Archive

At last Wonderful has broken the mould and hired a silver surfer and non techo who signed up on the proviso that Wonderful lived up to their boast that they "play as hard as they work" - Bring it on!!
Richard has spent more than 30 years in the financial and professional services sector - the bulk with ANZ Investment Bank working in financial markets at posts as far afield as Melbourne, Hong Kong and New York. Fortunately, at the age of 52, Wonderful have put him on a fast-track management course in Tweets, Facebook, Diggs, Blogs, Farks and Buzzes to which he now claims to be proficient (although the only visitors to his Twitter profile are dodgy and always blocked.)

Richard is hugely positive about life after 50 where experience and gravitas replaces the young and the thrusting. He hopes to bring that experience and gravitas to bear on like-minded professionals who don't yet know that they need Wonderful's cutting-edge creativity if they are to move into the modern world of social and truly creative marketing and appreciate that JAVA is not a type of coffee, Adobe is not where you live spelt incorrectly, MAC is not a hamburger and where having a DIMM (Dual Inline Memory Module) is prerequisite and membership of the PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association) mandatory.

Out of work Richard has a passion for most sports, British History, gardening, Westerns and more recently an appreciation for the life and work of Dizzee Rascal. Too infirm to play, he now coaches cricket and works with the South's leading cricket club, The Mote in Maidstone.

Wonderful has been enjoying an incredibly successful first half of the year. We have been busy ensuring we remain at the forefront of technological changes and as a result, we have won an innovative project with Tesco to design the top supermarket chain's first dynamic online advertising banners.
 
Given an open brief to develop a flash banner with dynamic content, we rose to the challenge and developed a banner which pulls up-to-the-minute information about Tesco's online wine by the case selection.
 
Our ultimate aim was to drive customers to the Tesco's Wine site in a way that was both inventive and more informative than a usual static flash banner.  The live data is collected from an XML file and the images are from the Tesco's site. Our widget pulls it all together in one neat package.
 
In addition to this, we have also been helping to boost Tesco's SIM card campaign by creating email and online banner adverts which encourage customers to register for a Tesco SIM card, with the added benefit of being entered into a free prize draw for one of six Nokia X8 mobile phones.

"If Facebook were a country it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria."

The Wonderful Creative Agency has been selected as finalists for the 'Best Business in the Creative Sector' at the Keiba Awards.

This is the first time Wonderful has entered Kent's premier business awards and to make the final three is a great achievement for the young brand.

Dan Maudhub, Wonderful's MD commented: "we are delighted to make the finals for this award. It is a testament to the teams' hard work and innovation".

The winner will be announced at Leeds Castle on July 2nd.

Wonderful have begun the next phase of our data cleansing work for Acas, this time focusing on the North East, Yorkshire and Humber. The campaign will see Wonderful contacting over 2000 companies to update current contacts, to develop new databases by gathering key information and to envision contacts about the services that Acas offer.
 
Acas offers a vital service to small to medium sized enterprises, providing specialist advice relating to Human Resources, employment law and conciliation. We have worked with the regional managers of Acas to ensure that a comprehensive review of all current contacts has been taken, whilst developing a whole range of new customer contacts for Acas.

The Wonderful Creative Agency have been appointed to design and build a new website for the Community Services division of Eastern and Coastal Kent PCT. Wonderful have run workshops with a cross-section of Health Care Professionals from Community Services to identify what staff really want from the website. The website, which will significantly improve communication between patients and Community Service's 3,600 staff, launched earlier this year.

The PCT have also commissioned Wonderful to design a range of offline marketing materials including 70 patient information leaflets, the Community Service's newsletter, a 300 page infection control manual and the PCT's annual report.

Controversial Brit artist Damien Hirst has given his approval for Demelza to use one of his paintings. Demelza approached Hirst's agent when Wonderful suggested that the image could be incorporated in the logo for Demelza's 2009 appeal, Make Room In Your Heart.  
 
The painting, entitled Beautiful Love Demelza, raised £650,000 for Demelza when auctioned at Sotheby's last autumn. The proceeds will be used as part of Demelza's Capital Appeal, raising funds to build South London's first children's hospice.

Wonderful have helped Demelza to strategise the campaign, which asks individuals and businesses to contribute towards the costs of running one of Demelza's fully equipped rooms at one of their two hospice locations.

Substance misuse and mental health experts KCA have commissioned Wonderful to help them develop their brand and produce their marketing collateral. KCA are a charity that works within communities to reduce the harm caused by substance misuse and mental health issues.

This is the first time KCA have engaged with an agency to help them evolve their brand and to develop their Impact Report. Wonderful are developing the imagery, written copy and the overall style guide for KCA communications this will help to create a more consistent overall look and feel for the charity's marketing.

Wonderful have been commissioned to rebrand and re-design the online marketing activity for the Hymns Ancient & Modern group. The group consists of several leading publications and titles including: Church Times, Third Way and the Church House Bookshop. The rebrand process includes developing the heritage brand, Hymns Ancient and Modern ltd.

The rebrand will review the entire online process, from visual identity, advertising strategy through to the overall look and feel of the websites.

Hymns Ancient and Modern has been trading since 1861. All of the publications within the group are now being brought together to deliver a coherent and consisitent strategy, with the objective to communicate with its customers more effectively and to drive online sales.
 

A new Save the Children microsite has gone live after just three days building it from scratch!
When Save the Children approached Wonderful to create a site to help raise more funds for Haiti we took on the project with pleasure.
Beginning on Tuesday, we established and developed the website including its design, a registration system and integrated and branded social media pages. The project was completed on Thursday morning.
Managing Director Dan Maudhub said: "It was a challenge but we were perfectly capable of turning this project around and ensuring it was of high quality despite the time constraints.
"It was a privilege to be able to help Save the Children with their campaign."
Save the Children wanted the project, which will come to a close within a month, to be a tool in providing more income for the Haiti devastation after the media storm and individual donations die down.
Therefore, the microsite is aimed at getting young entrepreneurs to generate ideas of how to raise funds for the Caribbean country.
The winner of the most innovative concept and the person whose business idea raises the most amount of money will be given the opportunity to work for Save the Children for three months, earning £250 per week.
The seven best ideas will be given seedfunding in order to put their plans into practice.

This FTSE top 250 pest control company is enjoying a greater visibility on Twitter and increased followers since Wonderful launched, and began managing, its social media campaign. Rentokil Initial plc wants to engage with multiple audiences via relevant social media networks.

We have been working with Rentokil's profile to build conversations and followers within these selected industries and people groups. This approach has led to increased communication channels for Rentokil and enhanced its brand as it has become more accessible and salient.

Wonderful has been commissioned to create two major Europeanwide online advertising campaigns for Park Plaza Hotels and Resorts and art'otel. The projects include online dynamic advertising through which we will promote Park Plaza's flagship London hotel in Westminster.

Users will also be able to check the hotels' availability through the adverts. We will be promoting the brand as a whole, specific cities where the hotels can be found and individual hotels. The campaign will be translated into several different languages in order
to reach each European market.

Wonderful's Managing Director Dan Maudhub said: "We are excited to be working with such renowned hotel groups which have so many great venues and locations.

"I'm looking forward to seeing the campaign rolled out across Europe."

Wonderful was commissioned by the Confederation of British Industry to design and build a website for its annual conference. The website included integration of blip.tv and Amiando payment gateway.
The CBI conference is one of the most high profile business and industry events of the year which is attended by some of the most influential people in the country. Last year, the event brought together the leaders of the three major political parties, leading businessmen and international speakers.

Wonderful has won a really exciting Kent-based project with Page and Wells; one of the longest-standing and most influential estate agents in the county.

As part of the job, we will be redesigning and rebuilding the agents' corporate website and helping them with their brand communication, including the development of a social media strategy.

Kent County Council gave us this cinema ad project on behalf of one of its education arms, the Kent Children and Families Information Service. The brief was to create a cinema advert which publicised and promoted the breadth and types of information the service offers.

Wonderful ran the whole production of the ad, which is currently being screened in cinemas across the Maidstone area, including script writing, pre-production, filming, lighting, sound and post-production.

We shot the film in Maidstone and used a Maidstone-based actress, finding someone who was actually eight months pregnant so we didn't have to use a pillow as a prop!

Early days in our brave new Social Media World; a look back at the most recent Media140 gig

A key conclusion from the Media140 Brands event in London, of which we were a sponsor, was that we are all still learning pretty much as we are going along and that our brave new digital world is still evolving - and fast.

Wonderful took a team to the event, which attracted a very full house with RIBA, the central London venue, thronging with more than 220 social media-ites, techies, journos and agency bods.

There were prominent people from a host of different disciplines speaking about real-time web, including the likes of AKQA CEO Tom Bedecarre, Nic Ray of Quirk, Ciaran Norris of Mindshare ad Ted Hunt of Innocent Drinks.
Salient points of the day included the vital issues regarding transparency in communications, the pitfalls of a badly managed social media account and tone of voice/personality, as expressed through Twitter.

Overall, a good day and great learning curve.

Who says London is where you have to be in touch with social media and striking out into new areas of creativity? We had our first Tweetup last night and it went really well. There were about 25 people and it was good to see they weren't all from Maidstone!
But what was more impressive was the amount of enthusiasm and passion everyone had to push the boundaries, especially in all the emerging technology on offer. Many chats were had about the pros and cons of Twitter, where technology would take us in the near future and how we could all be a part of the process.
Thinking back, there was also a lot of frustration in the room. The real desire to be at the cutting edge means hard work, money and a lot of hours - something one-man bands and small companies will find hard to invest in. It's the passion to get involved and be on the crest of the wave, but not knowing how to get to that place.
However, it was encouraging to meet people who have ideas, momentum and are trying out their thing, adding their mix to the ever-changing pot.
Thanks everyone for coming along and here's to the next one. Let's say Christmas time!

Wonderful's Head of Social Media Will Moore has spent three of his last annual leave days helping families and businesses which have been badly affected by the flooding in Cockermouth, Cumbria.

He went with Maidstone-based charity Restoring Hands, and cleaned homes, cleared out damaged furniture and helped remove fallen trees.

Will said: "It was very humbling but also great to be able to help the people there, as well as seeing, and being a part of, some real progress in them trying to rebuild their lives."

Wonderful has donated money to the mission.

We have a really exciting project on the go at the moment; we have won a contract to create a cinema advert for Kent County Council. The ad will go out across cinemas in Kent in the first quarter of next year and will promote the Kent Children and Families Information Service.

Needless to say our filming and copywriting teams are busy getting creative!

Wonderful has been commissioned to do a social media campaign for Rentokil. The aim is to build the business's online presence and help it communicate with its customers in the UK and abroad, through social media.

When KCA, a large charity which provides drug and alcohol rehabilitation services to people in the community, approached us to do some work for them, we saw an influential and high-achieving charity that had old and outdated branding.

The main aim of the project was to refresh KCA's brand and bring it up-to-date to reflect its current service and values. At the end of the project, we had also successfully created and designed a new logo, stationery, impact report, newsletter and developed brand guidelines.

The rebrand has given the charity a complete make-over and it now has the ability to bid for much larger contracts.

"I am delighted with the Impact Report which Wonderful produced and have received very positive feedback. It is clearly set out and written, uses powerful photography and images, adopts the right tone and is altogether a worthy communication tool for our achievements over the year. Overall, it strikes a balance between being creative and workable, and the entire team were a delight to work with - knowledgeable, patient and helpful." Stephanie Fairbank, Director of Development and Marketing

Wonderful is busy building an iPhone and iPad application for the new and exclusive London online buying club, Keynoir.

Keynoir gives its members access to luxurious experiences and purchases, known as keypasses, at a reduced cost with a different product or experience offered every weekday. We are developing an app that will promote each keypass and allow customers to upload reviews, share keypass links with friends on Facebook and Twitter and pay for any offers they want to benefit from.

We have also created a dynamic advertising and online advertising campaign to promote Keynoir's products which integrated its brand conscious and gave it a full suite of marketing.

We developed a range of banners that pulled information from Keynoir's RSS feed. This solution has the ability to update the banners with up-to-the-minute information which is communicated back to the client.

In addition to the mobile applications and dynamic online flash banners we have developed for this exclusive online buying club, we have also been commissioned to help Keynoir with its Facebook profile and presence.

We have created bespoke Facebook pages which are designed to engage with new audiences. As part of the package we are delivering, we have generated a competition page, a splash page which portrays different elements of the Keynoir brand and a previous offers page which details all of the previous luxury lifestyle day keypasses.

These additions saw a 650% increase in the number of people engaging with Keynoir.

Working with our affiliate partners TradeDoubler, Wonderful has developed an innovative project with Tesco to design the top supermarket chain's first dynamic online advertising banners.

Given an open brief to develop a flash banner with dynamic content, we rose to the challenge and developed a banner which pulls up-to-the minute information about Tesco's online wine-by-the-case selection.

Our ultimate aim was to drive customers to the Tesco's Wine site in a way that was both inventive and more informative than a usual static flash banner. Our widget pulls together live data from the Tesco database and allows customers to see continuously updated wine-by-the-case product offers.

In addition to this, we have also been helping to boost Tesco's SIM card campaign by creating email and online banner adverts which encourage customers to register for a Tesco SIM card, with the added benefit of being entered into a free prize draw for one of six Nokia X8 mobile phones.