into the 21st century. They came to the right place.
PetPounds - smartband technology to monitor the interaction between children and their pets, rewarding children for responsible behaviour such as walking or playing with their pets.
WhatsYapp - a motion-sensing device that let dog owners know what their pet is thinking.
CatQuest - an interactive 3D projection ‘gamestation’ for cats that turns a home into a playground for cats.
Consumers were then asked to vote on their favourite, with the goal of taking it to a prototype.
The campaign was a huge success, with the story being covered in over 40 publications worldwide including The Telegraph, Glamour, Campaign and Marketing Magazine. The promotional video garnered over 150,000 views and Fetch continue to explore the possibility of launching winning innovation WhatsYapp, for real.
Alongside our radical collaboration network, we came up with a dozen tech-based concepts, aimed at furthering the relationship between pets and their owners. Animal psychologists worked alongside developers to prototype groundbreaking innovations in the petsphere. From a long list of concepts we whittled it down to a shortlist of three...
The Radical Collaboration:
Motorcycling Aficionado
Model Making Maestros
Client:
Papa Johns
W Communications
Hey Team ST,
We want to transform our drivers' helmets into pumpkin for a fun Halloween competition. Can you help?
We then enlisted the help of our favourite pumpkin fabricators, who helped us model beautifully life-like, lightweight pumpkins to be wrapped around existing delivery helmets for the perfect Halloween trick or treat. For the client, a total treat and they launched the helmets to an emoji-filled ovation. For us, a little trick. The helmets glowed under UV light...it’s the little things.
We love a ridiculous project, and pumpkin styled delivery helmets are no exception. Papa John’s UK wanted to give their fans something to smile about at Halloween, with lifelike pumpkins placed upon the heads of the delivery drivers around their town. With safety on our minds, we speed dialled our local motorcycle enthusiast to ensure that this was in fact possible while adhering to road regulations. No obstacles there.
The Radical Collaboration:
Creative Technologist
IoT Champion
User Experience Expert
Client:
Kozel
Manifest PR
The campaign gained national attention, with coverage in PR Week, CNet, Metro and the Sun (among others). Chris McLardie, Kozel’s brand director, said: "Life’s little complications can sometimes get in the way of a good time. Whether it is a cancelled train, a last-minute 5.30pm meeting, or that report your boss requests as you walk out the door, obstacles can derail our best-laid plans. The Kozel Tap Out button is your ultimate shortcut to good times, getting you and your friend to the pub in comfort and style. Push the button and you could be enjoying a delicious Kozel in minutes. No stress, no fuss, just fun."
Hey Team ST,
We’ve had a strange thought which we thought you might be up for. With all this technology, we think it’s time someone came up with a way to transport you straight from the office to the pub on a Friday evening. Kozel wants it too, can you build it?”
A teleporter to utopia you say? Well, last we checked teleporters weren’t a thing. But we’ll be damned if we turn down a challenge, so it was time to get creative. A radical collaboration workshop was in order. Professionals from a whole host of disciplines attended to help us come up with a novel, engaging and (most importantly) possible, ideas for the campaign: a drone that flew you to the pub at high speeds, anyone? Or maybe a tunnel straight from the office floor to the edge of the bar? Not quite there, but we forged forward. Our IoT Champion stepped up. How about a button that sits on your desk that when pressed will order you, and a buddy of yours in a separate location, Ubers to your nearest pub that serves Kozel.
That was it, that was the idea. We called it “Tap Out”. We got cracking; designing, prototyping and building an office-friendly button that linked with both the Uber API and Google Maps to provide a seamless experience from final email to first sip. The final product was to be sent out to three 'Beer Button Bashers' so they could be tested, with the view of rolling out the Internet of Things button the following year - because who doesn’t want the closest thing to a teleporter sitting on their desk?
The Radical Collaboration:
Animal Psychologist
Dynamite Developer
CAD Superstar
Client:
Fetch Petstore
Hey team ST,
We’ve had a crazy idea. Everyone around us has a new phone or games console, but our pets are stuck with the same life our parents' pets had. Can we do something about it?”
Everyone gets to enjoy the latest gizmos and gadgets. Everyone except our pets - and Ocado didn’t think that was very fair at all. Fetch, their online pet store, wanted that to change. They asked us to help them launch the Petnology Centre, dedicated to launching pet tech into the 21st century. They came to the right place.
PetPounds - smartband technology to monitor the interaction between children and their pets, rewarding children for responsible behaviour such as walking or playing with their pets.
WhatsYapp - a motion-sensing device that let dog owners know what their pet is thinking.
CatQuest - an interactive 3D projection ‘gamestation’ for cats that turns a home into a playground for cats.
Consumers were then asked to vote on their favourite, with the goal of taking it to a prototype.
The campaign was a huge success, with the story being covered in over 40 publications worldwide including The Telegraph, Glamour, Campaign and Marketing Magazine. The promotional video garnered over 150,000 views and Fetch continue to explore the possibility of launching winning innovation WhatsYapp, for real.
Alongside our radical collaboration network, we came up with a dozen tech-based concepts, aimed at furthering the relationship between pets and their owners. Animal psychologists worked alongside developers to prototype groundbreaking innovations in the petsphere. From a long list of concepts we whittled it down to a shortlist of three...
Location
The Office
Location
The Labs
Location
The Workshop
Location
The Retreat
Location
The Retreat
info
lakecomo [at] strangethoughts.co.uk
