Simon Landi

Simon set off with his wife, two other intrepid walkers and the dog, completing the 34-mile Sandstone Trail in Cheshire, taking almost 12 hours and raising over £1,100 for The Christie.

Mark Hope

Mark, together with five others from Northern Digitals, embarked on a ‘Manchester to Blackpool’ 62-mile charity bike ride, raising over £1,400 for The Christie. To give himself an extra challenge, Mark rode an additional 38 miles home, making a total of 100 miles!

Kirstie Fisher

Kirstie took part in the 13-mile Shine Manchester night walk for Cancer Research, raising over £200 to bring light to the lives of those affected by cancer.

Helen Holmes

Helen put on her dancing shoes in Singing in the Rain at the Oldham Coliseum, in aid of Francis House Children’s Hospice, raising £2,000. Francis House Children’s Hospice, based in Didsbury, provides care for children and young adults with life threatening conditions.

Access

We’ve created a website “pro bono” for Children Today, a charity that provides grants for vital, life-changing equipment for children and young people with sickness and disability across the UK. The website is due to go live later this month.

At Access, we are proud of our commitment to supporting worthwhile causes and community-based projects. So far this year, Access have contributed to raising over £4,700 for numerous charities and counting!

Did you know that these lovely chaps are blowing into a Vuvuzela?

The Vuvuzela

It’s a large horn-type instrument used to create a cacophony of monotone rumblings during African sporting events. If you’re planning to watch any of the World Cup, chances are you’ll be familiar with the sound it makes in a few days time. Unlike Samba drums which are used sporadically during games in South America, these things are used constantly for the full 90 minutes.

It’s certainly making shockwaves. Massive amounts of pressure have been put on FIFA to ban the instrument, not only because of the annoyance factor but also in light of recent reports which claim it can ‘permanently damage hearing’. FIFA duly responded by giving the Vuvuzela its seal of approval.

Fair play I say. It may be excruciating on the ears (fact) but how wrong would it have been to finally give the World Cup to an African nation, only to tell them not to host it in their true spirit and tradition? Plus, if it drowns out some of the dross we’re forced to listen to from the commentary box, I say ‘hoorah for the Vuvuzela!!’

Experience the sound of a Vuvuzela for yourself…

Access were recently featured in the Manchester Evening News for our latest campaign for the Welsh Assembly Government. This is high profile campaign that tackles sexist behavior and violence against women.

For more information visit the “One step too far” website.

Where does harmless end and abusive begin?

Eventful Escapes with Visit Chester & Cheshire

And as you can see VCC have been busy bees themselves with a media launch taking place at London’s Euston Station. It all went down very well apparently – and the ‘Eventful Escapes’ branding we created for the campaign has received recognition from Virgin Trains who commented how much they liked our artwork.

Roman Centurions at London's Euston Station

Roman Centurions at London's Euston Station

What do we really want?

Having given it some thought, what we really wanted was:

• accurate and reactive to updates through the day
• central and web-based – save paper, remote access, same list for everyone
• very easy to use for all members of the business
• simple permissions to allow people to jump in on jobs and make updates
• email notifications when tasks are updated
• suitable for a range of work types like bugs reports, mini development tasks and large web projects
• we may also like to roll it out to different areas of the business like the Design department
• follow a simple logic of clients have projects, projects have tasks

What’s out there already?

We considered all kinds of existing systems like Basecamp, Lighthouse and activeCollab, amongst others. Our main complaint was that most of the systems were too complex and it too time consuming to create jobs on the system; we desperately wanted to make it quick and easy for everyone, otherwise people wouldn’t use it!

Do it with Drupal?

As a very Drupal-focused agency, we started to look at how we could do this with Drupal; the thinking being that we have the know-how to customise a Drupal solution. So we looked at Open Atrium and a whole bunch of modules you can just download and add to Drupal itself (comparison here). Again, we found these just too complicated or geared too much towards IT or Software technical support tickets. But one module stood at as being very close to what we needed  – Case Tracker.

Case Tracker was good (read ’simple’) but needed some tweaking

In Case Tracker, we had found a very good starting point. It is small collection of Drupal 6.0 modules that handles the Project-Task relationship, permissions, updates comments and email notifications. All we needed to do was tweak the views, add in clients via taxonomy, build a theme and make the log-in system more pleasant. The final product is actually very usable!

Is it working in the business?

We gradually phased in what we refer to as ‘Access Task Manager’ to the business over a few weeks. It’s been up and running for two months and so far the feedback has been very positive. Users have found it very intuitive, very little training has been required. All the  ‘can you just do this’ emails disappeared overnight and turned in to well-formatted requests on Task Manager. Follow-up comments and updates to the task are centrally stored – very handy when a key member of the team is out of the office.

Download Task Manager for yourself

We love ‘Task Manager’ so much that we have added the code for you to download here on our blog – Task Manager – Drupal 6 and Case Tracker made better

Screen shot of the main task list. Download and try Task Manager for yourself

Screen shot of the main task list (currently displaying one open task)

View more screengrabs on our Flickr account.

What is Task Manager?

Task Manager is a Drupal 6 installation with various contrib modules already installed and setup ready to be used as a task management or ticketing system. The configuration is particularly weighted towards the requirements of a digital agency but with a little configuration change this could be used in other environments where a user needs to raise tasks/tickets against projects for one or more clients.

Requirements

The system requirements are the same as Drupal – the gist being PHP 5 and MySQL 4+.

This is a dump-down of an existing website (files and a SQL dump) and not an installer. To install the database you will need access to MySQL at command line, phpMyAdmin or something like Sequel Pro or SQLyog to import the database file.

Download

Download Access Task Manager v1.0 (.tgz / 5.5mb) »

Legal: There are all kinds of reasons why Access can’t fully support Task Manager as a product and so you are using this release ‘as is’. We accept no responsibilities for the quality of the software or any other problems you have. Feel free to customise Task Manager as much as you like but be aware that it is a combination of code from the Drupal Project, various contributed modules (especially Case Tracker) and the CKEditor. By downloading you are agreeing to respect the individual licenses of the contained code and not to moan at us if this doesn’t work like you expected.

Installation

Just take a look at installation readme inside the download package.

We hope you can make some use of this code. We’d love to see your comments below!

Connected: The Amazing Power of Social Networks and How they Shape Our Lives

I’ve had a book on my desk for some time now, called “Connected (The Amazing Power of Social Networks and How they Shape our Lives)”. It was sent to me by the ‘nice and bespectacled people at Rubber Republic‘. (It conjures up images of them filing away books in a quiet library somewhere). I don’t know if they are bespectacled, but I do think they’re nice – they sent me a free book

Rubber Republic are specialists in viral and social media campaigns, seeding ’stuff’ (content) to influential audiences, getting ideas to spread online: Stuff like this.

The book idea follows the same simple ’seeding’ idea that works so effectively online – send the book to an initial group of people, make them feel special by getting the book first, let them read the book, and (hopefully) get them to pass it on to somebody else, distributing the message and exposure to the original sender. The difference being that with offline the idea is never really going to go ‘viral’ – it’s not possible for somebody to read the book and then send it to multiple friends – so the sharing element is a much slower process. (It’s quite a thick book too).

Send to a friend 'feature' - presumably by hand or post

It has had an effect though, and probably the desired effect. Without even having read the book, I’d already told several colleagues about the nice book idea, been back on the Rubber Republic blog and started following them on Twitter. The offline ’stuff’, in this case the book, has therefore definitely had a ‘return’ and has converted into an opinion that’s gone online (you’re reading it). It’s also had a much longer lasting effect on me than receiving something digital would have – it’s much more personal and intimate than receiving something digitally usually is.

This really does illustrate the power of including Direct as part of the marketing mix, and that offline and online can work really well together as part of integrated marketing campaigns.

So, thanks for the book Rubber Republic, and when’s the next one coming? And if only you’d include a ‘Send To A Friend’ on your Rubber Bullet email I’d probably pass that on too!

Now who wants the book next?

Mark

mark@accessadvertising.co.uk
@markhopetweets

Recently (OK not that recently), I was lucky enough to hear Sienne Veit speak at the How Do Mobile Marketing Conference in Manchester. Sienne is Social and Mobile Commerce Development Manager at Marks and Spencer and had plenty of interesting insights to share about the challenges for brands like M&S working across new online channels, such as mobile. She was a pleasure to listen to and was clearly very passionate about weaving Mobile and Social into everything M&S do.

This isn’t the reason I remember her talk. The thing that really stuck in my mind was her use of frilly knickers. Or rather, her use of a great analogy, illustrating the M&S approach to introducing mobile marketing, and how it relates to the attitudes of their customers.

For the most part the typical M&S customer wants to pick up a plain pack of white briefs. They’re consistent, comfortable, good quality, dependable, great value for money and the design is rarely changed – women know exactly what they’re getting and they’re comfortable with that (I can’t vouch for the knickers but their plain white T-shirts are similar). But, every now and again, they’ll want to try something a bit different. Something that feels a bit special, a bit sexier and a bit more glamorous. Most of the time they just go for what they know, but having something else on offer means that when they are ready to try something new, they’re more likely to try it with the company that is trusted and delivers the basics so well.

So how does this relate to Mobile Marketing? For the most part M&S still relies on a trusted mix of traditional, established media (I consider website, email and display marketing in this mix). Their customers are comfortable with it – it works, but, they’re not afraid to try something new. Take mobile for example. M&S have trialled a number of approaches including SMS alerts (offers, vouchers and loyalty points), 2D barcodes (QR codes), WAP links to mobile web content, Twitter, Facebook and other social sites, and customer feedback services like Fizzback. Channels you wouldn’t instantly associate with M&S’s customer base.

If you think your customers won’t try something new, think again. M&S’s do.

Sienne’s talk was specifically about the use of Mobile and Social Marketing but there are similarities with all online channels. Your brand may well not be a big as M&S, or you may just be starting out online, but your approach should be the same.

• Get the basics right: Make sure you follow best practice, gain trust and have a foundation to build on
• Be useful: Your audience will be more receptive and loyal if they get something from you (advice, an offer, or maybe just an opinion)
• Unify: Have a plan to get your team thinking about online, integrating it into campaigns and making sure the technology can deliver
• Start with the end in mind: Be ambitious, and keep taking steps that are manageable
• Be pants: Offer the good, reliable and consistent, but don’t be afraid to try something new

And finally…

• Test, learn and refine: Make sure you have the right tools and systems in place to analyse your activity – learn from mistakes and build on what works.

But what will it cost to try something new? What will the return be? How can you be sure it will work? The simple answer is, if you don’t try it you won’t know. The beauty with online is that it is extremely measurable – you’ll quickly be able to see what’s working and what’s not – the most important thing is to test and learn.

So what was the last thing you tried out online?

You can read a Q&A with Sienne Veit on the econsultancy.com website.

Among the thousands of submissions, from 24 countries, our creative work has been recognised among the very best.

The Summit International Awards (SIA) organization is dedicated to furthering excellence in the communications industry. It administers rigorous awards competitions throughout the year with the goal of recognising companies that excel. Throughout its sixteen-year history, the SIA has established itself as one of the premier arbiters of creative and communication excellence. Using both specific and comprehensive evaluative criteria and a blind judging process, its competitions reward only those firms and individuals truly deserving of special recognition.

This year’s international panel of judges included professionals from Ogilvy 2B and Saatchi&Saatchi, amongst others.

So, as you can imagine, we’re all suitably chuffed about it!

Our winning entries are:

Award: Gold
Category: Self-promotion stationery/identity
Client: Access
Work: Access identity

Award: Silver
Category: Self-promotion website
Client: Access
Work: www.accessadvertising.co.uk

Award: Silver
Category: Healthcare/Medicine TV
Work:
Client: Smokefree Northwest

Access Branding: Gold Award Winner

Award winning branding applied to the studio

Award Winning TV Ad: 'My Little Baby' for Smoke Free North West

http://www.youtube.com/user/AccessManchester#p/f/3/dRc1LoJZLuo

In the first nine years, the village office workers and local farmers grew a design of Mount Iwaki every year.

But their ideas grew more complicated and attracted more attention. In 2005 agreements between landowners allowed the creation of enormous rice paddy art.

A year later, organisers used computers to precisely plot planting of the four differently colored rice varieties that bring the images to life.

The farmers create the murals by planting little purple and yellow-leafed kodaimai rice along with their local green-leafed tsugaru roman variety to create the coloured patterns between planting and harvesting in September.

The village has now earned a reputation for its agricultural artistry and this year the enormous pictures of Napoleon and a Sengoku-period warrior, both on horseback, are visible in a pair of fields adjacent to the town hall.

More than 150,000 vistors come to Inakadate, where just 8,700 people live, every summer to see the extraordinary murals.

The murals in Inakadate cover 15,000 square metres of paddy fields. From ground level, the designs are invisible, and viewers have to climb the mock castle tower of the village office to get a glimpse of the work.