The Blaze Blog

Without wanting to sound all ‘bah humbug’ and somewhat Scrooge-like, doesn’t Christmas seem come earlier every year? The decorations are up in John Lewis, Christmas treats are on the shelves in Sainsbury’s and my mother has asked after what I’d like to receive under the tree.

In our world of marketing, Christmas can often start during a summer heat wave.  This year, I sat sweating in the office, daydreaming of picnics and summer barbeques whilst chatting to our mailing team about their Christmas plans.

So, if you’re only just starting to think about your Christmas business plans it’s time to get a move on as there is more to do than just hunt down a decent staff party venue.

Diaries – have you ordered your 2012 diaries for distribution to customers?  If not, place that order asap to secure a pre-Christmas delivery.  As soon as you get your own 2012 diary, make a note for August to plan this a little earlier next year to allow yours to be the first diary that people receive.

Advent calendars – we all love a bit of chocolate and our clients often order advent calendars as giveaways.  The cut off date for a November delivery has already passed us by, but there may still be a last minute deal to be had if you’re happy to take a consignment in the first week of December.

Christmas Cards – Now is the perfect time to commission your own-branded Christmas cards, there is just enough time to design, print, choose your envelopes and (depending upon the length of your client list!) handwrite a message.

Christmas shutdown – We may all be longing for that lovely extended Christmas break, but not everyone is as lucky as us. Let your customers know in good time your shutdown days.  Email is the most common way of doing this, look at booking it in now with your agency to make sure you can get your broadcast date of choice.

Branded Christmas Gifts – many companies give their clients gifts at this time of year, did you know we could organise these for you? It’s not too late to order them, there’s a wide range, but wine and chocolates are always popular.

We hope this list helps with your Christmas preparations, mince pie anyone?

If you liked is post, you may also enjoy reading Why internal communication is important to your business.

So you’ve spent weeks and weeks preparing your website and it’s ready to go live.

The process started all that time ago as a long meeting in a hot stuffy office where the site’s requirements were thoroughly hashed out. You then moved on to negotiate costings with your web designers and developers, whittling away at the spec until the job fitted into your budget.

Now you can see the fruits of those long long laborious hours spent staring at a blank screen whilst you were meant to be producing copy. You’re proud of how the copy flows despite the keywords you’ve discreetly nestled in to boost your SEO.

The design is fantastic, it even looks like a ‘real’ website and at long last you can approve the demo site and tick this big task of your to-do list and move onto your next juicy project.

But… STOP!!

We don’t need to tell you that your website is (arguably!) the most important communication tool your company has. As the first point of contact for most of your customers, stakeholders and even future employees it’s important that it’s spot on, from the off.

We produce websites for a wide range of clients and always recommend that thorough checks are made before a site is approved. There would be nothing worse than all those hours of work and money wasted because visitors can’t see how to contact you or disappear after following  a link which doesn’t open in a new window.

To save you that heartache, here is our checklist of key points you should consider before asking your web developers to set your new site live:

1. Check that all the links work (and where relevant open in a new window)

2. Proof the copy. Then proof it again! (especially headlines, subtitles and footer copy)

3. Has a contact form been included, does it work? And more importantly, is the correct person receiving the notification emails?

4. Are all the telephone numbers featured correct?

5. Has your analytics packages been set up?

6. Can you navigate back to the homepage from every page?

7. Are all the pictures correct and free of watermarks?

8. Is your registered company information displayed clearly?

9. Have you included links to your social media platforms?

10. Have you informed your web developers of ALL the domains that need repointing?

11. Do all downloads included work?

12. Have you tested the accessibility functionality to ensure contrast/text size changes operate as intended?

Once you’ve made these final checks, you’re ready to launch your website and sit back to admire all your hard work. Congratulations!

If you enjoyed this post you may also enjoy reading What are the most important things to check before sending an email campaign? or Why when it comes to websites big isn’t necessarily better

Diet Coke's Love It Light Campaign

My boyfriend and I sat in the cinema last night eagerly awaiting the start of a film, we’re the kind of people that actually enjoy the adverts shown before the main attraction so we were sat watching intently.

In a dark auditorium, adverts somehow seem better, brighter, bolder, more engaging.  The cost of advertising tends to sort the wheat from the chaff so usually we’re presented with an impressive array of the best that above-the-line advertising has to offer.

Unfortunately, on this occasion we were let down and treated rather badly by one brand in particular, Coca Cola. Within just 120 seconds of air time Coca Cola managed to alienate both me and my boyfriend through the use of patronising gender stereotypes in their adverts.

We saw Coke Zero’s ‘The Impossible Made Possible’ advert which follows the conventions of a traditional action movie. There was a big hunky, sports playing hero, a beautiful lady in need of rescuing and a race against time. We were also given speedboats, helicopters, adventure sports and an explosion, because explosions really excite men, right?

Next came an ad from Diet Coke’s Love it Light campaign that features 3 puppet ladies with lollipop heads and anatomically impossible waists. They totter into a shop to find a handbag, and upon not finding a suitable item, take out chainsaws and flame throwers to produce one. Because women really pay attention if you mention handbag shopping, right?

I love adverts that inspire, that excite, that take you on a journey, but I hate being shown untruths and more than anything I hate being patronised, particularly by advertisers.

I’m not sure if Coca Cola really believe that women are puppets obsessed with high street consumption or that men really aren’t able to process information unless presented with it in the simplest terms – but that is how I was left feeling. I felt patronised and disappointed that one of the largest brands in the world believe it’s necessary to revert to gender stereotypes in order to communicate with their audience.

Have you seen any other big brands who rely on gender stereotypes in their advertising? Please feel free to name and shame them here!

Any marketer’s job description requires ‘a skilled multitasker’, somebody who is able to work on many projects at once, who can do many things at once. And, I’m sure I’m not alone in enjoying working in this way, it makes me feel efficient, it makes me feel capable and it makes me feel in control… most of the time!

As a marketing communications agency we’re busy, really busy, sometimes scarily busy. Yesterday I worked on about 25 different projects for as many clients in an eight hour day, and this isn’t unusual. I went from managing exhibition stand design to print adverts to HTML campaigns to brochure printing to copywriting all without missing a beat.

On days like this I often find myself talking on the phone, checking my emails and keeping one eye out on Twitter for some exciting titbit. This is expert multitasking, right?

Wrong, says a study by Stanford University. Back in 2009 they conducted an experiment which found that contrary to popular opinion people who completed multiple tasks in a variety of media simultaneously actually performed poorer than those who performed one task at a time.

These findings were supported by a study published earlier this year in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which found that short term memory is actually hindered by juggling too many technological tasks at once.

The assumption was that when multitasking, we retain distracting information in our short term memory and so find it harder to focus on the project in front of us. Basically, we’ve stuffed our short term memory to the seams with information we neither need nor want at the moment.

I certainly find spreading myself over email, landline phone, mobile phone, Twitter and Facebook a discomforting way to work, not only that, a dissatisfying way to work. Just as the studies suggest, I feel full of information irrelevant to the task ahead of me and distracted by what I’ve seen or what I think I might see if I just check all my information portals more time.

So I have made a promise to myself, do one thing at a time.

Now, when I’m on the phone, I am mindfully on the phone listening to what the caller has to say. When I’m talking to a colleague, I don’t check my emails at the same time. When I’m watching television, I don’t keep one eye on my Twitter feed to see what everyone else is saying about the programme. I have found that by doing less multitasking not only can I get more done, but I can work on more different projects!

I started this blog post by saying multitasking makes me feel in control, and it does, but strangely, avoiding technological multitasking makes me feel more in control. In fact, I’ve discovered that by focusing fully on what I’m doing, I’m enjoying my work more.

If you enjoyed this post you may also like to read Mindfulness, Stress Reduction Without The White Lycra or A day in the life of an agency account manager

Avoid making embarrassing mistakes in email campaigns

Email is a fantastic medium for the marketer, low in cost, fast responses and easily trackable – what’s not to like? In the current economic climate where we’re required to deliver greater results with smaller marketing budgets email is certainly proving invaluable to any marketing campaign.

We’re seeing clients relying on eshots more than ever before, and to put this into perspective this week we have produced only 1 direct mail campaign to 5 email campaigns!

Although the medium has many advantages, these positives can sometimes be its downfall. As a fast response medium, clients often want to get it out as quickly as possible so that the results can be benefited from immediately. There is certainly a logic in this thinking, but we would always recommend delaying your email by an hour, a morning, even a day if you don’t have time to proof it properly before it is distributed.

We’ve all seen eshots delivered into our inbox with a misspelt subject line (the horror!), links that don’t work (oh the pain!) or just plain jumbled (thank God that wasn’t me!!) and immediately dismiss the brand thinking ‘if they can’t be bothered to get the message right I don’t want to know’.

So how do you avoid these horrors happening to your email communications? And how do you avoid alienating your key audience with a single misspelt word? By checking, checking again, and then asking somebody else to check it just to make sure!

To help you complete your pre-launch proofing process we’ve created a check list of key items to keep you out of hot water:

1. Has all the copy been proofed?
2. Is your call to action clear?
3. Are you using the correct data?
4. Is the subject line correct?
5. Is the ‘from’ information correct?
6. Have you checked that the key messages are visible even if the recipient’s email client doesn’t download the images?
7. Has a text version been created?
8. Has the text version been formatted?
9. Does every link work?
10. Is there a mirror page link? (ie if you can’t see the below please click here to view it online)
11. Is there an opt out option?
12. Have the company registration details been included (as per your letterhead)?

If you follow these simple checking points prior to sending out an email campaign you’ll reduce the risk of nasty surprises significantly and avoid the shame of having to send out a second eshot immediately apologising for mistakes in the first.

We hope this check list proves useful – happy emailing!

If you enjoyed reading this post, you may also be interested to read Tricks of the trade – 6 top tips to stretch your marketing budget or 6 Steps to Effective Direct Mail