Bushmills Voted Best Irish Whiskey in the World

A huge congratulations to everyone at Bushmills on a fantastic win at the prestigious 2010 San Francisco World Spirits Competition. Bushmills swept the board winning Best Irish Whiskey in the World, two double gold and four gold accolades. Bushmills is now one of only a few international spirit brands ever to scoop 100% gold in the competition. This is pretty spectacular considering that it was only a couple of months back that Bushmills won three World Whiskies Awards in London.

Bushmills won the top award for its entire range, with the Black Bush and 1608 blends each winning double gold, and the Bushmills Original, 10, 16 and 21 Year Old Single Malts all winning gold. Ultimately though it was the Bushmills 1608 that was named Best Irish Whiskey.

Colum Egan, Bushmills Master Distiller, said, "This is an incredible achievement for Bushmills. We like to think that we make the world’s finest Irish whiskey – it’s great to hear that the experts share that opinion and the team at the distillery are absolutely thrilled. We’ll definitely be cracking open a bottle and raising a glass to celebrate our wins!"

With Sarah Miles, Bushmills Global Brand Director, adding, "The awards are further recognition of the outstanding quality of Bushmills. It’s a real achievement to be placed at the forefront of the fastest growing international spirits category in the world today. Irish whiskey is obviously a competitive market and so we’re delighted that the excellence of our liquid has been recognised by our peers."

Again, congratulations to the whole Bushmill team - well done folks!

Want To Work For Ogilvy?

Are you an advertising hack? Do you want to work for one of the largest, most recognised, well respected agencies in the world? Ogilvy are now hiring! Kinda ;)

Ogilvy have just launched a campaign to find the 'World's Greatest Sales Person'. So if you think you can peddle sand to Arabs or convince an Eskimo to buy snow, you may be in with a chance. Beware though, this is not a competition for your average 'Del Boy', Sunday market, car boot sale geeza. The challenge here is to sell a brick!


The common everyday brick can be found almost everywhere. The brick was invented during the height of the Sumer empire between the 4th and 6th Millennia BC. In the 7,000 years since, mankind has made literally billions of them. However, they are still one of the most important things ever invented; the bona fide building blocks (pardon the pun) of civilisation.

So we know what the product is, a common Red Brick. The challenge is to convince people to consider it, to use it, to buy it. You need to create a pitch to someone who can actually make the purchase for good reason. Obvious choice is construction, but who else might want to buy a brick? That's the real challenge. Make people think, “Wow, I didn’t think of the Red Brick in that way. Maybe I need it.”

So what's the measure of success? You have several options of how you want people to respond so long as it is measurable. This could be by phone call, SMS, email, website or joining of a social network.

Now the only question is: are you the world's greatest sales person? If you think you are then you need to make a 1-2 minute long video of your sales pitch and get it submitted to youtube.com/Ogilvy by May 16, 2010.

For more information, follow the fun on Twitter, join the Facebook Fan Page or email the guys here: greatest.salesperson@ogilvy.com

Alternatively, check out this video...

The Future Of Photoshop

One of the biggest requests that Adobe have had for the new Photoshop is to make adding, removing, moving or repairing items faster and more seamless. This count be as simple as retouching to completely reimagining an image. To say that Adobe have taken this on board doesn't even begin to detail what is coming in CS4. Here's an early glimpse of capability that you may soon have access to...

What's Next For Apple?

There's no question that Apple are innovators. The iPod revolutionised portable music players. iTunes instantly became a firm favourite for organising your music and creating playlists. The iPhone has jumped ahead of every other mobile phone manufacturer as a leading mobile device. And on the horizon the iPad looks set to become just as popular. So what's next? What's Apple's next big innovation?

Well, if a new Apple patent is anything to go by, it may be the sun-backlit Macbook!



The idea would appear to hinge (pardon the pun) on a mirror magnetically attached to the the top lid that would illuminate the screen of your macbook by reflecting the sun. The benefits would be a huge saving on power consumption and, most likely, a greater ability to use the device in direct sunlight i.e. no screen glare. At the moment it's difficult to imagine how this would be carried off and still look awesome (as Apple products always do), but I have no doubt if anyone can do it, Apple can.

The Last Agency On Earth

I was sent a link to this video on the Ogilvy Blog (Blogilvy) by Brendan. Brilliant stuff, well worth a watch...