Working slap bang in the middle of London’s Soho, we are insanely spoilt for choice when it comes to places to eat, drink and be merry. But, being Soho, a lot of these establishments are victims of their own success, employing people that are so too-cool-for-school they’ve completely lost sight of their actual job – to be nice to people as they serve them good food. Whilst we love munching on our brown rice sushi and our laden ciabattas, it sure tastes nicer served up with a healthy dose of friendly service.

So here’s to Nice Places. Places where service comes with a smile that reaches the eyes. Places where your order is taken and nurtured. Places where a great sandwich costs only £3… Yeah ok. maybe not the last bit, but hey, there’s no harm in wishful thinking.

Anyhow, we thought we’d make it a regular spot on the blog. Everyone loves a recommendation plus it gives us an excuse to try out a few more places.

The first nice place isn’t an obvious choice (global coffee chain) but they hit the nail on the head. As suggested by our HR assistant Alice, “Vida e Caffé on Golden Square is a super friendly place. Serving great coffee, frappes and delicious treats, they’re always happy and lovely and know my order off by heart (clearly evidence that I go there way too much).”

Know of any friendly places? Do let us know! 

Guest Editor Tanya writes:

I love a bit of technology. It makes me feel safe. I’m glad that there are inspiring, infinitely clever people out there continually making, refining and dreaming up new things to make us happier, cleverer, wealthier, and anything in between. From the app that makes sure your computer doesn’t fall asleep whilst watching movies, to the robots that help paralyzed people use only their thoughts to move a robotic arm, technology is being developed every day that is set to change and shape our lives.

That’s why I was particularly interested to read about this year’s crop of newly minted ‘technology pioneers’. Each year the World Economic Forum selects a number of companies that it feels are making a major technological innovations in their respective fields. Spanning information technology, telecommunications and new media, energy and environment, and life sciences and health, they’re the companies pushing boundaries and challenging established thinking.

This year’s crop are amazing. From the company that has developed a ‘Milk Chiller‘ to keep rural Indian farmers from losing thousands in spoilt produce, to the company that helps young children understand the power of technology whilst having fun along the way, every selection is inspiring and laden with the promise of a brave new world. This year’s selection seems focused on earth sustaining technologies, both physical and economic with particular reference to free access and open source platforms. It makes me feel like we’re finally saving the world. But maybe that just my mindless optimism and blind faith in technology.

Anyhow, make up your own mind. The report is here in full.

Here’s a little film we’ve made about the last few months at Brothers and Sisters. Enjoy.

We had the internet version of ‘spooky coincidence’ happen here the other day. Our creative director, Mark Harris, was searching google image for a picture of a crowded commuter train to use in a mock up he was making. He happened upon a suitable one, put it in photoshop and then had another look to check all was looking well. This time round, his beady eyes spotted that one of the commuters in the picture was our very own Elliot Harris.  What are the chances??

Elliot, who lives in Essex and spends much time commuting to and forth has now been immortalized forever under the search ‘busy train carriage’. Lucky Boy.

This has prompted a whole new wave of Elliot sightings. The boy gets around… http://whereselliottoday.tumblr.com

Guest Editor Sophie writes:

So the Olympics were pretty great. A load of athletes doing amazingly impressive things, loving what they do and being truly thankful for being able to do it. It threw up debate over some footballers with some huge wages and some huge egos but it also re-raised the question about female sport.

Why wasn’t there a single female athlete up for the Sports Personality of the Year award last year and why is there such a unequal showing of female sport in the media? Whatever the reasons, during the Olympics, women were on that stage or in that boxing ring and it was the first year every participating country had women competing. Which makes this a great time for Plan International to run their latest advert with its endline ‘Because I’m a Girl’ in support of Day of the Girl on October 11th.

Find out more.

Guest Editor, Sophie writes:

When thinking of what to tell your customers you may need to look no further than the real stories of the people behind your brand. The stories about the people who make your product, the people who invent new ideas, the person who first imagined your company.

Innocent, the drinks company famous for the legend around their beginnings, are firm believers in brand storytelling. Their story is, they were selling smoothies at a music festival and put up a sign asking people to vote with their empty bottles on whether or not they should give up their day jobs to make smoothies. It’s a story they keep telling and now Dan Germain, Creative Director of Innocent, is speaking at the PSFK conference London on Sept 13 about the power of human stories to drive the success of an organisation. It might just be something worth listening to.

http://www.psfk.com/events/psfk-conference-london-2012

Lu Howlett writes:

We are mere weeks away from commencing our skip across town to our brand new premises in Clerkenwell, so we thought we’d combine a first view of our new home with celebrating the completion of one of our first 20% projects, Battersea Tattoo Project.

The night played host to a photography private view of the project, produced by up and coming commercial photographer Mike Whelan and also a live tattoo demonstration by uber cool tattoo artist Steve Vinall from The Family Business, Exmouth Market.  Thankfully only one poor soul had to endure the pain of the ink needle for 3 hours, the rest of us got our fix by way of fake tattoo transfers whilst sharing a few bevvies.  It was a lovely welcome to the neighbourhood and has gotten us all very excited about the move. 

This week’s guest editor, Sarah writes:

I feel I have to write about the song of the moment that has reached 200 million views on YouTube… that’s right, the highly infectious pop song ‘Call Me Maybe’ by Carly Rae Jepsen. My money’s on her being a one hit wonder but as much as I try, I can’t help but like this song!

What’s most fascinating about this song is the number of covers it has inspired. In fact I think I heard the covers before I heard the original, thinking this was Ben Howard’s plea for someone to call him maybe. Here are only 15 of the covers: http://mashable.com/2012/06/10/youtube-covers-call-me-maybe/

But my favourite yet, for pure comic value, is the chat roulette version (although I find it only slightly more hilarious than Cookie Monster’s version titled ‘You got cookie, so share it maybe’). The reactions to the drag striptease are brilliant:

Now Carly, we just need you to take lead from Gotye and create the YouTube mashup! Gotye’s ‘if you can’t beat ‘em then mash ‘em’ approach to YouTube covers is really nicely done. He’s taken the bestof his fan’s covers of ‘Somebody that I used to know’ on YouTube and edited them all together to create this beautiful clip – ahh I love a good montage:

This week saw the launch of the final film for Join In - a government funded, Olympic legacy project aimed at capitalising on the current wave of optimism and getting people to help out at their local sports clubs.  The film, directed by Morgan Hutchins, is the final part of our campaign and features none other than the grand master of comedy, Eddie Izzard.

Our lovely account manager, Fern, gave us the lowdown on the shoot that took place in Edinburgh earlier this month:

The Fringe Festival was in full swing whilst we were there so along with our clients, we embarked on a little comedy action. We went to see Eddie’s protégé, Trevor Noah , who was absolutely superb – we fully recommend checking him out! Following his show, we watched Usain Bolt smash his 100m in the Olympics. All in all, a pretty epic pre-shoot evening in Edinburgh!

Monday morning was full of rain in Scotland – only producer Shaun came fully prepared for the weather. Aaron sported double denim and a mobility scooter.

We only had a small time frame with Eddie and had a lot to get done. However, Mr Izzard was brilliant and in full Olympic and Fringe festival spirit, suiting the nature of our shoot perfectly. He even painted the union jack on his finger nails. What a legend. Here he is with our client, Catherine.

The shoot went swimmingly. We were wrapped up by 3pm with some really promising footage under our belts.

And now Join In have two films with Eddie Izzard, made with their team here at Brothers and Sisters.

The first being a passionate call to arms from Eddie, rallying the nation to get down to their local sports club for the Join In weekend, 18/19th August. If you’re on Locog’s official Olympic email, maybe you’ve seen this already?

The second film is more of a practical guide, informing clubs on how to put on a good event. (In a typical ‘Eddie’ off the cuff way of course – “Tiger!!!”).

Now our project with Join In is sadly coming to a close. But there’s still time to sign up for the Join In weekend! Visit their website for more details: www.joininuk.org

Here are both films for your viewing pleasure:

We’ve been getting some great reaction to the new Goal film. It seems that now the Olympics have had their turn, people’s attentions are being firmly turned to the season ahead.

Here’s a selection of what people have been tweeting…

Now that makes one feel all nice and warm inside.