This is Photolink

Last month we sent a team to London to film TV presenter and ‘Face of Regis Salons’ Emma Willis joining a handful of prizewinning bloggers for an exclusive makeover under the expert supervision of Regis UK creative director Guy Cammarano.

All were invited to the brand's flagship salon in Debenhams on Oxford Street for a morning of pampering. As Regis UK’s creative partner, we were there to film every last snip, clip, colour and polish.

Bringing a beautiful end to the ‘Locks Rock & Load’ competition on the Regis UK Facebook page and blogger outreach campaign we devised and orchestrated for the salon brand at the end of last year, the day was a reward for fashion, beauty and 'mummy' bloggers who helped promote the campaign.

The first of its kind to be implemented by a hair salon, ‘Locks Rock & Load’ was a unique way for Regis Salons to engage with their clients online, asking them to upload their favourite hairstyle onto the Regis Facebook page.

The campaign was supported by email, display and Facebook ads, and we also provided imagery and creative for in-store promotions to neatly dovetail with the online activity. It all helped campaign gain press coverage in a number of trade, regional and national press publications, including NMA, The Drum and the Manchester Evening News.

Find out more about what we did for the ‘Locks Rock & Load’ integrated campaign on the Photolink Work page. To find out what Regis UK creative director Guy Cammarano and the team did for the ladies, take a look at Emma Willis' blog about the day here.

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Creative, Digital, News, Photographic

This block rocking piece of work has just been completed by the Photolink India team for GQ India. The men’s magazine needed a clever solution to solve the logistical difficulties it faced organising shoots with luxury items often costing thousands of pounds each. Luckily, the CGI skills of the team made their Watch Report a relatively easy challenge.

There’s more detail about how they met the brief and a nice testimonial quote from GQ India art director Dipesh Pandya on our Work page. With regards to how Photolink India came to be, well that’s another story all together...

Our Mumbai journey began in January 2007, when we were asked by one of our UK retail clients to look into creating a commercial photographic studio, big enough to deliver India’s first large-scale home shopping catalogue. By July we had a crack team together who shot over 4,000 products and creatively directed over 500 pages of the catalogue.

We’ve been there ever since and thanks to Photolink India we now operate a fluid creative catalogue design and artwork production service for our clients. The team are also based in a fully-networked photographic studio which gives them the ability shoot fashion and still life on site and makes them the perfect ally to all operations here in Manchester. Take a look at the Photolink India site here.

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Artwork, Creative, Design, Digital, News

We are very pleased to announce that client Simon Jersey has won Best Equipment Supplier (website category) at the Caterer & Hotelkeeper Web Awards for SimonJersey.com.

Held annually, the Caterer and Hotelkeeper Web Awards are the only web awards for the hospitality community. They recognise and reward the people and organisations responsible for developing some of the most effective hospitality websites on the internet.

We helped design and build the award-winning website, and produce all of the interactive imagery and video content that marked them out from the competition, so we are doubly pleased.

According to the awards official statement, SimonJersey.com was “commended for its innovation, in particular its mobile website and video facility and its interactivity". Take a look at the award winning website here.

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Creative, Digital, News, Photographic

We’ve just uploaded our last remaining video highlights from 2011 to Vimeo. It offers a snappy retrospective of some of the work we completed and the clients we worked with last year, as well as an exciting taster of things to come in 2012! Featuring a mixture of client work (behind the scenes, brand ambassador, product videos, etc.) and some recently shot films from around Photolink, the content is a nice culmination of our motion picture work to date. The videos also feed into our new website (yep, you're on it) giving visitors who haven’t taken one of our famous walkabouts a better understanding of our personality, our studios and the work we do. The Vimeo channel itself will serve as a regularly updated, dynamic showcase of our on-going video work, so check in regularly to see how things progress. In the meantime, grab a brew and check out the page in ‘Couch Mode’ before the New Year gets too hectic. Continue reading →

Digital, News

We’ve been letting our hair down after the completion of some characteristically integrated creativity for client Regis Salons. To coincide with the launch of Emma Willis as the new face of Regis, our social media team, headed by social media manager Joanna Halton, came up with the ‘Locks Rock & Load’ Facebook competition.

With the enlisted help of some of the UK’s top mummy, fashion and beauty bloggers, we coordinated the upload of a specially created welcome video (shot by us) featuring the lovely Emma, which prompts viewers to enter the ‘Locks Rock & Load’ competition via a specially made Facebook app.

Providing a unique way for Regis Salons to engage with their clients online, the competition asks participants to upload their favourite hairstyle onto Regis' Facebook page. The top 11 will then be chosen by a panel of judges, including Emma Willis herself and Regis Salons’ UK Creative Director, Guy Cammarano, and the overall winner will be decided next year.

Not only are we proud of our own entries to the competition (try and spot them here), we’re also very chuffed with the ‘Locks Rock & Load’ brand ident we designed which has been carried across onto in store marketing collateral, neatly dovetailing with the current Emma Willis re:veal campaign.

The 'Locks Rock & Load' campaign, the first of its kind to be implemented by a hair salon brand, is currently being supported by email, display and Facebook ads, as well as a vibrant in-salon promotion and really represents what we do best: truly integrated creativity.

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Creative, Design, Digital, News

Say hello to Nathalie Gibbins!

Nathalie joins Photolink as editor of LittleBlackDress.co.uk. She’ll be working alongside David Walter to develop and grow the just-launched website into a unique online magazine and shop for luxurious women’s fashion.

Nathalie joins us from Dennis Publishing where she launched and edited the electronic fashion magazine V Style for Very.co.uk and Littlewoods. Previous to this, she edited Superdrug’s DARE magazine. She was also a freelance journalist for a number of years, specialising in health, beauty and travel, and has written for various women’s magazines and the national press including Zest, Grazia and the Daily Express.

Recently moved up from London, Nathalie enjoys cycling, photography, nice dinners out, drinking Guinness, and weekends away to the beach in the campervan. We’re all very pleased to have her on board but nobody’s got the heart to tell her about Ian Brown’s famous “Manchester's got everything except a beach” quote yet.

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Digital, News, Other

We are pleased to announce that our very own creation LittleBlackDress.co.uk has been officially launched!

The site, dreamt up by Photolink CEO and former fashion photographer David Walter, is a vibrant directory of classic and contemporary LBD’s from the UK’s leading retailers and the world’s top designers, and will feature a dynamic mix of fashion editorial looking at celebrity styles and uncovering industry trends and insights.

The site is already bulging with articles centred on the LBD as well as stunning images from photographer Rachell Smith – who used to work with Rankin – which feature the beautiful Miami-based model Mala Bryan. She’s the same elegant beauty you’ll see dancing on the short intro movie shot by videographer Mark Gleinster, by the way.

The site has already achieved coverage in regional press like How-Do, The Drum and Manchester Evening News but we’d be very interested to hear what you think about the new site. Enjoy!

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Digital, News

Photolink client John Lewis recently commissioned our photographic team to shoot images of purses, jewellery, shoes and watches. The images were then turned into internet banners which are currently live on the site.

The products were all shot by Helen Roberts and styled by Dominic Apenteng, the shoes were shot by Anna Hopkins and styled by Dominic Apenteng, and the purses were shot by Rita Mori and styled by Perry Airey. The entire concept was art directed by Jen Adie.

Take a look at the internet banners in action here: www.johnlewis.com

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Digital, News, Photographic

Chocolate, Photolink’s design and digital arm based in India, has been recruited by Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket team Rajasthan Royals to be its creative partner. This exciting new partnership will see Chocolate build on the existing Rajasthan Royals brand and sharpen up its digital presence.

Chocolate have already been managing the Rajasthan Royals' entire online presence, and busy redeveloping the front end of its website, as well as developing a unique photographic style for the Twenty20 team. The Chocolate team will begin further design and digital work for the Rajasthan Royals brand at the end of this summer.

To give non-cricket fans among you (and there are probably a few) a little bit of background on the client, the Rajasthan Royals are an inaugural member of the IPL – a hugely popular event in the world's sporting calendar, bringing together cricket's global super-elite – and are co-owned by Bollywood megastar, Shilpa Shetty. Until recently the team were captained and coached by Aussie cricketing legend, Shane Warne.

Rajasthan Royals is without doubt a fantastic brand to be associated with and we are thrilled that Chocolate will be working on such an exciting project.

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Design, Digital, News