To showcase our exciting voyage, we’ve created a lively game to demonstrate our love for great tech and integration. The Pirata Boat Race pits two teams against one another to row themselves to victory. With up to ten shipmates split between two vessels, the aim is to propel your boat to the finish line before the other team, using your iPhone as your oars.

We’ve combined a vast slew of technologies to create an experience that’s far closer to console gaming than usually found online. The site itself acts as a hub, allowing multiple people to huddle around the screen, snap the QR code on their iPhones and propel their boat via the built-in accelerometer; a unique combination to provide a new and exciting gaming experience.

The choice is yours between the ultra modern speedboat and a rickety old galleon but remember: real pirates don’t use engines so it’s all about that rowing motion!

To play the Boat Race head on over to piratalondon.com/boatrace and download our app from the App Store.

We’re extremely excited about our new adventure and if you want to know more then drop us a line at mobile@piratalondon.com

We’re thrilled to have landed a much coveted Gold Pencil at the annual One Show in New York! Our captain Eduardo set sail last week and came back with a shiny trophy for the Pirata cabinet, by taking the top prize in the Corporate Websites category for the Vodafone McLaren team’s 2010 website. The One Show is an incredibly prestigious award to get in the industry and to have a gold pencil nestled in our treasure chest is the greatest acclamation a set of scurvy sea dogs could ask for.

While we were there McLaren also scooped a merit for Other Interactive Media, as did Put on a Panto for the Consumer Websites category. Panto’s also been doing the rounds being a finalist in the Revolution awards and an Honoree at the Webby’s so all round a fairly impressive haul!

Client: Work Club

Brand: McLaren

Project: Vodafone McLaren ‘The Race 1.0b’

Pirata’s role: Information Architecture, creative treatment, design and development

Awards: OneShow Interactive ‘Corporate Websites’ Gold Pencil, OneShowInteractive ‘Other Interactive Media’ Merit

Following a successful pitch win, Work Club involved Pirata from the very early concepting stages to help them solidify their vision for the new McLaren site.

Collaborating closely with client and agency, Pirata helped to nurture the initial creative ideas to create a truly unique Formula 1 experience, that brings the viewer closer to the team than ever before.

On non-race days and out of season, the site provides a hub for all McLaren activities from interviews with the drivers to the technical specifications of the car’s suspension.

The main highlight of the site is revealed on race day. Designed to accompany the live TV broadcast, the site transforms into an engineer’s dashboard publishing real-time data directly from the pit. From the moment the ignition button is pressed users can view live telemetry from the car (speed, braking, GPS position) and commentary from the pit wall drivers and the drivers themselves.

The site is created almost exclusively in HTML and JavaScript so is fully accessible and available on most mobile platforms.

- 200,000 visitors came to the site to watch the live launch of the MP4-25
- Avg. 30,000 visitors per race day

Visit the site

Following an all-guns-blazing surge of wooing from the crew we are giddy as you like to welcome the one and only Kate Booth aboard. Yep. Kate Booth.

Kate is an industry gem, clocking up 10 years of digital know-how and brings a treasure chest of knowledge with her to share amongst the crew. Her spoils include Recollective, Tonic and Candi amongst others but she professes a particular love for us pirates and has surrendered her liberty to join us as Client Services Director.

Fitting that she takes up a position in the crows’ nest as there’s a lurking penchant for a spot of ornithology in there… not to mention being unbeatable at computer games and possessing a vast collection of around 118 pairs of shoes!

It might seem like we’ve been hibernating in the hold over winter, such is the scarcity of recent updates, but we assure you it’s been all hands on deck. We’re busy enough in fact to have cast our net far and wide to ensnare a few new shipmates into the fold.

Gabriel Bucknell is another in a long line of pirates who we’ve managed to lure away from the roaming liberation of freelance to take the tiller as Senior Developer. Gabes has sailed on many ships since his days as a powder monkey including stints at Tonic, Deepend, De-Construct and POKE, created some pretty big work – picking up a couple of D&AD pencils on the way.

When on shore leave he plays Bike Polo, gets tattooed, walks his dogs and enjoys a bit of pain… apparently.

On top of having a surname that sounds a little like a famous rum, Marta Bacardit grew up watching Hook and loves a bit of Lost. A pirate if ever we knew one. She’s come from the party town of Barcelona, bringing some much needed sunshine with her and joins as Junior Producer on the back of a stint with the D&AD.

Jess joins us from her travels as Studio Manager where she’ll be keeping us all firmly in check and everything ship-shape. Anyone who’s hobbies include surfing and being by the seaside pretty much has a golden ticket to the Pirate life. She’s a little scared of pigeons but that’s fine – we prefer gulls anyway.

If it wasn’t lovely enough to see how many mums have been blogging about our Put on a Panto site, we’re thrilled to bits to have been awarded FWA Site of the Day on the 27th of November!

The site, created for Robinsons and BBH to let people stage their own pantomimes during the season appears to have gone down a storm and a nod from the FWA is the best pat on the back we could have asked for. Since the launch we’ve also added a great little iPhone soundboard app to let kids play about with all the panto sounds and if that wasn’t enough, we also made a little promotional panto Flash game that’s being seeded out as we speak.

To the boards, my young star!

Adrian studied sound and video engineering in Leeds before taking a job as a multimedia designer and “webmaster” at a technical company in East Yorkshire.

He moved to London in 2002 working as a freelance Flash designer until he joined Wheel (now LBi Group) at the start of 2003 where he later got promoted to Senior Designer. At Wheel he worked on wide range of digital campaigns and websites for clients including Starbucks, BT, Ikea, Paul Smith, Marks & Spencer and Brahma.

In 2005 Adrian moved to Dare as a Creative Lead, where during his tenure he was part of the pitch team that helped them win Vodafone as a client. He worked across a range of their clients including the BBC, Axe/Lynx, Wanadoo, Sony and Sony Ericsson and did some award-winning work for Barclays and Vodafone.

After leaving Dare in 2007 he returned to his technical roots as a freelance Flash developer before joining Pirata early in 2009.

During our rather tumultuous September we heard reports of a stowaway on board our vessel who’d slipped under the radar, armed to the teeth with a slew of prized portfolio pieces.

The buccaneer in question was ratted out by means of an outburst of infectious laughter and on inquisition revealed that he was in fact Jonny Goodall; our new Senior Designer.

Jonny joins us from Dare where he’s been busy hoarding accolades – a proclivity he developed from landing a D&AD student pencil – as well as featuring in the alternative music press. With claims of an affinity with our grog of choice, rum, he’s more than welcome on the ship.

Part of the Pirata lifestyle is a good old treasure hunt and what a bounty we’ve dug ourselves up. Mark Evans has declared himself a proud pirate and is now part of the crew as Senior Producer. He’s made his way o’er the tides from Dare where he helped look after the Vodafone and Sony UK accounts, not forgetting to earn a few Campaign Digital and Revolution trophies for Vodafone and Becks along the way.

Not content with just running projects, Mark is keen to cut the flab from the shipmates and he’s already instigated Pirata FC, rising to any agency fool enough to challenge us on the astroturf.