Love Your Local

At Brockley Central, we try to keep business and blogging separate. We may spend more time than is strictly advisable from a career development point of view blogging at work and infuriating our colleagues with lengthy diatribes about why everyone should move to South East London but we try to keep our clients off this blog.

However, in this case, it's highly relevant.

Lately, our colleagues on the Stella Artois account have been putting the rest of us to shame. From launching airships to 4% beers, they've been busy. Now, they're helping to save London's pub culture:

Stella Artois is proud to announce the launch of its exciting new community awards scheme, ‘Love Your Local’. The competition, which is being spearheaded by Jason Flemyng aims to celebrate the role that pubs play in being a key part of their local communities and supporting responsible drinking.

The competition will run throughout London for the next three months. Pub goers will get the chance to nominate their favourite London pubs for the new Stella Artois award of “London’s Best Loved Local” The competition will celebrate the role pubs play in their local communities.
Jason Flemyng, actor and London landlord, says, “Love Your Local is a really positive campaign for pubs and communities which can demonstrate how pubs reach out to their customers and play an important role in promoting responsible drinking. I am excited to be part of this celebration of ‘the local,’ and keeping it where it belongs, in the heart of a community.

Stuart MacFarlane, President of InBev UK that produces Stella Artois, says: “Stella Artois is proud to support this major new award for London pubs. The competition will recognize and reward pubs that are the lynchpins of their local communities, offer a welcoming atmosphere for their customers to relax in and socialize and of course support responsible drinking.”

The prize is worth winning - as well as some guaranteed exposure in the Evening Standard the winning pub will get some money for venue improvements and a lovely plaque to put on their wall.

http://www.loveyourlocal.co.uk/

Now, given our connection to this promotion, we can't suggest which pubs readers might like to nominate, but it seems to us that there are some obvious candidates around here. Despite the dramatic loss of pubs in Lewisham, there are still places that have gone out of their way to work with local people to create great community pubs. And one or two that haven't.

It takes a couple of minutes to nominate a pub and it would be great to see some support for our best locals.