This is simply because the legislation is vague in a number of key areas and, verging on unworkable in others. Moreover, it hasn’t helped that the regulations have also changed at the 11^th hour to include Google Analytics and AdSense leading to many more companies being affected.

So, let us try and simplify this for you:

The guidance on third-party cookies – for example, Google Analytics and AdSense – suggests that site owners and third parties are jointly-responsible for obtaining consent, but in practice this is very difficult to pin down. Strictly speaking, Google are the owner of the cookies and the associated service, so the site owner is arguably not responsible for seeking this consent.

That said, Design Inc would suggest this argument may not wash. Any websites built by Design Inc are ONLY affected by the Cookie Law IF that website has Google Analytics. And, in our opinion, you are responsible to comply with these regulations.

So, if your website does use cookies, then you will need to obtain consent from anyone visiting your website. And, the simplest solution is to add a pop up block on the website page (perhaps running along the top of the page) with a simple tick box consent facility. If the visitor is happy that the website uses cookies, then a simple tick in the ‘I am happy’ box will remove this pop up block for good, never to be seen again by anyone visiting that website from that computer.

There are, however, differing theories as to the definition of ‘obtaining consent;. The ICO recently updated its policy to allow organisations to use “implied consent” to comply. This means users do not have to make an explicit choice. Instead, their continued use of a site could be taken to mean they are happy for information to be gathered.

It should be noted that where websites expressly disclaim responsibility for the setting of third-party cookies that this is also added into their Privacy/Cookie Law page (often linked from the footer of the website).

In terms of enforcement, we do not fully understand how the ICO will/can manage this (the UK has millions of live websites to check through), and in fact, they have recently announced they will not be looking at prosecution anyway but rather support, to help companies adhere to this legislation.

Design Inc would suggest that if you are a company with a website which does use cookies – that you at least demonstrate that you are working towards compliance. And, although the Government have hinted that Analytics cookies are well down their list when it comes to enforcement – we are still suggesting you look into this now – especially when the solution is simple

For our own clients, Design Inc can state that the only websites we build which are affected, are those which have also been set up with Google Analytics. If you are a client of ours and you do not have Analytics set up, the Cookie Law does not apply to you. So, stop worrying.

Cookie? D’oh! is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Our latest headline news is our proud announcement of a major new client win with our award by Eurocopter of a 3 year contract for their new global advertising campaign. 
The 5-way pitch winning campaign concept demonstrates how Eurocopter looks at things differently; resulting in innovation, service and a mission focus in their helicopters. As the brief was for a memorable advertising campaign with standout. We made heroes of the products by taking the expectation challenging Eurocopters and putting them into even more challenging settings. For example shrinking the helicopter down in size mirroring the company’s investment in nanotechnology so it can land on the nib of a pen or enlarging it – so like their extensive service networks it can reach across a whole continent.

All the campaigns featured are integrated and include supporting elements such as  animated online ads.

The campaign is currently taking off around the world in aviation magazines like Flight International and in animated form on aviation media and exhibition websites like HAI Heli Expo in Houston.

View Eurocopters campaign launch page here.

Design Inc UK is a West London-based advertising agency. If you’re considering our advert design services for a new advertising campaign, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s information pack. Alternatively, please contact us by calling 01784 410380 or emailing us to find out more.

Design Inc has considerable experience in specialist and aviation based advertising campaigns. To see more samples of our advert design work, please look through our advert design portfolio.

Vertical Markets! A New Aviation Advertising Campaign Launches. is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Design Inc has been awarded Silver in the coveted Brands of The World Awards for creating a new logo for Private Jet Charter Brokerage, Crown Jets. The brand was created by Creative Director, Paul Munday.  According to Paul, ‘It is always the icing on the cake to be recognised by your peers – and in this case on the international agency stage’. Paul continues, ‘the brand combines a curved horizon with a stylised crown and instantly positions Crown Jets  at the boutique end of the jet charter business.

At the recent Aviation Supper Club event held at The Aviator Hotel in TAG Farnborough Airport, Crown Jets founder and MD Jodie Packham was heard to comment that her new logo and branded website was continuing to completely support her business proposition of providing the highest levels of individual and personal client service.

This success in the Travel and Tourism Category comes in the wake of our two recent clients’ wins in the Meetings Industry Marketing Awards (MIMA). Does this hat trick mean we at Design Inc are on a bit of a roll?

Jet Charter and venue marketing are two of our areas of specialism where we have developed a niche and work for several key players. This brand new Award is nice as it rewards visual style – so we have now been credited for our strategy, creativity and technology delivery in these wins.

Design Inc UK is a West London-based Brand Agency. If you’re considering a new brand or re-branding, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s information pack. Alternatively, please contact us by calling 01784 410380 or emailing us to find out more.

Design Inc has considerable experience in specialist Aviation Logo, Branding & Marketing. To see more samples of our logo & brand work, please look through our logo & brand portfolio.

Click here to view more Design Inc brand & marketing award news.

Brand New Award Jubilations at Design Inc. is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Also, many thanks to those of you who have given such complimentary feedback about our pop-up Christmas card. You can view the card in action on a YouTube movie online by following this link.

We enjoyed our traditional classy and sophisticated Christmas outing this week. No injunctions pending.

A quick housekeeping point, we will be working between the Christmas and New Year holidays. So keep those marketing briefs coming!

A very merry Christmas and best wishes for a prosperous 2012!

Design Inc UK is a west London based integrated online marketing agency. If you are planning your business goals for 2012, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s Information Pack. Alternatively, please contact us by calling 01784 410380 or emailing us to find out more.

Design Inc has considerable experience in delivering integrated and online marketing services. To see some examples of our work, please see our creative website design portfolio.

In Brief…

Christmas collection – Design Inc is pleased to announce that we have been approved as an official Associate Member of The Westminster Collection. The marketing group for prestige London venues.

Winter chill – Yacht charter specialists Oceanstyle came to us in November to design a lifestyle based advertising campaign for a Daily Mail lifestyle supplement. Very Cool.

JIM ‘Skiing in the snow’ – A bit of festive southern soul for a leading digital printer. Job Information Management – an account management solution for all seasons.

A World in Motion – We have also just delivered a new website for event logistics specialists Global Motion. We were moved by their praise!
“Everyone who has seen our new website has said it is very good; From the outset Design Inc understood what we were trying to achieve with our website. They guided us with expert advice, but never imposed or pressured us into their way of thinking; everything was driven by our needs and our requests. I am sure we will be working with them again in the future.” Tracey Scotten, Marketing Manager, Global Motion

Here come the girls – Model agency and production company One Mega Management came to us earlier this year for a print then web makeover! We asked them how they feel now?
“We chose Design Inc to create our unique, magazine style 2011 brochure to present our portfolio of assignment work to prospective clients. From initial design concepts to final delivery, the team at Design Inc understood our requirements and ideas to design and create an outstanding brochure, which translates the identity and experience of our company. Following this experience we were compelled to commission the guys to create our new look online presence too! One Mega Management would like to thank everyone at Design Inc for their vision and help; the results they achieved would be an asset to any company. We hope to work on many projects to come with Design Inc, who are all clearly experienced specialists in their field.” Michael Green Head of Production, One Mega Management

Runway success – TAG Farnborough Airport recently commissioned us to create their new flagship brochure. Our briefing included at its heart the need for compelling representation of the truly inspirational architecture and unique passenger and operator ‘experience’ that awaits private aviation travellers using this award-winning airport entirely dedicated to private aviation. The brochure cover features a striking image of the terminal building with a reflection of itself that mirrors the impression of the fuselage and tail of a jet aircraft teamed simply with the aspirational word ‘experience’.

The visual aesthetics, interior design, quality of materials, air of calm and levels of service provided by TAG Farnborough Airport provided a range of design cues for our creative team to follow as inspiration. A true temple to aviation and design for air travel deserves nothing less. The project has been very well received both by the team at TAG Farnborough Airport and beyond. The creative approach is now being developed into a very special TAG Farnborough Airport 2012 bespoke desktop calendar contained within an innovative branded engraved metal case.

International style – Happy Birthday to clients Vertis Aviation who recently celebrated a successful 1st year of trading. We created a set of illustrated printed and digital invitations for their party in Switzerland.

Going for gold? – Congratulations to all the team at the Victory Services Club for their Bronze MIMA Award for their new Events brochure. We are very happy with the project and this mention is dispatches is the icing on the cake as a successful year draws to a close. Here’s to an epic Olympic year for London venues in 2012.

Catering for One Great Christmas – Our Meetings and Marketing Industry Award Gold winning venue client One Great George Street has just ordered a new catering brochure from us. Can we tempt you to an entrée?

A year in numbers – Won 2 design awards, Won 3 sport and quiz competitions, Hired 1 new designer. Welcome George, Moved into 1 bigger office, Won 8 major creative pitches – Hurrah!, Launched 31 new websites, Created 23 advertising campaigns, Designed 9 new brand identities, 1 baby! Congratulations again to Paul our Creative Director, 2012 – our 15th year!

P.S. We have just received a very special gift ourselves. We can’t divulge details just yet, but stay tuned to Design Inc early in the New Year for news of our recent winning creative pitch for a global advertising and online marketing campaign.

A Winter’s Tale – Online Christmas Wishes from Design Inc UK is a post from the Design Inc Blog

(Article courtesy of StainesPeople.co.uk)

In what was already known to be something of a formality, Spelthorne Councillors last night voted 25 in favour, with just four against, of rebranding the town name Staines to Staines-upon-Thames. After much lengthy debate during which many Councillors spoke in favour of the change, the vote was carried with six abstentions.

Councillor Colin Davis recommended the rebranding strategy to the cabinet making his points in favour of the change, and there were very few dissenting voices.

Members of the Council hope that the rebranding strategy of the town will advertise Staines’ location on the river to members of the public and businesses who are not aware of the Thames-side position. They believe that this will assist plans to creatively market the town and attract business and investment.

Attendees of the meeting, including local creative agency Design Inc, representatives from Staines Town FC and many other businesses were told that residents of many of the town’s wards were 70-80% in favour of the change providing it was not going to cost them any money, and we heard that adopting the name change was entirely optional and down to personal choice.

An official celebration of the name change is expected to take place in May 2012 at what is hoped will be a big event with members of the Royal family, local and national government and representatives of the City of London being invited.

Below is the official release from the Council press office.

Spelthorne councillors have voted to change the name of Staines to Staines-upon-Thames in a bid to bring economic benefits to the town. It is anticipated that the move will improve perception of the town as a place to visit, live and work. Of the 35 councillors who attended the Council meeting on Thursday evening (15 December), 25 voted for the change, 4 against and 6 abstained. The name change follows a public consultation which ran for a month in October 2011. The Council had invited a wide range of responses from residents, businesses, visitors and other stakeholders.

There will be a formal celebration and inauguration of the new name on 20 May 2012, a major civic event to which representatives of the crown, local and national government and the City of London will be invited. It is hoped that the event will include a repositioning of the London Stone from its current position in the Lammas Park to its original position by Staines Bridge.

Councillor Colin Davis, Cabinet Member for Economic Development said: “All those who voted for this excellent measure recognise that by evoking its historic position on the River Thames, Staines-upon-Thames can display its best to the world at large. Spelthorne has the largest and best reaches of the River Thames for leisure activity of any of the riverside boroughs. The official naming ceremony will take place next May and will form part of a wonderful community event to be held, naturally, by the River. ”

Design Inc is a strategic branding agency based in Staines, Surrey. Commercial Director, Frank Norman says “We have always been proud of our heritage and our location. Whilst we support many clients the length & breadth of the UK, Staines is where we call home. We are very pleased to see the rebranding strategy of our home town voted through for 2012. Not only is this Olympic year but it also coincides with Design Inc’s 15 year anniversary. This is even more reason for celebration.“

Councillors Approve Rebranding of Staines to Staines-upon-Thames is a post from the Design Inc Blog

We’re also a sociable bunch and you can find out more about what extra curricular activities we get up to. Look out for our next issue of Inc Christmas that will be reflecting on the year’s highlights and successes. Sign up to receiving our online newsletters here.

A social media management project will usually be embedded within a broader campaign landscape of additional marketing. Many brands are now adding connections to social media at various stages of their customers’ journey through the awareness, engagement and transaction process. In particular online businesses can now enable users to share information about purchases or attendance at events through social media sites like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn for example.

In addition to social media management we also work across all the traditional offline media too and our specialism is connecting up a brand proposition through cross platform marketing.

Design Inc UK is a west London based integrated online marketing agency. If you are considering updating your website and need social media management services, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s Information Pack.

Alternatively, please contact us by calling 01784 410380 or emailing us to find out more.

Design Inc has considerable experience in all types of integrated and online marketing and social media management services, so whether you need social media applied to a simple marketing based website, or if you want to create a wide social media network to join-up online and offline communications, we can help with the creation and management of it.

To see some examples of our work, please see our creative website design portfolio.

How does social media management work? is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Print design services rank among the main integrated disciplines provided by Design Inc. Effective campaigns can often include a printed element as an illustration of a point of difference or means for a client to best demonstrate a special or unique quality of a product or service. The visual aesthetics, design, quality of materials, air of calm and levels of service provided by TAG Farnborough Airport provided a range of design cues for our print design services to follow as inspiration.

The resulting brochure format and production specification that resulted from Design Inc print design services marries the TAG Farnborough Airport brand elements with a lifestyle feel that brings warmth to the cool Swiss feel and minimalist building interiors. A true temple to aviation and design for air travel deserves nothing less.

The cover features a striking image of the terminal building with a reflection of itself which mirrors the impression of the fuselage and tail of a jet aircraft teamed simply with the aspirational word ‘experience”.

The brochure has been very well received both by the team at TAG Farnborough Airport and beyond. The creative approach to the print design services is now being developed into a very special TAG Farnborough Airport 2012 bespoke desktop calendar innovatively contained within a branded engraved metal case.

Design Inc UK is a West London-based specialist in print design services. If you’re considering our print design services for any new marketing communications, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s information pack. Alternatively, please contact us by calling 01784 410380 or emailing us to find out more.

Design Inc has considerable experience in specialist print design services. To see more samples of our design and print work, please look through our design portfolio.

‘Experience’ Design Inc creative print design services for TAG Farnborough Airport is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Most of our long-term marketing and design clients look to us to provide specialist print management for the production of their integrated campaign deliverables. This is a value-added benefit for them as we handle all print elements on their behalf. This specialist print management service can often mean that we are dealing with a whole range of different specialist printers and sub-contractors. In fact just looking at the jobs going through at the moment there are: a laser etching firm, who are adding a subtle logo to a beautiful metal calendar case for us, a prestige tailoring shirt box manufacturer, who are making a very special presentation box for a smart phone, loyalty card and invitation, a carrier bag manufacturer who are making some lovely quality goodie-bag style accessories for a client’s series of West End events.

We are trusted to source, purchase, deliver and quality manage on our clients’ behalf for all their specialist print management.

Specialist print management has also this year meant lollypops in branded wrappers, embroidered mission patches for Top Gun style leather flying jackets and even building wrap graphics for OOH branding of live events.

This is what we mean by integrated, and variety they say is the spice of life!

Far from being ‘jack of all trades’ we have to be master of all when it comes to specialist print management and our resident technical experts and paper engineers can handle it. This time of year it is calendars and more calendars, with half a dozen in production in different innovative formats – we may yet be improving on the performance of our previous bespoke Calendar Awards short-listed projects.

Design Inc UK is a West London-based specialist design and print management agency. If you’re considering the design and print of any new marketing communications, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s information pack. Alternatively, please contact us by calling 01784 410380 or emailing us to find out more.

Design Inc has considerable experience in specialist design and print management. To see more samples of our design and print work, please look through our design portfolio.

Specialist Print Management Delivered is a post from the Design Inc Blog

These prestigious meeting industry marketing accolades were presented at last night’s MIMA Dinner at The Park Plaza Riverbank Hotel. For two of our clients to both be winners is the icing on the cake for us as we have been supporting these two leading Westminster Collection London venues with creative design this year.

Venue marketing is one of our areas of specialisation at Design Incorporated. With experienced venue marketing professionals in our team of consultants.

Reviewing One Great George Street’s winning campaign, the MIMA judging panel commended the winning combination of campaign strategy, research, insight, commercial hire package tailoring, creative execution, use of data, response handling and follow-up mechanisms as all contributing to the overall success of the campaign.

This campaign, aimed at government departments, featured a targeted eShot, used in conjunction with a printed mailpiece and a print advertisement. According to Wendy Greenhalgh, Director of Sales & Marketing at One Great George Street and Board Director of the Westminster Collection (pictured with her team). ‘One Great George Street is very appreciative of the expert help received from their loyal business partners Design Incorporated in the provision of award winning venue marketing support’.

Venue marketing is just one of the campaign areas that Design Incorporated has been working for with our other MIMA award winning client Victory Services Club. In addition to the Bronze MIMA Award for Best brochure, designed by us for corporate hire of the VSC, we have been supporting membership marketing with recruitment drives that have outstripped the performance of any previous initiatives. The ‘Reunite’ at the VSC print and email advertising campaign for Army, Navy and Air Force veterans being particularly effective this year.

For further information on our full range of Venue & Event Marketing support and design services please contact our Venue & Event Marketing specialist Darren Scurville on 01784 419380, darren@designinc.co.uk

Design Inc help two Meeting Industry Marketing Awards (MIMA) Winners is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Design Incorporated were recently invited to compete in the Baltic Air Charter Association (BACA) Golf Challenge. BACA represents companies practicing within commercial aviation and aircraft charter.

Our MD Dan Gilbert made good use of the tailwind on the back nine and managed a perfect three-point landing at the 19th hole as part of the winning team. In the process, adding a piece of tasteful glassware to the Design Inc cabinet that now boasts an array of golf, football, karting and quiz trophies.

We joined BACA last year in order to join the debate and support the trade body that promotes professional practice in one of our key market areas. Member events have proved good opportunities for networking within the sector as well as for the sharing of insights and current best practice for marketing within commercial aviation and aircraft charter.

Design Incorporated is a creative agency who has developed a longstanding connection with aviation marketing with clients in both commercial aviation and aircraft charter. We work within the UK and internationally and provide design, advertising and digital marketing services across client a base that includes: airframe manufacturers Bombardier, software suppliers such as MRO management systems provider Tracware and FDS flight data analysts as well as aircraft and airport operators such as TAG Aviation and TAG Farnborough Airport – the only dedicated private aircraft airport in the UK. We also work for aircraft sales agents, leading charter brokers such as Vertis Aviation and The Charter Company and specialist commercial aviation and aircraft charter financial and insurance consultants.

Design Incorporated combine strategy, creativity and technology to support commercial aviation and aircraft charter clients with branding and design for integrated marketing and advertising campaigns. Our team includes marketers who have many years of experience serving the aviation industry – bringing valuable insights to all our projects. We will work with you to draw out your USP and proposition then use these to develop strong relevant marketing messages to take to your customers and prospects.

To view samples of our work within the Commercial Aviation and Aircraft Charter industries please see our specialist Aviation portfolio. Alternatively, you could read more about how we support Bombardier Aerospace with a wide range of advertising and marketing services. Or click here to view an issue of the Design Inc eNewsletter (INC) about Commercial Aviation and Aircraft Charter.

For an informal discussion about our marketing and advertising support for your business, please contact Dan Gilbert on 01784 410310 or email daniel@designinc.co.uk.

You may also be interested in receiving Design Inc’s Information Pack.

Commercial Aviation & Aircraft Charter Association Golf Day 2011 is a post from the Design Inc Blog

I am very pleased to say that our venue & events marketing portfolio is growing and gaining some recognition. This year we are extremely proud to have added the Victory Services Club to our venue marketing client list that already includes Senate House, Kings Place, One Great George Street, Altitude 360, The Mermaid, IOD at 116 Pall Mall, Banks Sadler and Conference Care some of which are incidentally also exhibiting at Square Meal 2011. VSC Marketing Manager Karen Birks has given us some challenging campaign briefs for all her channel marketing including advertising for serving armed forces and veterans membership, renewals, affiliates and member events.

The highlight and most happening project right now being the branding of VSC’s venue marketing of their unique event spaces for corporate hire. The ‘Picture Perfect London Venue branded campaign has just been shortlisted for a Meetings Industry Marketing Award MIMA (Category ‘Best Brochure) fingers crossed for 12th October, will be launched officially on Stand G34 at Square Meal at Old Billingsgate on 22/23 September.

Also another project that we have been working on this year for our client One Great George Street has also been nominated for a MIMA award (Category ‘Best Direct Marketing Campaign) who will be at stand E33. So fingers crossed again.

If you are attending Square Meal 2011 and would like to say a quick hi and maybe even find out a little bit more about what we do in the Venue & Events, just drop me a line. The coffee will be on me, off course! Maybe also follow my Design Inc tweets on the day, as I will be reporting on what’s hot and what’s not at the show or even and take a look at our Venue & Events portfolio.

The next year or two will see some exciting new developments within the London Venue scene. It is going to be very interesting to see what happens during the year of the Olympics as well as the legacy it will create. The Square Meal Venue & Event show definitely acts as a great barometer for the event industry developments that encompasses the complete event supply chain.

If you are considering a creative marketing project for you venue or event and would like to find out how we can support then get in touch and I would be delighted to chat.

Have a good Square Meal Show. Be there or be square as they used to say!

Darren Scurville
Senior Account Manager

Square Meal 2011- The Venue & Event Marketing Show is a post from the Design Inc Blog

We’ve all seen the headlines and the apparent ease with which even UK based hackers & teenagers have been able to access a well known website that you’d consider was constructed and hosted beyond harm.

Secure website development is key to our ongoing service provision as no client wants to have to deal with unscheduled malicious damage, intrusion, breakdowns or unscheduled maintenance. As a result Design Inc are pleased to announce the achievement of 100% uptime over the last year for all our clients’ websites featuring great design and secure code which are hosted on our own secure servers.

As further testament to the robust build of our secure website development programming, Design Inc were selected by UK based MWR Info Security (internet data security specialists) to create and build their 2^nd generation website including marketing and information interfaces with secure remote client log-ins and  ‘Labs’ areas. This project required an ‘ahead of current best practice’ to approach and implementation.

Our servers are regularly backed up – and in the unlikely situation of disaster recovery being required your digital asset would be restored quickly.

The following security features are some of the key areas addressed by our programming team as standard within our secure website development software:

SQL injection protection

SQL injection is a code injection technique that exploits a security vulnerability occurring in the database layer of an application (like queries). The vulnerability is present when user input is either incorrectly filtered for string literal escape characters embedded in SQL statements or user input is not strongly typed and thereby unexpectedly executed. It happens from using poorly designed query language interpreters.

Session / Cookie hijacking protection

Session hijacking is the exploitation of a valid computer session – sometimes also called a session key – to gain unauthorized access to information or services in a computer system. In particular, it is used to refer to the theft of a magic cookie used to authenticate a user to a remote server. It has particular relevance to web developers, as the HTTP cookies used to maintain a session on many web sites can be easily stolen by an attacker using an intermediary computer or with access to the saved cookies on the victim’s computer.

Files upload abuse protection

Uploaded files are checked for names that could be used in an attack. Some hackers will attempt to inject pathnames into file names to overwrite or inject their files into the server.

URL Encoding abuse protection

URLs are protected against utf8 encoding attacks.

E-mail injection protection

E-mail injection is a security vulnerability that can occur in Internet applications that are used to send e-mail messages. It is the e-mail equivalent of HTTP Header Injection. Like SQL injection attacks, this vulnerability is one of a general class of vulnerabilities that occur when one programming language is embedded within another.

When a form is added to a web page that submits data to a web application, a malicious user may exploit the MIME format to append additional information to the message being sent, such as a new list of recipients or a completely different message body. Because the MIME format uses a carriage return to delimit the information in a message, and only the raw message determines its eventual destination, adding carriage returns to submitted form data could allow a simple guestbook to be used to send thousands of messages at once. A malicious spammer could use this tactic to send large numbers of messages anonymously.

User input validation

Never trust the input given to you by a user. All user inputs are run through a myriad of checks to insure they are not attempting to abuse our software. This includes, but is not limited to:

- Checking for out of bounds or oversized inputs. Ensuring each input has a max size that we expect it should be, for example, a telephone number will never be longer than 25 characters.

- Stripping out non-ASCII binary characters and ensuring SQL sensitive characters (e.g. ‘) are properly escaped.

- Form Keys. Adding a random key to a form will ensure it is harder for an attacker to brute force or automate the attacking of a form.

- Type validation. Make sure that the input type is what you expect. For example if you only expect integers, but get a string, something is wrong.

Keeping your server up to date

You can write the most secure website development but if you don’t keep your underlying systems fully updated and security patched, then people can bypass all the effort you put into securing your software and hack the machine running your website.

Limit access to your server

Provide a small footprint to any wannabe attacking. This means limit the services your server runs to just the ones which are required. Also if some services are required by administrators, but not by general users then lock them down with a firewall. E.g. If you require SSH on your server, limit it to your IP addresses in your firewall).

Hide Passwords

Website development software will require a password to access its database. This is normally stored in plan text in your scripts. We store this password in apache’s vhost configuration. The result of this is that if a website gets hacked; only its own database password, not the other passwords of other websites on your server will be compromised.

CMS Publishing

It is possible to run your CMS in house, away from the internet, and have the CMS publish any changes to your website as flat or semi-flat (db less) files. This greatly reduces the surface area for an attacker.

For further information about secure website development please contact Dan Gilbert or our Head of Technical Development Lee Simpson.

Design Inc UK is a West London-based secure website development agency. If you’re considering re-designing your website and need a security strategy to support it, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s information pack. Alternatively, please contact us by calling 01784 410380 or emailing us to find out more.

Design Inc has considerable experience in secure website development. To see more samples of our secure website development work, please see our website design portfolio.

Secure website development – How secure is my website? is a post from the Design Inc Blog

The Charter Company is a leading provider of the full range of private business jets and commercial airliners for Ad-hoc charter. This sector is a busy marketplace with a wide range of players ranging from major international charter brokers to small boutique broker firms.

Design Inc has considerable experience across the Aviation industry and especially within business & private aviation and we actually designed and produced The Charter Company’s original website in 2005. We recently undertook a second major revamp in order to improve prospect engagement and rankings within search engines and also to reposition The Charter Company within commercial aircraft charter. This was an opportunity to upgrade the website in line with evolving industry trends, technology enhancements and subsequent evolution in best practice. The new web 2.0 search engine friendly web development for The Charter Company, along with improved navigation, messaging and data capture now features a full investment in search engine optimisation, working in conjunction with pay per click Google AdWords. This improved search engine effectiveness for a wider range of pages & phrases from the team bios and service lists through to the private jets The Charter Company clients can choose from.

The importance of driving visitors to your site cannot be underestimated. The ability to understanding what will drive visitors, and what they do when they get to your site is essential if search is to be a key part of your marketing spend.

Search engine friendly web development best practice can include the following strategic elements as part of the mix: undertaking a search terms/phrases ‘Keyword’ report, selection of best performing and under competed-for phrases organic optimised placing of these phrases within the programming and visible site content, addition of a Blog to the website – to allow fresh searchable content to be uploaded and tactical key phrases to be deployed. Public Relations stories or news posted through blogs also provides the flexibility to use keyword insights from your search terms results. These elements combined with the more practical code, text and linking search engine optimisation compound the effectiveness of any investment even further.

Search engine friendly web development is embracing more and more use of social media strategies. Widening a company’s online presence through professional networking sites such as LinkedIn, leveraging blog posts through Twitter and a company’s social life with Facebook are becoming key to website’s ranking performance an prospect engagement.

The Charter Company now benefits from first page Google rankings for the search phrases ‘air charter broker’ & ‘empty leg charter flight’. Go ahead try it for yourself!

In addition to the search engine performance being greatly improved, Design Inc also provides complementary email marketing and data services for The Charter Company.

Design Inc is a West London-based website design & search engine optimisation agency. If you are considering re-designing your website and need a search engine optimisation strategy to support it, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s information pack. Alternatively, please contact us by calling 01784 410380 or emailing us to find out more.

Design Inc has considerable experience in marketing the Aviation industry. To see more samples of work within the Aviation industry, please see our specialist Aviation portfolio.

Search Engine Friendly Web Development is a post from the Design Inc Blog

OVERVIEW

Email marketing arrives in many forms. From the simplistic, single message announcement through to strategic eNewsletters providing interesting and relevant industry messages to its targeted audience.

Over the years, the rise and rise of the spam email and subsequent spam filters has led marketers to up their game in order to get their own message through to the recipient and for this to be opened, read, understood and acted upon. The name of the game is email marketing credibility. And through credibility comes trust, awareness and consumer loyalty.

Of course, whereas a typical eShot may look for a direct purchase for goods or services, a strategic eNewsletter looks to build up consumer confidence first and a ‘buy in’ to that company’s values. An eNewsletter, if done correctly need not bombard the recipient with requests to buy their product. Instead, it is a much more laid back ‘sales technique’. After all, as we all know, customer loyalty is earned not bought.

CASE STUDY

arvato are the experts in Loyalty Marketing, delivering rewarding experiences to tens of millions of their clients’ customers in 65 countries. With clients such as Renault, BUPA, Virgin Holidays, Sony, Microsoft to name but a few, they know more than most about establishing and growing partnerships through loyalty. So much so, that they have recently established clubarvato – a network group for Loyalty Leaders.

When clubarvato decided they wanted to maintain loyalty with their own members, email marketing was firmly in the marketing mix. A strong email marketing strategy was required and arvato turned to their digital agency, Design Inc for support.

SOLUTION

The following are six general tips we gave them for a successful email marketing campaign.

1. It’s All About the Reader, Not You

When developing an eNewsletter, it is crucial to make it relevant and interesting to the audience. Ask yourself, what is in it for the reader. If the eNewsletter is full of stories about your own company staff (“they got married”, “he did a bike ride”, “she has left”), it is likely the content means a lot to you but little to the recipient. This is a turn off and a sure fire way to click ‘delete’ now and request ‘unsubscribe’ for the future.

There is nothing wrong with having company information in an eNewsletter so long as it is relevant, for example if you have added new functionality that may benefit your clients to land a new customer. That said, a strategic eNewsletter design should also include industry news, links through to useful resources & information to help your clients grow their own business.

arvato solution: Design inc recognised that as a networking group it was inevitable that the club arvato eNewsletter should feature articles relating to all aspects of the industry, including articles about the members as well as themselves.

2. What (not who) is your Competition?

We are not talking about your company’s business competition. We’re talking about the competition for your eyes’ attention on the eNewsletter page. In addition, consider the competition in your recipients’ inbox. Ask yourself why would your recipients bother to read your eNewsletter first? Why would they read it at all? What is important is to make this relevant to them. A professional, good-on-the-eye design with a relevant subject line is key to grabbing attention.

arvato solution: The club arvato eNewsletter design was formulated to fit in with their existing corporate brand style. It is eye-catching yet easy to navigate. With regards the email subject line, this has been kept simple, straightforward and obvious. The recipient quickly knows whom it is from and what it is about.

3. Who Are You Anyway?

Over the years we have seen many eNewsletter designs which do not easily show who it is from let alone what message they are trying to say. The personality of an eshot or eNewsletter design should be clear. Understanding that most recipients split their email screen leads to ensuring the eNewsletter is designed to be recognisable at its header. This is email window shopping.

We would always suggest the company logo & corporate theme should feature in the header, preferably with the strapline message. The eNewsletter should advertise itself even before it is clicked on. Email users are very discerning and can spot something they don’t recognise within a fraction of a second.

arvato solution: Design Inc were adamant the e-newsletter be designed with a simple yet corporate header in mind, ensuring the company logo and name were available right at the top. Now, clearly visible in a split screen the arvato e-newsletter is recognisable from the moment it appears in the inbox.

4. The Hunger for Information

If you go to the trouble (and time & cost) to send out an eNewsletter, make sure you have enough to say. Too few articles and the recipient will be left hungry. This is an eNewsletter after all. Of course, it is important not too overfeed the reader with too many long articles either. If you do have a lot of articles, reduce the text accordingly and include links to other online locations where the full article can be read.

arvato solution: In the case of the club arvato eNewsletter design. Design Inc have suggested a maximum of 12 articles each time and have ensure all articles are linked to more available information either on the arvato website or elsewhere.

5. The Importance of Good Data

In email marketing the marriage of relevant message and good data is paramount. Good data does not just mean having a lot of email addresses. Good data is qualified email addresses, relevant people who have given their permission to receive your eNewsletter and who want to receive your information on a regular basis. After all, what is the point of spending valuable time, cost and effort emailing people who:

• don’t want your email
• are not interested in your product, solution or information
• are not relevant to your service

arvato solution: Design Inc helped arvato to build their own data. Every email address was qualified either as an existing member or a qualified potential lead and a consent process was undertaken. Now when arvato send out an eNewsletter, they know it will be well received.

6. Know Who’s Interested

So, you’ve gone to the time, expense and trouble to have an eNewsletter created. The design style is perfect, the articles are relevant and the data list is strong. Then you send it out. Now what?

Wouldn’t it be useful to know which recipient read your newsletter or, better still, which article they were particularly interested in? With this information, you can support them with providing more relevant information. Furthermore, knowing who read the newsletter versus who didn’t bother can help narrow your marketing into focusing on those who are interested and not wasting valuable resources on those for whom the eNewsletter or eShot is not relevant.

arvato solution: Design Inc supplied the marketing team at arvato with secure access into their eshot statistics, providing them with highly useful information relating to:

• Who opened (read) the eShot?
• Which articles they clicked through to?
• Who clicked on the link?
• Who unsubscribed?

arvato can even see which of the email addresses in their list are no longer working, leading them to update their data immediately.

RESULTS

The clubarvato email marketing strategy has been a runaway success. this has led to a high percentage readership, no ‘unsubscribes’ to date and new members joining after each message, building stronger relationships and continuing consumer loyalty.

To discuss the creation of your own email marketing strategy, contact Design Inc’s digital team on 01784 410380

Email Marketing Strategy for Loyalty is a post from the Design Inc Blog

These days a website can cost from £49 for a simple out-of-a-box template to several hundred thousand pounds for a comprehensive digital asset for a major web based business or service. This top-end ‘brand experience’ may include areas created for multiple users and tailored interfaces, an information resource, an ecommerce catalogue section, a membership area, multiple regional/branch log in areas, live social media and other content feeds such as news and events for example. A sophisticated back office database or customer relationship management CRM ability may also be built into the site. All of these can increase traffic, enhance user experience and revenue generated by a website but are not required by most.

Design Incorporated are creative web developers and we work closely with our clients to understand their business model. This results in a joined-up and unique website design solution that includes: proposing and agreeing a strategic brief for appropriate functionality and defining of the site map, creative user experience design and technical build, testing and commissioning. The website spec will be matched to the business need and role the website plays for the clients’ business and may engage some of the features listed above. However, typically Design Inc projects may require clients to invest a budget of between £5k to £15k for a 20-25 page site including Search Engine Optimsation (SEO), content origination, a Blog and/or a content management system.

Although as creative web developers for many of our clients, the website forms only part of the service as we provide integrated marketing and design. A web design project will usually be embedded within a landscape of additional online promotional campaign activity such as emarketing, advertising, Social Media Marketing. We also work across all the traditional offline media too and our specialism is connecting up a brand proposition through cross platform marketing.

Design Inc is a West London-based Website Design Agency. If you are considering updating your website and need a strategy to support it, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s Information Pack. Alternatively, please contact us by calling 01784 410380 or emailing us to find out more.

Design Inc has considerable experience in all types of creative web design and development, whether it be a heavily search engine optimised and marketing based website, or a fully integrated online business and associated online marketing campaigns. To see more samples of work, please see our creative website design portfolio.

How do creative web developers work? is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Customer relationship management and building brand loyalty in the world of private corporate jet purchase goes a little beyond the expectation of your usual incentive direct mail, corporate gift or giveaway. Owners and prospective owners of a Bombardier Global jet expect a whole different level of treatment – and they are used to it.

Design Inc applied experience in both direct mail incentive campaigns and strategy for corporate branding to introduce the new range of world leading Global aircraft and the Bombardier’ I Am Global’ strategy for corporate branding to the Middle East Business Aviation market place. Specially invited airshow attendees delegates received a hand delivered and rather striking item of ‘direct mail’.

Boxing clever, Design Inc devised the ultimate tailored shirt makers box with the dream contents to greet prospects and clients. The contents included a gold plated iPod loaded with the new I Am Global movie, and a personalised invitation to the corporate Bombardier booth for hospitality and a gold plated concierge services membership card for the duration of the show.

Dressed to impress, the MEBA ‘survival kit’ uses Bombardier’s new strategy for corporate branding elements, the ‘Be Global’ initiative’ and Bombardier corporate values. This is one direct mailpiece that simply refuses to be ignored.

The I Am Global initiative, spearheaded by the new Global product family is a commitment to world leaders: that they may continue their life mission, uninterrupted and without compromise.

“The values of the Bombardier I Am Global branding campaign: Creativity, Performance, Ingenuity, Technology, Community and Leadership have each been demonstrated by the design style and contents of our MEBA (Middle East Business Aviation) incentive direct mail campaign. Beautiful, top rank strategy for corporate branding. Bombardier loved it, and so did their clients!”

Daniel Gilbert – Managing Director

Design Inc is a West London-based Corporate Branding Design Agency. If you are considering re-branding your business and need a strategy to support it, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s Information Pack. Alternatively, please contact us by calling 01784 410380 or emailing us to find out more.

Design Inc has considerable experience in marketing the Aviation industry. To see more samples of work within the Aviation industry, please see our specialist Aviation portfolio.

A New Bombardier Strategy for Corporate Branding is a post from the Design Inc Blog

TRUST AND VALUE

Across over 50 countries measured, a majority of online consumers surveyed trust most forms of advertising and agree that it delivers value by promoting competition and supporting a wide range of media.

Trust in advertising is up: Consumers today are more trusting of every marketing channel tracked compared to two years ago, save newspaper advertising, trust in which declined a marginal 3%. Peer recommendation is the most trusted channel, trusted “completely” or “somewhat” by 9 out of 10 respondents worldwide.

Of the major paid advertising channels (online, outdoor, print, radio, TV and theatre), television and newspaper are the most trusted media, whereas text message ads on mobile phones are the least trusted paid advertising channel, winning the confdence of just 24% of consumers globally.

Online search, banner and video ads are trusted by fewer than half of respondents. Interestingly, Latin American consumers tend to be the most trusting of advertising, and European consumers the least trusting.

Nielsen measured consumer trust in 16 different marketing channels by asking consumers “To what extent do you trust the following?” Across all channels, an average 56% of respondents indicated that they trust advertising “completely” or “somewhat.” Peer recommendations top the list, trusted by 9 out of 10 consumers; while text message based ads perform the lowest, trusted by just 24%.

Across the 16 measured channels, non-media channels are more trusted than paid media channels. After peer recommendations, consumers trust branded websites, consumer opinions online, editorial content and brand sponsorships ahead of a broad list of paid advertising channels. This importance of peer recommendations and consumer opinions online justifies the attention marketers continue to pay to the use of social and consumer-generated media.

Of the paid advertising channels of online, outdoor, newspaper, magazine, radio, TV and theatrical, TV and newspaper are the most trusted media with 61% of global consumers saying they trust TV advertising – the same percentage that trust newspaper advertising.

Online and mobile advertising have perhaps the steepest hill to climb for consumer trust: in addition to text message advertisements, online search, banner and video ads are the only channels trusted by fewer than half of respondents globally. The good news for online is that consumer trust in that medium is growing.

The percentage of global consumers trusting banner ads grew 27% between 2007 and 2009 (from 26% to 33% of consumers). The percentage trusting ads in search engine results grew 21% (from 34% to 41%of consumers).

THE GLOBAL DIFFERENCE

Though TV and newspaper are the most trusted advertising channels overall, trust in ads across both media varies considerably by region. Trust in TV advertising is much higher than average in Latin America, where 74% of consumers trust it, and lower in Europe, where just half (49%) trust it.

Similarly, trust in newspaper advertising, which tied as the most trusted paid advertising vehicle globally, varies as a trusted source by region. As with TV, Latin Americans are the most trusting of newspaper advertising (75%), while just half of Europeans trust it. The higher-than-average trust that Latin American consumers exhibit for TV and newspaper advertising is consistent across almost all measured channels.

GENDER AND AGE

To get a better sense for the impact of age and gender on trust in advertising, Nielsen analysed trust by these characteristics among North American consumers. Gender appears to have very little impact on levels of trust in advertising across the measured channels, but age does make a significant difference. In all but two of the channels measured (consumer opinions online and e-mails), North American consumers under the age of 20 exhibit higher than average degrees of trust. The higher propensity for trust among young consumers is most visible in theatrical ads (North American consumers under 20 are 42% more likely than average to trust theatrical ads), sponsorships (24% more likely to trust) and television ads (23% more likely to trust).

Consumers under 20 aren’t the only ones to exhibit unique levels of trust in advertising. Persons 30-34 are uniquely prone to trusting online advertising of different forms. In North America, this is the segment of consumers most likely to trust ads served in search engines, online video ads and online banner ads.

CONCLUSION

The Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey shows that consumer trust in advertising has risen since the previous survey was conducted in 2007. Consumers continue to trust the opinions of other consumers (either people they know or consumer opinions posted online) more than paid advertising, including online, outdoor, print, radio, TV and theatrical channels.

Branded websites are the most trusted advertiser-produced medium, tied with consumer opinions online, while two traditional media – TV and newspaper – are the most trusted paid media.

In addition to trust, consumer perceptions on the value of advertising are generally positive. Approximately 80% of consumers globally acknowledge the value of advertising in funding art exhibitions, cultural and sporting events and helping companies succeed and create jobs. A lower share of consumers (67%) recognises the value of advertising in the basic media model of underwriting low cost and free content.

Perceptions on the value delivered by advertising vary across regions, with Western European consumers the most skeptical and Latin American consumers viewing the value of advertising more favorably. Though a rising segment of consumers, specifcally teenagers, seems more engaged with online video ads than TV ads, overall consumers in the survey perceive television ads to be more effective than online video ads at communicating humorous, emotionally touching and informative messages.

Variations in consumer trust across markets, demographics and media have implications in the best way to engage consumers in a fragmented media world.

What’s more, understanding the value that consumers see in advertising – and the levels of engagement they feel – can help marketers to best appeal to the marketing interests of their audience.

Information and copyright: Nielsen

Word of mouth and social media are more trusted than traditional advertising is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Georgina Field (9) is presented with an art set by Frank Norman, Client Services Director of Design Incorporated

Pupil power was demonstrated graphically this week as the new brand logo for Riverbridge Primary School was unveiled at Staines Riverside.

Riverbridge Primary School is the new school name which combines the three existing schools; Knowle Park School, Kingscroft Junior School and Shortwood Infants Schools.

Each school announced the logo competition to their pupils at the beginning of March and received over 500 entries. The winning logo design was created by 9 year old Georgina Field, a pupil of Kingscroft School whose winning concept for the new combined school features an iconic swan (a symbol for Staines) passing by the three arches of Staines Bridge.

School Head, Maggie Roberton said “we were very pleased and proud with the number of entries we received and there were some wonderful ideas here. Georgina’s logo was chosen as the winner by a panel of judges for its simplicity and creativity. The swan is recognised as a symbol of Staines and we felt that showing the three arches of Staines Bridge was synonymous with the coming together of the three schools. The new logo is smart, vibrant and also promotes the heritage of Staines. We are very happy with our new logo and proud of Georgina for such a great design.”

Staines-based website design and branding agency, Design Incorporated, provided their services free of charge – providing branding guidance to the judging panel and converting the winning entry from pencil drawing to digital artwork.

Staines school reveals winner in logo design competition is a post from the Design Inc Blog

These are 2D barcodes, better known as QR Codes (QR stands for Quick Response) and, if you have a smartphone with a camera, these can act as a clever portal through to a dedicated webpage.

Most smartphones come with inbuilt cameras and a Market where one can download a ‘barcode reader’ app. Open up the app and focus the QR code within the camera window. Hey presto, the code is read, recognised, and will lead you through to a dedicated website.

First developed in Japan in the mid-90s, this innovative mobile technology is rapidly taking a foothold amongst marketing agencies around the globe. The question is…what can it do?

Ultimately, QR codes help attract businesses and consumers to a company’s website, or indeed a particular page on their website.

Imagine being able to fit all your company information on a business card: your brand, style, credentials, services, client list, case studies, client list – all on a printed card 85mm x 55mm in size. Printing all this is impossible, but with a simple QR code, your customers have immediate access to this information.

Imagine attending an exhibition and wanting company information from the exhibitors. Rather than walking out laden down with heavy brochures, a QR code printed on their exhibition stand enables you to link through to a dedicated Information Request page where you can leave your contact details and have the information sent to you in the post.

Imagine running a restaurant, hotel, bar, club, etc. You want to reward your customers and keep them informed of special offers. Placing a QR code inside the venue could lead customers to an online fan page with details of secret offers, competitions, premiers, etc, therefore building customer loyalty, consumer satisfaction, repeat business.

Imagine looking to buy a home. You may not have time to view every house you like the look of in the estate agent’s window. A QR code placed on the sales sheet in the window, or even on a sticker affixed to the For Sale sign, can provide access to much more information about the property.

Businesses are finding all sorts of promotional and marketing uses for QR codes. Currently, the majority are seen on printed marketing material, especially advertisements and direct mail pieces, but the list is endless – stickers, badges, van livery, t-shirts, banners, flags.

It’s probably not long to wait until Nike add a reverse QR code to the soles of their trainers, potentially leaving a QR code imprint on every road and leading millions of followers to a dedicated brand page.

All businesses should be aware of the growth of smartphone usage. Worldwide sales grew an astonishing 96% in 2010 and accounted for 20% of all mobile sales that year. To make this easier to explain – that’s over 80 million smartphone users in one year alone. These users expect instant information and businesses now have a huge opportunity available to deliver it.

QR codes are quick, convenient and easy for the consumer. For businesses, they are simply to create and can be generated for free with results being easy to track.

Setting up a QR campaign is the key – think as if you were your customer and ask what would they really benefit from? Overall, keep it simple – QR codes should be used to engage, enthuse and delight your customers and prospects.

Incorporating QR codes into your marketing campaigns is a post from the Design Inc Blog

For those who are unfamiliar with the internet, certain website creation software is available to help design and publish good-looking websites with ease. Selecting from a library of text styles, interface template graphics & multimedia options, website creation software is ideal for anyone, regardless of computer programming ability.

Over the past couple of years, the market for website creation software has seen interesting growth with more and more individuals willing to pitch themselves up against professional creative website agencies.

It is certainly true that there are significant cost savings to be made here, but that is not necessarily the sole reason behind why website creation software has been created. Individuals, be they marketing professionals, technophiles or beginners, want the flexibility and challenge that comes with creating something themselves, for themselves.

And whilst this market is set to grow further, the creative website design agencies are not worried. For them, they realise that standard website creation software is missing some very important aspects, namely the true experience & expertise they employ:

• The strategic marketer is able to quickly understand the inherent values and strengths of the company and uses this knowledge to formulate a strong digital marketing plan.
• The creative designer has a discerning eye and uses their creative skills to develop truly outstanding website designs.
• The photographer has the right equipment, creativity and methodology to develop the best imagery to promote a company’s product & solutions.
• The SEO specialist understands your product, your market strengths, your competition, and is instrumental in attracting relevant visitors to the website from various search engines.
• The creative copywriter works closely with the SEO specialist and easily finds the right words to best promote the company and its products/services to the right audience.
• The website programmer understands the most appropriate, secure code to use for the situation and is on hand to make alterations with ease.

A great website intertwines all the above specialisms and more. It can promote the brand of the company, raise its profile, attract relevant visitors to the website and communicate with its customers. More importantly to many businesses, it can bring in real profits. And this is where website creation software currently falls down.

Website creation software can certainly help you make a website, and for a fraction of the cost a creative website agency may charge, but based on the question ‘would you prefer to save money or make money?’, we know what most companies would say.

Design Inc are a creative website agency based in Staines, Middlesex.

1. View their website portfolio.
2. Find out what makes an effective website.
3. Sign up for the forthcoming ‘web freaks’ newsletter.

Website creation software – is it worth it? is a post from the Design Inc Blog

In its first 5 years, Twitter has woven itself into almost all major worldwide events: the news that a plane had crash-landed in the Hudson River; election protests in Iran; the rapid dispersal of the news of an 7.8-magnitude earthquake in China; updates from the ground about the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

There have been less important moments – multiple billions of them, including Stephen Fry being stuck in a lift (“we could be here for hours. Arse, poo and widdle”); the race in 2009 between Ashton Kutcher and CNN to be the first past 1m followers (a contest rendered irrelevant by Charlie Sheen’s meteoric rise this year); Sarah Palin’s coinage of “refudiate”; and Clarence House announcing the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

It took three years for Twitter to gain a billion “tweets” – messages of up to 140 characters. Today, more than 200 million users post that number every week.

Twitter has become an endlessly flowing river of news, opinion, information, expertise, contacts, data, links, connections. You can not only find out what is happening, but can directly connect with the people who want to connect with you. And this connection is the holy grail for marketing and media agencies everywhere.

Twitter has changed the relationship between companies and consumers. And links to stories broadcast on Twitter are a new source of incoming web traffic for organisations – though presently far behind Facebook or Google.

The question now is: where will Twitter be in five years’ time? What will Twitter look like at age 10? How far will its influence spread? Twitter is only getting bigger and more pervasive – and will become all-important to companys’ online marketing plans with a much higher take up rate for new & existing companies trying to establish a foothold in their markets. Whilst it is still struggling to find profitability, it still generated $45m (£27.7m) of revenues last year.

Presently 40% of tweets originate on a mobile device, a clue to its enormous usefulness; its text message-length 140-character format made it the first widespread web service to break free of the PC. And with 5.3 billion mobile phone users in the world, and 90% of the world’s population in reach of a mobile network, Twitter has a far better chance of reaching everyone sooner than Google or Facebook.

So, we say Happy Birthday, Twitter. Many happy returns! We look forward to watching you grow.

And, for anyone who reads this and would like to follow Design Inc on Twitter, you can find us at http://twitter.com/DesignincUK

Happy Birthday Twitter is a post from the Design Inc Blog

The team at MBH Practice assemble before the guests arrive

MBH Practice recently celebrated the launch of their new corporate identity and next generation website by strategic branding consultants and marketing partner Design Incorporated at their new offices in Regents Park Road, Finchley.

The multi-disciplined property consultancy’s guest list read like a who’s who of the London property scene, including media contacts, partners of established and up-and-coming professional firms, property owners, property management clients and trusted suppliers. A great opportunity for networking within the west end property sector.

Frank Norman, Design Inc’s Commercial Director and Design Inc’s built environment project specialist attended the champagne and canapé reception on our behalf and comments, “The re-launched, strategic brand identity for MBH Practice was created to represent the coming together of the property disciplines now offered by the practice, working both together and individually. The chosen design also represents a building footplate as well as thinking both within and outside of the box.”

Frank continues ‘More and more we are being seen as our clients’ outsourced marketing partner. Getting under their skin by sharing in events like this clearly benefits the strategic direction of our creative briefs and resulting campaign work. We wish MBH Practice all the success they deserve and look forward to continuing being part of that success in the future.”

Party in the Park – The Strategic Building of a New Brand is a post from the Design Inc Blog

With 30 separate conference sessions welcoming 1500 delegates, a separate exhibition hall featuring 90 industry exhibitors and with over 3000 trade visitors, the event has more than come of age this year to firmly stamp its position as the UK’s prime subsea industry event.

Subsea 2011 is an annual two-day event, organised by industry body, Subsea UK and promoted by branding specialist, Design Incorporated, who were responsible for the exhibition’s corporate branding strategies, as well as;

• corporate image
• exhibition website
• event literature
• exhibition signage
• event floorplan
• on- & off-line advertising

Design Inc Commercial Director, Frank Norman looks after the Subsea UK account and was again present at this year’s event. He says “It is always good to be present at this event. It is a very positive show with a great atmosphere and some really wonderful people. We started working with Subsea UK on the strategic branding and promotion of this event 8 months ago and it is great to see it all come together. The combination of a record number of visitors with many of the exhibitors already confirming bookings for next year means we have all done a good job. We look forward to Subsea 2012.”

Subsea 2011 also saw the industry black-tie awards dinner take place on the evening of the first day and congratulations should be given to this year’s winners, who include:

1. Subsea Company of the Year – SMD
2. Emerging Talent – Stuart Holley, GE Oil & Gas
3. Innovation and Technology – Tritech
4. Global Exports – Andrew Palmer & Associates / Penspen
5. New Enterprise – Viper Subsea
6. Subsea Safety and Leadership – RBG
7. Outstanding Achievement – Mel Fitzgerald, Subsea 7

Additional congratulations are also due to Ecosse Subsea who walked away (rode away?) with the Triumph Daytona motorbike from the exhibition’s Daytona Draw competition at the close of the show.

To view images from this year’s event, click here.

The branding of a very successful event – Subsea 2011 is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Design Inc have worked with Verderg for the past four years, supporting them with high quality marketing communications across all their engineering divisions. For the recent SMEC campaign, Design Inc designed the eye-catching kaleidoscope campaign to showcase SMEC’s range of applications. View this campaign and others within our energy sector portfolio.

VerdErg Renewable Energy Ltd wins Natural Energy Award is a post from the Design Inc Blog

i. From 1 March 2011, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) will regulate advertisers’ own marketing communications on their own websites and in other non-paid-for space online under their control.

ii. The extension of remit poses operational challenges for the ASA and the Committee of Advertising Practice, the body that writes and enforces the CAP Code. The purpose of this document is therefore to recognise and address the obvious jurisdictional and enforcement challenges ahead and, in doing so, guide stakeholders as to how the new remit is intended to be operated.

iii. This document also signals the start of an ongoing and lengthy review period (see 1.12), which invites comments from all stakeholders about any aspect of the remit extension with a pledge to act, as appropriate, on the significant comments received.

2. Overview

2.1. For nearly 50 years the CAP Code1has set out the remit and the rules covering non-broadcast marketing communications in the UK. Over time it has been updated to take account of new technologies and to reflect changes in advertising standards, ensuring the CAP Code remains fit for purpose. Today it applies to marketing communications across all non-broadcast media including online where it already covers advertisements in paid-for space and sales promotions wherever they appear (See 2.2).

Reviewing the digital remit of the CAP Code

2.2. The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) has reviewed the remit of the CAP Code in the light of the growing level and changing nature of marketing in the digital space.

2.3. In the two years covering 2008-2009, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) rejected approximately 3,500 complaints relating to the content of organisations’ own websites because they fell outside the remit of the CAP Code. The complaints were registered by consumers, businesses and other organisations and typically concerned potentially misleading claims.

2.4. CAP notes the growing social and political concern to ensure children, young people and vulnerableadults are adequately protected in the digital space, including online. In its February 2010 manifesto, the Conservative Party pledged to ‘Tackle currently unregulated marketing on corporate websites targeted at children’ and ‘to shut this regulatory loophole and clamp down on irresponsible online marketing targeted at children’. The Byron Review of 2008 and the Buckingham Report of 2009 had previously highlighted concern about children’s engagement with the online world, including marketing online.

Extending the digital remit of the CAP Code

2.5. CAP has taken into account stakeholder expectations that the ASA regulates organisations’ own marketing communications on their own websites, and the social and political concerns relating to this growing and ever-changing sector. CAP notes that advertisers are increasingly using their own websites and other non-paid-for space online, such as social networking sites, to target their own marketing communications to UK consumers. Taking these factors into account and to ensure that the same high standards are achieved in marketing communications on websites as in other media, CAP has decided to extend the digital remit of the CAP Code. 2.6. CAP’s decision takes effect following a six months period of grace, which will allow time for CAP to train and educate stakeholders about the extended digital remit and permit contractual marketing arrangements to run out or be renegotiated as necessary. On 1 March 2011, the CAP Code will apply to:

Advertisements and other marketing communications by or from companies, organisations or sole traders on their own websites, or in other non-paid-for space online under their control, that are directly connected with the supply or transfer of goods, services, opportunities and gifts, or which consist of direct solicitations of donations as part of their own fund-raising activities.

2.7. The drafting of the new remit is framed so as to focus specifically upon material which can be properly accepted as constituting an advertisement or other marketing communication.

2.8. CAP confirms that all the rules in the CAP Code will apply to advertisements and other marketing communications falling within the extended digital remit. The CAP Code includes rules about misleading advertising, the protection of children and social responsibility in advertising. Conformity with the CAP Code is, as always, assessed according to the marketing communication’s probable impact when taken as a whole and in context.

2.9. CAP’s decision to extend the digital remit of the CAP Code endorses and implements the recommendations of the UK advertising industry as represented by the Council of the Advertising Association. The Council of the ASA has agreed to administer the new remit and the Advertising Standards Boards of Finance (ASBOF) has confirmed that the advertising industry will fund the regulation of the new remit.

The benefits of self-regulation

2.10. In agreeing to extend the remit of the CAP Code, CAP seeks to ensure that UK consumers including children and others whose circumstances appear to CAP to put them in need of special protection are protected and that truthful and responsible marketing communications can flourish throughout digital media.

2.11. CAP’s decision extends the benefits of self-regulation further into the digital space. Stakeholders gain from a cost-free, fast and established complaints-handling service. The marketing community benefits from joined-up regulation, which reinforces the integrity of digital marketing communications and which strengthens the principles of fair competition generally accepted in business. Self-regulation is a faster and cheaper alternative to statutory regulation and its value, as a complement to statutory control, is recognised in important EC Directives including on misleading advertising (Directive 2005/29/EC). The ASA is recognised by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills and the Office of Fair Trading as a first line of control in protecting consumers and the industry from misleading advertising.

Reviewing the extended digital remit and inviting feedback

2.12. CAP, the ASA and ASBOF are committed to an ongoing, quarterly review of the extended digital remit with the intention of carrying out a comprehensive review in quarter two, 2013 (two years after the implementation of the extended remit). This level of review is considered necessary in order to ensure that the UK’s advertising self-regulatory system continues to work in the best interest of consumers and the marketing community in the online and offline world. As part of that commitment, the three parties invite and encourage feedback from stakeholders throughout the review period about any aspect of the remit extension with a pledge to act, as appropriate, on the significant comments that they receive. Feedback should be addressed to the Secretary of CAP and sent to:

Email: codepolicy@cap.org.uk

Address: Committee of Advertising Practice

Mid City Place

71 High Holborn

London

WC1V 6QT

Advice and guidance for stakeholders

2.13. CAP is committed to helping stakeholders get up to speed on the implications of the extended remit and to ensure marketing communications on websites and in other non-paid-for space online under an advertiser’s control are compliant with the CAP Code. In order to be notified of forthcoming training events on CAP’s digital remit, particularly as it relates to marketing communications online, CAP encourages stakeholders to sign up to CAP Services (at www.cap.org.uk)

3. The Extended Digital Remit of the CAP Code

The current online digital remit of the CAP Code

3.1. The current digital remit of the CAP Code is well-established and extensive. Marketing communications subject to it are shown to have a high level of compliance with the CAP Code. The current online remit is not subject to the review process set out in paragraph 1.12.

3.2. The current digital remit applies to advertisements in e-mails and advertisements in paid-for space including, for example, banner and pop-up advertisements, paid-for search listings, commercial classified advertisements and paid-for listings on price comparison sites. The remit also applies to sales promotions in paid-for space and non-paid-for space online.

The extended online digital remit of the CAP Code

3.3. From 1 March 2011, the CAP Code will apply to:

Advertisements and other marketing communications by or from companies, organisations or sole traders on their own websites, or in other non-paid-for space online under their control, that are directly connected with the supply or transfer of goods, services, opportunities and gifts, or which consist of direct solicitations of donations as part of their own fund-raising activities.

3.4. The drafting of the new remit is framed so as to focus specifically upon material which can be properly accepted as constituting an advertisement or other marketing communication. This responds to a particular challenge of regulating websites and other non-paid-for space online under an advertiser’s control. Websites can include marketing communications and other types of communication including, for example, editorial, public relations e.g. press releases and investor relations material that must properly remain outside the remit of the CAP Code and, therefore, outside the jurisdiction of the ASA. The drafting of the extended digital remit, the additional assessment criteria and a list of categories of content excluded by the CAP Code (both of which are discussed in this document) are intended to assist stakeholders, including the ASA, to identify marketing communications coming within the extended digital remit.

3.5. Three important factors arise from the drafting of the extended digital remit:

I. ‘directly connected with supply or transfer of goods, services’ etc: this phrase is intended to identify and bring within the extended digital remit material which can be properly accepted as constituting an advertisement or other marketing communication. It is intended to help distinguish material that will fall within the extended digital remit from other types of communication that will remain outside the CAP Code. The phrase conveys the primary intent of marketing communications coming within the extended digital remit: to sell something. It is understood that a marketing communication may set out to sell something in a myriad of different ways. It need not necessarily include a price or seek overtly an immediate or short-term financial transaction or include or otherwise refer to a transactional facility. In judging the intent of a communication to sell something, the ASA may call upon one of CAP’s advisory bodies, the General Media Panel10for example, which consists of advertising industry practitioners and acts as a forum to advise the ASA and CAP in its core functions.

II. Marketing communications promoting causes or ideas: the current offline and online remit covers marketing communications promoting causes or ideas. CAP is not aware of any significant call for regulatory action in the area of websites that promote causes or ideas, either by complainants to the ASA, by industry, government or the third sector, to which the advertising self-regulatory system would be an appropriate response. The extended digital remit does not, therefore, cover marketing communications promoting causes or ideas but it does explicitly apply to marketing communications which consist of direct solicitations of donations as part of fund-raising activities. CAP notes the potential for consumer detriment, especially financial loss, arising from these marketing communications. For example, consumer detriment could arise from misleading information about the purpose of the charity or donation being sought.

III. ‘non-paid-for space online under [the advertiser’s] control’: this phrase covers, although not exclusively, advertisements and other marketing communications on advertiser-controlled pages on social networking websites. Social networking websites have a significant consumer reach, are popular with children and young people and play an increasing role in public policy debates.

Additional assessment criteria

3.6. Determining whether material constitutes an advertisement or other marketing communication coming within the extended digital remit involves a careful assessment of its specific content and the context in which it appears.

3.7. The assessment must consider, on a case-by-case basis, whether it can be reasonably assumed that the advertiser intended to sell something (the primary purpose of a marketing communication). The following additional criteria may assist stakeholders in these assessments but they do not alone determine what can be properly accepted as constituting an advertisement or other marketing communication. For example, depending on the context in which it appears, an advertisement or other marketing communication is likely to consist of commercial communication that:

• has appeared in the same or very similar form as an advertisement in paid-for third party space, or
• may include, or make easily accessible, an “invitation to purchase” as defined by the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (“a commercial communication which indicates characteristics of the product and the price in a way appropriate to the means of that commercial communication and thereby enables the consumer to make a purchase.”)

Advergames

3.8. Advergames are typically video games that are used to promote a product or an organisation. The current digital remit covers advergames in paid-for space. Advergames on own websites or in non-paid-for space online under the advertiser’s control which amount to marketing communications that are directly connected with the supply or transfer of goods, services etc will fall within the extended digital remit.

User-generated content

3.9. User-generated content (UGC) is content created by private individuals. In establishing whether UGC should be regarded as a marketing communication, and consequently fall within the remit of advertising self-regulation, the primary and preliminary areas of enquiry to be considered are:

• Did the website owner originally solicit the submission of UGC from private individuals, then adopt and incorporate it within their own marketing communications?
• Did a private individual provide the website owner, on an unsolicited basis, with material which the website owner subsequently adopted and incorporated within their own marketing communications?

3.10. If the answer to either question is yes, (and of course that the content of the material and the form in which it is re-used by the marketer does itself constitute an advertisement or marketing communication by the marketer) then prima facie the UGC under consideration will be regarded as a marketing communication.

Communications excluded from the extended online digital remit

3.11. Communications that do not constitute an advertisement or other marketing communication coming within the extended digital remit will obviously remain out of remit. (As stated, the extended digital remit does not apply to marketing communications that promote causes or ideas.)

Existing exclusions

3.12. The extended digital remit will not apply to the list of content already excluded by the CAP Code. The most relevant exclusions include:

• Classified private advertisements
• Press releases and other public relations material
• Editorial content
• Political advertisements
• Corporate reports
• Natural listings on a search engine or a price comparison site
• Marketing communications in foreign media

• Claims in marketing communications in media addressed only to medical, dental, veterinary or allied practitioners, that relate to those practitioners expertise
• From the preface to the CAP Code: ‘The Code is primarily concerned with the content of marketing communications and not with… products themselves’

New exclusions

3.13. From 1 March 2011 the CAP Code will be updated to reflect two new exclusions. The first, ‘investor relations’, clarifies a category of content that CAP understands is presently excluded by the CAP Code.

• Investor Relations. This refers to marketers’ communication about their own company (including their goods or services) with the financial community, including shareholders and investors, as well as others who might be interested in their company’s stock or financial stability. 3.14. The second, ‘heritage advertising’, relates to content that CAP considers should fall outside the extended digital remit. CAP considers it is appropriate to exclude heritage advertising from the extended digital remit because of the role that advertisements play in the UK’s social history and because websites provide the facility to ensure heritage advertising is placed in an appropriate context. Amendments to the CAP Code may have rendered past advertising campaigns non-compliant. In some instances, such campaigns may be iconic material of value and relevance to the brand owner’s website, and should therefore be permitted in an appropriately identified part of the website.
• ‘Heritage advertising’ by or from companies, organisations or sole traders on their own websites, or in other non-paid-for space online under their control, where that advertising is not part of their current promotional strategy and is placed in an appropriate context . In cases where advertisements or other marketing communications recently adjudicated against by the ASA are featured, rule 1.2 (the spirit of the Code) may be invoked to bring those advertisements or other marketing communications within remit.

4. Sanctions

4.1. CAP works closely with the marketing community to maintain high standards in advertising. CAP Services offers training and advice to help marketers comply with the Advertising Codes. This helps to create an environment in which advertising, promotions and direct marketing are welcomed and trusted by consumers and the freedom to advertise responsibly is maintained. The compliance figures published from time to time by the ASA have demonstrated that the vast majority of marketing communications comply with the Advertising Codes. 4.2. Underpinning the ability of CAP to maintain and improve high standards in marketing communications is an effective range of sanctions. If a marketing communication is in breach of the Advertising Codes, the marketer responsible is told by the ASA (or the CAP Compliance team) to amend or withdraw it. The vast majority of marketers willingly undertake to do so. If they do not, sanctions are applied, although the possibility of imposing sanctions is often sufficient to secure compliance with the CAP Code.

4.3. Sanctions include adverse publicity arising from an ASA adjudication, pre-publication vetting by the CAP Copy Advice team and the withdrawal of trading privileges, including media space. On the very rare occasions that compliance with the CAP Code cannot be secured, CAP may, depending on the nature of the breach, refer a non-broadcast marketer to the Office of Fair Trading for action under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 or the Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations 2008.

The approach to issuing sanctions

4.4. Sanctions are issued by the CAP Compliance team. The team relies on the general consent and, if necessary, the specific cooperation of CAP’s member bodies.

4.5. Sanctions are issued proportionately taking into account the nature of the breach and the aim of securing the team’s primary objective: to amend or have withdrawn non-compliant marketing communications as quickly as possible and thereby ensure consumers are protected and a level playing field is maintained for marketers. The team adopts a sensible, flexible and pragmatic approach to its work with the emphasis on persuading marketers to comply with the Advertising Codes.

4.6. Some sanctions are more punitive than others. In the event of continued non-compliance, the CAP Compliance team’s strategy is therefore to escalate the pressure on marketers to comply with the Advertising Codes by raising the possibility of imposing and then, if necessary, issuing progressively more punitive sanctions.

New sanctions

4.7. To strengthen CAP’s ability to secure compliance on websites and in other non-paid-for space online under the advertiser’s control, CAP’s member bodies have agreed new sanctions. It is understood that the possibility of imposing and then, if necessary, issuing these sanctions would follow the custom and practice set out in paragraph 3.4 to 3.6. The new sanctions may be applied until such time as the non-compliant marketing communication is amended to comply with the CAP Code or withdrawn. The new sanctions are:

• Providing details of an advertiser and the non-compliant marketing communication (appearing on the advertiser’s website or in other non-paid-for space online under the advertiser’s control) on an ASA microsite, to which the ASA may make a particular effort to draw public attention.
• Removing, with the cooperation of the search engine, paid-for search advertisements that link directly to the page hosting the non-compliant marketing communication on the advertiser’s website or in other non-paid-for space online under the advertiser’s control.
• Placing paid-for advertisements on internet search engines that highlight the continued non-compliance of an advertiser’s marketing communication and link through to the ASA microsite described above.

5. ANNEX: Changes to the CAP Code effective from 1 March 2011

Additions to the CAP Code are highlighted.

Introduction This twelfth edition of the Code comes into force on 1 September 2010. It replaces all previous editions.

As well as this Code, non-broadcast marketing communications are subject to legislation. See www.cap.org.uk for a non-exhaustive list. The advertising rules that apply to video-on-demand services which are subject to statutory regulation are reflected in the rules set out in Appendix 2.

I The code applies to:

a. advertisements in newspapers, magazines, brochures, leaflets, circulars, mailings, e-mails, text transmissions (including SMS and MMS), fax transmissions, catalogues, follow-up literature and other electronic or printed material

b. posters and other promotional media in public places, including moving images

c. cinema, video, DVD and Blu-ray advertisements

d. advertisements in non-broadcast electronic media, including but not limited to: online advertisements in paid-for space (including banner or pop-up advertisements and online video advertisements); paid-for search listings; preferential listings on price comparison sites; viral advertisements (see III l); in-game advertisements; commercial classified advertisements; advergames that feature in display advertisements; advertisements transmitted by Bluetooth; advertisements distributed through web widgets and online sales promotions and prize promotions

e. marketing databases containing consumers’ personal information

f. sales promotions in non-broadcast media

g. advertorials (see III k).

h. Advertisements and other marketing communications by or from companies, organisations or sole traders on their own websites, or in other non-paid-for space online under their control, that are directly connected with the supply or transfer of goods, services, opportunities and gifts, or which consist of direct solicitations of donations as part of their own fund-raising activities.

II The code does not apply to:

a. broadcast advertisements (The BCAP Code sets out the rules that govern broadcast advertisements on any television channel or radio station licensed by Ofcom)

b. the contents of premium-rate services, which are the responsibility of PhonepayPlus; marketing communications that promote those services are subject to PhonepayPlus regulation and to the CAP Code

c. marketing communications in foreign media. Direct marketing communications that originate outside the United Kingdom and sales promotions and advertisements in paid-for space that are published on non-UK-registered websites, if targeted at UK consumers, are subject to the jurisdiction of the relevant authority in the country from which they originate if that authority operates a suitable cross-border complaint system. If it does not, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) will take what action it can. Most members of the European Union, and many non-European countries, have a self-regulatory organisation that is a member of the European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA). EASA co-ordinates the cross-border complaints system for its members (which include the ASA)

d. claims, in marketing communications in media addressed only to medical, dental, veterinary or allied practitioners, that relate to those practitioners’ expertise

e. classified private advertisements, including those appearing online

f. statutory, public, police and other official notices or information, but not marketing communications, produced by public authorities and the like

g. works of art exhibited in public or private

h. private correspondence, including correspondence between organisations and their customers about existing relationships or past purchases

i. live oral communications, including telephone calls and announcements or direct approaches from street marketers

j. press releases and other public relations material not covered by part I above

k. editorial content; for example, of the media or of books and regular competitions such as crosswords

l. flyposting (most of which is illegal)

m. packages, wrappers, labels, tickets, timetables and price lists unless they advertise another product or a sales promotion or are visible in a marketing communication

n. point-of-sale displays, except those covered by the sales promotion rules or the rolling paper and filter rules

o. political advertisements as defined in Section 7

p. website content not covered by I d and I h, including (but not limited to) editorial content, news or public relations material, corporate reports and natural listings on a search engine or a price comparison site

q. sponsorship; marketing communications that refer to sponsorship are covered by the Code

r. customer charters and codes of practice.

s. investor relations (see III m).

t. ‘heritage advertising’ by or from companies, organisations or sole traders on their own websites, or in other non-paid for space online under their control, where that advertising is not part of their current promotional strategy and is placed in an appropriate context. In cases where advertisements or other marketing communications recently adjudicated against by the ASA are featured, rule 1.2 (the spirit of the Code) may be invoked to bring those advertisements or other marketing communications within remit.

III These definitions apply to the code:

a. product encompasses goods, services, ideas, causes, opportunities, prizes or gifts

b. consumer is anyone who is likely to see a given marketing communication, whether in the course of business or not

c. the United Kingdom covers the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands

d. a claim can be implied or direct, written, spoken or visual; the name of a product can constitute a claim

e. the Code is divided into numbered rules

f. a marketing communication includes all forms of communication listed in part I

g. a marketer includes an advertiser, promoter or direct marketer

h. a supplier is anyone who supplies a product that is sold by a distance-selling marketing communication (and can be the marketer)

i. a child is anyone under 16

j. a corporate subscriber includes corporate bodies such as limited companies in the UK, limited liability partnerships in England, Wales and Northern Ireland or any partnerships in Scotland. It also includes schools, hospitals, Government departments or agencies and other public bodies. It does not include sole traders or non-limited liability partnerships in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. See rule 10.14

k. An advertorial is an advertisement feature, announcement or promotion, the content of which is controlled by the marketer, not the publisher, that is disseminated in exchange for a payment or other reciprocal arrangement

l. A viral advertisement is an e-mail, text or other non-broadcast marketing communication designed to stimulate significant circulation by recipients to generate commercial or reputational benefit to the marketer. Viral advertisements are usually put into circulation (“seeded”) by the marketer with a request, either explicit or implicit, for the message to be forwarded to others. Sometimes they include a video clip or a link to website material or are part of a sales promotion campaign.

m. Investor relations material is information about an organisation (including its goods or services) addressed to the financial community, including shareholders and investors, as well as others who might be interested in the company’s stock or financial stability.

Extending the Digital Remit of the CAP Code is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Banking on a Return

‘The invention of tradition’ according to Wally Olins is key to the success of all new brands.

Chevalier Wealth Management has just been born with corporate branding strategy, print and web development by Design Inc, that included a team of the creative, marketing and commercial specialists at Design Inc.

Design Inc’s Senior Account Manager Darren Scurville, said “Our method to corporate branding strategy unites marketing strategy with perceptive creativity. The special ingredient for the creation of compelling brand communications relies on developing ‘qualities’ that the target audience emotively connects with. He continued “Our task is to define and bring to life the clear meaning and creative message of that character” He continued “We conducted an audit of the industry and competitor landscape and worked within the boundaries of the business positioning and proposition and company values”.

A name, a logotype, brand imagery. Classic architecture and sculpture, a palette of British racing green and gold have been delicately combined to portray trust, experience and transparency within the Financial Services sector. The project required print and web development to appropriately position this new company providing a new independent introduction service matching investors with investment managers and providing training in financial services sales.

Proud parents Design Incorporated provided a full service integrating corporate branding startegy, print and web development solution – having firstly conceived the company name based on research, creative selection and subsequent market testing of a shortlist.  Darren Scurville stated “This element of the corporate branding strategy originated from an initial brainstorm selection of over 100 names. We then selected a short-list of 45 names, which then went through a further filtering and criteria system that had specific values, meanings, emotions, and image interpretations. These names were then scrutinised, discussed, critiqued and scored against the criteria. The names were scored against the clients required brand identity, brand messages and brand values that had been identified in the initial brand workshop“ . The names varied from made up names, hybrid words to classic Greek and Latin names.

‘Chevalier’ was the preferred option. Design Incorporated’s Darren Scurville continued “ The chosen name reflected the client’s brand identity, brand values and brand messages in many ways such as Leadership, Integrity, Security, Protection, Relationship,  Dynamic, Growth , Wealth, Forward Thinking, Timeless, Prestigious. The branding, print and web development followed suite including: website, corporate printed brochure collateral and stationery to support the launch. Design Inc has supported the development of the company as it takes its first steps into the marketplace and as of 10^th December, 2 weeks after the project completed,  2010 Chevalier Wealth are pleased to announce their inaugural contract for Financial Sales Training services with a major FS client.

To read the full case study please click here

www.chevalierwealth.com

Corporate branding strategy for new financial services company is a post from the Design Inc Blog

For years now, we have always attracted significant numbers of visitors to our website but with visitor numbers increasing dramatically month and month – so much so that they are now double what they were only 6 months ago – we went to investigate what we had done differently over the past 6 months to help create this sharp increase in website visitor numbers:

Keyword Research – understanding which keyword phrases our potential clients are more likely to be searching for has always been critical to us. Even more important however, is the process of optimising our own website with these keywords and keyphrases so as to help ensure our website appears on the first pages of that particular Google search. Our SEO web development is highly important to us and over the past 6 months we have continued to keep our website highly optimised. We have, in fact, narrowed down the searches to be ‘quality-specific’. That is, if a potential customer is searching for a creative service at a certain high level of quality, it is more than likely that Design Inc will appear higher up the rankings.

Blog – our blog continues to grow. The quantity of blog articles is important of course but not as important as the quality (and the keyword relevance) of the content. This helps Design Inc rank higher in relevancy for all those keywords & keyphrases embedded into our blog articles. And that is one way in which Google works:- ie just how relevant is this website for the particular keyword/phrase which you are typing in? For us, we have become so much more knowledgeable in the past 6 months in understanding just how to write an effective blog, so much so that each story attracts hundreds of new visitors to our website daily.

AdWord Campaign – whilst our monthly Google spend has remained unchanged for our PPC campaign, it is important to note that in the past six months, the keywords in which we are investing have changed significantly. Having carried out extensive research into our Google statistics last Summer, we clearly saw where are money was best spent and where we felt it was being wasted. This enabled us to reappoint the Google spend in much more truly effective ways. Our AdWord spend is working so much better for us now without any increase in investment.

Social Media – last year saw the introduction of Design Inc’s social media marketing push. With accounts set up within Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Quora, etc, we have been able to create more relevant industry networks, a dedicated following as well as many more inbound links to our own website. And of course, the more inbound links you have created, the more opportunities there will be to attract more website visitors.

Inbound Links – as mentioned, the more inbound links there are to a website, the more opportunities there are for visitors to find themselves on your website. And one very good way of increasing inbound links is through entries on online directories. In August 2010, the marketing team at Design Inc invested their time researching and adding our details to over 200 online trade & industry-specific directories (some paid for but most free of charge). The upshot is that the combined might of these directories help push more new enquiries our way than ever before.

Email Marketing Services – all the email marketing solutions we send out – whether this be eNewsletters, eShots or simply the eSignature at the bottom of our everyday emails (introduced in July 2010) – all provide active hyperlinks back through to certain areas of our website, therefore offering more opportunities for increased visitor numbers. Our eShots are sent to those who specifically sign up to receive information from us, and although we have been creating eShots for years now, we can see that sign up numbers were much larger than they were than in previous years. The more people who sign up, the more receive our information, the more they mention us to others, the more new visitors we attract. And, with our own eMarketing statistics report, we can directly see just who has clicked a link through to our website, what they were interested in, who signed up, etc. This information is priceless to us.

Overall, it is impossible to pinpoint just one factor which has helped us increase visitor numbers. All the above website marketing tool (and more) are responsible for bringing more visitors to our website, and ultimately more enquiries from it. Rest assured we will continue to keep this trend going, not just for ourselves but to all of our website customers.

Attract record number of visitors to your website is a post from the Design Inc Blog

• News Events
• People
• Movies,
• Television
• Technology
• World Cup
• Sports
• Hashtags

Each Trend in the Top 10 list includes multiple related terms, to give the most accurate view of the topics that people cared about most in 2010.

From the findings we can see that the main tweeted topic overall was regarding the oil spill in the Gulf which occurred back in April.

Two films make it into the Top 10; Leonardo DiCaprio’s Inception at 3rd place as well the seventh installment in the Harry Potter phenomenon, Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows, which came in in 9th overall.

And as for music, no overall Top 10 entry for Lady Gaga this year but Justin Bieber was not unsurprisingly tweeted the most in this genre. Lady Gaga does appear however – as high as third in the Most Tweeted People chart, one position behind Dilma Rouseff – Brazil’s newly elected and first female President.

Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange makes a late surge for fourth position.

In the Most Tweeted Television category, the MTV Video Music Awards takes the crown closely followed by ABC’s family TV show, Pretty Little Liars.

As expected the Most Tweeted Technology category brought up all the tweeted terms one would expect of the Twitterati. The iPad, iPhone, Google’s Android were all tweeted about accordingly. But it is the entry at 5th place; Call of Duty: Black Ops that brings video games into the Tweet charts for the first time. Not surprising for a game that smashed all records within 24hrs of going on sale.

Of course, 2010 was Word Cup year and this was the reason a Most Tweeted World Cup category was added. Not surprisingly the event itself (FIFA World Cup) was the most tweeted within this category. Interestingly a word and a product which only 12 months ago, no-one had heard of, made it into second place. The Vuvuzela was introduced to the world and now the world was tweeting its merits.

In third place, above Dunga, Maradona, Ronaldo, Messi sits Pulpo Paul a German psychic octopus who successfully predicted the results of all the games.

In the Most Tweeted Sports category, US All-Star basketball player, Lebron James out-tweeted all others.

Within the Hashtag category, the first thing that may strike you is that twitterati loved their hashtags in 2010.  Whereas they made up just 9% of the trending topics in 2009, they gobbled up a whopping 40% of the pie in 2010, stealing a good bit of ground from entertainment topics.

So, as we slowly slip towards the end of 2010 we look forward to seeing more and more of us embracing the Twitter bird in 2011 and all who fly beneath her. We couldn’t even begin to guess what the 2011 trends will be?

2010 Trends on Twitter is a post from the Design Inc Blog

As well as Season’s Greetings to all, this issue features a Glamour theme and includes news about our aviation, event and automotive related clients and shows some of the great work we have produced for them during the run up to the end of the year.

Our recent achievements include the completion of major branding projects for Sharda Architectural Glass, Crown Jets & Chevalier Wealth, as well as the ongoing marketing consultancy, direct mail design and PR support for Curries Online. This includes a range of activities surrounding their sponsorship of the prestigious Spice Times Restaurant Awards.

This includes the creation of a short advertising film to be shown during breaks in the awards presentation. And a mailshot to be included in the event goody bags. The film shows a modern urban fairy tale and features Curries Online busily generating orders for signed up CurryPartners – bringing joy, orders and profits through online orders.

You too can receive regular Design Inc email communications by signing up.

Design Inc’s Christmas eNewsletter is a post from the Design Inc Blog

In the face of digital everything, a unique corporate brochure can achieve stand out creatively by your target audience receiving something really intriguing or special. This becomes a bespoke gesture and project and should feature print production values matching the business proposition. What about sustainability? I hear you say – well yes and I read that story in Campaign about the high tech Landrover CRM mailer that went down like a lead balloon too. Truth is, if the recipient is targeted and proven to be genuinely interested in the message contained in a unique corporate brochure printed on resources that are sustainable or recyclable what’s the harm?

A unique corporate brochure can involve interesting cardboard engineering, new printing techniques and special effects, material textures, binding methods and formats can all contribute to impact and if the design theme is a metaphor for the message too then so much better. At Design Inc we have recently designed and printed some very special branded and individually assembled boxes for the extremely tailored marketing of an executive jet presentation preloaded onto an iphone to a luxury brand. These DM pieces were varnished with branded messages and also protectively packed in bespoke recycled cartons. So a unique corporate brochure can really set you apart, engage intrigue and entertain – and combined with a digital or online component truly provide a memorable brand experience for head and heart.

Design Inc is a West London-based Brochure Design Agency. If you are considering designing and printing a new corporate brochure for your business, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s Information Pack. Alternatively, please contact us by calling 01784 410380 or emailing us to find out more.

The return of the unique corporate brochure is a post from the Design Inc Blog

New clients within the financial services, recruitment and automotive sectors have recently adopted Design Inc corporate branding strategies. Brands borne online can be conceived with the media in mind. The limitations of printed versions of a logo and brand identity design can be addressed as a secondary task while the opportunities of the digital realm for corporate branding strategies can be fully explored for creative user engagement and brand differentiation.

Many of our long term relationships with clients have included working closely with internal teams, reviewing and evolving corporate branding strategies as historical brands have been digitally developed and enhanced to become a fully functioning dynamic online presence.

Design Inc is a West London-based Corporate branding agency. If you are considering rebranding or maybe a brand review, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s Information Pack. Alternatively, please contact us by calling 01784 410380 or emailing us to find out more.

Corporate Branding Strategies Unravelled is a post from the Design Inc Blog

So, they are thinking that by changing the name of the town from Staines to Staines-on-Thames they can improve the image of the suburban Surrey town. Staines-based branding specialists, Design Incorporated went (not far) to investigate.

Commercial Director, Frank Norman admits that most people outside the area associate the town with comedy gangsta Ali G, a fictional character played by Sacha Baron Cohen. He says “But it is also true that most people don’t know Staines is situated on one of the most beautiful stretches of the River Thames and I agree that a name change to Staines-on-Thames may certainly make the town sound more desirable, but we have to be careful that any name change or rebranding, whether for a product, business or location is always carried out for the right reasons. In the case of a town however, it is important to understand its heritage.”

The Romans settled in Staines in 43AD and the first Staines Bridge was constructed to provide an important Thames crossing point. In fact it is assumed there was more than one bridge as the Roman name for Staines was ‘ad pontes’ (at the bridges). The present day name of Staines actually comes from Old English meaning ‘the place of the stones’.

In fact a border stana, or stone, on the bank of the River Thames, dated 1280, still remains, indicating the western limit of the City of London’s jurisdiction over the Thames.

The Thames therefore, and Staines’ situation as a major crossing point has always been key to its heritage and its involvement in national affairs; the barons assembled there before they met King John at Runnymede in 1215, and Stephen Langton held a consecration there shortly after the issue of the Magna Carta. Sir Thomas More was tried in 1535 in a Staines public house, to avoid the outbreak of plague in London at that time. Kings and other important people must have passed through the town on many occasions: the church bells were rung several times in 1670, for instance, when the king and queen travelled through the town towards Windsor.

The river has also been key in the decision of locating industry, with the Linoleum Manufacturing Company settling in Staines to set up business in 1864. Linoleum soon became the main industry of the town and the company was a major employer in the area up to the 1960s. These days, the town is home to a number of blue chip companies including BUPA, British Gas, Logica, Siemens, Centrica and Samsung.

And, bringing the town right up-to-date, Staines is poised for major expansion with construction already started on the ‘Staines Central’ scheme – a five storey, 3 building, retail, office, hotel & communications hub in the centre of the town. Creative agency, Design Inc is located directly opposite.

Frank Norman met with Alex Tribick, chair of Spelthorne Business Forum which made the proposal. He said: “A lot of businesses are moving from Central London out to the Spelthorne and Staines area. Everything we can do, even if it’s a small thing like changing the name, can only be good for encouraging business and investment in the area.”

The Forum insist there would be a public consultation before any formal decision was made and they are fully expecting to meet with opposition from residents who see no need for a name change.

Many residents we met felt it a good suggestion, with one prominent businessman commenting, “Of course there will be many who don’t like the idea of change and may think this is pretentious nonsense. But it’s not. With the 2012 Olympics almost upon us, we have a real opportunity to promote & showcase Staines to a wider audience. The Thames is integral to our town and we are proud of our association with the river.”

Another commented “We have Kingston-upon-Thames, Richmond-upon-Thames, Walton-on-Thames and they are all as beautiful as they sound. I can only see positives from renaming our town Staines-on-Thames and showing that we are so much more than just the home of Ali G.”

No doubt the debate will continue and we will of course look forward to the outcome. We certainly understand and acknowledge the reasons behind the suggestion of this name change. Frank Norman gives his final thoughts, “As a branding agency, we know that creating the right message and values in a name is crucial to any brand. I believe the name Staines-on-Thames is certainly a positive one for the town and the area within which it is situated. The name creates a promise of beauty & tranquillity and, if this change happens, it is important the council continue to back up that promise.”

Goodbye Staines. Hello Staines-on-Thames. is a post from the Design Inc Blog

How many times have you eaten at a restaurant that’s “famous” for their pie or their burger or their fish & chips? And how many times have your expectations not been met?

“We’re famous for our pie” is a brand statement – and it’s easy as pie to announce it. Living up to that promise is another story however.

Your own corporate brand isn’t necessarily what you want it to be; instead, it’s the sum of all the ways your customers experience your company and its services. And, what your consumers think of your brand may be very different from the message you believe you’re putting out there.

At the most basic level, your brand isn’t necessarily the work you do, but it is how you do it and just how the service ‘tastes’.

You may have agonised over your company name, obsessed about your logo design, struggled over the design of the company brochure. But now, you need to live your brand. Every minute. Of every day.

The company brand becomes the anchor identifying what you are promising to be. There’s a whole set of what look like little things that amount to something enormous when it’s done right.

The design of your office, retail space or reception area says something about your brand, as does your voicemail announcement and the way your staff answer the phone. The way you and your employees dress makes a brand statement; the music you play, the pen you use, the cars in your car park. All these and more contribute to the branding or ‘taste’ of the company

But the most important part of your company branding doesn’t come from the design or your office, your fleet or even your website design. It comes from the way you and your staff treat your customers.

Operationally, what you actually deliver and do as a company for the customer, whether that’s on your company website, in your office or working with your consultants, has to match the promise you made in the marketplace. If you promise your customers a great taste sensation then you had better give one. And just like a great chef, you may be wise to taste it first.

Examples of companies that don’t deliver on their branding are legion: A personal coach who lets walk-ins cool in the reception area without a personal greeting; the software company that claims customers are its most valuable asset but sends them into voicemail hell when they have a problem; and the general contractor who promises high-end work but is always late; all are giving consumers a mixed branding message.

Look at your company outside in – just like your consumers do and ask yourself what reaction they would really give if they tasted your brand?

If you are promising something sweet make sure you are not giving something that just looks sweet on the outside but then leaves a sour taste in their mouths afterwards.

The bottom line: Your branding succeeds when what you actually do matches with the promise you’re making to your customers.

Design Inc is a specialist Surrey-based branding agency. If you are considering a new brand you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s  Information Pack.

Just How Sweet Does Your Brand Taste? is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Today’s special buildings need special glass. Sharda Architectural Glass are the industry specialists who manufacture this glass and work in partnership to deliver specialist glass solutions globally.

Design Inc are proud of our relationship with Sharda and are pleased to have conceived, planned and built a regenerated online presence for them. Being an integrated agency, we started working with Sharda last year when we created a series of printed direct mail campaigns, including their innovative & award-winning, Inspired-Desired! mailers. Following on from the success of these campaigns, Design Inc were asked to look at a major overhaul of the brand to take the company forward for its next stage of evolution.

And this is where the ‘See the Bigger Picture’ campaign was conceived and developed, demonstrating both:

How Sharda’s architectural glass products and attention to detail enables the design and construction of amazing landmark projects worldwide.

And

How Sharda form larger partnerships with leading firms of architects, engineers, designers and construction businesses. Working as a project team component requires an integrated approach and flexible attitude as well as a deep understanding of the building design supply chain.

The branding components that were included in the repositioning were:

Identity and name: Evolving the outdated Sharda Glass identity and creation of a new descriptor “Architectural Glass’ to reflect the new positioning as partners to the major international players in the built environment sector.

Web Design: Web site interfaces, site architecture, imagery, typography information hierarchy and programming. Including lead capture devices. The homepage movie shows a series of striking glass building applications, representing the endless range of projects served by Sharda Glass. Each time zoomed out to reveal that the image is part of a bigger picture.

Content: The site map has been designed to cater for both the high level user looking for a strategic partner for a project or framework agreement or alternatively the project architect looking for a specific innovation in glass technology, technical information or application examples.

Quote from MD of Sharda Glass

“Design Inc have provided a truly integrated solution for us, the team combined an understanding of both the built environment sector and our need to achieve a website design that worked on several levels for us at this stage of our business evolution. We were again looking for the wow! factor from them, not just in design terms but also in the strategy of our message. The Bigger Picture concept does exactly that.”

If you are considering a forthcoming creative/marketing project, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s  Information Pack.

Shouting From The Top – Sharda Architectural Glass is a post from the Design Inc Blog

The passport postcard concept was a lighthearted suggestion to UK based developers they may need to migrate to Canada for their next job!

Whether as a result of this mailshot UK Ltd may lose the reputation and revenue it currently enjoys in this sector as programmers decamp across the pond to the land of the Maple leaf and Bryan Adams remains to be seen!

If you are considering a direct mail project, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s Information Pack.

Passport to Politics is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Troika is the name for a collection of three elements that once combined increase strength, stability and power. It is the power of three. And when three seasoned hospitality recruitment specialists came together to form a new, powerful recruitment company, the name ‘Troika’ was the natural choice.

To set their offer and brand apart, the three principals of Troika Recruitment created a brief that demanded a corporate website design that was very different from those of the established, larger, more general recruitment agencies.

Of course, in a heavily networked industry, ‘word on the street’ is all powerful, and it was this knowledge that inspired us to create a Banksy-inspired, graffiti streetscape that provides a truly interactive experience for the web visitor.

Sounds, tools and posters all provide exciting navigation around the site, with many hidden treasures to be found now, and many more being planned for the future. All in all it’s a website that punches above its weight for a start-up business and not just another brick in the wall.

According to Troika Director, Suzie Boyd, “the team at Design Inc took our brand aspirations & the vision we have for our boutique business and have created for us a online presence that is as unique as we are – we love it – and better still our clients love it.”

If you are considering a forthcoming creative/marketing project, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s  Information Pack.

Has Banksy finally designed a website? is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Attention to detail and a good understanding of the lighting and spatial challenges each shoot presents is essential to ensure the airframe build integrity, design detailing and quality of interiors materials comes through. In addition, giving the impression of space and comfort is always a key priority (especially in helicopters and cockpits).

The challenges internal and external shots present are extremely different. Very often additional exterior lighting is needed when shooting interiors to show how much natural light is available and how airy the passenger cabin is.

Design Inc were recently commissioned to produce a website marketing campaign including a micro site and e-brochure for this rather amazing private jet owned by one very wealthy individual which involved a comprehensive and creative photo shoot.

This project required positioning the aircraft on the apron of a photogenic airport hangar and terminal hard standing location, a stylist dressing the inside and outside background areas and providing models and props including cuisine.

In addition to stills photography in a variety of formats and DV, a 360 degree lens and other specialist cameras were used to create a stunning portfolio of images and presentation footage. It all helps to promote what a unique aeroplane this converted Boeing 727 really is.

See the interactive e-brochure we created as part of the marketing project by clicking here.

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AirCRAFT: The Art of Aviation Photography is a post from the Design Inc Blog

How to best gain internet traffic insights from your website marketing campaigns, optimise your online proposition, capture visitor data, enquiries and new prospects?

With our new Website Visitor Profiling service, using the latest internet traffic profiling technology, you can now analyse  these web stats:
• What companies have been looking at on your website.
• What search words, terms and phrases did they use to find your website?
• What are the most popular pages they are viewing?
• Are they repeat visitors?
• Where are they based?

How is this done, does it cause disruption and introduce a security compromise to our site?
No. You simply need to provide FTP access for Design Inc to make some minor code optimisation and you’ll be given a discreet log-in access to a report screen. This can be set to your own preferred custom reports enabling you to see who is looking at your website and their browsing behaviour.

Alternatively, Design Inc can also improve your website’s performance at the same time by optimising content and filenames for search engines rankings to increase the amount of hits to your website and the conversion of them. Results come through quickly and often will surprise you.

Your sales team can then follow up with informed calls to your website visitors which will give them a massive advantage over you competitors.

Website Development
An added benefit of course is that you can engage with those site visitors who browsed but didn’t contact you so you can fully understand how effective your internet marketing and advertising campaigns are. Target your selected visitors with a research based communication. eg. Why they didn’t make contact? What they didn’t see? What will they base their decisions on? The answers to all of which will aid your web development and formulate your own company’s online proposition to maximise it’s effectiveness.

Please contact us if you’re interested in this online marketing service, and remember, we’ll know if you’ve been reading this blog!

Would you like to see who has visited your website? is a post from the Design Inc Blog

The teams consisted of either clients, suppliers and friends of Isosceles Finance Limited which included Celona, Emergent, InsightSoftware.com, Solsis, Line and Design Inc.

The group stages the matches were extremely tight; games were pinched by the odd goal here and there. This was demonstrated by the fact that the 3rd/ 4th and 5th /6th play offs all went to penalties!

After all of the huffing and puffing, the pump and the grind of the group and playoff stages there were two left standing – Design Inc & Isosceles. This is somewhat of a Germany v England fixture, close neighbours who know each other’s players well. The final turned out to be more one sided than many had predicted and Design Inc were worthy winners. Jon Turner assured the assembled press that they would accept the cup in a spirit of friendship and humility and that they would keep this low key, they would be unlikely to brag, wave the cup around and generally remind Isosceles of their ignominious failure on a daily basis henceforth.

Many congratulations to all the teams that participated, and a big thank you to Mike and the team at Isosceles for making it such a thoroughly successful event.

The Isosceles World Cup Tournament is a post from the Design Inc Blog

He continues, “The big question still being asked is, how is the industry performing? In response he quotes “The 2^nd quarter of this year has started to see some momentum with the increase of confirmed events, an increase in new venues and venue refurbishments and more importantly the green light for the release of funds for event budgets”

Further adding, “ However we are still in unsure times and no doubt there will still be some casualties ahead, for example with Sound London becoming the latest venue to follow the unfortunate trend of nightclubs in trouble by going into administration. But Venues that invest in marketing are likely to be rewarded for their efforts and increase their clientele, raise their profile and secure bookings”

Q. Has the event industry suffered from budget cuts in both the private and now public sectors?

A. The continued financial scene has meant that budgets are tighter and negotiations will be stronger. Smaller venues and a new generation of venue spaces have been given the opportunity to rattle the older, established venues who have had it too easy for too long. In some cases there is definitely a change in the perspective of the client/supplier relationship and a new approach required. Venues sometimes fail to recognise the real value of the creative elements that needs to be invested in the lead up to winning business.

From the point of view from an ex-Events Manager, it is not always the costs that affect the decisions around where to host events. It can also very much depend on how a venue engages with their audiences from first time contact to post event evaluation and markets & advertises themselves through the quality of their communication tools such as websites, promotional literature, direct & email marketing pieces etc.

Leaving that compelling first impression can do wonders for the confidence and trust of the event organiser to know that this is a venue who are professional, experienced and can cater for all aspects of the event.

Venues such as The Business Design Centre has invested heavily in its website and a newsletter to keep its customers informed. “It’s an important way to build relationships with organisers,” says BDC head of venue sales Graham Stephenson. The north London venue also hosts social events for organisers so they get to know the venue.

In an effort to generate awareness in London, one London venue had branded two black cabs following an overhaul of the venues’ customer and event marketing last year. Bespoke campaigns are now tailored to the individual needs of organisers. The strategy has seen the venue awarded a respected Business Superbrand title by independent brand analyst SuperBrands, alongside household names such as Shell, Samsung and Rolls-Royce.

Working with tourism promotion bodies can also help raise a venue’s profile: “London tourist bodies promotes the city internationally and at home. It’s about keeping the venue in the loop and making sure people are aware of the venue.”

A very effective way to reach markets in specific industry sectors is to apply direct & email marketing. Targeting organisers with this medium can increase hits on the venue’s website, build awareness, strengthen the brand, raise the venues profile and more within a very cost effective budget.

Q. How is the latest technology including augmented reality and design tools, changing the way a venue markets itself on line?

A. I see that in the very near future that venues will need to embrace in the technology of ‘Virtual Tours’ to attract more visitors and engage more deeply with their audiences. This has already started with the successful launch of Event and C&IT Virtual Venue Visit. However for venues to truly differentiate themselves and promote their USP’s, the virtual tours should not be presented in a traditional video scenario as is being done, but by the use of a more dynamic and interactive design and system which allows the visitor to explore in more detail the venues spaces and may even include the user to create a virtual event which will include designing room plans, stage sets, room lighting and even a selection of themes that can integrate the creative production into the virtual event.

Q. What about the London Olympics, this is going to be a boom time for UK venues surely?

A. The next 12 months will see numerous public and private events relating to the 2012 Olympics leading up to the games including conferences, seminars, roadshows, product & promotional launches and corporate hospitality. Competition is still rife however and venues need to be proactive in their marketing to share in this business.

We are very excited and looking forward to the many ‘event’ based communication & design projects that we are currently discussing with many of our clients in providing compelling design and effective event marketing strategy for their networking events, experiential campaigns, product launches, conferences, tradeshows, road-show campaigns, exhibitions, hospitality events and the many other events that will be incorporating the theme of the Olympic Games to promote their events.

The key challenge will be to create the association and incorporate the spirit of the Olympic games in all the design & strategy elements and succeed in overcoming the strict design & marketing guidelines in place. We have been researching this area intensively and have some very creative and strategic ways around this that can be implemented for events, email & direct mail campaigns and all online marketing campaigns.

If you are considering a forthcoming creative/marketing project, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s  Information Pack.

Darren’s event and venue marketing clinic is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Getting the most out your own sales data and data captured from your website can automatically create profiles of your prospects and segment them to ensure maximum engagement with the highest possible level of response and ROI.

It’s no coincidence that the direct mailings you receive from the larger corporates and retailers are completely relevant to you, your lifestyle and interests. It’s a scary thought, but they know your age, personal circumstances, the car you drive, what you earn, what team you support and what wine you drink!

These techniques apply across the board. Whether you are a B2B or B2C online retailer and want to promote your products, or you’re a professional supplier promoting your range of services. Initiating the process of data gathering can be time consuming, but once the mechanisims are in place, sending communications and eNewsletters to all your clients and prospects will be fast, cost effective and rewarding.

Just imagine how powerful a professionally designed website with a clear sales route and data capture forms which in turn feeds mailing lists would be for your organisation.

Design Inc have implemented integrated direct marketing processes for the Aviation, Energy and Conference & Events industries.

If you are considering a forthcoming creative/marketing project, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s  Information Pack.

Making Email and Direct Marketing Campaigns Work is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Darren explains, “From a venue’s point of view I was their archetypal buyer. From the clients side I was the trusted, experienced and venue expert.

This experience has provided valuable insight into the decision making process for companies selecting a venue for their own events and the essential marketing requirements when a venue needs to promote themselves”.

I have summarised the criteria for Venue Finding and Venue Promotion as follows:

Venue finding

Venue finding provides a mammoth task for many people every day with more and more corporate events being held every year. More than 80% of the success of any event, meeting, conference or any type of event is dependent on the choice of the venue itself. Spending money in venues should be looked upon as an investment in your company’s future and should not be looked at without due consideration. Consider your requirements fully, look at the venue carefully and book the venue confidently.

Start early! Venue finding can be a very time consuming exercise. It is never too early to start looking for a suitable venue. If you are thinking about hosting an event, then you can be sure that there are dozens of other companies thinking about hosting one also.

Identify your objectives and format - what do you want to achieve from your event and how are you going to achieve it? Is it increased sales, sales recognition, employee motivation, product launch, customer appreciation day, etc?

Attendees - How many people are you going to invite? Who will be attending – employees, existing customers, prospective customers, media, members of the public, any VIP’s or celebrities?

Location, location, location - where do you want to host the event? Close to company offices; easy access from major road networks, train stations or airports or in a luxury countryside setting away from it all? Consider the widest geographic area. Think not just in terms of miles but minutes of commuting time. A location may be further away but well served by motorway and other transport links

Budget - Yes, this is important and needs to be realistic to your objectives? Has one been approved? How does it compare to other events you have arranged? What does the budget actually need to cover? Set a budget you are comfortable with. Everyone has financial constraints but you need to get the best value for your spend.

Specialist Support – Of course, there are many venue finding specialists you can call upon who will know the ins and outs of hundreds of potential venues. These companies can help reduce the aggravation, time and hopefully cost in finding & booking your venue. Be sure you provide a full brief as to your requirements, which could include:

Venue style and service quality
Does the venue have a high level of standards and ethics
Accommodation proximity
Quality of food and beverage services
AV production support
Availability of meeting space, activity rooms, discussion space and break out areas
Specific room dimensions, capacities, ceiling heights, natural daylight and lift access etc
Compliancy with the Disability Discrimination Act
Dietary requirements; kosher, halal, gluten-free, vegan etc?
Availability of team building activities, florists, entertainment and games for after dinner, etc
Does the venue provide creative production services and inspiration for themed events?

Venue Promotion

Building an effective venue-marketing plan is like sowing a field for a successful crop. There are certain methods that are absolutely necessary. You can tweak a little here and there adding your own special methods as long as you include the main components’

Distributing seeds instead of planting them in one place by not just reaching people individually and telling them what your venue does or has is a tough way to do it and an uphill battle. Instead thinking of each person you interact with, as someone who can carry the seed of your venue to someone else is valuable. Your goal shouldn’t be just to convince them, it’s to give them some way, large or small to carry your venue message forward.

How are you as a venue making things happen and distributing the message? Do you…..

Blog – demonstrating your venue industry awareness, expertise, knowledge and establish yourself as a recognised venue industry voice connecting to the topics of the moment.

Send tactical e-shots & newsletters – To reach out and engage with your audience, telling them about your venue’s successes, latest events at your venue, your venues new features, the venues new services or even the venues new staff. Also to solidify your current client relationships, strengthen your venue ‘brand’ and keep your venue constantly in the public eye.

Strategically Advertise – With calculated planning, compelling copywriting and powerful messaged advertising design for your entire venue advertising campaigns. Making sure it is tailored to appeal to your target market using compelling and strategic design, graphics and messaging to entice a reaction, an enquiry and a venue booking.

Design your marketing collateral tactically – Making sure your brochure and direct mail pieces truly reflect and delivers your venue’s image, values and core services. Creating interactive elements such as incentivised response devices for data capture and the use of enticing formats and tactile materials.

Stand out at Exhibitions – to distinguish and differentiate your venue amongst all the other venues doing the same thing. Making sure your stand fascinates, captivates, generates interest, interacts with your audiences, creates the WOW factor and leaves a compelling impression on your visitor.

Optimise your Website – incorporating strategic, valuable keywords & phrases that relate specifically to your industry so your prospective clients find your website ahead of your competitors and integrate strategic creative designs, high impact copywriting and a fully comprehensive statistics area to gather that all-important marketing data.

For More Information & Design Inc’s Portfolio click here

How to … Find a venue / Promote a venue is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Search engines favour constantly updated websites containing rich and relevant content, so make regular company and industry comment, post news and media bulletins, and link it all with your Twitter and other social media accounts such as LinkedIn to spread a strong and consistent message across all forms of online media.

Of course, if you have already gone through the process of keyword research, you will already have a list of highly relevant & Google-friendly keywords. These can be added into your daily/weekly blogs to significantly increase the flow of visitors to your site. Remember, for every blog story you add, Google will see this as yet another content-rich page on your site. And, the more of these pages you have, the higher up the search rankings you will appear.

Blog systems are fully content manageable and offer detailed controls to ensure each entry is both creative and powerful within search engines. Style text, add images, set links, categorise stories and automatically archive all entries for total ease of navigation for the user.

Blogs have usually been written by one person, although more and more companies are setting up their blog to allow different staff members to contribute. This enables the blog to be kept regularly up-to-date (especially when the bloggers are on blog rota) as well as promoting a different message about the company. This would enable a company to better cover stories relating to product, sales, marketing, manufacture, despatch, aftercare, etc.

And, as already mentioned, the more blog articles with content-rich (key)words, the more Google will find your website when searches are made.

If you are considering a forthcoming creative/marketing project, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s  Information Pack.

How to Create an Effective Website – Blogs is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Following on from my last post about Augmented reality, I thought I’d share with you some examples of this amazing new communication tool.

Making your business card design really stand out.

Even Lego have embraced this tool. See 3D versions of your model before you buy.

A great tool for your next augmented reality hallowe’en party. Swapping heads with a rat.

I’ve got a few magazines in my car. Here’s how to fit a car into a magazine.

The car right in front of you is a Toyota.

Should have gone to the augmented Specsavers.

Bringing your trading cards to life.

Making your tattoos come to life.

You can even try this for yourself. James Alliban’s webpage allows you to print an AR code symbol and try it out on your own webcam. You’ll be amazed.

Augmented reality – some great examples is a post from the Design Inc Blog

It’s not just business cards, but company brochures, magazine advertising & direct mail too. By adding little barcode symbols, which, when viewed through a webcam, come to life, providing more information about the company, the service & the campaign. A single page advert is no longer a single page – it becomes a video, a website, therefore packing so much more into that single page advertising fee.

Even June’s edition of BBC Focus Magazine has been set up to show you just what can be done. Hold the magazine’s front cover up to a webcam and watch what happens on screen. Perhaps if you are an arachnophobe, don’t try it, but the sight of spiders crawling around the page is exciting and bewildering at the same time.

Augmented reality is relevant for many industries – even the fashion world has embraced it. Benetton is using AR for their It’s My Time campaign that kicked off last month, in which it is trying to find models from among the general population.

Adidas, too, has launched trainers with AR symbols in the tongues: hold them to a webcam and you are taken to interactive games on the Adidas site.

Augmented reality – AR, as it has quickly become known – has only recently become a phrase that trips easily off technologists’ lips; yet we’ve been seeing versions of it for quite some time. The idea is straightforward enough: take a real-life scene, or (better) a video of a scene, and add some sort of explanatory data to it so that you can better understand what’s going on, or who the people in the scene are, or how to get to where you want to go.

Sports coverage on TV has been doing it for years: the superimposed winning line in a rowing race orthe swimmer’s name superimposed onto the lane they are in. More recently cricket, tennis, rugby, football and golf have all started to overlay analytic information on top of standard-speed replays – would that ball have hit the stumps, the progress of a rally, the movement of the backs or wingers, the relative flights of shots – to tell you more about what’s going on.

AR took its first lumbering steps into the public arena eight years ago: all that you needed to do was strap on 10kg of computing power – laptop, camera, vision processor – and you could get an idea of what was feasible. The American Popular Science magazine wrote about the idea in 2002 – but the idea of being permanently connected to the internet hadn’t quite jelled at that point.

“AR has been around for ages,” says Andy Cameron, executive director of Fabrica, an interactive design studio which works with Benetton, “maybe going back as far as the 1970s and art installations that overlaid real spaces with something virtual.” He mentions in particular the work of pioneering computer artist Myron Krueger.

What’s changed in the past year is that AR has come within reach of all sorts of developers – and the technology powerful enough to make use of it is owned by millions of people, often in the palms of their hands.

The arrival of powerful smartphones and computers with built-in video capabilities means that you don’t have to wait for the AR effects as you do with TV. They can simply be overlaid onto real life. Step forward Apple’s iPhone, and phones using Google’s Android operating system, both of which are capable of overlaying information on top of a picture or video.

Within the small world of AR, one of the best-known apps is that built by Layar, which – given a location, and using the iPhone 3GS’s inbuilt compass to work out the direction you’re pointing the phone – can give you a “radar map” of details such as Wikipedia information, Flickr photos, Google searches and YouTube videos superimposed onto a picture you’ve taken of the scene.

More usefully, Yelp offers an augmented reality application that will show you ratings and reviews for a restaurant before you walk in – the sort of thing that could make restaurants quiver with delight, or shudder in horror.

Going further, the application can get personal, very personal. A prototype application demonstrated at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February showed the scary future. Point the phone at a person and, using facial recognition software, it can pull their information off the web and attach details – their Twitter username, Facebook page, preferences and other facts – and stick them, rather weirdly, into the air around their head (viewed through your phone, of course).

Social networking may never be the same again.

Augmented Reality – the new communication is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Market intelligence and message development at these planning stages can help exhibitors to make the most of the commitment to attend. Apart from the obvious attraction of some December sunshine, many smaller companies who offer highly specialised services are investing in shared-stand accommodation. This can be very cost-effective as not only enabling the face-to-face on stand contact, but in participation as show exhibitor enabling additional supporting guerrilla activities on the show fringe. The organisers of most aviation industry trade fairs like MEBA encouraging and accommodating creative participation as business seeds are sown.

The design of exhibition space usually falls into two clear camps, the ‘stakeout your territory approach’ all walls and stools with flags and towers at each corner, demonstrating the maximum acreage of your expensive floor space – but a little intimidating to approach as your visitors may be fearful of being rounded upon by lurking salespeople. Better perhaps to design an innovative stand with a seamless boundary transition that blends into the surrounded aisles – the prospect then being drawn onto the stand by the ambient feeling of space and calm. Actually arriving right in the middle of your brand and message without even being aware that they have strayed into the zone! Gotcha.

Design Inc at MEBA 2010 Dubai is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Wenlock and Mandeville, created by iris

On 19th May London 2012 finally revealed the mascots that will help characterise the capital’s Olympic experience. The futuristic part alien one-eyed figures, called Wenlock and Mandeville, were unveiled at an east London school.

The mascots will soon be everywhere, with merchandise going on sale in July to mark two years to the London 2012 opening ceremony.

Chosen from more than 100 designs, including animated teapots, pigeons, lions and a Big Ben with arms and legs. The characters can be customised into recognisable costumes and even celebrity identities due to their digital potential.

Design Inc Event & Venue Marketing specialist Darren Scurville commented “There will be numerous public and private events relating to the 2012 Olympics leading up to the games including conferences, seminars, roadshows, product & promotional launches and corporate hospitality events heavily tied in with investor relation events to name a few. Undoubtedly the mascots will be integrated into these events and even required with the “ceremonial scissors” to hand to launch and promote the events. “The brand & Identity of the mascots will also be heavily incorporated into the design for the event marketing & promotional literature.

He added “We are very excited and looking forward to the many ‘event’ based communication & design projects that we are currently discussing with many of our clients in providing compelling design and effective event marketing strategy for their networking events, experiential campaigns, product launches, conferences, tradeshows, roadshow campaigns, exhibitions, hospitality events and the many other events that will be incorporating the theme of the Olympic Games to promote their events.

He continued “ The key challenge will be to create the association and incorporate the spirit of the Olympic games in all the design & strategy elements and succeed in overcoming the strict design & marketing guidelines in place. Also to navigate successfully through the minefield of the brand protection rules set out for all non-official sponsors. He commented “We have been researching this area intensively and have some very creative and strategic ways around this that can be implemented for events, email & direct mail campaigns and all online marketing campaigns.

London 2012 Mascot Branding …. On your marks, get set, go for your 2012 Olympic Events & Promotions? is a post from the Design Inc Blog

With 2012 on the horizon, professional sportsmen and women know there is nothing more detrimental than carrying out dead weight. So, for those considering a weight loss program, accurately assessing your body fat percentage is one of the most important measurements you can take.

Moreover, with the knowledge that excess body fat is directly linked with a number of serious medical conditions, including heart disease, diabetes and certain cancers, accurate measurement and continual monitoring is crucial.

Founded in 1923, Tanita Corporation is an ethical health care product manufacturer. They are the supplier of choice for body composition monitors, and supply their monitors to fitness and health organisations, surgeries, clinics as well as to the end consumer. Tanita monitors provide instant measurement, not just of weight but also:

• Body Fat
• Visceral Fat
• Body Water
• Muscle Mass
• Bone Mineral Mass
• Daily Energy Requirement

With the London Olympics only 2 years away, Tanita Corporation made the decision to push their brand and products further into Europe through international print advertising for both consumer and trade campaigns. And in March 2010 following a creative pitch from several marketing communications agencies, Tanita Europe selected Design Inc as their preferred partner.

Our winning creative promotes an aspirational message: healthy bodies tattooed with a ‘food packaging ingredients’ list.

Design Inc Marketing Consultant David Parker says, “We wanted to show just how delicately balanced the human body is and show just what the healthy body is made of. We are all made of the same stuff, although of course, the amounts differ from one person to the next. Our creatives provide the message that Tanita body composition monitors accurately keep your health on track to what is right for you. The new Tanita advertising campaign has been designed to provide a simple, strong and on-brand message. We look forward in ensuring this campaign is delivered over the next two years.”

The Design Inc team were involved with all aspects of this advertising design campaign including:

• Creative & Marketing Strategy
• Creative Design
• Artworking
• Copy Writing
• Photo Shoot
• Photo Manipulation
• Models
• Project Management

If you are considering a forthcoming creative/marketing project, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s  Information Pack.

What are you made of? – Fitness versus fatness. is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Whether your business is actually based and sells online or simply marketed online, an effective website is your most important communications asset. There are many elements to the location, design, build and population and promotion of your site. All of which present both opportunities and threats. Opportunities that is, to get it very right, and the real threat of getting it very wrong.

Here is our guide to the elements; can you tick all the boxes? First off, what is the desired response from your user? If you can answer that question instantly and have the resources in place to react to that response, then you know what we are working to achieve.

If you are considering a forthcoming creative/marketing project, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s  Information Pack.

Design Inc’s guide to a sucessful website is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Today’s Farnborough is a shop window for the World’s aerospace industry. Ensuring that a presence at the show maximises the return on cost requires detailed planning, Prospect and customer relationship management, hospitality, some ear-to the ground market intelligence and guerrilla tactics.

Getting a hearing in a crowded room, full of competing vendors can be a challenge. However getting a large chunk of your target audience in one place at one time is still a logistical opportunity to be made the most of.

Design Inc help clients focus on the event attendees that count and put together tailored packages to support the dialogue and engagement between visitors and hosts.  You may have existing clients to entertain, prospects who are about to become clients to close deals with, you will certainly have contacts you will want to network with and colleagues you will want to exchange best practice and insights with.

As a creative design company providing online marketing strategies, including corporate identity creation, digital email marketing campaigns and corporate video presentations. It Is not too late to create some Farnborough related PR interest, client hospitality or sponsorship campaigns in connection with the networking events, seminars or the exciting Futures Day aimed at getting young minds thinking about flight and space engineering.

Everyone has a favourite ‘Farnborough’ story or memory, what ‘s yours? My own is borrowed from dad I’m afraid – but witnessing a DH Mosquito flypast at zero feet with BOTH props feathered takes some beating in my book!

Please leave a comment; we’d love to hear some myths too!

Farnborough Fly Past is a post from the Design Inc Blog