Business Innovation Group (BIG) Event Lunch

On Tuesday I attended a lunch held by the Business Innovation Group (BIG) supported by Greenwich University. It was a chance to network as well as hear what the KCC head of procurement John Tunnicliff, had to say.

It was an interesting talk and a broad selection of businesses attended which I think is healthy for networking. The funny thing is I always seem to be sitting next to another graphic design company.

Getting an overview of procurement was good, John Tunnicliff was very open and honest. On one level it almost seems pointless for an SME like ourselves trying to tender for public work, even if you know you could deliver the contract.

The criteria that the procurement dept use to cut their list is so narrow e.g. businesses turning over £2 - £3 millions, in design there are only a handful, and if they have weighted this at 60% then any other criteria within the PQQ has a tough time to catch up to bring your score level with competitors that do match completely.

So what did I learn?

• Check out whether your product or service is required. (some services are tied up at a national level)
• Who buys your service/product within the organisation (their name)

Secondly...

• Big organisations always seem to win
• Find out who has won the big contracts
• Contact the winning contractor or even the sub-contractor
• Find out how to get on their sub-contractor list

This is by no means a de-facto list but his talk made it clear why we don't get past the PQQ stage and we are probably wasting our time going for the main bids, we should spend more time identifying the needs for our services further down the procurement chain.

Peter Gregory Artist

We have recently completed a website for Peter Gregory. He's an artist and copyist. If you want full size Rothko reproduction in your house he's your man.

The site is based on a template we have produced for small business with a limited budget.

UK graphic designers

UK Graphic Design Companies - List of UK graphic designers offering web, print advertising (brochure, leaflet, flyer) and corporate brand identity design services. Get free quote.

Great shopping centre marketing

So what makes a great shopping centre campaign?

Some of our most successful and satisfying design and creative work has been for shopping centres.

In a world where there are so many shopping centres and high street malls with similar shops and services, I believe you have to give the centre a personality. A personality that stands out from the competition. A brand if you will, a place people have a desire to shop and are inspired to shop.

You have to communicate with the core customers on their level and be honest. Not every centre can be Bluewater or Westfield London. If you have an honest, inspiring and eye-catching campaign you will see footfall increase, basket spend go up and advertising recall go through the roof.

Our campaign for The Liberty Shopping Centre in Romford was so successful the owner sold the centre for a huge profit.

In this case the campaign research showed advertising recall was high and people thought we were advertising in place's that actually we were not. 

So we had a great eye catching campaign that the customers responded to and the client loved (we developed it for 5 years). 

It's success is also down to the marketing mix, talking to the customers through proven marketing channels. In this case we used, bus backs, mega rears and bus sides, 48 sheet posters plus seasonal press advertising. We also produced some really exciting direct mail.

When we produced this campaign the web was not so prominent, so it was brave for the client to have very little copy or logos on the advertising, but this allowed it to really stand out.

Now with the web you can push this even further as all the detail can now be put on the website, e.g. opening hours and store information. This allows the advertising to work much harder at inspiring the consumer.

You can see more of our shopping centre work on our main site.

Free guide to branding and writing a creative brief

We have composed a 10 point guide to help you brand your business, and communicate your idea effectively to your designer or design agency. So you get what you exactly what you want.

Download it here

A Chris Cardell email a day...

...keeps the spam filter busy!

Chris Cardell Entrepreneur extradinaire sends me an email nearly everyday, I knew what I was getting into when I signed up and hit the submit button on registration form. I think only Amazon send me more email.


His summit has just ended and now he is sending emails asking why I didn't go and what I missed. Friends tell me it was good and interesting but there was a lot of up selling to the next tier of his program, plus some good anecdotes.


I have kind of gone off business conferences like this after I went to see Sir Tom (Kwik Fit)  Farmer. He said that he would sign up to every lecture and conference going and all he would take away from them were the anecdotes. Which were only serving him now he was on the speaking circuit.

I have no great opinion of Chris and his techniques but  I thought would share you this anti email he sent - which was quite good fun. In fact it was the only one I read to the end (his email are notoriously as long as a book).

It's all good marketing though but as a designer I just can't stand his website! Chris if you read this maybe we can help you with that.


Dear Jake Shepherd,

I’m bored sending emails with all the reasons you should attend the Entrepreneur Summit….we’ve only got 47 places left and tomorrow (Wednesday) is the final early booking deadline that lets you save up to £800.

So I thought for a change, I would give you all the reasons NOT to come to the Summit. Who knows, you may have already thought of some of them. 

So here they are – 12 Reasons not to come to the Entrepreneur Summit:

1 Don’t come to the Summit if you can afford not to

2 Don’t book your place at the Summit if you’re a dabbler and won’t implement the 100 plus business growth strategies you’re not going to experience.

3 Don’t come to the Summit if you think I send too many emails. You’ll find that most of the millionaires in the room send too many emails – and three days with them will really annoy you. Instead, you can use the link at the end of this email to unsubscribe from my email list.

4 Don’t book your place at the Summit if you think that there’s something wrong with making money.

5 Don’t come to the Summit if you’re not at least a bit skeptical about my claims that you can double your profits in 12 months or less and you’re not willing to put that skepticism to the test.

6 Don’t come to the Summit if you believe that the tide of the economy has turned and that things are about to take off and there’s no need to master the most powerful marketing strategies in the world to immunise your business in the year ahead.

7 Don’t book your place today if the idea that there’s an Entrepreneurial ‘elite’ in this country who make a fortune while most struggle, offends you. You’ll become part of that elite in the first hour – and that might not be appropriate.

8 Don’t come to the Entrepreneur Summit if your website is attracting too many customers

9 Don’t come to The Entrepreneur Summit just to prove me wrong and claim my £15,000 Guarantee cos you’ll decide to stay and that’ll mess up your plans.

10 Did you know the human brain can’t process negatives?

11 Don’t come to the Entrepreneur Summit if you don’t have a huge, wonderful sense of curiosity just to see what all this is about, just on the off chance that maybe I do know how to create the financial certainty and freedom that you so deeply deserve.

12 And don’t come to the Entrepreneur Summit if you haven’t got a sense of HUMOUR!

Advertorial for property week

We just designed this advertorial for Property Week for Estama.

It can be a a bit of a battle getting something like this past the editing team. They hate anything that is well designed and looks like a magazine article, but hey that's the point.

They used to call this long copy advertising, it don't seem to be so popular now. If you have a some good copy and its written well and engaging they really have impact.