10 Year Anniversary Party - Part Five

10 Year Anniversary Party - Part Four

10 Year Anniversary Party - Part Three

10 Year Anniversary Party - Part Two

10 Year Anniversary Party - Part One

Sorry, technical glitch last time around.
Here's a veritable banquet of piccies from our recent 10 year party spent in our spanky garden.
Enjoy.

Guerilla Marketing, Karmarama style

You may not know this (you may not care), But Dave lives opposite the legendary but not sadly brown-bread Mole Man of old London Town who used to enjoy burrowing under his house, digging out tunnels and filling them with all sorts of nonsense.

Dave, being a believer in free speech, free expression, free cakes, but most especially the freedom to dig where ever you please, decided to erect a blue plaque to the infamous Mole Man lest we forget one of this great county's more colourful eccentrics (because that's what we are if anyone is reading this from the US - all us Brits are stark raving bonkers - trust me, we are).

Dave's local paper covered the story and gave a nice piece to our mischievous freedom fighter. Once again a cracking example showing how we like to manipulate the news wires here at Karma CBI.





We're preparing Dave's plaque pending his demise as we speak.

10 Year Anniversary Party

Sorted.

It all started when the BBQ caught fire at the Last Meat Friday and IToby (computer wizz) got a suspected 3rd degree burn on his mouse finger.

Pondering the shocking circumstance of the overzealous flame it dawned on us that the BBQ hadn’t been cleaned since we bought it. Not because we’re lazy but because we didn’t have anything to clean the mothership with- like a useful scraping thingy. We then also realised that we actually didn’t have anything useful at all to help with the BBQing- like tongs (scissors from reception) or a poker (the metal ruler from production). So we decided something should be done and midst a creative briefing and budgety chat at our lovely clients Clas Olhson Shiv quickly wipped around the useful shop and bought everything that looked useful for the BBQ as well as a load of other useful things for doing all those jobs the production ruler couldn't do.

So where we had two chopping boards, we now have a WALL of chopping boards.



And pineapple and strawberry consumption has increased 10 fold since the strawberry and pineapple slicer made an appearance.



And who knew that salad spinning could be so satisfying? Or that cutting onions with a knife with a blade that doesn’t resemble an axe made such a difference.



We’re now all a lot happier and the number of kitchen punch ups has gone down considerably.



Thank you Clas and thank you Shiv.

Academy K - food for our brains

“So”, I hear you ask, “you lot over there at BarmyRama, what do you do all day when you’re not banging out top drawer creative solutions for new age entrepreneurial client? I mean, I know you do lots of barbies and stuff and you clearly like having a drink and a bit of a get together, but what else?”

Alright, alright, I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition! (cue: ‘Nobody expects…’).

Well to answer your rather nosey question, we train. Boy we train hard. You know that bit in Rocky IV with the logs in the snow and the biceps and stuff, well old Sylvester ‘aint got a thing on us. We work hard to be match fit for our everso demanding (but everso lovely) clients who expect us to do the do with aplomb (I’ve never written that word before, but I kinda like it now – aplomb – nice, a bit like a 3 year old talking about Def Con 3).

I digress (another nice word). To help us with our training and all round fitness we’ve been exercising our grey matter. Not with weights, plastic stretchy bands and steroids, but with inspiration….

...inspiration in the form of (check us out) our very own academy! (round of applause). It’s much more interesting than all that boring school stuff, it’s where we actually get to talk about interesting stuff and fill our brains with lots of goodness. In fact, my head feels a little sore from all the new knowledge I’ve stuffed into it.

Over the last few months, we’ve had loads of great people through the doors at Karmarama Towers imparting their words of wisdom. We’ve been wowed by the booming Mark Lund (CEO of COI) who gave us some top tips about working client side vs agency side. Roisin Donnelly (Corporate Marketing Director and Head of Marketing at P&G) inspired us to think about how we work with our clients and Adam Morgan (from eatbigfish fame) had us completely hooked (excuse the fishing pun) with his thoughts on the number of different ways challenger brands can behave. I have to say, he left me running to order a copy of his latest book!

As I said, we’ve been swotting up. In fact, so much so that I need to buy a ‘back-up’ brain to fit all the new stuff in. 10 out of 10 for effort I say.

Bad Karma In The Air

Just what the ruddy hell is going on?
What have we done wrong?
So far, Spring has been a dreadful bad karma month for your friendly neighbourhood creative do-dah company.
It started with Wayne being knocked off his bike.
Then Ray, the dark destroyer from the studio came a cropper when a white van man opened his door on him A shoulder gash and a smack to the head and a blood wagon journey ensued.
Then someone who keeps being referred to as 'that girl from Kream upstairs' was also knocked of her bike.
And then this!



A sign!
A big fat London pigeon flew, karma-kaze style, smack bang into our office window and dropped down on the floor brown-bread dead.
Now this is not good.
We shall be having a special service today for said pigeon and quietly slaughtering an innocent to appease those unhappy gods.
Please, no more.

Hold On To Your Tea Mother, This One May Send You A Bit

Now it may be that the Karmablog is fast becoming a bit like the local A&E, but there do happen to be quite a number of accidents occurring to us lot as the moment - clearly a bit of bad karma is visiting.
Next to get a free ride in a blood wagon was antipodean Mitch who is enjoying life in our tranquil isle combining work at western Europe's most progressive communications company, DJ-ing and footy.
Unfortunately the latter all got a bit messy, Mitch had a collision, and the following piccies sort of set it out so words are not necessary...

Karmarama: Now A Proper Official Agency

When does an agency become a 'proper' agency? It's a good and chewy question?
Could it be when you reach over 50 people?
Could it be when you get an agency garage?
Could it be when you go on annual company ski trips?
Or could it be when your largest supplier is The Ivy?
Actually none of the above.
It just has to be when your agency gets its very own apple corer.
Yes, extraordinary I know. And bizarre. And a little bit wonderful and spooky.
This, by all accounts is one of our Clas Ohlson client's iconic products.
So that's why we've got it and that's why it's here.
If you have aspirations of being a proper agency too, you now know what to do.

More Near Death Experiences In West London

As you know, we like a nice bike round these parts.
Fixies, singles, geared, mountain, hybrids, the lot.
But we must always remember to do what our Mums used to tell us and take extra, extra care out there (just like the baldie fella in Hill Street Blues, but it was alright for him as he never left the bleedin' precinct - anyway, I digress).



So horror of horrors, poor old Wayne Hanson who's doing some top stuff creative wise for us at the mo' had a nasty run in with a white van driver on Hammersmith High Road.
Wayne took a tumble, splattered onto the windscreen but the van kept going and right mashed up his bike.





Sends a shiver right down your spine.
And just in case you're asking, yes Wayne was wearing a helmet (not wearing one is all a bit too Shoreditch for us).



He reckons if he wasn't he'd either be brown bread or seriously wheelchaired right up.



Be safe out there people.

Steak and Eggs for breakfast

Due to the recent good weather we needed more excuses than just lunch to use our new BBQ. So Paul bought 16 ribeyes and some eggs from his local butcher (William Rose in East Dulwich), we all got in 10 minutes earlier than usual and the rest is history.