Last Wednesday morning a hardy crew of marketing bods, legal eagles and professional networkers braved the early morning Manchester weather to join us at Waulk Mill. The reason? A fabulous breakfast seminar ‘Healthy Brand, Healthy Business’ on our favourite subject matter, branding.

We’d spent weeks planning the first of our Northern Insights mini-series and despite the number of registrations exceeding our original expectations by 50%, we nervously anticipated the arrival of our first guests, wondering who would show up and who wouldn’t.

As 8am loomed large, the inviting smell of bacon sarnies, pastries and coffee welcomed a shade over twenty visitors to a nice relaxed atmosphere of networking chit chat and industry banter. By 8.30am, Allie was in full swing and giving us her theories behind good branding as well as analysing some diverse brands that have got it just right.  The presentation was rounded off with an open Q&A session (yikes, we’d forgotten to ‘plant’ some questions, but the crowd duly obliged) and a fun business card draw. Our delegates returned to their offices armed with a branded smoothie and a swatch of some key seminar takeouts including some of our favourite smoothie recipes. One lucky delegate also walked away with an engraved iPod.

We’ve had some excellent feedback thus far and as a result have planned a repeat event on 11th May for those who couldn’t join us first time round. You can get a flavour of the presentation by looking at the video file we have uploaded here and watch this space for the sequel event which is planned for sometime in June. We are just digesting the event feedback to help us decide upon the content you’ve told us you want to hear about next.

If you couldn’t make it along but would like to be involved in future Northern Insights sessions please give Simon Calderbank a quick call on 0161 237 5151 or drop him an email simon@studionorth.co.uk

Allie Johns is proudly in her 20th year as a brand builder, having experienced all aspects of integrated marketing strategy from brand creation to campaign delivery. An award-winner in external and internal communications, she has proactively devised, managed and delivered a wide variety of work in the UK, Europe, USA and the Far East – both agency & client-side.