Is it just us, or has there been a dramatic decline in the overall quality of Christmas greetings this year?  An intense piece of internal research monitoring all Xmas messages/cards received by LOVE has generated the following dramatic results;

46% - "we’ve donated the cost of sending cards to charity, so here’s a really cheap and boring Merry Christmas message by email"
40% - "here’s our pretty basic "off the shelf" digital Xmas card (cos we’re in the digital age don’t you know) with a pretty crap looking bit of snow animation and some irritating music overlaid that is impossible to switch off"
9% - really nicely produced pieces of digital work, either a santa game (e.g glue london) or a beautiful/thoughtful piece of film.
4% - your good old Xmas card with lots of scribbled signatures inside because the sender has only set aside 5 minutes to sign 900 cards.
1% - painstakingly produced ‘concept mailers’ - like the entertaining Balti Nights piece we’ve received from W+K London.

The annual ’send out a Christmas message to clients/colleagues’ can be a bit of a ball-ache if it is seen as a painful necessity rather than an opportunity to make people smile, but it’s Christmas and we think that everyone should put a bit more effort in - especially those who use the charity excuse cos they’ve left it too late to do something memorable.

Whilst we’re on the subject, we think everyone should send out more tasty edible stuff.  We’re running perilously short of chocolates and we’ve only been saved by the immense generosity of the lovely Yorkshire Tea who have just sent us a massive box of cakes.

Anyone received anything else of note - either because it is really great or really rubbish?

Posted by Jonathan Rigby

You may have already seen the article in the newspapers: “Only 44 per cent of seven to 11-year-olds across Britain who took part in a survey regarded the day as a celebration of the birth of Jesus.” Shock horror.

Even more bizarre is the fact that someone in the LOVE offices believes that Christmas is about Chavs & Scallies, Dog Turds, Tramp’s Underpants and Pies & Pasties. Such are the topics covered in the 2006 LOVE Christmas card. Previous years’ efforts have involved a Bumper Book of Fun featuring some very un-PC kid’s games, an Office Christmas Party Corporate Guidelines, and a 4ft Magic Tree air-freshener/Xmas tree.

But this year we really pushed the boat out. The first response was a client contacting us to say (and I’m paraphrasing here): “we stared at it for over an hour, before deciding it was the most inappropriate Christmas card we have ever seen.”

Tumbleweed rolled through the office.

But then we got another call from a client asking for an extra copy for a friend, and a call from an industry mag asking for the artwork so they could feature it, and another call from someone saying they loved it, and so we thought “maybe we should give them away on the blog for Christmas”. But then we thought “maybe we should sell them on the blog for, like £9.99 or something including postage and packaging and stuff”. And then there was a bit of a discussion, and a few cups of tea, and then we agreed £9.99 (inc p&p) was a pretty good price to pay for something so inappropriately brilliant.

If you’d like a copy please contact us on info@lovecreative.com, and apologies to anyone who found it inappropriate, distasteful, offensive. It really wasn’t intended to be that way.

Oh, and Merry Christmas.

LOST - 2 x digital cameras containing approximately 300 embarrassing photos.
LAST SEEN - somewhere between Manchester and Sheffield during the LOVE Magical Mystery Tour Peak Challenge Xmas Party, Thursday 14th December 2006.
IF FOUND - please return to LOVE so we can remember at least some of what happened that day.

In general I’m a bit unsure about blogs. Sometimes I think, especially agency ones, smack of ‘Aren’t we just so crazy’. The person that writes ‘curlypasta.co.uk’ is a genuine crazy type though. You could even say mad as cheese. They claim to be ‘the UK’s foremost experts on Macaroni Cheese’, and frankly, I’d have to agree.

Posted by Adam Rix

A large portion of the blogging community will already be familiar with the fantastic blog standinaqueue. Some will know that the person who set it up is a delightful chap called William Deed. A couple of you might even know he recently finished a post-grad course in advertising at Falmouth. But only a few will know that William spent last week on placement with us at LOVE. This is nothing to be ashamed of – we simply didn’t tell anyone.
At the start of the week I asked Will to write a small piece on his experience at LOVE for our blog. Obviously he’d have to wait until the end of the week before he wrote it, or the experience wouldn’t have actually happened yet, but the subject could be whatever he fancied. Most importantly, in an honourable copywriter’s pact, I assured him I wouldn’t change a word. So here, in its original form, is Will’s experience of LOVE. I think it’s a compliment…

There’s something rather disarming about an agency that calls itself ‘Love’. It creates an expectation that you would not gain from a company that has founded its name from the three managing directors, or the latest primary colour. And so it was that I entered the Love offices on Monday morning with less trepidation than one would expect.

Despite this, it wasn’t really until Wednesday morning when I felt comfortable enough to contemplate my surroundings by sitting on the office loo. The entrance to which is just next to the desk of Danni; the gatekeeper of the Love offices

To be fair, I may have relaxed sooner had Simon not muttered something on Monday morning about the inefficiency of one of the flushes. And so before Wednesday I tended to use the, rather clean, facilities in the Arndale Shopping Centre.

Unfortunately, Thursday morning things got a little tense. I had been taken out for a few the night before and was not really feeling my best. A grumpy stomach demanded some relief and with haste I entered the stall on the right, with the one on the left having already been occupied.

It was a rather noisy time and so, with an ear witness next-door I was somewhat anxious to escape. But one of the fellas was been rather stubborn, and the third attempt of a flush brought with it no luck.

I had two options, either to do the right thing and publicly announce to the office straight away that it was me. Yes, I did it. Or to avoid later embarrassment when the culprit was sought and to leave Love straight away.

A quick phone call to Gary Wood and a text to my sister, and I had a couple more options. Either fish it out and hide it in my bag or to try and find a jug.

I found an oversized mug but it wasn’t big enough, and then soon I was distracted by putting post-it notes up on the wall.

And so it is with delight that I tell you that the drama soon passed, and not one of the kind souls who work here said anything.

I think that this is a fine testament to the people of Love and, as such, good things should happen to them always.

PS - Just a quick note to clients and future visitors of the agency: Will’s dilemma can be avoided by a repeat, ‘pump-action’ style flushing technique - Three or four fast flushes should do the trick. Unfortunately I have no idea if the same applies to the ladies’ toilet. I must apologise to Will for not telling him this on Monday, but it just felt a little soon to be talking toilet with him.

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

The LOVE blog has already given a warm welcome to The Neighbourhood - a terrific bunch of 3D animators, artists and film makers who share the same offices and have now been in business for a few months.  We’re doing some great work together on Playstation 3 (more of that in the New Year).  In the meantime, we can really big them up by sharing a beautiful piece of film they’ve released to "pay festive homage to the exquisite hexagonal architecture of the snowflake".  If this doesn’t give you a nice warm festive glow, nothing will.

Posted by Jonathan Rigby

It’s great to see some new creative coming through from the Kings Arms since their breakaway from BDH/TBWA.  Here’s a new viral from Lynton and Paul (with Lynton taking the lead role) for Andrew Normansell, who is (now) the only act in the UK performing Russian Roulette.  Love the viral guys - but for Pete’s sake get yourself a website so people can find you.

Posted by Jonathan Rigby

We haven’t done a great deal of work with Manchester Kids since Dave P developed their identity, so it was a pleasure to join them at their Jingle Ball, a massive fundraising event to help underprivileged and disadvantaged children living in the Greater Manchester area.  Dave S and I were guests of Matt, our client from Man City.  It was a fairly typical Wednesday lunchtime in Manchester really as we ate our dinner whilst being entertained by the cast of Coronation Street, a load of up and coming bands, stars from X-Factor, Liz McClaron from Atomic Kitten and Tony Christie.

Posted By Jonathan Rigby

The new way to complain is through the medium of song.  More specifically choir-complaints.  In case you haven’t seen it, here’s the Complaints Choir Of Birmingham voicing their grievances about the changes in Birmingham in recent years. (Thanks to Anthony Mayfield for posting about it).  It’s nearly 9 minutes long, so they clearly had a lot to get off their chest.  It’s also received 350,000 hits, so a lot of people are interested in hearing their gripes.  According to YouTube, the complaints choirs have now spread to Helsinki and Hamburg.  So where do we start…"manchester, manchester so much to answer for…".

UPDATE - I’ve just watched this video through again. What a boring bunch of moaners.  They had the opportunity to do something really witty, controversial and insightful and all they manage to moan about is people pinching their biscuits, dog poo, bus drivers that don’t speak (would you?) and having to work for a living.  Get a life guys, or alternatively write something really brilliant.  Come on Manchester, maybe we should show them how to really complain.

Posted by Jonathan Rigby