Apparently, a third of the Pay and Display machines in Lewes, East Sussex have been destroyed in vigilante attacks by industrial-sized firework wielding locals.  Direct action with an "ooooooooh, aaaaaaah, wooooooooow" attached. Nice.

Thanks to Stan for pointing out another dead cert for top Xmas pressie 2007 - coloured bubbles.   Quite how the colour gets into the bubbles and then disappears is a mystery. Maybe Zubbles would make a good ad for Sony Bravia? There’s even a video on the website.  We want some and we want some NOW.

This one is for a project we’re working on.  We thought we’d throw the internal email out to blogworld to see if you’ve got any suggestions.

Anybody got any ideas on what kind of things should happen at an Anti-Valentine’s Day event?

The night is not designed as a singles night; it’s not for munters who can’t find a partner. It’s more just a night for people (couples?) who think that red roses, being serenaded by some ‘Spanish’ bloke from Urmston in a bad restaurant, chocolates, oysters and teddy bears are just downright crap.
We want to have an alternative night, where Barry White is about as welcome as…[something that was too un-pc to re-produce publically on our blog].

XX.

It’s approximately 6 degrees in Manchester.  In Melbourne its exactly 41 degrees.  We know this because along with a LOVE book, we sent Stan a bar of chocolate.  The book made it in one piece, the chocolate didn’t.

Posted by LOVE

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.

Radio is often seen as the poor relation of the media world - not as glamourous as cinema, not as high profile as TV, not as proud as press. But done properly it can be an absolute joy - and make a huge impact on the public without making a huge impact on your budget.

Anyway, whilst we’d in no way proclaim to be legends in the world of radio, we’ve done our fair share over the last few years, and it’s nice when the hard work gets rewarded. Mark Bryant, the excellent producer at Hush! entered two of our ads for the Museum of Science and Industry into the Vox Awards, and, of the eleven categories available, the LOVE/ Hush partnership picked up four Golds. They may not be as recognised as the Aerial Awards in the advertising community, but they are the respected face of the radio production community. (The Grossology commercial was also commended by the Aerials.)

So, a big thanks to Mark - if you’re looking for a fine radio producer outside London, then I can’t speak highly enough about him, and if you’d like to hear the ads you can click through from here. The ads are called Grossology and MarsQuest.

(Sorry, I tried to load them directly onto the blog but failed miserably)

We’re probably a bit late discovering the brilliant indexed blog by Jessica Hagy, but just in case we’re not the last to pick up on it, go and take a look.  Here are a couple of our favourites.

We’ve bought some new cameras after losing all of the old ones during the LOVE Xmas Magical Mystery tour.
Here’s the first picture - some LOVEsters looking at some proofs for a Playstation 3 job.  (Yes, we occassionally do some work, you know).

What the f@(* have they done to Scooby Doo and the gang?

Dan’s ‘robot chimp head’ post reminded us to write a short piece asking if anyone has actually seen the "breathing dog and cat" toys in action. (a fine performance from Dan in the new Innocent ad, by the way)  We’d like to know if they’re as weird in reality as we imagine.  Don’t these toys scare the shit out of children or is it just adults that find these things scarey?  Anybody else come across similar freaky toys during the festive season?  We might invest in a macabre collection for the office.

Posted by LOVE.