And so it begins...

Here it is, my first ever post on my first ever blog. I plan to keep this regularly updated with my thoughts and feelings on some of my favourite topics: comedy, advertising, technology, music and games, for instance, and most likely the various ways in which people offend, annoy, and amuse me in my daily life.

Recently I seem to have been unwittingly (actually it was entirely wittingly) engaging in some serious brand experience: The Innocent Smoothies Village Fete and The O2.

The former was a fantastic day out for old and young, and a fine example of brand immersion. Innocent have built up a very strong image of a fun, zany, caring and environmentally sensitive brand, and the Fete exuded this brand identity from every inch of grass of the occupied Regent's Park. From astro-turf and cow-print vans (complete with flowers and/or udders and tails) to the Village Green featuring welly-wanging, a dog show and a rather scary dance display (think Little Vicky from that episode of The Simpsons and you'll have an idea what the instructor was like) they had everything that made you think, "aren't innocent lovely". Couple this with some free smoothies and they had more or less everybody eating (or drinking) out of their hands.

The festival also featured a host of other brands piggybacking Innocent's squeaky clean image and setting up stalls of their own, including Virgin Trains offering a train ride around the park for kids, The Guardian propounding its environmentally friendly image by creating a forest of used newspapers, and Lastminute.com handing out free suncream. The real highlight of the festival for me, though, was Dyson's washroom featuring The Airblade, their revolutionary new hand dryer. One simply dips one's hand into the air blade, and then slowly draws them out as the water gets blasted off to the sides, and your hand skin ripples in the way of an old man on a motorbike.

The O2, which will almost certainly never shake off the Millennium Dome's name, is a well branded bubble in the middle of London, with O2 imagery sprinkled liberally about the place. I sincerely hope that O2 do well with this, as I feel they have done everyone a great service by providing another great venue in London, complete with plenty of great places to eat (unlike Wembley, which charges around £10 for fast food Fish 'n' Chips).

One word of advice, though: don't go for a meal in the O2 on the same night that an artist formerly, and currently, known as Prince is playing a concert if you don't have tickets to see the show, otherwise you're just a mug in a half hour queue for bad service and a much dimished menu.