Social Media networks spread the big stories before the papers had the chance to get hold of them, with everything from the Libyan revolution to the sad end of Amy Winehouse tweeted and spread on Facebook, virtually in real time.

Dual screening led to comment on public events, from the X-factor to the Royal Wedding, often replacing any formal newscasting. The media had to adapt, and adapt fast – and some didn’t survive the new era.

But what’s been happening at Spring? Here’s a little run down of the high points of the last year.

January

The year started well with Spring featuring in Design Week – oh those heady days of print! Southwold’s status as a cultural mecca took one step closer to being sealed, courtesy of Lynda Relph-Knight.

Spring’s work with other East Anglian cultural icons kept us busy in January, including Dance East’s academy packs, a campaign for Wayne McGregor’s ‘Far’ and the start of working with Bury’s Theatre Royal on Dick Turpin and The Georgian Horse Challenge.

A Heritage Lottery-funded tourism project, Threads, kicked off this month too, with Spring creating a walking tour around West Suffolk’s wool towns. The book of maps also includes a fascinating history of the area created by a leading Cambridge academic, David Dymond.

The month ended with a hat trick of wins: Spring was commissioned by neighbours Southwold Pier, Suffolk football leaders Ipswich Town Football Club, and for a second year by Champagne Bollinger.

And on the last day of January we said goodbye to green, blue and our little tick, and hello orange and a blurring of the lines between ‘i’ and ‘n’ – yes, Spring’s gorgeous new brand image launched.

February

The shortest month, and the month of love. And we loved Suffolk Business magazine, who kindly gave us a cover and a double page inside spread to introduce our new senior players: ex-Fitch MD Ian Cochrane and planner Melanie Welsh.

We took the Spring message to the Barbican, delivering workshops to London brand managers on Social Media. And on the subject of Social Media, our work for Belvoir Cordials went from strength to strength, with their Springy new website combined with hugely successful competitions causing Pev Manners to have to recruit more staff to manage orders from the site.

Our work for British-built catamarans company, Broadblue, saw us launching a brand new website and marketing campaign to support their expansion. With innovative new vessels launching at boat shows across the globe, owners Mark Elliott and Mark Jarvis are riding out the recession in style.

And the month ended with happy news for our much-loved clients Nursey who, following our submission on their behalf to the Daily Telegraph Countryside Alliance Awards for Best Traditional Manufacturer, heard that they’d made it to the finals.

March

…or more appropriately run – the month started with Spring’s Olympics ad campaign launching for Choose Suffolk and National Express. With trains from Stratford to Ipswich taking just an hour, county tourism chiefs were keen to advertise the fact, and this campaign featured across the rail network and tourism destinations throughout the rest of the season.

March also saw the launch of 2011’s Suffolk Short Breaks guide, which Spring designed, artworked and printed on behalf of Choose Suffolk, and a new Spring brand for Ipswich Waterfront.

Flagship, East Anglia’s largest social housing provider, continued to keep us busy with press, radio and digital advertising and technical artwork employing our project management, copywriting, design and evaluation skills for the fourth year in succession.

We were delighted to be commissioned to provide press and digital comms by society fashion designer Beshlie McKelvie, whose ethics and design have earned her rail space in top fashion stores like Browns. We secured her coverage in industry and lifestyle fashion press including Marie-Claire and Drapers.

Towards the end of the month, Spring hosted Britain’s most easterly twestival event – a coffee morning and quiz at Southwold Pier. A cold but sunny day created the perfect backdrop to a really fun morning, well attended by East Suffolk’s twitterati. The event was live blogged throughout and with prizes kindly donated by joint-sponsor, Adnams, everyone had a fabulous time in a good cause.

In other community news, March saw the first concert in 2011’s Southwold Concert Series – the third outing for this fabulous classic music series of which Spring is patron.

March also ended on a high note for Nursey, whose visit to the House of Lords resulted in a win. Nursey was crowned best Traditional Manufacturer by the Countryside Alliance and Daily Telegraph – we couldn’t have been more pleased.

April

April saw the Springers getting our heads down and ploughing through some serious work.

We solicited content for the crowd sourcing site MySuffolk from such local luminaries as MP Therese Coffey, and submerged ourselves in the briney North Sea for Southwold Pier, as we conceived, developed and built their ‘Lovely Day’ campaign, website and supporting materials.

Our work with George East, which from its Leiston base is one of the UK’s leading non-food suppliers to major retail chains, continued throughout the year. The Springers have been developing packaging for the Tala brand and own-label products for nearly every major British supermarket and department store. This is an exciting, growing East Anglian brand and again proves the region’s quiet entrepreneurialism.

The Drum published an article by Erika’s dad, whose years as a board marketing director of food companies Buitoni and Princes left him with useful insights about agency behaviour as relevant to the digital age as the long-lunch ’80’s. He developed a fan club in Leeds on the back of the article.

Clearly we’d learnt our lessons too, as we found ourselves finalists in the Marketing Industry Network awards, as Marketing Services Agency of the Year.

O&C Butcher, the wonderful Aldeburgh outfitters, took delivery of their first Spring-produced catalogue, a thing of beauty and great statement of the company’s modernisation and growth.

Further down the coast, the Heritage Lottery-funded Woodbridge Tide Mill commissioned Spring to undertake the huge and wonderful task of designing and building their beautiful, interactive new visitor centre. This is a mammoth project which has kept Simon, Bex and others busy for the rest of the year in preparation for its launch next Spring.

May

The Pier’s ‘Lovely Day’ campaign launched, with everything from advertising to menus to staff badges, showing the character and appeal of this wonderful seaside destination. The conversation continued across social media, buses, the website and sandwich packaging – and let’s face it, once you know your waiter likes guitars and cats, you’ll never be short of small talk again!

Springers hit the lifestyle press, too. George’s dad’s cinema, The Electric Picture Palace, provided the backdrop for Lizzie’s Red feature, and Erika had spent a frugal February living on vouchers and online discounts to grace the pages of May’s Prima. Glen’s dad became an honorary Springer too, celebrating his 60th by setting off from Ness Point on a bicycle and kayak journey round the coast of Britain.

Bollinger’s Hay Festival competition soaked us in a wave of playground nicknames. We invited followers to submit their name as Bertie Wooster’s girlfriend – an amalgam of their childhood sobriquet and town of birth. Many indecorous replies ensued, and our sympathy votes went to Nutter, Moocow and Spotty.

Some very exciting new Spring clients for May included The National Trust and wonderful Suffolk light maker Jim Lawrence, for whom we undertook a rigorous marketing and web sales audit. At the same point we also recruited Nikki Barker, who joined us as an Account Director following a life tour of some of London and Cornwall’s most exciting agencies.

The end of the month saw us launch a complete marketing package for Smart, and create a wopping new product catalogue and website for sports kit firm Mark Harrod. Both of these companies manufacture their product in the UK and are run by visionary entrepreneurs – testament to the quality of work and business that we’re lucky to find in East Anglia.

June

This was events season, and many of the Springers’ partners became football widow/ers as the Mark Harrod project team accompanied him to Birmingham and other venues for exhibitions. Armed with video cameras and branded clothing, we joined Mark in interviews, sales and celebrity engagement, including (soon to be) Strictly Come Dancing star Robbie Savage.

Suffolk hit the underground in early June too, with our ad campaign for Visit Suffolk gracing escalators the length and breadth of the capital. Spring’s twitter account went wild with Suffolk expats thanking the team for some wonderful photos of home to enjoy during the rush hour.

Notable East Anglian launches includes TV airfield Bentwaters Park’s new website and print campaign and The Theatre Royal’s launch of the Georgian Horse Challenge – and Anderson ran an ‘Everything but the Cat’ offer at Amwell Mews, Stanstead St Margarets, in which Spring launched a campaign to sell houses equipped with literally everything their new owners could need.

Spring’s big win for June was Ten Lifestyle Concierge who commissioned us to conceive and manage a London membership recruitment campaign during the summer months. Ten is the largest global provider of lifestyle concierge services, and is building its relationships direct with clients in addition to its traditional platform of customer loyalty schemes.

July

Summer saw our home town explode in the colour and bustle that is the tourism season. We always love this time of year, it brings renewed vigour into Southwold – though it admittedly makes the queues far longer at the sandwich shop! There was no rest for the Springers though, as we launched Ipswich Town’s new ‘Suffolk Punch’ business club identity, and covered The Open on location, in real time for Bollinger.

Ipswich Town’s thoughts were also turning to Christmas, and as temperatures soared we were busy creating the ‘Party Pledge’ marketing programme. Christmas party bookers were encouraged to ‘take the party pledge’ to give their colleagues a great Christmas party, and in exchange become the ‘Party Hero’. Their reward was packages containing party packs of Santa hats, balloons and chocolates.

We were joined by Comms Executive Lucy Aldous, fresh from her classics finals at Cambridge. She was immediately immersed in The Suffolk Coast, a content-rich website devised to attract the well-informed, knowledge-seeking off season crowd.

We also launched new cloud computing brand, two10degrees, at the Microsoft Worldwide Conference, Los Angeles, an exciting occasion for us and for our client AWS.

August

Sexy highwayman myth shattered! Yes, the eighteenth-century tale of dastardly Dick Turpin came in for a Paxman-esque drubbing courtesy of playwright Daniel O’Brien and director Abigail Anderson, and Spring created a compelling ‘exploding horse’ campaign to support this hugely entertaining production at Bury’s Theatre Royal.

Meanwhile our internship scheme was in full swing. This year we invited two interns through the formal process, one a designer and one a copywriter. It was, as always, wonderful to see them develop within a studio environment. We also invited our old friend Jack Howson, for whom it was the third year with Spring before heading off to university.

New commissions in August included the wonderful new boutique Spear and Hubble, for whom we created a knockout brand with simple upper case typography imposed on an acid yellow backdrop. This branding continued across the interior design as well as bags, gift vouchers and ads, and as I write Spring’s studio is working on a stunning new website for the high-end Norfolk brand.

September

The arrival of autumn saw us in farmer mode. Maybe it was the influence of the fifth annual Aldeburgh Food & Drink Festival but we found ourselves immersed in great East Anglian produce, most notable of which was Havensfield Happy Hens. Spring’s photographic studio became home to a flock of beautiful red hens for a day or so, whilst we learnt their foibles and good sides. End result was egg box packaging, vans, lorries, signage and a website covered in gorgeous, clucking, happy hens. They even won a prize for being the best hen photos in the British egg producer community!

Other wildlife entering our lives this month included baby giraffes, who we fed at the launch of Visit East Anglia.

Back in the town, the Southwold Concert Series’s popularity grew and we were delighted as more and more Southwold businesses chose to sponsor the events. A classical guitar concert given by two Rolling Stones-sponsored musicians drew crowds on a warm autumn night. It’s always a privilege to attend these events and see such large numbers of people from around Suffolk and Norfolk gather to enjoy wonderful music in our town.

Meanwhile Nikki Barker’s promotion to Client Services Director was another clear sign of Spring’s dedication  to our clients’ welfare and the quality of the service we provide. She’s certainly proved a hit with the Eastern Enterprise Hub, for whom we launched a new suite of printed marketing materials in September to support their ‘Superstars’ campaign.

As Autumn drew in, we launched Nursey’s new sheepskin catalogue. This year they have focused on their iconic slippers and snuggly hats, all of which are handmade in Bungay, in the same workshop which has housed Nursey since Mozart’s days.

October

This month we launched an exciting programme of events and activities to reward the Springers for their hard work and broaden everyone’s horizons. From share schemes to a Mind Expanding Grant, the Springers found themselves working for quite a new type of company.

The replacement of Friday fish’n'chips with Friday Gym was surprisingly well received, and our grants allowing Springers to take their loved one out for a meal and an exhibition/ event/ performance in exchange for a production meeting presentation and blog post has seen gratifying take up.

Our first Spring heroes – PR maven Sam Denny-Hodson and our own Non-Exec, Ian Cochrane – visited to talk to the team about their experiences, dispense advice and answer questions, providing some indispensible tips for creativity and innovation.

On the subject of expansion, Spring opened a second office, in Lowestoft’s Orbis Energy Centre. A useful additional space for meetings, breakout sessions and brainstorming, Orbis is also at the heart of East Anglia’s coastal energy economy and provides easy access to Spring for clients across the two counties.

Design Week contacted senior designer Bex Spillings to gauge her thoughts on investment in community focused design. Bex put up a convincing case for the merit of good design in relatively deprived communities to create motivation, ambition and broad-mindedness.

New clients for October included our local public school, Saint Felix, which has retained Spring to create a full marketing programme and outsourced marketing department to support its growth under innovative and charismatic new headmaster Dr Simon Letman.

We were also tasked to create brochures and an ad campaign for two new developments by Anderson in the wealthy Essex suburb of Loughton, seeing us branding, dangling out of helicopters and researching the history of this fascinating area.

Saint Elizabeth’s Hospice, who had commissioned us earlier in the year to support their expansion across the region, this month saw the fulfilment of their plans as they launched across the coast. Spring created a community engagement marketing programme, including extensive door drops, a widespread radio, print and bus ad campaign, and community hub information posters and leafleting.

November

The fireworks brought with them one of East Anglia’s most exciting growing brands – Signs Express. Based in Norwich, the company now has 85 franchise operations across Britain.

We started off with a brief for their 2012 calendar (this involved a bespoke photo shoot for every month of the year, each image disguising an S and an X, and strategic use of social media for monthly competitions), and next year Spring’s work with Signs Express is due to continue across some very exciting projects.

On the coast, we were delighted to be commissioned by Suffolk Coast and Heaths to write their winter newsletter, which filtered neatly into our work on the ever-growing Suffolk Coast website.

Luxury Suffolk retreat Bruisyard Hall, an established Spring client, set about a radical refurbishment, which is due to project it firmly onto the national stage; and Spring’s work with them has extended to the development of a complete marketing programme and all creative and strategic elements contained within it.

Our account management team was augmented with the arrival of another Nikki – Nikki Palmer joined us from Burrows, where she had been managing six-figure global accounts.

December

The festive season launched with an exuberant client party, held on the Southwold Lights Night. We were happy to celebrate with clients new and old the successful passage of another year for all of us.

In addition, Spring was rejoicing at the success of the Bollinger advent calendar, a Facebook campaign that within just three days saw Bollinger’s Facebook following increase by 300% and the level of conversation about them on line by a staggering 4,000%.

December will also see the launch of the new Bollinger website, a beautiful site whose layout is entirely based on user experience analysis. Our commission has just been renewed for the third year, launched with a days’ planning session at Quo Vadis, testament to the strong relationship between Spring and this wonderful Champagne brand.

The Advent season is still young as this resumé of 2011 nears its close, but has seen us start work with an exciting new music brand, host an extraordinarily successful Southwold Concert Series Christmas Concert (over 250 people attended) and make serious headway on the new Spring website. We’ve got some exciting news to share with you early in the new year, too.

So may we take this opportunity to wish you all pleasant reflections on your own 2011, and a wonderful  2012.

I had some time off last week, the idea was to spend the time sleeping followed by more sleeping and occasionally getting up to eat something tasty. But I managed to wake up for long enough to take advantage of Spring’s creative exploration grant which allows you and your partner to take a trip to expand your mind. So on Tuesday we caught the train down to London to explore the Design Museum.

It was such an awesome day that I thought it would be a good idea to get the tube down to Westminster and walk along the river to the Museum, taking in the sights as we walked. I hate travelling on the tube as you just don’t get to see London and you have no real idea where things are in relation to one another. I rather underestimated the walking distance from Westminster to the design museum by about 2 or 3 miles, but the walk was beautiful and involved a chance viewing of Holly Willoughby and Philip Schofield filming a piece for This Morning (whose studios are right on the river). Later we discovered (with the beauty of ITV player) that we were actually in shot, I am not ashamed to admit this!

Eventually we arrived at the Design Museum. I have always been fascinated by the history of design because of the ways in which it influences the future of it and the way in which manufacturing processes and the ability to mass produce affected the way in which products were actually designed. Product design and graphic design share many similarities, as both have to start and end with the user. The walk through the Design Museum takes you through various iconic and significant changes in design, from the humble chair and the angle poise lamp, all the way through to the latest developments in gaming technology. The exhibit I was looking forward to most (as a lover of typography) was the development, creation and implementation of Road/Motorway signs, the design for which was created in the 1960s and has changed very little to this day. All in all a very enjoyable day and I definitely recommend a visit to the Design Museum.

Pinterest

Lets you create a virtual pinboard of things you like on the interweb. Other users can Like, Re-pin or Comment on your choices. You can make lots of different pinboards with themes (or just one, it’s up to you).

Checkthis

Lets you publish a single web page quickly and easily, without registration and all that time-consuming blah. Glen & George call it ‘kind of a bigger more picture-y tweet’. Which I think pretty much sums it up.

We have been working alongside Sarah Brown for six months now, updating the brands, planning, designing and building these sites, and all manner of technical work including drawing up architectural plans and maps.

The sites feature amazing content including their resident Spitfire, military hire vehicles and fascinating insights into the Cold War and WWII uses for this airfield and its varied buildings – including the runway specifically designed for crash landings.

Next steps will be an introduction campaign targeting location scouts across the British film and TV industry. We are delighted to be working with such a famous feature of Suffolk.

This 13th Century Monastic barn in Essex is a lasting reminder of the powerful Coggeshall Abbey, and was probably built in around 1240. Previous owners included Henry VIII – the irony of it now hosting wonderful weddings would, I am sure, not escape him.

For some brands, Labour included, the value is more in the action (with its implications of being willing to listen to the general public and the brand awareness resultant PR creates) than its result. I can’t help feeling this is true of the most recent creative crowdsourcing brief to come to my attention: Wikileaks.

The leaks website is offering $365 to the winner of their tshirt design competition. So far, 374 people have entered and the deadline is just under 5 days away. You can find out more here.

Crowdsourcing contradicts every argument that industry associations make against unpaid pitches. Open opportunities, encouraging hundreds of replies, against a lose brief mean that the hours put in can never, ever be equalled by the profit margins available to the winner.

This democratisation of graphic design started as soon as we moved from pasteboards to macs, and has been turbo charged by the internet, broadband and social media. Many people’s concern, mine included, is that in many cases this has led, not to meritocracy, but to a industry-wide loss of craftsmanship.

Wikileaks crowdsourcing? For a brand that sets out, in the first sentence of its mission statement, that it is for the public – and is in fact created by that same public, a bit rebellious, a bit anti-establishment; I’d say it was spot-on positioning.

We all felt it was time for a new look, to demonstrate what Spring is now – a top 100 agency which is really making an impact for a wide range of clients and in our industry.

Our vibrant new brand will be rolling out over the next few weeks across our marketing materials, with a reskinned website (the new site is currently in planning), new signage across studio and delivery van, stationery and documentation and new advertising. We’ll even be redecorating the studio interior in our striking new colour palette.

We’re thrilled at this symbol of growth, and just as we see in our clients after a rebrand, Spring’s staff are reinvigorated and raring to go.

Head of Strategy Melanie Welsh joined us in the late Autumn of 2010 from Soup, a multi-award-winning digital agency. She brings with her wide experience on accounts including Innocent, Jordans and Nestlé and is already helping Spring and our clients develop brilliant strategies for brands and campaigns.

Ian Cochrane is a big name in the design industry. Previously Chairman of Fitch and Landor Europe, what Ian doesn’t know about agency best practice probably isn’t worth knowing. As so often happens at Spring, Ian found us: his curiosity was piqued by our Patronage of the Southwold Concert Series, of which he is a fan, and a casual cuppa in the summer of 2010 has led to him joining us as a Non-Exec Partner.