Welcome to the Escape Blog

Today it’s like the Mary Celeste at The Escape with Laura off ripping it up on her birthday (happy birthday Laura), Gary scooting round town in his new wagon and Jason sloping off early. Plenty more Friday cookies to go round though.

New projects in this week include a new website for the athletic legend that is Roger Black, who is keen to start using our new CMS system to create a more interactive web presence in the run up to the 2012 Olympics.

Our own new website is going full steam ahead and we are hoping to have this up before Christmas. There’s still lot to do but as part of a brand repositioning we are being a lot more measured in our approach - which is quite rare for us.

By the way, is it me or has the Christmas slowdown already started? I’m off down the pub for a warm toddy.

I had great meeting yesterday with a couple of people from Venues4u.com and I came out with a real smile on my face. The company won a web prize we donated to a recent Women In Business Event and the meeting was the initial kick-off to see what they wanted and to explain how the project process would work.

Why I loved the meeting was because we managed to add a different perspective to the way they could communicate online. From being relatively negative about what they could get from a website, based on past experiences, ideas soon start flowing on ways that the new site would be improved to attract the relevant clients they were searching for.

And, I’m not just talking about the design. Yes, we need to reposition the identity, followed through with tone of voice and message, but I’m talking about the way they could interact with customers online, and they way they could refine the audience they appeal to.

The key to this working is that they know their business and the way their industry works. We know how to convert that online into a relevant proposition. Putting those two things together creates excitment and positive intentions towards a web project.

Building a website is not just about nuts and bolts. It’s about assessing hopes and fears and turning them into opportunities, or adapting messages to overcome doubts.

Of course the proof is in the pudding but it’s a genuinely exciting project. I’ll keep you updated.

So, another week hurtling towards the big C, and the window scrapers are out as the mornings of Basingstoke become ever more frosty.

One person who is not frosty, is our warm and fuzzy Louise who has just landed our biggest ever web project to start in the new year. The job entails developing a whole family of websites with a central property database - She da girl.

We’ve have also started a project this week to strategically re-position the Magic Mitre global website as look to expand.

Craig met Mark, who he actually met (hut-hum) 17 years ago, and has excitedly been telling us all about a product that Mark’s company Storepoint have developed that creates artwork automatically online, with translation and variable data. We are hoping to partner up as this solution has massive benefits to organisations looking to create marketing collateral across different languages quickly and cost-efficiently.

Lastly, it’s 37 days to go to Christmas and Jacqui “I wish it could be Christmas Everyday” Sanwell has already put our tree up. To be fair to her, we are shooting our Christmas video next week. That hasn’t stopped her humming Christmas tunes though and reminding us how soon it is.

A bit of a formal announcement. Simon Calderbank, our Sales Director has left the company today after 14 months.

This is a company decision and a sad one to make and is purely a cost-cutting excercise as far as The Escape is concerned.

We all wish Simon well for the future. It’ll be quiet with ya.

Sorry, we have been a bit rubbish recently posting our own news. I could say it’s the old ‘treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen’ routine” but I would be lying - we have just been a little busy.

So, to this week… A small feeder site for Corrosion Training went live for MPI after the success of their Marine Diplomas site. We have also been racking up some nice smaller projects after a large website we are working on got postponed until January. This is good news as it will be a more strategic led presence across a number of sites.

We also started on a website for BT Headsets as we have nearly completed version 2 of our e-commerce solution. We are very excited about this product as it is very powerful in terms of running an online shop with so much more scope to develop a more comprehensive experience for customers. For starters, it’s full content-managed, allowing you to add all sorts of ‘other’ content away from the shop section.

We have also started our Christmas campaign project for 2007, which will be online, and it’s had us laughing this morning - watch this space.

Oh, and a cat joined our Facebook Group.

If you have known our merry band for some time you may know Daryll Scott, who ran True Colours before they merged into The Escape back in 2004.

Daryll wanted a new direction in his career so decided to leave and followed his passion, which at the time was rooted in NLP but has gone on to encapsulate many more ideas. Basically, it’s to do with communication.

Anyway, he only went and wrote a book about NLP (neuro linguistic programming) that was launched last week.

We’re obviously very proud of Daryll and the book is well worth a read. Don’t take our word for that though. John Grinder, one of the initial founders of NLP, has only gone and written the foreward.

Needless to say, Daryll is like a kid in a candy shop - well done Daryll.

This week has been a busy one for all of us.

Craig went off to the Escape hideaway in Cyprus whilst back at HQ we entered the calendar season. If anyone else out there is thinking of a way to promote themselves, get in touch and we’ll be happy to help out. Calendars are a sure-fire way of ensuring your business is on display every day of the year.

We had never eaten so many cakes when Debbie turned 30 this week and we all celebrated.

Debbie hits the flirty thirties

We have also started the end of 2007 newsletter run, now don’t go forgetting deadlines as we march headlong into the busiest postal period of the year. Last posting dates - 2nd class is Monday 17th December and 1st class Thursday 20th December.

Enjoy the sunny weekend and we’ll see you again next week.

The week is meandering into a gentle Friday afternoon of R&D at The Escape, as we enjoy a [relatively] quiet week.

We’ve been building up our Escape Facebook Group this week and giving away design concepts, just the usual stuff other than projects.

But, on the project side, we bolted on a neat little news section to Brackenwood. Started on a marketing content management system for E-Media and have nearly finished Boomerang V3.

We also met a nice PR person about some partnership work. It’s a new thing for us, working with PR and marketing agencies to help us spread our web and design skills to a more extensive audience. We knew we’d get on when Barry mentioned a recent project he did involving women and body paint.

We’ve also been in discussion with a hosting company about affordable commercial hosting packages requiring great customer service - more on that as it comes but let us know if you have an immediate requirement - prices start from £200 per year.

Right, off for a nice autumnal pint of warm ale next to the fire at The Crown in Old Basing - our new company pub.

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot… Come On Engerland!

A nice sunny afternoon to report back what’s gwan’on at The Escape.

A gentle stroll of a week by all accounts with a great pitch to MPI for the Corredere website - being built as we speak. This follows the immense success of the Marine Diplomas feeder site.

We also started on the BT Headsets website. Due at the end of November this is a content-managed website with E-Commerce built in based on our Boomerang Solution.  The web guys have been busy pretty much all year developing this system, which will be the basis for all of our content-managed websites moving forward.

It is VERY COOL and very effective and we can’t wait for clients to start using it and for us to develop it more.

Meanwhile we have been developing our knowledge of all things web and have revisited Google Analytics - Wow! Talk about quality measurement, it’s really come on. We are planning some seminars based around Analytics and Adwords early next year so watch out for those.

New recruit Alex is putting us all to shame - The Jersey Challenge last weekend, a 5km running event this weekend… I feel faint thinking about it, pass me the bourbons..

Have a good weekend - a few of us are off to Brackenwood to see the original Chitty Chitty Bang Bang car… hi chitty low chitty everywhere we go chitty…..   …   …   …

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