Kevin Brown writes:

If you came to our Jubilee fundraiser for Mali back in May, then thank you, thank you, thank you. You helped us get the cash together to construct a much-needed maternity ward near the capital Bamako. It was worth the hangover.

We love to throw these parties. We like seeing you lot with smiles on your faces and we like dressing up. Most importantly, they go some way to making people’s lives in this small part of west Africa a little bit better.

When we first started working out in Mali it was due to a mutual friend of ours, Ballo, who you can see in the video below. He’s a teacher, fixer and philanthropist who was our connection to the schools system out there. We helped build some classrooms and improve the lives of a small collection of students.

Since then, we’ve hooked up with the Mali Development Group to implement the maternity ward project and our money can be put into a bigger pot to affect even more change in the area. We plan on having more fundraisers this year, so please come to those and throw a few quid at the raffle when harangued. We ask very little of you.

Sadly, things in Mali and the surrounding countries aren’t great at the moment. 18 million people urgently need food and water in West Africa’s drought-struck Sahel region. Our small domestic endeavours are quite insignificant when put into the broader political and economic context. At the very sharp end, it’s a humanitarian crisis and at a domestic level this has fundamentally changed the fabric of the local culture we have come to know and love in the capital.

It may sound insignificant, but on a grassroots level, some of the culturally rich music clubs in Bamako have closed as people can’t even afford food and water nevermind a beer and a sing-song. We’ve given you load of opportunities to have a beer and a sing-song over the past four years. So perhaps you could help them out?

A quick request. Please watch the video below with Damon and our friend Ballo. On this glorious summer day, perhaps you might find it inspiring and be moved to help them in some small way. There’s even a website here, www.sahel2012.org. Mali has been a second home to some of the siblings, so your time would be muchly appreciated. Hard sell over. As you were.

So, some splendid drinks-based news to end the week. We’ve just begun working with Bacardi in the UK. Lovely.

We won the business without a pitch and have been given the enviable task of developing local work based around their “It started with a party” theme.

Our esteemed founder and ECD Mr Andy Fowler said: “We’ve wanted to work with an iconic spirits brand for a while and Bacardi is exactly that. The heritage they have and the stories that have been collected over the last 150 years are incredibly inspiring.”

The first campaign was shot by Marco Walker with us recreating a party in east london venue Zigfred Von Underbelly.

Throw in one DJ and 30 party boys and girls & we had quite the knees-up. Twelve hours later, the dancefloor was still packed and no-one would leave. A job well done.

The campaign will be run across the UK and Republic of Ireland in press, online and digital outdoor, with this being the first of six executions.

Chin chin.

Mark Harris writes:

Football is watched the world over and is the reason why it’s one of the most over-saturated commercial markets in the world. There can’t be much left in the game that hasn’t or isn’t covered in a brand name or logo. So how do you create awareness or stand out from the crowd?

Well in Brazil, FC Vitoria have carved out a very simple but affective promotion to help promote the government’s “Give Blood” campaign.

Football is in the blood of most Brazilians, but blood donor levels are very low and the Ministry of Health wanted use the country’s interest in football to raise awareness. So, FC Vitoria launched the campaign, “My blood is red and black”, after the club’s colours and their nickname.

The campaign saw the team remove the familiar red from their kit and begin the season in an unfamiliar white and black striped version. The famous red stripes would only be reintroduced as blood donor goals were reached thru the season.

With the season less than a month old, 50,000 new donors have already registered and the team are unbeaten, so it looks like it’s worked on both sides. Back of the net.

You can follow it all HERE – if you can read The Portuguese.

Guest Editor Mark Harris writes:

I’m fed up.

With just days to go until the start of ‘The Games’, things are really heating up in London. ‘Thank God!’ I hear you say. A weather report at the weekend said that one area of England had a total of 1 hour of sunshine in June. Aaaah!

Sorry, I’ve been sidetracked, let me get back to what I wanted to say. The Olympics. It’s only in the last couple of weeks I’ve really noticed that London is about to host the biggest sporting event in the world. Sure, the flags have been up, the bunting is hanging out and the signage is everywhere, but it’s the general chit-chat amongst people and the talk filling the airwaves that’s taken my attention. But not in good way.

It now seems all anyone does is moan or endlessly bash the Olympics, and it’s very boring. Sure, there have been some shocking decisions and hiccups (much like the video below), but it’s not these big issues that bother me. It’s the fact that if you talk to anyone, all they seem to say is what a bloody inconvenience it all is or how they won’t be happy until we fail.

Take last night’s Evening Standard as an example: ‘Welcome to London’ was the ironic headline. The article then went on to say how in one day, one athlete had a bag lost at Heathrow, and one 2012 bus took a wrong turn. Woooooohh! So bloody what? Is this really the best we can come up with?

So, that’s it. I’m not talking to anyone about the “O” until everyone’s attitudes change.

You may remember us talking about the D&AD Graduate Academy workshop that we held here a few weeks ago.

We gave the graduates one of our old briefs and challenged them to come up with a brand new pitch. They came back a few days later to present their ideas. It was really interesting to see a whole different take on a brief we’d spent so much time working on and the results were inspiring. The guys really blew us away with their ideas and their creativity, but most of all it was great to see how they brought each of their individual disciplines to the table to create a truly multimedia pitch. Watch out for these faces – they’re the future!

Written by this week’s Guest Editor, Mark Harris:

Forget the geekdom that are Apple product launches or the dull fest that are Mark Zuckerberg Facebook speeches. The new keynote market leader is K-Swiss and their CEO, the one and only, Kenny “MotherF*ckin” Powers, the star of Eastbound and Down.

If you’ve never seen Kenny in Eastbound and Down, I urge you to seek it out. Played by Danny McBride, the TV series (now in its third season) follows the story of fictional Kenny Powers, who was a one time successful baseball player, but has now fallen on hard times due to beer and women.

Hats off to 72andSunny for genius casting, but most importantly to K-swiss for being brave enough to back Kenny and all his brash and quite often cringeworthy offensiveness. Not forgetting the fact that he is the least aspirational sport star you could ever imagine. What’s great is the fact they haven’t tried to water the character down at all, they just let him deliver the product messages in his own way.

It seems to be working in The America, coz their sales have allegedly gone up by 250 per cent. I still don’t own a pair, but their ads entertain me and I like their brand that bit more. Go Kenny!

Our superstar HR assistant, Alice Pettegree, writes:

Over the summer we have had a vast array of fresh young faces in our office in the form of interns and work experience students. We have taken full advantage of their enthusiasm and creative minds by putting them hard to work on multiple projects such as: designing B&S T-shirts and coming up with new and innovative ideas for what is soon to be our new home.

The lovely Ruki and Sammy inspired us with their 3D diorama of what they envisioned for our new office. This included having a giant puzzle as a floor and a 70’s themed reception area.

Jenny left our taste buds tantalized with her write ups on cheap and cheerful Soho eats, when we sent her trawling through the streets for the best places to have lunch for under a fiver.

And, last week, Liam (an IT enthusiast) dived head first into working on some IT projects, as well as multiple creative briefs. He has kindly written the paragraph below about his time at B&S.

“My work experience at Brothers and Sisters was an amazing experience. It was so much better than anything I could ever imagine. Everyone was so friendly from the start, it was really well structured, as soon as I walked in there was a plan already set out for me, so I knew exactly what I was going to be doing for the week. Every person I spoke to really took their time to explain to me what their role involves on a day to day basis. They would also ensure that they gave me a separate project to complete so it gave me a little taste of what they would be doing day in day out. Even the people I wasn’t booked in with came up to speak to me and said that if there was anything I wanted to know, they would set aside they time to talk to me, and they followed through with this. They were absolutely amazing and I couldn’t have asked for a more amazing experience!” – Liam

A huge thank you to all the work experience students and interns for; helping us out over the summer, keeping us young and reminding us that we are lucky to work in such a vibrant and fun agency.

We have a new arrival. And no, not babies this time…

This week’s new arrival goes by the name of Ed Ralphs. He comes to us from TBWA’s Media Arts Lab where his client was the mighty Apple.
He joins our Account Management team as an Account Manager and seems like a genuinely lovely chap. To get to know him a bit better we asked him some serious questions:

3 interesting facts about you, one of which may not be true:
I had dreadlocks in a previous life, I cannot turn left, I sometimes go walkies in my sleep… very strange.

When you’re not account managing, you spend your time…
Friending, familying, fooding, drinking, musicing, travelling, Arsenaling.

Favourite place in the world:
Gwythian, Cornwall

If you had a superpower what would it be:
Time travel by flying (kind of two I know, but one is not possible without the other)

Favourite thing about Brothers and Sisters so far:
Tunes and crumpets!

What makes you angry?
The list is too long. I’m trying to be a better person.

A few months ago we won a pitch for Join In Local Sports, to come up with a creative strategy to help them promote a very important date in their calendar. On the weekend of 17th – 18th August, Join In are encouraging people from all over the UK to head down to their local sports club or community club and get involved.

The forthcoming Olympics have caused a huge rise in enthusiasm for sport throughout the UK, and that’s what Join In want to build on. It’s the first time that an Olympic host city has ever done anything like this, so it’s a pretty big deal. Going live this week across a wide range of media, including print, online and radio, the campaign celebrates the everyday volunteers that give up their time to support their local sports clubs, in a bid to encourage more people to get involved and create the champions of the future.

Here’s a little sneak peak….

We happened upon this really lovely advert from Getty. It tells a simple but heartwarming story in 826 separate pictures. Just enough pictures per second to make it feel like a video. With pictures this good, you don’t need a voiceover.