Russian Standard Vodka is widely recognized in its homeland as a benchmark for excellence, therefore it is little surprise that their team turned to Mash Marketing to provide fantastic hostesses for their recent, exclusive members night.

Look out for the Mash girls at the upcoming Russian Standard Vodka Originals Film Festival, in collaboration with Empire Magazine - which sees truly classic films playing in luxuriously decadent cinemas right across the country - kicking off with a VIP launch night in London on 31st August at the Everyman Cinema in Belsize Park.

Hailing from Colombia and having just recently completed her 3rd year in the field for Mash…we’d like to say a massive well done and thanks for 3 years of dedication and professionalism to Monica Botero.

Monica has completed hundreds of projects for us and never lets us down and always prepares really diligently and thoroughly for every campaign. She is currently knee-deep in her dissertation for her Masters in Marketing - and is focusing her project on Experiential Marketing.

Mashing through the years has clearly inspired her to take her experience to the next level and is hoping to land a graduate role with a top agency soon…

In the meantime, she’s still holding out for that elusive “Salsa Dance” campaign…

Well done Monica from all at Mash Towers.

‘Tyrrells have made headlines again!! After three weeks of digging, potting, planting, tractor driving and grass fluffing, we’re delighted to announce that the Tyrrells Harvest Celebration garden won a Silver Gilt medal at the Hampton Court Flower Show (in between Gold and Silver). Our teams have been sampling brand new Chips Nouveau to the thousands of visitors while explaining all the different flowers and attractions of the garden itself, including a stunning vintage tractor. What a great success!’

If you want high-energy in your promotion, then you should look no further than Agata Madurowicz. Agata joined Mash in September 2009 and since then has contributed hugely to a number of key campaigns for Mash.

When Agata says she is an ‘energetic and proactive’ employee in her personal statement on Moogle - she really means it and we - along with our many partner brands - feel the benefit of it as her performances over the last 8 months have been outstanding.

Agata happily agrees that working on the Rayban Campaign at the Isle of Wight Festival in June was a Mashing highlight to date….you only need to look at her video on the Mash Fan Page on Facebook to see how much she enjoyed that.

Those are the kinds of jobs out there for top and consistent performing Mashers so get involved and give it your all!

Look out for July’s Masher of the Month coming soon!

We have decided that it isn’t enough to reward our Masher of the Month with the ‘celebrity status’ our blog and facebook give as well as the £100 shopping vouchers…..our new promise to our TOP Monthly Mashers is that they will be our FIRST PORT OF CALL FOR EVERY JOB  in their area for a whole month. They obviously won’t always be free but we want to recognise their outstanding performance by giving them the first opportunity of work for a 1 month period.

First up to walk the Mashing walk of fame….

Rachel Walker joined Mash back in October 2007 and has gone on to deliver campaign after campaign with consummate professionalism and a wonderful smile on the face. Rachel always responds brilliantly to the huge variety of briefs thrown at her and has often accepted ‘last minute changes’ with complete flexibility and positivity.

Rachel is also one of our main ‘npower girls’ and has contributed to the ‘best team yet’ and we’re all looking forward to the remaining 4 Tests from the end of July.

It’s great to have you Mashing Rachel - Well done!

We’re very proud to announce the opening of MASH Australia with our very first job working with iris Experience and SONY for a SONY 3D launch at the famous Sydney Opera House. Headed up by our Sydney MD and Co Founder, Neil Burton, the agency has been set up to deliver the same added value, promotional staffing offering as is currently being delivered in the UK to our partners.

Here are some photos from our first activity! If you would like to get in touch with Neil in Sydney about potential opportunities or staffing, please drop hi an e-mail on neilb@mashmarketing.co.uk or call him on +61404864861.

As part of our social responsibility commitment, MASH Marketing has committed to providing a $50.00 donation to a third world entrepreneur, each and every time that we win a new promotional staffing activity with one of our partners. Our goal this year is to provide $15,000 in funding.

To join our lending team, or to learn more, please visit http://www.kiva.org/community/teams/view?team_id=9787

Here are three entrepreneurs we have just provided loans to courtesy of on going work with iris Experience;

1) Buzaniro Women’s Group, Uganda

There is a fascinating story behind determined Musinguzi Alfred (leader of group) who was not afraid of diversity when he ventured into the business world ten years ago. This hardworking, married father of four children began his produce shop, dealing in general food crops like beans, maize flour, groundnuts (peanuts), peas and many other items in Kibaya, Kihihi.

Through acquiring loans from micro-finance institutions, Alfred was able to start up this side business alongside his agriculture to help him bring more income into the family. With this loan Alfred will be able to purchase more stock and be able to improve his earnings as he looks forward to live a self-sustaining life.

2) Kun Soklim, Cambodia

Kun Soklim, 29, sells CDs, VCDs and refill gas from home, making US$5 each day in Kandal province. She is married and has two young children living at home to support. Her husband, Bou Soklim, is on the private staff of a local company. He makes approximately US$8 every day.

Kun would like a loan of US$1,000 to set up a grocery store so that her income will increase daily.

3) Azeem Mohammed Irfan’s Group, Pakistan

Azeem, a resident of Lahore, famous for its historical places and its Punjabi foods, is the wife of Muhammad irfan and owns a small house of two rooms in which she has been living with her family for over 30 years.

A very caring lady, Azeem manages her domestic chores and takes care of her family very efficiently. Her husband operates a DVD selling business. He sells the veritable DVD and movie tapes. His variety in items helps him to approach more customers in his shop. He is very active in his work. He writes the demands of his customers in a notepad and arranges them on an urgent basis, which gives a nice impression to its customers. He has been doing this work for over 10 years.

Azeem is applying for a loan from Asasah to invest the capital in her husband’s business so he can purchase more DVDs and movie tapes and complete the order of his customers.

Just who is the face behind Facebook? It’s the face of man who’s a savvy dealmaker, a confident businessman, and a brash leader - but it’s also the face of a man who’ll sob hysterically in the men’s bathroom after a meeting.

Meet Mark Zuckerberg, the coding wunderkind from Harvard who turned the concept of the annual booklet of incoming college freshmen into a game-changing digital empire. The Facebook CEO’s story is fraught with emotion, inspiration and determination - with a sprinkling of college geek humor.

In released excerpts from Fortune contributor David Kilpatrick’s soon-to-be-released book “The Facebook Effect,” Zuckerberg is a Harvard prodigy who shows moments of extreme maturity while creating the social networking juggernaut before being able to legally rent a car.

Kilpatrick, who had total access to his subject, portrays Zuckerberg akin to the Val Kilmer character in the 1985 teen classic movie “Real Genius.” Brash, confident with a propensity to wield a fencing foil about the room when he wanted to make a point, Zuckerberg is all ego and bravado in pajama pants.

Before the mega-corporations came calling, Zuckerberg lived in Palo Alto, Calif., with seven male friends in an environment that was more dorm than deluxe. There were parties, there was beer, there was college humor.

The house mascot was Tom Cruise, according to the excerpt. “Pretty soon the resident nerds were naming their computer servers after characters in Tom Cruise movies: “‘Where’s that script running?’ ‘It’s running on Maverick.’ ‘Well, run it instead on Iceman, I need Maverick to test this feature.’”

Zuckerberg and cohorts would insert lines from “Top Gun” into the burgeoning Facebook site. In a likely nod to Dave Chappelle he printed up a version of his business card with the title “CEO … b**tch.”

Yet Kilpatrick’s excerpts show a young man of amazing maturity and business acumen. Zuckerberg handles a private jet ride on a Gulfstream V with a hard-driving MTV executive with a combination of thrilled disbelief and the ability to hold his cards close to his chest.

Zuckerberg is also portrayed as a young man bound by ethics. In a key meeting with the venture capital firm Accel that would exponentially increase Facebook’s worth, Zuckerberg leaves the table and bursts into tears in the men’s room. He is in agony because he has already made a deal with Washington Post scion Donald Graham and does not want to renege on their honorable, but less profitable deal.

“Graham was disappointed, but he was also impressed. “I just thought to myself, ‘Wow, for 20 years old, that is impressive - he’s not calling to tell me he’s taking the other guy’s money. He’s calling me to talk it out.’ ” Graham knew that even his first offer was very high for a company so tiny and so young. “Mark, does the money matter to you?” Graham asked. Zuckerberg said it did. It could, he went on, be the one thing that could prevent Facebook from going into the red or having to borrow money. “Mark, I’ll release you from your moral dilemma,” said Graham. “Go ahead and take their money and develop the company, and all the best.” For Zuckerberg it was a huge relief. And it further increased his respect and admiration for Graham. (Zuckerberg eventually asked the publisher to take a seat on the Facebook board.)

Zuckerberg, now 26, now has a nearly $5 billion stake in Facebook.

“Unless I feel like I’m working on the most important problem I can help with, then I’m not going to feel good about how I’m spending my time,” he says. “And that’s what this company is.” The ultimate payday is not a priority. Changing the world is.”

US workers’ projected retirement age has risen over the past 15 years, with more than a third of people today saying they will retire after age 65, compared with 12% in 1995, according to a poll from Gallup. The research marks the first time Gallup has recorded more people saying they will retire after age 65 than before that age.

‘It seems that we are in tune with the US on this one. The UK Government and many of the workforce wants to let people work for later on in their lives. This makes real sense - all that knowledge is passed on and it’s a fact that working keeps people healthier both mentally and physically and gives them a sense of being part of the community and a feeling that they are contributing to society. Roll on the day when there is no retirement age at all, but merely not work ‘til you drop, but choose when to stop!’ Sarah Johnson, Divisional Director, Dylan* London.

I remember that Monday morning, January 10, 2000. The day that AOL announced it was buying Time Warner. The word starting seeping out the night before, Sunday night. I went to sleep like it was Christmas eve, and couldn’t wait for what market madness the morning would bring. I was working at Flatiron Partners, and Fred, Jerry, Bob and I had a standing Monday morning breakfast at the Mayrose Diner. We all looked at eachother that Monday morning with our mouths agape, shaking our heads in amazement that this was really happening. In retrospect, that deal was a watershed for the Internet. It announced that new media was going to be bigger than old media. It also marked the final inflation of a bubble that popped painfully only a few months down the road.

I came home tonight to a techmeme filled with news about Amazon’s boffo earnings, rumors about Yahoo! and Microsoft’s interest in acquiring Foursquare, and a Bloomberg Business Week analysis of whether Pincus’s Zynga can continue to extract hundreds of millions of dollars from people buying virtual hoes in his games on Facebook. Brad Stone’s story about sharing credit card transactions in public was already filed for tomorrow New York Times. Waiting for me on the kitchen counter was a copy of this week’s New Yorker, filled with an essay by Ken Auletta “Publish or Perish: The Ipad Takes on the Kindle.” Next to it was New York magazine, whose cover “Life is Tweet” features Sam from drop.io, Karp from Tumblr and Dens from Foursquare. All the while, my mind was still adjusting to the new contours that had been etched into it, first by Twitter’s annotation feature announced at its Chirp conference last week, and then by Facebook’s Open Graph blitzkrieg yesterday. It feels like something big is about to pop, something on the AOL-buys-Time Warner richter scale.

All of which begs the question, what gives? The great recession of 2008 is a distant memory, as we move through the Spring of 2010 with stocks like Apple and Amazon up more than 100% from their lows. The Nasdaq chart from the financial crisis up until now looks something like this:

And to think, the seminal stock of the social media era, Facebook, has yet to trade a single share in the public market. One can only imagine how much pent-up demand there is from mutual funds, hedge funds and retail investors for stock in this company that has established the default identity system for what will soon be over 1 billion people around the world. One could argue that the value of this resource on a macro economic basis is commensurate with that of oil (ie Exxon Mobil) or of the two primary computer operating systems (Apple and Microsoft), and that the “mature” value of Facebook in 2012 might be closer to $300b than $30b.

And yet, against the breathlessness of what might be, is the reality of what once was. All we need to do is look at the Nasdaq chart from the 1998 Russian financial crisis through the dot com bubble of 2000 to give us pause:

Although I am not a market technician, my spider sense is tingling. The wheels of capitalism are back in motion, and liquidity is flowing from the top to the bottom of the cap structure. University endowments are trying to distinguish deal flow quality from the PayPal mafia versus the Xoogler community; Web 1.0 bankers are reuniting to capitalize on the coming Web 2.0 IPO liquidity, and startups with big ideas, hockey stick user growth, but relatively little revenue, are commanding eight figure Series A valuations.

Markets tend to overact on the way up and on the way down, so we may well see an extended period of bullishness over the coming months or even years. The Nasdaq has another 100% to go before it gets into the same trough to peak range we saw 10 years ago. The bubble needs to wait for companies like Facebook, Groupon and Twitter to transition from privately held to publicly traded before bursting. But burst it will, as it always does. Not before, however, some very fortunate entrepreneurs, investors and bankers make out with new fortunes.

In light of all this, it hadn’t occurred to me until now how uncanny my experience last Saturday night was. Tina and I ventured out from Marin into SF to join Kara Swisher and Quincy Smith for what we thought was going to be smallish dinner honoring Bob Pittman. Yes, that Bob Pittman. The one who, along with Steve Case at AOL, bought Time Warner. The one who made us all shake our heads in amazement that Monday morning ten years ago. As we walked into the back room of Tres Agaves, we quickly realized that this was no small dinner party. There had to be at least a hundred friends and colleagues milling around: Google execs, angels, VC’s, Public and startup CEOs. Everybody was enjoying the open bar and free flowing conversations. As I made my way to the back, to take a breath, there was Bob Pittman, off to the corner, looking fit as ever. The only noticeable difference was a fresh shade of sandy gray stubble matching his sandy gray hair. Every few minutes, somebody would venture up to him and shake his hand and reminisce about the last time they met. The younger startup folks seemed to have no idea who he was and were more concerned with putting together their tacos from the cart. Little did they know, however, how much their future will be shaped by his past.