As our first guest blogger of 2010, Rod Petrie – Business coach & founding partner of Design Bridge – shares a few thoughts on what lies at the heart of a successful agency….

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Uncle has just completed the latest project for financial services provider, Fidelity International. The brief was to create an interactive experience that helped illustrate how, during the last 30 years, Fidelity has achieved a higher than average rate of return on it’s leading specialist fund. Average annual returns of nearly 18% have lead the Fidelity Special Situations Fund to out-perform all other registered funds in the UK. The Special Situations Anniversary Quiz was designed to help explain the concept of contrarian investing, a unique approach to investment first pioneered by Fidelity investment guru, Anthony Bolton. Read the rest of this entry »

Before we head off for a brief period of ‘indulgence induced hibernation’ we wanted to say thanks to all of our wonderful clients, suppliers, family and friends who have helped us along our merry way through the course of 2009. Your support is very much appreciated and we look forward to working with you all throughout next year.

In the mean time, we wish you all the very best for the festive season, and hope that 2010 proves to be a happy, healthy and successful year for one and all.

Uncle are proud to announce the addition of a new client to the business, financial services specialists, Fidelity International. Fidelity is one of the UK’s largest investment fund managers with over 660,000 customers, looking after assets worth over $210 billion. Uncle have been appointed to deliver creative solutions by the eBusiness team here in the UK. We are currently engaged on a brief to deliver an online interactive experience. The activity will support an upcoming above the line campaign, celebrating the anniversary of one of their funds.

Uncle are always on the lookout for talent. If you think you’ve got the skills to pay the bills and aren’t afraid of life outside the M25, drop us a line with your folio and we’ll take a look. Currently we are looking to fill our books with great freelancers to call on when things get hectic. If you think you’ve got something to bring to our party then get in touch. No agencies please!

Uncle have been helping ourselves as well as our clients lately with a focused and sustained push to develop a solid, electronic, direct marketing strategy. Email is far from a recent technology, but one that has been used and abused in varying degrees throughout the relatively short history of the internet. It’s been done a lot. It’s also been done badly, and only in recent years have the truely entrepreneurial companies enabled us all to do it better. Read the rest of this entry »

UK based company sales agents, Clear Business Sales required an identity that would speak clearly to their intended audience. Uncle produced a strong recognisable brand identity and designed a range of stationery items to help this new business communicate with their growing client base.

Design Exchange magazine was recently launched at the 100% design exhibition in Earls Court, London. Uncle who designed the masthead and cover of this design specific publication, produced graphics for a stand at this years show. Sadly we missed the free champagne – thanks to a rather late night in the studio

Pay per click marketing is very competitive, a sector that paid search marketing specialists Jellyfish have made their own. At Ad:Tech 2009 Jellyfish wanted to give maximum brand presence. Working with an exhibition construction specialist, Uncle translated the Jellyfish brand onto this exhibition stand that will be reused throughout the year.

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We are quite proud of this recent Uncle project. Design Footprint is to be launched in early 2010, a magazine that focusses on sustainable and ecological design. LDI Media wanted a magazine that would sell within a competitive marketplace, so we set about creating a bold masthead and look and feel that would interest the designer target market. We have supplied the master styles and grid to the in house creative team at Design Footprint HQ to layout this quarterly publication.

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You may have already seen these adverts, as Virgin Holidays have been promoting heavily over the summer in many national newspapers. The Daily Mail, The Times and London’s Metro all ran the Uncle designed adverts to promote various discounted holiday destinations around the globe.

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Time magazine is a recognised news source trusted by the world for intelligent journalism. Uncle were asked to design a website that will promote magazine subscriptions. Working within Time’s strict brand identity we delivered a e-commerce site which will sell the weekly news magazine to a UK audience.

Huge congratulations must go to Sun Resorts hotel, Le Touessrok, having  just won an award in the category of: ‘Best Hotel, Mauritius’ at the ‘Europe and Africa Property Awards 2009’ in association with CNBC Arabia. Le Touessrok will be presented with this major property award at the renowned Marriott Hotel in London’s Grosvenor Square in October 2009.

Uncle played their part by designing and producing the bespoke award submission document. The document was created using a combination of digital print & handmade rubdowns and was ultimately hand-bound drawing upon the production values common throughout this premium resorts printed communications.

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LDI Media asked Uncle to design the masthead and magazine template styles for the relaunch of Design Exchange. Already with 5,000 subscribers, the London based magazine specialising in all things design, wanted a clear and up-to-date look and feel. Uncle are now working on the master design and layout for sister publication, Design Footprint. Keep an eye out for more on this publication which focusses on the issue of sustainability in the design industry.

Illustrator Gemma Correll was the perfect choice to spruce up Uncle’s new presentation format, having worked with her on a previous Virgin Holidays project. Recently Uncle has been pitching to many new clients, so we needed a illustration style that could give our proposal document sense of fun. View some of Gemma’s beautiful drawings at www.gemmacorrell.com

BBC Worldwide, Gardeners’ World. Uncle were commissioned to create various 30 second adverts to promote the Gardeners’ World awards 2009. Having storyboarded the ads we created the final movies in Adobe After Effects. The motion ads coincided with a national print advertising campaign that Uncle also created.

To find out which marrow wins the gold rosette visit www.gardenersworld.com

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Working in partnership with Jellyfish, Uncle designed and produced seven supplement covers for MoneyWeek magazine. The supplements contain exclusive content for MoneyWeek’s new subscribers. Read the rest of this entry »

As brand guardians for Paid Search experts Jellyfish, Uncle were tasked with bringing the brand to life in the new Surrey HQ. As well as working with the directors to plan and specify the interior fit-out and furnishings, Uncle designed and produced a series of large format graphics for application in key high visibility areas. Custom printed window frostings were also used to help segment the open plan offices and create ‘quiet zones’ within the building, with bespoke artworks being originated that fit within the overall brand framework. Uncle applied the brand across all three floors of the brand new office development, including a universally applied desktop theme for all workstations and the creation of a leisure area complete with pool table and handled the design & installation of the exterior signage.

Walberswick, Suffolk played host to the British Crabbing Federation 29th Annual Crabbing Championships, we sent our senior designer to compete. Over 1,200 eager participants took part in the competition, the winning crab weighing in at 4 5/8 ounces. Richard didn’t manage to catch a thing, making do with his complementary jar of crab paste. Better luck next year Rich! Find out more: www.walberswick.ws/crabbing

Britannica Exhibition Stand

We thought you might like to know that we have recently developed a exhibition stand for our ‘Superbrand’ client Encyclopaedia Britannica. Exhibited at both London and Frankfurt International Book Fair, we worked with Britannica to improve their brands perception by using contemporary design and photography. It must have worked as they made it into the Top Ten of ‘Superbrands’ shortly after.

Huge congratulations to Uncle client, Encyclopedia Britannica, for landing the number 10 place in the 2009/10 Superbrands Consumer Index. Quite an achievement, and with a ranking just behind Apple in this years league of the top consumer brands in the UK, Uncle are hugely proud to provided design work that ‘has been a very important element in the quality of the Encyclopedia Britannica brand presentation‘. Thank you to Ian Grant, Managing Director, for the kind words, all of us at Uncle send our congratulations, it really is amazing news!

The Recommended Agency Register have awarded Uncle a place in the 2009 agency listings. Thanks to all those who took the time to respond to the research survey, the many kind words of support have secured us a place with this marketing & design industry body. Qualification is based entirely upon client feedback relating to specific design briefs, not size or revenue, and with scores upwards of 90% for creativity, professionalism, strategic thinking and value for money, it’s good to know we are getting things right!

As well as creating the triOpsis brand and company website, we have also played a big part in building the web application that forms the central part of the company’s key product offering. Uncle provide a totally integrated service to triOpsis, a specialist in the world of Retail Display Management. Crossing the boundaries of the traditional agency/client relationship enabled Uncle to add real value to the project.

So off we went on a school trip to the D&AD New Blood exhibition at London’s Olympia. Good to keep an ear to the ground and see the new talent as it emerges from the cocoon of higher education. Student projects from Leeds, Kingston and Ravensbourne caught our eye, then again so did the free bar. A post-show trip to the White Horse in Parsons Green for some ale and BBQ action did us no harm whatsoever.

With quite a lot happening at Uncle over the last few months, we thought an email newsletter would be a nice way to keep everyone informed of the latest and greatest goings on here in the studio.

Email newsletters are a great way of keeping in touch with your client base, a CRM tool that’s really easy to manage. Drop us a line if you would like to know more about how Uncle can help deliver the creative solution and infrastructure to get your own newsletter up and running. You’ll be surprised how easy and cost effective this can be.

Mike comes to Uncle with 10 years experience in design, information architecture and usability for the web. Mike’s legacy includes an impressive portfolio of over 25 websites for FTSE100, AIM and techMARK companies. Since then Mike has worked on more creative briefs for clients in the music industry, and has spent the last two years building People’s Music Store, a revolutionary music download service.

Welcome on board Mike!

Uncle welcome new client, luxury hoteliers, Sun Resorts. Sun Resorts, owner of five luxury destination resorts, asked us to provide a complete HTML email solution to communicate a promotional offer to the wider travel industry. We combined strong creative with a robust email delivery system to communicate Sun Resorts campaign message to key industry decision makers. The campaign was a great success, with less than 10% bounce backs and solid rates of engagement.

BBC Gardeners’ World recently got us to design some print advertising for a current promotion, these will appear in Olive, Good Food, Home & Antiques magazines amongst others. There will be more Gardeners’ World projects germinating soon.

Uncle created a campaign specific website for this online organic produce retailer. We developed the site to reflect the existing Riverford brand and combined this with hard working promotional creative to help convert online leads into actual sales.

Uncle worked closely with Paid Search marketing agency, Jellyfish to provide a bespoke creative and SEM solution aimed at driving substantial sales when the site goes live at the end of July ‘09.

Richard will work alongside Uncle founder and creative director Mark Deeprose to spearhead Uncle’s pursuit of new clients and drive the development of the business. Richard brings boutique and blue chip agency experience to Uncle, combined with 16 years of design and production expertise, and will play a lead role in managing client relationships and driving larger projects through the agency.

Give Richard a call if you would like to talk about how Uncle can be of help on 07525 838537 or email richard.tidman@creativeuncle.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/

Uncle have designed a number of campaign specific landing pages for Skype with the objective of improving conversion rates for sales in the international telephony market.

So successful have the new design solutions proved, Skype have taken Uncle’s creative treatment and applied it to a number of their own website pages.

Uncle have relocated. Luckily we only moved round the corner as the boxes were quite heavy. Our new studio address is: Uncle, 31 London Road, Reigate, Surrey RH2  9SS. All other contact details stay the same.