One of my responsibilities in my job is marketing for our division. I strive really hard to think of new, innovative ways to engage our clients with us. It’s partly to do with keeping us top of mind in a highly competitive market research market and partly to bring us goodwill and ‘a nice warm feeling’ whenever they see our name. I happen to think that the two Louises and I are pretty good at it – the stuff we do is often talked about at clients’ offices for weeks.

Last week, I was visiting a client and two people stopped me in the corridor to tell me how much they’d liked our Christmas card….which was a boost for me and for David too because he designed it and did the photography.

One of my favourite ongoing marketing activities is our Fantasy Football League. It’s run for us by a company who provide us with a website and the wherewithal to run the game. We send all our clients a link to the website at the start of the soccer season and each client enters a team, made up of real players who have been allocated a fantasy value. The team can’t have any more than two players from a single real team (so you can’t have the entire Man Utd side for example) and you can’t spend more than £50 million.

Each week, when the real teams play, players get allocated points for scoring goals and other such feats! Your Fantasy team goes up and down based on the performance of the players you have chosen.

My team (‘still no Gooners’, a pun on the nickname of Spurs’ arch rivals ARSEnal) started a storm and have subsequently flumped down the league table much like the Spurs really.

Our clients love it. About a hundred of them play and I have regular communication with them all as the fortunes of the real and fantasy teams ebb and flow. Twice a year, I host a dinner for them. Tonight was our ‘mid-season blues bash’, held in a wine bar in central London. The idea is I take them out and pay for them to have a good time and get drunk at our expense and this brings us a bit more goodwill. It’s the softest of selling activities – I never allow any ‘shop’ talk.

Anyway, wine bar, then a curry at the Thames Tandoori where this pic was taken, then home on the train. Poor David had to wait up for me because I had no door key. When I phoned to tell him what time I’d be back he said he’d leave open the garage door and I could sleep in the beetle but fortunately he relented and allowed me in the house! See, he’s all heart really!