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So if you don’t know the story, here it is:

26th April. FIBA announced that, unlike the rest of Team GB, the British Basketball team had to win a series of games to earn their spot at the 2012 Olympics. Even though we’re the host nation!

We’ve got the best team in years. So with Sam Neter of Hoopsfix and Sillky Slim, hype-man, Albion are on a mission to fill those games with the biggest, loudest crowds ever. To inspire and give GB the boost they need to qualify for the Olympics.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks with British basketball. Sam and Sillky are running around the country. Meeting people, charming the public and going to games. Whatever they can. And people are starting to get behind the campaign. Including Lenny Henry, Keith Lemon and Jamelia!

Crowds at the game are growing steadily and are getting louder. People are joining the Facebook group. We’ve sold out of T-shirts – but are ordering more. The website backbritishbasketball.com is going strong, There are loads of interviews and videos and more importantly people are buying tickets.

And it’s working.

GB are 5 wins for 5! And it really feels like the fans are the one’s giving them that extra boost to win, what are very close games. The pride, energy and GB love is electric. Especially from Sam and Sillky. We have one final home game left in Liverpool. Thurs 26th August. Not long to go. But GB are playing better than they ever have. They’re the underdog team and they’re showing their worth.

We’ve created a film about the exploits leading up to the first game. And to introduce you to the players – they are top blokes, who clearly love representing the country. For anyone out there with a cinema we’d love for you to screen it.

We’ve started our own noise-makers with the Balldogs. People who receive free tickets to home games in return for creating an atmosphere. Something GB games have always sorely lacked. They even reside in the Dog Pound. And you can clearly hear them during the highlights, led by Sillky on his trusty megaphone.

Channel 4 even interviewed Sam and Sillky and it was broadcast on Sunday. Against the backdrop of a great win by GB against the Ukraine. With Deng pulling out all the stops during the final quarter. You can clearly hear the Dog Pound shouting the “Deng” chant, created during our campaign. And for eagle eyed amongst you, this handsome writer even pops up in the crowd. Skip to 25:48 for the BBB interview and 43:50 for Luol Deng’s clutch performance.

Also, Sam and Albion’s Creative Director Andre Moreira even got a mention in the Wall St Journal. Exciting. In an interesting article about the state of the British game. “British stink at basketball”? Well, we’ll show you. You big American journal of Wall. “Balls St” to that! Ha ha hum.

What we are seeing is that there are very passionate fans out there for British basketball. And people that are simply passionate about our nation and want British sports people to do well. Even President Obama is a fan of Britain’s Deng. Why isn’t our Prime Minister getting behind our team? Or the Olympic committee? Or even the UK press? Basketball could be the next rowing or cycling if we get into the Olympics.

So if you still have time after reading all that. Watch the film or buy some tickets. Or just click “like” on the Facebook page. After all, with our football teams cocking it up over the summer we should at least show some respect for the underdog GB team who are battling their way to an Olympics they should by rights already be in.

Our Team. In our Olympics. By any means necessary.

After the thrills and spills of a highly entertaining production, tomorrow sees the launch of our fantastic new ‘Middleman’ campaign for Betfair.

It’s Betfair’s biggest ever marketing campaign to date (see this article on Brand Republic)  and we’ve been really lucky to work with a cracking international client team in Hammersmith and Malta in our bid to position the brand as ‘The World’s Biggest Betting Community’ (yes, we’ve even got that claim through those lovely people at Clearcast).

The idea’s a simple one: on Betfair, you cut out the middleman which means you bet direct against 3 million other people. And that of course means better odds and much bigger wins (than all those traditional high street bookmakers).

As you’d expect for a brand like Betfair, it’s a fully integrated campaign with a massive online push that kicks off this weekend with the first ever YouTube takeover by a betting brand. A massive coup for all of us involved and a nice little cameo from Andy Gray of Sky Sports, so watch out for that from midnight on Saturday…

We’re also going to be on TV throughout the season’s live sport coverage (football, horse racing, golf, cricket, you name it…) with a couple of hilarious ads showing how middlemen (yes, it’s those traditional bookies again) get in the way of people trying to betting and add no value.

A big well done and a massive thank you to everyone involved at Betfair, all our partners and of course here at Albion (too many to mention in this post, but you know who you are).

Look out for it over the weekend.

Here’s a sneak preview for you:

Since its launch two months ago Draw and Fold Over is still going strong and yesterday we were contacted by Mark Sinclair at Creative Review who had just stumbled across it. In his words ‘I love it, lots of fun‘ – read more on his blog post here and if you still haven’t had a go yourself, you really should. www.drawandfoldover.com

The much anticipated Matt’s House video content we produced for BE Broadband is now live! (You might still remember the pictures of our very own Mark and Gav from the shoot….)
It stars BE Broadband’s very own Forum Manager Matt’s genius is usually locked safely away in his brain. But we take a step not only through Matt’s front door, but into his mind’s eye, to see your internet connection the way he does. See if you can pick up some tips to make your connection faster in ‘Matt’s House’. See it at www.bethere.co.uk/mattshouse
This is the first content piece to come out of BE’s ongoing Real World Speed creative platform, which is an introduction to the world of hacking together the future of access – A ‘top-tips’ video series to educate BE Members (and everyone else) on how to seek out that extra performance from their copper wire.
It is the fact that many internet users don’t get the speed that their ISP has promised through their advertising that has led BE to adopt the Real World Speed proposition. Most people struggle with their broadband speed. They get much less than they were quoted for and they don’t have an active community within their ISP to get help. With these very creative online videos, we not only showed how enthusiastic BE Broadband is about, well, broadband, but also how people can maximise their speed with these simple 2-minute videos, even non-geeky types can optimise their speed.

We’ve just finished making the promos for Channel five’s Don’t Stop Believing. If you are a Glee fan you’re in luck. If not, you may well dig this show too. It plays out live, starting late July and is five’s biggest investment ever in creating an entertainment program. Unlike most talent shows, the interest wont hinge on the cruelty of putting down the rejects. Each week 6 groups of auditioned people go through heats. The groups will be made up all different ages, shapes and sizes of at least five people, but some will contain over 100 individuals.

Our promo aims to capture to capture the upbeat, uncynical nature of the show. We cast over 1000 people for the spot. The real challenge was that we couldn’t feature any of the groups competing in the show as we didn’t want to show favoritism! Some of the groups we have put together ourselves(Simon Cowell eat your heart out), and some of the groups came to us as a team. The yellow group is actually a gospel choir – keep an ear out for Cathy’s voice who is the blonde girl who leads the group – absolutely stunning. The blue team are a barber shop quartet; eh, well actually we ended up making them a triplet. Within the main group at the end is The Choir With No Name made up of homeless people.

You’ll notice a pianola at the beginning of the spot that Emma Bunton activates. We managed to find the only living person in the UK who is able to program pianolas with the original paper-style script. He told us that suitable paper is becoming increasingly hard to find. The scrolls are hand-perforated although he does now use a computer to map out the notes. The 80 year old who owns the pianola doesn’t know that his keys were carefully rainbow-ified with colored film. Looks pretty cool though.

The spot was beautifully crafted by Kim Gehrig (and her ever patient producer Dom) at Academy. With music by the audio wizards Nick and Ollie at Soundtree.

Earlier in the week you might have heard that we won the Jose Cuervo account, one of the oldest most recognised and awarded Tequila brands – worldwide.

To celebrate we thought what better place than a Mexican bar along the road where (guided by a knowledgeable barman) we tested out a number of Cuervo cocktails. The girls had some rather large pink ones (very SATC) and the boys went more macho with shorts followed by an odd looking green chaser (which the barman claimed to be good for you).

We think our night out has put us in good stead to work on the Cuervo portfolio of products and has given us an insight into the product to help us deliver an international brand positioning and creative platform.

One thing we learnt during the night is that Tequila definitely makes you happy!

Work will roll out later this year.

If you haven’t heard yet – Albion are going to be working with FIVE to help them launch a new TV show ‘Don’t Stop Believing’, with an integrated advertising campaign.

The show is due to air later this summer and will see FIVE scan the UK for groups that can sing and dance who will then be choreographed and judged by a team of industry experts, with Emma Bunton hosting along the way.

If you’re a Glee fan (or Journey) you’ll already be familiar with the title and this could be an opportunity for you to achieve fame as the show also offers the chance for the public to join a specially created DSB Supergroup who will represent the UK in the international Glee club circuit in the U.S.

We’re all very excited in the office about the show (and the competition).  Some of us have already been warming up our vocal chords, stocked up on honey and lemon and are even thinking of turning one of our meeting rooms into a studio so we can practise our singing and dance moves – we’re ready to pop, lock and drop – are you?…

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.

Last October, while the BNP leader Nick Griffin was sweating on BBC Question Time, one of our creatives built slapnickgriffin. It was a simple site where people could express their dislike of the man, by ‘voting with the back of your hand’. It really struck a nerve, and quickly went viral, getting 20 million slaps in just 5 days. We had to take it down when we received nasty threats from far right groups. (For that same reason, we’re not crediting the creative who dreamt up and made it, in their own time – but they’re awesome.)

With an election about to be called any day, we wanted to do something new that took the slapping idea into mainstream politics. And here it is. The Slapometer.

The Slapometer is ‘watch along’ website that lets you ‘vote with the back of your hand’ by slapping along to the live televised election debates. It’s a way for people to express their opinion on the leaders’ performances during the debate, by virtually ‘slapping’ them when they say something particularly wrong. Live graphs show what everybody is feeling, in real time.

We think the slapping idea reflects the sentiment surrounding this election: The dislike of all politicians, and the feeling that there’s no one to vote for – only against. Of course we’re not advocating violence, it’s a ‘Carry On’ slap, in the grand tradition of ridiculous political protest e.g. egging, flanning, Spitting Image.

As well as being fun, we think it’s actually useful. It’s a version of the dial tests popular in US political polling. And we think it’s a much more nuanced tool than, for example, Channel 4’s simple poll after Ask The Chancellors.

If you like it, please pass it on. We want to get as many people as possible slapping along during the debates (which we think are likely to be on 15^th, 22^nd and 29^th of April).

Thanks to the team at Albion who have worked in their own time to pull this off. You know who you are.

http://www.slapometer.com