Designers wear daps

I call these 'daps'

Now, when I went to school in deepest South Wales I called the above footwear ‘daps’. And this is what we had to wear for gym. In England I think they are called plimsolls or pumps or even gym shoes, but to me and any other Welsh boy they will always be ‘daps’. On gym day my mother would always say ‘don’t forget your daps’. We even have a legendary footballer playing at Swansea with the nickname ‘magic daps’ Why am I rambling on about daps?

Lee Trundle aka 'magic daps'

It’s because footwear in the office is very topical what with there being 6 inches of snow outside. Martin is very sensible and has some belting fur lined boots. Nita and Wendy have some very fetching wellies, there are some really sturdy boots to combat the weather….and what do the designers wear….yep….daps. It makes no difference what the weather is doing outside, if you’re a designer you still have to look good, and if wearing daps does the job then daps it is….Now they may argue that they aren’t daps and that they’re extremely fashionable canvas leisure wear, but to me they’re still daps. Take a look for yourself… here’s a selection of todays footwear…

Designers wear these!

Account managers are sensible

Wendys wellies

Daves daps in action in the snow and ice

Martins ‘beasts’

Grahams well worn and trusty daps

Is the BBC a scaremonger?

Front Page of Yesterdays Daily Mirror

In Lancashire we’ve been up to our eyeballs in snow since Monday 21st Dec. But now it’s fallen on London  the uplift in intensity and weight of coverage in the media is amazing! I listened to the reports on the BBC yesterday morning and I have to say that their reporting is verging on scaremongering. Their use of  language designed to frighten is pretty reckless, making it sound as if the entire country is virtually impassable, scaring the public into not going beyond their front door.

However whilst a lot of people do have genuine problems with the snow, I’d like to say well done to the team at Workhouse…. all our staff  made it in today apart from James who travels in from Southport and Jen who’s had difficulty from Accrington, though both are working from home. All credit to Account Manager Mark Camp who has made it in every single day from the Fylde Coast.  On Tuesday, while the media made out the country and the North West  in particular was an ice rink, my 23 year old nephew drove from Swansea to Ribchester in his  Ford Fiesta without a single problem, and yesterday made it into Liverpool City Centre for a 9 am audition again with no problems.

This is not the first time the BBC have gone overboard with their sensationalising of the news. I firmly believe that much of the loss of business confidence during the recession was due to the scandalous reporting of the BBC. We contacted the BBC during the recession to say  it wasn’t all bad news and a client of ours was taking on 30 new staff, but they were only interested if we had any clients shedding jobs.

A lot of people were responsible for ‘talking up’ the recession, I hope those same people, particularly the BBC, will be just as enthusiastic talking up the recovery. In amongst the snow and ice this week we have seen FTSE shares rise to a 16 month high and the fastest growth in UK manufacturing for two years.

Mark Jones, MD, Workhouse Marketing

Some snowy pics

A snow covered Workhouse Marketing

Lancashire dry stone wall

The edge of the Forest of Bowland

Over Jeffrey Hill

Workhouse Photography Studio

A snow covered Workhouse Marketing

L-R my brother Gareth, his wife Nan, and yours truly on Boxing Day 2009.

Our patio just before Christmas!

A Christmas baby at Workhouse!!

If you read this blog pre Christmas you will have known that our New Business Manager Steven and his partner Sarah were expecting their first baby at any moment. We were all on tenterhooks expecting good news at any minute…..but as we broke up for the holiday, and baby was two weeks overdue, there was still no news….until  3pm on Christmas Day, as we were literally carving the turkey, pouring the champagne and listening to The Queen, I received the following text….

“Hi Mark, Sophie Carlin, 7lb 5oz was born at 8.47am this morning, Sarah and baby Sophie are doing great”

How fantastic is that. A Christmas baby! Everybody at Workhouse is delighted for Steven and Sarah and their brand new baby daughter, surely their best Christmas ever. Congratulations to you both and welcome to baby Sophie!

And as we all crunched through the ice and into work yesterday we had another celebration, as designer James Hogg who pre Christmas went on holiday to Brazil with his girlfriend, announced that he had  come back with a fiancee! Whilst on holiday in sunny Rio, he popped the question to his Brazilian, model, girlfriend Debra who, unfortunately for the rest of the male population, agreed to marry the Liverpool fan from Southport! Congratulations James and Debra.

Pics of baby  here soon… pic of beach babes below!

James and Debra in Brazil

All smiles in Brazil

Here’s wishing you a happy, sunny, cricketing, barbecueing, football winning, recovery filled, optimistic New Year

Happy New Year and thanks to everyone who visited the blog to check out the 6th annual Workhouse Christmas Video. It’s normal practice every year for us to give £1 to charity for every comment or e-mail we get in response to it. So today I’ve been checking the stats to see how we fared. Apparently  1.509 people visited the blog since we posted the video, 750 have specifically visited that particular post, You Tube says there has been 561 views of the video, 49 comments were left on the blog, 47 e-mails were sent to me, and 2 comments were left on You Tube. This year we’re making a donation to support Bens attempt at the London Marathon, fundraising for The Cystic Fibrosis Trust, and by my reckoning 98 people have replied to our Christmas Video, so that’s £98 in the pot. But….if he completes the London Marathon we’ll make the donation up to £1000, so Ben, get training!

Another stat I was encouraged to read over the holiday was produced by Nationwide who said that the national average house price ended 2009 5.9% up on the previous year. Now I know they dropped more than that in 2008 but it is very positive that house prices are now moving in the right direction, it provides such a stimulus to so many sectors of the economy, and is good news for 2010.

44. Another stat. This is the number of years since England won the World Cup,  the only major thing they’ve won since the birth of football, which many England fans say happened in England. It is true that the first Football Association in the world was formed in London in 1863, the first Football League followed in 1888…AND the first winners of the Football League Championship were here in Lancashire at Preston North End. Having only won one trophy in the whole of the existence of football it is surely a law of averages that England win another one. I firmly believe that England WILL win the World Cup this year….and give another boost to our economy.

The law of averages must also mean that we’ll have a lovely long hot summer this year. For the last three years, according to my ‘ oh no, my cricket match has been rained off again’  index, we’ve had more than enough rain during recent summers. So, I also firmly believe that this year the sun will shine….and give a further boost to our economy.

So here’s looking forward to a sunny, cricket filled, barbecue eating, football loving, marathon watching, recovery fuelled, optimistic 2010!

Mark Jones, MD, Workhouse Marketing.

Workhouse Christmas Video 2009.

This is the sixth year that we’ve created a ‘no expense incurred‘ Christmas greeting in the form of a video. Please check out the link below, and please leave a comment on the blog, if you do we’ll give £1 to charity (in the highly unlikely event of this video becoming a ‘Boyle-like’ You Tube worldwide phenomenon, we’ll donate up to a max of £1000). This year we’re raising money to support Ben’s attempt at the London Marathon in aid of The Cystic Fibrosis Trust.

We would like to thank all our clients and suppliers for your support during 2009, and we wish you a Happy New Year, and a successful and prosperous 2010.

Merry Christmas,

Mark Jones, MD, Workhouse Marketing.

Is Manchester in Lancashire….?

Freddie Flintoff

Recently I bought a mailing list to cover 5 counties in the North West. I asked for  Cheshire, Merseyside, Cumbria, Lancashire and Greater Manchester. However when all the data turned up, every Manchester address includes Lancashire as it’s county….so I did a straw poll in the studio as to whether Manchester is in Lancashire or not and it was split 50:50.

Now this causes us a problem because we’ve been videoing the Workhouse Marketing christmas greeting today with a bit of a Lancashire theme to it..and we were wondering if we can claim that all our Mancheter, and Merseyside, based clients are part of Lancashire….well for the sake of creative licence, and a welcoming and inclusive Christmas spirit, we are! But I do believe the facts are somewhat different…..

Now my instinctive view is that we are right, because Lancashire play their cricket matches at Old Trafford, in Manchester. And historically we are right because in the census of 1971 Lancashire did include not only Manchester, but Liverpool too, and even Barrow-in-Furness! According to that census, Lancahire had a population of  5,129,416, making it then the most populous geographic county in the UK.

However, on 1 April 1974, (April fools day…?!) the administrative county of Lancashire was abolished, Liverpool and the south-western part became part of Merseyside, Manchester and the south-eastern part was incorporated into Greater Manchester. The new county of Cumbria took the Furness peninsula.

Today the population of the county is 1,449,700, with it’s administrative centre in Preston, and it’s county town in Lancaster….perhaps it’s cricket team should move back into it’s county, there’s a delapidated cricket field in Ribchester that needs a facelift! But that’s another story..

Lancashire today

Life at Workhouse…often challenging, often exciting, often frustrating, always busy…but never ever dull!

I would say this but…..the atmosphere at Workhouse is electric at the moment. The tension and excitement is palpable.

With only 6 working days (including today) left before Christmas everybody is flat out. It’s normally wind down time but not this year. We’re pitching on Friday, we’re waiting for the yes/no on a couple of big proposals, a lot of existing clients are very busy, staffing issues are to the fore, we’re light in Account Management and have had to draft in some freelance design help in the studio this week, but can we manage it….YES WE CAN!  On top of that we’re shooting our annual Christmas video tomorrow, editing and e-mailing Thurs/Fri. We’ve another big photo shoot coming up in the New Year (do we know that’s only 7 working days away!!!) , and a raft of new business wins to start working on.

We’ve a training day with our new admin system to fit in, the voting and deciding on our ’staff member of the year’, the Christmas party, the new accountant to brief, and the creative for our new year mailing to do. And this is while we’re all on tenterhooks awaiting the arrival of Stevens new baby…..

No let up when I get home, as we have my brothers family and Nita’s parents up for Christmas…. Christmas dinner for 10. Youngest son Ben is frantically decorating the granny flat above our garage trying to move in in time for Christmas, as well as trying to start his training as he’s been accepted to run the London Marathon. And oldest son Tom is on the verge of a ‘life changing’ decision as we wait to find out if our family’s offer to buy the lease on the Threshers store where he works has been accepted! If we get it Tom’s Wine Shop in Whalley will be open as fast as is physically possible! As well as all my Christmas shopping to do.

Life at Workhouse…often challenging, often exciting, often frustrating, always busy…but never ever dull!

PR. One of the most undervalued marketing disciplines.

Apparently one third of the whole country tuned in to X Factor last night and helped make ITV an estimated hundred million quid! What’s more the Christmas number one is guaranteed!  Simon Cowell manages to get the song, The Climb, sung three times in half an hour, so by the end of the show one third of the country are already familiar with the song, if you already hadn’t heard the Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana) version. What’s more about half a dozen plugs for the record, download it from midnight, in the shops by Weds etc, will guarantee it to be the biggest record of the year. It was much more fun when a whole host of records stood a chance to get it, and it really meant something.

For whatever reason I ended up listening to Radio Four’s Westminster Hour last night  when they were talking about the importance of  ’reputation management’ for politicians especially in an election year. “It can take 20 years to build a reputation…and 5 minutes to lose it” they said. Well, anybody who understands the value of good and regular public relations will recognise that sentiment. PR is often one of the most undervalued of the marketing disciplines. This is because it is hard to quantify, and although you can claim X many column inches of press coverage which would have cost Y many pounds to buy, it is the value of the relationship you have with your media which is most crucial.

So many businesses only look to PR when they’ve got something new to launch, but if it’s the first time you’re talking to them in a while don’t be surprised if the results aren’t what you’d like. If however you talk to your media on a regular basis, and have a good relationship with them, when you’ve got something to say, or you need their help, they will be much more receptive and understanding to your message. Keeping your media up to date with the quality of your reputation should be one of your most valued marketing disciplines. Every year, not just in election year.

Mark Jones, MD, Workhouse Marketing

The stork is on it’s way for Steven and Sarah!

What a varied and exciting couple of days it’s been, so busy, no time to do any blogging.

We’ve had some really good new business wins this week and Steven Carlin is doing a sterling job, dashing here there and everywhere. And this is when he’s expecting his first baby, well it’s his partner Sarah that’s doing the expecting!

What’s more, the due date is TODAY! And he’s just rushed upstairs with the good news….”I’ve just won another client!!” We all wish Steven and Sarah all the best and an exciting weekend beckons….watch this space…for news and pictures!