Lovely news just in that we’ve been fortunate enough to scoop an integrated consumer, social, corporate and CSR brief from the lovely, lovely people at Virgin Active.

We are going to be working with the folks at Headland, who pitched alongside us.

There are some cracking campaigns in the pipeline to get their approach to activeness out there and to make sure that everyone understands what makes Virgin Active different.

Alongside a hard-working press office to make sure there’s a steady drumbeat of great coverage. Oh … and we will be supporting their social media team to bring the brand to life on those channels.

Some great work from the team to get this one. We’re more than made up …

We haven’t really tended to go in for jumping up and down and raving about our successes (um, until now!).

But, as the PR awards season has finally come to a close for another year, we thought we’d do it just this once.

Who knows whether it’ll happen again (we’ve got a wonderful team and some amazing clients so we are set fair to repeat our successes), but this has been an epic start for a still relatively new agency.

It’s testament to some brilliant PRs and some clients who have backed our silliest ideas and have been unfailing in their support for us as a business

So this is a huge thank you to them all.

PRCA Awards 2013: Winner, Best Small Agency

PRCA Awards 2013: Winner, Best New Agency

PR Week Awards 2013: Winner, Best New Agency

SomeComms Awards 2013: Winner, Best Small Agency

PR Moment Awards 2013: Winner, Best New Agency

Drinks Business Awards 2013: Winner, Best PR Agency

SomeComms Awards 2012: Winner, Best Small Agency

Social Buzz Awards 2013: Winner, Best Integrated Campaign for Meantime

Some Comms Awards 2013: Winner, Best Social Media Campaign for Meantime

Fresh Awards 2013: Grand Prix for O2 Travel

Fresh Awards 2013: Gold (winner), Best Integrated Campaign for Hops in a Box

Fresh Awards 2013: Gold (winner), Best Digital Campaign for O2 Travel

Fresh Awards 2013: Gold (winner), Best CSR Campaign for O2′s Walkie Talkies

Fresh Awards 2013: Silver (winner) Best Consumer Campaign for O2′s Walkie Talkies

Fresh Awards 2013: Silver (winner), Best Social Networking for O2 Travel

Fresh Awards 2013: Bronze, Best Social Networking for Hops in a Box

Digital Impact Awards 2013: Gold, Best TMT Campaign for O2 Travel

Digital Impact Awards 2013: Bronze, Best Community Relations for O2 Travel

Digital Impact Awards 2013: Bronze, Best Food and Drink Campaign for Meantime

Digi Awards 2013: Winner, Best Use of Microblogging for O2 Travel

PRCA Dare Awards 2013: Winner, Best “Consumer Choice” Campaign for O2 CooB

SomeComms Awards 2012: Winner, Best Use of Twitter for O2 Santa

Digital Impact Awards 2012: Winner, Best Technology Campaign for O2 Santa

Digital Impact Awards 2012: Highly Commended, Best Use of Video for O2 Santa

PR Week Awards 2012: Highly Commended, Best Technology Campaign for O2 Santa

Ideas of the Year 2012: Best in Book for O2 Santa

Ideas of the Year 2012: In-book for UKTV Alcatraz
read more…

This is just lovely work … Simple. Effective. With some serious money behind a straightforward idea.

To add to the Pantheon of PR tactics that includes “make it big and photograph it”, “put it in a bus and tour it regionally” and “put a fit bird in a bath and smother her in it” should be added “put it on a hydraulic lift and live in it” …

You want a Christmas-related science story to promote the Big Bang UK Young Scientist and Engineering Fair.

Pretty obvious response … you create a Sprout-power Christmas tree, don’t you?

Which has been occupying some of the team here at Hope&Glory over the past couple of weeks. The result of some extensive testing, some work with the lovely people at DesignWorks and some serious media selling during the day has been that our “launch” of the world’s first Sprout tree – the vegetables power the lights on the tree – has done pretty well across the media.

So far, national coverage includes a spot on DayBreak (awesome!) and pieces on (or in) Daily Mail, Daily Star, The People, Daily Telegraph, ITV news, METRO, Yahoo, TreeHugger, Gizmodo, AOL, MSN, Inhabitat and … happy days from a shareability perspective … PSFK and Mashable.

Here it is in action …

General Harvey Nichols awesomeness. Humour, genuine jollity and lightness of touch.

The perfect antidote to festive saccharine and organised fun.

What’s better than a video of a cute seal acting like an excitable puppy? After the experiences of this week, the Isle of Man Tourism team here at Hope&Glory will tell you, not a lot.

We knew we’d struck gold when we came across an adorable video,l belonging to a local diving school on the Island. Especially when we found out that the diver in the video, 15 year old Jamie Gallagher, was on his first ever dive.

Like a dog excited to see its master, a wild grey seal is seen wrapping its fins around a diver’s legs, whilst pawing and nuzzling at him.

It turned out, as we suspected, that we weren’t the only fans of this footage.

Since featuring in the Metro, Daily Telegraph, ITV, AOL and on BBC North West Tonight, CBBC Newsround, BBC Breakfast, on good old Daily Mail Online and across the pond on Good Morning America (yes, really), and being named Steve Wright’s viral video of the day on BBC Radio 2, young Jamie and Discover Diving owner Michelle Haywood have turned into local celebrities.

But more importantly, the Isle of Man is just a little bit more firmly on the map as one of the best diving sports in the British Isles.

Just goes to show that you don’t always need a big budget to make a big splash, and on this occasion it was a good spot and a quick turnaround that won the day.

Challenged to find a way of making Barclays’ massive investment of time and energy creating new solutions for its customers’ needs a compelling editorial story, we’ve been again the media this week.

The Barclays Age Suit is a remarkable tool that has been used by staff to help them get a real sense of the banking experience for the elderly.

Complete with weights, joint stiffening, hearing impairment and a variety of sight loss inducing specs, the suit ages the wearer from 30 to 80 in about 20 minutes.

A swift sprinkle of research later – asking older people whether they feel too much is designed around the needs of the young – to give the story a news hook, we were off.

First up, CNN spent the day in the Barclays Age Suit and were followed swiftly by METRO and ITN. The research story and pics ran in the Daily Telegraph, Mail Online, Daily Express, HuffPo and The Times, while James Day came through with a full-page belter. Some of the trend sites – PSFK and Trendhunter – also picked up the story. The story even made an appearance on the Sky News paper review and tempted Lee Price into the suit for The Sun.

And next up we’re working with the Beeb to do a bigger piece in the next week or so.

All-in-all a cute little campaign based on something Barclays was already doing – but perhaps being a little too humble about. Lovely stuff altogether.

Since last we had cause to wave a flag and celebrate what has been a shockingly happy awards season for Hope&Glory we’ve scored another couple of wins.

First of all a handful of us trooped out to the Digital Impact Awards to do battle against the likes of LBi, AMV and AKQA – they really have upped their game in the quality of entrants.

It was therefore with considerable pride that we took Gold for our O2 Travel “Gone Roamin’” campaign in the Best Tech and Telecomms category. We also bagged a Bronze for the same campaign in Best Use of Community Development while Meantime “Hops in a Box” also got a Bronze. Cracking night had by all.

Then last week we headed off to the PRCA Awards 2013 in a broad variety of interpretations of black tie.

After what had seemed an interminable period of time we found ourselves called to the stage to take the award for Best New Agency. Which we were pretty startled by.

But (as if that wasn’t enough), before we’d had chance to get back to our seats we found ourselves getting the nod for a second time as we won Best Small Agency as well.

Not one but two awards. Amazing.

As ever, it’s massive congrats to the whole team of wonderful people who make up Hope&Glory and huge thanks to all the wonderful people who have helped us get so far.