The London Marathon! What an amazing day.

Ben with his medal for completing the London Marathon

What a fantastic occasion, and what a fantastic effort by Ben to complete the London Marathon. Yesterday, Nita and I went to London with Ben, to watch him participate in the most famous race in the country. It was uplifting, humbling, and exhilarating to watch this amazing mass of people literally shed blood sweat and tears to get through 26 miles, all to help other people.

We saw people dressed as rhinoceroses, camels, a really tall giraffe, men on skis, a man pulling two tyres, man running in a blindfold, several blind runners, a man in an aeroplane suit, a man with a giant poppy tin on his back, how some of the people managed to even walk in their gear was amazing. And the crowd were unbelievable, everywhere we went people were whooping and hollering, shouting and encouraging all the runners to keep going.

Ben’s race was going really well, we saw him first at 7 miles when he said he’d started to feel an old knee injury. We saw him again at 15 miles, and he was in agony, almost in tears and on the verge of packing it in, here he is at that point…

Ben, in pain, at 15 miles.

Nita and I nipped into boots at Canary Wharf and met him again at 18 miles with 3 extra strength Ibuprofen, a knee support, plus water and a banana. Although the rest of him was fine he was struggling badly with his knee. Having dosed him up, we saw him again at 21 miles and thankfully the painkillers had kicked in and he was feeling better. In the last 5 miles the crowd really egged all the runners on and 5 hours after he started the race, Ben collected his runners medal. Needless to say we were very proud of him, especially having done it in so much pain. With the generosity of friends and family, and all those who supported him at work, he has raised over £2,200 for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust.  A brilliant day left us feeling proud of our son and humbled by the amazing generosity of  spirit of  the British people. A million thanks to everybody who supported him, you are all amazing too!

Ben’s donations page is on http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/BenJones

Best headline of the day…

As you can see further down this blog, my son Ben is running the London Marathon on Sunday and to drum up a bit of support for his fundraising we issued a press release to the local paper, The Longridge News.  He’s going to get a lot of stick for this headline….!

Ben’s attempt at the London Marathon for Cystic Fibrosis

Ben Jones training for the London Marathon

BEN SHAPES UP FOR LONDON MARATHON

A 23 year old graphic designer from Ribchester has quit the beer and fags and got in shape for this Sundays London Marathon. Ben Jones from Greenmoor Lane in Ribchester has been training for three months to lose weight and get fit to compete in the Worlds most famous Marathon. Ben is attempting his first ever 26 mile race to raise funds for the charity Cystic Fibrosis Trust.

Ben said “At that time of applying to enter the London Marathon I was a short, fat, 20-a-day smoker who drank too much. Since being accepted I have given up smoking, I’ve been training hard and I am eating and drinking sensibly, so now I’m a short, not so fat, non smoker who drinks in moderation (kind of!).  I am running  to raise funds to help fight Cystic Fibrosis a nasty disease which effects children and young adults, with 3 people a week losing their lives. So anything you give will be a real big help to the thousands that suffer from Cystic Fibrosis. You can donate on the following website http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/BenJones

(Ben is my youngest, and has been training with a niggling calf injury that won’t go away. He is determined to complete the race though even if he has to do it on his hands and knees!)

Thank you very much for supporting him.

Mark.

A new MacBook, a toothless United, a new wine shop, a charity marathon run, a new cricket ground, a busy agency, an election, more men in China and hows your offline spend!

It’s Wednesday, and a few days since I last blogged. Since then my old laptop, after trusty service has finally bitten the dust. I was really happy with the last one and although there are alternatives, all costing more, I’ve gone with a straight replacement so a simple, small Macbook it is. Nice one. Not so simple and small a job to transfer all my information, settings, addresses, programmes etc from one machine to the other, but Steven and Martin are on the case, and hopefully all my routines will be back to normal soon. It really seems like everything comes to a standstill without your computer.

Berbatov, not a patch on Rooney

And meanwhile there’s so much stuff going on to blog about I don’t know where to start! Since Friday the sun has come out and so too have all the shorts and skimpy tops, to be followed no doubt by all the cold remedies as our bodies remind us it’s only mid April and not mid July. I was kindly invited to Crown Paints hospitality at the Rovers United game on Sunday by David at Stax. Really enjoyable I think Rovers are actually progressing well under Allardyce and are playing some decent football in between all the set pieces. as for United without Rooney, a bit toothless for me.

My son Tom opens The Whalley Wine Shop this coming Monday and it’s incredibly hectic, will the builders finish in time, will the shelves be installed in time, will all the stock turn up, will be get the signage and the ticketing done…etc etc. My son Ben runs in the London Marathon a week on Sunday…will he get round…will we raise enough in sponsorship for Cystic Fibrosis. The Cricket season starts on saturday with my club Ribchester CC benefitting from a late opportunity to play this season’s matches at Blackburn Northern due to their demise. Off up there  tonight for a bit of a practice and to see what ground preparation is required by us.

Meanwhile at work, we’ve won another big contract for an existing client. It’s fantastic news. Well done to Jen and Ian who put the pitch together. We’re very busy and we need another Account Manager pronto and whilst there have been a lot of applicants, Mr or Ms Right hasn’t turned up yet. The holiday season is also having an effect with Mark and Heidi off this week, we need to schedule our holidays carefully so we’re not understaffed.

Out in the big wide world, the election is upon us, and whilst I will try and make this blog an election free zone, I find it quite amusing how the parties are frantically throwing wild promises at the electorate which we all know will not come to fruition! I think there may be a big vote against Lab/Con this year and the smaller parties will do surprisingly well. There are two good articles i’ve read recently which I’d like to comment on and will form the basis of future blogs…an article in the Sunday Times highlighting the fact that soon there will be 30 million more men than women in China and the social consequences. Also a piece in The Marketer speculating that soon online marketing spend will outweigh offline marketing spend.

Lots going on, and with a brand spanking new laptop, lots to blog about.

Here’s wishing you a happy, sunny, cricketing, barbecueing, football winning, recovery filled, optimistic New Year

Happy New Year and thanks to everyone who visited the blog to check out the 6th annual Workhouse Christmas Video. It’s normal practice every year for us to give £1 to charity for every comment or e-mail we get in response to it. So today I’ve been checking the stats to see how we fared. Apparently  1.509 people visited the blog since we posted the video, 750 have specifically visited that particular post, You Tube says there has been 561 views of the video, 49 comments were left on the blog, 47 e-mails were sent to me, and 2 comments were left on You Tube. This year we’re making a donation to support Bens attempt at the London Marathon, fundraising for The Cystic Fibrosis Trust, and by my reckoning 98 people have replied to our Christmas Video, so that’s £98 in the pot. But….if he completes the London Marathon we’ll make the donation up to £1000, so Ben, get training!

Another stat I was encouraged to read over the holiday was produced by Nationwide who said that the national average house price ended 2009 5.9% up on the previous year. Now I know they dropped more than that in 2008 but it is very positive that house prices are now moving in the right direction, it provides such a stimulus to so many sectors of the economy, and is good news for 2010.

44. Another stat. This is the number of years since England won the World Cup,  the only major thing they’ve won since the birth of football, which many England fans say happened in England. It is true that the first Football Association in the world was formed in London in 1863, the first Football League followed in 1888…AND the first winners of the Football League Championship were here in Lancashire at Preston North End. Having only won one trophy in the whole of the existence of football it is surely a law of averages that England win another one. I firmly believe that England WILL win the World Cup this year….and give another boost to our economy.

The law of averages must also mean that we’ll have a lovely long hot summer this year. For the last three years, according to my ‘ oh no, my cricket match has been rained off again’  index, we’ve had more than enough rain during recent summers. So, I also firmly believe that this year the sun will shine….and give a further boost to our economy.

So here’s looking forward to a sunny, cricket filled, barbecue eating, football loving, marathon watching, recovery fuelled, optimistic 2010!

Mark Jones, MD, Workhouse Marketing.

Workhouse Christmas Video 2009.

This is the sixth year that we’ve created a ‘no expense incurred‘ Christmas greeting in the form of a video. Please check out the link below, and please leave a comment on the blog, if you do we’ll give £1 to charity (in the highly unlikely event of this video becoming a ‘Boyle-like’ You Tube worldwide phenomenon, we’ll donate up to a max of £1000). This year we’re raising money to support Ben’s attempt at the London Marathon in aid of The Cystic Fibrosis Trust.

We would like to thank all our clients and suppliers for your support during 2009, and we wish you a Happy New Year, and a successful and prosperous 2010.

Merry Christmas,

Mark Jones, MD, Workhouse Marketing.

Life at Workhouse…often challenging, often exciting, often frustrating, always busy…but never ever dull!

I would say this but…..the atmosphere at Workhouse is electric at the moment. The tension and excitement is palpable.

With only 6 working days (including today) left before Christmas everybody is flat out. It’s normally wind down time but not this year. We’re pitching on Friday, we’re waiting for the yes/no on a couple of big proposals, a lot of existing clients are very busy, staffing issues are to the fore, we’re light in Account Management and have had to draft in some freelance design help in the studio this week, but can we manage it….YES WE CAN!  On top of that we’re shooting our annual Christmas video tomorrow, editing and e-mailing Thurs/Fri. We’ve another big photo shoot coming up in the New Year (do we know that’s only 7 working days away!!!) , and a raft of new business wins to start working on.

We’ve a training day with our new admin system to fit in, the voting and deciding on our ‘staff member of the year’, the Christmas party, the new accountant to brief, and the creative for our new year mailing to do. And this is while we’re all on tenterhooks awaiting the arrival of Stevens new baby…..

No let up when I get home, as we have my brothers family and Nita’s parents up for Christmas…. Christmas dinner for 10. Youngest son Ben is frantically decorating the granny flat above our garage trying to move in in time for Christmas, as well as trying to start his training as he’s been accepted to run the London Marathon. And oldest son Tom is on the verge of a ‘life changing’ decision as we wait to find out if our family’s offer to buy the lease on the Threshers store where he works has been accepted! If we get it Tom’s Wine Shop in Whalley will be open as fast as is physically possible! As well as all my Christmas shopping to do.

Life at Workhouse…often challenging, often exciting, often frustrating, always busy…but never ever dull!

Will you tune in for ‘tales of the vanilla slice…. and other things’?

Well, I had so much fun writing yesterdays blog that I’m going to do it again today! I don’t for one minute think that I have the dedication and perseverance to write a blog every day, but I guess I’m in the ‘novelty’ stage with it at the moment, so I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.

But what shall I write about? Should I fill it full of positive PR about Workhouse Marketing and Workhouse Studios and use the blog as a promotional tool? Should I fill it full of key words so that the search engines pick it up and move Workhouse Marketing and Workhouse Studios up the rankings? Should it be called something like ‘the beleaguered life of an MD in a marketing agency’ and I could offload all my stresses and worries to the hordes of followers that will no doubt be glued to this amazing tale as it unfolds. Perhaps it should be an ongoing marketing seminar and I could preach about the need for awareness and visibility, I can see it now ” Marketing through the Storm – number 783 – ” Please spend some money on marketing it really works you know”.

I could use it as a platform for charitable and social causes, raising money for charitable foundations as we are doing with ‘The Ribchester Calendar Girls’ fundraiser for Rosemere Cancer Foundation, and for the Cystic Fibrosis charity which my son, Workhouse Graphic Designer  Ben Jones is running the London Marathon for this year. More about that in future blogs. I could just use it to promote my true loves, the Welsh Rugby Team, Blackburn Rovers, a pint of Wainwrights, the X Factor, most rock bands, my company Workhouse Marketing, and the ingredients of the Vanilla Slice.

Anyway, I guess it will be a mixture of all these things (although the Vanilla Slice will feature heavily), and of course I’m absolutely sure that my in-box will be flooded with messages of exciting topics that I should apply my wisdom and acerbic wit to. Not.