*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
Fuller’s has chosen Synergy Creative to help define a people promise for its 5,000 strong workforce.
Boasting a managed pub estate of over 200 sites, Fuller’s makes the appointment following the sale of its brewing division earlier this year and a renewed focus on its pub and hotel business.
Fuller’s calls upon Synergy Creative’s experience with insight-led employee engagement and employer brand work to create a people promise that will help Fuller’s recruit and retain top talent in the future.
Dawn Browne, People and Talent Director at Fuller’s said: “It’s been a period of significant change at Fuller’s, and we want to ensure that everyone continues to feel part of the Fuller’s family in our focused pub and hotel business. We have a truly fantastic culture and we want to show off what makes us a great place to work, so that we can attract even more brilliant team members.
“We were looking for an agency to help us maintain that family feel and articulate what makes Fuller’s so special to its team members. The Synergy team stood out to us, not only for their expertise in this area, but also for taking the time to understand our business and our personality.”
Emma Holland, Client Services Director at Synergy Creative, said: “We’re thrilled to be partnering with Fuller’s through an exciting time of change for its business. Fuller’s has a brilliant employee proposition and story to tell and we’re excited to help it shape that narrative and tell it to the world.”
The news comes as part of a brilliant year for Synergy, following new client wins including Aldi and DFS, a best agency win at the Institute of Internal Communications awards and several key hires to the team.
About Synergy Creative:
At Synergy, we believe in the power of people; to imagine, excite and inspire. Ambitious brands trust us to help their people take action, delight customers, transform cultures and create change.
We engage people with impact through insight-driven creative comms and experiences that connect with employees and change behaviours.
As specialists in internal comms and employee engagement, we think, write and gather some brilliant resources to help guide and inform your employee communications. For more information, visit: https://www.synergycreative.co.uk/
Livestock farmers have a real challenge on their hands. Those trading in meat are facing an environmental revolution that has grown so strong, it’s spilling out into almost every industry across the world, and a data driven health movement that is so easily accessible it’s changing consumers eating behaviour more quickly than ration stamps.
Climate ragers have systematically picked apart the energy sector, automotive, manufacturing, fashion and food. And rightly so. The system built since the industrial revolution has been streamlined to provide right now products to right now people at all cost.
Environmental consciousness is a perfect bedfellow to personal health. As people wake up to the planet damage, so do they to their own mortality. And now they know exactly what to do. Aside from the apps, google dieticians and social shaming, heavy hitters like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jackie Chan, Lewis Hamilton and James Cameron are applying the science behind a vegan diet and shouting it in award winning documentaries like The Game Changers.
Over the past few weeks Tesco has launched its new TV campaign, leading with its vegan sausage casserole, as stated in The Independent.
We are potentially very close to British farmers being demonised for their environmental impact as much as their meat produce. So the National Farmers Union (NFU) feels that meat is being misrepresented, and the latest campaign from Tesco has sold them out, opting to bounce on the latest consumer demand trends. Kevin Grace, NFU’s commercial director has even called Tesco to “bring profitability back to British farming and put more British food on plates.”
As a marketing team, we have worked with Meat Promotion Wales for a number of years, and understand the consumer landscape intimately. We also have a responsibility to steer brands into the right markets. And although meat consumption has declined over the years, there is still a low impact and buoyant market for it.
Consumer thinking has changed and these are some of the principles that need to be considered today when executing your marketing strategy.
Bristol-based integrated digital marketing agency, Loom, has begun its eleventh year securing award-winning energy switching service, Flipper, as a client. The business also welcomes apprenticeship training and development specialist, Lifetime Training, and software expert, Ghyston.
Launched in 2016, South West-based Flipper, was the UK’s first energy auto-switching service. Its in-house tech includes the most advanced algorithm in the industry which has already saved over £14M collectively for thousands of customers.
“Here at Loom, we champion Flipper’s innovative approach to saving on energy bills and its overwhelmingly selfless and successful customer-first approach to business. We look forward to working with the team to build upon its digital growth strategy and drive its potential even further,” commented Loom founder, Nikki Ellison.
Lifetime Training is a long-standing, highly accredited training programme specialist with over 20 years’ experience in apprenticeship and development courses across a wide variety of sectors. Bristol-based software expert, Ghyston, develops bespoke, highly functional and diverse platforms such as websites, apps and ERP systems.
Loom will be working closely with all three clients, implementing digital marketing strategies to help them achieve their business goals. Flipper will be focussing on its Pay-Per-Click (PPC) offering and Ghyston will be building upon its Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), content and its PPC. Lifetime Training will be taking advantage of Loom’s fully integrated digital marketing service by working on PPC, paid social advertising, SEO and content.
Now a team of 12, Loom was founded by Nikki Ellison in 2009. Prior to this, Ellison’s experience lay in digital marketing with a number of big-name brands including HMV, Monster and TUI. With an expert team specialising in different digital verticals, Loom aims to continue its impressive growth stats of 40% year on year and fantastic client retention rates, some of which have worked with the business since inception. Long-standing clients include Permagard, ForrestBrown and Infinity Motorcycles.
Director of Client Strategy and Co-owner Karen Pearce, said: “We are very excited to be working with Flipper, Ghyston and Lifetime Training. All three are innovative, Bristol-based companies and we are so pleased they have chosen Loom to help them with their digital growth strategy.”
About Loom
Loom is an integrated digital marketing agency founded in 2009 and still independently co-owned and owner-managed. Based in Temple Studios in Bristol, the 12-strong team has South West-based clients including Cheltenham College, ForrestBrown, Permagard, Nest Design & Build, Safe Options, Spoke & Stringer and Touchwood Play.
Instagram: @loomdigitalagency
Twitter: @loomdigital
SOUTHWEST disruptor index DisruptSW has unveiled the DisruptSW Index 2019 as The Diversity Edition, featuring the businesses and organisations which are addressing diversity challenges within the South West’s tech teams and the technology sector.
This year’s list highlights those that disrupt diversity and inclusivity challenges within tech teams, all pulling together to make changes to the way companies enable, attract, train, recruit, engage and retain tech talent.
This is the third year DisruptSW has indexed innovative companies based in the region. The index recognises firms taking a new approach to existing problems. It is backed by Top 100 law firm Foot Anstey, and specialist recruiters ADLIB.
ADLIB managing director Nick Dean said:
“We strongly believe changes need to be made to the way businesses attract, recruit and retain diverse talent. Our mission is to reposition the tech skills gap as a massive opportunity for diversity and inclusion.”
“Building diverse and inclusive teams is proven to bring multiple benefits. From brand perception and increasing candidate attraction, bridging hard-to-find skill gaps, increasing staff retention and driving better business performance.”
The Diversity Edition index has been collated and curated based on nominations from key influencers and participators in the region’s tech and innovation space.
Martin Cuell, head of technology and partner at Foot Anstey, said:
“The South West is emerging as a world-leading hub for technology and innovation.”
“We’re focusing on those businesses that are tackling the sector’s diversity issues head-on. There are a wealth of businesses who are thinking differently about this problem and turning it into an opportunity.”
The award was set up in memory of the late Ben Martin, a local, entrepreneurial agency MD who was committed to an inclusive culture and actively encouraged diversity.
Marissa Lewis-Peart won last year’s award, travelling to Austin with Chris Thurling, Bristol Media Chair, to attend the world’s largest digital festival, SxSW. This was followed by a 5-month paid internship programme with a range of the top agencies in the South West – McCann Bristol, Bray Leino CX, Armadillo, True, Mentor Digital, Ragdoll, Tallt, Wonderland Communications, Mr B & Friends, saintnicks, Taxi Studio, Great State, Six and Halo. Read about Marissa’s experience here.
This year Bristol Media and ADLIB, together with a growing list of agency sponsors, are extending the award to 4 candidates. A candidate briefing session in mid-October, hosted by ADLIB, Bristol Media and Babbasa, will allow candidates to fully explore the opportunities available to them, according to their preferred area of interest in either the creative, technology, data or tech sector.
Applicants should submit a video (no more than a min) or short written piece (around 500 words), explaining why they stand out and should be selected. Successful applicants will be interviewed by a panel of experts and the winner and 3 runners up will be awarded paid internships. The winner will, once again, attend SxSW with Bristol Media and a group of industry professionals.
To enter the award, please send your submission to [email protected] by Friday 22nd November 2019. Winners will be announced in early December.
Terms and Conditions
Applicants must be over 18.
Applicants must be willing to create and supply content of their journey for media usage.
Applicants must be able to travel to Texas in March 2020.
Applicants must be living in the South West of England.
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