Pete up for a Bafta!

Pete Way, our Head of New Business, has been nominated for a Children's Bafta for his show: 'Basil's Swap Shop' which ran on the BBC from January to April of this year.

Pete will find out this Sunday if he has won. The best o' luck to ya!

Movember nearly over

It's been emotional, painful, hilarious, itchy and slightly scary. The Collective team has done a brilliant job of growing their mo's over November in aid of prostate cancer. Here are some pics of the mos' Guinness-tinged final lunch (is anyone actually keeping their facial furniture past December 1st?).







More on the flickr.

If you'd like to donate to the cause, please just click the banner below.

Twitter: What's the bl**dy point? Part two.

What more can twitter do for your brand?

6. Brands can engage in a real two-way conversation with their customers – brands have the potential to listen to the buzz about their brand in the Twitter-sphere, simply by searching for their keywords and thus actively and instantly respond to their consumers and react instantly.

Search for you brand using Twitter and listen to the noise.

7. Build a reputation for your brand by following potential customers and journalists that write about your space.

8. Lead generation.

One question though that still remains as to how do I know who is interesting and worth following? Time is money and all that and I don’t want to listen to people waffling all day (I have Facebook for that). I'm currently trialling MrTweet...so watch this space on my thoughts.

But so far for me it has been a bit of random luck finding people. One simple way Twitter could make spreading the word much faster is by making it easier to search for people and categories. So far, it’s been a bit of a treasure hunt. Although I hear on the twitter blog that there might be progress.
So to get you started - here’s some Twitter voices we are following who we think have something good to say about digital or do digital good:
@BBCdigital
@BarrackObama
@russelldavies
@kevinrose
@BrandRepublic

You got any better twitterers to share?

Hayley

Feeling festive?...

...We certainly are. Just check out the aerial view of our office.



(Very nice viral idea from Coke using Google Maps technology to the fullest.)

Twitter: What's the bl**dy point?

I have to admit, I did nearly give up with Twitter. I thought it was a geek world full of self-indulgent Facebook feeds. But what kept me going was not only characteristic sheer pigheadedness but also the fact that it’s full of early adopters (yes, geeks) who tend to be the type of people to talk about the industry stuff I want to know first. And the more I’ve started using it, the more benefits I can see.

So I’m sold….can I take you to the Twitter-side?

1. It’s not Facebook status feeds - Twitter is not full of self-indulgent Facebook-esque feeds. It’s all about knowledge sharing – so for you that means industry and brand knowledge building.

2. Keeps you ahead of the competition - by following the leading commentators and ordinary folk alike people are actively sharing industry information and news before it hits the regular media in nice dinky bite size pieces and links. Which makes you look clever in front of your clients and colleagues when you share a nice ‘new’ idea.

3. Networking – you don’t have to be mates with someone to stalk them now! Twitter allows you to follow who you like and it’s up to them if they want to follow you back or just ignore your noise – but quite often people will return the favour and engage in dialogue.

4. Profile raising – if enough people start following you and your ramblings, you can go from zero to hero and you’ll be a keynote speaker at FOWA in no time.

5. Easier than you thought - If you down load a Twitter firefox add on – it makes it really simple and quick to up-date and follow feeds. No more logging into a distracting webpage all the time. Try this: >https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5081

Hayley

She Says - Golden Stiletto Awards

Some of the Collective girls went to the Golden Stiletto awards last night. It was the inaugral award ceremony from the She Says organisation who promote and encourage females in the creative industry, headed up by Laura Bambach from agency Glue.

The 5 shortlisted pieces of work were all excellent. They were

• BBC's Culture Show by Hyper Happen
  
• Non-stop Fernando by LMFM
  
• Samsung camera phone by LMFM
  
• Virgin Bets (video ad campaign) by LMFM
  
• Sony Walkman Project by Dare, the overall winner.
  

All in all, a very fun and inspiring night.

Another Award Nomination!

Collective have been nominated for an E-Consultancy Award in the category of 'Innovation in Online Advertising' for our work with Snickers and AMV.



Our Snickers widget was the UK's first Ad served Clearspring Widget Banner Campaign. It centred on creating fun, interesting and engaging content, delivered directly to the consumer.

Congratulations to everyone who worked on the project. The results will be announced on 2nd December.

Our very own MD, Greg Doone, has a new article published that makes a great case for a currency that proves brand effectiveness online. Greg gives the Collective take on how to build a universal measurement currency and what’s needed for it to succeed.

Read it here: www.imediaconnection.com

Wig out!

Hayley set up the Wig Out campaign to raise awareness for Breast Cancer (and money for Breast Cancer Care). The idea is simple: wear a wig, eat some cakes and give generously.

Thanks to everyone, the first Wig Out was a great success. We raised £103 from kind donations and on behalf of the company, the directors donated another £50. 25% will be added by Gift Aid too.

WIG OUT TOTAL - £191.25... and counting!




As ever, check out more photos on the Flickr and vote for your favourites on the Wig Out site.

Movember week one

Movember has kicked off in earnest at Collective Towers. Here's who's Top of the Taches so far...


Omar's looking dapper with his tidily-trimmed nose-tickler (so carefully trimmed he was late this morning, in fact).



Jon's gone Wild West style with matching mutton chops. Looking foward to seeing how they develop.



Whereas Kenta resembles some kind of Bond super-villain.



Methinks we have a Mo-cheat in our midst.. Nice fuax-tache, Seren.

More pics on our Flickr.