Did you know that the creative industries in the UK are now responsible for 8% of GDP? But what is it, this thing called creativity? And what does it mean to be a creative person? Why is it that agencies exist? What is it that (most) marketers cannot do themselves?
Hosted by Patrick Collister, ‘Getting the Big Idea’ is a one-day ‘how-to’ workshop for Creatives, Planners and Account Managers, designed to provide the necessary tools to generate ideas. What it is NOT is a session involving finger-paints, plasticine and connecting with the inner self. It will, however, provide the answers that teams need to understand exactly what it is they’re doing and how to do it faster, with more confidence and with greater expectation of success.
The day will be divided into three key parts:
Using ‘The Hierarchy of Ideas’ methodology, you’ll gain an understanding of exactly what sort of idea is being asked for to create successful paid-for communication by breaking ideas into three key parts: the business idea, marketing idea and creative idea.
The workshop also provides practical tools to help you generate strategies, creative platforms and creative ideas faster.
It’s designed to be interactive with a mixture of individual and teamwork where you’ll work together on a ‘live’ brief. As well as being stimulating, the session is intended to be energetic and fun so you’ll leave feeling confident and rebooted.
You’ll acquire real tools of real use which you can use the very next day to improve the creative brief, develop brand positioning ideas and generate creative ideas that will cut-through.
“A unique viewpoint derived from his years spent in both advertising and direct marketing; every person I have sent on his courses has emerged from the experience marvelously rebooted and re-energised.” Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman, Ogilvy Group UK and President of the IPA.
The 1-day workshop is on Tuesday 8th October from 9.30am – 5pm at Zone, Bristol. Places are limited so book early!
Tickets are £245 (+VAT) for Bristol Media members and £345 (+VAT) for non-members. Lunch and refreshments are provided.
Patrick was the executive creative director and Vice Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather, London. Then executive creative director of the EHS Brann network of direct marketing agencies. From 2013 to 2018 he was the creative lead for Google’s creative think-tank The Zoo. He has won many awards, the most prestigious being Cannes Gold in 2013 with Cheil for Samsung. In his spare time, Patrick publishes Directory magazine and resource.
Patrick will also be joining Bristol Media for a lunchtime Vision keynote in September entitled ‘Permission Denied’ – get your ticket here.
Not only is it International Week of Happiness at Work, it’s also the week of the Macmillan World’s Biggest Coffee Morning on Friday, so Home are bringing the two things together to create something good for everyone.
If you know Home, you know that they love food. A lot. Especially cake. It makes them happy at work in the form of welcome cakes for new Homies on their first day, homemade cakes baked especially for clients and workshop attendees, a cake for pudding for their famous Wednesday lunches or cake for…. well, just because they feel like it!
What also makes Home happy is the chance to give back and support charities that are close to not only their hearts, but the hearts of others too.
So, they are giving you the opportunity to be in with a chance of winning one of Homie Louise’s legendary Unicorn cakes this Friday. Tickets are £2.50 and money raised will be donated to Macmillan Cancer Support in aid of their coffee morning.
You can buy as many tickets as you like, and the winner will be announced on Friday afternoon. The winning cake can be personalised with a name, message or birthday number if you want it for a special occasion. You can ‘bank’ your win if you have got an occasion in the coming months that you would love it for, just let Louise know when she gets in touch if you’re the lucky winner.
You can buy your raffle tickets here.
*DISCLAIMER:
To enter the competition you have to answer a (very easy) question to prove that you aren’t a cake-loving robot. Home will deliver the winning cake within a half an hour driving time of the Home offices at Unicorn Park, Bristol, BS4 4EX. Anything further than that, the winner will have to come and pick up your Unicorn yourself (giddy up).
Please give Louise 3 days notice for your cake if you win, she needs time to work her magic!
10% of raffle ticket cost goes to Raffall, the host of our online raffle.
Good luck! And if you do enter, give the raffle a share so that they can raise as much money as possible for such a worthy cause.
Fuelled by developments in technology and a raft of new regulations, the financial services sector is in a state of flux. Where traditional banks once controlled the market, customer demand has seen an influx of new entrants come forth to innovate the way we make payments and manage our money. For the majority of businesses, marketing is rarely a walk in the park at the best of times. However, in an increasingly crowded industry in the midst of major transformation, PR for FinTech has become a competitive game that only the forward-thinking can win.
Needless to say, an effective FinTech PR strategy that is targeted and well thought out is the bread and butter for any established or start-up business in this sector. With the industry boom set to continue, the focus for FinTechs should be fixed on promoting innovation they bring to the market and showcasing the value they can add to financial institutions through collaboration and data aggregation.
Part of this can be achieved through well-established PR practices such as media relations and story development. By building newsworthy stories with your brand’s unique insight and data and distributing this via a network of key contacts, you can begin to shape external perceptions of your company. Similarly, cementing your reputation as a thought-leader within your field demands a strong content marketing strategy; it rests in large on the creation of engaging content that includes original opinions, well-researched arguments and supporting data.
However, as the sector continues to evolve, FinTech PR will increasingly extend into the use of technology. In order to make data-driven decisions with regard to marketing spend, FinTechs eager to retain their competitive edge will start to tap into artificial intelligence and business analytics. In doing so, marketing teams will receive clear guidance in the form of empirical evidence drawn from data insights on which methods yield the highest returns.
As well as The Innovators, FinTech companies have a unique opportunity to present themselves as a breath of fresh air with regard to transparency. Traditional banks have long considered trust to be a foundational strength, thanks to the familiarity of their brands and prevalence of their branches across the globe.
However, a raft of high-profile scandals has gradually seen the erosion of consumer trust for banks, fund managers, insurance providers and financial advisors. In fact, figures from a YouGov poll on behalf of campaign group Positive Money found 66% of adults in Britain do not have faith in banks to work in the best interest of society.
In 2016, EY conducted a study that revealed new market entrants and FinTechs had already achieved parity with traditional banks when it comes to trust. Ten years after the global financial crash, a new generation of account holders are putting their trust in tech over traditional banks. For an innovative FinTech firm, capitalising on the collective sense of growing trust means positioning yourself as open, honest and transparent in everything you do.
If they want to capture the attention of potential customers, however, FinTech firms must ensure they are visual, relevant and targeted in their marketing approach.
According to research into buyer behaviour from Google and the Corporate Executive Board/Gartner (The Digital Evolution in B2B Marketing), customers reported being 57 percent through the sales process before engaging a sales representative, irrespective of price point. During this time, prospective customers are actively researching your brand and your position in the market to qualify you as a vendor.
Building brilliant experiences for members is part of the puzzle – if people love your product and your brand engaging, they will talk about their experiences online; they will be inclined to sing your praises on social media. Beyond user-generated content, however, FinTechs must make use of channels such as Instagram and Twitter to show the human side to their business and build a profile with their target audience. In the age of reviews, social proof is invaluable – a lack of presence on such social channels is as good as a shutter over your shopfront.
FinTech PR in 2019 and beyond should further focus on educating the market. As disruptors to the industry, they have a duty to inform the public of who they are, how they are different and what this means for financial services moving forward. After all, it’s one thing to convince digital natives to download a FinTech app, it’s another to win the hearts and minds of those who have spent decades relying on brick-and-mortar banks.
Even in a market as competitive as this one, every business is different and so is every engagement. As such, there is no one-size-fits-all silver bullet solution to PR and marketing: the key to success lies in getting to know your target audience and developing your strategy around that.
This article was re-posted with permission from YOURS . SINCERELY
Image credit Photo by Jonas Leupe on Unsplash
There are just 13 companies in the UK that are a Google Premier Partner, Google Marketing Platform (GMP) Partner, and officially certified in Google Analytics, Data Studio and Tag Manager. The good news? SearchStar is one of them!
Achieving this certification demonstrates our industry-leading expertise in Google Tag Manager, with agencies asked to prove their knowledge in a rigorous two-step process:
Wearing his pride on his sleeve, Conversion & Analytics director, Ryan Webb, said:
“I’m incredibly proud of the SearchStar team for achieving yet another Google Marketing Platform accreditation – this time as a reward for the industry leading work we do using Tag Manager.
“These accreditations are important because they help clients differentiate between the Google Platform agencies that truly know their stuff, and the rest. In addition, we now have 37 of the team with the individual Google Analytics qualification, the most we’ve ever had. All in all, this is fantastic news for us as an agency, and our clients.”
The Tag Manager certification is only open to existing GMP Partners, meaning that you can only apply once you hold an existing GMP certification (in our case Analytics). See our official partner page here…
On top of that, to remain certified, GMP partners are required to have a minimum of five full time employees pass the specified product exam. Following our last push, we have a ludicrous 37 full time employees with the qualification!
In Google’s words, “Google Tag Manager is a tag management system (TMS) that allows you to quickly and easily update measurement codes and related code fragments collectively known as tags on your website or mobile app.”
Simply put, it’s a free marketing tool that enables you to deploy snippets of code or tracking pixels (for instance), without having to modify the source code of your website itself.
Common examples of tags include Google Analytics tracking, Google Analytics event codes, Facebook’s tracking pixel, remarketing tags and scroll tracking. But that’s just scratching the surface of what you can accomplish with GTM. A complex site might have need for hundreds of these codes, and GTM provides an easy and convenient solution for managing them without relying on a developer.
This news story first appeared on the SearchStar blog here…
UN Women UK has selected Firehaus to handle its 2019 #DrawALine campaign.
The appointment follows hot on the heels of Firehaus’ strategic support for the organisation’s upcoming #SameBoat fundraising activation with Anna and Cameron McLean, the first sister-brother duo to take part in the Talisker Whiskey Atlantic Challenge later this year.
UN Women is the United Nations entity for gender equality and the elimination of violence against women. The #DrawALine campaign, originally developed by JWT in 2017 and featuring Benedict Cumberbatch, Billie Piper and Stacey Dooley, seeks to raise awareness of the issue of gender-based violence. The 2019 phase of the campaign will seek to build on its direct response element to drive leads and donations, and will continue to be supported by MediaCom.
‘1 in 4 women in the UK have experienced sexual or physical violence’, said Claire Barnett, Interim Executive Director of UN Women UK. ‘#DrawALine connects people into a global movement to end violence against women, starting today. It is the first step in a journey that converts outrage into action that will leave a lasting impact on the UK and the world.”
Firehaus Founder and Strategy Partner Nick Barthram said ‘If ever there was a worthwhile campaign to be part of, this is it. We’re delighted that our work to date on the #SameBoat project has been well received, leading to us being chosen to deliver #DrawALine for 2019’.
Our Content Apprentice Izzy headed over to Bath for this month’s Featured Member to talk with Sue Bush, Creative Director at Touchpoint Design, and find out more about what they’re up to. Here’s what we learned…
Hi Sue, tell us what you do?
We are a brand design agency, we design brand identities, primarily for arts and culture and not for profit clients. We work across all touchpoints, which is where we got our name. The touchpoints are: digital, printed materials and large-format visuals. Ensuring a consistent brand identity across all applications.
Who are your team?
There are 3 of us in the production team, myself (creative director), Georgia (designer) and Ian (technical director). We are a small team, but we collaborate with lots of talented associates that we bring in on a project by project basis.
How long have you been a Bristol Media member?
We’ve been a Bristol Media member for 4 years I believe. We became members because I moved to the South West from London, so it was a good way to get to know everyone and join the creative community.
What’s your favourite place in Bath and Bristol?
In Bath, Solsbury Hill, it’s really invigorating up there. It’s a steep hill but a great place to clear your mind. In Bristol, probably the harbourside, a great place for people watching.
What are you most proud of as a business?
I love that we punch above our weight. We’re only small but we take on some really big briefs, size is not an issue. Our rebrand of the American Museum & Gardens was a great example of where we demonstrated what we can achieve with a complex and demanding brief.
Our favourite projects to work on are those where we get involved right from the brand discovery stage, researching, unpacking client vision and values, positioning etc. Going in deep from the start gives us insight and helps us to maximise impact and spark really effective creative solutions.
What exciting plans have you got coming up this year?
We are working on a website with Taxi Studio for the West of England Design Forum to help women in design. There’s a big disparity between women reaching roles of seniority so it’s great to work for something we’re passionate about.
We’re also a part of a ‘mastermind’ group of 8 agency owners. We’re small giants, like the concept developed in the book Small Giants by Bo Burlingham. Based around the idea of sustainable agency growth, rather than expand for the sake of it, to make a wider positive impact beyond simply our own financial gain. So we’re excited to see where this takes us in the future!
Whose work do you admire and why?
Marina Willer from Pentagram. We love her, she’s very humble considering how successful she is, and she works in sectors we work in (charities and creative arts). Her work with Amnesty International and the Serpentine Gallery in particular. She creates clear solutions that are bold and impactful. She is a stand out influence for us.
If there’s one thing we need more of in this region, what is it?
In Bath, it would be great to see a big contemporary art centre. Bristol has Spike Island and the Arnolfini, and while Bath has great spaces, like The Edge and 44AD, it would be nice to have a permanent space that can pull in some of the bigger high-profile artists and act as a creative hub across disciplines.
If you could sum up Bristol in 3 words, what would they be?
Vibrant, refreshingly diverse and fiercely-independent.
What’s the best tip/trick you’ve learnt as a business?
For designers, use a notebook! Don’t go straight for the computer, sketch ideas before you start pushing pixels around, it’s so much easier and quicker. Leuchtturm notebooks are our favourite! Our greatest tip is to really listen. Ask questions, then actively listening to the answers. Prompt and facilitate those conversations to get insight.
Keen to feature your business? If you’d like to be part of our Featured Member series, email Kirsty or Izzy for more information. See you in September!
Previously executive creative director and Vice Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather, as well as creative lead for Google’s The Zoo, Patrick has a career spanning over 30 years, and we’re delighted to welcome him back to Bristol.
20 years ago, Seth Godin wrote “Permission Marketing”. He had such high hopes for advertising, suggesting that the digital revolution would make advertising personal and relevant and thus anticipated and welcome.
But it didn’t quite work out that way…
Not only do people dislike advertising (there are a billion ad-blockers installed on devices around the world) they dislike the advertising profession too. In the UK, advertising people often rank below politicians, which takes some doing! Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, Google and Brand Safety, the new tech giants have had a disastrous effect on how advertising is both made and seen.
BUT, despite all this, advertising can still help sell products and grow brands. It’s just that there are new rules.
About the keynote:
In this talk, Patrick Collister will apologise for the cliché (new rules) but will explain how it gives a framework for understanding the five conditions brands need to meet if they want to get through to people.
He’ll talk a bit about data, a lot about insight and he’ll mention the fact that 30% of the audience will have bought something on their mobile phones while sitting on the toilet. He’ll squeak excitedly about some of the new toys in the tech-box but pull a frown when he gets to the slide with the poo emoji. That’s when he’ll be discussing Programmatic and how it is an opportunity that creative agencies miss at their peril.
He’ll talk about ideas a lot, use the word creativity quite often, and may even try to sell you his book, “How To Use Innovation & Creativity In Business.”
Tickets & Entry
Join us and Patrick on Tuesday 17th September (12.30-14.15) at the riverside offices of Foot Anstey, 2 Glass Wharf, Bristol BS2 0FR.
Tickets are £40+VAT for Bristol Media members, £55+VAT for non-members and include lunch. A limited number of £10+VAT tickets will be available from 9th August to Bristol Media freelance members.
About Patrick
Patrick was the executive creative director and Vice Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather, London. Then executive creative director of the EHS Brann network of direct marketing agencies. From 2013 to 2018 he was the creative lead for Google’s creative think-tank The Zoo. He has won many awards, the most prestigious being Cannes Gold in 2013 with Cheil for Samsung. In his spare time, Patrick publishes Directory magazine and resource.
Patrick will return in October to run his critically-acclaimed workshop ‘Getting the Big Idea’… find out more.
The 2019 series of ITV’s Love Island came to an end on Monday and the contestants were released back into the world of social media, where they can expect to earn potentially astronomical amounts of money as ‘influencers’ by promoting brands, products and services through their social media accounts.
To help the Islanders navigate the regulatory dos and don’ts of online advertising, ITV in partnership with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) recently published this Cheat Sheet to Declaring Ads on Social Media, which provides a useful and accessible summary of ASA rules for anyone planning on using social media for commercial advertising. It’s a timely reminder of the key points to be aware of when advertising on social media.
What rules apply to advertising on social media?
A number of different regulations apply to advertising on social media, although the key rules which apply are the ASA’s CAP Code rules and consumer protection legislation, such as the Consumer Protection Act 2015, which is regulated by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). These rules apply to anyone who places an advert on social media.
Additional rules also apply if you are promoting age-restricted products (such as gambling or alcohol), food or health supplements, or running giveaways or prize draws
What is an advert?
In the context of social media, an ‘advert’ can include any of the following:
What does the CAP Code require?
The CAP Code states that adverts on social media must be “obviously identifiable” as such. This means that consumers should be able to recognise that something is an advert without having to click on it or otherwise interact with it. To comply with this rule, ASA advice suggests that:
What does consumer protection legislation require?
Consumer protection legislation requires that adverts placed on social media do not contain false or misleading information. This does not stop you from expressing an opinion – e.g. ‘this is the best makeup I have ever used’ – but it does stop you from expressing a fact unless you can back it up – e.g. if you say ‘this makeup is produced in the UK’ and it was actually produced in Spain, you could be in breach of consumer protection law.
What happens if someone breaches these rules?
If someone places an advert on social media which breaches the CAP Code rules, the consumer can complain to the ASA. The ASA will investigate and, if the advertiser is found guilty, the ASA can apply a number of sanctions, including requiring that the advert be withdrawn, that the advertiser be banned from placing adverts on social media, or that their adverts be vetted before they are placed online.
If someone breaches consumer protection legislation, they could expect to be sued by the consumer or investigated by the CMA, which can lead to sanctions including significant fines.
For further information, please contact Jennifer Agate at [email protected] or +44 20 7263 0011.
Pimento is celebrating emerging talent in the UK, across all marketing disciplines, by offering an under 24s rate for their 2019 Conference.
At the Conference, emerging agencies, consultants, clients and marketing entrepreneurs will get the chance to meet established agencies and consultants from across the UK, as well as hearing from leading authorities on how to build their business and career in marketing.
The day-long conference will be held at the Montcalm Marble Arch London on 19th September. Daily delegate rates for under 24s (single workers, freelancers or consultants) are just £95, less than half the standard and member rate tickets.
Stephen Knight, Founder and MD of Pimento, the UK’s leading independent agency network said “I’ve met some fantastic young creative talent over the last year, right across the UK. It’s always been tough getting a break in marketing and I’m keen to support talent wherever it is and ensure we can share, support and collaborate with the stars of tomorrow.”
For tickets for the conference or more information, go to https://www.pimento.co.uk/pimento-conference-19
For exhibition and sponsorship enquiries, email [email protected]
Design Jobs Board is a good place to find and advertise new jobs across the creative industries. Kaleido Grafik was approached to create a new ad campaign that communicated this message, to the global creative industry.
The resulting creative was a series of bold copy lines and illustrations which speak about – whether you’re after a change of career, path or direction, DJB are there to connect the finest creative talent with the most respected agencies around the world.
The campaign runs digitally and in print across London as well as featuring in a number of creative arts magazines.
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