Weeks of hard work and preparation paid off when over 200 friends, family, clients and colleagues – past and present – joined us to celebrate our landmark anniversary at the Bright Blue Day 50th Year Exhibition in our offices on Poole Quay.

The entire Bright Blue Day team pulled together to create displays, arrange tours, organise presentations and even bake cakes, before we welcomed our first guests.

Canapés were served and specially produced champagne flowed (for the adults, anyway) as guests enjoyed an exclusive viewing of our most prolific work. Members of the team took visitors on guided tours of our offices, taking in Creative, Planning and Digital teams, to demonstrate how a brief makes its way through our various departments. With many of our proudest moments hanging from the ceilings and flickering on computer screens, our guests were offered a personal insight into what has made Bright Blue Day one of the best integrated agencies in the UK. Our Client Services and Finance teams were also on hand to show visitors what happens at the core of our business.

Queues formed outside the boardroom, where Executive Chairman Jonathan Clark introduced a retrospective look at Bright Blue Day’s many highlights from the last half a century, showing how much the agency – and popular culture – has changed since his father David set up the company in 1961. Items from the company archive, including the first job book starting with ‘Job 00061’, plus original Walt Disney and Mr Men illustrations, were on display.

Meanwhile, in the room that normally serves as the Directors’ office, clients, local marketing students and some (well behaved) pets jostled for a space on the sofa to check their proofreading skills with our pre-prepared test sheet. They soon realised spotting typos and spelling mistakes wasn’t as easy as they first thought! There was a prize for the guest who matched the most copy slogans to the right brand (again, not as easy as it sounds), and one lucky person walked away with a jar of chocolate eggs after winning our ‘Guess how many?’ contest laid on by the company’s bean counters (also known as the Finance department).

Our movie theatre, complete with working popcorn machine, showcased some of our best interactive work and films, and a new addition to the office – ‘Inspiration Alley’ ­– allowed visitors to see where some of our best ideas come from.

The event proved a fitting finale to our anniversary celebrations, allowing everyone to look back at what we’ve achieved in the past, and look forward to the magnificent opportunities that lie in the future.

Here’s to the next 50 years!