How I raised almost £500 with just five e-mails For any charity or non-profit organisation, fundraising plays a key role in their survival. It’s absolutely vital for staff, volunteers and supporters, to generate enough cash-flow for them to be able to carry out their mission, and the only way to achieve this is through effective, targeted marketing. Although it’s been … Read More
Evans Cycles — talking to customers where they live
Yesterday I joined the thousands dotted along the route of the London Marathon to cheer on a couple of friends as they participated in the 26.2 mile race (congratulations Chris and Shareef). On my way home I spotted a neat little bit of guerrilla advertising at Waterloo Station. Evans Cycles, a well-known chain of bicycle shops here in London, had … Read More
Resignation by cake — exemplary guerrilla marketing
A small business owner takes the guerrilla marketing principle to heart and achieves a marketing reach he couldn’t have imagined in his wildest dreams. Yesterday, the Guardian website (along with many others) featured an article about Chris Holmes, a Border Force immigration officer at Stansted Airport, England, who resigned from his post in a unique, and rather sweet way — … Read More
Topless bartenders and false advertising
I never ceased to be surprised and impressed by the inventive and fun ways that small businesses find to market their services and products. Take, for example, this simple chalk board sign I came across on the wall of a pub in Kingston upon Thames. False, but amusing, advertising. It was probably no coincidence that it was April 1st when … Read More
Never underestimate the importance of proofreading
Proofreading is so often overlooked. You’ve spent hours, days even, crafting the perfect copy — you spellchecked it, and read it so many times you know it back to front — surely, there’s no need to proofread it? At first glance, you may not notice anything wrong with this sign, but look again. They Welome Everyone If you’ve spent your … Read More
Protecting your Brand Identity Ecosystem
In my last post, I wrote about how we have recently established a web strategy that aims to develop, nurture and evolve an organisation’s online presence – we call it the Brand Identity Ecosystem. Fig 1: The Brand Identity Ecosystem with all of its possible elements. Building a successful ecosystem is not possible without measurement. Organisations must establish a means of measuring … Read More
What a comedian and an author can teach us about marketing on the web
What can a novelist with a still relatively small, but enthusiastic and rapidly growing fan-base, and a comedian with a non-mainstream but passionate audience teach us about content ownership and digital marketing? Control the medium, control the message Louis C.K. is not a particularly well known performer here in the UK, but in the United States he is rapidly becoming a household … Read More
The Brand Identity Ecosystem
The World Wide Web has come a long way in the last decade. As a species, our drive to connect, communicate and explore has given rise to a number of revolutionary online environments that have allowed people separated by thousands of miles to communicate at any time of the day, and with little cost. Facebook and Twitter are currently the … Read More
Make the mundane memorable — add some humour to your copy
I recently wrote a post about website copy and storytelling, so I thought in this post, I’d share a couple of great examples of how imaginative copywriting can lift what would normally be plain and ordinary copy into the realm of the attention grabbing and memorable. First up is an example of the oft seen “lost pet” poster. As I was … Read More
The EU Cookie Directive — an update
Following on from my recent post about the EU Cookie Directive (and an email my agency sent to clients in the run up to May 26th) I thought I would update readers on changes in the Information Commisssioner’s Office (ICO) approach to enforcement. On May 24th, just two days before the compliance due date, the ICO changed its position regarding … Read More
BBC’s The Apprentice is hurting design and branding professions
I have watched BBC’s The Apprentice for quite a few years now. I enjoy the problem solving aspect of each episode, perhaps because it mirrors the brief-to-solution journey we undertake in design, and I appreciate, much like any user experience designer, the feedback and analysis that takes place in the boardroom at the end. The case of Everydog and how not … Read More
Don’t make website errors your user’s fault
Error pages. What are they good for? We all know that the perfect website is an unachievable goal. Sometimes what a user is looking for just doesn’t exist, sometimes servers and systems fail, sometimes a bit of errant code gets into the page and causes an error — in the words of Osgood Fielding III, “nobody’s perfect”. For that reason … Read More
The EU cookie directive — unnecessary and futile, but it’s the law
On the 26th May, Article 5(3) of the Directive 2002/58/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 July 2002 concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector (amended December 25th 2009) — more commonly known as the EU cookie directive — will come into force in the UK. This … Read More
Online marketing and the power of a good story
A little while ago I was grabbing some lunch from the Marks and Spencer food hall near my office and noticed a series of four in-store advertising posters stretching along the wall. Each of the posters drew attention to one food product type and one M&S producer/supplier of that product. One poster featured John Mearns, a pig farmer from Oxfordshire, … Read More
Why we can learn a thing or two from the Government Digital Service
Exciting things are happening over at Government Digital Services (GDS). They are revolutionising the way online services are being delivered to UK citizens, and their approach to this mammoth task is spot-on.They are tasked with slowly transferring the Directgov information portals to a single domain website at gov.uk, and redesigning the user experience to better deliver all the vital information to the … Read More
