Steelso V6.0

It’s taken some time but we’ve got it done! Below are the [tag]business objectives[/tag] for biscuit for the next year. There’s nothing earth shatteringly innovative here but as part of our model of being as transparent as possible. We all create these, had a good brain busting session make sure that we all agreed on them to help take us forward.
We’ve already started. Some of the objectives have been met and today the team are exploring some new projects to help in the future, the link sharing has started and the we’re all settig our personal objectives next week.

Any questions, thoughts, feedback? Let us know.

Vision

Biscuitmedia aim to always create outstanding Internet experiences that build profitable relationships between our clients and their customers.

Business Strategy

There are three main strategies to achieve this vision:

GROWTH – By growing in terms of staff, turnover and profit biscuitmedia can access larger, more profitable clients.

TECHNOLOGY – Being at the forefront of technology is vital to create great Internet experiences for our clients.

DEVELOPMENT – In a fast moving industry we must develop our team to ensure that they are abreast of all aspects of the Internet; design, development and customer usage.

Goals

1. To be a place that talented and innovative people want to work
2. To use Internet technologies in new and exciting ways that support our clients objectives
3. To be placed on major pitch lists
4. Win creative awards for our clients
5. To be financially secure

Objectives

Create a Creative biscuitmedia

• Inspiration is to be openly shared throughout biscuitmedia by sharing links, recommending websites, passing articles
• Create websites with different, relevant design styles
• Strategy and Design briefs are to be given by MD and HD to bm team so that the overview of the website purpose is explained and understood.
• Inspiration to be taken from anywhere, traditional media, digital media, GRP, other agencies.
• Del.icio.us page for biscuitmedia to be created to share on-line reading material
• Last Friday of every month to be used as ‘development’ days, to explore new coding, technologies, design. Brief to be produced before hand by HD + HDev.
• Subscribe to and read leading trade magazines
• Attend relevant industry events
• Celebrate our successes
• Ensure that our failures are as creative as our successes
• Engage in post project reviews

Creating Creative Clients

• Introduce new ways of using technologies to the client via external websites and through biscuitmedia.com and grp5.com websites
• Provide real world examples of biscuitmedia’s creative thinking to inspire the client and to increase the ‘comfort factor’ with clients on biscuitmedia’s abilities.
• Redesign biscuitmedia’s website in line with technology advances

Facilitating Current Clients

• Ensure that current clients still produce revenue for biscuitmedia
• Aftercare diary for clients to be reintroduced as soon as possible
• biscuitmedia to hold hospitality event for certain clients on a regular basis
• Ongoing maintenance plan to be created and introduced to clients
• Gain client feedback when projects are launched

Being Web 2.0 Aware

• Develop .Net reusable, efficient content management components
• Investigate and develop a technology strategy for the next year
• Create new biscuitmedia and GRP website that showcase new technologies

Business Development

• Biscuitmedia to work with GRP business development to add value to GRP’s proposition
• To produce a minimum of 30 proposal documents for new business per year
• Create a sales database of targeted companies that biscuitmedia want to work for
• Improve reporting of time spent on projects to ensure that projects are profitable and to improve future quotations
• Work in Progress to be produced on a fortnightly basis

GRP/Biscuitmedia Understanding

• GRP to hold small workshops on certain areas of GRP (account handling, media buying, production) to build greater understanding of various depts within GRP.
• Biscuitmedia to have a representative at GRP operation meetings.
• Biscuitmedia to have a representative on the GRP Social committee.
• GRP to attend biscuitmedia creative culture exercises
• Biscuitmedia team to actively and responsibly participate in GRP events.
• Add design briefs to kitchen wall in line with GRP’s approach
• Create internal newsletter on monthly basis

Marketing and PR

• To have at least one news story in The Drum magazine per month
• Attend at least two networking events per month
• Enter client work into industry awards when appropriate
• Create client mailing list

steelso :: Jun.30.2006 :: biscuitmedia :: 10 Comments »

Great entry and the always entertaining [tag]W+K London[/tag] blog. They had a nice fella from their Portland office over to see them and they had a chat about Google’s notions and note of innovation. It is quite pertinant for us at the moment as we’ve just finished our vision and objectives for the year and we’re doing some [tag]Google[/tag] thinking, albeit in a smaller scale.

Have a look at the blog entry. I’ll be posting our objectives and ideals here tomorrow.

steelso :: Jun.29.2006 :: Cool, Thoughts :: No Comments »

[TAG]Adobe[/TAG] launched [TAG]Flex 2[/TAG] today and we’re very excited about the potential for creating fantastic, intuitive [TAG]Internet experiences[/TAG]. Marc has been already working with the beta software and created a great little application that we’ll be using for a client shortly. The fruits of that will be displayed as soon as possible.

With Flex looking good and using various [TAG]ajax development[/TAG] tools the future looks bright. What does this fancy chat mean for you? An Internet experience that helps you get to your information faster. It’s all looking good.

steelso :: Jun.28.2006 :: Clients, Cool, Flash, Rich Internet Applications, Thoughts, biscuitmedia, biscuitmedia web design :: No Comments »

Monday night I flew over to [TAG]Islay[/TAG] for a client meeting on the Tuesday. I went over to visit my dad too who also lives on the island.

The flight is only about 20 minutes from Glasgow and offers great views of Arran and the west coast of Scotland.

Met me dad, went to the Lochside Hotel for a bite to eat then went over to the village my dad lives in, [TAG]Port Askaig[/TAG]. His local is the Port Askaig Hotel were I sampled the local produce, gained very, very interesting customer insight from the owner of the hotel, Marion, and was entertained no end of tales of derring do by the good Mr Murphy, the bar man with the best whisky patter I’ve ever heard. It was hilarious and ended up a late night. Of course it was all in the interest of invaluable customer insight.

The hotel has fantastic views of [TAG]Jura[/TAG], a place that I’ve never visited. My dad tells me that you can see the deer swim between Islay and Jura when ‘the season is right’. If the deer can visit then so can I but they seem to have an added incentive…
The next day I woke up and went off to meet Richard from [TAG]999 Design[/TAG] who are doing the branding and print for the job that we are involved with. As our meeting wasn’t until around 12.30 we spent some time in the airport and then off to [TAG]Laphroaig Distillery[/TAG] for our meeting.

The weather was fantastic and the views from the distillery were wonderful. We spent some time in the mueseum and st in the sunshine taking life in. Not a bad day to earn a living. We saw the big wall that has ‘Laphroaig’ painted on it in bold, hugh letters then saw the more improvised sign scrawled in the caked muck of a truck. Perfect.

We had our meeting then wondered about, looking around and soaking up the sun. All very relaxing. The only place I could get a signal on my phone was at the end of a wee pier like structure and then trying to get into that signal sweet spot. It wasn’t bad, the fish were jumping and I could see them all swimming about in the clear sea water.
We all then went for a bite to eat then off to the airport to catch our flight back. A couple of beers in the sunshine, happy with our days ‘work’. A quick flight back with some more amazing scenery. Not a bad day, not a bad day at all.

steelso :: Jun.28.2006 :: Clients, Cool, People, Scotland, Social, Travel, biscuitmedia :: 3 Comments »

Where I Was

Originally uploaded by Stewart2006.

Port Askaig, Islay. More on this tomorrow.

steelso :: Jun.27.2006 :: biscuitmedia :: 1 Comment »

Some news from our parent company, [TAG]GRP[/TAG] in [TAG]Glasgow[/TAG], who are forming an alliance with two other agencies, [TAG]Enten Associates[/TAG] in [TAG]Washington DC[/TAG] and [TAG]H&H Advertising[/TAG] based in [TAG]Reykjavik[/TAG] (I’ll get the link to H&H when I get back to the office). The name of this new alliance is Triola. A neat wee article from the Scotsman website explains all better than I could. Not sure how it’ll affect biscuitmedia yet, if it will at all, but its exciting nevertheless.

steelso :: Jun.24.2006 :: Cool, Employment, GRP, Glasgow, Travel, Triola, biscuitmedia :: No Comments »

The new [tag]website design[/tag] for RTWS was been launched today. It’s looking good and it’s been fun too. RTWS are based outside [tag]Glasgow[/tag] in [tag]Cambuslang[/tag]. Thanks to Ian, Fraser and Anne at RTWS for all their help, creativity and thought.

Please feel free to pass on your thoughts on the website, good or bad. We’re tough, we can take it.

steelso :: Jun.20.2006 :: Clients, biscuitmedia, biscuitmedia web design :: 1 Comment »

I’ve been back on the UIE website looking over their fantastic content and this wee article on [tag]vision statements[/tag] caught my eye. It’s timely as we’re in the last stages of developing our objectives for [tag]biscuitmedia[/tag] for the next year and we’re excited about what that holds.

Tomorrow we’re [tag]objective setting[/tag] and looking to start putting the chin rubbing into action. When we’re happy I’ll post what we’re doing up on the blog to share the insight and understanding of what we are, what we stand for and what [tag]experience[/tag] we’re all gunning for here.

Your [tag]feedback[/tag] will be more than welcomed.

steelso :: Jun.20.2006 :: Clients, Cool, Thoughts, biscuitmedia, biscuitmedia web design :: No Comments »

We’re currently pitching for a contract that needs to be easily recognised in [tag]search engines[/tag] (a whole other area of ranting for me, anyway…). When talking to the prospective client they stated that it didn’t have to look good, it just had to “do the job”.

An interesting conversation then started between myself and the client about how [tag]good web design[/tag] could help with the whole “job”, that good web design is important in creating the experience for visitors that help them feel comfortable in doing the ultimate goal, be that to enquire on a service, buy a product, etc.

That’s not to say that design is all. [tag]Content has to be king[/tag] but if the mix of design, content, purpose, clear navigation, easy to understand objectives and anything else you’d like to think of isn’t balanced then the website can’t be all that it can be. For me design only works for three pages then it must be backed up with content otherwise the [tag]design[/tag] is hollow and becomes frustrating.
It was a spirited and positive debate, the client just wanted it to “work”. We do too, it’s just that we want all the elements in place to create the best experience that we can.

What do you think? Do overly designed websites put you off? Does a design influence your thinking as to the website being good or bad? Are you looking for a website that “does the job” or are you looking for more?

Just to make clear, the client is cool with me posting this, we don’t have the job yet and it was a really interesting discussion. We both were just wondering what a wider audience would think.

steelso :: Jun.20.2006 :: Clients, Cool, Glasgow, People, Thoughts, biscuitmedia web design, new clients :: 5 Comments »

Received my new phone last week, the very, very sweet [tag]Nokia N80[/tag].
It’s odd to think that I’ve had a [tag]mobile[/tag] for 13 years now, my first was a [tag]Nokia 1011[/tag]. It was huge with big squidgy keys. My N80 has a great colour screen, perfectly acceptable 3 Megapixel camera, picks up e-mail, 3G, all sorts of stuff. It’s sweet. I’m happy.

Other news. Found a nice comment from someone saying nice things about our [tag]GFO website[/tag]. Which is nice. I felt it only right to say thank you, my good deed for the day.

Didn’t go to see [tag]Angels Share[/tag] last week as I had meetings the next day and was scared that I’d be rubbish for them. I was right not to go as they didn’t start until 12.30am and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to resist the temptations laid in front of me. [tag]Temptation[/tag] being [tag]beer[/tag]. I was right to resist gentle reader, the night was a good one and I would have felt all sorts of rubbish the next day. I am mighty wise.

Went to [tag]Edinburgh[/tag], saw painted cows. Very cool. Very fun too, a great idea to get people thinking of just what art is.

Today I am listening mostly to [tag]Jolie Holland[/tag].

[tag]Podcasts[/tag] have now officially jumped the shark.
I have a [tag]sitemap[/tag] to finish and I’m pretty motivated too! Get me!

S

steelso :: Jun.19.2006 :: Clients, Cool, Podcasts, Scotland, Social, Thoughts, biscuitmedia :: 2 Comments »