Is it just us?

Sidney and I were looking at KFC's latest product - the Cheesy Roller, a melange of chicken, cheese and tangy bbq sauce which we are sure is quite delicious.



And it's not a particularly clever bit of commentary but we couldn't help thinking it looked quite a lot like a gentleman's largest finger.

That is all.

Join Karmarama Kwik To Kome To Our Kristmas Trip

So it's been a tough old year. We've sold a couple of organs on ebay, grown veg in the garden and started using the tap in the kitchen. But good old Karmajarma has done pretty well and to celebrate, we're taking all our beautiful people on the ski trip of a life time.



Somehow we've found a chalet that sleeps 52 people, half way up a mountain somewhere cold.



We've got the plane booked, the fuel paid for and the drinks cabinet full. All we're missing is you. If you've been sniffing around our gaff and are thinking of joining our happy team, then move swift-like as Hattie is closing the list soon. Apparently if we exceed 52 then the partners will have to have hotel rooms of their own. Hurrah (both from a partner's 'No one's pants in my face when I wake up' perspective, and from a happy camper 'Now the boss is away let's play play play' perspective.



Obviously if the plane goes down and we're all mincemeat, we'll be passing the agency on to the local hairdressers who'll do a good job we're sure.

Karmarama Ping Pong Academy launches

Karmarama this week officially launches the Karmarama Ping Pong Academy, with private coach Shirwen Remata available to book for lessons in their club room ‘The Theatre of Tears’ from Monday-Friday 9:30am-8:30pm.

Shirwen is ranked number 8 in the Philippines, and in addition to coaching at Karmarama, Shirwen plays across the UK at professional table tennis tournaments with Karmarama as his official sponsor, recently finishing as runner up in the Liverpool Open 2009.

“Shirwen is an awesome player and a really lovely bloke, and I’m really pleased that he’s working with us. As well as coaching people from all over London he trains our current squad members and is also helping recruit new players for our two teams. My lofty ambition this year is that we won’t be the shittest team in London, he is our new secret weapon.”
David Buonaguidi

If you would like to book a lesson with Shirwen for just £15 an hour, call him on 07545 581624.

For further information see:
http://www.karmapingpong.com

Credit where it's due...

click here to view

Recently we broke a rule here at Karmarama, and, occasioned by a sighting of a dementedly awful poster, were forced to publicly name and shame a fellow practitioner of our craft.

Just to redress the balance I thought it would be nice to celebrate an advertisement that raises a smile whenever it bounces onto my screen of an evening, joyfully putting a donk on the ITV3 ad break, to what is, I imagine, the utter bemusement of its largely elderly audience.

I only wish I had a car to sell them. I would especially to hear what the chap doing the Ian Wright-esque rap has to say about tax and invoice arrangements.

The return of Dapper Friday!!

That's right it's back. Click on the picture below for more information and remember to dress up if you're coming in for a meeting on Friday or you'll feel all embarrassed and that for looking like a scruff.

Karma cars

We were sent this over from a friend who recently went to the Frankfurt motor show (the picture not the car).

Karma cars are made by Fisker Automotive and although looking like bad ass super cars from the outside, on the inside they are actually all kind and loving to the environment as a result of being hybrid and solar powered and such like. We've got two on order. One to park on the roof of the office for the IT department to work out of and the other as an agency runabout to pick up bread, Marmite and the occasional fish and chips.

Get yours here- http://karma.fiskerautomotive.com/

Meet Tricia: She's not Scottish, she's better.

Luckily for Tricia her mum asked her when she was 7 whether she wanted to be Scottish or famous. Being a pretty sharp girl at the time and thinking on her feet she chose fame. Ever since she's never stepped out the limelight and has also been lucky enough never to have to step over the border into Scotland. (According to a Mintel report published in March 1936 being famous makes her 1437 times better than any living Scot).

Her fame and success over the last 15 years has come in many forms. The early days saw her getting hit upon by Wrexham, Crystal Palace and Tottenham Hotspur striker Chris Armstong in a West End nightclub. Interestingly the same Chris Armstrong who in 1995 was the first Premiership player to be banned for cannabis consumption (Tricia maintains she was not involved). Only a couple of years later Tricia had her second brush with fame when she dated a guy who believed he was Jesus, who's story made page seven of the Croydon Guardian in 1999. Most recently (and significantly) she won over the hearts of our great nation in reaching the semi-finals of Britain's Got Talent as a burlesque dancer in the group Caburlesque. Check her out doing her thing below, she's the naughty one stroking Dec's face at 3.00 mins with her feathers.



Her grandfather was a Sir, she hates Craig David, she's worked as a clown on a farm and a cleaner on a submarine and is now Karmarama's superb new receptionist and general office legend.

Be nice and say hello to her when you ring.

Shamefully Bad Advertising

There's a lot of old tosh in this industry of ours with some very, VERY bad ideas knocking around.

We don't often comment about them on this blog, instead preferring to write about what we're eating or who's chatting up who (or whom).

But when something like this comes along you just have to say something, because this is possibly the worst, and I mean the WORST ad ever.

So many questions, so little time or breath for answers.

Like, why Kevin Costner? Why SHOULD we fly Turkish Airlines or Airways or whatever the bleedin' hell it is? WHY oh why is Kevin leering like that? And why is it here, in our manor, singularly devoid of insight, idea, drama or kreadividy?

Any answers much appreciated. Any ads believed to be worse (not possible surely) VERY much appreciated.

Someone out there should be ashamed.

Meet Gemma: She's Also Scottish And She Sings. Nicely

Gemma joined us a while back but we never shouted about it because she was freelance so we were a bit suspicious of her and while she was here loads of things went missing. But then we hired her proper and only a few things go missing now.

So Gemma's Scottish (blimey, the place is overrun with them at the mo') but she's got a right odd accent on account of her being born in Muscat which is in Oman which is a desert country a lot like Camber Sands. With oil rather than chip shops.

Gemma is, in her own fair words, a talented singer. She had several auditions for this year's X Factor but didn't get on to the final show as she didn't have a sad story. We offered to knock her up with several kids or do her knee caps in so she'd need a shopper mobility scooter but she declined. Clearly having a cracking voice only gets you so far. You really need a bit of social trauma in there too.

Gems also loves all things digi, has a number of anonymous blogs and buys loads of cack off ebay and sells it for huge profits.

She also has one of the nicest smiles around.

Meet Jamie: He's Scottish

This is Jamie and he joined us recently to work on lastminute.com (NEVER forget the .com bit, never ever never).

We call him Wee Jocky. It's not smart, clever or very PC, but it makes us laugh.

He commutes from his Glaswegian council flat every day by hitching down the M1.
This means unfortunately we only have him in the office for an average of 23 minutes a day, but boy, those are 23 good minutes.

Jamie enjoys kittens and embroidery and was once on children's TV as a lampost.

He's a lovely bloke and is also veeeery good at rounders and really loves his cricket.

Jamie is also a part time model for the Lakeland catalogue because he has astonishingly beautiful and tender hands.

New! Karmarama Top Lunches

We are very excited and delighted to be birthing an entirely new concept in the world of eating out.

Mike, the god of the studio, has created the first in what will be a long line of Top Lunches cards detailing where's best for grub in our local area.

Mike promises this will be the first of many, delivered regularly on a Friday, regardless of how busy he is because he can magic client work away just-like-that.

And it's only right and fitting that we launch with the Miran Masala as their curry-in-a-box deal is such splendid value and top nosh that is has us and our widening tums returning time and time again.

Finally, we'd just like to say that any similarity between our new Top Lunches cards and a similarly very well trade mark protected brand of popular playing cards is entirely coincidental.

Meet Dan: Handsome, 7 years Old, Cycles 97 Miles A Day

So we asked Dan to write about himself but he's too "busy" to do it. Yeah, right, whatever.
We lured Dan away from St Luke's for 99p and a packet of Chewits.
Dan is not only the youngest person to ever work in advertising, he's also one of the most beautiful. But more important than that is the fact that he lives in Greenwich and he cycles in every day. Which is a HUGE distance of at least 97 miles, possibly more. That's like cycling from New York to Chicago every day (that's for our one reader from the US - hi, how's it hanging? Go Obama) or cycling from Moscow to Brighton. Sort of.
Dan works on Nintendo and his looks. He's a lovely lad, veeeery good at rounders and speaks very posh. And is possibly the nicest bloke in advertising, which makes him perfect for us.
I have nothing more to say. Other than asking Dan to marry me.

Is This The World's Worst Tea Pot

It's a bit like school time 'show and tell' here at PharmaBarma sometimes. People get over excited and bring in silly little things to show their friends. And then it ends up getting dumped in the kitchen or the toilet. Like this tea pot.



Lordy Lordy. Surely this must be the biggest load of tat ever found anywhere. If someone wants it for their crap tea pot collection please let your friendly, new age and harder working comms agency know and we'll pack it right off to you. Sad person that you are.

Karmarama: Now 'Market Town Club' Size

Golly, we've grown a bit.

A few months ago when our last phone list came out (listen, stop it, that's big news down KarmaKountry way) we talked about how, only a wee bit back when we were in Great Titchfield St we were garden shed sized (22 of us had a Christmas bash in a shed - honestly).



And then suddenly we were church hall sized with 55 of us out here in W14.



Well, the glourious phone list has been updated again and look how many of us there are now:



Yes



After a bit of spatial awareness calculation, a couple of floor mapping exercises and a cup of tea, planning has worked out that we are now officially the perfect size to fit into a market town club.



Now the important point to make here, before anyone says we're bragging or we've got ideas above our station, planning insists that it's a bit of a shit market town club, on the fringes of the town, probably somewhere you have to drive to, maybe need to wear shoes but definitely not jeans to get into, will have a ladies night on a Thursday, definitely have bouncers on the door and in the bogs and has always got lots and lots of bother going on. And it has VERY sticky dance floors.

We hope to grow a little bit bigger quickly before we get glassed as it's all about to kick off in here

Meet Arjun (by Arjun)

Arj was born in London but moved to the tiny island of Tobago at the tender age of 1. During the next 16 years he perfected the arts and tricks associated with the yo yo, finally managing to conquer all on the island and earn a place at the Caribbean regional finals in Barbados which would have given him a shot of a finals place in Miami. He unfortunately failed to qualify. The shame of not making these finals drove him away from the Caribbean and back to London where he sold posh suits to rich people in Selfridges, tried becoming an accountant but got bored, moved into a finance department at a small advertising agency and got bitten by the creative bug. He then moved through some of London’s bigger more established agencies producing some great work along the way, also during this time he tried multiple times to get a job at Karmarama but Dave thought he was a call centre worker and never took his calls. Despite this knock back he really admired the founding principles of Karmarama in particular the ‘no wanker policy’ and managed to impress the partners a few years later with his perfection of the Queens english and the hardest yo yo trick of all time, the ‘Three Leaf Clover’.

We've been growing! (and here comes the proof!)

We've banged on a lot about the number of empty seats that have slowly been filled with the good bums of great new people here at Kramarama. Back in the good old days when new joiners arrived we used to stop work for 4 straight days, lock up the agency and all cycle to a small town just outside Abersoch in North Wales to plant a tree to celebrate their arrival. However, times have changed and we're busy people nowadays which has meant we have got a little slack about welcoming all the nice new people that are brave enough to make the trek on a daily basis to W14 (sorry). Sadly there's no tree anymore but there are the bright lights of the blog! So get ready to meet some new Karmacrew all this week...

Pete Fowler at the Truman Brewery

Pete's a good friend of the agency and has helped us on all sorts of things from designing our Ping Pong mascot, DJing at agency events to looking after Hattie when she had her poorly back. Here's some pictures of the brilliant mural he finished up yesterday at the Truman Brewery, it looks amazing and is well worth going down to see it in all it's glory. 10 out of 10!

Dave's Birthday, A Hog Roast For The Agency, And A Very Poor Picture

Last week was Dave's 65th birthday.

To go with his Freedom Pass we decided to buy him a pair of dodgey old NHS specs, a shirt from Oxfam, but most excitingly of all, a proper full on hog roast.

Said hog arrived in a metal spit and pit, ready charred.



The agency dutifully queued and feasted on what supposedly can feed over 100 people. Strangely, we finished most of it. Could be because we have a lot of wasters here who spend all their pennies on beer and fill their bellies at such events. The combined crew of Steve, Craig and Jono (the usual offenders) managed to slam down 15 portions between them.

Damn fine hog, damn fine agency.

Happy pension Dave.
(sorry about the rubbish photo)

Feast For a King: No.2 In A Very Irregular Series

So there I was in Exmouth Market wondering where to eat when I remembers that there is a very nice little pie & mash shop there. As I passed trendy young things buying falafels and mung bean whatnots from stalls and so-hip-I-could-just-die types sipping their smoothies outside overpriced cafes, I went to Cookes where, apart from a couple of low life geezers (bless 'em), I was the only punter.

And this is what fast, cheap food really is all about.



£3.20 for pie, mash and liquour.
Served in 23 seconds flat.



Finished in 3 minutes 43 seconds flat.

Nice work.

Next week, The Ivy. Maybe

Karmarama Summer Sports Day

A day full of triumphant joy, laughter, bruises, sunshine, lovely food, cold beers, grubby feet and many grass burnt knees.