Storm in a (PANTONE®) teacup

Despite the Met Office issuing a heatwave warning this week, we still got in this morning, put the kettle on and somewhat stubbornly made ourselves a nice, boiling hot cup of tea.

Thing is, it got us thinking about the slightly strange theory that most grandmas seem to have about a hot cup of tea cooling you down. Can this really be true? Does it depend on the type of tea you're drinking? Or maybe it's something that only happened in the olden days.

Maybe a hot cup of tea cools you down because, comparatively, you're much colder than it!?

Please also note the first appearance of our much admired PANTONE® mugs. More of them later.

A micro-success

We're lucky to do pretty much all the marketing required by our lovely friends at Amber Ales, Derbyshire's award winning microbrewery.

Even better still, this weekend saw Amber host their first ever 'AMBERFEST' beer festival, so we thought the only polite thing to do was to pop along to try a couple of their finest ales. 

The festival showcased some new and unusual ales from Amber, along with other leading local breweries including Thornbridge, Brampton and Derby Brewing Company (We recommend the Chocolate Orange Stout and the Jasmine IPA).

Since its launch in 2006, Amber Ales has put locally produced ales on the map, winning many awards at a local and national level. 

All Amber's flagship beers are named after Amber Valley local heroes including Barnes Wallis IPA, Outrams Bitter and Samuel Slater American Amber Ale.

For the love of Gossard

Our latest Gossard brochure happened to feature world famous, and Maxim's favourite, model Elle Liberachi (along with her little dog ‘Tiger’).

 

Created, and produced by The Message, the photography was by John Oakley, fresh from his trip to South Africa where he was privileged enough to be asked to shoot a certain Mr. Mandela. 

The Message is proud to work with Gossard, an iconic lingerie brand and can trace its roots back to Chicago 1901.

All garments shot were for Gossard’s Spring Summer 2010 collection.

Weleda of the pack

Thanks to a helping hand from yours truly, our friends at Weleda have just announced that their wonderful Skin Food has won the prestigious Silver Award for the Classic Beauty Product of the Year at the Clothes Show London.

Skin Food is one of Weleda’s original skincare products and, thanks to our play on the fact that it's been in existence since 1926, has since been ‘discovered’ by a number of celebrities.

Jayn at Weleda loved our ad and said lots of kind words about it: "The 1926 Beauty Product of the Year ad that you guys did for us went a long way to create a real buzz around the product and get it on people’s radars!"

Actually, the new ad campaign measured over 1.2 million page impressions in April, appearing in Elle, Zest, Harpers Bazaar and Top Santé to name just a few.

Have you tapped in to the Skin Food phenomenon? It's now got quite a cult following and has been seen peeking out the handbags of the likes of Joss Stone, Rihanna and Helena Christensen.*

*Any excuse to post a picture of the lovely Helena really.

Ever the exhibitionists

We're proud of our clients, and tend to boast about them whenever we can. So imagine our delight when Weleda asked us to design and build their exhibition stand for this year's Clothes Show London at Excel in (yes, you guessed it) London.

So instead of talking to a few of our mates about all the good stuff that Weleda do, we got to tell a few thousand Clothes Show visitors as well. Perfect.

We should point out that this photo was taken before the doors opened, hence the lack of Weleda staff, enthusiastic customers and muddy footprints.

For more about the wonderful Weleda, check on their online-ness at www.weleda.co.uk.

New for June 2009

We've promised ourselves for a while now that we'd get round to updating our website, but constantly find our time being dedicated more naturally to our clients' marketing needs, rather than our own.

Anyway, in  between designing ads, printing brochures, firing out press releases like they're going out of fashion and editing a few short movies (we're just like, so Hollywood, di'nt ya know), we somehow found time to give ourselves a makeover.

So yup, this is us after a bit of a nifty nip and a tiny tuck. A spot of lipo here, an injection of botox there...all resulting in a new logo, a new website and this blog.

It's our way of telling you what we're up to, and also an opportunity to brag about all the wonderful things we do. Over and out for now.