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If you haven’t heard of The Betfair Front Room by now, you can’t call yourself a real football fan. Our highly acclaimed integrated campaign which puts Betfair, the world’s biggest betting community, at the heart of football fandom, is now in full swing with a whole host of tantalizing TV adverts and online content under our belts. (check it out here)

But we’re not stopping there.  With our 5 über-passionate (bordering on obsessive) football fans feeling very comfortable on their inflatable Chesterfields, we thought it was about time we mixed things up, and so last night’s shoot was just a little bit special.

Enter Andy Gray, former international footballer, seasoned commentator and world-renowned Sky Sports pundit.

Yes, you heard it here first – this is an exclusive. So be sure to check out the first airing of Andy Gray taking on the Front Room lads in style during the coverage of the Champions League second-leg game between Manchester United and AC Milan at Old Trafford on 10^th March.

Massive big-up to all involved, especially to our clients at Betfair, and of course to our director Theo Delaney and the crew at Hotspur & Argyle. Finally, here’s one for the scrap book – our own Neil Potter and Matt Roskill rubbing shoulders quite literally with the big man. Although Matt’s jumper has either shrunk in the wash, or he’s choking on Neil’s excessive use of perfumed hair spray. In the words of Andy Gray: ‘Right on the money’.

After a successful pitch to Albion’s Senior Management we are sending Senior Planners Hannah Yelin and Sam Ashken to Austin, Texas as the official reporters for Contagious Magazine and Brand Republic’s new Tech Blog, The Wall.

They will be flying out next Thursday to South by SouthWest, the most important industry conference of the year, as our man and woman on the ground, reporting back, in real time.

The best of all they encounter will be summarised in a series of films, blog posts, Venn diagrams and even T-shirts.

Check out the blog, here, which has already set the twittersphere ablaze since it launched last night. Follow them at @HannahYelin , @samashken and #VennSXSW.

Yesterday we enjoyed our best Albion Society yet. We were filled to the rafters, with people having to stand at the back to fit everyone in. Those who couldn’t make it were following on Twitter, like @debkhan who tweeted “@albionsociety stellar panel -fed up to miss it-following up via Twitter love-in”. So massive thanks to all those in the audience who set the twittersphere alight with your quotes during the session. It’s not surprising that this was our most talked about Albion Society with a high calibre panel second to none.

Alan Rusbridger, Editor in Chief of the Guardian Media Group talked about a series of interesting binaries facing both journalism and politics now: Us Vs. Them; Open Vs Closed; and with direct  reference to Murdoch’s Paywalls, Pay Vs. Free.  ”If you are open that means you want to be part of the way the web works rather than simply on the web,” whereas, being authoritarian, top down and proprietorial, whether in politics and journalism, is ” just completely antithetical to the way everything is going”.

Justine Roberts, founder of the influential online community Mumsnet, hailed this as “ the first social media election. We have a  have a power in agenda setting, because all the journalists and therefore the politicians are all watching social media”. However she dismissed suggestions that this made communities such as Mumsnet the new block vote saying that if anyone tried to tell her members that they all had to do the same thing, they’d be more “like an octopus with PMT” all going their own direction.

Tess Alps, Thinkbox Chief Executive, praised the space for criticism provided by the  mediation of professional journalists: “I don’t want politicians and the public to always have a direct unmediated relationship because next time it will be Nick Griffin. I think Goebbels would have loved the internet for that reason!” She made an impassioned plea for us all to continue supporting professional journalism saying “Politicians without online communities would be worse, but online communities without journalism would be utterly meaningless.”

Dan Thain, Senior strategist at Bluestate talked about how digital campaigning doesn’t replace real world campaigning, rather it is a way of stimulating “real activism in the real world. The fundamentals haven’t changed. Peer to peer contact is still much more important and high value.” Digital campaigning however, enabled the two important elements to any successful political campaign “Money and Mobilisation” a strategy they’ve developed by “looking at participation, what matters, what gets results – seeing what works and focussing relentlessly on that”.

Read what the Telegraph and Brand Republic had to say.

Next time Albion Society gets together at Patisserie Valerie will be in June. Make sure we have your details if you want to be invited to come along.

Sometimes advertising delivers one of those Really Proud Moments.

Really Proud Moments usually include:
- Your mum seeing some of your work.
- Your mum seeing some of your work and understanding it.
- Your mum seeing some of your work, understanding it and actually liking it.

Well, we were really chuffed to make it onto Wired Magazine’s updated London silicon roundabout. Another Really Proud Moment. The original 2008 list compiled by Dopplr’s CTO included 15 tech start ups all based around Old Street. In the updated map we one of only a few creative agencies to be noted alongside some of our favorite tech brands: Tweetdeck, Moo and Last.fm. Oh, and we are at number 69 (cue childish chuckles – double proudness).

A few months ago it was realized that the walls here at Albion were a tad bare, so the management saw fit to get the team to design and paint a mural on the kitchen wall… It’s a bloody mess!