It’s easy to get a bit disillusioned with award ceremonies. You head there with a nomination, hoping that this might be your year. Sometimes it is and you come back not just with the gong, but the respect of your peers too. But sometimes it’s not to be. And while it’s tempting to shrug your shoulders, pretend you’re not really bothered or that some terrible injustice has befallen you, actually it’s always better just to hold your hands up and say well done.

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Long hair, stubble, drives a fast car… no it’s not a rock star, it’s one of Manchester’s coolest and nicest Photographer’s, Tim Ainsworth. It’s been a while since he’s done some work for us… probably a few years, but we’re pleased to say he’s delivered a fantastic looking job for us for Swinton’s Cashback Plus.

The concept for Cashback Plus involved creating a clean graphic world populated by all the things Swinton can get you insurance for… the main idea being that the more insurance you take out with Swinton… the more Cashback you’ll get.

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I like handy guides… especially ones that stay with you for years because of how incredibly useful they are. One such guide is Alan Rosenspan’s 101 ways to improve your response, which quite frankly borders on being invaluable!

In the guide, which you can download here, Mr Rosenspan shares with us little tips that prompt people to respond to Direct Marketing communications… thus increasing the effectiveness of marketing spend.

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We’ve cracked open the Champers and fired off some party poppers in celebration of being shortlisted for our Swinton Mystery Tipper campaign for the IPA Effectiveness Awards 2009.

The IPA Effectiveness Awards are recognised by agencies and clients as Adland’s most rigorous awards scheme because entrants have to prove to a jury of experienced clients that their communications strategies have worked in hard business terms.

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‘It’s not what you know, it’s who you know’.

This was almost certainly the case for me when trying to find a placement for my year out from university. It had proved much more difficult than I anticipated, possibly due to companies being under pressure during the recession.

After numerous phone calls and e-mails I was still struggling to secure even a two-week placement, until a friend (Lee Fairhurst) mentioned that a marketing company he works for were looking for placement students. A phone call, and an interview later, I had got myself a month’s work placement at Red C.

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The N50. Beautiful.

There’s a lovely quote by John Masefield from his poem ‘Sea Fever’ that I’m incredibly fond of. It goes ‘And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by’. Every time I hear it, it reminds me of my own thoughts with regards Creativity. In my case it’s ‘And all I ask for is a pad and a pen’. Or to be more specific… a Pentel N50 Marker and Goldline Layout Pad.

Computers are wonderful things. They have given the masses the power to be creative in ways that we never dreamed. Yet without an idea, all that technology simply goes to waste. And where does that idea start… for me it starts with that pad and a pen, locked in a room with my Creative Partner giving birth to seemingly endless ideas.

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Direct mail may still hold a slender lead as the most dominant form of Direct Marketing, but things are definitely changing. Recent technological developments are giving marketers more and more opportunities to get their message directly to their audience. In years to come both mobile marketing and social networking may be the most effective forms of Direct Marketing, but right now the biggest rival to the DM pack is undoubtedly email marketing.

The practice of contacting customers and prospects through email has really taken off in recent years. In fact, The Direct Marketing Association estimated that US firms alone spent over $400 million on email marketing in 2006 – and the technique has only grown in popularity since. The reason for this is simple… email marketing has a number of benefits over traditional DM and door drops. Read more…

At Red C we put a lot of work into formulating the perfect email strategy to maximise response from recipients. So it’s important when it comes to producing the actual email creative that it is written and designed in a way that helps promote click-throughs.

Many companies go to a Direct Marketing Agency like Red C to do their DM packs. They then go to a Digital Agency to do their Emails. This is where they are going wrong. Today’s Direct Marketing Agencies are far better equipped to drive response and hit ROI targets from Emails than Digital Agencies are.

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Relevance and creative impact are the keys to generating a better response from busy HR managers. In most medium and larger companies, HR professionals carry a lot of responsibility, which makes them a target for many of us wishing to promote our conferences, training seminars, employee benefits, recruitment and professional services.  They act as a conduit, taking company-wide responsibility for key budgets.  If you want to get a member of staff onto a training course or to attend a seminar, you need to get buy-in from the HR Director.

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