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Tuesday, February 22, 2005
The Return of Internal Marketing Communications

Since the new year we at PDG have seen a proliferation of internal marketing projects, something we have not been involved for a few years. They are a great kind of project because there is often much more freedom and willingness to try new things.

I spoke to a client today and we discussed the fact that there are two distinct trends in corporate life. The first is the difficulty the large corporates have in retaining good people, especially in the job-rich locations like the M4 corridor. Strong internal comms make people feel valued and appreciated and can often be a factor in retention of key staff.

The second is that a lot of the larger corporates insist on high levels of governance and ethical behaviour in their partners, outsource resources and suppliers. Best practice in this area demands a high degree of internal communciation on all issues from health and safety to the environment.

With the advent of intranets, electronic communciations and personalisation internal comms has been transformed and is a much richer and rewarding experience for all involved. Give us a shout if you would like to see some of the projects we are working on.

Sunday, February 13, 2005
DEFINITION: Glocalisation

Glocalisation is the ability to deliver global marketing strategy and brand awareness at a local level. It is now essential to personalise information making it as relevant as possible to the local audience.

4G Web Sites from PDG

At PDG we have spent a lot of time thinking about the next generation of web sites and have been developing a model for some time. As worshippers of the legend that is Seth Godin we thought we would 'bounce it off him' for an opinion. We were stunned to find that he had featured in his latest blog.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/
2005/02/a_new_terminolo.html


Under the heading "A New Terminology"

Seth Said: “I was immediately grabbed by the terms "above the web" and "below the web".
Imagine dividing up your world this way. Worth a thought.”

Here comes the theory:

The next generation of web sites [4G] will need to be more focussed on individuals needs, much smarter and driven by permission. Permission marketing enables the process of turning strangers into friends, and friends into clients.

Content, user profiles, tracking data and digital assets are all stored in databases ‘below the website’ to enable the pages of the site to be created dynamically determined by user preferences and access levels.

This pushes and pulls the users through the permission levels increasing their exposure to products, services, thinking and knowledge. Linked to key 'above the website' strategies this can also help stimulate lead generation, quickly identifying potential key clients and accelerating them through the permission layers.

For more information contact David Coe [david.coe@pdggraphics.com]

If you would like to know more please vote for our manifesto on www.changethis.com

http://www.changethis.com/proposals/361

e-news for you!

At PDG we have had a lot of success withour own regular enewsletter. It has enable us to reinforce our relationship with our key accounts as well as burture prospects. Whenever we send one we get lots of comments from our pears who wish they were doing it to but there does seem to be a barrier to them getting stuck in.

The reason ours has taken off is because we decided to give the responsibility for content generation to a third party. We integrated it into our PR strategy; news stories feed the content for the enewsletter and it is also the place where we float stories often in embryonic state to see if there are worthy of further PR, in effect we try them on for size.

It is handy that we have in house web developers and an excellent online ecomm system which manages the whole process but ultimately it comes down to the commitment to create regular, interesting and relevant content.

It is recognised that it is getting harder and harder to get e-mail through to individuals within companies, and it’s even harder still to get them to read it. This all adds weight to the argument that permission marketing and a high degree of personalisation are the way forward.

The research also shows us that you really need to know what you’re doing for your e-mails to get through to the right people and for your message to stand out from the crowd.

Enewsletters are a great way to drive sales activity, to increase your presence on search engines and to reinforce key client relationships.

We have created a guide to running an e-newsletter strategy which is available on this landing page:
http://info.pdggraphics.co.uk/lp/E_Newsletter_Solutions/

Click here to sign up for the PDG Graphics enewsletter

Yoga v Heroin

There are two types of web content that you should strive to create for your web site:

Yoga Content 1
After going to yoga you feel great, telling your friends about it makes you feel great, meeting other people who do yoga makes you feel great. Yoga is about rituals, truth, work, soul and sex.
Yoga content gives you a sense of well being, enriches your spirit and makes you want to go and do it again.

Heroin Content 2
People who are heroin addicts would crawl through shit to get hold of the product. Imagine if you could replicate this feeling with your web content. The onyl way to even try to achieve it is to keep the site constantly updated, solves peoples problems, exceed expectations and be totally relevant to every individual browser. A bit of controversy, humour and pithy opinion doesn't go amiss either.

1 Simon King and Piers Fawkes
2 Vincent Flanders [www.webpagesthatsuck.com]

Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Recommended Web Experiences

I just can't get enough of strong bad -- what's your favouite?

- Strong Bad's Email

Sunday, February 06, 2005
Things / People we like at the moment...

  • (Sir) Jamie fuckin' Oliver !! he rocks...
  • Kevin McLeod
  • Girls Aloud (not quite sure how they got in here?)
  • Michael Crichton
  • Daniel Kitsen - http://www.danielkitson.com
  • Trinny and Susannah
  • Martin O'Neill
  • Clive Woodward
  • Phillipe Stark
  • Little Britain
  • Seth Godin
  • Tom Peters