After some long hours in the oven, The Feed from Orange is now live. It’s very exciting to see Orange bravely hopping on the blogtrain. My (great) hopes for The Feed is for it to become both a vehicle for Orange to tell the world about their passions and about all the interesting things that are going inside and around the business AND as a platform for them to reach out and build a strong, valuable and permanent relationships with their customers and with everyone who is interested in what’s going on with Orange – the business and the brand.

It is all really early days and we’re all excited about the birth of this baby. In blog years it’s still a newborn and we’re going slowly and softy but the stories started to flow and it’s worth checking out.

The latest post, for example, tells the story of Bryn Harding, the first champion of Orange Rockcorps collective and a real community hero. A voluntary peer educator with homeless charity Shelter, Bryn teaches people his own age about homelessness and housing issues.

I’m really looking forward to see how it will evolve.

Go and say hi

We teamed up with Jont, a charismatic, brutally optimistic unsigned singer songwriter to take Unlit, his and Dave’s heartwarming, life-affirming initiative of intimate house gigs on the road in the UK this summer. Orange will provide them with everything they need (from winnebago to GPS phone and everything in between) to go on the road for 2 weeks of unpredictable journey of love and goodness. We’re really hoping to bring to life the Unlit philosophy that it’s the people we meet and the experiences we share that make us who we are.

This is going to be very special. And you can get involved on so many different levels – anything from following the tour on different platforms, to offer your house for a gig or, if you are a musician and want to participate in unlit, you can leave your details on the microsite

While on the same subject, Mike sent around this gem. Turn out the whole campaign is not really original – I am Orange been running for quite q while now. Oh boy.

A bit of a background:

Live music scene is in the middle of a boom period with a higher than ever number of sold-out gigs taking place across the UK and gigs tickets have become the most sought-after commodity in the music market. Getting tickets to gigs today sometimes involves lots of hassle, effort and with all the dodgy touting business online and outside venues there is a growing issues of trust. All this contributes to an occasionally unpleasant and disapointing experience for live music lovers.

Orange has teamed up with seetickets to create Gigs and Tours from Orange – a free service that allows Orange customers to get alerts for gigs of their favourite artists and reserve tickets to these gigs in advance up to 48 hours before they go on sale to the public. In short, Gigs and Tours makes it easy for people to enjoy live music.

It’s been around for a while but never got the attention it deserves. We thought it’s too good a service to be hidden and we wanted to take it to the heart of communities where people connect, share and discover music and there’s no better platform than Last.FM.

From the very beginning we weren’t looking to simply advertise or promote the service but to create a complementary experience for Last.FM users in the UK. Last.FM helps you discover new music, generates social recommendations, gives you artists and events information and a platform to discuss your passions – Gigs and Tours from Orange takes you to the gigs of the artists you like.

So to generate awareness and encourage people to subscribe we just launched a long term activity on Last.FM with 2 key elements:

1. Functionality integration: This is still in beta but we aim to allow people to seamlessly add artists to their gigs and tours alert list straight from Last.FM – on every artist page on Last there will be a branded button that will enable you to add it to your alert list.

2. giggers united: we’ve created a sponsored group that is all about celebrating live music and gigs goers. It’s a space that was created for and will be maintained by the community. The mechanism is very simple – Orange will give you x 2 tickets to a gig ( you can choose from a long list – we hope to have at least 15 gigs every month) in return for a review and a couple of pics. [We've hired Gareth, a serious music buff to be the community manager of giggers united to help with the day-to-day stuff.]

In the future we have some more loveliness like monthly competitions of the best gig picture, ‘gigger of the month’ prizes for the person who went to the most gigs and more.

Please go and visit the page and if you like it, please join the group. Oh, and because we just launched there are some tickets up for grabs for some amazing gigs next week…

I’d really appreciate any feedback on this one.

Live music lovers, unite!

*(Even if you’re not an Orange customer you can still get a free sim so you can subscribe and enjoy this)

The Race is On!

[I have a feeling that no one's gonna work here this week...we're all gonna kick some ass]

For full credit list go to Gor’s.

Click through the widget if you want to have one as well

Race begins on the 23rd. I’m gonna kick some ass!

There’s lots of great stuff going on with Orange at the moment here at Poke but this one is really special. To celebrate the arrival of animals plan on pay as you go (previously only for pay monthly customers) we’re going to set off loads of beautiful balloons all over the the Internet. And just like the real thing, the one that goes the furthest in 7 days wins – and the prize is a £20K VIP trip to Ibiza (including everything that you and 7 friends could hope for, ever!).

How does it work?
Visit the site now and get yourself a balloon. Then when the race starts in 3 weeks we’ll set them off and all the fun and race vibes will start – daily prizes, friends support, tricks and bombs — it’s going to be fantastico!

Get your blog / website part of the race
If you like the idea and not only as a balloon owner but wants your blog/site to be a landing/passing site for thousands of baloons (that’s it – get loads of traffic to your site) you can register here – the Poke geeks created a small snippet of widgety code to your site. Register here NOW

Will surely keep you updated on this one…

Good luck!

Officially the biggest ever Glasto tickets giveaway, Spot the Bull is back and it’s even better than the first one. This year you can go strategically mind with your mates and get yourselves up to 8 tickets per group – how awesome is that?

Go and play the super fun shagaddictive Spot the Bull

Ladies and gents, I’m very proud and excited to announce the launch of BBC Green, Poke’s new work for BBC worldwide. Following Top Gear, Good Food and Gardeners world, which were all existing brands with TV and print properties, this one has involved the creation (in collaboration with the lovely people at multiadaptor) of a new brand – an online magazine for everyday sustainable living.

BBC Worldwide has undertaken extensive research into the UK changing consumer attitudes, covering green issues and ethical consumerism, and developed this unique and comprehensive online magazine as a result of a perceived opportunity to plug the ‘trust’ gap. The aim of BBC Green is to lead the mainstreamisation of sustainable living, to cut through some of the confusions surrounding green, sustainable and ethical issues and to help people make the choices that enable them to live a more sustainable lifestyle.

One key insight was that you can’t do it all, and that everyone has different levels of knowledge, motivation, time/money and priorities. We really wanted BBC Green to be inclusive, friendly and actionable and one of the key challenges was to move away from the “10 easy cheap steps to save the planet” which became generic and in danger of trivialising the climate change debate. At the same time not everyone can insulate their loft today or sell their car and start cycling. So we’ve created an informed, personalised action plan (in beta) to help people shrink their carbon footprint at their own pace and according to their priorities.

So, let’s get on with it everyone “Think Big, Start Small”.

We’ve got the dates approved 15th – 18th November

We’ve got the giant paper boat and plane being built:

And now all we need is more sign ups.

So you- yes, yes you – Have you secured your name being printed on the massive boat or plane? if the answer is no, then you got less than a week to do so and if the answer is yes, then well done. Now send an email to a friend, or make sure your mother’s name is there as well. Make it your ‘this week’ resolution – to sign up one friend.

You can do it all here

Thank you and see you down at Gabriel’s Wharf on the weekend.

Oh, and I’ve got a little blooper bonus for you…