Social & Education Marketing Specialists: Design, Advertising and Branding Manchester

App-watch: Spring into 3G

Spring has almost sprung and although we haven’t spotted any daffs yet, we’ve certainly discovered a crop of shiny new apps this month! With 4.5 billion apps estimated to be downloaded in 2010, apps are providing brands with opportunities to engage with their customers to provide new experiences.

This month we’re focusing on apps for retailers. Why not see if there any of these could apply to your business?

Next: shop on the move, including homeware as well as clothes, this app has had brilliant reviews and is so much lighter to carry than their Directory.

BA Flights: online check-in, arrivals and departure information…the only downside we can think of is that doesn’t come with a free flight!

Natwest: you’ve probably not used your phone to check your finances since the 90s (ah, remember the joy of those call centres), but this is fast and secure.

Tesco: no need for plastic cards anymore, this app turns your iPhone into your clubcard, you even get to scan it yourself…beep!

North Face: there was more snow in Scotland than at last month’s Winter Olympics, so use this app to check the snowfall in your ski resort with your own personal forecast.

We’d love to know which apps you rate and can’t live with out and so please let us know!

If you are want to talk to us about developing the perfect app for your business then email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Make sure your customers find you!

Hungry, lost or need a bed for the night? We’ve all been there, but this should no longer be a problem with location based apps. These handy apps make finding locations, products, services…and late night kebabs simple.

There are hundreds of location apps available to download and many of them are free, the Tesco Finder app shows you their 24-hour supermarkets in your area when you’ve run out of nappies, the myStarbucks app locates their nearest store when you’re craving a latte or meeting a friend. The AA Britain app not only provides their maps, but also lets you book hotels and recommends places to eat, whereever you are at in the UK.

So have you thought about utilizing location based apps to your drive sales and raise brand awareness? Well with over 3 billion app downloads to date, it would seem that is plenty of demand.

To find out more on how we can make your business visible to the 3G generation contact us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Finalist Global Social Marketing Awards 2010

Perfect Circle are delighted to have been selected as a finalist at the Global Social Marketing Awards 2010.  The nomination is for the Most Effective Creative Communications Campaign, for which we submitted our Burnage Media Arts College Social Marketing Campaign.  This highly prestigious awards event will separate the mediocre from those of truly outstandingly high caliber achievers, people who can really claim to be at the forefront of changing the world we live in

This award will be presented to the agency that is best able to demonstrate the most effective communications campaign- Hopefully that will be us!!! The Burnage Media Arts Campaign was a stand out campaign that possessed a strong focus on creative execution, pushed the boundaries of communications to achieve its objectives, including creative bus shelter wraps, to Bluetooth SMS, Interative Sonic Bus Shelters and ‘Real Life learning’ activities that involved the students of Burnage Media Arts College in Manchester.

Please keep your toes, fingers, and eyes crossed that we scoop the award so that we can continue to deliver our dream of successful people, living healthier lives in a sustainable world.

Iphone & 3G Apps- “I have the perfect idea for a great app!”

Today’s online experiences have expanded beyond the traditional, browser-based portals to include social media and then expanded again to include the latest mobile devices.  The 3G network has enabled mobile applications to capture the imagination of many and created unprecedented excitement across many industries. Though for many within sales and marketing developing their idea into an application remains a mystery.

We have identified five indicators of success which are covered as part of the ‘App-ideation™’ process that Perfect Circle utilises to generate market leading apps for our clients, transferring great ideas from grey matter ideation to interactive realisation.

1. Does your app solve a unique problem?
2. Does the app serve a specific niche?
3. Does it make people laugh?
4. Are you building a better wheel?
5. Will the app be highly interactive?

So if you’ve ever thought… “I have the perfect idea for a great app!”? then make it happen by e-mailing .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Real Life Learning in Education

Nearly half of employees feel that they have acquired their most valuable skills through work, according to research from lifelong learning charity Campaign for Learning. So ensuring that students have real work experience will give them a clear start in attaining relevant career skills. 

At Perfect Circle we are committed to our dream of successful people, leading healthy lives, in a sustainable environment.  To develop successful people we work with colleges, schools and acadamies to create ‘real life’ learning opportunities for students.  Our latest project involved Burnage Media Arts College, where we worked with over 100 students to develop a 30 second cinema advertisement to promote the College’s unique learning environment that is dedicated to Media and Arts. 

To see the actual film that was created, produced and stared the Burnage Media Arts College students then click the link to YouTube.  You can also visit the www.enjoymedia.co.uk to learn more about the campaign.

To find our more about this just click real life learning or e-mail .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

For related information about this project please visit our case study section.

Perfect Circle meets Seth Godin

SETH GODIN is a bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change, holding an MBA from Stanford, and was called “the Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age” by Business Week.

He’s also the author of ten books, one of his most recent, Purple Cow, was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller.  It’s all about how companies can transform themselves by becoming remarkable which links with our brand development process of PlayTime. Plus, as a bestselling author around the world he’s changed the way people think about marketing, change and work.

A pretty remarkable chap in the world of marketing!!

So when we had the chance to hear him speak in London, on one of his rare sojourns from New York, it was a chance that we could not miss, so we left Manchester on the first available train!  And was it worth it? Well see for yourself via the Seth in London recording….enjoy. 

How to develop a habit

Habit forming occurs after 66 days.

That was the average time it took for volunteers in a study to begin doing automatically something they had adopted as a daily duty, such as eating fruit with their lunch or going for a run before dinner.

It means if you make a New Year’s resolution to exercise or eat healthily and do it daily until March 7, it is likely to stick. In the research, being reported in the European Journal of Social Psychology, the researchers set out to investigate how long it took for the repetition of behaviour to reach a stage of ‘automacity’, where it is performed whenever the situation is encountered without thinking, awareness or intention.

The volunteers who took part in the study were asked to choose a healthy eating, drinking or exercise behaviour that they would like to make into a habit. It had to be done in response to a particular cue, such as eating a piece of fruit with lunch, drinking a bottle of water with lunch, or running for 15 minutes before dinner. Participants were asked to try to carry out the behaviour every day.  Each day they also completed a test designed to measure features of habits which are central to automaticity, including lack of awareness and lack of control. Results showed that whilst the average time to form a habit was 66 days, more complex behaviours took longer, whilst an exercise habit took longer to form than a healthy eating or drinking habit.

So each member of our team is going to give it a try…..and see what happens!

We know where and how you live

Here at Perfect Circle we are big fans of Mosaic UK profiling which gives us a deep understanding of our customers target audiences: who, what, where, when, how and why. This can help us to target, acquire, manage and develop insights for social marketing campaigns.

Mosaic is based on analysis of the latest trends in UK society, a wealth of high quality, comprehensive data sources and a sophisticated proprietary approach to cluster analysis, supported by analysis of market research to validate the classification.

So we thought we would apply the profiling to a few guys in our team; Oliver is a type A06: High Technologist, he does love his gizmos; Simon is a part of the Happy Families group, he is type B13: Burdened Optimist, well who wouldn’t be after 3 kids? And Jennie (who was disappointed that we not talking about mosaic tiles) feels she is definitely a type E31: Caring Professional - well at least she tries!

So what MOSAIC type are you?