Soo and Sonia's Blog Page

Our Marketing and PR Wins Award for Kitchen Showroom
Posted at: 2011-10-22 16:47:03

LOCAL KITCHEN SHOWROOM WINS ADVERTISING GRANT AWARD FROM NEFF AT MASTERPARTNER EXCELLENCE AWARDS 2011

Ipswich Company Anglia Factors has been chosen as a runner up for the first Advertising & Marketing Grant Award presented by the UK’s leading built in kitchen appliance brand Neff at the company’s annual MasterPartner® Excellence Awards 2011.

Dan Barr, Managing Director of Neff MasterPartner® Anglia Factors of Ipswich in Suffolk accepted the prestigious £2,500 Grant on behalf of the company. The money will be used to drive the business forward by investing in a number of innovative marketing and promotional strategies.

The Advertising & Marketing Annual Grant Award was presented at a special Awards Dinner held in the Central Hall of the famous Natural History Museum in London .The glittering event was hosted by the popular presenter of ITV 1’s ‘All Star Family Fortunes’, Vernon Kay.

Anglia Factors was one of three finalists in the first Advertising & Marketing Annual Grant Award category of this year’s Neff MasterPartner® Excellence Awards.

He company was praised for their creative ideas and integrated marketing approach of the comprehensive advertising and marketing proposals submitted by Dan Barr of Anglia Factors.

The attached photo shows Dan Barr and Dave Charlton accepting their runners up cheques from Neff Brand Manager, Hannah Groves and host Vernon Kay.

Comments Neff Brand Manager, Hannah Groves: “The Neff Excellence Awards recognise those who excel at being first class in every aspect of their business. Anglia Factors personify all the values we hold dear: quality, service, professionalism, creativity and enthusiasm. We look forward to seeing how they invest the money and reap the rewards for the future of their business”

The Neff MasterPartner® Excellence Awards were set up in 2008 to recognise the successful partnership between brand leading built in kitchen appliance manufacturer, Neff and its key specialist dealers throughout the UK, known as MasterPartners®.

ENDS. Issued by Creativity PR on behalf of Neff. October 2011.

Local PR: Sonia Shelcott, Millriver Publicity on 01473 410278

How Social Media Helps bring Traffic to your website
Posted at: 2011-08-07 13:07:03

"I am on Social Media sites but it doesn't increase traffic to my website" - people ask me this occaisionally, and I find that they are failing to link Social Media posts to their websites, or don't have buttons linking their sites to Facebook and Twitter etc.

Here I will explain:

Think of your website as the "centre" of the internet - that's a big statment, but if you think in this way you will increase traffic to your website.

Button Links
So, your website it the centre of your business. If you have not placed any buttons linking your website to your Social Media sites, it would be a good idea to do that for a start. Get your Web Designer to add some classy buttons that fit with the design of your site. Or if you are thinking about rebranding or starting up a business, choose a competent designer who can create bespoke buttons and build social media areas to your website that does not clash with the design of the site. Build them in and make it work.

Google Bots and Spyders
Now you have linked your website to your Social Media sites, Google and other Search Engines will notice "traffic" flowing from your site to the Social Media sites. This is a good start, but you need to encourage visitors back to your website rather than direct people away. So your next task is to draw attention to your website in your Tweets and Posts, then traffic will flow back to your site. Please see diagram here>>

Linking from Social Media to your website
Finally, you need to get to grips with creating a link to your website when you Tweet or Post on Facebook, or other. This needs to be done carefully, if you over do it, Google, Yahoo and other Search Engines will see this as Spam, so it's best not to link to your site every time you comment. It is also wise to link to your site when you have something to expand upon that will help other people and get them interested in YOU and your business.

Out to the Internet
Once you ahve set all this up, traffic is flowing to and from your website and Google and other Search Engines will see your site as "Important" and start moving it up the rankings. You can check your rankings by downloading SEO Quake to your Mozilla Firefox browser and watch your Page Rank grow.

Typically, a communications campaign is only as good as its plan.

Like any other avenue, a public relations road map should be reviewed not only with overall business goals in mind, but also with an eye toward opportunities and obstacles specific to PR.

Here’s a checklist based on the most frequently overlooked or underrepresented elements. To fully evaluate your plan, ask yourself—or your PR team—the following questions.

What is PR’s role?
The PR program should have a distinct and defined role within the bigger marketing picture. Often, the best use of PR is to add depth or detail to brand messages or to lend credibility to an advertising claim. It’s rarely just “positive visibility.”

Does it include internal audiences?
Many plans don’t address employees and stakeholders. These audiences can be very powerful ambassadors for nearly any PR strategy. For a corporate social responsibility (CSR) program, they are crucial. If employees and partners aren’t fully informed of a program’s goals and strategies, it can create roadblocks. Failure to do this is simply a lost opportunity.

Is it coordinated with other marketing elements?
Maybe full integration isn’t a goal, but simple coordination adds value to every piece. Very often we see newsworthy elements in other parts of the marketing plan, but we find them out too late to offer input or realize the news potential.

Does it allow for full story development?
In our haste to generate publicity or social media impact, we sometimes underestimate the time and research required for full story creation and for multiple storylines. Because this is the meat of most PR programs, it should be afforded time for fairly robust research, development, and vetting. The beauty of PR may be that we can shift tactics or change messaging without incurring production costs, but who wants to lose the time?

Does it include a back up plan?
For the publicity piece of a PR plan, you should always have a backup plan—particularly if the planned coverage hinges on a seasonal opportunity or culminates in a special event.

Is it flexible?
Similarly, any plan should be adaptable to market conditions, competitive developments, or changes in the news cycle as you go. Most PR programs operate within a very dynamic media environment, so change is the rule and not the exception. Take advantage of it with monthly plan reviews and adjustments.

Does it include a contingency or crisis plan?
It always pays to think through potentially damaging scenarios and be prepared with a defensive strategy.

Is the timing realistic?
People tend to underestimate the time required for research, tactical planning, and achieving media relations. If you want your publicity to hit in say in July you should be starting at least three months ahead, if not more!

Content may be king, but it's the design that draws you in!
Posted at: 2011-04-10 13:50:29

Much has been made recently about signing up to Social Media Networking sites and creating your own Blog. Even more importantly, a big deal is also made about linking these Tweets and comments back to your own website. But how effective is it? If you write drivel who is going to bother to read your news?

Quite rightly, copywriters and SEO professionals are reminding people to write meaningful news items and to employ a copywriter for important news and events. However, I have seen many websites that have superb copy but very poor graphic design.

How you design your website, or indeed any other materials such as printed matter, will be the first point of contact potential customers have with your company. Visual impact is key to draw visitors into your website, who is going to hang around and spend time on a website like this: http://www.lingscars.com/ ? There isn't any readable copy on there either, so visually and verbally a disaster.

Remember - It's the design that draws you in! How often do you visit a website only to click away from it immediately? Think about why you do that.

Your website should involve the following:
— attract visitors
— inform
— be easy to navigate
— have graphical consistency
— look professional
— encourage you to return
— make a sale

If you want to have a giggle, take a look here: websites that suck>>

With the arrival of many themes for creating websites, it can be easy to fall into the trap of producing design work (for print or web) without giving much thought to typography. A new designer venturing into their first job or dealing with clients for the first time may be making some of these simple mistakes. Now, nothing is set in stone, however, there are some golden rules here which you might want to refresh yourself with.

1. Helvetica Overload
Now, I can be accused of this one, Helvetica is a superb font with about 50 variations. But it shouldn't be used on everything, a wedding invitation for example or a brochure for a Furniture company. Do explore Futura, Frutiger, Optima and Gill Sans which are all easy to read sans serif fonts and lend themselves to being manipulated into a workable logo.

2. Centred Layouts
A sure-fire tell-tale sign that the designer is un-schooled. It creates a very dull design and leaves you with very little room for manoeuver, and above all never mix centred text with left aligned or justified as this is even worse. It's OK for wedding invitations, menus and the like, but that's about it.

3. Lack of Contrast
Readability is key. Never put a strong coloured background behind black text, contrast is crucial. White on a colour = good, black on pale colour or white = good.

4. Drop Shadows
Classic school boy error, especially bad if the text is on a curve. I does not help with readability and should only be used on large bold heading (once only) to lift the text up from a busy background.

5. Default Leading
On other pages on this website, I have increased the leading of the bodytext (Leading = inter-line spacing). A slightly smaller font with a slightly increased leading will make your website or document look much more professional.

6. Hyphens for Bullets
Dingbats or Wingdings will be much clearer to the reader

7. Underlined Text
This is a biggie - for goodness sake, underlining comes from the days of typewriters when there was not such thing as bold type! Unfortunately MS Word etc adds it to web addresses as default, it is much clearer to drop the underline and use bold and another colour to signify a link on the web. If a website is designed with green and black colouring (for example) why change the links to vibrant blue? Totally spoils the look of the site and is inconsistent with the other styles. If you really want to add an underline, then use a bottom border feature to style the link, this will at least let the decenders be shown clearly. By the way, a decender is the bottom bits of g, y, p.

8. Drop-Shadowed Text
This doesn't turn your wording into a logo (that will be another blog), it should only be used very, very sparingly, again, it is something that can be done in Word when it tried to add some designer features.

9. Massive Indents
Indents can be set more discreetly in your stylesheet, whether it is for the Web or for print.

10. Inconsistency
Another biggie. If you put a green border round your images, put it on all of them. If you use a photoshop filter for an image style - do it on all of them, don't confuse the viewer with all of your tricks at once. Don't overuse font styles either. Don't mix up left aligned, right aligned and centred text and images in your layout.

When the going gets tough, what is the first thing businesses look to do? Yes, cut costs! It’s a normal response to a downturn, indeed some would say crucial to keeping the business lean and mean. Unfortunately some of the first candidates for cutback are marketing, advertising, design and public relations. Considered as a luxury during tough times and something that can be done without – Of course professionals in these fields throw caution to this and advise businesses not to hit the panic button.

Sonia Shelcott from local marketing and PR consultants Millriver Publicity commented: “It is well documented that brands who maintain their marketing presence during a recession, when competitors are cutting back, can improve market share and deliver a return on their investments. Maintaining strong brand awareness even in a downturn can play a crucial role in helping businesses keep its head above water and keeping one step ahead of its competitors. In a downturn businesses need to show strength and stability to its customers, cutting back too much on marketing budgets in the short term can actually cost a business more money in the long term, by having to rebuild your brand when the economy picks up and falling behind your competitors. It is crucial to remain successful, it puts you in a strong position when the market does eventually improve.”

Andrew Fleming is commercial partner of Blocks Solicitors, and realises the benefit of strong brand awareness. Andrew commented: “Although the business environment may be hardening, that’s when good marketing comes into its own. All businesses need to be able to communicate their particular strengths. As a firm, we invest in focused local advertising and have a concerted marketing strategy, which we intend to follow through and even enhance through this economic downturn.”

Cementing a company’s message is also crucial in a downturn, a good PR campaign backs up the effectiveness of an advertising campaign, amplifying its message, and it can help any size company build awareness.

Sonia commented: “Unfortunately many people see PR as a luxury it shouldn’t be if used correctly and integrated with an effective marketing plan. PR enhances reputation, builds a brand, and makes your business stand out from the crowd.” She added: “If you cut PR out in tough times you leave the door open for your competitors to walk in, you are much better off maintaining a presence in the public eye, keeping in peoples minds and communicating with your customers. If you are serious about business, you have to invest in it.”

Fusion, Mill River Publicity and Double S Design new websites go live

After three months of intensive work, Soo and Sonia have now completed the Fusion Website. It is visible here: http://www.fusion-ipswich.co.uk and is a collaboration between Marketing and PR consultant Sonia Shelcott (Mill River Publicity) and Graphic and Web Designer Soo Smart (Double S Design).

Definitely two heads are better than one, together we can offer a full marketing, PR and design service. We are a PR, marketing and design consultancy that helps your business deliver highly effective PR and marketing campaigns. We share a passion for ethical, clear-sighted and client focused project delivery.

Whether your business is new, growing or established, we can deliver expertise and ideas that will drive your business forward. We work across a range of different sectors and pride ourselves on our many long-term partnerships with our clients. Working to your budgets and deadlines, either for a specific campaign or over a longer period of time, we can help to raise the profile of your business both in the written word and through creative design.
If you are looking for a dedicated consultancy to help you, please give us a call. We would be happy to visit to discuss your plans.

Fusion - Design, Marketing and PR Specialists. We share a passion for ethical, clear-sighted and client focused project delivery.

Did you know that it's no good doing social media if you don't link back to your site?

You may be very happy to communicate to your friends and business colleagues on Twitter and Facebook, but 2011 will be the year when Social Media comes into its own. If you are the only one seeing your Tweets, then your message is not getting across. If you never link your Tweets to your website, your are missing out on a vital way of driving traffic to your website. Search Engines look for links between sites, it thinks if there are links happening frequently, then your website is important.

Not only do you need to join Social Networking groups, but you also need to create a Blog and send the news from the Blog to your site via RSS feeds.

Is it all beginning to sound rather tricky and complicated? It's just a steep learning curve, but nothing you or a competent web designer cannot help you with or do for you. If you want to see what I mean, just click on these links here>> Tweets RSS Linked In Twitter News Feeds

Or better still, hire me>>

If you are serious about your business you need a professional email address. This means registering a domain and buying hosting. If you only need email and don't want a website for the time being, then that's as far as you need to go. It is a small fee to pay to look professional.
OK, so we all have to start at the beginning and a hotmail or tiscali email address will do the job while you are setting things up. But if you want to look professional and don't know where to start, then simply give us a call on 01473 728617. We can set up your domain and email address without you having a Website.

We are nearly full! We can fit a couple more teams in, to book call Sonia on 01473 410278, check out the link below.

Includes a Curry Supper and complimentary drink courtesy of Adnams. The Suffolk SportsAid Foundation invites you to join us for a special quiz night, based on the hit TV series ‘A Question of Sport’. Enjoy a night of sporting fun, whilst supporting some of Suffolk’s finest young athletes.

Compered by Radio Suffolk’s Sports Editor and Presenter Graeme McLoughlin, challenge fellow businesses on their sporting knowledge, enjoy taking part in some of the funniest moments from the TV series such as the ‘what happened next’ and ‘the picture and observations rounds’.

Teams of Four for £50 per team, to book your place click here>>

A Question of Sport Quiz Night on Feb 11th in aid of Suffolk SportsAid foundation.

Teams of Four for £50 per team, to book your place click here>>

If you want to ReBrand in the new year, you need not look any further than Double S Design, we are currently under going a rebrand ourselves, and there will be exciting news in the new year, just watch this space. A new brand or re brand involves a comprehensive overview of your company - what you do, what you say and how you say it is so important. It's no use skimping on detail or ideas, your identity will reflect the way you are seen as a business and it isn't something to be done in half measures.

All types of media need to have a consistent message both in visual and copy terms, a suite of bespoke images whether they are illustrations, photos or graphic devices will enhance your look and add credibility if these are linked to printed and electronic media.

A hefty job you think? Yes, a lot of work is needed and Christmas will be taken up with getting the new identity ready for launching. So if you are thinking about this for your business, we can give you a couple of words of advice: plan ahead, think about your message and give yourself time to do a good job.

Big new website for local company goes live today. Take a look at www.jshipswich.co.uk/homepage.html, the site is the large half of a completely re-designed, re-written and re-built using up-to-the-minute web technologies. Good use of Flash Animation on the homepage, and a couple of interactive elements to hold your interest. Together with Double S Design the copy was written by Mill River Publicity. Watch this space for new developments!

Great East Swim is on Channel 4 Sunday at 7:30pm. Do take a look, I was there to support the Suffolk SportsAid Foundation only as a spectator and it was freezing weather for June. To find out what the Suffolk SportsAid Foundation is all about, take a look at their website here>>

It has been set up to raise funds for Suffolk's young athletes who aspire to take part in the London 2012 Olympics. I am adding content and changing the website frequently, making it as interesting and informative as possible.

Suffolk SportsAid Foundation Lunch on Wednesday was a great hit. Those of you who remember the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary will be sure to remember Eddie the Eagle - Britain's one and only Olympic Ski Jumper. Eddie Edwards was throughly entertaining as he told the story of how he got interested in skiing, and then progressed onto the Ski Jump. He had no funding, no team mates and no coach, yet he managed to achieved the high standard required to allow him to take part in the 1988 Winter Olympics.

The event was held at the Ipswich Town Football club and raised over £500 for the Suffolk SportsAid foundation charity. All moneys raised go towards helping Suffolk's young aspiring athletes reach their dreams for the London 2012 Olympics. I will let you know when the next event happens.

Alternatively, check out the Suffolk SportsAid website here>>

Following on from my Tweet, the Comic Sans Typeface debate continues: There is a time and place for this typeface, namely on "speech bubbles" in comics. Anywhere else is a sin. To use it as your logo is the biggest sin of all.

That friendly little font will not do a sincere job as the first point of contact for your clients, sadly I have seen too many home-made logos using this font.

If you want to stand out from the crowd -get a logo professionally designed
If you want to show your company in the right light - think about the message you want to give
If you want to be taken seriously - think further about what you want to say and how you want to say it

Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards is an icon of British sport following his heroic failure at the 1988 Calgary winter Olympics.

SUFFOLK SPORTSAID FOUNDATION LUNCH GUEST SPEAKER - EDDIE ‘THE EAGLE’ EDWARDS

Supported by Ipswich Town Football Club
Wednesday 3rd November 2010 12 noon
Sir Bobby Robson Suite, Ipswich Town Football Club, Portman Road, Ipswich
Price - £30 per person or £250 for a table of ten

To book a place or a table click here >>
Or email sonia@millriver.co.uk

The so-called birdman of Cheltenham finished last in both the 70m and 90m skijumps at Calgary – his best effort of 73.5m was more than 50m behind the double gold winning Finn, Matt Nyaken. But instead of slinking home in disgrace and resuming his career as a plasterer, he arrived at Heathrow Airport to find a crowd of 10,000 fans, a 25-strong police escort and a whole new life of private jets, personal appearances, £10,000-an-hour fees and a Top 50 single, Fly Eddie Fly.

Eddie was a huge media celebrity – he appeared on Wogan, on the Johnny Carson show and even Ronald Reagan, then US president, held up a White House briefing to catch him on TV. His story is even the subject of a Hollywood Film.

This is an unmissable opportunity to hear a truly unique and compelling story from the legend that is Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards.

Suffolk SportsAid Foundation
The sole purpose of the Suffolk SportsAid Foundation is to raise money to help the next generation of Suffolk’s sporting talent to succeed. It is a joint initiative between SportsAid, the national charity for sports people, Suffolk Sport and ‘Rising to the Challenge Suffolk’ the campaign to maximise the benefits for Suffolk from the
London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

SportsAid is the only UK charity directly helping talented British sportsmen and women. Their research identifies that on average each athlete spends nearly £5,000 per year on equipment, training, travelling and all the other essentials that are required for competing at the top level. More often than not their only sponsors are Mum and Dad, so every bit of independent recognition and financial help that the young athlete gets at this stage makes a world of difference.

Since the Suffolk SportsAid Foundation was launched in 2007 it has awarded over 60 grants to talented sportsmen and women from across Suffolk, all of whom are
competing at either national or international level.

Your Logo alone should not be the finishing point of your brand identity. Your brand is more than simply the logo, it is the personality that identifies your company or product and should encompass the beliefs and attitudes of that business. Thinking further about your brand identity, is it something that needs to be reviewed every couple of years or longer? Is the message you created when you set up the company, still relevant today? Or, in more simple terms, do all your marketing materials look like they have come from the same company?

Your Logo therefore, is only one part of your brand: careful brand managemant employs many visual clues to carry a consistent message to your target audience. A single graphic that acts as the link to your clients, can be joined with other strong design themes, and this will help your brand be recognised as coming from the same source.

Double S Design has been in operation since 2002 and has built up a diverse range of clients ranging from Blue-chip to youth market to individuals. We pride ourselves on building long lasting relationships with our clients, and are always looking to forge new ties.

We are highly creative and have been creating designs, illustrations and other works of art ever since we could weild a pencil. After successfully completing a four year Graphic Design course at Suffolk College (similar to HND) Soo (Susan) went to work in London in the Animation business. Working on project such as The Snowman and SkyWhales films, SuperTed and Paddington Bear TV programmes and adverts including Delight Margarine, Kelloggs Frosties, The Post Office and Jordan's Toothbrushes. The scariest piece of work I was involved with was an animated music "video" for Iron Maiden where I had to work all night to a very tight deadline. Drawing 'Eddie the Head' in the middle of the night was a rather uncomfortable experience.

Following this, I worked for 11 years in the GRE in-house design studio where I rose to Studio Manager ultimately under the guidance of Williams Lea FM. This is where design skills were honed thoroughly, by learning to work with a variety of clients within the coporate sector. My work involved Creative Direction, concept work and implementation of publicity materials for the Insurance industry. Motor Insurance, Personal Insurance, Training materials and Commercial insurance Proposal documents, Insurance Policies, business to business brochures and high quality business to consumer printed materials all created by a dedicated team of people under my lead. GRE was finally sold to AXA Insurance and this created a wonderful opportunity to branch out by myself and start up Double S Design in 2002.

Double S Design has developed into a comprehensive design agency providing a wide range of clients, from small individual start-up organisations, to medium sized businesses, local authorities and blue-chip organisations such as Willis. We have a variety of skills in our armoury, we are equally happy working with corporate styles, producing crisp, clear authoritive styles, through to lively, individual styles for the youth market.

Every project is treated with new, fresh ideas, we do not use clipper art or templates. Everything we do will be tailor-made specifically for your business. By focusing on your business first, we will provide you with concepts which relate to your brief in the most accurate and creative way possible.

Take a look at samples of our work here>>

How to organise your apps into folders: If you've now downloaded the new upgrade for iPhone to v4, like me you are probably wondering how to organise your apps into folders. Simply press on one of your apps until they all wriggle, and drag it on top of another app icon. Your iphone will then create a folder for you - simple!

Great website design is an art. It is the point where functionality and visual impact combine to provide the user with an informative, interesting and useful source where you don't notice its greatness. Does your website fall into this category? Does it function as a tool to promote your business? If you are uncertain, or are looking to upgrade your website with added interactivity, animation or simply need to refresh the design; then take a look at Double S Design's portfolio at http://www.doublesdesign.com/websites.html. Click through to take a thorough look at the sites displayed. Or call for a chat on 01473 728617.
We are currently working on a new website with Mill River Publicity, the website involves Flash Animation, Dynamic Accordion menu and other web techniques to make the website easy to navigate and interesting to use. Our work in London on Films and Advertising has given us a great natural feel for the magic of animation using today's digital techniques.

New Double S Design Twitter to compliment personal tweets. After running personal tweets for the last couple of years, it's about time to add Double S Design to Twitter. You will be able to see new design developments made at Double S Design and see how we are working with other companies and Charities too. We are proud to be involved with the Suffolk Sports Aid Foundation and ISSBA, and are a busy, dynamic studio keen to give something back to society. Follw Double S Design here: http://twitter.com/doublesdesign

Colin is at this match in Capetown tonight, I hope he enjoys it. We will be watching tonight and try to see him in the crowd. Could be tricky.