Welcome to our winter warming newsletter 2011

Say hello ... we are delighted to announce that Hayley Bryant has joined us as Account Executive having previously worked for Tribal in the midlands. She brings nearly two years of experience and will be supporting Sarah and Louise across the majority of their accounts.

...wave goodbye - we bade a fond farewell to one of the agency's stalwarts in September, when Toby Edwards left us to take up a new role. We wish him all the very best and thank him for his hard work over the years and will miss his cycling stories… but definitely not his bright lyrca outfits!

The Apprentice – You're hired! Well, kind of. We've taken on board an apprentice as part of a government scheme, in Chelsea McGrath, who will be helping us out with various duties around the office whilst studying for her NVQ in Business & Administration.

Internship – for the fourth year in a row, WDAD welcomed an intern from the USA. This time it was Kirsty Philips who originated from Florida but adapted very well to the less sunny climes of Farringdon. We wish her and all the previous interns our best wishes in their chosen careers back across The Pond.

Two Creative Gongs – continuing our recent run of success, we had two winners at this year's Gramia Award (The Grocery Advertising and Marketing Industry Awards) held in October at the Savoy. The Get-on apprenticeship scheme for Whitbread Hotels & Restaurants was very well received, as was our 'We'd like to speak to the manager' multi-channel campaign for Costa, both of which were up in lights for the evening.

Winner of 'Most professional agency' industry poll – and we won it by quite some distance. Great for us and for all our clients as it really does make a difference in our dealings and negotiations on your behalf with the media. For details click here.

Get on with Whitbread – it may have been much earlier in the year, but we really enjoyed the work we did for Whitbread to promote their apprentice scheme at the Smaart Skills event at Wembley Stadium. WDAD came up with a new concept 'Get on the Whitbread Journey' with a striking design that ran across an exhibition stand, interactive kiosk, activity area, giveaways, facebook and a microsite. Check out the videos on www.thewhitbreadjourney.co.uk and discover exactly why an Eton 'Mess' is so aptly named!

Innecto Reward Consulting – Following on from our corporate website build for Enyo Law, we’ve won another non-recruitment web project for one of the UK’s leading reward and benefits consultancies. Design is well underway and an exciting site should be live early in 2012.

Dove Adolescent Services – another corporate site which really takes video engagement to a new level. Click here to visit

Turner Construction – a very interesting and challenging project that saw us recruit throughout the Far East using traditional, online and social media to target specialists and management level professionals to work for the world’s leading skyscraper construction company. The end result was a Talent Pool of nearly 4,000 candidates! Click here for the detailed case study (PDF 728Kb).

KFC – It may challenge a few perceptions, but KFC won a 'Great Place to Work' accolade and a 'Britain's Top Employer' award. We were appointed to help them take that message to the marketplace with an advertising and editorial campaign which you can see here (PDF 1Mb).

A few interesting new developments and partnerships for WDAD as we go into 2012.

Going global - WDAD have just gone into partnership with two specialist providers to launch ‘'Recruitment³'; a tailored end-to-end high volume attraction and recruitment solution for international employers, specifically targeting the oil & gas, construction and medicine sectors amongst others. For more details visit www.recruitment-3.com

The avatars are coming! We've teamed up with one of the world's leading players in the area of "Serious Games". Daesign is a digital-games based provider of innovative training solutions to major corporate clients in the areas of Sales, Management and Customer Services.

The following YouTube links showcase some of the projects we’re aiming to promote here in the UK:

Social Media Graduate Conference & Awards – We're proud to be sponsors of the very first Social Media (SoMe) event dedicated solely to graduate recruitment. The event runs on January 12th, 2012 where we are sponsors of 'Best use of SoMe within graduate recruitment in the Hospitality and Leisure Sectors'. For more details visit www.somegradawards.co.uk

New Applicant Tracking System for Virgin. We designed and built a new website for Virgin Active Health Clubs which has all the usual engaging pieces you’d expect from an effective, modern recruitment website. The real beauty of the system however lies behind the scene with the ATS we've installed with our partners eArcu which takes the Virgin brand values into the application process itself. It's almost a 'dating' exercise rather than an application process that candidates and the organisation go through to make sure they 'match' one another perfectly.

In September, we launched a redeployment tool in partnership with Jobs Go Public combines their state-of-the-art technology solution and our account management experience to provide a highly professional and effective service to Harrow Council.

The Guardian Digital First strategy – I had a delightful dinner with the Editor and various other dignitaries from the Guardian to say thank you for the work we put with them, and also to give them the opportunity to explain to a number of agency heads their vision for the paper in 2012. Not surprisingly it revolves around the web and whilst not burying the print version, they now derive more revenue from online and the future is most definitely digital. For a view of the online and offline press market take a look at the following articles: