Miles of Marketing : internet and traditional marketing musings

Goals and User Journey's - the only brief worth reading?

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:42:00 +0000

During the daily battle to keep onto of my my inbox I received a perfectly valid request from a new member of the client's marketing team that I thought worth of sharing to garner other people's thoughts (how would you have handled this differently?)

"I am working on a new website brief and we wondered whether there was a Drupal module that we could add for a blog?"

I can only but imagine the immediate thoughts that this would spark or groans this might induce. To me this was an opportunity to reinforce some of i-KOS' collective wisdom......

------ my reply ------

As the Drupalists like to say 'there's a module for that'. In fact if you look at Drupal.org you will see there are over 14,000 modules - yikes! However in practice we nearly always utilise and configure one or more module (we sometimes refer to as a Features or Feature-set) to deliver the desired and best result.

HOWEVER if I maybe so forward I'd like to share a method of briefing which, in our humble opinion, is where the overall goal and individual goals for each task is expressed and done so via user-stories. This method, we find, helps the authoring process as it makes you consider the different users.

A simplified examples might be:

Overall goal: We would like a blog to allow for editorial that is neither official news, events or product information. The driver of this request is to help us publish more regular content and thus assist us in terms of SEO.

User goals:

As the Site Administrator:

I would like to be able to create a new blog post which allows me to create a title, bylines, sub headings and body copy using a simple WYSIWYG editor.
I will need to add links to other sources
Upload images and ideally be able to perform a basic crop
Associate a .pdf document although not mandatory
Classify the post by way of a pre-determined classification
Tag the post using free-form text
Moderate comments prior to publishing, edit them if required, have the rights to delete or publish them
etc.

As a site visitor:

I would like to be able to share a blog post to my twitter followers or facebook friends
Post comments; I would like to be able to post comments.
I don't mind logging-in but I'd prefer to use my twitter or facebook credentials
etc

Development of new features for a website used to be wholly dependent upon the technology or rather the limitations of the technology. Whereas we are heading towards a time when we can, within the confines of time and budget, deliver what is actually wanted to meet the project goals. The time and budget is therefore the cornerstone of what we might set out to achieve; meaning we may still in fact revert to what a particular module or modules can do to meet the goals.

Goals and user journey's help us to assess if a feature is actually a good idea (does it achieve the goals) it also helps us and you in terms of guidance and feedback which can be difficult to frame or receive without goals to reference.

Myles

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in and around castle acre - norfolk

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 01:44:00 +0000

See the full gallery on Posterous

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myles.davidson's photostream

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 20:00:00 +0000

myles.davidson's photostream on Flickr.

First experimental shots with pinhole (no lens) photography #pinwide #wanderlust #pinhole #photography

i-KOS are moving to London - 30th June 2011 - Yippee

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 09:48:00 +0000

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Myles Davidson

Founder of i-KOS
www.i-kos.com
tel: +44 01322 277255
skype: myles.davidson
myles@i-kos.com
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Anglo-EU Translation Guide

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Mon, 23 May 2011 10:02:00 +0000

55551980-Anglo-EU-Translation-Guide.pdf Download this file

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Almost Half Of All Online Orders Now Include Free Shipping

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Wed, 18 May 2011 06:56:00 +0000

Stat of the day:

Almost Half Of All Online Orders Now Include Free Shipping

TECHCRUNCH | 18 MAY 2011
http://pulsene.ws/1E4r3

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Using Open Source Drupal to Rapidly Deploy New Features for e-Commerce

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Tue, 17 May 2011 17:42:00 +0000

Myles Davidson

Managing Director

+44 01322 277255

Get advice on:

Strategy

Design | Development | Marketing

Read the blog | Follow me on Twitter | Link with me

To review my online diary, check availability and book a call or meeting please visit http://www.tungle.me/mylesdavidson

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e-mail tear-down

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 08:55:00 +0000

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eCircle Connect Europe Review in Pics | #eceuro11 @ecircle @duncanbanantyne @dcobley

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 21:31:00 +0000

@LucyAHudson | Lucy Head of Marketing at eCircle UK introduced all the big names to the main stage whilst managing to smile at all times. If Lucy was nervous it didn't show.

@dcobley | Dan Cobley | Google's VP of Marketing | See the materials at http://goo.gl/uqj8t.

Dan reminded us about the power of making people happy. In a day full of psuedo-science and statistics this was a simple, compelling and welcome reminder.

Making reference to Maslow's hierarchy Dan showed this bus shelter that had been turned into a human oven - depicting warmth (on a winters day) as a way to make people happy (and warm).

Personalisation: Being Noticed

I too got one of these e-mails from LinkedIn and it having faces of people I knew definitely made take notice.

Torn open: Wired's extreme example of personalisation caused controversy and made for, for one, think about how much I readily share on social sites.

Dan's colleague (Anthony Hall) got a shock!

The Old Spice "smell like a man campaign" totally eclipsed it's initial groundswell; gained virally from it's YouTube video's by actually providing personalised replies to comments on YouTube. The responses to video's reached over 17m viewers!

Barney Willis | eCircle | Spoke in the performance theatre on the topic of Display versus Email – The SEAT Study,

There were some great stats from the top 100 retailers | the one that struck me was that 60% do not send a thank you or welcome message to signing up. A) how rude B) wasted sales and brand opportunity.

This slide lead to a question that I asked Philip Story - "do you think technology is still holding companies back when handling e-mail marketing". Philip said no. The person sitting to my left was from the largest incentive card programme in the UK and agreed (with my view - that tech is still a hindrance for many).

Making one customer happy at the expense of the masses is a fools errand.

Inbox relationships with people, Philip Storey, eCircle (sorry for the pic Quality Phil I didn't want to use a flash whilst you were in full stride)

I was really looking forward to hearing Groupon's story. If I'm honest this presentation was a bit of a disappointment. Claiming Groupon got so big so fast because they are agile and were funded from the start only rings as partially true; the well funded bit. Forbes naming Groupon the fastest growing online business ever, raising serious VC money (from ebay founders) and buying an established (BIG) business, followed by Google giving them the ultimate kudos, (offering $6bm and now an IPO floatation of $15bn) might have something to do with it.

Don't get me wrong, I buy into the fact that 'everyone loves a deal' - and being 'service only' is working - but was 'letsbuyit.com' so different? What I wanted to hear more about was how they actually help clients deal with the huge sales volumes they deliver in a day, and maybe even a case study of five!

Groupon's Jonathan Mann

Groupon is definately a beter brand name than mycitydeal

What I would love is for Groupon to allow me to select the type of offers they send me. I'm really not interested having my lady-parts waxed on a daily basis.

Everyone with money then.

Strange benchmark. Unless there is a correlation between people checking their bank balance before committing to a deal.

Still Jonathan was a huge hit with some fans in the audience.

A huge thank you and a hearty well done to @lexi_clarke (pictured) along with @AllyBurt and the whole @ecircle team.

The networking and sponsors' area. The hotel was a fantastic venue.

How IBM helps Wimbledon deliver a rich experience to millions of fans around the world, Alan Flack, IBM

It was the demo of the IBM 'seer' reality app that blew me away; with its live data and video footage from the BBC - awesome.

This really is the future of sporting events; for geeks like me anyhow.

Inbox Relevance – Optimising Halfords Lifecycle Marketing, Saj Bhojani, Halfords & Adam Bennington, eCircle - this tag cloud, specifically the orange highlighted words, were, according to Saj Halford's main areas of focus for 2010.

I liked the categories used to describe the different campaigns.

Re-targeting with relevance, Chris Journeay, Adobe

Chris's presentation was very analytical. The cool bit for me was Adobe's ability to dynamically change an e-mails content based on what, I assumed, is a complex set of rules. If anyone knows how this really works please add the comments here.

On stat to rule them all!

automate, automate, automate

The journey from e-commerce to o-commerce, Steve Robinson, MandMDirect.com started with a trip back in time.

P3171401

e-tailers should be able to get to 10%

Looking for questions.

@duncanbanantyne got up and told his story. An unapologetic, funny, and frank talk with more than a hint of fraud!

My takeaways: Be bold, be persistent, ask lots of questions, learn how to speak the lingo, entrepreneurs are the answer!

Lively Q&A's | plenty about 'den' stories.

A few pints of the black stuff were enjoyed in Club X and under good advise I tool the lift to the roof garden for a breathtaking view of St Paul's

All in all a great day away from the office; listening to some truly knowledgeable speaker to pick up new stories and stats. My gratitude to eCircle.

Please stay connected with me @mylesdavidson

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Live from Connect Europe 2011 #eceuro2011

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 18:18:00 +0000

Listen!

via Audioboo

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Experimenting to learn - getting to grips with a manual lens

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 09:17:00 +0000

SLR Magic is a company that sells some interesting camera gear through their E-Bay listing and one of those products is a lens that has been modified to work on the micro-four third mount cameras. The lens, featured in this post is their 35mm f/1.7 lens (which on the Olympus and Panasonic M43 camera's is equivalent to 70mm) and it comes with the lens, a sun shade, metal cap and rear cap for about £85. Although the lens was subject to import duty (about £20 -- which was an unwelcome surprise).

So it's a cheap, fixed (no zoom), manual (no auto-focus) fast (wide aperture) lens but what's it for? Well having first read about it over at http://www.stevehuff.com and looking at a few some samples from a few people online and I got the distinct impression it is for FUN!

Having had it for just a couple of days here's what it and i have captured:

The Kit (Olympus Pen EP-2 with SLR Magic 35mm f1.7 manual lens

Incredible control over depth of field.

This shot is noisy and not pin sharp; this was, however, before I figured out how to use 'manual assist' (a 10x zoom feature).

The natural characteristic of the lens create a soft 'dreamy' feel towards the edges; helps to direct the eye to the centre of busy scenes.

At F1.7 you can throw the background way out of focus and get some cool creative backdrops.

Using the lens with the Olympus' built in art filters (such as pin hole) has the making for some great shots

This was shot through a train window; this looks almost 'toy-like'

@dereckjohnson shot this on the way into London Euston (Dereck is now thinking of buying an Olympus Pen :-)

A quick snap; with a bit more work (changing the letters) this might make a good stock-shot

In the pub; this was shot in pretty low-light.

The table looks like it's the sharpest point of focus; where as the mayo bottle was the intended point of focus - hmmm maybe i need a tilt-shift (or more practice)

Shot in the office; this set-up really lends itself to be picked up, at a whim, and shot a candid shot.

The box.

Discovering the manual assist mode (a 10x zoom function) allowed me to really 'dial-in': almost on a single word.

Having tried to refer to the manual I soon gave up, opting for a search instead. As ever the world provided the answer in a forum.

Testing the 'manual assist' mode to the max. This is quite sharp considering it's hand held and under artificial light (pictured: pussy-willow)

Using the pin hole art filter rocks.

Myles can be followed on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/mylesdavidson (@mylesdavidson). If you have a second do leave a comment or critique...

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Olympus Pen Lens Testing

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 16:06:00 +0000

The kit: Olympus Pen EP-2
Lenses on test:
Olympus M.Zuiko 14-42mm (kit lens)
Panasonic Lumix 45-200mm (telephoto)

Some test shots (in the garden) to compare Olympus' kit lens with the Panasonic Lumix 45-200mm telephoto.
All images are unprocessed - the most startling thing is the difference in colour.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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How to use your computer screen as a great photographic backdrop

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 18:21:00 +0000

First off some background and a rant:

In a desperate need to get some change for the toll bridge over the M25 (aka the Queen Elizabeth II bridge) I pulled into a service stations and bought a sandwich (I didn't need as it was 11am) from a Waitrose; thinking this a good place to get cash back. I was aghast when they said 'sorry we don't do cashback'. To make matters worse they suggested I use the cash machine. A cash machine which I had already ascertained charges for taking out (my) own money.

Now I don't know about you but I would rather drive a complete lap of the m25, using the planets dwindling resources, than pay for withdrawing my money from such a machine. Perhaps it was my demeanour but in a hushed tone; she then said "WH Smiths" next door do Cash Back. Eureka; I then pondered what to buy with a card; without it being an insult (I couldn't in all good conscious ask for chewing gum). So I went to the magazine rack and having recently purchased a new camera I opted, at random, for a camera magazine (Digital SLR Photographer). This lived in the back of my car for a good-week until I took it home and a casual flick turned to an avid read and a read turned into a challenge. In a section called 'Photo DIY' they show you a few concepts and invite you to have a go. One such challenge struck me as a good idea: Use your computer screen as a great photographic backdrop.

Here then is my concepts using, as they suggest, an object such as a wine glass with various backgrounds.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Technical details:

F5.6

1/30th second

Gorilla Pod

Olympus PEN EP-2

Focal length: 84

Wine glass (hand held)

MacBook Pro

Google image search (large: 'polka dots', stripes', abstract pattern')

If you feel so inspired please let share your results with me here or via twitter (@mylesdavidson).

Happy snapping

Myles

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Drupal Training in a City Near You

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 09:56:00 +0000

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Looking for Drupal training in a city near you?

We have added several new sessions to the Acquia Drupal Training calendar in several cities across the globe. Our program offers a variety of topics created for beginners, novice, and advanced developers and designers. View our full calendar to learn more.

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DrupalCon Chicago

Upgrading Drupal 6 to Drupal 7:

Drupal 7 introduces many new features and integrates several popular community modules. Participate in this training session and learn how to prepare for a site upgrade and learn the steps required to successfully upgrade from Drupal 6. Space is filling up quickly! Reserve your spot today.

Upcoming Trainings

Drupal in a Day: Get a solid introduction to Drupal 6 in a day. Learn about the most essential features and concepts of Drupal through hands on activities. By the end of this day you will be familiar with Drupal terminology and be able to identify how 90% of Drupal sites are constructed.

Site Building with Drupal: In two days, participants will be brought up to speed on Drupal and will be ready to tackle their own project. Learn how to manage media, build calendars and complex, dynamic queries of content by selecting and configuring the most popular modules.

Drupal Module Development Course: Learn how to get custom functionality using Drupal’s hook system, as well as how to extend or alter contributed module functionality.

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or would like more information on custom training sessions.

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Fasthosts apology - Email service disruption

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 09:53:00 +0000

Dear Myles‚

Over recent days a number of our customers had problems accessing their Standard or Advanced Mailbox using POP/IMAP or Webmail services for which we offer our sincere apologies. Whilst customers on POP or IMAP were able to send email and inbound emails were delivered to mailboxes, a number of our customers experienced connection problems when trying to retrieve and download mail during peak business hours. Customers who only access via Webmail experienced the issue more acutely. Customers using hosted Exchange were not impacted at any time.

The underlying problem originated with our email storage platform which hit performance issues despite no increase in email usage. This impacted the number of concurrent customer connections it would support. Therefore during peak hours customers would experience intermittent access rather than the usual seamless service that we strive to offer.

All services were restored as quickly as possible by migrating some customers to additional infrastructure, however we fully recognise that for many of our customers, we haven't delivered the level of service that is expected from us nor that we expect to deliver. This problem was compounded when customers queued to get a response from our call centres due to the increase in demand associated with the service issues. Throughout this time, our team were working with our infrastructure suppliers, with all possible resources, to restore full service to all of our customers impacted as quickly as possible.

We would like to reassure you that absolutely no emails were lost as a result of the service interruptions, as all emails were queued (where necessary) and delivered to customers mailboxes. The issue was one of a lack of access to the received mail not a loss of mail.

To resolve the problems we have distributed the email load even more widely across our storage clusters than should normally be required. We are also adding in further storage capability as an additional safeguard this weekend to further expand the resources available to our customers and provide the highly available service we always aim to deliver. Work will continue over the coming days to ensure that from a hardware, configuration and processes point of view Fasthosts delivers the resilience and availability of the email platform to a high standard.

On behalf of Fasthosts, I would like to thank our customers for their patience and understanding during this incident. Rest assured we do not take this for granted and we will deliver a more robust solution going forward having worked through this experience. If you have any comments for our senior team on this issue, please

visit our blog for more information on how to send your feedback.

Again, I apologise unreservedly for the inconvenience caused to those customers affected, and fully recognise the importance of email in your daily professional and personal lives.

Kind regards

Simon Yeoman
Customer Services Director
Fasthosts Internet Limited

Fasthosts is the trading name of Fasthosts Internet Limited.
Company registration no. 3656438. Registered in England and Wales.
Registered office: Discovery House‚ 154 Southgate Street‚ Gloucester‚ GL1 2EX.
VAT no. 720821857.

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The Advertising Standards Authority's remit extends to misleading marketing claims on websites - March 1st

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 08:47:00 +0000

The Advertising Standards Authority is the UK's independent regulator of advertising across all media, including, from 1 March, marketing on websites. The ASA We work to ensure ads are legal, decent, honest and truthful by
applying the Advertising Codes.

To help businesses and website owners, the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP), the industry body that writes the Advertising Codes, offers a full range of training and advice resources. Businesses and agencies are urged to sign up to CAP Services to ensure they are up-to-speed with how the extended remit will impact on them and how they can avoid being in breach of the rules.

I foresee a whole lot of landing page redesigns...

You have been warned!

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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An introduction to Taxonomy #drupal

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 14:30:00 +0000

An introduction to Taxonomy

Drupal's Taxonomy is about organizing your site by attaching descriptive terms to each piece of content. Those terms might describe what section of your site a particular page belongs to, or what topics are discussed in a given blog post, or what region of the country a photograph was taken in. These terms are organized in separate 'Vocabularies' so for example that recipe ingredients don't get mixed up with cities in Texas when you're trying to find out what travel-logs were written in Houston, or what soups use potatoes.
Setting up these Vocabularies, and the descriptive terms that belong to them, is the first step in organizing your Drupal site.
There are different kinds of vocabularies, and understanding how they differ can help you decide the best way to categorize your content.

Lists of pre-defined terms -- a 'flat' vocabulary, i.e. colors: red, blue, green.

Hierarchies of pre-defined terms -- a 'tree' vocabulary, i.e. Location: United States-Illinois, Europe-France.

User created terms -- a 'free-tagging' vocabulary, created when content is created. For example, let's say you're setting up a photo portfolio and using Taxonomy to keep things organized.

Create a 'flat' vocabulary
First, you might create a 'flat' vocabulary for basic organization called 'Photo Type'. To that vocabulary, you would add the terms 'Portrait', 'Stop-Action', 'Landscape', and so on.

Create a 'hierarchical' vocabulary
Next, to keep track of where the photographs were taken, you might create a hierarchical vocabulary called 'Location'. To it, you could add terms like 'Europe' and 'United States'. In a hierarchical vocabulary, each of those terms can also have sub-terms like 'France' and 'Illinois'. This makes it possible to tag a photo once with the term 'London' and retrieve it later with a broader request like 'Show me all the photos taken in Great Britain'.

Create a 'free tagging' vocabulary
Finally, to capture notes about each photograph that would be hard to plan in advance, you could add a 'free tagging' vocabulary called 'Keywords'. Rather than defining the terms in advance, a free tagging vocabulary lets you enter in new terms each time you post a piece of content. If two separate content items use the same vocabulary term, they will both show up when that vocab term is searched or accessed from a menu block.
With those three vocabularies in place, any new photograph you post to your site can be quickly categorized. Whenever you post a new image, Drupal offers you a list of the available terms in the 'Photo Type' and 'Location' vocabularies AND a place to type in terms for your 'Keywords' vocabulary. When posting a photo of your brother's wedding, you might select a Photo Type of 'Portrait', a Location of 'Paris' and type in 'wedding' and 'brother' as keywords.
If you're used to other CMS or blogging systems, these different vocabulary types might be refered to as 'categories' or 'sections' or 'keywords'. It's important to note that Drupal does not require you to use these vocabularies
Also note that different kinds of content can use different vocabularies when it makes sense. For example, News articles and Images might share 'Keywords', but 'Photo Type' obviously only makes sense for one.
Mixing and matching these techniques in Drupal allows you to create the organizational system that best suits your needs. Getting used to it can be tricky at first, but if you take the time to think through your site's organization, the results are worth it.
Source: http://drupal.org/node/46268
(there's so much great information on the Drupal.org site; you just have to know what you're looking for. I'm only blogging this as I am working on a document which needed a really good section to clearly explain Taxonomy to non-techical folk; and thought I'd better save this somewhere for future reference. @mylesdavidson)

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Sage Pay: An apology message from the MD

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 11:51:00 +0000

A message from Managing Director, Simon Black
Hello,
Tonight (6th December 2010) Sage Pay suffered service disruption shortly after 6pm for approximately four hours. During this time, many customers were not able to process transactions.
The issue is identified as fully resolved and was not related to our new system infrastructure. I can also confirm that our processing systems are now fully operational.

The root cause
The duration of the issue was due to a number of system diagnostics being carried out to pinpoint the root cause, which we have identified as an obscure problem relating to a background job that was running at the time. This in itself should not have caused an issue, however an existing, but unknown, hardware flaw was triggered — affecting our back-up.
I deeply regret the impact that we've had on your business, at what is the worst possible time for our systems to fail.
My team and I are entirely focused on supporting your business. We remain completely available, should you wish to contact us and you can get in touch with me personally on simon@sagepay.com

Kind regards,

Simon Black, MD
simon@sagepay.com

Do not reply to this email. Please send your enquiries to support@sagepay.com.
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Should you wish to be removed please unsubscribe here.
Sage Pay (a division of Sage UK Limited)
Holborn Hall, 100 Gray's Inn Road, London, WC1X 8AL
Tel. 0845 111 4455  Fax. 0845 111 4456
www.sagepay.com
© Copyright 2010 Sage Pay (a division of Sage UK Limited). All rights reserved

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Acquia Authorised Drupal Training Launches in the UK - book Drupal-in-a-day now

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 20:09:00 +0000

via i-kos.com

I am really proud that i-KOS has been selected as the first Acquia official training partner in the UK for Drupal

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Google instant review

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:14:00 +0000

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Sage Pay - Emergency Maintenance Notice - Tuesday 8th June

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 16:20:00 +0000

Emergency maintenance notice

Our technical engineers will be performing emergency maintenance to the
Live payment gateway
on Tuesday 8th of June 2010 between 10:00pm - midnight (BST).
During this time you will be unable to view or perform actions such as Refund, Void, Repeat, RepeatDeferred, Release, Abort, Cancel and Authorise against any archived transactions. This includes anyone with a Direct integration into Sage Pay Go and those using our Reporting and Admin API.
This will not affect any new Payment, Deferred and/or Authenticate transactions processed during the maintenance window.
As always, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact our support team anytime on 0845 111 44 55 or email support@sagepay.com.
We apologise for any disruption or inconvenience this may cause.
Kind regards
The Sage Pay Operations Team

This email was sent to myles@i-kos.com because your email preferences are set to receive Sage Pay notifications.
Should you wish to be removed please unsubscribe here.
Sage Pay (a division of Sage UK Limited)
Holborn Hall, 100 Gray's Inn Road, London, WC1X 8AL
Tel. 0845 111 4455  Fax. 0845 111 4456
www.sagepay.com
© Copyright 2010 Sage Pay (a division of Sage UK Limited). All rights reserved

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Note to self: prequalify all sales leads or waste valuable time!

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Wed, 26 May 2010 07:20:00 +0000

Listen!
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Juice Doctors Launch New Drinks Range - and a campaign to hydrate the nation

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Fri, 14 May 2010 09:53:00 +0000

UK is Urged to ‘Keep It Light’ as New Consumer Campaign is Launched to Improve Hydration Health of the Nation
Never one to miss a launch party for one of our clients (Juice Doctors) I, selflessly, headed into the heart of UK media land (Soho, London) to the Groucho Club - the sort of place paparazzi frequent the doorsteps of - to witness both the relaunch of a great british brand and a really great campaign that has got the backing of 5 Time Olympian Gold Medal Winer - Sir Steve Redgrave.

‘Keep It Light!’, a new consumer campaign is launched today in light of new research, which has uncovered habitual dehydration among 96% of the UK’s office workers. Designed to educate the nation and encourage healthy hydration habits, the campaign is urging people to frequently check the colour of their urine and setting the nation a goal to ‘keep it light’.
Sir Steve Redgrave, five times Olympic gold medallist, is supporting the campaign and comments, “Improving hydration habits is an easy way to improve performance in everyday life. It’s the same message for athletes, taxi drivers, office workers and busy mums alike.”
Currently, two in every three Brits are dehydrated and while our bodies offer an accurate visual detector to ascertain hydration levels, namely the colour of our pee, ‘Keep It Light!’ has found a widespread lack of understanding of what the campaign’s leaders claim to be ‘simple biology’. Their findings show that 93 percent of office workers either don’t check and/or don’t know what the colour indicates.
‘Keep it Light!’ has been launched in response to the shocking results from a workplace hydration survey, which uncovered an overwhelming lack of hydration knowledge in the UK. Funded by Juice Doctor on behalf of ‘Keep It Light!’, the survey polled over 1,000 UK office workers and questioned them about hydration-related issues, such as their office drinking habits and how they identify and treat dehydration. The results were astounding…
Pop A Pill and Cure All Ills?
A shocking 75 percent of UK office workers cited their first response to a headache as taking headache pills rather than drinking more water.
Feeling a bit parched?
While the majority of office workers (60 percent) believed that they drink enough water, less than 4 percent are actually getting the recommended 7+ glasses of water per day. In fact, almost three-quarters of the respondents admitted to drinking either no water at all or only one to two glasses.
Dip in productivity
The vast majority (83.5 percent) of office workers surveyed admitted that being thirsty affects their productivity at work, yet most continue with poor hydration regimes. Just a 2 percent drop in hydration can lead to a massive 20 percent drop in concentration. The ‘Keep It Light!’ campaign warns that a habitually dehydrated worker can be wasting up to one day per week in loss of concentration.
Let’s shed some light on this…
Our bodies have a natural early warning system for helping us know when we are dehydrated, namely the colour of our pee. However, the survey has shown that less than one-third of people (27.10 percent) admitted to checking the colour of their urine to see if they’re dehydrated. Even worse, only 7 percent of them, the more vigilant, said they notice when their urine is an odd colour, and when they do, they don’t know what it means.
To spread the ‘Keep it Light!’ message, Sir Steve Redgrave and Juice Doctor have enlisted the help of some of the UK’s leading companies – including Birds Eye, Plantronics, The RNLI and TalkTalk – to help educate the British workforce about hydration by providing their employees with posters, fact sheets and other hydration resources.
The ‘Keep It Light!’ website includes a downloadable personal “Y’urindicator” chart from Juice Doctor, which is designed as a pee-tone colour chart to help identify the stages of hydration, as well as other free materials to post up in washrooms, rest areas and offices.

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Fantastic Banner Creative - everyhing is bigger in Canada

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:55:00 +0000

I saw this on a Yahoo news page (i'd share the link but it will probably be gone) - so the next best thing might be a movie of the banner
enjoy

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canada.mov (8021 KB)

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Conflict resolution: If you're using e-mail are you winning or just winning the argument

noreply@blogger.com (MylesDavidson) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 07:20:00 +0000

Listen!
via AudioBoo

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