huffington post uk posts

Today marks The Huffington Post UK launch of a new digital marketing campaign to showcase the huge variety of opinions and voices across the site and its blogs.

The brand new content-led campaign, created with Gravity Road, will feature opinions and views on a range of topics from some well-known faces. Celebrity bloggers and opinion-formers leading the charge include Alice Cooper, Cherie Blair, Rugby player Will Carling and TV presenter Cherry Healey, with many more lined up to take part over the coming months. The ads will also promote original content from the HuffPost's in-house editorial team and will run across a wide selection of digital media outlets and formats until the end of the year.

Kickstarting the rolling campaign in style, the first set of creative features close-up photography and video of each blogger, with provocative quotes from their blog intimately scrawled across their face. It also sees the UK launch of HuffPost's global strapline "Conversations Start Here". Alice Cooper will be lending his writing skills to the topic of Reality TV, Cherry Healey will be blogging on the pill industry and Cherie Blair will focus on female entrepreneurship. Other blog topics being supported in September include religion & politics, the beauty industry, comedy, sport and celebrity culture.

Watch the video here:

Mehdi Hasan, Senior Editor (Politics) for Britian's award-winning weekly magazine New Statesman and a leading political commentator in the UK, is joining HuffPost UK as its first Political Director. Just last week, Mehdi was named second most influential British journalist on Twitter and was listed as the UK's No. 2 blogger in 2011 by Total Politics magazine's in its list of the top-50 media bloggers. Starting in July 2012, he will host the AlJazeera talk show series, The Café.

Before joining New Statesman in 2009, Mehdi served as editor for news and current affairs for UK public broadcaster Channel 4. He also worked on Sky's breakfast show "Sunrise," the BBC's "Politics Show" and ITV's "The Jonathan Dimbleby Programme." He has also written for The Guardian, The Times and The Independent newspapers as a guest columnist and co-authored "Ed: The Milibands and the Making of a Labour Leader."

Mehdi is a talented and passionate writer and will make a fantastic director for our political team. Politics drills down into the minutia of everyone's day-to-day lives and with so much happening at both a national and global level, it couldn't be a better time to expand our team and the breadth of reports, news and blogs we offer to our growing audience. He joins the team in July.

HuffPost UK has grown nearly 50% since its launch last July and recently reached 5 million global UVs, according to comScore.

.@HuffPostUK Names Political Director @ns_mehdihasan aol.it/JrHITA

- AOL PR (@AOLPR) May 21, 2012

Carla Buzasi, Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post UK, has scooped the top individual award -- Media Innovator of the Year -- at the British Media Awards, recognizing innovation and excellence across the British media industry.

The judges deemed that Carla and The Huffington Post UK showcased a mixture of old-fashioned and modern editing, "incorporating original reporting and comments with a chorus of contributions from the audience in real-time." The Huffington Post UK was also highly commended in the 'Social Media and Marketing Innovation' and 'Digital Media Innovator of the Year' categories.

"I'm very proud that, just nine months after launch, HuffPost UK is being recognized in this way. The team works tirelessly to ensure we're creating the very best original reports, news stories and blogs, and it's great that the rest of the British media scene are sitting up and taking notice," Carla said.

Last November, The Huffington Post UK was honored by the Lovie Awards with a Gold Award in the news category.

The Huffington Post UK partnered with the WIE Network (Women: Inspiration and Enterprise) for its inaugural London symposium at the Hospital Club yesterday, coinciding with International Women's Day.

The symposium is now an annual event in New York, which Arianna Huffington co-hosted last year as well as its first year in 2010. The London partnership further strengthens ties between HuffPost and WIE.

This dynamic conference is designed to inspire and empower women by bringing together prominent leaders from politics, business, fashion, philanthropy, media, entertainment and the arts for a full day of lively panels, workshops, master-classes and an inspirational awards ceremony.

Speakers today included fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, Home Secretary Theresa May, fragrance creator Jo Malone, comedian Ruby Wax and handbag designer Anna Hindmarch.

HuffPost UK Editor-in-Chief Carla Buzasi chaired a lively session entitled Telling Women's Stories - Women in Film, TV, Media. The panel featured inspirational women including Celia Walden, journalist and novelist; Shohreh Aghdashloo, Oscar-nominated actress; Rosario Dawson, actress and philanthropist, and Hannah Pool, journalist and novelist. The session covered everything from boardroom quotas for women to their own experiences working in media, tips on how to succeed and female camaraderie to help all women succeed in their chosen fields.

The evening capped off with a cocktail reception and awards ceremony.

.@HuffPostUK Gets WIE Symposium Talking aol.it/yzAmzr

- AOL PR (@AOLPR) March 9, 2012

In partnership with Promote Iceland, today we've launched an innovative cross-platform campaign, Inspired by Iceland, that will raise awareness around Iceland as a year-round holiday destination by delivering inspirational content spanning our editorial sites and AOL advertising platforms.

Inspired by Iceland is the first Europe-wide marketing campaign that fully integrates a comprehensive suite of AOL advertising products, creative solutions and innovative platforms – including the first Project Devil ad with a live camera feed. Working hand-in-hand with the client and agencies from the outset, we've been able to push the envelope in our creative efforts in delivering a campaign that's groundbreaking and sure to make an impact with our users.

The campaign also marks the launch of The Huffington Post UK Inspiration, a new section of HuffPost UK that enables brands to communicate directly with prospective consumers via video, blogs and social media. The section goes live today with a number of exclusive blogs and interactive competitions lined up to begin next week.

To learn more about the program, visit the Inspired by Iceland sponsored page on HuffPost UK.

AOL partners with Promote Iceland for pan-Euro campaign bit.ly/xwuUa7 @brandrepublic @AOLPR

- AOL Europe (@AOLEurope) February 23, 2012