CREATE.

Isle of Man Queenie Festival

Wow, it’s been ages since I’ve posted!! The good news is that it’s been really busy, and although no excuse it’s what I’m sticking to.

As well as continuing our work with Neil and Tim we’ve been working on the Isle of Man Queenie Festival and Marine Day. The Queenie Festival is celebrating Queen Scallops, locally known as Queenies. It’s been great to get involved and there is so much going on which I’ll not go into here as it’s all listed on the Queenie Festival website.

We’ve got plenty still to do on this and the website will continue to grow with new features and content added all the time. It’s a real treat to be working on this as it’s so much fun. How nice to be able to say that about work!!

With this project we’ve been speaking to some really great people who are so passionate about the marine environment of the Isle of Man and are putting their own time into making this festival a success. The Manx Basking Shark Watch and Manx Whale and Dolphin Watch are involved and are two groups I knew very little about. You can get to both their sites from the Queenie Festival site and it’s well worth checking out. The best bit is the latest sightings. Despite mucking about in the sea all my life I hadn’t realised we had so much in the way of Whales, Sharks and Dolphins in the water. I think it was just last week somebody spotted a Humpback whale off Port Soderick!!

Anyway hope this explains my blogging absence a little and I hope to get back to posting a bit more frequently.

Island Seafare’s Wall of fame

We have been really busy at CREATE. over the past few weeks especially working alongside Island Seafare on some great initiatives that will happening very shortly.

One thing I did notice when I was down at the factory on the quay Port St Mary last week was the Island Seafare’s Wall of Fame.

It would seem that several foodies/celebrity chefs like a bit of local Manx Seafood and are suitably impressed with the set up of the factory and fishmongers (Paddys Market) that they autograph the wall in the shop. So far there is the Hairy Bikers (Si King and Dave Myers), Simon Rimmer from ITV’s Grubs Up show, and the favourite with the ladies of course, is James Martin. Not a bad wall of fame so far!

Looks great and is also a highlight to shoppers purchasing there local seafood goodies, lets hope it continues and we can fill the wall!

Isle of Man Smoked Salmon!

I always think it is amazing how, even on a small Island like the Isle of Man that likes its skeet, some things can remain relatively undiscovered. As a kid I’d go exploring around the South of the Isle of Man and every weekend I’d find somewhere of interest I’d never been before, or I’d find a new way to get there. Well I guess my recent experience is kind of similar in that I found a product under my nose that I never knew was produced here.

We’ve recently started doing some work with Tim and the team at Island Seafare in Port St Mary. I knew they had Paddy’s Market selling fresh fish down at the factory and that they sold Queenies (Isle of Man Queen Scallops) and King Scallops but had no idea that Island Seafare smoked Salmon.The Salmon is carefully sourced from Scotland and is then smoked to a much guarded recipe handed down to Tim and Paddy Croft from and Isle of Man resident who had perfected it over a number of years in his own personal smokehouse. It’s a really great story and the recipe lives up to the tale. Just one of those little gems that you wonder how you never knew of this before but are always delighted to discover.

Really Simple explanation of RSS

Just read Ed Lee’s post on What is RSS? A simple way of explaining the benefits of syndicating your content.

Where will it end?

Here at CREATE. we love great ideas, especially when out of great ideas grow more great ideas! We all love Google and frankly who doesn’t… ok so the likes of Yahoo et al may not for obvious reasons, but for a user, the experience just keeps on getting better and better.

I love Google Maps it’s a great way of locating something you need, so much better than the traditional Yellow Pages. Whilst Google Maps might not be the best tool to use in the Isle of Man at the present time (because its not detailed enough) I am sure the time will come when a full detailed map of the island will be at the finger tips of Google Maps users

What I really wanted to highlight is the new Google Maps Street View which I quite frankly find mind blowing. The Google Maps Street View applies the principle of Google maps and combines this with on the ground pictures of streets where you can navigate up and down, zoom in and out, its just amazing. At the moment its only limited to a few cities in the states, but give it time.

I am sure the opportunities and applications for this are endless.

Any way check out this video and all will be revealed.

Great online resource for anyone involved in Public Relations

Again this is another StumbleUpon of mine whilst searching the web for some PR inspiration. I have started to subscribe to the twice weekly podcast from For Immediate Release known as the Hobson & Holtz report focussing on online communications and public relations, it really is excellent and well worth checking out. The most recent podcast was an interview with Sarah Dean Forrester of Trimedia in Manchester discussing Crisis Communication.

What I particulary enjoyed was her BLT acronym, which I thought was especially apt in todays world when the public are especially losing trust with communications often made by an organsations most senior people and turning to the less senior staff of orgainsations for their source of information. I think this is a very poinient point and the start of a real shift to a more social media approach where many consumers are turning to newer forms of interaction such as blogs, something that orgainsations are going to have to move towards if they are truely going to interact and understand their customers rather than feeding the traditional polished (often ghost written) corporate messages. Transparent I think the word is?

Stumbled upon some innovative advertising

I must say that recently I have been quite addicted to StumbleUpon, probably the main reason why I haven’t been posting to the Create. blog - sorry. Anyway for those of you who are not familar with StumbleUpon it really is a great way to find sites that interest you and also find other people that share your similar interests. I wont give to much away so why not register for free today and Stumble away!Moving swiftly on, whilst I was Stumbling the other night I came across another blog with some great pictures and examples of when advertisers get really creative and make some remarkable adverts. I though I would share this with you all, so why not check them out!  Enjoy! 

2007 the year of the social networking site

I think its fair to to say that 2007 was the year of the social networking site. We have seen amazing growth in the phenomenom especially with sites like Facebook, Bebo and more recently Sagazone becomming names we use and hear on daily basis.  I think its fair to say we will see huge growth during 2008 with more and more people joining these communities to share information, conversation, ideas and and have fun not to mention the endless opportunities for marketers to communicate, listen and interact with whole new audiences. 

Isle of Man Marketing direct

Set up a Skype account linked to the website so when I’m working at home and the green light shows feel free to call! Of course I’m available on the mobile anyway but it can be so much easier when your online. I’ve got to say I wish I used Skype more often, I’m certainly going to make more of an effort now as so many people I know are already Skyped up!

Great books for marketers

Just had the luxury of a week on holiday and took advantage of the chance to chill out a bit. Got through two books that I’d recommend to anyone. The first book I read was Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. This book outlines how businesses can benefit from blogging and how blogging has changed communications. It’s a really great book with plenty of case studies throughout showing both good and bad use of blogs.

The second book I read was The DNA of Customer Experience: How Emotions Drive Value by Colin Shaw. Through their trademarked emotional signature, Colin Shaw and his company have developed a method of measuring the financial benefits of improving customer service. In this book he discusses this, again with case studies, and looks into how businesses can benefit from improving the emotional experiences of their customers. I really enjoyed reading this as to me the customer should be central to any long term strategy. Not always the case and still many businesses of all sizes still focussing solely on the financial targets and goals.