With the support of ADLIB and Babbasa, we’re delighted to announce that Okori Lewis-McCalla has won the 2020 Ben Martin Apprentice Award. The calibre of entries was higher than ever this year and Okori was unanimously chosen by the judging panel for his passion and ambition to become a ‘creative technologist’.
As part of the competition, Okori will join Bristol Media and a team of agency professionals at the world’s largest interactive festival, SXSW in Austin, Texas for five days in March. On his return, he’ll complete a structured programme of paid internships.
“To even be shortlisted for the Ben Martin Apprentice Award was quite flattering but to win the award is an honour and something I’m very grateful for”, said Okori. “More than anything, it’s empowering and has reaffirmed to me that you can and should just be yourself.”
The BMAA internship programme was hugely successful in 2019 and saw last year’s winner, Marissa Lewis-Peart, undertake 16 internships with some of the biggest and best agencies in the region. As a result, her career is off to a flying start! This year, we’re looking for agencies and businesses to be involved as corporate sponsors, to provide additional funding and further reach for young people. In 2020, we’re also committed to offering internships to the runners-up who will benefit from gaining practical work experience, setting them up for a future career in the industry.
“We all want to make sure our industry is more diverse and inclusive, but when you run a small business, it’s not always easy to know how to make a practical difference. By coming together as the Bristol Media community to support the BMAA, every member business, regardless of size, can do their bit to help young people get that all important ‘foot in the door’.” ~ Chris Thurling, Chair, Bristol Media
“ADLIB are delighted to support this year’s Ben Martin Apprentice Award. We’re a B Corp business committed to driving and championing diversity and inclusion within the technology, data, creative and marketing sectors. We are big supporters of Babassa and it has been a pleasure working with them and Bristol Media, we look forward to seeing the positive outcomes that are generated through the programme.” ~ Nick Dean, MD, ADLIB
“This competition embodies Babbasa’s mission to improve social mobility outcomes in Bristol and the SW and to support young people from diverse communities with their professional ambitions. We are very pleased and excited for what comes next for Okori and I am sure this will inspire many other young people to consider a career in the creative industry.” ~ Urfan Ali, Babbasa Advisory Board Member
If your business would like to get involved with the BMAA in 2020, contact [email protected] for more details.
BBC Digital Cities will be returning to Bristol for 2020, with a week-long series of events for the creative industries.
Starting on Saturday 25th January 2020, there will be a full and varied schedule across the week, offering insights and free digital skills training.
See the full schedule on the Digital Cities Bristol homepage.
Partners include BBC Writersroom, BBC Academy and BBC Young Reporter plus digital arts and creative conference, Hello Culture Remix, will be making its debut in the city.
Boomsatsuma will once again be opening up its doors for the “Ask Me Anything” event and Bristol Media’s “How to Get Your Dream Job” will be taking place at the BBC on Whiteladies Road. We the Curious will be running a number of special showings on the Thursday and The Watershed’s Pervasive Media Studio will be hosting a special lunchtime session on the Friday with the BBC’s Makerbox.
On Thursday 30th at The Watershed, there is a fantastic day of events packed full of opportunities for storytellers on all digital platforms – called Screen Futures; If you are looking for funding for your latest film venture, want to know more about writing for social media, animation or commissioning opportunities in audio, are a black film maker wanting to know about opportunities in the city or have a story to tell at TedX in Bristol, then this day is for you. Featuring amongst others Into Film, ScreenSkills, Cables & Camera’s, BBC Writersroom, BFINetwork, New Creatives, Bectu & TedX Bristol, there will be opportunities to find out about schemes, burseries, funding and commissioning opportunities, as well as recent arrivals to the city – Channel 4 who will be talking about their latest apprenticeships and trainee schemes.
Not to be missed out – tech and digital creators will be able to attend UWE’s Global Game Jam & Bristol City Council’s Hackathon over the two weekends, both returning again after successful events last year.
Follow #digicities and @BBCAcademy on Twitter for updates. This page and the Digital Cities homepage are updated regularly so keep checking back for the latest information.
For Information:
Booking open now.
Free Google analytics health check on your website/Make your website a happy one
New year, new you! Or at least your website. It’s time for that to get into shape this January and ensure you’re getting the traffic you deserve. In this case, the bigger the better. That’s why we’re launching a couple of free tools to help you understand how your website is performing, and make it work harder for you.
Our brand shiny new Google Analytics tool takes a deep dive into your website and gives you an overview of what is going well, and what needs some work. From setting goals to tracking e-commerce, our tool shows exactly what workout is needed for your analytics.
We’re also offering a free SEO health check to ensure your website is working hard and getting you the traffic you deserve. Find out what keywords are ranking, if pages are sluggish and what links are getting you the best traffic. There are over 3.5 billion searches per day through Google alone, so getting your SEO right is key to ensuring your audience can find you.
These two free tools can help you whip your website into tip-top shape. Sorting out these critical parts of your website can help improve your bottom line.
Drop us a line to chat through the results and see what the best next steps are for your site. Make 2020 your best year yet!
Challenging injustice is just a day in the life here at OggaDoon. Today we’re supporting the launch of the Women’s Resource Centre’s #PayBackTheTamponTax campaign!
In 2015, the Conservative Government pledged to pay the tampon tax back into women’s charities and organisations, however only 1 out of 10 charities who received the funding was a dedicated women’s charity.
The campaign is already receiving some amazing support and attention. It has been picked up in an exclusive feature in the Independent this morning, which you can read about here.
Demand for women’s services has increased by 85% since 2018, whilst funding has fallen by 50% in the same period. Domestic violence killings are at a 5-year high – you never know how close to home these statistics can become.
With Brexit on the horizon, the future of women’s rights is uncertain, however the amazing women at the Women’s Resource Centre are working hard to protect us.
Help us hold the Government to account for not delivering their promise of paying the estimated £700 million of women’s money back into the women’s sector. Find out more and donate here.
Alternatively, show your support by sharing materials from our partner pack, which can be found here.
Communication is the key to a successful crowdfund. If you’re looking for support with an upcoming crowd fund – speak to us today!
Award-winning Bristol based creative agency Workbrands has been appointed by the IETA (International Emissions Trading Association) to create the brand, alongside the landing page design and social media assets for its new initiative Markets for Natural Climate Solutions.
Markets for Natural Climate Solutions is a new initiative launched by the IETA with the aim to maximise the business investment in natural climate solutions to ensure they play the fullest role possible in delivering the goals of the Paris Agreement.
If that all sounds pretty serious it’s because it is…the Paris Agreement is a landmark environmental accord that was adopted by nearly every nation in 2015 to address climate change and its negative impacts. Natural climate solutions can hopefully provide more than one third of the emission reductions needed to deliver the Paris Agreement. They offer ecological restoration and deliver wide ecological and social benefits.
Given the urgency and importance of the climate crisis, the Workbrands team were excited to get stuck in and help such a fantastic project.
The slick new brand and website Workbrands designed was launched on Thursday 5th December at the UN Climate Change Conference COP 25. You can see the site in action and find out more about Markets for Natural Climate Solutions here.
*This event is now SOLD OUT. Please add your name to the waitlist and we’ll confirm if a ticket becomes available*
Humans are innately illogical, and make unconscious decisions based largely on our emotions. Yet when confronted with a business or personal challenge, we have become obsessed with absolute logic, rationality, algorithms and data, and it’s threatening to stunt us: politically, socially and economically. What if there were an alternative to logic and rationality –a ‘psycho-logic’–that was far more pervasive and powerful than we realise, and when employed correctly, creates the kind of magic (or alchemy) most businesses or economists can only dream of?
Join us for a keynote with Rory Sutherland, the legendary Ogilvy Vice Chairman, the ‘Don Draper of the UK’, and one of our most acclaimed behavioural economists, who will share insights into his book ‘Alchemy – The Surprising Power of Ideas that don’t make Sense.’
Sutherland will use real case studies from his work and research with the world’s biggest brands and influencers, to reveal how we must learn to identify and understand the basics of ‘psycho-logic’, to get ahead in the modern world.
This keynote takes place between 12.30 – 14.00 on Tuesday 28th January at Foot Anstey, 2 Glass Wharf, Bristol BS2 0FR.
Tickets are 45+VAT for Bristol Media members (£60+VAT for non-members), a limited number are available to Bristol Media Freelance Members for £25+VAT.
Tickets include a buffet lunch and a copy of Rory’s book ‘Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas that don’t make Sense’ to take away.
Rory is the Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, an attractively vague job title which has allowed him to co-found a behavioural science practice within the agency.
He works with a consulting practice of psychology graduates who look for ‘unseen opportunities’ in consumer behaviour – these are the very small contextual changes which can have enormous effects on the decisions people make. It is a hugely valuable activity – but, alas, not particularly lucrative. This is because clients generally do not have budgets for solving problems they have not noticed.
Before founding Ogilvy Change, Rory was a copywriter and creative director at Ogilvy for over 20 years, having joined as a graduate trainee in 1988. He has variously been President of the IPA, Chair of the Judges for the Direct Jury at Cannes, and has spoken at TED Global. He writes regular columns for the Spectator, Market Leader and Impact, and also occasional pieces for Wired. He is the author of two books: The Wiki Man, available on Amazon at prices between £1.96 and £2,345.54, depending on whether the algorithm is having a bad day, and Alchemy, The Surprising Power of Ideas that don’t make Sense, published in the UK and US in March 2019.
Check out more Bristol Media events on the What’s On pages
Moonraker VFX calls for Bristol creative industry to champion inclusion through new mentoring programme
Moonraker VFX, the award-winning Bristol visual effects studio is shining a spotlight on the lack of diversity in the creative industries and leading the call to action by urging more regional companies to join a unique mentoring programme.
Moonraker VFX is a member of the innovative e-mentoring scheme run by ACCESS:VFX, a global non-profit organisation focused on driving inclusion and diversity in the creative industry. The online mentoring initiative is managed by third-party provider, Prospela and uses private Slack channels to connect aspiring talent from all walks of life. Mentors include representatives from some of the leading global VFX, animation and games studios, delivering personalised career advice on demand.
According to diversity statistics released by UK Screen Alliance & Animation UK, only 27% of those working in VFX are female, rising to just 40% in the Animation sector. To date, the ACCESS:VFX mentoring scheme has helped more than 100 people aged between 13 and 41, with 70% of mentees either female or BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) – targets are set to over 350 for 2020.
Leading creative companies such as Framestore, The Mill and DNEG are all onboard and provide mentors for the scheme, alongside Moonraker VFX in the South West.
Emma Kolasinska at Moonraker VFX, commented: “Bristol is at the forefront of the thriving UK creative industry, and as a socially diverse and culturally rich city, we should be leading the way in opening up our industry to talent from all backgrounds. Just think of the positive impact we could have if all the creative studios in Bristol came together for this initiative to inspire the next generation.”
ACCESS:VFX brings together a wealth of experience in an industry-led drive to increase opportunities for aspiring creatives around the globe. With growing numbers across the UK and new chapters opening throughout North America, including Montreal, New York, and Chicago.
“Just last month, the number of mentees and mentors grew 15% and 11% respectively. We’re proud to see an increasing number of students and creatives joining the initiative. However, this is just the beginning, our goal is to make our industry more accessible to everyone, across the country and beyond. This is a call to action as we actively seek industry mentors to help lead talent through their first steps into animation, VFX and post-production” said Simon Devereux from ACCESS:VFX.
Moonraker is a Bristol-based VFX studio, creating award-winning Visual Effects and CGI content for TV, film, commercials, museums and visitor attractions.
Access:VFX
ACCESS:VFX is a global, industry-led, non-profit comprised of 47 leading employers, industry bodies and educational establishments in the VFX, animation and games industries. It focuses on actively pursuing and encouraging inclusion, diversity, awareness and opportunity under its four pillars of Inspiration, Education, Mentoring and Recruitment.
Contact:
Alex Humphries-French at Red Lorry Yellow Lorry
[email protected] / 020 7403 8878
Search engine rankings are more competitive than ever before. This is a particular problem for small or local businesses, as they are often unsure of how to climb to the first page of Google. Today we’ll be looking at one sure fire way to do this – earning backlinks.
A backlink is any time a website posts a link to your site. The quality and quantity of these is the most important factor used by Google to rank search results. By the same token, if you have no backlinks, it’s pretty much impossible that anyone will ever find your site.
As such, it’s crucial that you are proactive in seeking out backlinks for your site. Let’s look at how.
The first part of your new backlinking strategy is outreach. That is, finding relevant sites and asking them for backlinks. If the site isn’t relevant, Google will see this and these backlinks won’t improve your SEO. Luckily though, judging relevance is really a matter of common sense. Once you have a shortlist of potential sites to reach out to, simply check out their homepages and what kind of content they produce to decide if it’s a good fit.
After that, you need to find the right person within the company to reach out to. Your best bet is using LinkedIn to look for someone with a title like ‘content editor’, or for smaller companies simply whoever’s in charge of marketing in general. In terms of actually reaching out to them, you have a couple of options. For one, you could simply use LinkedIn to send a message.
However, I don’t recommend this, as many people tend to ignore LinkedIn messages.
Your chances of success are better if you reach out via email. Of course, this creates the additional challenge of getting someone’s email address. To do this, you need a special tool like Voila Norbert. This figures out email addresses based on the format the company typically uses.
When sending an email to request a backlink, it’s important to remember your value proposition. That is, what you’re offering in return for what your asking for. If you present your proposition as a win-win scenario, then most people will accept.
The best way to do this is having two or three ideas for articles which would fit in with what they usually publish.
Throughout your backlinking strategy, it’s always a good idea to keep one eye on your competition. This has a number of benefits. For example, your competitors guest posts are a great source of inspiration for your own.
This will also help you to figure out the best sites to ask to guest post on. If your most successful competitors have backlinks from a certain site, that’s a pretty good indicator that you can expect quality backlinks.
The first step is to identify your competitors, even if you already have some idea of who these are. One easy way to do this is to survey the Google search results for your targeted keywords.
Then you need an easy way to identify who links to your competitors and how. For this, I recommend Longtail Pro, which has an excellent suite of tools for competitor analysis.
Alternatively, Longtail Pro also allows you to start with your desired keywords and identify the best way to pursue these in your backlinking strategy.
If you don’t have the time or resources to write large volumes of guest posts, a quicker and easier way to get backlinks is providing testimonials to other websites. This is a classic win-win. They build customer trust with your testimonial, and in return they link to your site.
Just like guest posting, this involves reaching out to relevant sites. However, after that things are much easier. You simply write a short snippet about why you love their product.
However, giving testimonials is by no means a replacement of guest posting. That is, you’ll never be able to get enough backlinks through testimonials alone, so they should be used to supplant your guest posting strategy, or to quickly build a better backlinking profile.
Another easy way to improve your backlink profile is turning mentions into backlinks. Often, your company could be mentioned on some article or other, but the author fails to provide a link to your site.
To take advantage of this, you need to find such mentions, and then reach out to provide a relevant link for the author to include.
This can also be achieved using the keyword research tools in Longtail Pro, to seek out mentions of your website. Of course, when you reach out to provide a link, it’s important to maintain courtesy.
The worst thing you can do is inadvertently come across as rude or passive aggressive. Instead, emphasise how much you enjoyed their article, and add value to them by presenting them with a way to improve it.
It’s also important to constantly seek out dead backlinks and fix them. That is, backlinks which don’t actually lead anywhere, either because of an incorrect URL or because a page on your site no longer exists.
While you can use a number of tools to find dead links, an easier solution is to automatically redirect broken URLs to your home page. That way, you don’t even need to seek them out.
You can also take advantage of your competitors dead links. This is really easy. When you find a dead link, simply create a piece of content to replace it and send it to the target site. This is the easiest kind of content marketing, since you don’t even need to dream up your own topics.
The 2019 DisruptSW Index features and showcases the businesses and organisations which are addressing diversity challenges within the South West’s tech teams and the technology sector. As part of The Diversity Edition, ADLIB caught up with a range of those Disrupters and asked each of them “from a business perspective, what do you consider the potential consequences of a lack of Diversity and Inclusion?”
Lo Wright, Senior Partner Manager: If a company lacks diversity, it lacks ideas. If you have a team made up of the same type of people, whether that be gender identity, sexuality, ethnicity, work experience, tenure at the company, upbringing, background or a combination of, guess what, you’re going to end up with the same results.
If you keep producing the same ideas, you’re going to become outdated and get left behind. The world is changing, and businesses need to change with it.
Jon Mahony, Lead Partner – Systems Engineering UK – Consulting: A lack of diversity and inclusion results in lower employee engagement, lower productivity and ultimately lower profitability.
It also results in lower creativity and a narrower perspective on solutions, outcomes and life overall. Without diversity we wouldn’t be able to bring our clients the best solutions so for us it’s an absolute imperative.
We’re all aware of some of the stories from the past and sadly, some in the not too distant past that have resulted in the creation of products or solutions that have not delivered what they have intended to and in worse cases, they have resulted in serious consequences for the people impacted by the lack of diverse people being involved in the design of the solution. Think seat belts that were only tested on male proportioned crash-test dummies and AI that made incorrect judgements on the likelihood of a population committing a crime all thanks to bias in the training data.
The role of consulting and professional services organisations is to provide new thinking not more of the same. One size does not fit all!??
Zoe Taylor, CEO: A workplace that lacks diversity and inclusion is limiting for business growth, employee engagement and employee retention.
Where diversity and inclusion are at the forefront, employees tend to feel more connected and have a high likelihood of remaining with the business.
Jane Ginnever, Group Leader that launched the Bristol WIB Charter: The lack of women at senior levels in business is astounding, given the level of educational achievement and capabilities of women and girls. It’s a systemic problem and won’t be resolved overnight, but the impact of our failure to include that female talent leads to a significant waste of potential for us as a society.
A more diverse and inclusive culture in business benefits men as well as women, providing us all with different models of leadership, making businesses more effective, and making it possible for us all to play a more active part in family and community life.???
Hayley Galpin, Project Manager: From businesses that I meet there is a frequent concern that there is a lack of diversity within their current workforce and a lack of new alternative thinking to grow their business further often via recruiting of “what you know”. Similarly, this means businesses are not representative of the customers or community they are within and serving.
To ensure businesses are reflective of the wider talent pool and are able to create, attract and retain future staff, it is imperative they engage with the range of school provisions (including a wider demographic of mainstream schools, alternative provisions and special schools ) to enable them to not only be aware of the employer but also to ensure they have the knowledge and skills to be successful within this field. Therefore a lack of diversity and inclusion means businesses may lack alternative thinking, innovation and perspective on how to take their business forward.
Jane Ginnever, Founder: Well that’s where we have been in the past isn’t it, leading to poor strategic decisions, questionable ethics around how business is done, customer needs not being understood, failing to capitalise on the potential of the whole workforce.
It’s time to change and it’s great to see that change happening across the south-west right now.
Thank you to all of those that have shared their business perspectives on the lack of a Diversity and Inclusion. We hope that they will inspire others to also do their bit.
To find out more about Disrupt South West and to see the 2019 Index, please visit disruptsouthwest.co.uk.
This article was previously published on the ADLIB blog.
Instagram has continued to prove itself as a social juggernaut within the last year, with an increase to 1 billion monthly active users and more than 500 million of those using the platform every day. So how do you get your content seen among all the big influencers and bots?
In this creative and strategic workshop, Instagram experts Jess Siggers and Keri Hudson will show you how to up your Instagram game and find your tribe.
After a refresh of the most up-to-date Instagram essentials, Digital Content Creator/Community Manager Jess Siggers (@porthjess/@igersbristol) will talk you through all the latest tools, tips and secret tricks you’ll need to supercharge your feed & Stories for 2020.
We’ll then go behind the scenes with Ads Manager and explore best practice for Instagram advertising. Social media expert Keri Hudson (@keritweet) will share her top creative and targeting tips to help you produce effective campaigns for brand awareness and sales. She’ll also give you a heads up on the latest paid activity trends and a glimpse at what the future may bring!
The workshop takes place from 3 – 5pm on Wednesday 4th December at Prophecy Unlimited, Glass Wharf, Bristol. Tickets are £20+VAT for Bristol Media members and £30+VAT for non-members.
Jess Siggers (aka Porthjess) is an experienced Digital Content Creator & a photographer focusing on bold, vibrant colour. A Community Manager who runs the Bristol Instagrammers network IGers Bristol, and an Ambassador for SMW Bristol and Destination Bristol, Jess has been featured by the BBC, Time Out, The Chromologist, The Guardian & Mollie Makes. See Jess’s Bristol Media member profile here
Keri Hudson is a Social Media Consultant specialising in teaching businesses how to think strategically about their online activity. With a decade of experience, she’s worked with brands of all shapes and sizes, including Cancer Research UK, Land Rover, The BFI and Yotel. A strategist at heart, Keri focuses on the tactical and tech sides of social media, and is passionate about helping brands get the best from the platforms’ organic and paid functionality. See Keri’s Bristol Media member profile here