The good news reminds us of our previous Transform success where we were similarly fortunate, being shortlisted for three categories and subsequently winning one gold and two silvers for our work on the Parasol rebrand.

This time around the categories in question are ‘best corporate rebrand following a merger/acquisition’ and ‘best rebrand in the property sector’, and with global branding agencies such as Interbrand and Landor appearing on the shortlists, we’re pretty chuffed!

The Merseyway rebrand involved a complete overhaul of its brand identity, with the aim of rejuvenating its image and connection with local Stopfordians.  Since the launch of the rebrand in late 2010, Merseyway’s 2011 footfall figures saw an increase of 950,000 shoppers, focus groups demonstrated a much-improved public perception and major retailers such as Primark and Costa Coffee opened new stores at Merseyway.

The ceremony itself is being held on March 21^st in London, and looks to be a fantastic evening that will definitely keep us in high spirits no matter the outcome!

For those not up-to-date with the situation, there is a legal bill to be voted on currently in the American House of Representatives and another to be deliberated by the American Senate, the ‘Stop Online Piracy Act’ (often abbreviated to SOPA) and ‘Protect IP’, which seek to clamp-down on online copyright infringement.

However, there are questions being raised over the amount of power that the legislation would give both the government and corporate world in America, with critics calling it unconstitutional. This has ignited debate throughout the world, with a great deal of it having ironically taken place on internet forums, social networking sites and message boards.

With lobbyists from Silicon Valley on one side and Wikipedia, with their break from their normal ‘passive’ stance, on the other, the debatable issues of the morality and ethics of piracy and also of the potential threat to the ‘freedom of speech’ ethos (which the internet was founded on) remain at the centre of the debate.

It seems to me that legislation of this nature could potentially hinder on the organic and innovative internet ‘culture’ that we have seen developing so quickly over the last decade.

It also occurs to me that legislation of this nature, while fair in a basic moral sense, may give rise to a potential ‘dark age’ in the development of the internet, should steps not be taken to preserve the freedom internet users currently have.

Definitely an issue to watch and I’m sure its one that will not slip far from the public’s thoughts for some time…

When I come across a decent agency I usually bookmark them for future reference, but I recently thought maybe it would be a good idea to share those bookmarks. Putting what I consider to be the best agencies from around the world all in one place.

The Creative Shelf is a simple click through site where you can link to some great agencies that you probably wouldn’t otherwise come across. And it’s not about who’s got the biggest budgets, won the most awards or has the most celebrated ego. In fact the only self imposed criteria I have is that they have to have one piece of work or idea that I’d love to have done. If there is I put them on the shelf.

So if you’re a curious design geek or a student wanting to know who you should be looking at, then when not check out http://thecreativeshelf.com or follow it on twitter @creative_shelf

One of the topics of discussion was the way in which many people are now consuming media in a two-screen environment – the most common being while watching TV and being on a laptop/smartphone/tablet at the same time.  This has allowed an entirely new level of engagement whereby viewers are playing an active role in what they’re watching.  For example you might have either sent a Tweet to Alan Sugar during The Apprentice, or done my personal favourite and put a virtual million on the line during Channel 4’s Million Pound Drop.

A similar trend is also being encouraged by brands in their advertising, with more and more Twitter hashtags being spotted at the end of adverts in the hope that people will create/join a discussion around whatever product is being sold, adding that extra level of engagement.

However, the talk that stole the show was from Sky’s Nick Milligan, who pointed us towards the future of television advertising.  In his talk he introduced Sky’s AdSmart technology – a service that will bring TV advertising into the Internet age and deliver tailor-made adverts, specific to your home, based on the information they have about you.

If it works, TV will finally be able to give brands the option to target extremely specific demographics with their adverts in the same way online can, even specifying the number of times they want each consumer to view each ad.  And even more importantly – no longer will I have to sit through adverts for dentures and Clarks shoes.

I can’t wait!

But from M&S’s point of view is aligning their brand to a group of people that are clearly not their ‘target customer’ a clever tactic or a case of just jumping on the bandwagon?

I must admit, from a brand perspective I’m struggling to see the logic, the two clearly don’t go hand in hand despite the soft focus filming and scenes of happy children and families. But the X Factor has become a promotional tactic that many businesses are using almost as an ‘off the shelf’ concept. It’s easy, current, in the public eye and everyone knows about it.

But I do wonder what damage and expense this could cause people like M&S. The X Factor is notorious for being steeped in controversy. Some may say this is part of the appeal but to a brand like M&S who have traditional values and traditional customers I think this is a risky card to play.

I’m an M&S shopper myself (maybe one of the younger ones) and the Ad really left me with a conflicting view of what the brand was trying to say.

Then I had a chat with my Nan (one of their older shoppers) who told me quite plainly that she didn’t like it.

“ I can’t stand that Girl Group, why didn’t they do something with Shirley Bassey again?”. Fair point, they have gone from one extreme to the other.

I’d love to know what was in the M&S Ad brief, because if they asked for something controversial, that didn’t appeal to their core market and pushed the boundries of their brand then they got it spot on!

Lets just hoped none of the other contestants get the boot otherwise it’s going to become a pretty short and expensive TV commercial.

First up was Ian Wharton of software start-up Zolmo who as I already knew from a recent Northern Digitals/BLAB night is a superb speaker. In this environment, Ian was similarly entertaining and shared some of Zolmo’s finest moments with us, mainly their work producing apps for brand Jamie Oliver. As he departed the stage he left us with the inspirational last thought “In this industry, if you’re pissing a few people off, chances are, you’re doing something right”. Superb stuff.

If this was a tough act to follow then it needed the cool head of Stephen Mellish (Radical Company) to pick up the baton. Stephen’s talk was mainly future focussed, offering his thoughts on where mobile goes next or as he more appropriately suggested…the device with no name. With no stone unturned Stephen lent his thoughts to how ‘mobile devices’ could be practically used in every way from treating health conditions to voting live on political issues (who needs MPs he quipped).

After a great opening by two live speakers we were then treated to a broadcasted version on the big screen of Roger McNamee at Tedx SantaCruz. You can see his engaging ‘Steve Jobs’ style right here Roger McNamee – Disruption and Engagement including this great opening line “Have you ever been in a position of watching Silicon Valley take off and knowing what was going to happen.” At 15 minutes, it’s an effort but please do take this time to educate yourself and listen to an absolutely top class technology expert.

Back to live speaking and Alex Dunsdon of M&C Saatchi ably stepped upto the plate (as a last minute replacement I might add) with a different slant. The twitter stream faded immediately as Alex requested we all take a little time out as to contrast our mobile behaviour with that of nomadic tribes. Alex actually produced the second most unusual word of the day, the rather cartoony cute sounding ‘weisure‘ a modern observation on how work and leisure behaviours are now combined simultaneously via the power of mobile device. The visual example of a father checking his email with one ear and half a brain focussed on their child is an experience some of us are all too familiar with. The point being that for the first time ever we can physically be in one place yet virtually in another…all due to the power of mobile. It’s a fascinating cultural observation and Alex’s belief is that while many will embrace and ‘Opt In’ to this lifestyle, many will deliberately ‘Opt Out’ and resist the advances around us.

Following this, another twist in technology, as we joined Dan Lyons, Newsweek Technology Editor in a crystal clear Facetime broadcast from the States which took us nicely through to the interval.

Finally some time to condense thoughts, compare notes and bump into some old and new industry contacts, all fuelled by the free Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Happy days.

The second session got fired up by Tom Scott of Sky 1 HD’s Gadget Geeks. A nice bit of interactivity where the present and virtual audience were asked to take part in a crowdsourcing exercise. Using twitter as the channel we were asked to guess the answer to five questions such as how many wind turbines are in the UK?  The questions were all deliberately posed to prove when and how crowdsourcing can be effective and when it can fail. “Going from someone who is an expert to the rest of the world isn’t always the right path to take” Nice big screen interaction, short and sweet, a winner.

Things were then about to seriously geek-up a level with Jeff Coghlan of Matmi who made most of us feel terribly old with the archaic images of 70s/80s/90s consoles & technologies… we extracted some minor revenge when even a tech-whizz like Jeff had trouble fitting his powerpoint slide to the screen…failed…and then got on with it anyway.

“I wish this would fit on the bloody screen, serves me right for doing it on a mobile device”

Jeff predicts the demise of consoles…why should we pay so much for content we can only play in one place…why can’t I stand in Times Square and play with friends on a screen type thinking. But I’ll definitely remember his talk for the startling (well, worrying) revelation that there are now more mobile phones in the world than toothbrushes (ugh!).

The penultimate speaker was Nicholas Cumisky of Google who I’d seen earlier in the year at TFMA. Nicholas had sat through a degree of Google-bashing throughout the day…not heavy stuff, more subtle digs…and had the unfortunate bad luck to cite Best Buy as a great online case study (on a day the firm went bust, oops!). That aside, some fascinating insights, great stats and a little gift at the end in the shape of Google’s own global mobile data research, which can be found at http://www.ourmobileplanet.com/

Last, but by no means least, the appropriately titled Chief Wonka of ustwo, Mills, real name Matt Miller, the self-proclaimed King of Succailure (the most unusual word of the day). We were walked through his Studio of Dreams…and some of the apps they have beautifully crafted, like Mouth Off, Whale Trail, Papercut and Nursery Rhymes with Storytime. A real eye-opener for those looking to make a fast buck from apps & his own advice… “Don’t innovate if you’re trying to make money” a lesson they have clearly learnt the hard way.

A hard core of delegates then took things to Leaf Cafe round the corner for a few well deserved beers and technology chat. An excellent event I hope to see in Manchester sooner rather than later.

With a record number of delegates attending this year’s event, World Routes offers an unrivalled platform for airlines and airports to do business face to face with the people in the industry who really matter.

Our digital strategy and planning for Routes identified the opportunity and benefits of producing a mobile app for the event to work alongside their traditional communication channels. A number of impressive functional benefits were served up to those who downloaded the app, including event news, information about Berlin, programme guide, delegate listings and full social media interactivity.

With additional features now planned for ongoing development and future events, this initial foray into the world of mobile apps was loved by both client and delegate alike.

Blackberry themselves were condemned for the outages, with users flocking to social media sites to vent their frustrations.  However, the outbursts were not only aimed at the service’s downtime, but were also related to the lack of communication from Blackberry themselves.

When asked whether he thought Blackberry’s communication was good enough during the outages, Managing Director Stephen Bates stated that they “didn’t spend enough time thinking about communication”.  Considering the purpose of their products is to help people communicate you have to love the irony.

Lack of communication during a crisis, however, isn’t anything new.  A classic example occurred during the 2010 BP oil spill.  During the cleanup operation, BP gave very few updates of their progress, and some photos they did release of their efforts were found to be Photoshopped.

In response, a fake Twitter account was created under the BP moniker, providing extensive and hilarious updates throughout the spill.  As a result, the handle gained over five times as many followers as the official page, a statistic which must have deeply saddened BP America’s Head of Communications.

The moral of these stories can be summarised pretty easily.  With mass communication inevitable with the advent of social media, brands need to either play an immediate and active damage limitation role in a crisis, or be prepared to deal with the aftermath of letting others do the talking for them.

However, Blackberry and BP would probably rather think of their PR at the times in the the following way:

Having only graduated myself in July, I know how they feel.  Coming out of a university environment where you are constantly doing something in the day, be it lectures or group study, (or at least playing Ultimate Freebie), to being sat back at home, mindlessly filling out tens of applications a week, can quickly become frustrating.

Add to this the fact that when you do find the confidence to apply for a job you feel you are suited for, the large number of applicants means that not only are your chances of securing the place slim, but it’s unlikely that you’ll even get a reply.  After a few times of going through this process it’s easy to take it personal and become disheartened, forgetting that you are in the same boat as nearly one million others.  I know I did.

The problem for this generation is that we are not necessarily competing against each other anymore, but instead are competing against those who have lost jobs and bring with them a wealth of experience.  As many companies are struggling enough in the present climate, it’s unsurprising that they will want to hire someone who can hit the ground running, freeing up valuable hours for existing employees.

With this in mind though, I often get surprised when asking friends if they have considered applying for work experience at companies.  A few say they’ve toyed with the idea but most seem to feel as if it’s a step backwards, as it doesn’t offer long term security and is often unpaid.  While these are of course valid points, continual rejections from companies quickly showed me that all of the qualifications in the world don’t make up for a lack of experience in the present job market.

Now I’m not saying that the search for employment should be abandoned in favour of looking for work experience, I regard myself amazingly lucky to have been able to stay at Studio North for 2 months after initially applying for some, but I do think it’s an option that many people don’t consider as much as they could.

For me, applying for work experience as the best thing I’ve done since graduating.  Wanting to begin a career in branding/marketing, I’ve learnt a lot about the industry, met some brilliant people, and, perhaps most importantly, learnt a lot about myself.

I do miss Ultimate Frisbee though!