Having already delivered successful and Platinum Award Winning Facebook and Twitter campaigns for the IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) Hotel Indigo brand; Pixel8 were invited to provide global Social Media marketing for IHG’s Crowne Plaza Hotels & Resorts brand.

Crowne Plaza currently has 388 hotels open in 60 countries and 123 new hotels are in the pipeline.

Within just four working days the Pixel8 Social Media team launched the Crowne Plaza global Facebook with 43 elements including:

A custom-application microsite listing all hotels that works within a single page on Facebook.

All Crowne Plaza campaigns including PGA TOUR and BMW Motorsport sponsorships.

Hotel photo albums, worldwide special offers, latest news and two charity donation campaigns.

“Room Nights for the Brave” is the Crowne Plaza campaign supporting “Birdies for the Brave”, a PGA TOUR supported military outreach initiative assisting U.S. Armed Forces and their families. Crowne Plaza is donating one room night to Birdies for the Brave for every Eagle made at 8 PGA TOUR golf tournaments between 19th May and 3rd July, 2011.

Room Nights for the Brave launched on Facebook and Twitter at the moment play began at the Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial, on 19^th May. An “Eagle Counter” on Crowne Plaza Facebook displays the number of free room nights accrued to date. By close of play at Colonial, 231 free room nights had been accrued!

Pixel8 launched a second campaign to further support Crowne Plaza donations to Birdies for the Brave. The Crowne Plaza Facebook “Likes” campaign will donate up to $20,000 to the charity, one dollar for every “Like” on Crowne Plaza global Facebook until 3rd July, 2011. In week one of this campaign, over 1,000 people “Liked” Crowne Plaza’s Facebook and many positive comments were posted about the brand.

Please join Crowne Plaza in supporting the great work provided by the dedicated people at Birdies for the Brave, just visit Crowne Plaza Facebook and click the “Like” button.

Pixel8 are very pleased to win Platinum in the Social Media category at the Hermes Creative Awards for our Hotel Indigo Facebook & Twitter campaigns. We’re also proud of the Facebook and Twitter campaigns we delivered in record time for Crowne Plaza Hotels & Resorts.

Charles Yap, Director of Global Brand Communications at IHG described Pixel8’s achievements as “Epic work!”

One advantage of having the same agency provide both brand design and social media, is that the agency is already up to speed and on-brand before social media marketing begins. Advantages which IHG enjoys working with Pixel8 include our ability to provide immediate expertise across both traditional and new media platforms, staff that work out-of-office hours to accommodate Eastern Standard Time and quick turnarounds on custom campaign graphics.

For more information about Pixel8 please visit Pixel8ltd.com or call us direct. In the UK please call 0845 230 1336 – From the USA dial 011 44 161 228 6489 or contact us by e-mail today.

Crowne Plaza, PGA TOUR and BMW are trademarks of their respective owners.

When Pixel8 creates new corporate branding and website designs for clients, we always provide a selection of creative branding ideas, design formats and colour options.

A personal injury law firm wanted ‘something different’ for their new Accident Compensation claims website, and researching the sector revealed that many of the websites lack creativity and exciting colours were nowhere to be found!

Pixel8 began creating different strap lines and icon designs that could be incorporated into the logo’s identity. Working closely with the client, the strap line ‘You’re in Safe hands’ was chosen giving the logo a ‘reassurance’ look and feel to it, and didn’t have the bold, brash selling features that most compensation websites have. Pixel8 and the client wanted the logo design and the web design to feel friendly, fun and approachable.

The client was then provided with a selection of logo and web designs, and picked the quirky design featuring unique characters of people involved in everyday types of accidents. For each accident category Pixel8 wanted to portray something different, and went with the idea of illustrating multiple characters to play out the scenes from different types of accidents. The characters are bright, colourful and have a fun, caring style to them with a little humour too.

Pixel8’s graphic design team also created a character named ‘Bob’ who shows the different amounts of compensation payable for various personal injuries; see Bob now.

Lime green and blue colours were selected for the logo and Pixel8 ran the same colours and tints throughout the website design.

The website is now live at www.accident-compensation.co.uk

For more details about Pixel8’s corporate branding and web design services, call Pixel8 in Manchester on 0161 228 6489 – 0845 230 1336 or contact us by e-mail

Calendar industry leader Danilo, which supplies over 10,000 retailers globally, asked Pixel8 in Manchester to create a new brand, and to develop a new eCommerce website that would allow consumers to personalise officially licensed calendars and greetings cards online.

Pixel8’s brand design team developed the Personalise.com brand then worked with their in-house web design and web development teams to create an eCommerce website that would:

A)     Appeal to a wide consumer audience as the website offers calendars and cards ranging from Manchester United and Hello Kitty to Wallace and Gromit and Hollyoaks.

B)      Allow people to order personalised official calendars and greetings cards easily.

Pixel8 developed bespoke backend software for the website that produces print ready artwork after personalisation. Using a simple four step process, consumers can now get their favourite celebrities from the worlds of music, football, TV and film personalised on calendars and greetings cards which are despatched within 24 hours.

The website allows people to put their name, or a loved one’s name on a Manchester United shirt held up by Sir Alex Ferguson or on the billboard outside Old Trafford. Hollyoaks fans could find Gemma Merna (plays Carmen McQueen) asking them to be her valentine in February or Ashley Taylor-Dawson (plays Darren Osbourne) requesting a meeting under the mistletoe in December.

Jamie Watson, joint managing director of Pixel8 said, “Danilo saw there was an opening in the market for personalised, officially licensed calendars and greetings cards, so we have set them up to fill the niche.

“Pixel8 has produced numerous award winning licensed calendar designs for Danilo over the last decade and was well placed to help them diversify with this exciting new brand. The bespoke software we created for Personalise.com has several other applications, including the creation of uniform marketing collateral for multi-site franchises. This is an avenue which Pixel8 is keen to explore.

Danilo produced its first design, an Elvis calendar, 32 years ago, and is now licensed to produce the official calendars for top brands including major football clubs, Top Gear, Cliff Richard, Glee, Toy Story 3 and Hollyoaks.

For more information please visit www.Personalise.com or call Pixel8 in Manchester on 0161 228 6489 – 0845 230 1336 or contact us by e-mail

Paul Leybourne is head of sales for Greater Manchester-based Vodat International, a supplier of managed networks and IPT solutions to the UK retail market.

Vodat’s clients include Jaeger, Beaverbrooks, Fat Face, White Stuff, Karen Millen, Lush, Reiss, Dune, 99p Stores and B&M Bargains. Vodat has not lost a client in more than seven years.

Paul started working with Pixel8 in Manchester 17 months ago…

“I think truth, honesty and really engaging an agency to understand the goals and core objectives of your business are the most important things in a great client-agency working relationship.

“The more an agency understands, the more they can give. I think too many sales and marketing people keep agencies at an arm’s length out of fear. They don’t want to lose control of any aspect of the business. And I think insecurity can play a part too – if your agency is coming up with all the ideas, then what is your role?

“We see both Pixel8 and our PR agency as business partners, and that’s not just rhetoric. We have bought into Pixel8 and they have bought into our business vision.

“I think poor client-agency working involves the client being too directive and the agency just running around to their orders. But we brought Pixel8 on board for their design and marketing expertise, so we’re not going to just leave them with the donkey work. Pixel8 adds value to our company and they do a lot of the creative thinking that we just don’t have time for. They allow both me and our MD Mike Bielinski to concentrate on running the business and generating sales.”

Jamie Watson, joint managing director of Pixel8 said, “Vodat are excellent communicators and invite us to a monthly meeting which is always very productive. They are honest with us about any issues their company is facing and encourage us to really get involved with ideas and solutions.

We originally started working with Vodat’s MD Mike Bielinski then as their company expanded Paul took over the sales department. We are really pleased to have developed an excellent working relationship with both Mike and Paul.”

For more information please visit Vodat International.

The Pixel8 Design and Marketing Agency in Manchester, UK is proud to present “Powered by Smarter Pixels”, a short animated video showcase of our services.

See Powered by Smarter Pixels now on our home page at www.pixel8ltd.com

If you like our animation, please visit YouTube and click on the “Like” button to vote for us at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Kl4Dwz9lmY or tell us what you think by contacting us.

The animation was originally hand designed on storyboards by Pixel8’s creative team to showcase our top level service categories, called WOMGE…

	Web Design
	Online Marketing
	Multimedia
	Graphic Design
	Exhibition Services

Powered by Smarter Pixels also shows the high levels of creativity that Pixel8 consistently delivers.

As a small agency our clients get immediate access to our senior creative, technical and management staff. Our in-house design, development and production teams regularly deliver fast turnarounds because we’re not a 9 to 5 agency. We don’t clock off till your work is done.

Pixel8 is working smarter so your company can get all your design, branding and advertising requirements from one agency. We manage the complete process from concept to completion.

Whether you’re a small business that needs a new logo design or an international hotel chain that’s looking for creative corporate branding, call Pixel8 in Manchester because we’re Powered by Smarter Pixels!

Pixel8’s WOMGE services:

Web Design: Website design and development of SME and PLC websites, eCommerce and CMS websites, database development, blog designs, online brand guides and mobile websites

Online Marketing: Search engine optimisation, SEO copywriting, online press release distribution, social media marketing, email marketing, mobile website marketing and Smartphone applications

Multimedia: Animation, video, virtual tours, 3D page turning magazines, Adobe Director and Flash presentations and recyclable corporate PowerPoint presentations

Graphic Design: Logo design, corporate Branding, brand guide design and development, graphic designs for calendars, sales collateral, leaflets, brochures, business stationary, packaging design and product mock ups, t-shirt design and printing

Exhibition Services: Exhibition stand design, build and removal, light boxes, pop up and pull up banner, in-house large format printing for exhibition stands, vehicles and building exteriors.

If you want your advertising and marketing to work smarter in 2010 and beyond, call Pixel8 in Manchester on 0161 228 6489 – 0845 230 1336 or contact us by email today.

Manchester design and marketing agency Pixel8 has been selected to take part in a £10million high growth programme which aims to generate 2,000 jobs in the North West of England over the next three years.

The northern quarter-based agency was chosen because judges believe Pixel8 has the capability to expand by at least 20 percent a year. As part of the programme, Pixel8 will receive intensive coaching from an experienced mentor, high growth workshops and networking opportunities.

Pixel8 has already demonstrated its strong growth potential, increasing sales by over 30% during the recession of 2009 and taking on three new fulltime members of staff.  The agency is also relocating into larger offices in the northern quarter this summer.

Working with both multinational global brands and small business owners, Pixel8’s new clients include 2ergo, the Global Mobile Technology Provider, the Vertex Group of International Outsourcing Companies, and SME’s such as portrait photographer Rebeka Fiona, and the motorbike lawyers at SorryMate.com

Joint managing director, Jamie Watson said “the high growth programme offers us the chance to take an outside view of our business, considering longer term goals and how we can best work towards them”.

For more info please visit www.Pixel8ltd.com or the www.HighGrowthProgramme.co.uk

The Pixel8 design and marketing agency in Manchester are pleased to be working with Vertex, which has over 8,000 employees in the USA, Canada, UK and India.

Vertex is a global Business Process Outsourcer (BPO), providing Customer Management and IT Outsourcing services to over 200 clients worldwide across many sectors. Vertex clients in the UK include bmibaby and The National Trust.

Vertex were interested in our email marketing design, broadcast and reporting services which allow design templates created from initial HTML emails, to be integrated into their CMS system. Future email marketing campaigns can then be authored by clients themselves, giving them full control over the content.

Pixel8 has recently broadcast two initial email marketing campaigns for Vertex.

The first campaign was for the Vertex V-Zine – an email sent to their Utilities client base in the USA and Canada. Designed with graphics to match Vertex corporate branding, the email displayed several snippets of news articles related to Vertex and the North American utilities sector; with links to the full news articles hosted on the Vertex website.

The second email campaign was a simple newsletter broadcasted to their UK client base, updating them with new, additional benefits of outsourcing.  The aim of the email newsletter is to have a Vertex branded email which focuses on a specific news article, which can be sent out in-between the more comprehensive Vertex V-Zine.

Both of these email marketing campaigns were delivered using Pixel8’s email broadcasting system, which has design and spam testing features as well as a detailed analytics reporting system. This allows Vertex to analyse how many people have received the email, which links were clicked on, how many times and specifically who clicked on which links.

For more information about Vertex please visit Vertex.

Manchester design and marketing agency Pixel8, has produced two new online interactive multimedia page turning brochures for 2ergo, the global provider of mobile enabling technologies for mobile marketing, mobile CRM, mobile entertainment and media.

Multimedia page turning brochures, otherwise known as e-brochures or interactive digital editions, are providing 2ergo with a new interactive platform to promote their services. The interactive brochures are hosted online for easy distribution via email and instant access; and they’re so more flexible than emailing large PDF files.

All the graphic designs in both interactive brochures were designed by Pixel8.

The retail online interactive brochure uses video footage, music and flash animation. The video content includes detailed information about the 2ergo iPhone and Smartphone apps for the Guardian and for Rightmove.

The future mobile technology interactive brochure covers interactive messaging, mobile internet publishing and content management, Smartphone application development, mobile ticketing, coupons, customer loyalty solutions and mobile security.

Pixel8 also printed offline versions of both the new brochures in full colour, as part of a range of graphic design work currently in production for 2ergo.

To see more of Pixel8’s interactive brochure designs please visit page turning multimedia.

For complete information about 2ergo, please visit 2ergo.com

As part of our ongoing web support services for our client, the Expert Patients Programme, our web design and online marketing teams provided them with access to our easy-to-use email marketing system.

First, we designed and developed an HTML email template for their Self Management Division and integrated it into the content management system (CMS) of our email broadcasting system.

After an initial email marketing training session with the client, they were able to insert the text into the email campaign using the content management system which features a simple to use WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor with the ability to edit text and images, insert banners and links to their website or to other organisations such as the NHS.

When the email content had been added, it was a simple case of uploading the mailing list as a CSV file and using our email broadcasting system to send the email out to members of the Expert Patients Programme and the Self Management Division associates.

Once the email campaign had been broadcast, the client used our live email reporting system to browse through analytics and statistics including the number of times the email had been opened, which links had been clicked on and which email addresses caused a bounce back.

Pixel8 recently provided website redesign and web development services for the Expert Patients Programme website, to find out more please click here.

For more information visit our web design or our email marketing portfolio pages, or call the Pixel8 design and marketing agency in Manchester on 0161 228 6489, 0845 230 1336 or contact us today by e-mail

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) gives us the ability to get websites found for many different keywords phrases on the natural (or organic) search engine results pages. Google, Yahoo! & Bing prioritise websites based on what they see, and SEO allows us to help the search engines to give our websites better rankings in their search results.

Why create an SEO strategy?

Like anything, if you don’t plan for it, it won’t happen! Strategy is about aligning everything that we do towards a common goal and this philosophy has never been more relevant. We only have a finite amount of time and resource for SEO, therefore it’s essential that we’re clear about what we want to achieve and how we are going to achieve it.

It’s simply not realistic to want to be number 1 in Google for highly competitive keywords quickly, so initially we look for long tail keyword phrases that include the top performing keywords. By being realistic we are much more likely to generate traffic and revenues quicker, as we work towards achieving top search engine results for the best performing keyword phrases.

Steps to an SEO strategy

1. Keyword Discovery and Research

This involves finding and understanding the keywords and phrases that potential customers are using to find your product or service. Viewing competitor websites and understanding the keywords that they are trying to be found for is a good start.

2. Keyword Priority

Now that we have a list of keywords and phrases, we need to prioritise and categorise them. We now need to assess, commercially, which keywords and phrases are most important to be found for. This should be based on the competencies and overall objectives of your business.

3. Long Tail Phrase Development

Once we have prioritised the list, we can start to assess the competition for each term and increase the focus by adding related keywords. This may be by geographical location or by a more specific description of the product or service.

4. Website Development

Before starting any SEO strategy we need to answer some technical questions about the website. Can the web pages be found and indexed by the search engines? Is the website easy to search? Is the website tuned for your SEO priorities? Does the navigation reflect the keywords that you want the website to be found for?

5. Optimising Website Content

Now that we are focussed on the keywords and phrases that we want the website to be found for, we can write textual content that targets the keywords and phrases. Content includes the on-page text that visitors and search engines can read, and also the web page Title Tags and Meta Tags which are crucial for SEO. In most cases, the text in the Title Tags and Meta Tags is displayed in the search engine results. In other words, we control what people read in the search engines, so we can influence people to visit “our” website.

6. Link Building

Google wants to be assured that your website is more relevant than all the others for the keywords that are being searched for. One way Google does this is to measure the relevance of the external links that are pointing to the website / web pages. The best quality links are from related-content websites, authority websites and respected blogs and social media sites. Whilst the best things in life are free, the best quality links aren’t!

Internal website links are often overlooked but are important as they help search engines to easily find other pages on the website.

7. Reviewing

We need to take a snap shot on a regular basis to ensure that we are following the original strategy, or that we are consciously making decisions to change it based on the ever moving feast. There are a host of useful tools including Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools to help with this. Setting key performance indicators (kpi’s) really drives our understanding of the market and our position within it.

If you’d like to know more about developing successful SEO strategies for your business website, please call the SEO consultants at Pixel8 in Manchester on 0161 228 6489 / 0845 230 1336 or contact us by e-mail.