Unfortunately Lisa’s had a tough week with her baby boy Truman, who got ill as a result of teething symptoms. At just 9 months, he has teeth breaking through that have been causing him a lot of pain –which only means Mommy Lisa is up in the night to care for him. Beyond baby blues, there’s plenty of activity in the Name office in planning for a few press releases to be distributed. The highlight of the week was Thursday’s surprise pizza party – a few tasty pizzas were ordered and the team enjoyed lunch, courtesy of head honcho Sam.

Speaking of said Honcho, Sam has taken to the south of France for a light bit of skiing and snowboarding, we can’t wait to hear all of the stories on his arrival.

Hugo has returned from his sickly daze this week, still slightly groggy but firing on most cylinders. He spent much of the week preparing the PR for Nozstock The Hidden Valley festival’s initial line-up announcement all coming to a head on Thursday, a day in which Sam decided to disappear to the slopes of France. Faced with a variety of tasks from a variety of clients (as well as some of Sam’s, picked up in his absence) he buckled down with our new helper Tom to conquer the mountain. We have to say that he was successful in climbing the Himalayas, but not without his trusty Sherpa Tenzing..I mean Tom. The weekend is looking to be a welcome relief for him and despite not making it to ILMC himself one of his clients, WeGotTickets, will be up to win an Arthur Award ‘The Golden Ticket’ there – we at Name wish them the best of luck!

Check out Lisa’s Evian addiction above lol, have a great weekend all!

With the imminent arrival of a lot of press coverage for respective clients, the team has been working not only on all of our ongoing projects but some top secret new things too… shhhhh! We can’t tell you all the details just yet.

Lisa, although much better, is still recovering from being very sick. She spent the week with an enormous workload including the prospect of putting out four press releases in one day. For our client Merlin, we achieved extensive coverage as the digital rights agency reached a settlement for its thousands of record label members with LimeWire. The story even appeared in The Guardian and was picked up by popular TechCrunch.

In a never ending cycle of sickness Hugo’s body finally fell to the incessant attacks of germs on his immune system and called in sick today. However, as he’s such a trooper and loves Name SO MUCH that he’s been working from home getting things accomplished and ready for next week.

We’ve also had some strange occurrences in the office. On Thursday Hugo and Denise both heard morse code and blamed Sam, which to their defense was ultimately true, as they both heard it at the same time.  The mystery deepened on Friday when one of our clients gave us a brief involving Morse Code management, freaky right?!!

Quote of the week, has to be from our general knowledge guru, Hugo, “I thought she [Lisa] was going to cough up her face”. This was in reference to Lisa coughing so badly that her face turned a scarlet colour and produced sounds of a dyeing buffalo.

We also have a real treat for you this week as we not only have our fortnightly playlist but also a freebie. That’s right, just to make sure you read to the end of our week notes we save our free stuff until last. Good job you. The free download is from the brilliant and fast rising Soundway Records and is called Tirei O Chapeu by Batida, Sam absolutely loves this stuff.

Our playlist is titled ‘Soundtrack To Our Lives’ can you guess who picked which tunes from our childhood?

Until next week Name fans.

On Monday night Denise and Lisa attended the launch party for Social Media Week – the drinks were flowing and there were some really great characters at the party too. Being the social media addicts that they are, they fitted right in and were able to make some top-class connections.

Although Denise awoke  from her slumber on Thursday thinking she was only mid-way through her week, it’s been a great one for Name’s junk food queen. She’s also extremely excited about judging the auditions for the Live and Unsigned competition this weekend, where a variety of artists will be showcasing their talents and hopefully making it to the next round. She does promise however not to be extremely cold hearted like Simon Cowell  and break anyone’s dreams.

Swathed in the grey Friday afternoon Hugo managed to find beauty in some unlikely places. It isn’t an occurrence that happens often for him – and it definitely did not come from the office, which was chaotic cacophony of crashing computers and coughing employees – but somewhere in the ether inspiration seemed to be pouring forth. Cascading down a mountain, collecting in little luminous pools encased in willing minds, works of art have been springing out and in turn creating further inspiration. An encounter with one such work occurred Friday morning, a track recommended to him by his ex-colleague and web designer friend with impeccable taste, Mr. Dave Hall. A track by British trumpeter Neil Yates, Rainy Harbour is clearly influenced by his Transylvanian band-mate Zsolte Bende and unearths sparse, intimate soundscapes interlaced with Balkan rhythms and rich melodic lines.  The second is a review by Dave Edwards found on Drowned in Sound this week on indie act Tindersticks. It’s worth spending a couple of minutes reading it just to enjoy the writing. As Hugo said, this kind of inspiration is not something that occurs often, but when it does it’s worth stopping and smelling the flowers.

Lisa, the Mommy of the office, rushed home on Thursday as Baby Tru caught a fever. We’ve missed our Yankee in the office and we hope Tru is doing a lot better now.

So who’s looking forward to Pancake Day next week Tuesday? We sure are! Doubt that we’ll  be having a tossing contest, but we’ll be sure to let you know  how our pancakes turn out via Flickr.

Work has gotten going for this summer’s Nozstock festival and even though the warmer days are months away, the Name team is busy planning and preparing for this event. Tom has been researching hundreds of blogs and online forums in the dubstep, jungle and drum ‘n bass genres, whilst Denise has been helping with the hip hop side of things. Mom of the office, Lisa has been thinking about ways to promote the festival to a family audience and Sam was brainstorming how to run a Nozstock Battle of the Bands series of events.

Next week is the international Social Media Week, where Lisa and Denise have plans to check out a Monday night launch party.

With the snow falling Wednesday night, it was time to turn up the heat and stay inside – but Hugo ventured out for the Kinetica Art Fair, where he saw mind-blowing examples of digital art and sculpture. The annual event is one of Lisa’s connections, from her days working on the Cybersonica festival of music, sound, art and technology.

Hugo left the office on Thursday night with the idea fixed firmly in his head that he would see the Black Keys. He’d been too disorganised to get tickets in advance, but was sure that he would be able to source something at the door as there were three gigs over the weekend, there will definitely be some cancelations and scouts with tickets to a Thursday night show. First he would meet a friend but would be on the road in no time to see the gig. Well that meeting set him back an hour or so, “oh well” he thought trying to keep positive, “so I miss a most of the Band of Skulls, would have been nice to see them but I really want to see the Black Keys”. After stopping for something to eat he was on his way in the tube, up the Piccadilly line and at this point properly late but still in high spirits, ‘maybe I’ll be able to get a ticket cheaper as the scouts will have a whole lot that they want to get rid of’ he thought.

By the time he got off the tube it had started snowing heavily, not ideal for his flat soled boots. Checking his phone he imagined it would take 15 minutes to walk to the venue and WHAM! He fell over. “I can still make it” he thought and went trudging up the hill on his non-existent grip and feeling very much like a Napolionic horse retreating in the winter of 1812. As he looked to catch a bus he realised he got off at the wrong stop, it would take him a good 30min to walk there and a flick over his twitter revealed that the Black Keys had started their set. So sitting in a fallen pile of demoralisation, covered in snow on the side of a mountain and over two hours late for a gig he had no ticket, Hugo gave up. The moral of this story is ‘If you’re going to #fail, #fail spectacularly’.

Quote of the week, comes from Hugo. Whilst having an episode about his almost deceased PC, Hugo blurted, “It really grinds my gears… I mean your one function in life is work [as a computer] and you can’t do it”.

We finally have a brand new playlist of our latest recommendations for you Name fans and it’s a good’un!

Whilst beginning incredibly stressfully, Hugo’s week has actually come to a rather pleasant close as he sits overlooking the Thames under a crisp blue sky through floor to ceiling windows. He has found himself at the Southbank Centre at the AIF’s Structural and Crowd Safety Conference ducking out from the proceedings to bang out some work and check his emails.

One thing he’s not looking forward to however, is the celebration of New Zealand’s national day ‘Waitangi Day’ this weekend. Let me rephrase that, he is looking forward to the celebration of this day on Saturday with the thousands of other Kiwis who have found themselves in London, but he’s not looking forward to the Sunday. The day commemorates the treaty that was signed between the main Maori chieftains and the British crown thereby bringing a close to the bloody ‘New Zealand Wars’. It now turns out that the British duped the Maoris into signing the treaty by mistranslating it and thereby stealing the Maori land – so in effect we’re celebrating the peculation of property from the primitives… ‘Here here’ as the Brits would say.

This week two people in the office win clutz awards, Lisa walked into the doorway, slamming her arm against the hard metal lock. She did, “Yelp” in pain but her colleagues laughed about the clutz move. However this (Friday) morning, Sam managed to make the toaster fall off the table, which then in a chain reaction, caused the sugar and other items to fall on the floor. It’s a mystery how he managed this, as he was sitting at his desk when the incident occurred. We think he may have magical powers.

He did however want to say how excited he and the team are to be working on Nozstock 2012!! Woop Woop!  A much loved, much fun festival that aims to stay small even though it could grow a lot bigger…  Look out for the first artist announcements next week!

A rather busy week, Denise hasn’t been conscious of the days but rather feels like they’ve amalgamated into one another and now it’s, “Happy Friday” as she likes to call it. With a fun pack packed weekend ahead of her she’s raring to go and can’t wait to see her friends.

Quote of the week has to come from our Mommy of the office, Lisa. During a brief chat about technology, geeks and more Lisa uttered, “Khaki Pants – the uniform of Geeks”. Everyone was in stitches after she mentioned this.

Have a great weekend

For one release, we connected with the artist Trenton Birch, and his band Free Radical, who’s collaborating on a new track for his upcoming album with Maxi Jazz of Faithless fame. Fan girl Lisa was thrilled to have a link to this amazing artist, who’s tracks carried her through the late 90s.

This week has been pretty standard for Denise; however she did go to the Childish Gambino gig on Wednesday night. The night kicked off with a performance by Josh Osho and then Gambino took to the stage much later.  She says, “It was a great chance to bring out her inner rapper and get down.” We can’t even begin to imagine this!

One of the best things that happened, was that we announced our lovely Lisa has now joined full time and of course our Zealander Hugo, who has now been promoted to press officer – YAY for Lisa and Hugo,  as Lisa would say! It was nice to see Lisa and Hugo becoming famous – be it only for only 15 minutes – as we’ve had some great endorsements from some of the most read publications within the music industry, like Record of the Day and Music Week.

We are also inching closer to taking on a really cool little festival this summer – the sort of thing we will be going to anyway if we weren’t working it!  Fingers crossed for us!  To celebrate we might even try and sneak off a little bit early tonight for a nice drink – don’t tell Sam!! Shhh!

This week has been a bit of blur for little ol’ Denise and now she’s wondering how the week went so fast without her registering that it’s now Friday. But hey ho, she’s not complaining! Much of the week was spent dedicated to the new ‘Meet The Team’ Lichtenstein photos and the new Facebook page logo. We have to applaud her efforts as she is in no way a graphic designer but she certainly did a great job!

Hugo has been fighting deportation officers this week, well, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. He’s been very stressed trying to decipher the INCREDIBLY complicated maze of information that is the UK Home Office website. After days wasted reading PDFs and following labyrinthine trails of information he is none the wiser and wondering how anybody ever emigrates to the UK – although he did find David Bowie in a ballroom. To cheer himself up he has managed to score tickets to Henry Rollins tonight, and with minimal Rollins experience to date other than some idle Black Flag listening he’s looking forward to it with an open mind.

On the brighter side of things, Sam and Lisa won over a new client over a tasty meal at Koba (a scrumptious Korean restaurant), talking deals over BBQ and Kimchi. It was either the food or talent that won over the new client, and work’s begun immediately. 2012 is brewing some fantastic client projects for Name PR, especially on the music meets technology front, with innovative campaigns soon launching that make use of new technology in ground breaking ways.

Quote of the week, has to come from the Name’s Head Honcho, Sam Shemtob. After attending a Ukulele karaoke night he couldn’t be persuaded to sing, which he says, “Was for the better of mankind that I didn’t”.

Also, remember the PIAS fire last summer? Well we’re finally putting up the coverage in our office so stay tuned for the final product on our new Flickr site.

We’re also back with our playlist, so make sure to check out the treats we have in store for you musically.

Realising that a great breakfast is all you need to start the day right, we’ve now stocked up on Vogel’s – a New Zealand specialty introduced by Name’s very own Zealander – Hugo, Muesli and loads of fruit! We’re trying to get our five-a-day, aren’t you? However even with all these efforts, this week has seemed like a never ending tale of sickness for Denise – from being bed ridden earlier in the week to then catching a cold in the latter half. Luckily, she has no intention of being anywhere else other than in front of her 42” TV with her duvet and a pack of popcorn at hand, for the whole weekend. Sounds like a plan no?

Hugo has noticed things grinding back to life as journalists begin to return from their slumber and a bit of sun peaks through the wintery clouds. Mysteriously, the office chatter degenerated into arguments over whether it was appropriate to have the word ‘Mist’ as a weather sign or whether there should be some other logo thought up for representing that specific type of weather – completely unrelated to Sam’s return of course.

As well as observing the usual carries on within the office, Hugo has been fuelling his immune system with Vitamin C as the entire office was struck down with one ailment or another. Lungs were being coughed up and pain killers knocked back like Skittles as the space surrounding Hugo’s desk was filled with evil germs and spluttering colleagues – well he’s made it this far so it’s looking ok.

Unlike the continuous series of unfortunate sickness at Name Towers, Sam and Lisa were extremely lucky to attend the nominations party, just yesterday, for the BRIT Awards.

“Well for the first week back after a phantasmagorical holiday it wasn’t too bad”, says Sam. As the sun goes down on a lovely Friday, special mention must be made to Sunday’s brilliant secret cinema, which our lovely client WeGotTickets handles tickets for, Sam got engaged in a spot of Penicillin dealing for a top Mafioso, while also passing on secrets to the British Intelligence, and in the name of the Third Man – what a lot of fun!

On behalf of our client Noise Inc who’ve built the first ever app for the BRITS – download it here and get voting!

This week has been not only exciting, exhilarating but also surprising for Denise as she celebrated her 25^th birthday. The highlight came on Wednesday when she was thrown a surprise party by her girlfriends. The joke of the day came when she sent out an e-mail about a dinner party on the Friday, with all her friends laughing at her as she didn’t know what was coming.

Unfortunately Lisa had a bit of a scare this week, when her oven caught on fire. Yes! Caught on fire! Baby Tru and husband John were home at the time, escaped safely and the fire brigade came to the quench the flames. The place is soot covered, but thank goodness all are safe and sound.

Hugo returned to what can only be referred to as the Siberia of London this week as he braved the downpoars and wind whistling through the trees. His solitary footsteps were accompanied only by the occasional snort of the snoring Harrow Field Mouse in the depths of their hybernatory slumber.  Well, also he was accompanied by our now fulltime tech specialist Lisa who appropriately arrived everyday in head to toe fur and Cossack headwear to boot. Bonded by their collective exhaustion they soldiered through the week only really hitting their stride on Thursday just in time to make announcements from Noise Inc (see above), WeGotTickets as they launch their ‘one stop shop’ site for festivals WeGotFestivals and to announce MusicTank’s first think tank of 2012 The Big Question: Can Streaming Go Mainstream?

The whole team has been working tirelessly especially with the vacant desk which is normally occupied by Name’s head honcho, Sam. We also realized this week that everyone in the office has an iPhone, what does that say about us a team? Yep we’re all tech geeks. Check out Hugo’s throwback to the good ol’ days with his cassette tape iPhone case.

Until next week Name fans!

This year has been a thrilling one for the Name team, and we’re more than ever excited about what’s to come… we’ve got some big things taking place in 2012, so make sure to watch this space.

This week has been an extremely exciting and busy for Denise, with not only all of her duties at Name, she’s also had some last minute artist interviews, as well as the mad rush of sorting out Christmas – yes she still hasn’t sorted out presents for her immediate family, we say good luck to her lol.

Lisa and Sam hustled before the big holiday to write up a great press release involving the BRIT Awards. They are extremely eager to release the news to the music industry and technology writers in the new year. They also, fingers crossed, are hoping to score themselves passes to the big night of the BRIT Awards in February, which means 2012 could see them hanging out on the red carpet with the A-listers of the UK music world. If that’s not worth bragging about on Facebook and Twitter, we don’t know what is?

In this last week before the big Christmas holiday, it seems everyone is scrambling about to get presents – except Lisa. A few years ago, she got all of her family (including in-laws) to put an end to gift giving and focus on being together and eating great food. Money has been saved as unwanted gifts that are subject to “re-gifting” are no more, due to a gift being the wrong size or bad colour. Gifts are still given to the one grandson (Lisa’s baby boy Tru), but the adults just happily say a toast to each other and feel glad to escape the Christmas present madness.

Unfortunately for Hugo he is as he describes, “Definitely over 2011, bring on 2012!”  With plans for Paris over Christmas and Berlin over New Years we’re sure he’ll be able to put his cares aside and enjoy the holidays. Check out the photo below of Hugo with his Secret Santa present, a ‘Bah Humbug hat’.

Sadly, this will be the last Weeknotes of the year but we’ll be back in full force from the 3^rd Jan, in the meanwhile you can check out our Christmas playlist to see if your favourite made the cut.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!