On the road 'til 5am with the Texperts team
11:30pm: My alarm sounded and I got out of bed. I’d decided to take a few hours sleep in the early evening prior to heading out on the road with the Texperts team. I hadn’t been told much about what to expect so as I sat in the back of the cab toward Leicester Square, I reflected on exactly what I’d got myself into.
“Keep the night of the 13th free, OK?” asked Anthony D’Alton of Parys Communications, Texperts public relations team.
“Right,” I said, marking off 6.30pm – 10pm in my diary.
A few days later, Anthony was on the phone again, “Are you still up for this, Ewan? 11.45pm start, OK?”
11:45pm? Geez.
A few more days later and Anthony called to explain the launch concept — take a few London landmarks and project some Texpert images on to them.
Nothing too raunchy, Anthony had promised (I had visions of Gail Porter being projected on to the houses of Parliament again, this time holding a mobile phone or something).
11:45pm – I arrived at the car park by Leicester Square and within a few moments found Anthony, looking slightly apprehensive.
Whilst we waited for the others to arrive, I asked him if he was really planning on projecting something on to the MI6 building. He smiled and gave a deep nod, as the projectionist chap arrived in an ‘unmarked white van’.
Just the sort of thing you want to be parking outside the MI6 Headquarters.
“The projector’s in the back,” he explained, “We just need to turn up, open the back doors, switch on the projector and we’re done,”
Right, I thought, surely if you can shoot light out of the back of a white van, you can shoot missiles. The ever vigilant authorities won’t be that impressed, will they?
I began to have visions of explaining to some polite, yet perfectly hostile MI6 agents just why I was carrying three top of the range handsets, especially when their sister agency is forever putting out statements encouraging people to watch out for suspicious people who have lots of mobile phones (on account of pay-as-you-go handsets being cheap and useful methods of remotely setting off bombs).
My mind fast forwarded to a dark room, one grey light shining in my face, with some Etonian demanding that I ‘drop the I’m-a-blogger–bollocks’ before pounding the desk in front of me screaming ,’We know who you’re working with MacLeod.’
“All I was doing was blogging the launch, officer,” I responded, handing over my SMS Text News business card.
“Got press credentials, eh?”
“No, I’m a blogger. I don’t need credentials. I just do it.”
Oh dear. I didn’t feel that good as the photographer had just arrived to explain to all and sundry that he was already on the MI5 records but that his press pass would get him out of most sticky situations. Right. Stand well back, then, MacLeod.
23:55 – Sarah McVittie, Chief Executive and co-founder of Texperts rocked up looking serene, but at the same time, bursting with excitement. Her colleague, Giles Adams, Marketing Director, arrived shortly afterwards with our transport — a funky Golf courtesy of Streetcar. Here’s Sarah listening as Anthony outlines the night’s strategy:
00:00 – Midnight arrived and after a bit of pre-game discussions on the landmarks to target, Wembley Stadium, Battersea Power Station and, of course, MI6 were settled upon: –
00:05 – Before we departed, Sarah showed off her special Texperts T-Shirt that she was planning on wearing in some of the photos:
It was at this point that I realised that we weren’t just going to be shooting light on to the side of London landmarks, but that Sarah would be — balls of steel, I tell you — standing in front of the projection to have her photo taken.
Oookay. Into the car.
As we drove over to Wembley, I began quizzing Sarah on the re-brand from 82ASK. Although, I’ve covered that in a previous post, I negated to mention that they’d done some extensive testing of the 82ASK brand vs the Texperts brand — with 40% of people not quite getting how the alphanumeric monicker translates into an actual shortcode. It’s a bit of an arse if you spend some money to reach, say, 100 people — only to find that 40 of them don’t know how to transact business with you. Much better to swap to a different, clearer shortcode — 66000.
00:25 – Wembley Stadium arrived.
The projectionists wasted no time, pulling up the VAN, opening the side door and flicking on the machine:
One side of Wembley Stadium was instantly covered in the ‘The Search Is Over’ slide:
Impressive! Sarah and the photographer got to work. She stood in front of him and he began to take some shots of her and the projection in the background over her shoulder.
Every few minutes, a car would drive by in the distance. The projectionists, hot wired for any Police activity, were continually looking over their shoulders. At one point, they spotted some security guards in the Wembley Stadium staring at the projection, no doubt wondering what to do.
“They’ll be on to the Police now,” said the elder of the projectionists in a knowing series of grunts.
Uh oh. I looked round at the empty road, wondering just exactly what I was going to say to the Police Officers demanding to know what I was doing. It it accurate for me to point to the Texperts team and say, “reporting on what they’re doing”? Heh.
02:15 – With Wembley photos complete, we hopped over to Battersea Power Station. The projection van had already arrived and setup as we joined them:
Just a brick building, the power station was a wicked subject for projection:
It was exciting to see the super-dooper-bright bulb light up the sky:
Mucking about sorting out the bulb in the projector:
The chaps swapped over the slide to the ‘Licensed to Find’ one:
Incidentally, this was going to be the one that was earmarked to be projected on to the MI6 building.
When they were changing slides, I snapped the full power of the light:
Cue time for a bit of a break. I took a pic of us at the Petrol Station nearby the MI6 HQ:
(Left is Anthony of Parys, the balls-of-steel photographer, then Sarah’s red coat and then me. I didn’t shave you see, I thought it was more in keeping with the fashion for that evening).
03:30 – We arrived at Vauxhall Bridge:
Nerves were turned up to 11 as we sat in the car waiting for the projectionist guys to do their drive-by. I nearly jumped into panic mode when a Police car drove straight by the van as they began setting up. It continued driving on. Geez.
Vaxuhall Bridge was absolutely empty… making a van (about to arrive in this image) look rather conspicuous.
I turned my back and then, shit, there it was. One top right hand corner of the MI6 building, bathed in the Texperts slide:
Wow. The photographer snapped away quickly and we all marveled — for minutes — before the projectionists quickly turned off the projector and sped off in case any severely unimpressed Spies fired top secret yet highly effective lasers out the MI6 HQ windows at them.
There wasn’t time to fly across to Liverpool Street Station (amongst other locations) to check out the special Texperts logos etched into the pavements. Here’s one:
There’s a chap that Texperts found who will do this sort of thing — he actually CLEANS — the pavement using some wicked cleaning fluid, and thus etches the Texperts logo out of the pavement dirt. Neat!
Here’s another one at Cambridge Circus:
As 5am rolled on, I began to come to a halt. We said goodbye to the visibly relieved projectionist team and then watched as poor Anthony trod off to the Parys Communications office to begin getting the message out to the mass-media. The Texperts guys dropped me back at my place and, after a quick email-check, I was in bed sleeping. And really pleased I wasn’t spending the night in an MI6 detention centre.
If you’d like to see parts of London at 5am in the morning, then check out this video I made. I played around with the new Apple iMovie:
