Archive for November, 2009

Winning Through Innovation Event

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Scottish Enterprise held a Winning Through Innovation yesterday at the Odeon Cinema Springfield Quay Glasgow.

Speakers at the event included former global CEO of Burger King Barry Gibbons, Brian Williamson of Tiger Eye and Helen Battersby. The main theme for the event was Developing a Culture of Innovation with each speaker providing an insight into their own experiences of innovation and passing on their own words of wisdom as to how we can all motivate and innovate within our workplaces.

Overall the event was a great success with it almost nearly being a full house. A particular highlight was hearing Helen Battersby provide an indepth look at how she helped the Gleneagles Hotel increase profits from £700K to £5 million through innovation and people development. She provided several excellent examples of how the hotel managed to motivate staff, lower costs and target new markets, one example being to give staff the opportunity to offer and suggest innovative ideas to solve issues within the organisation the best being rewarded with a pay increase.

Each speaker provided the audience with 5 Top Tips related to Winning Through Innovation, here is the best from each;

Barry Gibbons:

In difficult financial times there is a tendancy and temptation to ‘nickle and dime’ your stakeholders (emplyees, suppliers, partners, customers and clients). Don’t.

Brian Williamson:

In meetings rotate the Chair to different team members to get a different perspective.

Helen Battersby:

Grow your people and your business will grow itself.

The Winning Through Innovation event forms part of the Scottish Enterprise Strengthen Your Business campaign designed to help, innovate and inspire Scottish Businesses. A downloadable Innovation Guide is available from the Strengthen Your Business website.

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AOL’s new branding gets us talking

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

AOL have announced that they are to ditch their triangle and running man logo with its familiar blue branding in favour of a new  “simple, confident logotype, revealed by ever-changing images… one consistent logo with countless ways to reveal.” Along with a changing background (which the company are calling “reveals”) the new logo will see the word AOL go lowercase and become accompanied by a dot; something which AOL CEO Tim Amstrong claims will all make sense when the full brand revamp is revealed on 10th December.

The sneak preview AOL released shows the new logo with several different “reveals” and the feedback across the web so far is…. mixed. One opinion that keeps cropping up is that it’s all a bit mad and perhaps a little slap dash.

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The amendments to the logotype- going lower case and adding the dot- don’t do enough to change our perspective of the brand if anything reducing the logotype from the bold symbolic AOL- full caps no dot- could do more damage than good taking away the emphasis of the bold brand name and making a brand name seem like any old word. AOL claim that having the o and the l as lower case is an excellent lead in to the dot. A lot of emphasis upon the dot it seems, it will siginify AOL plus something else such as Aol.Music

And then there is the changing backgrounds. Armstrong tells Paid Content that these changing “reveals” represent all the different things going on at AOL “underneath the surface”. The idea of a changing logo is nice but in practise it does very little to present a strong brand image and the concept is very similar to another highly successful search engine whose logo we often see accompanied by highly popular doodles.

Of course only having a sneak peak at the proposed brand image it is too early to be drawing conclusions, however, at this early stage a lot of people are starting to wonder whether AOL themselves know who they and what they want to be? Hopefully it will all become a little clearer on 10th December.

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Design Crush – edition 18

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

With the build up to the festive season already under way and many Christmas lights  being switched on in cities and towns all over the world, it is no wonder that lighting effects have crossed over to design and are playing a big part in current web design trends.

Lighting effects within web design come in a variety of different forms, from creating subtle shadows and dim glows that produce a peaceful tranquil mood to multi coloured and faceted light rays that give across an energetic mood. More and more websites are utilising these lighting effects to give websites a dimensional interest, coming away from flat designs that can often look bland and seem uninteresting.

Visually, employing light and shadow effects enables us to better understand and relate to what we see on screen by creating texture, aspect and perspective. Therefore we are able to make web pages appear more natural, existent and intuitive by utilising these effects which in turn makes the design  stand out on screen creating a true sense of depth, layers and realism.

These lighting effects can create interest to areas on a page that are seen to be more important. By highlighting specific aspects within a web page with lighting, you can subtly draw the viewers eye around the page, guiding them to the parts of information that you desire. Creating these prominent areas not only gives interest to the page but give the page a defined purpose.

With all these reasons and plenty more, it’s no wonder that lighting effects are playing a large role within web design at the moment. And we are sure that with the festive cheer set to continue it will only amplify this trend bringing light not just to streets and trees, but to web pages as well.

Below are some exquisite examples of lighting and shadow effects being employed within web design:

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If you fancy trying your hand at creating lighting effects here are some resources:

16 Photoshop Light Effect Tutorials >

Creating Lighting Effects with Brushes >

30 Lighting Effect Photoshop Tutorials >

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The Social Media Diaries | Turning a follower into a sale!

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

We are big supporters of social media and its brand building qualities;  it is the perfect channel to ‘connect’ with your target audience and push your message. However, once you have your hundreds of followers and fans how do you convert them into a sale? According to a recent publication by MediaPost,  at its core social media works best when relying on good old fashioned marketing tactics promotion and customer service.

Your social media campaign should aim to increase brand awareness, drive customers to the website and convert the follower to a sale. The MediaPost article using data published by Razorfish states, “of those who follow a brand on Twitter, for example, 44% said access to exclusive deals is the main reason. And on Facebook and MySpace, 37% cited special deals as the main reason they have “friended” a brand”. As the stats tell us brands must be enticing customers to their websites using promotions and discounts doing so will increase brand interaction and encourage customer loyalty.

Using social media platforms to give customers added value such as insider hints, tips and additional information regarding products can push customers onto your website and help the decision making process. The correlation between such brand engagement and providing above average customer service is high. Big brands such as BT are utilising social media platform Twitter to provide immediate and relevant customer service, e.g. within minutes of a complaint about their service is aired a message is recieved by the complainer asking for contact details with someone dealing with the response as soon as possible saving you the time and effort of phoning and sitting on hold!

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Online customer service from BT

However, as we touched up on in our Habitat Getting It Wrong post for a successful online marketing campaign you must strategically plan a course of action. Many businesses and brands may rush into setting up social media profiles on the premise that it will ‘be good for the brand’, however, as this post has hopefully communicated there is more to social media than building brand awareness and that it takes a little more than having a big brand to entice friends/fans/followers to your website to purchase.



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Christmas tips for B2B websites

Monday, November 9th, 2009

Last year we talked about getting more Christmas shoppers to your website and getting them to spend, but this year weChristmas Lights will turn our attention to B2B, an industry which can be incredibly quiet over the Christmas period we have put together some handy tips and advice on how to get visitors to your website and how to use online marketing techniques to keep your business busy this festive period.

Social media has been big news this year and Christmas 2009 is no different; B2B websites should be using the micro blogging platform Twitter as a way to continue relationships with prospective clients; don’t stop talking about products and services online just because work/enquiries seem to have slowed down.

Most people send a Christmas card every year so why not send an e-Christmas card this year, use it as way to not only wish your stakeholders season’s greetings but to offer them seasonal offers as a means of encouraging a decision (in your favour of course) over the festive period. This method of wishing them well is not only greener but allows you to add a more personal touch, although throw in a donation to a local charity to show your not being cheap!

Get into the festive spirit, do some charitable activities such as helping out at the local soup kitchen or even throw an office pantomime inviting clients to watch. Take it online by blogging and posting photos on Flickr, yes it’s something that can be done all year round but at Christmas time there is a lot more fun things going on and it is much easier to get clients involved in Christmas parties etc.

Use professional networking websites such as LinkedIn to locate or arrange a Christmas party. LinkedIn has an excellent event finding tool which is already listing several Christmas networking events, take it one step further by hosting your own Christmas networking event and post it on LinkedIn and any other social networking site the business gets involved with.

Whatever you choose to do for your business this Christmas the best advice we could possibly pass on is to keeping talking about your brand, just because business is quiet it doesn’t mean you can’t continue helping the customer make their decision in your favour or increase the brand visibility with your target market.

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Get Safe Online Week

Monday, November 9th, 2009

From the 16th – 20th November it is Get Safe Online week, an annual event aiming to raise awareness of Internet safety issues. Get safe online logo

There are various ways crooks can attack your business online, for example hack into your website, steal your identity or have your computer network infected with viruses.

The Get Safe Online website provides plenty of information for small businesses outlining and providing advice on how they can protect themselves online.

Key points include:

  • Monitor your staff online activity through writing a staff internet usage policy
  • Be aware of and train your staff on the risks of phishing, social engineering, e-commerce fraud and identity theft
  • Avoid publishing any sensitive information online and make sure that emails containing sensitive information are deleted immediatley
  • Be aware of the tell tale signs of a fraudulent order, for example large & expensive orders with unusual buying patterns
  • If you have any remote users on your network ensure that the necessary safeguards are in place

For more information visit the Get Safe Online website.

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Business guide to Twitter list

Monday, November 9th, 2009

Twitter has recently introduced Twitter lists to all their users allowing them to classify (or list)  followers in seperate groups.

It is fairly easy to create a group and add people to it, but why the need for it? Well, they are there to enable users to recommend lists of followers for other users to also follow.

So, how can a business use Twitter lists?

Firstly, businesses can create an employee list and encourage all the brand followers to follow the employees also. The benefit? It groups together everyone associated with the brand which makes it easier for customers, fans or stakeholders to follow all the employees of their favourite brand, from a corporate perspective making the employees equally as popular as the company allows the brand message to reach a wider audience and allows the brand personality to shine through, see NME magazines employee list. For larger companies creating numerous employee lists based on geographic location, office location or department will help to put the customer in touch with exactly the people they want to speak to.

Secondly, it can allow businesses to give customers a little bit extra by compiling lists of Twitterers that they feel will be of interest or relevant to the service/product they are buying. For example if you are selling bathroom suites online perhaps you could create a list of decorators or DIY shops that also appear online, a sort of recommended Twitterers almost. The main benefit this could bring is by establishing your Twitter account as a bit of resource for your industry and opens up the possibility of creating relationships with the companies or individuals on the list.

Thirdly, use Twitter lists to manage fans following enabling them to connect with other fans in their geographic area or sharing the same interests. For example the NHL has created NHL fan lists, they did so by send out a tweet to all their followers asking them to tell them what team they supported accompanied by #myfavouritenhlteam. As a result the NHL Twitter account has 20 lists of different fan groups and is in the process of asking Twitter to allow them the ability to have even more. The result being that NHL have turned their Twitter account into a mini social community where fans connect with other fans.

Fourthly, if you are hosting an event or are an events company then the Twitter list can be used to group together attendees of the event, this allows potential attendees to see who will be present and gives those within the list to socialise with one another prior to and after the event itself.

In conclusion there really are many different way a business can utilise the Twitter lists, with a little thought and creativity they can provide benefit to any business and hopefully this blog post gives you a starting point.

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