They’d decided to do something about the East African Famine. They realised that this was a crisis on a massive scale, which was hardly getting any attention, because of our preoccupation with the riots and the recession. They wanted to do something that would draw attention to it, and raise money for it.

Their idea was 50/50. They wanted to rope in makers and do-ers to create 50 fundraising projects, within 50 days. (Following Mark Earls ‘light 100 fires’ thinking, it’s more likely that a few of 50 projects will get traction, than if we all concentrated on one project, which might fail.)

They had a few example ideas to illustrate the kind of thing we might like to do. First on this list of bullet points was a Twitter Swear Jar. In brackets at the end of the short description was “still looking for someone to do this idea by the way…”.

I immediately liked the idea of the Swearjar. We’ve got a track record with swearing at Albion, and I’m childish enough to think it’s funny, and it seemed like the kind of fun idea that might catch-on. I started to try and build some support amongst our dev team for this voluntary project.

In conversations with Tim it became clear it was an idea they’d had back in October 2010 for a pitch, and they’d been looking for a chance to realise it since. They were busy building the 50/50 platform, so they were really keen for us to develop it.

The project gained some momentum on 23 August when we were running the Marketing Academy digital faculty at Albion. We were hosting 20-odd rising stars of the marketing world and, as part of the day, had promised to run a workshop where they would scope and paper-prototype a new web service. The Swearjar seemed like the perfect brief for this – fun, for a good cause, not too complicated – and they all really engaged with it and did some great thinking.

On 24th August a crack team of Albionites hunkered down, did a definitive set of wireframes, and committed ourselves to building it.

On 25th of August, our project page on the 50/50.gd site went live: http://5050.gd/projects/f-ckfamine-swearjar

On 30th August Stuart Eccles of Made by Many gave us some Ruby code he written previously for parsing the Twitter stream, which kicked our coding effort into life. Thanks Stu.

We spent the next 4 weeks designing and coding the site, in between client work and in our spare time.

On 29 August we started testing the almost-finished Swearjar app with a wider group inside Albion.

Then a surprising thing happened. Charityswearbox.com launched. Exactly the same idea, and a very similar execution. What. A. Fucking. Nightmare.

Anyway, after some teeth gnashing and soul searching, and some diplomacy from 50/50, we’ve decided to launch our Swearjar anyway – and Charity Swearbox will also (hopefully) come onto the 50/50 platform.

So now 50/50 has two Twitter swearing apps. We’re going head to head. May the best Twitter swearing app win. There’s nothing wrong with healthy competition in the charity sector. Hopefully both together will raise more money that either would have alone.

(BTW, it’s not unusual for people to have the same idea independently. The lightbulb, the internal combustion engine, asteroid movies. And now swear-tracking apps for Twitter.)

We think Charity Swearbox is great. But we think Swearjar is better. Please sign up right now and start swearing for Africa.

www.swearjar.cc

A massive thanks to @drcongo and @eliphinobeats for building the thing, and to @samwander and @gringomoses for helping to make it happen. And thanks to @madebymany and @goodfornothing for having the incredible energy to will 50/50 into life.

The work launched this week in the US and UK with a mini series of three online films featuring Mason & Jason as they introduce the premium features of “Cuddle Class”: dreaming, drinking and watching movies all on demand. There are some nice cameos in the films too, but we wont spoil it for you (*cough* The Hoff *cough*). You can also see what’s down the back of Mason & Jason’s Economy SkycouchTM on Facebook for your chance to win a flight on the fully redesigned long haul planes. The campaign is being supported in digital media in the UK, US and New Zealand and has been made by a combination of Albion talent across our London and West Coast offices.

Enjoy….

The campaign launched on Saturday 9^th June and features the elderly trio (known as the Wongies) who demonstrate the ease of using Wonga.com.

The campaign shows that Wonga.com offers a simple and straight-forward  application process, which has an upfront and transparent approach to costs and gives its customers complete flexibility and control – including being able to pay back early.

We are really excited to be working with Wonga.com as they are an innovative company that is offering a fresh alternative to the world of credit and lending.

The second in the series features the trio demonstrating the ease of using the online ’sliders’ to choose how much you wish to borrow and for how long. Go Earl!

Anthony Nolan is a pioneering charity that saves the lives of people with blood cancer such as leukaemia or lymphoma. Every day, they use our stem cell register to match remarkable donors willing to donate their blood stem cells to people they have never met, who desperately need lifesaving transplants.

They currently have over 400,000 potential donors signed up and this helps to find matches for two people in need of a transplant every day.  Sadly though, this only accounts for half of the requests they receive from patients.

Albion was tasked to produce a short film to bring their brand into life and raise awareness of who they are – Who to better tell the real story then the real patients, donors, fundraisers and staff of Anthony Nolan? We’re extremely pleased with the results, and very honoured to share the brand film here. You can hear their story in this 4 minute short film and learn how you can get involved in helping the cause:

And amazingly, Anthony Nolan is the 10K London Run Official Race Charity of the Year, which is happening on 10^th of July. There are 9 of us from Albion running to help raise money for Anthony Nolan. Not all of us are the fittest of people, but we’re giving it a go anyway!

It takes £100 for Anthony Nolan to register one person to the bone marrow register (with all the testing and sampling), so our aim is to raise this amount each.

So please show your support by sponsoring us here www.justgiving.com/albionathletic, and wish Rowan, Amy, Ed, Romney, Simon, Mike, James, Nick and myself (Nes) a good luck! We’ll keep you posted on how well we’ve done and who has made it.

These are our way of making the boring memory stick a bit more fun. For the last few years our sticks have been on a crazy rollercoaster of a journey. Each one has a selection of entries from it’s travel diary. The latest set even has a stamp from all the exotic places its visited. If you get one you’re bloody lucky, even those of us who work here struggle to collect them, for they’ll inevitably be worth a fortune on The Antiques Roadshow 2067.

Here at Albion HQ, we are extremely pleased to announce not one, but two wins at the annual Marketing Society Awards!

giffgaff picked up the award for ‘New Brand’ with Absolute Radio following closely behind with a win for ‘Mobile Marketing’.

A huge congratulations goes out to both of our clients and to the teams involved in making this possible….We’d like to thank our Mum’s and Dad’s…..

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!