Thompson Brand Partners

Camp Hill Awayday

Well it's been over a week since we had an outstanding day up in North Yorkshire at Camp Hill. 

We were amazingly lucky with the weather as it's been pretty much raining for fun lately. We had a beautiful, bright winter day to enjoy our outdoor pursuits of climbing scarily high in the treetops, skidding around on quad bikes and then scaring ourselves silly on the ridiculously high zip wire.

We'll put all of the shots from the day on Flickr, but in the meantime here's a few to keep you going.

The day started with much needed bacon rolls and hot cups of tea. Lovely.

After a morning of envisioning and imagining what the future might be like, we took lunch and then donned the ominously waterproof full body suits. "It's quite wet on the quad bike course" they said. Paul took it all in his stride of course.

Anna, Chloe and Josh prepare for the Chicken Run egg capturing challenge (we got 7 in case you're interested). Anna and Chloe get full marks for imaginative yet practical use of knitwear and matching sweatshirts.

Ian and his helmet.

As I'm sitting here now, I have no idea how i managed to climb the ladder of doom. Of course the photograph doesn't really do the height justice, suffice to say it was high and very frightening for complete wusses like me. Everyone else seemed to get on just fine, however. 

Interesting people

At Thompson we like interesting people. Interesting clients, interesting partners - even our accountants are interesting!

Because of this, we work extra hard to find interesting people to work here. Sometimes we spend a little too much time trying to find that perfect fit for a role profile, but we think it's worth the effort.

So when a really interesting person comes along in a serendipitous fashion we're extra chuffed. Hayley is spending six months with us sitting on reception and helping tackle the growing administrative stack in finance. After she's been with us, she's heading down to St. Martins to do her masters as it so happens she's a fine artist to boot. 

Here's some of her work - you can see more of it here

Darth Vader's inbox

Welcome aboard

Sam's our new business development guy and he's just started this week. 

Obviously his week will be all about trying to remember everyone's names, deciphering the complicated tea making rituals and impressing everyone with his knowledge of cricket and up and coming challenger brands.

So when I asked him if he had a photograph I could put on the blog this is what he gave me. Welcome aboard Sam, you'll fit in just fine.

Full on

It really is business as usual in Thompson Towers at the moment. Back with a vengeance and only two weeks into the new year and the team is firing on all cylinders. We've not had the time to feel sorry for ourselves that we're in January - the way it's going, we'll have blinked and it's gone.

It's great to have so much new stuff to get our teeth into. Hot on the heels of the pre Christmas client wins, there are tenders everywhere (not chicken tenders, more's the pity) and opportunities all over the place. I'm quite buoyed by the activity and I'll try not to tip into seething rage when thinking about the media's economic meltdown message I'm constantly getting.

There's one thing that I've completely not done is introduce Paul - our new designer - who joined us just before Christmas. Now I did ask him for a photograph which he hasn't supplied so I'm afraid he'll just have to make do with this one. Quite a good likeness I can assure you.

Normal service will be resumed on the blog next week, its been so busy I've not had the chance to give it the love it so craves.

2009

Happy New Year to everyone.

First full day back in the office for most of us and although we had a great two week festive break, you always know that there's hard yards to be run the first day back. Getting back in the swing of things is always a toughie after two weeks of chillaxing with just mince pies and port to keep one company.

New year's resolutions are funny things. I personally don't believe in them as life should be one, long, ongoing, series of resolutions being set and broken. Anyway, to get us off to a flying start here's a few of the teams' resolutions for 2009...see if you can guess who's is who's.

Quit shopping (until February)

Eat less of the bad, takeaway stuff

Eat more of the good, home cooked stuff

Sleep better (Buy a year's subscription to Nitol)

No indiscriminate use of the F word (but cock is fine)

Lose a stone

Stay calm (for most of the time)

Work off the mince pies and port (by whatever means)

Stop feeling anxious about things over which I have no control

Stop listening to doom-laden Radio 4

Resolve to never make resolutions

Be positive about absolutely everything

Totally Brilliant People

We've recently introduced a recognition scheme at Thompson. That makes it sound rather grand but it's simple really, every month we all vote for the member of the team who has been the best to work with, the most pleasant, who's soldiered on in the face of adversity or even who has given blood.

The winner each month gets our specially commissioned trophy to keep for a month and although we're only in our second month it's already proving to be a brilliant way to recognise everyone's contribution to what we do at Thompson and how we do it.

Pictured are Liz and Chloe - who are the joint winners for December in what was a very close race. It's going to take some effort to knock them off the top spot in January but I'm sure everyone else will give them a run for their money!

Dragon's Den

One of the highlights of our day out of the office was the boys versus girls Office Plan Dragons Den.

We're looking at making the office space more suitable to what we actually need and we thought it would be great idea to open it up to everybody - what would you like to do with our office space? We gave everyone a brief and a budget to work to and announced a Dragons Den style competition where the successful team gets £100 and to work with the architect going forward.

Phil and Ian were to be the 'dragons' (nothing new there I hear you cry) but I don't think Ian and I were prepared or the level of competitiveness - particularly from the girls' team. Suffice it to say that they had definitely gone the extra mile with a scale model including wind turbine, reception petting zoo, mezzanine level including live pandas. All carefully costed of course.

The boys' more modest but more carefully costed proposal was, on the day, overshadowed by the glamorous lifestyle promised by the girls' extravagant refurbishment of The Old Stables. We were suckered in by the promise of bean bags and photoelectric glass (although there was some debate about the originator of this idea) and the £100 from the dragons went the way of the girls.

The boys foolishly declined an offer by the dragons for a further £100 to work together as one team lest their principled approach was sullied by inappropriate use of sodoku loo paper and sun loungers.

On yer bike

There's nothing like a decent summer - and this has been nothing like a decent summer.

So what does a Thompson Artworker get up to when they're not slaving over a desk? Well, I'd like to say I spend my time clocking up the miles up on my 1200 Bandit, but in the absence of any kind of sunshine or warmth this year I've spent more time staring at the grey clouds considering whether to make a "Will It? Won't it?" gamble with the elements.

Still, it should be another six weeks before we slip from summer to autumn (how will we know the difference?) so by rights we may still see some rays which, I hope and pray, grace us with their presence this Sunday.

That's when I and fellow members of the YorkshireBanditForum (not just for Bandit owners) are planning on taking a ride down to Matlock Bath in Derbyshire - so watch this space (and the weather forecast).

Kyle

Kyle's on work experience with us for a few weeks.

When he sent us his CV, there were two clinchers that secured him his placement.

1. Ability to grow a full beard
2. Patchy BMX skills

Let that be a lesson to all you students out there. Be creative. And make us laugh, it works every time.