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With the advent of digital books hitting our consciousness in the late nineties, the way we read and what we read was about to change. One thing remained true though - literature and reading have always been a cornerstone of our culture and the importance of reading has gained further prominence and importance pre, during and post pandemic.

Our culture team has been working with The Booker Prize for more than 20 years. Since 2001 the team has handled every element of The Booker Prize cycle, making the prize the most famous literary accolade across the globe, through our integrated brand, communications, marketing, digital and event work.

The subject of how we could protect our privacy became top priority at the beginning of the millennium. Chip and PIN was the answer to security matters when it came to our money and made card transactions more secure for both customers and business owners.

The introduction of a new payment system nationwide required a formidable multi-media programme. We met dual challenges of both selling Chip and PIN to the public and educating them on its uses, as well as ensuring retailers moved to the new system.

The switch to Chip and PIN reached more than 40 million cardholders and 2.7 million retail staff.

The Spirit of Dubai was the world's largest airship, which in 2006 flew from London and across Europe to mark the launch of The Palm in Dubai, the audacious real estate project from developer Nakheel Properties.

At the time nothing like The Palm had been seen before and the launch deserved something fitting and memorable.

The journey kicked off with a flight down the Thames with a live Sky News broadcast. The airship then visited UK landmarks such as Stonehenge and the White Cliffs of Dover and European cities including Paris, Rome and Athens.

Along the way we flew dozens of media, TV crews and VIPs and hit the headlines across Europe and in the UAE.

The Palm got the big splash we all hoped for and the campaign won a European Sabre Award.

2007 saw one of the most anticipated entertainment launches of all time - Sony's PlayStation 3.

As Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's strategic retained agency, we worked behind the scenes to create a panoply of ideas and materials - from online and offline experiential concepts to digital assets and media factsheets - for 108 countries across the EU and MENA.

During the year we also delivered top-notch creative ideas covering around 60 different game launches including best sellers Grand Theft Auto V and Grand Turismo.

The European Tour, the Burj Al Arab and the biggest purse in golf… the only other ingredient needed was our team to make this front page news around the world.

Launching the Race to Dubai was just one of many global golf stories driven by us, including the launch of Jumeirah Golf Estates, promoting the Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship and attracting players to Pearl Valley, Celtic Manor and Saadiyat Beach courses.

From a suffragette hiding in a broom cupboard to the first official records of ethnicity and religion, the Census is the story of all our lives. Rather than households completing forms for themselves, the early censuses, up to 1831, were carried out by an enumerator filling in counts for local areas.

In 2011, Four undertook one of the biggest public information campaigns to date: Census 2011 - the first digital census in the UK.

Setting out with the goal of encouraging every person in England and Wales to fill in their Census form, our campaign reached into communities across the nation.

The success paid off with higher completion rates, particularly in 'harder to count' areas than in the previous Census counts.

Ten years later, we also worked on the build up to the 2021 Census.

Despite being one of the oldest cities in the world, London's skyline and districts have constantly changed and evolved. One of the biggest changes has been more tall towers dotting the skyline. We’ve had the pleasure of working on a few of these world class constructs, like the then tallest residential tower in Europe at One St George Wharf.

And as place making has evolved we have worked right across the city with some of the best architects and developers in the world from Canary Wharf and Principle Tower to One Blackfriars, Battersea Power Station and Kings Cross to London City Island, Embassy Gardens and Greenwich Peninsular to London’s West End.

Each delivering outstanding places for Londoners to live, work, shop and play - helping to keep London ahead of the competition as the amazing city we all love.

The concept of food miles began in the 1990s and provenance continued to grow in importance throughout the noughties. With sustainability as the centrifugal force, it spurned a new food revolution.

Four Cymru has been building the Welsh food brand for over 10 years delivering innovative, impactful and targeted campaigns, showcasing provenance and sustainable brand values.

We led the foodie conversation, reporting and shaping the narrative and changing the way people think about food, what we are eating and where produce actually comes from.

The UAE is the first country to launch a new nuclear energy programme anywhere in the world for three decades and we have been with it every step of the way.

From public events to explain the benefits of nuclear energy, to attracting a new generation of Emirati Energy Pioneers to work in the plant, to the commissioning of the first reactors, we’ve helped ENEC communicate clearly, transparently and successfully for a decade. Along the way, ENEC and Four have won more awards for successful communication than any other project in the Middle East.

The new Library of Birmingham was the largest public library in Europe and opened in 2013. A £189 million capital project, it was controversial, not least because it involved a large council investment at a time of across-the-board spending cuts.

We launched the new Library of Birmingham with the culture team organising an opening ceremony with campaigner Malala Yousafzai, reaching over one billion people.

Virgin announced that it would begin its first commercial spaceflights for private space tourists in 2013. To support this historic event we created a BAFTA award-winning multiplatform presentation for the first live documentary in the sky. Live From Space was an ambitious event, broadcasting live from the International Space Station (ISS).

A specially-created HTML5 mini-game allowed viewers at home to test their skills in zero-gravity, which the astronauts aboard the ISS recreated and played for real as part of the live TV show. Over 870,000 balls were fired in the Earth vs Astronauts game by viewers, celebrities and NASA astronauts (62% were on target).

We also built an ISS tracker with a quarter of a million viewers using it to see the position of the space station in real time.

In 2015 we created Costa Rica's first European brand and marketing strategy. Costeureka! was born - a campaign designed to trigger the vivid landscape and amazing culture of Costa Rica in consumers’ minds.

In the UK, an integrated campaign was planned and rolled out including Out of Home and digital advertising campaigns.

In 2015 there were 393,115 arrivals to Costa Rica from Europe. By 2019 this had increased to 500,602 high value European travellers.

Our work with Costa Rica continues and the UK is now the second largest European market.

We're extremely proud that Costa Rica was the winner of The Times Reader Award for Best Emerging Destination in 2022.

We built Etihad's corporate reputation for more than a decade, as it grew from a $300 million regional carrier to a $26 billion global titan.

The journey included the announcement of the world's largest aircraft order, investments in Alitalia, airberlin and others - and the launch of The Residence - the only three-room suite in commercial air travel. (We even had a little help along the way from Nicole Kidman…)

St Patrick’s Day is known the world over and countries join together to celebrate this global tradition. We’re used to seeing different landmarks across the world lit up in green to celebrate the occasion but we wanted to do something different.

In 2015, we worked with Liam Neeson to create a very special St Patrick’s Day campaign. ‘Each year, to celebrate St Patrick’s Day, the world goes green. But in Ireland, every day is bathed in green.’

The campaign saw an outstanding overall performance – with the film accounting for 1 in 5 of the 1 billion online mentions of St Patrick’s Day.

The film was shared at events around the globe from Sydney to New York and via partners such as Aer Lingus.

Revenue from overseas visitors to Ireland grew by +18.6% during 2015, an additional €661 million for the Irish economy compared with 2014.

TV shows have helped cooking become a highly competitive ‘sport’ with professionals and amateurs going head to head in some of the highest rated shows. And they don’t come much bigger than The Great British Bake Off.

Our digital team in Sheffield worked with Channel 4 to create a mobile app to take The Great British Bake Off’s online presence to the next level.

Jam-packed with bespoke content and recipes, the app helped take advantage of the nation’s newfound obsession with baking.

The British Science Association wanted to get everyone inspired by science and see the true value it added to all our lives.

In 2018, the theme was recycling. The aim was to use a topic close to people’s hearts (plastics) to increase personal action. The Plastic Tide campaign’s aim was to tidy up Britain’s beaches.

The Plastic Tide used drone technology to capture thousands of images of rubbish found on British beaches. We brought the project to life, tagging pictures around the coastline to target and capture the imagination of media and consumers.

We were thrilled that this campaign won Best Environmental Campaign at The Purpose Awards sponsored by Campaign, PR Week and Third Sector.

We developed an important and multi-award winning campaign to support King’s College London’s mental health study: Genetic Links to Anxiety and Depression. This was the UK’s largest ever mental health study.

The #GLADStudy campaign focussed on recruiting research participants with celebrities, groups and members of the public telling their stories to help make a difference.

At launch, the study website got one million visits and as a result 24,000 valid and diverse research participants with depression and/or anxiety were recruited in six weeks.

Four’s first major government campaign for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) was in supportof Shared Parental Leave. We developed the overall campaign strategy, crystalised as ‘Share the Joy’, to reflect the positive aspects of sharing parental leave.

The creative used an engaging yet simple mechanic; a sliding line that showed a moving split-screen between one parent and the other, versions of which, were seen across Out of Home, digital channels and TV.

Awareness of Shared Parental Leave with the general population went up from 44% before the launch to 61% after launch.

Our bespoke and highly sophisticated digital technology – Footprints - enables clients to track consumers from initial engagement online to actual physical presence in a destination.

Once in the destination (a retail outlet, tourist destination or other location), we can serve consumers with highly relevant content and offers for products and services, knowing they already have an interest in them.

We have rolled out Footprints with many of our clients. For Estee Lauder, we used it to target international travellers from pre-travelling planning to airport locations. For one campaign alone, we were able to drive 11 million impressions.

Post pandemic, it seemed like everyone had changed their behaviours completely. The need for crucial retail recovery programmes and the opportunity for consumers to take a new look at favourite retail stomping grounds was paramount.

Four worked with Grosvenor Britain & Ireland to support them in creating a completely new and refreshed campaign structure, including rebranding and new advertising campaigns. This supported businesses and the crucial retail recovery of the iconic London neighbourhoods of Mayfair and Belgravia.

Credits

Photographer – Christopher Bissell

Stylist – Sophia Katyea

Assistant Stylist – Lestine Manduakila

Hairdressing – Lauren Bell

Make up – Bryanna Angel

Casting & Shoot production – SARAHDAW

Artbuying – Noonwright

With thanks to Nina and Deusaul Kim @ Titanium Management