LOVE

Best Tea In Britain?

Another blatant plug for our lovely clients in Harrogate.
We've helped Yorkshire Tea to launch a little site about all tea matters. You'll find it at www.bestteainbritain.co.uk.
At the site you can tell Yorkshire Tea whether you think their tea is the best tea in Britain.  Or you can tell them that you prefer another brand.  That's up to you. 
And the first 500 people who visit the site every day can request a free sample box of Yorkshire Tea to try.

LOVE:Cream

Hot on the heels of our work for James, we've been asked to create an advertising campaign for Creamfields 2007, the UK's leading dance festival.  We're going to do a book for Creamfields as well, which we're aiming to publish in March.
Clearly fate has deemed that we'll be mostly working on music-related projects for a few weeks.
We hope that after that we'll be mostly asked to work on beer and chocolate projects.
Fingers crossed.

Posted by LOVE.

Fort Dunlop

If you're a regular traveller on the M6, you'll know Fort Dunlop, the Grade A listed old Dunlop Tyre factory between Junctions 5 and 6 in Birmingham.  Nothing happened with this derelict old building for as long as we can remember driving past it.  Word has it that nobody had a clue what it could be used for.

But our clients Urban Splash came along and changed all that.   It's well on the way to being a really cool hotel, office and retail complex offering a great new working environment for forward-thinking business of all sizes.



We're going to be helping them with some creative ideas, including putting some life-sized cows on the roof (which is why Rob and I had to freeze our backsides off doing a recce up there with the Chief Engineer yesterday.)

As a slight aside, it was only when we were waiting in reception for our meeting, that I realised Rob's legs are too long for his body...

The lead architects on the project are ShedKM.  Their vision was to retain the integrity of the original Fort Dunlop external architecture by "putting a new building inside the original building".  This enabled them to keep the original brickwork, windows and external fascia pretty much the same whilst putting new glazing and walls a foot or two inside the Fort Dunlop structure.

Here's a spare bit of office space if you're interested - available now for very reasonable prices.

We're not sure where ShedKM responsibility ends, but there are lots of nice design touches inside, including a brilliant floor to ceiling atrium space.

You can even spend all day looking at the top of the security guards head, if you so choose.

Posted by LOVE.

STA Travel

We've started to do a bit of project work with STA Travel.  If all goes well, we're hoping to do much more over the coming months, so we're really excited about the opportunity.  STA is very well known amongst young travellers, and we remember them doing some really mould-breaking creative in the past.   It'll be our task to help their internal designers bring back some of those glory days, but for a world that has moved on in really interesting ways.   It strikes us that STA travellers and staff are all excellent potential sources of real-time, on the ground travel content.  Why read an out of date travel book when you can find out what's going on around the world right now through a connected group of like-minded travellers armed with a digital camera, flickr and an internet cafe?  What about the exciting possibilities with PSP?  Why read the standard reviews of hotels when fellow travellers can tell you what it was really like, not last month or last year, but last night.  And how can STA use technology to help travellers meet new travellers on their round the world trips.  Of course, this isn't about STA spending £millions to build their own digital systems and software.  It's about STA working with what's out there already.  So if any of our friends out there have any interesting digital applications for us to look at and share with our new client, please let us know.  Happy holidays.

Posted by Dave Palmer

This Is Our City

Doing creative work for a football club is really interesting.  Dave, Susie and I really enjoy the projects we do for Man City.  Our clients Matt, Ian and Karen are a real pleasure to spend time with.  They've also got a really clear feel for their 'brand'. Many years ago, Man City were one of the first football clubs to launch a young supporters club.  (We've just re-launched it as Live4City). 

They've been active in the community (through CITC) for 20 years.  This season they're the first Premiership club to sign up to a scheme to attract more gay fans and staff. 

In other words, they are really in touch with their fans and their community which is something to be really admired.  Marketing a football club is a real challenge.  The 'product' is extremely inconsistent and always changing (and as any hardened supporter knows, no club has more of a rollercoaster season than City!). 

You're selling intangibles - dreams, hope, escapism, passion, joy.  Fans can't ask for their money back if the team fail to deliver, but they can choose not to go again, or stop buying the merchandise, or support another club.  But City know what they're doing. 

Recently they were the first football club to win an IPA Effectiveness Award for their extremely popular and controversial 'This Is Our City' campaign.  We're now working with them on bringing a consistent creative style and voice to their internal and external communications.

We were over there today planning a shoot at the City.v.Newcastle match tomorrow. (Here's Dave Black taking a few test shots). 

The stadium  is really awesome even when it is empty and it was good to see the view that the Sky TV pundits get when they're covering a game there.

 

Posted by Jonathan Rigby (a Liverpool fan)

Clients we LOVE

Talking of The Kings Arms, one of their founding clients was Ringspun and it gave us the opportunity to team up for the project.  Ringspun is one of those streetwear brands that has been bubbling under the mainstream for years.  David Mallon (the bloke behind Ringspun) has asked us to work with him to grow his business.  We really like spending time with David.  He's one heck of a nard-nosed businessman and a tough 'mother' to keep happy - not to mention a wicked negotiator when it comes to extracting cash to do stuff - but you just can't help wanting to do the best for him.  Most importantly, he's got a great eye for creativity and he's confident enough to let us run with our ideas.  The fashion business, more than any business we've worked on reminds us of the value of great ideas that make money.  We're developing a creative approach that is completely 'self-liquidating'.  The more business we make through our ideas, the more money he'll invest. (And no, the creative recommendation isn't going to be an FCUK 'me too').  Here's a picture of Lynton and Paul in the Ringspun office.  Business is so much more enjoyable when conducted on old leather sofas under the watchful gaze of a moose-head, dont you think?