Our Logbook

Today was the day that The Famous Grouse team at Albion undertook Trusadh. Trusadh is a traditional Scottish Gaelic word meaning ‘gathering for success’ – and when you’re rounding the day off tasting the Grouse portfolio, then how could it not be? Derek and Alison put us through our paces, as we talked Grouse (naturally), whisky (well, of course), Gloag family history (someone should really have told us we’d get tested on it, our 11.30am dram clearly eroded my brain cells), marrying of malts (apparently it’s like a box of chocolates – hmm, we trusted Derek on this one), the master blender (Good old Gordon), ‘nosing’ (Steve reckons he’s found another calling aside from copy), brand values (involved dancing…yes really…and Neil was a natural). Brilliant fun and great inspiration for all of us (but if Matt’s reading this then you didn’t miss a thing and we didn’t get any free gifts. Honest.)

It’s official: We’re not going to be taking part in the Skype pitch. So we thought it was time to reflect a little on what’s been an astonishing journey.

Skype wasn’t Albion’s founding client, but we’ve worked with them for nearly 5 years. During that time we helped them to grow from zero to nearly half-a-billion users.

And also over those 5 years, our work with Skype became emblematic of everything we set-up Albion to do:

• Helping to shape a disruptive modern business idea.
• Creating an iconic modern brand.
• Growing the brand by getting people to talk to each other about it.
• Working in a truly collaborative way, with lines totally blurred between client and agency.
• Doing anything and everything to help realise their opportunity. And doing it nearly all in-house.
• Doing some cracking, effective work.

Skype called the pitch because they need a different kind of agency now to help with their global expansion.

Of course we’re sad we won’t be involved for too much longer. But we’re immensely proud that we were involved for so long. Skype is a brand that genuinely changes people’s lives. It’s been a privilege to play our part in that.

Thanks to Niklas and Janus for giving us the chance. And to Saul, Malthe, Henry, Simon, Suchi, Buzz, Henrique and Neil who’ve been such great clients. And to the hundreds of other brilliant, entrepreneurial people we met along the way (most of whom are now running their own brilliant start-ups).

We’ll still be working with Skype for a few months yet, and we’ve got some great new work breaking soon. But then we move on. We’re already working on the next crop of pioneering new brands, and maybe one of them has the potential to be just as big.

And finally, for now, this: Only a couple of years ago, hardly anybody in adland knew what Skype was. Now it’s the account everybody wants to work on. Funny eh? We wish nothing but the best to the new team, whoever they turn out to be. But a plea: As loyal and passionate Skype users, please don’t fuck it up!

Oops. We caused a little bit of a stir yesterday, when we commented on some inaccuracies in a blog post on Skype by new communications agency Campbell Lace (beta).

If you’re not sure who they are, CLB are a new agency set-up by Robert Campbell and Gary Lace who have had founding or senior roles in big advertising agencies such as RKCR, TBWA, and Grey. They are, in their own words, “an agency that is only three months old but desperate…”

Want to find out more? They have a one-page website, and Campaign host a blog for them.

And they’ve written some interesting stuff on their blog, that we agree wholeheartedly with, about collaboration and entrepreneurialism. They’ve also written some disarmingly honest stuff about their struggles with technology and their struggles with social media.

They also seem to specialise in something we’ve done in the past – crashing pitch lists. (Talking their way onto a ‘closed’ list at the last minute.) We did that on eBay in 2007 and went on to win.

Their latest blog post was an attempt to do that on the Skype pitch. Which again we admire. Who wouldn’t want to work on Skype? But in their enthusiasm they seemed to get a few facts wrong. We tried, but failed, to stop ourselves correcting them in the comments.

Here is CLB’s original post:

LET BETA HYPE SKYPE…

For the first time in our short but incredibly enjoyable history, we are going to use our blog to unashamedly get something off our chest. At the same time, hopefully, we’ll make it onto the radar of one of the most, if not the most, brilliant technological innovations of the last 2000 years. Skype.

Hands up anyone who knows what Skype is? Hands up anyone who knows how Skype works? Hands up anyone who knows how Skype charge you? Hands up anyone who has ever used Skype?

We ask because we believe passionately from the bottom of our Skypelorn hearts that Skype is one of the great untold stories of our generation.

In amongst the Facebooks and Twitters of this world, if anyone had told us five years ago that you would be able to make telephone calls to anybody from anywhere in the world and not be charged for them, while at the same time being able to see their lovely shiny happy face on a computer screen, we would have thought that they were having a laugh.

Well they weren’t, because Skype exists. It’s brilliant but nobody knows what it is or how to use it. Why is that ?

SEE NO SKYPE? SPEAK NO SKYPE? HEAR NO SKYPE?

The overwhelming conclusion we draw is that Skype has consistently and religiously worked with communications agencies that have failed to define one of the best customer propositions we’ve ever encountered.

Millions, no, maybe billions of people are gagging for Skype. Its just that they don’t know it. Skype needs to happen and we’d like to help. We think your product is the best in the world and we’d like you to call us.

Our telephone number is 0207 734 2949 and that is the direct line of one of the founding partners of an agency that is only three months old but desperate, yes desperate, to work with you. Please call.

And here is our response:

Hi Garry. We thought this post was very interesting and a ballsy attempt to muscle onto a pitch list. But, as the agency who’ve worked with Skype for the last 5 years, we couldn’t help but comment on a couple of little inaccuracies in what you said.

Firstly, plenty of people know exactly what Skype is, how it works and why they love it. For example, Skype has 70-odd-percent brand awareness in ‘mature’ Western European markets. And 480m users around the world.

Secondly, you describe Skype as an “untold story”. We think that’s only true if you see mainstream advertising as the only way to tell a story. Thousands of people are telling stories about Skype all the time. And Skype tell their own story all the time. But they just don’t do it in paid for media. Try a blog search, a Facebook search, a Twitter search, or get on Skype and talk to some of those hundreds of millions of users and you’ll soon see.

Thirdly you seem to imply that, in contrast to Skype, Facebook and Twitter are more successful marketing stories. They’ve definitely generated more UK column inches just lately, but globally it’s a different story. Plus Skype is twice the size of Facebook and growing almost as fast.

Lastly, we not sure what’s needed, more than anything else, is to ‘define the proposition’. To go back to your examples, we’d love to hear your take what Facebook and Twitter’s ’single minded propositions’ are? And assuming they each have one, how they’ve contributed to their success? We think modern digital brands are rich because they can be different things to different people at different times. How I use Skype for project management at work is totally different to how I use it to say goodnight to my daughter.

One last thought. We don’t know if yours is the right agency to take Skype on the next stage of the journey, but we think you’d probably be better off leaving your Skypename as a contact, not a phone number  But that’s just us being mean. So, to make amends, if you do get on the pitch list, we’d like to extend an invitation to you (and any other agencies pitching) to come in and have a chat, and we’ll try to pass on some of our genuine love for the brand.
 
Unfortunately it came across as more ranty than it was meant to be. I think the way Campaign’s blog loses the formatting of comments doesn’t help. And someone called our last point about leaving their Skypename “snarky” and “knowing and acerbic”, which again it wasn’t meant to be – we were just trying to be helpful. The people at Skype don’t have phones. They use Skype.

Anyway, there was quite a reaction to what we wrote on Twitter. Here are a few of the comments:

• “Albion want a chat, CLB want to talk at people. My money is on Albion.”
• “Stunned by the blog entry, naive isn’t the word esp. that he didn’t include a skypename – schoolboy error. Gr8 response”
• “Desperate Agency pipes up about Skype ad strategy. @albionlondon responds! Brilliant response!”
• “Just to say, your snarky ‘perhaps you should have left your skype username’ point was my favourite. campbell lace beta fail… “
• Who doesn’t love an agency cat-fight? Albion respond to CLBeta’s thoughts on Skype. Meow.
• Touche! Its fairly obvious who comes out on top in this little battle!

Thank you tweeple. But you do seem rather to have seen it as a ’spat’.

So we just wanted to use *our* blog to clear the air. We’re not really the kind of agency to have a pop at others. Maybe we did get a bit carried away and overdo the snark. It’s just that we’re feeling understandably sensitive about Skype at the moment.

So, Garry and Robert, no hard feelings. And if you do crash the list, we’ll make good on our promise to tell you whatever we know (and legally can).

UPDATE – We’re all friends now, and looking forward to going to their next bloggers’ breakfast.

Our Lily’s Kitchen packaging has been spotted by the people over at The Sunday Telegraph’s Stella Magazine. Good stuff. Go on, treat that other member of the family. The magazine thinks it’s wise to.

“It’s not often you’ll find us cooing over a tin of pet food, but Lily’s Kitchen has packaging to challenge many an posh organic brand.”

Air New Zealand sponsored the Kiwi day of this year’s Toast Festival on Clapham Common. They had two Premium Economy tickets back to NZ to win on the day. How best to promote it was our bag – with the one mandatory that we get an email address of anyone who entered.

So we built a 12m x 5m map of New Zealand. Apart from missing out Stewart Island, it was perfect. The winner would be the person placing their flag closest to a hidden Kiwi 10c coin. The winner chose Matua, at the north of the North Island. His name is Richard Middleton.  And he’s going home to see his Gran.

We had over 1500 flags put in the map which meant we also collected 1500 email addresses. Proof that sometimes doing something analogue is the best way of doing something digital.