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Albionites Jon and Stephen, recently stumbled across the BBC comedy ‘Urgent Genius‘ competition. The aim of the game was to create a great piece of online comedy in just 48 hours (we’re told they managed to do this in just 24 though!) We love it when team members get creative in their spare time, so check out the boys’ side project here.

As some of you may know, we recently joined forces with The Marketing Academy as a faculty partner, which we are really excited about! The Marketing Academy is a fantastic scholarship program that aims to take today’s marketing talent and develop them into future business leaders. There are over 80 mentors and 26 coaches from all areas of marketing, communication and advertising on hand to help develop and coach these lucky scholars!

In order to secure a place on this free scheme, the applicant must be nominated by someone else (e.g – their manager). There are only 28 places available and the nomination deadline closes on the 1^st March 2011. Do you know someone who deserves a place? Then get voting here!

Our friends at The Guardian have put together a showcase page of the best advertising videos for 2010, called ‘Creative Lounge’…..guess who clocked in at number 5 with our Epson Video!

Check out our handy work below:

To check out the full article just click here.

What a way to end 2010!

Phew, that was quite some 2010. We can’t believe it’s nearly over already. But we end it with the warm glow of satisfaction.

(Nearly) Digital Agency of the Year

We were very proud to be announced as a runner up in Campaign’s Digital Agency of the Year. They said some very nice things about us:

“With its emphasis on innovation, entrepreneurialism and the power of social ideas, the agency is a strong indicator as to where the digital sector – and, it could be argued, the entire industry – is heading.”

Our Creative Partner Nick Darken was also mentioned as one of the top ten digital creatives. All the more excuse to sink a few Cuervos during the festive season (did we mention that we won the global Jose Cuervo tequila account this year?)

Fantastic work for fantastic clients

What we’re most proud of though is the work we’ve made this year. Here are a few highlights:

Air New Zealand ‘Forget Everything You Know About Flying’

Outdoor and digital campaign to launch their innovative new product (e.g. flat beds in economy) across Europe.

giffgaff ‘The Man’

Launch campaign for this O2-owned mobile network that we took from beta to top 5 contender for Marketing Society ‘Brand of the Year’.

Betfair ‘Front Room’

Social TV campaign to move Betfair into mainstream football betting. We made 3 new TV spots every week of the football season.

Epson ‘Engineered for Speed’

Online film and integrated campaign demonstrating the 38ppm speed of Epson’s inkjet to microbusiness owners, in 22 markets worldwide.

Creating our own products

We think the agency of the future will create its own products as a way to road-test new ideas. And we had a few successes in 2010.

Slapometer allowed people to ‘vote with the back of their hand’ in the UK General Election. It received over 90 million slaps, and press coverage around the world.

We’ve just launched the follow-up, TweetJockey. It’s a Twitter-powered popularity poll that allows players to ‘race’ Twitter trends, turning the nation’s obsession with Twitter into an easy-to-watch horse race.

In 2010 we also backed a real fan’s quest to help the British basketball team qualify for the 2012 Olympics against the odds. Back British Basketball was co-funded by Albion and produced in-house.

The Albion Society

Our programme of provocative talks went from strength to strength in 2010.

In February Alan Rusbridger of the Guardian and Justine Roberts of Mumsnet debated ‘digital democracy’. And in September young entrepreneurs Eliza Robeiro and Emi Gal discussed ‘Gen Y activism’ with Mike Butcher of Techcrunch and investor Robin Klein.

We’re planning the next talk in early 2011 with Seedcamp on hot startups and entrepreneurs. Watch your inbox for an invitation.

Merry F**king Christmas

And finally if you’re over-18 and very open-minded about swearing and industry in-jokes, have a look at our Christmas ‘card’. It’s a pastiche of the classic internet meme What The F**k Should I Make For Dinner, and is very sweary. You were warned.

We wish you a fantastic Christmas, and all the best for 2011.

Jason, Liz, Nick, Glyn, and the Team at Albion.

Here at Albion HQ we are delighted to announce that we will be working with not one, but two fantastic new clients in 2011 (Christmas has come early….)

First up we have BookaTable, Europe’s largest online restaurant-booking service (They are currently working with approximately 8000 restaurants worldwide!) We are helping them develop their brand strategy and early next year we will be helping them launch a campaign to raise greater awareness about the company and service they provide.

Secondly we have Charities Aid Foundation, a market leading organization that provides financial services to a huge amount of charities worldwide. We are delighted to be working with CAF (we’ve been doing this secretly for some months but its great to be finally talking about it) and are involved in a variety of areas from brand strategy right through to website design. The new CAF website is due to hit your screens in the New Year. Watch this space…..