Cloud 9 Digital Design ltd

Mike — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 21:59:21 +0000

It’s an exciting time for us here at Cloud 9 so we’re looking for an Admin Angel Are you Microsoft Office, Internet and E-mail savvy? Smart? Well spoken? Super organised? We’re funky & friendly but fussy who joins the team:We need someone who’s not afraid to pitch in to the demands of a small, creative office, and wants to help us manage projects and offer outstanding customer service. You’ve got to be able to hit the ground running so we’re looking for someone who has experience in a creative agency, or within a marketing environment. In exchange for your commitment we can be flexible with hours (10am-3pm Mon-Fri is our ideal). Interested?

Please note: At this time we’re not looking for any help from recruitment agencies or similar thanks. I’m sure we’ll be in touch if things change!

Join us!

Cloud 9 — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 10:00:13 +0000

It’s an exciting time for us here at Cloud 9, so we’re looking for an

Admin Angel

Are you Microsoft Office, Internet and E-mail savvy?

Smart? Well spoken? Super organised?

We’re funky & friendly but fussy who joins the team at our new canal-side studio in Lapworth.
We need someone who’s not afraid to pitch in to the demands of a small, creative office, and wants to help us manage projects and offer outstanding customer service.

You’ve got to be able to hit the ground running so we’re looking for someone who has experience in a creative agency, or within a marketing environment.

In exchange for your commitment we can be flexible with hours (10am-3pm Mon-Fri is our ideal).

Interested?

Please note:
At this time we’re not looking for any help from recruitment agencies or similar thanks.
I’m sure we’ll be in touch if things change!

A design/build competition to develop the ultimate MODERN utility bike: BIKE CRAFT. DESIGN. INNOVATION

Mike — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 19:36:51 +0000

Here at Cloud 9 we just love our bikes. No matter what kind of rider you are, there’s a bike for you. Although most of us have mass produced cycles, it’s the smaller bike builders that get the heart racing (or jumping – depending on your thing).

Got something for a cheeky little bike builder?
Tell us more by commenting below…

via BIKE CRAFT. DESIGN. INNOVATION. on Vimeo.

Congratulations to Ash and Lyns

Cloud 9 — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 11:16:48 +0000

We would like to say ‘Big Congratulations’ to Ash and Lyns who got married on the 10^th September. The C9 team headed for Devon for the big day and a great time was had by all. The church and reception were in a beautiful location and the bride and groom looked rather fab!

It’s a year of celebrations this year at C9 with an engagement and a few big birthdays – I won’t mention who! A great excuse for cakes and bubbly…………

Twitter adds new image gallery feature

Si — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 12:55:13 +0000

What?  
So we know that Facebook allows us to easily add images to galleries and share them to our friends, but Twitter has always stayed true to it’s minimalist structure and purely been a way of telling people what we are doing via short text based updates or ‘tweets’.

You could argue third party applications such as TwitPic and YFrog allowed us to add images to our profiles but it was never really as simple as uploading directly from your Twitter account and the images never appeared as saved galleries on your profile.

How?
 Twitter has now added a new image gallery feature which loads a strip of thumbnails of your recently uploaded pictures into the sidebar. When you view a person’s homepage directly, you get a larger image. When you view a profile by clicking on a person in your stream, you get a smaller set. Both allow you to click and enlarge the photos in a very similar way to Facebook!

A typical Twitter slider view

Why?
 So why have Twitter added this feature?

Adding new features like this keeps people on the site longer and adds interest to the general text based tweets. It also means people won’t miss images that are uploaded by people they follow as they would usually be buried under a stream of updates as they are a constant feature on a profile.

So?
 More interestingly for us at Cloud 9 it allows us to market ourselves and our clients in a better way on Twitter that we could only before do using Facebook. We can brand ourselves in a better fashion and ‘tweet’ with images rather than text and images. As well as text, tweets can ‘retweeted’ to allow them maximum interest. It may seem like double the work but we look at it being double the exposure to a normally out of reach audience.

We’re excited about this new feature and will be sure to be using it! Keep an eye on what we’re doing on https://twitter.com/c9dd or https://www.facebook.com/cloud9digitaldesign

Mike — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 08:57:52 +0000

PR PR has a vital part in maintaining your image and is integral to the overall marketing mix. It is not only about column inches – it is about effective communication, crisis management, employee relations, conferences, exposing you and your organisation to your intended audience. In its simplest form, press relations, it enables you to reach a far wider audience than an advertising budget will permit. The key to successful press coverage is continuity and a regular flow of good quality, well written, newsworthy stories to a precisely targetted circulation list;. In this way you can spread the message about developments in your organisation at a realistic cost. Cloud 9 offers a full PR service and unlike many agencies we don’t always work on a retainer basis – so you can use this service when you need to, and not have to pay for retaining us when your PR campaign is inactive for any reason. We believe that this offers our customers the chance to tailor their PR expenditure to suit the budget. Everyone in business needs to communicate with its audience – let us show you how to formulate a PR campaign that will really work. [/column]

PR – press and public relations

Mike — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 08:56:02 +0000

PR has a vital part in maintaining your image and is integral to the overall marketing mix. It is not only about column inches – it is about effective communication, crisis management, employee relations, conferences, exposing you and your organisation to your intended audience. In its simplest form, press relations, it enables you to reach a far wider audience than an advertising budget will permit. The key to successful press coverage is continuity and a regular flow of good quality, well written, newsworthy stories to a precisely targetted circulation list;. In this way you can spread the message about developments in your organisation at a realistic cost.

Cloud 9 offers a full PR service and unlike many agencies we don’t always work on a retainer basis – so you can use this service when you need to, and not have to pay for retaining us when your PR campaign is inactive for any reason. We believe that this offers our customers the chance to tailor their PR expenditure to suit the budget.

Everyone in business needs to communicate with its audience – let us show you how to formulate a PR campaign that will really work.

What are QR codes and how can I use them for my business?

Ash — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 15:11:46 +0000

QR codes (or Quick Response codes) have been around for a while and arrived here via Japan, where they are very common place. It’s not been until the massive uptake of smartphones in recent years however that we have now started to see them used in the UK.

What are QR codes used for?

In simple terms, when a QR code is scanned into your smartphone it will prompt your device to automatically do one of a number of things such as:

Send you to a website
Dial a phone number
Set up a text message
Pass a email address
Send email messages
Transfer contact details to your phone
Add events to your calendar
Show a location on a map (via Google maps)
Direct you to a PayPal link

These are just a few of the things that can be done using QR codes; when they direct you to a website the possibilities are endless.

How do QR codes work?

Well, that’s a big question to answer, and you may not be all that interested in the technical explanation, but if you do want to know there is a good description at QRme that will explain in detail.

The simple answer is that it’s a graphical representation of encoded data, which your smartphone can decode with the use of a QR code reader app, like this one.

It takes literally just one minute for someone with a smartphone to find and install the reader.

Once you have acquired one of the apps, you load it up and then you point your smartphone camera at the QR code. It then scans it and takes the action that is encoded within the QR code.

Why use them?

There are many reasons why you should be taking advantage of QR codes as part of your marketing activity. The most important is that it provides the ability to transfer your message/product from an analogue (printed) media to a digital medium such as the one that most people carry around in their pocket! They also allow you to increase response rates (almost anyone who knows what they are finds it difficult to resist scanning them).

Measure the effectiveness of your campaign; different QR codes can be generated for each individual project and tracked.
Integrate print, mobile and Internet marketing with three “touch points”, in one printed item.
Plus, you will be at the cutting edge of a marketing strategy that is still relatively new in the United Kingdom.

How you might use them

Your business can use QR codes by adding them to any print advertising such as flyers, posters, invitations, advertisements in the printed media and they can contain:

Product details
Contact details
Offer details
Event details
Competition details
A coupon
Twitter or Facebook engagement
A link to your YouTube video

Will your customers use them?

Usage numbers are growing rapidly and people are becoming more inquisitive. Those that already use QR codes will undoubtedly be receptive to your presence on the web, your Twitter Facebook, YouTube presence etc.

If you’re still not sure about QR codes, here is a video that may encourage you to try for yourself.

http://youtu.be/B3lrcOhmp9g

Or contact Cloud 9 and let us help you to develop a strategy to build QR codes into your marketing campaign.

Some examples

Awkward timing for new Levi’s ad

Mike — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 13:53:43 +0000

Levi’s has released the latest ad in its Go Forth series of spots. The campaign is centred around youthful freedom, usually of the semi-naked-in-nature variety, but this spot also features kids fronting up to riot police, scenes the brand no doubt didn’t actually think would be happening when they released the spot…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT16DcHcjRA

Titled Legacy – Now Is Our Time, the ad features a reading of Charles Bukowski’s poem The Laughing Heart, which opens with the lines ‘Your life is your life, don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission, be on the watch, there are ways out, there is a light somewhere.’ The visuals are a mixture of kids having fun (jumping into swimming pools etc) and the more pertinent imagery of protests and riots.

Realising that the timing is off, Levi’s has apparently postponed the ad’s UK release, but has uploaded the spot onto YouTube and similar sharing sites, and it is available to view on the Levi’s Go Forth site, goforth.levi.com, so is easy to find. Plus with the unrest that has occurred elsewhere recently, the ad’s imagery will no doubt feel topical to people all over the world, not just in the UK.

Levi’s is far from the first brand to want to co-opt the romanticism and danger of protest imagery for commercial gain. And looking more deeply into the mission statement that accompanies the ad on the website, Levi’s is clearly trying to instigate positive action with the campaign (in particular support for the charity water.org). But should brands really be dabbling with the language and imagery of political protest to sell products? Especially when the issues behind such action, as has been proven lately, are often far more complex than brands are ultimately comfortable with engaging in?

This post courtesy of Creative Review

Move, Eat, Learn

Ash — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 14:45:20 +0000

I came across these three short videos.

Not only are they great videos, but they also make me want to see more of the world, and all the great things in it.

Their words…

3 guys, 44 days, 11 countries, 18 flights, 38 thousand miles, an exploding volcano, 2 cameras and almost a terabyte of footage…
all to turn 3 ambitious linear concepts based on movement, learning and food ….into 3 beautiful and hopefully compelling short films….. = a trip of a lifetime.