Saturday saw Part 2 of our 3 Peaks training regime, this time in Snowdonia. Over 8.75 hours we managed to get lost, fall over a few times, have a snowball fight, eat 3 picnics (check out Picnkr on our Warburtons website) on 3 different 3000ft peaks, get an unwelcome football result and have a religious experience (see below). Please support our considerable efforts and sponsor us here: http://www.justgiving.com/love3peaks

There’s been a lot of press recently about Affleck’s Palace closing down. We can assure you it’s all lies. See you there on the 12th. (Please spread the word.)

Unfortunately, due to filming commitments, Ben Affleck will not be attending.

We were recently invited to the McNaughton Review in Gleneagles. Previous years had seen the review take place in Marbella, Venice and Monte Carlo, but 2008 saw us fly to Scotland on the same weekend that the UK was due its biggest storms in twenty years. Yes, it was wet, and yes, England lost to Scotland in the rugby, but no, it didn’t stop us having a good time. Activities laid on by McNaughton included clay pigeon shooting, and scurry driving, which I imagined as some sort of 4×4 scrambling. When I was told it involved horses, I figured it was something like the chariot scene from Ben Hur. As the clip below shows, I wasn’t disappointed.

That’s me, top speed. Think my horse was called fudge or spodge or puzzle or something. As Sir Arnold Edward Trevor Bax once said, you’ve should try everything once except incest and Morris dancing. (Although Arnie should have probably added suicide to that list.) Anyway, it was a successful weekend, crowned by not only winning the Direct Mail/ Promotional category for Chavs & Scallies, but also joint overall winners of the Design section.

Thanks to everyone who helped organise it – Tony, Phil, Mick, and apologies that it’s taken 2 weeks to post about it. Hope to see you all again next year. Somewhere hot would be nice.

Tuesday night was the 2008 Design Week Awards Ceremony. We had all our eggs in one basket with our 2 nominations in the ‘Promotional Brochures’ category. We were chuffed to bits that we got a commendation for our London College of Arts set of Prospectuses for Chelsea, Wimbledon & Camberwell. We were chuffed even more when we won the category with our Umbro Control Book… so congratulations to all involved.It was a pretty good night for Manchester, with Mark Studio, Thoughtful and The Chase all picking up awards - so nice work guys!However, perhaps the biggest achievement of the night goes to Dave Palmer, our creative director, for being described by the compere as looking like a Toni & Guy hairdresser. That’s what you get for dressing like Jean Paul Gaultier without the hat. Dave’s hair straighteners have also sadly broken this morning, so if anyone cares to donate a good pair of GHDs, he’d be really grateful.

Not many people will have heard of David Canter. In the 1950’s, he’d read a lot about the health benefits of unrefined wholefoods and a vegetarian diet. By the 1960’s he’d identified a bit of a problem with sticking to such a diet. It can be mind-numbingly boring and involve eating meals that don’t taste of much.In the early 60’s David had an idea to create a chain of predominantly salad restaurants that aimed to make tasty wholefood recipes and interesting vegetarian meals.”In contrast to the traditional tired lettuce that makes the appetite wilt too, these salads could change the eater’s whole view of vegetables.” - he said, as he opened his first restaurant in Carnaby Street. More followed.He called them Cranks - because in those days his meat-reducer lifestyle was probably seen as a bit cranky.

Though Cranks became a highly successful early pioneer of vegetarianism and a very cool brand in the swinging sixties, the brand fell on hard times until it was bought by our Nando’s client, The Grocery Company who have been working hard to restore Cranks to the full glory it deserves. Look out for their sandwiches, wraps, bread and ready meals in places like Waitrose and Sainsbury’s. They’re delicious.They’ve asked us to work with them on a branding project.There’s nothing more rewarding than working on a brand with an interesting story to tell.

A nice piece about LOVE in The Drum. Maybe this year we’ll try to win the “Hybrid Design, Advertising and Digital Agency Of The Year Award” if such an award exists.

Our digital geniuses put together a brilliant pitch to re-design the Crown paint website and overhaul the general digital strategy for Crown. We were pitching against Digerati and Code.

It was one of those pitches that couldn’t have gone better on the day. It was also really enjoyable to present. We were really proud of the work and the Crown clients seemed impressed with our understanding of the Crown brand and the issues it faces.

But sadly, after waiting nervously for a couple of weeks for the result - we found out we lost out to Code. Shame.

So, well done to Code who have, I guess, consolidated their relationship with Crown after doing various projects with them in the past. We’d like to think that we pushed you all the way and we look forward to taking you guys on in a few more ‘head to heads’ next year.

In the meantime - congratulations to the LOVE team for producing some great work. We’ll be watching Code’s progress on Crown very closely….

Just when we were looking for an excuse to continue the festive celebrations, we received a phone call from Andrew at Taylors of Harrogate to say we’d won the pitch to produce a new national advertising campaign. Woo-hoo!There’s no better feeling than winning pitches. Even better, the decision was made really promptly (we pitched on Friday). And best of all, we’re really excited about producing the winning work.Unusually for LOVE, we went into the pitch with a range of 5 different creative ideas and intentionally didn’t make a recommendation. Instead we got the ideas on the table and used the time we had with the Taylors team to talk through which route was right for the brand for next year.Sometimes this approach works and sometimes it doesn’t, but this time round it was the right approach to take.There’s a real desire from Taylors Of Harrogate to create a fresh, modern, vibrant and confident campaign for their coffee range. It’s really great to work with a clients who are keen to develop less ordinary advertising ideas.
We’re off to the pub to celebrate.

Chris, Jono, Leanda and the rest of the digital chaps have just won themselves another juicy project. Zygo is a mobile social networking brand that Techcrunch this week described as “UK’s Twitter, but with revenues”.

So far, we’ve developed a new identity for Zygo (designed by Gre) and created a holding page and corporate page. The all singing, all dancing website for a Beta launch is in development and due very soon.

We did our creative pitch to Andrew, Clare and Kevin at Taylors Of Harrogate on Friday. Pitches are always a bit nerve-racking, so it was nice to receive the usual warm welcome from our clients at reception. Fingers crossed.