Welcome to the Escape Blog

Who would have thought that a computer chip-maker could even have a brand?

Well Intel do. Not only that, but according to the Interbrand consultancy, Intel is the world’s fifth most valuable brand, worth an estimated $36bn (£21bn).

The BBC report that on 5th January Intel will reveil a whole new marketing makeover to incorporate Intel products running in more than PCs.

It just goes to show that it doesn’t matter what you make you can let people know about it and get yourself a recognised brand, whether it be on a global or local basis.

A groundbreaking county court case could see SPAM (at least in the UK) become less of a problem after a ruling whereby an internet firm must pay damages for sending
unwanted ads.

Nigel Roberts, 37, used the EU anti-spam law after being bombarded with e-mails from Media Logisitics, based in Scotland. The firm agreed to pay £270 damages and it is thought this could open the floodgates, or rather close down the e-mail spammers.

Full article can be read in The Sun Online.

If you are sending e-mails and are uncertain of your obligations, you should get it checked out. There are procedures for creating opt-in e-mail lists and that is something we can help you with.

"It could also be the year where experts sit up and take notice of blogs, podcasts and other consumer-generated content."
With faster, and more accesible broadband speeds, BBC (along with Jupiter Analyst Ian Fogg) take a look at some developments that could play a big part for us all in 2006.

ASOS, the online retailer has been a
much loved company as far as the City is concerned, growing from
strength to strength over the last couple of years.
The recent fire
in Hemel Hempstead hit them hard and they have had to shut-up-shop
temporarily, not being able to fulfill any orders.
Ironically, the flip side is an unexpected flurry of PR and although they intend to discount stock to win back customers, I can’t help thinking this may actually benefit them in the long-run (if they can weather the storm).
It just goes to show that however well a business is going, sometimes
the unexpected happens and when it does is the true test of a great
business. Any, and all, opportunities need to be pounced on, there simply isn’t time to rue.

20:12:05 FT has an article about Blogging and Large Brands:

"Blogs are a long-term strategy that will work for brands that are
able to open themselves up. It is about long-term engagement and
dialogue," says Oliver Snoddy, media manager for OMD Digital.

"If you just use blogs as a short-term promotional medium you are missing the point."

The big boys are starting to wake up to the fact that people can speak about you whether you like it or not. It’s how you handle the response that counts!

Fancy having a Blog on your site? Contact us - it’s easy peasy

(and will anyone care?)

A great little e-book from Chris Houchens

Chris Houchens founded Shotgun Concepts in 1997 to help small
businesses who are at that "awkward age" of being between solo
marketing and big agencies get the most out of their marketing,
advertising, and PR efforts.

Chris’s Blog

So the pass-the-parcel finished yesterday with all the prizes gone. Dave Chivers, a designer from a Basingstoke Print Company was very pleased after winning a black iPod:

"thankyou thankyou thankyou! Highly delighted and can’t quite believe it!
I’ve been one of the envious ones at times like this so many times…"

As a viral marketing campaign, we learnt a lot. The game was played 1125 times and created a real sense of fun for us seeing new people visit our site from all over the world. We learnt, too late, that we should have made the pass-the-parcel mechanism allow for passing on to more than one person - it could have spread more that way!

If you are interested in running a similar campaign, why not give us a call.

For all you geeks out there (and there are plenty of us), you now have the opportunity to interrogate the entire net through one of Amazon’s subsidiaries.

Via the Alexa service, anyone with a basic knowledge of
programming will be able to search 4.5 billion web pages from more than
16 million websites for whatever they want with prices for the service starting at $1 per processor per hour to crunch the 300 terabytes of data.

Complete Story from the BBC

Seth Godin, Author of Permission Marketing (amongst others), speaks to
e-consultancy in an online interview.

We’ve touched on the death of e-mail marketing. Question 12 covers the same topic.

How much of your web site budget goes on actually making it work better?

Forget about the design and the content; so many people overlook the very basic principle of how it works and, more importantly, how people use it.

"Following a usability redesign, websites increase desired metrics by 135% on average"

Jakob Neilson’s article from January 2003 should make us all think more about how it works.

We can test and advise you on your current or pending web projects to help maximise your return on investment.