Happy Birthday for Saturday little ladies.

bet365bingo started sponsoring the show in March and launched with x3 scenarios of people taking off their bingoheads to kick back and enjoy the show. All of the idents were filmed on location in Newcastle, using a local director, a local crew and featuring some not-so-local actors from London who found the January weather hard to handle.

A new batch of x3 launched yesterday and we’re in the midst of planning the next set which are due to air in September, to tie in with the show’s 40th birthday.

A couple of the DC team were lucky enough to visit the Emmerdale set (the illusion has been ruined we might add) and attended last week’s Soap Awards to get fully immersed in the world of soap. Highlights were chatting to Janine and Jack from Eastenders about puppies in goodie bags, watching the Hollyoaks ladies dance like they were at a gypsy wedding and realising that soaps are in fact NOT real.

Muchas gracias to MTP, Alex Telfer, Garrod Kirkwood and ITV for helping us out along the way.

A contraction of: it is and it has

Examples:

“It’s all your fault,” said Kev to Michael.

“It’s a new business pitch,” said Amanda.

It’s been a long week.

It’s got the wrong typeface on it.

Its

A ‘belonging’ word for it.

Examples:

Turn the camera on its side.

Gareth chose the location for its natural beauty.

Laura saw the Disney film during its opening week.

Where is its head office?

The bottom line?

Say the sentence aloud without the apostrophe to check.

If you can replace the word with it is or it has, use it’s. Otherwise, it’s always its.

A test

1. ___________ been a really long day.

2. “Give me a shout when ________ready,” said Becca.

3. The old building didn’t have any of ________ original features.

4. ________never been possible to pay for it online.

5. I don’t know why ________so difficult for you to understand this,” Dan said.

6. The client has increased ________ customer base.

7. “_______ never going to work!” Phil said.

So, what’s the deal with this blog? Well, ever noticed that the state of grammar and spelling these days is pretty awful? Do you sometimes read a tweet and cringe at the lack of apostrophes? Or do you worry that your colleagues, clients and friends will think you’re as thick as a wood plank because you don’t know your ‘its’ from your ‘it’s’.

Fear not. You’ve come to the right place. Not that I claim to know every word in the Oxford English (a common mistake that many people make about copy dancers, although we know a fair few) or that I am the authority on all things grammar, but these posts just might help you learn something you didn’t know.

Have a passion for all things online? We’re looking for a front-end developer to show some love to existing sites. You also need to be able to develop scalable cross-browser interfaces for a variety of applications from the ground up.

You must already be an expert at writing high-performance, semantic HTML and efficient CSS to consistent effect across IE7, IE8 and all modern browsers.  Your JavaScript ability needs to go far beyond hacking together plugins, but knowing when and why to use JavaScript libraries, particularly jQuery.

You don’t need to be a design guru, but should have a solid appreciation of design, UX, accessibility and usability. Bonus points if you’ve worked on design solutions that you’d describe as responsive or adaptive. We’d also like you to have some version control experience, particularly Git.

You’ll be reporting to Anthony Sterling, our Technical Director. Don’t worry, he doesn’t bite.

If you have a general love of web standards and doing things the right way, send your CV with samples of your elegant markup to kathryn@drummondcentral.co.uk

If we like your stuff, we’ll be in touch.

Those clever creatives wrote and illustrated a story about the time I asked mum if I could have some stickers and she told me that money doesn’t grow on trees. Whenever anyone takes out a Big Little Saver Account, they get a copy of, ‘Bob and the Money Tree’. The campaign has only gone and won a Marketing Excellence Award for ‘Best Integrated Campaign’. The awards were held at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London on the 23^rd February.

The judges said that it was, “A brilliantly executed integrated campaign that demonstrated great understanding of audience.” They also said, “A well thought out targeted approach to refreshing an already established product, producing excellent results on a limited budget.”

Just goes to show that you don’t have to spend all your pennies to walk away with a shiny award.

You’ll need to have TV production knowledge, a confident manner, client facing experience at meetings and presentations, and strong planning and strategy skills. For this is a job that requires an extra-special personality in order to maintain and develop long-lasting relationships with our Clients.

You must be able to work as part of a team, as well as being proactive. It goes without saying that you’ll need to be brilliant at the detail and easily handle paperwork including contact reports, invoices, quotes, and creative and media briefs. Digital understanding has to be in your locker. And when it’s full on, you’ll know the importance of hitting those deadlines. You’ll need to convey client requests through the agency, and liaise with external contractors including media buyers, printers, production companies and photographers.

We’re offering a competitive salary and great rewards for the right walker/talker. Send your CV to info@drummondcentral.co.uk with Account Manager in the subject box and if we like the sound of you, we’ll talk. Closing date: Friday 23rd March.

This award is based on the standard of creative work, new business won and awards won. To celebrate we had Gorman’s Fish and Chips for lunch today courtesy of Steve and Julie. Because that’s just how we roll. Celebratory chips. In January. When everyone else is on a diet.

Then there’s Anthony Sterling who is our new Technical Director (or ‘Chief Geek’ as he’s fondly nicknamed!). Anthony is highly regarded in the developer world – he joins us from Draka Holdings BV where he was IT Manager for UK Operations, as well as a PHP Developer for the last seven years. He also founded @phpne, a PHP User Group designed to share knowledge and skills, in addition to raising the focus of local developers. Now that’s being pro-active.