So I swung down to Brandhouse yesterday for a little presentation, and I was surprised to see some people I knew, and some people I knew of. Rory and Gareth from Halo Live were in attendance, I spotted Raoul from UrbanNinja.co.za, Shaun Oakes and some of the other blogging elite, as well as the crew of Stacy and Carrie and all the other crew who keep me in the know.

(Just to interrupt, please do yourself a favour and vote for Urban Ninja for the blog awards, it’s an amazing site for inspiration, and I’ve been reading it for about 6 months now, with a place on my blogroll for a good few months now, deservedly. There was an awesome piece posted today, click HERE to read that. And you can vote from that page as well, there is a blog awards banner there)

Basically it was an informal get together to learn about the history of the brand, where it is going in the future, and the fact that finally, bloggers are starting to get noticed as a proper part of the process. The last party, Smirnoff Mashup Street, was a very one sided affair, where bloggers were used to promote the event, but not much more was given for their work. For Project X (The next Smirnoff party), a certain number of the top bloggers in South Africa, will be integral to the marketing of the event, which I’m really excited about. The fact is, all my friends, and people like me at my age, aren’t going to News24 for their news, they are going to the established and trusted blogs in South Africa for their daily news. We don’t serve it up like News24, we have a real approach to news and events, offering a fresh perspective on what is happening in your world. We’re live at events, we’re hands on, and best of all — we’re not boring.

The Smirnoff chat yesterday was really cool and I was genuinely interested in hearing about the history of Smirnoff, and the mixologist, whose name I forget (Garcon, where is my notepad?) gave an awesome talk and also gave us some history on drinks such as The Screwdriver as well as the Long Island Ice Tea, while also getting us involved. I was pulled up to do some tricks with the bottle, of which I couldn’t!

Hey sexy!

Boozing at lunch

Chilled office

Oh…hi there…

Me and glass and a hard floor and a difficult trick = bad idea!

I’m quite excited that Brandhouse and Smirnoff have realised the potential in bloggers at getting the word out about events and getting people amped for them. It feels like the day has finally come where blogging is just a little nearer to closing in on traditional media, which no one seems to be reading that often anymore for the news they really want to know. So I’m pretty excited, and you’ll be hearing more on SLXS in the coming weeks about what is being planned.

And thanks to everyone involved, in what is set to become a very exciting project!