Charities are starting to innovate digitally. Innovation teams are spluttering into life, and some charities are building new digital products and services that will reach new audiences, create new potential income streams and increase their impact. But it’s slow, hard going. Why is this?
Do charities have the desire, the imagination? Do they have the vision at board level? Is risk-aversion the big blocker? Do funding models stymie innovation? Or do previous failed attempts mean they’re once burned, twice shy? Frankly, do they have the guts?
All of the above and more is probably the answer. But, here, I’ll focus on overcoming the barriers to charities adapting the type of modern, agile product development process that drives digital product innovation from the civil service to Silicon Valley.
Let’s kick this off with money. In charities, procurement teams and budget holders like to know what they’re buying. They like big specs, clear outcomes and fixed costs. They’re less keen on Minimum Viable Products (MVPs), iterative development, testing learning and pivoting – uncertainty. Unfortunately, that difficult stuff is at the heart of agile project development.
If you aren’t ready to totally change the way you procure, a starting point is to break projects into small, affordable chunks. Assuming you are working with an agency partner: start with an innovation workshop; if that works take an idea forward in a ‘design sprint’ (roughly £15k to £25k); iterate on it; run story mapping to build a roadmap. Make each stage a micro-tollgate like a mini government service standards assessment. This way projects actually get started so they can gather momentum, and they ‘fail fast’ if they aren’t worth pursuing.
An example of this in practice is MQ Mental Health who are building a new product to engage the public in mental health research. MQ leveraged the prototype we built with them in a design sprint – to attract funding to build an MVP. MQ have funded this whole product development one step at a time, using the quality outputs of each phase to help engage the funders of the next. This can be slow, but at least it’s moving.
Be creative with the process too. We recently ran a Design Sprint with Sue Ryder (who are building a new in-browser video service to provide bereavement counselling and support ) with a ‘money back guarantee ’ – if they weren’t completely satisfied with the design sprint, they wouldn’t pay a penny. This gave the procurement team the confidence to sign off the initial phases of the project, while both teams got stuck into it with extra enthusiasm.
Creating a product culture in the charity space is tough. There’s not much experience about, yet experience is a really valuable component. We believe that the critical piece of the puzzle, is an engaged, skilled, empowered, client-side product manager. A good product manager keeps development aligned to business objectives and holds delivery teams to account, whether internal or external (this is particularly important when working ‘agile-ly’.)
This may all sound challenging for most charities – accepting more risk, changing funding and procurement models, developing an effective product culture – so let’s make it simple.
Here is a formula that might help you kick start innovation in your organisation:
Finally, try to remember agile projects can (and do) fail. Particularly, if you don’t have the right processes, people and culture in place. And failure is scary in the charity sector; especially if it threatens your public image. Nevertheless, ‘fixed scope’ innovation is an oxymoron. Leaders need to be brave enough to be prepared to fail.
Well-run product development processes, as outlined above, fail early, which helps. Something that doesn’t help is annual budgets. Ben Holt said in his valedictory post about the Disruptive Innovation Lab at Cancer Research UK, “disruptive ideas need to impact strategy with an eye on the future, not the annual planning cycle” and that is something we should all try to keep in mind.
Innovation products need a new, flexible ‘as and when’ funding approach, one where funding is aligned to goals or outcomes, rather than ‘project scope’ and that is something the sector will have to keep working towards.
Torchbox run a free Charity Digital Innovation Series of breakfast events. Here you can see the details and video of their last one, for Heads and Directors of Digital – where the discussions were on this same topic of challenges and success of Digital Innovation. Keep up to date on all Torchbox events on Twitter.
This article first appeared in Charity Comms.
The Yeo Valley Café, which opened earlier this year in London, featuring an interior design scheme by award-winning South West designers Phoenix Wharf, has taken GOLD this month in the Hospitality Interiors category of the London Design Awards 2019.
The café-store-office space, Yeo Valley’s first outlet away from its Blagdon, Somerset HQ, is an engaging, inviting showcase for the leading organic dairy brand, offering customers a dine-in café, grab’n’go produce area and mini retail store, as well as a work and meeting space for staff on the site’s upper storey. Bristol-based designers Phoenix Wharf ensured the customer-facing ground-floor offer had a friendly, unpretentious and fun feel with its ‘warm and cool’ concept – featuring a white and bright ‘cool’ retail area to the right, and a warmer ‘natural’ sit-down area to the left, underlining the brand’s countryside origins and authenticity.
Standout features that caught the judges’ eyes in the scheme include a ceiling feature in the form of a stained-glass-style light-box installation, showing an abstracted map of the Yeo Valley farm HQ in Blagdon; a lighting feature made up of 19 different pendant lamps set at different lengths and a cottage-garden mural by long-time brand collaborator, artist-illustrator Natasha Clutterbuck. The store’s highly-original loos have also featured prominently in press coverage. Designed as ‘Blagdon Station’ underground toilets, as a link between the London and Somerset sites, with curved tube-tunnel corners and ‘pomegranate’ wall tiles, sourced from H.E. Smith, the original London Underground manufacturer. Further details include tube-type platform signage; a ‘priority seat’ sign above the toilet; an ‘All Change Here’ baby change unit; a ‘Loo Roll’ tube-style roundel; a platform-style floor detail saying ‘Mind the Gap’ and a ‘Way Out’ sign.
‘We’re really thrilled with this win’, Phoenix Wharf’s Associate Creative Director Emma Gullick commented. ‘It puts the South West firmly on the map and shows just how much talent and creativity we have here, capable of the highest performance at national level.’
The London Design Awards are one of 10 global city-based awards across three continents run by DrivenXDesign, a global community of designers, thinkers, strategists and design lovers. They provide recognition across the design spectrum, are cross-disciplinary and are currently held across three continents. The awards celebrate and honour the role of design and the skills of designers, while recognising all aspects of the design process, including product, digital, interiors, architecture, graphic, textile, events, fashion, advertising, food, experience, and publications.
– Ends –
Photography credit: Franklin & Franklin
For further information on Phoenix Wharf, please contact Caroline Collett of Caroline Collett PR Ltd on T: + 44 (0)1297 444179 M: + 44 (0)7801 270598 E: [email protected]
About Phoenix Wharf
Phoenix Wharf is a design consultancy specialising in branding and interiors concepts for ambitious hospitality and retail brands. Founded in Bristol in 2015 and independently owned, the consultancy’s mission is ‘inspiring change’. Known for its youthful approach and reputation for fresh thinking, Phoenix Wharf has won and been nominated for several national awards and has worked with a wide range of clients, from start-ups to established heritage brands, both local and international, including Space NK, The National Trust, Ensemble, Craghoppers, The Gro Company, Gill Marine, Gymshark and The Richmond Building at Bristol University. Along with sister creative companies Ignition (exhibitions, events and experiences) and Caroline (strategic communications), Phoenix Wharf forms part of Istoria Group.
www.phoenix-wharf.com / www.istoriagroup.com
It’s been almost a year since we announced Marissa Lewis-Peart as the winner of the 2019 Ben Martin Apprentice Award (BMAA). Marissa’s had an enviable experience of Bristol’s creative sector since being selected. 12 months later and with applications open for the BMAA 2020, we wanted to find out more about the opportunities she’s received since last year’s victory.
“Hi, I’m Marissa, a Graphic Communication graduate, and I won the 2019 Ben Martin Apprentice Award!
As part of my award I attended SXSW in Austin, Texas – The world’s largest interactive media festival, where I had the opportunity to immerse myself into the latest technology and attend talks by industry leaders. Read the article about my festival experience here. Since finishing my final year at university, I’ve been making my way around 15 different Advertising, Marketing, Branding, Design and Digital agencies, taking part in 1-2 week internships.
As a student wrapping up my final year at university, I felt nervous about what would lie ahead of me in terms of finding a graduate job and not wanting to lose my creative freedom. Winning the Ben Martin Apprentice Award came at the perfect time and it took a lot of that stress away for me. It provided me with connections to people within the industry and paid internships straight out of university, providing a rare opportunity to experience the biggest creative agencies in Bristol and learn about the various roles within these agencies, all in one go! Some of these agencies include Armadillo, McCann Bristol, Bray Leino, Wonderland Communications, Halo, Tällt, Saintnicks, Mr B & Friends, Taxi Studio, True Digital, Great State and more to come.
I’ve met so many great and supportive people who have taken time out of their schedules to explain to me how exactly the Internet works, or why my website has disappeared from Google, how Pantone colours are used, or have written me a reading list of creative strategy and design books to get stuck into! I’ve had the chance to work on projects for Disney Cruises, McDonalds, The Royal Navy and many more companies, as well as attend a commercial photo shoot for a campaign and facilitate my own user testing sessions for an app that’s being developed, all within my first 4 months out of university!
It’s a crazy feeling when I reflect on notes that I took during my first few internships and how I’m beginning to apply my knowledge now, and I realise how much I’ve learnt in such a short space of time. Nothing compares to gaining real industry experience and I’m so glad to have been given this opportunity.
I’m now beginning to wrap up my last few internships and I’m weighing up my options in terms of whether to go back to a few agencies to do longer internships and gain more, varied experience, or whether to settle into a permanent job role. Whatever I choose to do, I’m grateful to have options and be in the position to choose my next steps thanks to the Ben Martin Apprentice Award.
If you’re reading this and considering applying for the 2020 Ben Martin Apprentice Award I definitely recommend you do! I was unsure about applying when I first came across the award. I doubted whether I stood a chance at winning, but you miss 100% of the opportunities that you don’t put yourself forward for! What’s the worst that can happen?”
We’re now looking for sponsors to come forward and support the BMAA in 2020. If you’re committed to making a difference, get in touch for details.
For candidates, more information about the 2020 Ben Martin Apprentice Award and how to apply can be found here.
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.
*DEADLINE EXTENDED – We’ve had some fantastic applications, and are now looking for freelancers who specialise in Copywriting, Animation or Video production*
We’ve had several requests from our membership community to bring back our famous Portfolio Review Nights. Well, there’s good news! We’ve secured the date and the venue, and the next Portfolio Review night will be held on Wednesday 13th November at Origin Workspace, Berkeley Square.
If you’re a Bristol Media Freelance Member working in the creative sector, this is a fantastic opportunity to have your portfolio work reviewed by top creative directors from several of the most successful agencies in the region. We’ve got 15 creative directors signed up from agencies including Mr B & Friends, Oakwood, Epoch, Armadillo, Proctor + Stevenson, Zone, saintnicks, Great State, Bray Leino CX, The Way, Halo, Home , Six and Prophecy who are all eager to meet local talent.
Freelancers will have up to 8 minutes with each director who will offer their advice and constructive feedback in a speed networking environment. In the past, Freelancers have often secured a project or been invited for a further interview with the agency team, and we hear that the creative directors have a great time, too!
We’re now looking for freelancers working in the fields of digital, graphic design, branding, web development, video production, animation/motion graphics, VFX, photography, illustration and copywriting.
This is a very popular event which is for Bristol Media members only. We only have 15 places available.
Please email [email protected] saying why this is the perfect opportunity for you right now, along with a link to your portfolio or website. Applications close at 5pm on Friday 25th October.
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.
We want our 15 million members to enjoy the same personal, tailored experience online as they do in our network of branches. So for us, technology doesn’t mean designing something to replace the human touch, it’s simply a way to enhance and extend it.
This virtue certainly resonates with Sonja Jefferson and Will Wellesley-Davies, who have just joined our Service and Experience Design Team leadership team.
Sonja has been a leader in the world of content for many years. She founded Bristol’s content strategy firm Valuable Content and is co-author of the award-winning book, Valuable Content Marketing – how to make quality content the key to success and joins Nationwide to head up the fast-growing content design discipline.
“Nationwide has a long history as a values-led business; the most human business wins today and content design in a transformative practice in the drive towards that goal. It’s great to see the Society adopting content design across the business and we have some incredible talent in our team. I’m excited to see how far we can take it.”
Will has joined from the strategic UX design agency, Nomensa, where he was Principal User Experience designer and will be scaling up Nationwide’s UI design capability to meet the modern ‘Fintech’ challenges of service design to better serve the needs of both customers and colleagues.
“Nationwide believe in putting people first; in honesty and integrity – applying these values to the design of future innovative financial services, which touch all aspects of people’s lives across society is a really exciting opportunity.”
If the Service and Experience Design Team sounds like something you believe in and would like to be a part of, take a look at our roles or get in touch with [email protected]
Hi Pete, what do you do at Prophecy Unlimited?
Prophecy Unlimited is a customer journey agency, launched in May 2017. We brought together two great South West agencies, EMO Unlimited, renowned for customer acquisition, and The Real Adventure Unlimited, experts in customer relationship management. We realised that we could combine the complementary skill sets and people together, the result being Prophecy Unlimited. That ultimately means we work across every channel in the mix, and for some clients we work end-to-end across the whole journey.
Customer journeys are rapidly changing in terms of technology and consumer behaviours, so we work with our clients to create a successful and impactful customer experience.
More specifically, my role as CEO involves two key jobs: one is making sure the Prophecy team are happy, and then making sure that clients are happy, too. The two are incredibly interrelated, happy team, happy clients, and vice versa!
Who’s in the team?
Everyone from client services, project management, creative content, data and insight, tech, HR… the list goes on. I’m responsible for making sure we have key team leads ensuring we all work to the best of our abilities. No one department is more important than another, it’s a real team effort.
What are you most proud of as a business?
The client list that we have for a South West agency – I’m so proud of it. We have several clients who have been with us for over 30 years, some large blue-chip brands and global players.
I’m ex London, and we tend to have this chip on our shoulders about London, thinking it’s the big be all and end all. But I actually think the work coming out of Bristol is as good, if not better, than the London players. Bristol has such an energy and creativity.
What’s your favourite office gadget?
Big Red – our coffee machine! It’s got to be at least 10 years old. Probably as long as we’ve been Bristol Media members it’s been trucking along, supplying us with coffee. As part of our induction for new starters we have a stint with the coffee machine. Not quite barista training, but it’s a proper machine so not just a press and go.
Whose work do you admire and why?
This is a tricky question, because I think about the campaigns I like at the moment and actually, I wouldn’t pin it on one particular agency or brand. I’ve never known a time for the agency world to be quite as challenging, in terms of the changes and the dreaded B-word. Any agency that’s making their client feel confident enough in them to buy work is absolutely doing great. Hats off to all!
What’s the biggest challenge your industry/organisation is facing at the moment?
I can think of two, clearly economic uncertainty is one of those, but also data. The scandal around Cambridge Analytica made consumers wary about their information and what’s being used and where. Not only that, but with more data available, we need to make sure we don’t just disappear into big systems like Adobe or Salesforce. It’s something we’ve been focussing on at Prophecy recently; transparency in the customer journey, not just getting the system to tell us the answers but making sure we’re sensitive to human emotion and using old school planning skills.
If you had one piece of advice for someone just starting out, what would it be?
Get involved, put your hand up, get stuck in and remember that your voice matters. Great ideas can come from anywhere, any team and any person. Don’t be afraid to speak up! And seek out a mentor if you can.
What’s your favourite place in Bristol/this area?
On Friday mornings I religiously make a breakfast run to Hart’s Bakery. The guys know to leave a small window in the diary so I can get my sourdough, or sausage rolls, or cheese toasties… There’s too much to choose from!
If you could sum up Bristol/this area in 3 words, what would they be?
First up, real. As a city, we don’t pretend to be anything different. We’re proud of our differences. Then vibrant and innovative.
What exciting plans have you got coming up this year?
That’s a really good question, because we’ve always got new things in the pipeline, and those vary by client. Probably the most exciting thing is our new customer journey methodology, it’s a model for getting to the heart of what’s working in a customer journey and what’s not.
We’re working it through now and we’ve got some clients using it. The hairs on the back of my neck are standing up a bit thinking of the difference it’s going to make. We’ll be sharing it soon so watch this space!
To see latest examples of Prophecy’s work, visit the website.
Fancy joining the Prophecy Unlimited team? They’re on the lookout for new hires, find out more about the roles available here.
If you’d like to be part of our Featured Member series and profile your business, get in touch.
2019 is a landmark year for Quantock as they celebrate 30 years as one of the UK’s leading creative communication agencies.
To mark this occasion Quantock are holding an exclusive event to celebrate the past and look to the future of Natural Creativity™.
In conjunction with D&AD and their New Blood Festival, the event will be showcasing some of the most exciting and award winning creative talent emerging in the UK today. Not one to miss if you want to celebrate how Natural Creativity™ is still the most powerful asset the industry has, and see tomorrow’s up and coming stars.
Event Location: Clifton Observatory (Bristol’s iconic landmark)
Date: 19th September 2019
Time: 4.30pm – 7:30pm
Why is the event taking place?
It is rare in this modern age for an independent agency to have survived (and prospered!) for 30 years. As a way of giving back, Quantock are keen to celebrate this milestone by bringing to Bristol the UK’s best graduate creative talent and award winning D&AD pencil winners.
Why Attend?
No need to head to London, when you can see the winning D&AD pencil winners, and emerging creative talent here in the South West.
Come and join many others in a 30 year celebration of Quantock and New Blood.
Who should attend?
Anyone actively involved within the creative communications sector, marketeers, clients, agencies, and anyone looking to make connections.
Get your exclusive pass to the event now
Tickets need to be ordered and printed in advance. Head to The Future of Creativity – Eventbrite website for more info. Alternatively speak to one of our team.
W: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/preview?eid=63577325492
E: [email protected]
T: +44 (0)1823 327532
Leading one-day digital conference, Collaborate Bristol returned to the Watershed Bristol to celebrate the best in UX and design in the South West this Summer.
Designed and curated by strategic international UX agency, Nomensa, Collaborate Bristol was held on June 21st at Bristol’s iconic Watershed. Returning for its sixth year, Collaborate Bristol welcomed a mix of speakers including: Onkardeep Singh MBE, senior UX designer at Three; Juliana Martinhago, product designer at Monzo; Georgia Rakusen, design research lead at ConsenSys; Gavin Strange, director and designer at Aardman Animations; Hilary Brownlie, head of service design & innovation at Registers of Scotland; Catalina Butnaru, ethics track lead at City AI; Eriol Fox, senior product designer at Ushahidi; and Nomensa’s own head of UX, Jon Fisher.
Onkardeep Singh MBE, who opened the event with his talk around passion for your work said: “There’s a laidback and informal feel about Collaborate which not only aids in building the community but also helps to bring honesty to the table, demonstrating the key challenges that we all face as designers and UX practitioners on a daily basis. This works to bring about topics that we wouldn’t usually talk about in a design context and I believe that’s fantastic.”
As a firm highlight on the tech events calendar, over 200 of the top UK creatives descended upon Bristol’s harbourside for this sold-out event. Focusing on collaborative thinking centred around UX and design, Collaborate Bristol is renowned for its unique approach to digital conferences in the South West, elevating delegate knowledge whilst building on those critical networks.
Speaking of the event, Henry Carroll, events manager for Nomensa, said: “We are always incredibly proud to bring Collaborate to our home city of Bristol. Of course, we operate in multiple cities across the UK and Europe, but Bristol will always have a special place in our hearts, and we feel privileged to bring such an event to the city, partnering with local businesses to contribute to Bristol’s thriving tech scene.
“Despite running for six years, no two Collaborate events have been the same yet and we’re proud to bring a multitude of speakers to the stage with a diverse range of experiences and passions. This year, we were thrilled to be joined by representatives from Monzo, Three, our own Nomensa experts and more, all showcasing the latest thought-leadership in UX and design, encouraging a collaborative approach and out-of-the-box thinking.”
For more information, visit: https://collaborateconf.com/
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