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During a dull moment, our Tom Pounder (@gutpap) came across the intriguing Stylate.com, a website for buying ‘stock brands’. The site sells company names – including the baffle-tastic ‘Striplet’, ‘MagicItem’ and ‘HelpTruck’ – with matching logos and domain names. For the bargain price of $250, you can pass the most fun bit of creating a startup to someone else.

Having circulated his find around the agency, Tom inadvertently started an email game of ‘define the brand’ with some of the more obscure company names.

Here are our favourites:

Vehicley

Car rental for people who like to be spoken to like children. “Would you like your vehicley now?”

TempBuy


Are you fed up with things you bought still being there the next day? With TempBuy, you get all the rush of buying something, without the annoyance of actually having to OWN it. You buy, then we break into your house a few hours later and take it back. And best of all, you’ve still paid for it. Why hasn’t anyone thought of this sooner? We’re baffled.

MuteSwitch

The ultimate in noise limitation devices.  Had enough of your wife going on, or the husband who can’t shut up about the cost of that new outfit… just buy Muteswitch.  Developed by Adam Sandler in every film he did for three years, MuteSwitch is the world’s first remote that shuts everyone up.  Through the use of totally unharmful electro-magnetic charges* MuteSwitch has two settings: silenced but awake, or full comatose. Simply pick how much peace & quiet you want.  As used by Jeff Bridges in Iron Man 2.

*tests still ongoing, proof of fatalities was inconclusive

Countmeter

A brilliantly helpful tool for those visiting Transylvania. Helps keep an eye on the number of counts you’re facing at any one time.  Never be caught out and vampirised again with the new Countmeter.  No need for excess wooden stakes, or off-putting breath ever again.

Filmcitizen


Are your neighbours a bit shifty-lookin’? Does their behaviour behind closed curtains raise your suspicions? You need Filmcitizen. Easily spy on humans of any denomination with instant upload to MI5, CrimeWatch or YouPorn. Filter and transition effects coming soon!

Zipperr


Pronounced ‘zip-urgh’, Zipperr is a site dedicated to spoiling your ‘me time’. When you’re feeling frisky and you’re worried about straying from the path of moral rightitude, come to us. You’ll see something appealing that will lead your hand to your flies – then something so grossly scarring that you’ll be unwilling or able to feel good again for weeks to come. And when you do? Time for Zipperr again. Brought to you by Mums Against Crusty Cumrags.

UnRecruit

When you’ve hired someone and it’s just not working out, you need UnRecruit. This amazing app plants evidence of the crime of your choice so you can easily and quickly call ‘gross misconduct’. Choose from ‘boned the boss’ (complete with photoshopped picture of employee and boss in cupboard), ’stole office supplies’ (with X-ray showing stapler in rectum) or ’shat on meeting table’ (with incriminating poo pile). PLUS, coming soon: ‘got naked and humped the CEO’ (with photos)*

*This actually happened at the Albion summer party. No one was unrecruited, though.

Albion’s superhero team of 6 have left the agency and begun their three peaks journey, which will see them climb three of the tallest mountains in Britain in under 24 hours. I would like to say that this is after months of gruelling, dedicated training but for the most part, this is totally untrue. But that’s why this makes this expedition more of a feat than most.

Apart from a couple of half-hearted lunchtimes spent ‘stair running’ (one of which was about two months ago), the only training Andrew and Jack had put in was walking to “the big Tesco’s” for their lunch. And since Nick only realised yesterday that the day of reckoning had quietly crept up, I’m fairly sure he hadn’t been nailing the cross-trainer anytime lately either.

It’s not just their day jobs that have been getting in the way of training, though. Each hiker has been gathering an enormous, and ever-growing, list of equipment. A list of equipment that would put any sane minded folk off. Blister plasters, hydration salts, painkillers, head torches (yes, they’ll be climbing in the dark, too), waterproofs, spare waterproofs, spare spare waterproofs…the list is probably getting longer as I type.

So, needless to say, everyone here is extremely impressed. Especially for giving up their spare time, on a weekend, for an exceptionally worthy cause. Jason, Nick, Rowan, Amy, Andrew and Jack will deservedly wear their Albion super capes as they conquer each summit and we look forward to giving them a hero’s welcome when they return, however battered and bruised that may be.

You can watch their progress on the Feeling Peaky blog and if you fancy supporting with a bit of cash (it’s for a great cause) then check out our Just Giving page.

Last weekend I went to the launch of Kapow. To ka-what? Kapow. A comic con at – wait, wait don’t click that back button – London’s Business Design Centre in Angel, that plans to be an on-going yearly event.

Kapow aimed to bring some ‘American glamour’ to a UK comic book event. A place where comic fans, top writers and artists, publishers, filmmakers, genre TV shows and games get to meet and talk.

And you know what. I loved it. Even the queuing. Which took up about 50% of the two days I spent there. We queued to get in. We queued to meet comic book legends. We queued to see film exclusives. We queued to get out.

The ambassador and ‘fixer’ for Kapow was Mark Millar, the creator of Kick Ass. A little Scottish guy with a big, honest and playful personality, Millar seems to have cornered the market in “Why hasn’t that been done already?’ ideas. And seems so prolific he must make it hard for others to keep up. At Kapow he even announced a new book called Super Crooks – about criminals who are so sick of being beaten by American super heroes, they move to Spain to start a new crime spree.

Jonathon Ross (a huge comic book fan) was also a key ambassador for Kapow. Kicking off the day with a fun and funny Fans Vs Pros game show. As you can imagine sexual innuendo and obscure characters were in abundance.

Two of the more inspirational panels: Creator Owned comics (Books with original characters put out by creators under their own steam. E.g. Super Crooks) and How to Break into Marvel featured Frank Quitely, Dave Gibbons, John Romita Jr, Andy Diggle, Jock, Leinil Yu, Ian Churchill, Kieron Gillan, Adi Granov as well as Millar. If you don’t know who those people are Google them.

Those panels were interesting for me as they drew parallels with how we work at Albion and how we judge people seeking jobs. The digital world makes it so much easier to get known. Don’t wait to see someone. Don’t just email and expect an interview. Start publishing your own comics online. Start your own site. Start your own company. Get friends to draw them. Get weird digital or real life projects going. Make online connections. Build your own network of talent. If enough noise gets made around you then the right people start taking notice. All advice, that for me, rings true.

Adi Granov summed it up in one word: Quality. That’s the linchpin. You can know as many people in the industry as you like. You can blag your way in. But if the quality isn’t there you won’t last two minutes. The others agreed. Stating that they continue, even now, to push the quality of their work. Making it better for themselves, not the money or fame.

In fact, while these people have become so well respected and famous within the comic book (and entertainment) world they’re also incredibly normal, humble and respectful of the people who showed up to see them. Which was great to see.

There’s also a big British contingent in modern American comics and this was on show. And even with the American polish, Kapow had a very British sensibility. Albeit slightly hung-over one, well can you get more British? I felt this was an event put on by friends. Guys who literally go down the pub together, who’re fans themselves that love and talk about each other’s work.

Back to queuing. I waited for an hour and a half to get John Romita Jr to sign my copy of Kick Ass. He’s like The Fonz. When I finally met him, he told me I had to go out shopping with my wife, sit quietly, help carry bags and then take her out for a nice meal, to make up for her having to queue with me to get his signature. Emma liked that. Even when we saw him later on he remembered us and talked to us even more. So… that’s why the wait was long. He actually spent time talking to everyone. And then I suddenly felt the time queuing wasn’t wasted. Which, if you know the moody-glass-half-empty me, is hard to believe.

I managed to get Dave Gibbons to sign my copy of Watchmen. Watched Joe Cornish talk about Attack The Block. I got issue #1 of one of my favourite books Ultimate Wolverine Vs Hulk signed by artist Leinil Yu (written by Damon Lindelof who made Lost and you all watched that). I also saw a great little interview with Frank Quitely which had him talking about how he draws on the bus on the way to his studio. Again, I could relate. Although I’m usually coming up with lines for Cuervo POS.

There were tons of other panels and screenings. I never got into Thor or Green Lantern – the two big films this year. Instead I spent time going round the many stalls of comics, artists and toys. Now, other than a Transformers’ G1 Megatron teasing me, I was drawn to the 2000AD stand. A British magazine going since the 70’s that I’d so far ignored, to the real comic fan’s horror. But I was determined today of all days to be opened up to it.

Never have I met people enjoying the content they put out so much. These weren’t sales people, but fans who were just keen to talk about and recommend stories I would really like. Could I be tempted? After a few page turns it seems I could. Kapow Ka-ching.

So why am I talking about a comic con here? Well, in my mind comics are such an influential, creative medium. Whether digital or printed. And it was great to go to a celebration of that. They are fuelling and have fuelled for many years the ‘more credible’ film industry. Road to Perdition? Comic book, oh yeah. It’s an industry made and upheld by struggling creative people who just want to make high quality, rich and emotive work. And yet it’s still considered niche or silly by many. And ignored by others. At Kapow, I overheard one 10 year old seemingly well-adjusted boy saying “I feel normal for once”. Forgetting the fact he was running about pointing a Green Lantern ring at people, why did it take a Comic Con full of like-minded people to make him feel this?

Comics, whether you’ve notice them or not are a huge part of pop culture. Superman is one of the World’s most well-known brands. The Dark Knight was a huge success story. The Kick Ass film was independently funded and found a big audience. Kapow itself was full of people from all walks of life (and their patient partners), some who were new to comics and curious, not just the typical ‘comicbook guy’.

Yet a lot of people still scoff at the ‘funny pages’ and refuse to read books with pictures. As for me, the ideas that pour out of comics amaze me on a regular basis. What would happen if all the men in the world suddenly died (Y the Last Man)? Or what would happen if Superman landed in Stalin’s Russia (Red Son)? Or what would happen if a preacher, who’d lost his faith, was possessed with the offspring of a demon and an angel and was pissed off at God (Preacher)? And I’ve only been reading for a few years.

Hmmm… I had no real point to make when I started writing this. I had some time to kill and wanted to share. Is this a review of Kapow? Is it a discussion on how most creative industries seem really similar in practice and process, no matter what their creative output? Is it my not-so-subtle way of twisting the arms of the people who read this blog to like comics? Or is it just a proclamation of how geeky I really am? I don’t know. As you’ve seen I have no answers or conclusions as is customary.

But one clear message I will finish on is this: Read Ultimate Wolverine Vs Hulk. It’s frackin’ awesome.

Friday night saw the launch party for NSEW taking place in a quiet cul-de-sac off the main strip in downtown Shoreditch. A hundred or so of London’s most culturally curious, cerebrally minded and generally not in Texas folk gathered to drink margaritas, beers and celebrate the diverse range of events taking place in the coming week .

The music flitted from math rock to disco to yacht rock and then back to disco while the conversations spanned the possibility of the emergence of black holes forming in Austin due to the extreme smugness of geeks with the iPad2, which was the better venue out of the RSA and Conway Hall and why was it still not possible to find decent ribs in London? Even Mike Butcher from Techcrunch / Tech Hub fame popped in for a few drinks and told us about the various other festivals he’s attending in the coming weeks from Tel Aviv to Beirut.

Despite the exitement the party was wrapped up by 11 and everyone hurried home to their beds to rest up before a gruelling 9 days of talks, screenings, gallery shows  and openings. Thanks to everyone that came and made it such a great start to the festival.

Last night was Albion’s 8th Birthday party, which was celebrated with the “Demolition of Disco”: drinking, disco dancing and cavorting at the aptly named 26 Smithfield (26 Smithfield st, Smithfield).

Nick Darken was there dressed as a piece of disco hi-fi equipment whose exact significance was lost on anyone born after 1975, a costume which, in his words, was “testament to the power of a so-so idea executed with unblinking conviction and commitment” .

Andrew Edelston could have just wondered off the set of a Wes Anderson film set.

Jack Gallon was resplendent in a gold lame dress.

Even Matt Roskill was there.

The evening started with prizes.

Winner of the ” Award to the person who gets off their bum most in order to make verbal communication thereby avoiding sending another bloody email” was the very deserving Sasha.

Stevo scooped the ” Award to the person who has done most under their own initiative to make Albion a culturally richer, more inspiring, surprising and altogether less dull place to work”, and celebrated with a sailor’s jig to match his sailor’s outfit.

Petrina pocketed award for the “the person who goes above and beyond the call of duty in order to deliver team success with their happiness, their faithfullness and their gallantness as inscribed in neon on our right honourable reception wall”.

Duncan trousered – literally – ” The gutter trash award to the person most able to end up in a gutter or stranger/collegue’s bed through sheer irresponsibility and utter disregard to self or others thereby earning the term in general discussion of “disgrace”.”

After that a Frank Zappa-meets-David Bedford costumed Glyn showcased his enclycopaedic disco-inspired early 90s house music record collection which got the dancing going.

The shapes were illegal. Nick Darken’s costume, which was never the going to be the most practical of get-ups, was coming off so fast that there was some concern about whether he would stop taking off articles of clothing at all. At times the behaviour frankly scored a zero in terms of appropriateness.

And then Sonny took to the decks.

In his snazzy blazer, shirt and tie combo looking like a man with a PhD in Advanced Disco Studies, Sonny’s set tipped the leg-shaking over into an 11, and that’s out of 10.

The sheer quantity of Jose Cuervo Tradicional meant that memories thereafter are cloudy. There was a very funny drag artist. There was an even funnier moment when we made Nick Curnow think that the drag artist’s chair was a prop for him to use to perform. There were more Cuervos. There was just more. Much much more for some. To quote MJ “don’t stop till you get enough.”

Charles: Starting at a new school is always scary no matter what but changing industry slightly brings a whole new level of terror. The uniform is different. The culture is different. And you don’t speak the same language. So imagine my joy when on my first day Albion partnered me with a German foreign exchange student! w00t. And imagine my disappointment when on our first outing as the Coffee Twins she starts talking to me about Brand Molecule theory. This was no foreign exchange student but a small, precision engineered (it’s ok – I asked) planning mastermind.

We’ve reached a good balance now – essentially, as a Londoner, I show Corinna where the best lunch and coffee spots are.  Where to take your parents to dinner and the best way to cycle from Shoreditch to London Fields without having to go up Hackney Rd. In return she teaches me about the importance of PowerPoint, propositions and purpose ideas.

Corinna and I are not the only people starting at new schools. Dan Hon’s recent move to W&K and Jeremy Ettinghausen’s move to BBH perhaps show that advertising is really willing to play properly with the internet. Or perhaps these types of recruits will help ad agencies evolve into something new. Either way it’s pretty exciting times. And so I find myself, a community manager amongst the admen and women of Shoreditch. Alone. And cold. So cold. But seriously, one of the main reasons I wanted to come to Albion was the fact that they get digital and are naturally social and entrepreneurial. The other main pull was the promise of some good old fashioned intellectual rigor. As much as Albion is about doing stuff it’s just as much about great business ideas, and those, my friends do not grow on trees. They grow on the vines of mind grapes.

Corinna: Starting at a new school is always scary no matter what but changing countries slightly brings a whole new level of terror. The uniform is different. The culture is different. And you don’t speak the same language. So imagine my joy when on my first day Albion partnered me with an English bow tie wearing school teacher! w00t. And imagine my disappointment when on our first outing as the Coffee Twins he starts talking to me about sewing. This was no English bow tie wearing school teacher but a small dictionary full of interestingness and awesomeness.

Actually, I knew a lot about Charles before I even got to London. I knew he had quit alcohol in favour of tea. And I knew about the beard and the bowtie obsession (ask him about his pinnie trauma!). The interwebs in action. His passion for it in action. So now, when he asks me about supposedly smart planning stuff, I ask him why bus drivers never stop on me. When he asks me about how things work around agencies, I ask him for coffee places that might do unicorn milk foam figures for me.

I left Berlin with little luggage and arrived in London with great hope for two things: a new and interesting culture to explore. And to get to do awesome, interesting and useful work beyond what most people in Germany call advertising. So I am excited to have joined Albion as they are a bunch of smart thinkers and doers with a compelling vision and the passion to make stuff happen. Always thinking in solutions, not ads.
Let the fun begin.

Chorus: So despite our different backgrounds and the many miles we’ve travelled to get here we share a view which is perhaps why we’ve arrived at the same corner of Shoreditch High Street and Bethnal Green Road at the place in time. And that is a belief that, in this day and age it is the companies with the strongest notion of who they are, why they exist and what their purpose is, that are able to create the most exciting work.

We’ve just developed a brand identity for  ‘Bridge the world’ a  digital holiday brand from STA travel which specifically targets the +50 market. The identity will run across all business comms.

You can read more about the concepts and ideas behind this new brand here on Figaro Digital

Today (Monday 4th October) sees the launch of a campaign that we’re particularly excited about for our client Epson.

The campaign ‘Engineered for Speed’ launches the new Epson Stylus Office inkjet printer (BX625FWD) specifically targeting small businesses with its high quality printing and incredible speed – it can print up to 38 pages per minute.

We wanted to create a campaign that would engage a business audience on a rational and emotional level (not your normal B2B campaign). As  a result we created the ultimate product test and our team really got to have some fun with it as they set out to test the speed of the inkjet printer alongside one of the world’s fastest accelerating cars – an Ariel Atom which travels 0-60 mph in 2.7 seconds (super FAST).

The two products were combined for the challenge as engineers from Epson and Ariel worked together to form a unique partnership and then raced the printer against the car around Rockingham race track (in the UK) to see whether the Epson printer could print a map of the track faster than the car could drive it.

It’s a really exhilarating Pan European campaign that spans across several platforms. These include a film of the race (housed on the campaign microsite), online banners and EDMs  and it will also run across point of sale and PR.  It’s our first big campaign for Epson and we’re really proud of it.

Thanks to all the team involved – you know who you are.

Watch to see who wins here…..

Yesterday Thursday 23rd September the Albion Society breakfast brought together a panel to discuss Gen Y – shorthand for 16-25 year olds.

Untitled from Albion London on Vimeo.

First up was our Planning Director Sam Ashken, who presented a brief summary of a thinkpiece which can be downloaded here. The argument is that teenage and early adult years are for Gen Y not a time of rebellion but of personal aspiration.

Eliza Robeiro, the seventeen year old founder of the Lives not Knives project and campaigner with Battlefront comprehensively floored the room with her drive, activism, intelligence and precocious self-assurance.

Emi Gal, founder of online video advertising company Brainient, and a comparative oldie at 23, charmed the audience with three stories explaining his entrepreneurial drive.

Robin Klein VC of The Accelerator Group sagely analysed the differences between Gen Y and earlier generations of entrepreneurs.

Mike Butcher Editor of Techcrunch Europe showed that the Gen Y can-do spirit is a European as much as a British thing. A number of key themes emerged from the panellists. Gen Yers tend to be driven by personal mission, don’t sit around waiting for permission to do things and are unconcerned by the cynicism of older generations or the fear or failure.

Gen Y-ers’ innate drive, the panellists agreed, is accelerated by an environment in which it is easier than ever to get hold of tools and capital, and equally easy to make direct connections with contacts and partners all over the world.

All of which makes a Gen X-er wonder whether it’s possible to be a born again Gen Y-er…

The quote of the day was from Eliza who, when asked how much common ground there is between her community and young entrepreneurs like Emi responded in jest that, “A lot of the kids in Croydon are good at business, just the wrong kind of business!”.

Last week I spent another amazing few days helping out at Seedcamp, running one of the marketing panels and meeting/mentoring the finalists.

By a long shot, it was the highest standard of entrepreneurs to date and demonstrated the massive potential of creating the competition and fund. My guess is Seedcamp is going global. Its started its focus in Europe but has no reason to narrow its search in EMEA. Most of the finalists have fully functioning businesses with near proven business models and I was particularly excited by the next gen ecommerce businesses and fresh thinking on how to use customer data.

I also got together with my good friend Saul Klein, Seedcamp founder and we had a chance to look back at why we all got involved.

My main conclusion is about the opportunity to learn new stuff from some of the brightest business upstarts in Europe. For me, its all about looking for insights into how to create and build businesses and I get more out of a couple of days at Seedcamp than the more conventional business education I’ve done in the past.