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Last night a team of Albion’s Account Handlers were lucky enough to attend the last IPA 44 Club ‘Big Achievers’ event with Johnny Hornby. Johnny is a true Account Man to the bone, a founding partner of CHI and widely known as one of the most respected Ad Men around. We were in for a lesson in 20 years of Account Handling experience, and he didn’t disappoint.

Johnny talked through some vital aspects of what, in his opinion, makes a really great account handler. He explained how the ‘old school’ measures of traditional account handling still firmly had their place – or sharp pencils and clean note pads, as he put it. When commenting on his days on the Ogilvy graduate programme, he spoke fondly of ‘The University of Advertising’, and how he originally had wild dreams of becoming a creative.

Interestingly, Johnny divides the Account Handler stereotype into 2 halves – those who are on-the-button organisers with great project management skills, and those who are born relationship builders who thrive on inspiring creative people and giving confidence to their clients. He admitted he himself was the epitome of the latter  – even going as far as to say a previous boss had once stated ‘We need to get you a number 2 fast….or fire you’.

As Claire Beale, Editor of Campaign, probed Johnny with questions on his ‘playboy image’ in the Ad world, he was quick to dismiss this as the way to go for young account types, adding that ‘working hard and playing hard’ is the measure of his success to date. Even stating categorically that although he loves mixing business with pleasure, this doesn’t always work out the way it’s intended.

To sum up a great 30 minutes with one of the industry’s top men – Johnny hit the nail on the head by saying that to be really successful in the often self-indulgent Ad world, you must really love what you’re doing. ‘Our industry is going at 120mph’ he added, and pointed out how we must be constantly listening to our clients; knowing what’s going on in the industry in every media channel; and never forgetting that the over-supply of agencies wanting to take your breakfast is even more apparent now than ever before.

One of Johnny’s best quotes of the evening is still ringing in my ears – ‘I’ve always wondered where average Account Directors end up…probably not in a good place.’ Inspiration and motivation were the order of the evening, and we certainly got served a plate full. Thanks Johnny.

Yesterday (Monday 24^th May) a few of us popped along to the Big Draw event being held at the British Museum.

The Big Draw this year celebrates its 10^th year and is an event that runs for the whole month of October which encourages communities to come together to do simply that – draw.  The event yesterday awarded artists and communities for their contributions in 2009 and was truly inspiring. There were lots of activities going on around the venue including people making paper flowers, calligraphy writing, bug drawing which we each got the chance to add our contributions to on a display of ladybirds, though Nick’s turned out to be more of a ‘manbird’.

Albion heard about The Big Draw when Jon (one of our creatives) explained what they do. Inspired, we wanted to create something that helped fulfil the Campaign for Drawing’s mission of getting more people to draw. So Jon created ‘Draw and Fold Over’, an online adaptation of the traditional parlour game ‘picture consequences’. The idea is to combine the feeling of drawing by hand with the social benefits of the internet. Families and friends can draw together from countries around the world. The game naturally encourages you to send it to your friends, meaning more and more people enjoy the rewards of drawing.

The game was launched by The Big draw yesterday who got 4 artists onboard including Posy Simmonds to give it a go with a live on stage demo – thankfully the wifi worked!  And this was the outcome:

Following on from this www.drawandfoldover.com is now live.  You should have a go and pass it onto your friends – it’s great fun and will take you back to your childhood we promise!

If you haven’t already read about it in the news – Albion has won the business of two iconic British brands Airmiles and Visit Britain.

Some of you may already know that Airmiles, is one of the UK’s leading travel reward scheme. They have over two million active members collecting miles from their  everyday spending – yes that’s right you can get miles from the simplest things like cat food, petrol or a bottle of wine. They partner with Tesco, Shell and Lloyds TSB allowing members to use miles for free flights, hotels, holidays and days out to name but a few. If you’re not a member already I bet by the end of this blog post you will be…

I’m sure you will have all at some time visited the Visit Britain website whether it was for yourself, a friend or a member of your family to find out interesting or fun things you could do.  They are Britain’s national tourism agency, responsible for marketing Britain overseas as well as working with thousands of organisations in the UK to market Britain to visitors from the UK and around the world.

For both brands we’ll be developing fully integrated campaigns across all advertising platforms as well as using social networking sites.

Thanks to everyone that worked on the pitch (you know who you are) and helped us win these two great clients.

We’re looking forward to working with them both later on this year.

Here’s the news in case you missed it:

http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/1002952/Albion-develop-Airmiles-creative/?DCMP=ILC-SEARCH

http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/1001445/Albion-becomes-digital-lead-Visit-Britain/?DCMP=ILC-SEARCH

As the domestic football season draws to a close for 2009/2010, the final whistle has been blown on our highly acclaimed integrated marketing campaign for Betfair – The Betfair Front Room.

It’s been a rollercoaster of emotions with plenty of laugh or cry moments, but what we’ve managed to pull off has been nothing short of incredible. We’ve created and aired over 60 TV commercials and over 80 pieces of online content…in 8 months. Yes that’s right, just 8 months.

When we kicked off the campaign we raised plenty of eyebrows.‘You’re going to shoot a new TV commercial every 2 weeks…and you’re going to use real football fans… and the whole thing is going to be unscripted from start to finish?’ they asked. We smiled in the face of our critics who said it couldn’t be done as we tore up the TV advertising rule book.

The campaign hasn’t just got people talking in advertising circles. We smashed the business objectives set out by Betfair with overall acquisitions up by 50% and the highest number of new sign-ups ever outside of a major football tournament. We’re still smiling. But, the icing on the cake had to be the bonus of Betfair topping 3 million customers during the campaign, becoming the World’s Biggest Betting Community. Our faces are beginning to ache.

So as we throw our proverbial football strips back in the kit bag for this season, we’re super excited for the World Cup activity with Betfair, and with lots more thought inspiring creative briefs in circulation – we’re already well into our pre-season regime.

A massive thank you to all involved: a brave client, an extremely hard working production team in Hotspur & Argyle, a fabulous football-nut Director in Theo Delaney and of course, the team here at Albion – A special mention to Matt, Petrina, Andre, Sam and Neil.