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.

Last night we went along to the annual NABS Little Big Bash and auction.

A lot of the auction items were interesting, but one proved too tempting to resist - “one logo design provided free of charge by bjl“.

Now, we could dwell here on the irony of paying less for a company identity than the sum donated for two Take That tickets, but we’ll leave that for another day.

Instead, here’s what we propose.

If anyone out there has any suggestions for a worthy recipient of bjl’s extremely kind logo design offer, please make your suggestion below.

(By the way, we found ourselves bidding against Sandra Tinker who needed a logo for her stables, so LOVE will do that logo for Sandra leaving bjl free for another ‘organisation in need’.)

Not only will we ensure bjl receive a very thorough briefing and work to the very legendary LOVE quality standards (ahem), we’ll also showcase their handiwork right here on this site as a big thank you for their generosity.

Suggestions please.

Thursday night was the Roses Design Awards. It’s always difficult to blog about these things, especially if you do well. What can you say? Well, since I asked, I thought I’d answer. According to Blogging About Awards (2007, Revised Edition) there are five correct ways to approach the subject:

1) Show off (but no one likes a show off)
2) Remain modest (does anyone really buy that any more?)
3) Thank everyone (don’t really want to do a Gwyenth)
4) LOST poster (did this last week)
5) Use squirrels

Fortunately of the four golds, silver and two bronze awards we won, we only managed to lose one of them. It may possibly be buried somewhere in South Manchester. Dave says there’s a job and a bag of nuts going for anyone who returns it safely, along with the Fresh ones.

Chris, Phil and Alistair are in Kinsale at The Shark Advertising Awards. Chris simply sent me this image and a few words: ‘Kinsale is proving very interesting…’ Read into that what you will.

London, England-based trade title Campaign have apparently written about our account win for global football brand Umbro. We say apparently, because we haven’t read it yet. Campaign doesn’t get to Manchester, England until Friday. Instead, Gareth in Boston, USA told us about it last night as did Terry in Bangkok. Chuffed to bits about the win. We now just need to work out how to log in to “Campaign Online” so we can read about stuff at the same time as the rest of the world.