Christmas came early to Manchester last week as Delineo took to the pavements to promote a charity race on behalf of The Co-operative, donning Santa costumes in an off and online campaign. Taking place over Thursday 6th October, the publicity stunt was designed to increase awareness and participation for The Co-operative Santa Dash, a 5km charity run, raising funds for Mencap to be held at Heaton Park, Manchester on Sunday 27th November 2011.

On Thursday 6th October, volunteers from both The Co-operative and Delineo jumped into their Santa outfits and hit the streets of Manchester. During the course of the day, six Santas ran around the city centre, handing out leaflets to commuters and shoppers, while also posing for photographs at the city’s most iconic landmarks. Each Santa was tasked with engaging the public, raising awareness for the event as they jogged around Media City, Deansgate, Piccadilly Gardens and Oxford Road. The Santas boarded trams, trains and buses as they journeyed across Manchester, travelling down commuter routes and tourist hotspots during the day to ensure visibility with the city’s inhabitants.

Back in the office, Delineo coordinated the social media activity for the day, updating a Twitter feed for the publicity stunt, while also encouraging the public and institutions around Manchester to interact with the campaign via the social network. The social media activity ran in conjunction with the real-world progress, charting Santa’s route through photographs and videos sent from the teams out on the streets. These photographs were then broadcast via Twitter and Flickr, the latter gaining 1,812 unique photo views during the day.

The Twitter account utilised the popularity of the social network with local organisations to gain Retweets and mentions during the day and, in all, 342,773 Twitter accounts were exposed to messages from the Manchester Santa profile over Thursday. Similarly, the account also received 199 Twitter replies across the seven hours of the campaign.

Overall the amount of sign-ups for the charity run had increased dramatically with 769 page views on the day, an increase of 646 per cent to The Santa Dash sign-up page in comparison to the previous day.

A special mention to all of those who took part in the event, including those volunteers from The Co-operative and Delineo.

One of the latest projects for Manchester Creative Agency Delineo was to provide brand creation and several other accompanying elements for a UK leading engineering inspection company. The client undertakes thousands of assessments on everything from steam boilers to large excavators.

The initial challenge was to produce a reputable, unique business identity and name and after much consideration, Thurra was chosen. This highlights the company’s approach towards its inspections and touches upon the standard of service companies expect. The strapline of ‘everything is taken care of’ was chosen and reaffirms Thurra’s offer of inspection services to individual businesses, from factories to care homes, commercial premises and to insurance brokers and agents.

After finalising the brand name and logo Delineo set to work on other campaign elements of the work. A website was designed and implemented www.thurra.co.uk providing an online presence and point of reference for the range of services on offer. Strong creative headline banners are used on the site, incorporating the mechanical components and parts Thurra inspect on behalf of its customers.

To complete the business identity and roll out of the brand, other marketing collateral was designed and produced for everyday business use. Key collateral included business cards, letterhead, posters all of which reinforce the brand carrying the new reassuring strapline ‘everything is taken care of’. A brochure was written and designed to be used as a communication tool, highlighting the company’s services and the benefits to both target audiences.

To support the unveiling of the rebrand, launch activities were organised including an eDM campaign and has resulted in exceptional results with a huge amount of interest. This consequently has resulted in a significant increase in website traffic.

From Farm to Fork, an exciting outdoor learning experience for primary school children, now falls within Green Schools Revolution and has been running since 2005 after being developed at Stoughton, Oadby Lodge Farm in Leicestershire by The Co-operative farm manager, Nick and his wife Michelle.

This learning initiative has resulted in over 40,000 children visiting one of a number of The Co-operative’s farms across the UK, improving the school children’s understanding of where their food comes from and how it is grown, with the aim of encouraging them to make healthier lifestyle choices around the food they choose to eat.

As the From Farm to Fork initiative falls under the new Green Schools Revolution programme, the clothing worn by the representing staff has also been rebranded. It was crucial to source high quality garments to complement the brand as most activities are held outdoor on the farms involved with the programme and keep the staff warm and comfortable in the unpredictable British weather.

Due to the re-launch of the project, a logo redesign was necessary to bring the brand under the current all-encompassing Join The Revolution campaign and also to fall within The Co-operative’s new brand guidelines. The typeface used for the Join The Revolution campaign has been used to maintain consistency on all marketing collateral.

Delineo also organised the photo-shoot for one of the school groups being guided around The Co-operative Stoughton farm estate. This gave us excellent action shots to use for the Green Schools collateral and allowed us to capture the group experimenting with some of the farm activities and gauge the children’s reaction to some of the farming practices.

Further news on Delineo’s work with The Co-operative’s Green Schools Revolution programme will be released soon.

Vidira, a leading manufacturer of building components, recently tasked Manchester marketing agency Delineo to develop a brand identity and website for its UK launch.

Vidira is now expanding overseas after its huge success in its home country Bulgaria. The new website designed and built by Delineo attributed to this expansion plan as it showcases the extensive product range and expertise the firm has to offer.

Here at Delineo, we are always ready for a challenge and this latest project was no exception. We were tasked to develop a new brand identity for the client and in addition, design and deliver a database driven website.

To begin, we constructed a WordPress site, incorporating a number of innovative features, including a database call-upon function which collated the information into an easy to view format. To assist with the customer journey, a search feature was also implemented, allowing users to quickly search and specifically find the various products by name or code.

To produce a consistent set of product images, our design studio was used to photograph the components, allowing the best possible representation of the products from Vidira.

To create the new brand identity and logo the creative team focussed on the company’s core competencies, such as the high quality and expertise within the Vidira manufacturing process and are reflected in the sleek, modern logo design with industrial connotations. The red widget in the logo represents a Vidira product, its plastic plug. The web banners produced also highlight the company’s expansion overseas with the plastic plug locating the headquarters in Bulgaria.

Contact us today to see how we can help your business with its branding, website and search marketing.

Soundnet a leading supplier of music and video content recently tasked Manchester marketing agency Delineo to develop a digital campaign for its Background Music System business.

The aim of the campaign is to attract traffic and generate leads from businesses looking for a legal and affordable music solution.  The campaign targets pub, bar, shop, restaurants, café and hotel operators, emphasising if they get the right background music in their premises, customers will spend more time with them as their experience will be enhanced.

The key benefits of the Soundnet Background music system is that it’s easily installed into any PC (requiring only a low spec) and Soundnet’s team of music profile experts will formulate a playlist tailored to suit the venue and customer type. It can be updated monthly and can be set to create different atmospheres at different times of the day.

Many premises often use MP3 libraries such as iTunes or Spotify without realising that these services do not grant the commercial use of their music, consequently operators are in  breach of copyright law – Soundnet can guarantee a digital background music service that provides a fully legal solution.

Through extensive research of the most searched for terms and phrases in relation to background music systems for businesses and a full competitor review, Delineo identified the most relevant target audience for Soundnet in order to structure the website content and create the most cost effective PPC campaign.

Delineo refreshed the whole background music section, improving visitor navigation, strengthening call to actions, adding blogs, incorporating imagery and created  fully optimised business specific landing pages (e.g. bars, hotels) to support the targeted PPC campaign.

It was clear early on into the campaign that the right people were being directed to the site without Soundnet having to invest too heavily on Adwords, and those who made contact with Soundnet typically were the ideal prospect and conversion to sale has been impressive.

Within a 6 month timeframe visitors to the website have increased by 200%, with organic rankings significantly improving and searches yielding a 150% increase. In response to the campaign, Soundnet’s Commercial Director said:

‘The SEO and PPC campaign has generated excellent leads for Soundnet, great work Delineo’.

For little over a year, Delineo has been helping to promote a better way of doing business for The Co-operative. Our management of The Co-operative Enterprise Hub social media, an initiative from The Co-operative which provides support and training to businesses across the country, has seen online applications from the client rise by 366% year-on-year. This growth in applications has been attributed to our management of the initiative’s social media.

Before the launch of the campaign, The Co-operative Enterprise Hub had no presence on any social media platform. The organisation approached Delineo to provide a social media strategy designed to increase the number of applications for support, as well as improving the brand awareness of the initiative. The campaign took place on Twitter (@enterprisehub), Facebook and on the company’s official blog.

The social media campaign focused on one particular audience, targeting established co-operative communicators; consultants, co-operative organisations, employees of The Co-operative and relating public bodies. In order to achieve our primary target – increasing the number of applications – the co-operative community needed to be aware of the initiative’s existence and recognise the organisation as the leading authority for co-operative advice and support.

We adopted a co-operative way of doing social media; engaging and interacting with the leading commentators and readily promoting content from other organisations and bodies. The strategy relied on brand advocates sharing the existence of The Enterprise Hub; these users had been using Twitter and Facebook for a considerable length of time – their reach and influence was huge. In order to get the message about The Enterprise Hub to people who might have applied for support, we needed an endorsement for these users.

In order to increase the opportunities for applications on the website, a vigorous blogging strategy was also adopted with posts concentrating on case studies; news from organisations who had benefited from the Enterprise Hub’s support. Each blog was specifically focused on news from inside the organisation in order to demonstrate that, not only did the initiative have their hands full with promoting and supporting the co-operative movement, but also in an effort to generate enthusiasm for the Enterprise Hub; enthusiasm which would be transferred through our brand advocates across the two social platforms.

The implementation of an engaging and supporting social media strategy has led to increased awareness of the initiative, contributing to a wider understanding and awareness of the co-operative movement in the United Kingdom and highlighting a previously unknown arm of The Co-operative.

The social media campaign was started in conjunction with the ability to submit application forms online. Since the social media activity began in March 2010, The Co-operative Enterprise Hub has enjoyed:

Speaking about the campaign, Angela Davies, Co-operative Development Manager of The Enterprise Hub, said:

“Delineo has delivered a truly effective social media campaign for the Enterprise Hub that has undoubtedly played a key role in our recent growth. They’re also great to work with – attentive, hard-working and clear-speaking. I’d wholeheartedly recommend them to anyone.”

This is not the first social media success for the Delineo social media team. Last year, Delineo began the online campaign for Coffee #1, an independent collection of coffee shops in Bristol and Wales.

The social media campaign, which includes Twitter, Facebook and blogging, has amassed 1,617 Twitter fans, 1,942 Facebook likes and drives an average of 168 visits to the site each month.

Contact us today to see how we can help your business with your social and search marketing.

Client: Ecowater is the world’s largest manufacturer of water softening systems and reach out globally to dozens of countries in North America, Europe, Asia and Australasia.

Target audience: Ecowater products are aimed towards households and industrial businesses that suffer hard water issues. Hard water comprises a high concentration of calcium and magnesium (in essence, lime scale), resulting in blocked pipes and ruined kettle elements. Certain areas of the UK are more susceptible to hard water than others, owing to high concentrations of mineral deposits in the ground. Central, north east and south east areas of the UK have hard to very hard water.

Aim of the SEO campaign: The company tasked Manchester digital agency Delineo to implement an SEO strategy for www.ecowater.co.uk  to increase visitor numbers and conversions via search engines, as well as refine and make better use of its ad spend through Adwords.

The Process: The term ‘optimisation’ in SEO does not just mean keyword research. This element is important, but not all encompassing. And so our first port of call with www.ecowater.co.uk was to review the development side of the site, checking everything from hosting and the CMS, to how clean the code was: the fundamental underbelly of the site. The following stages of the campaign for organic search rested on detailed keyword research used to ‘fine-tune’ the website in terms of metadata structuring, on-page content. Internal linking and, of course, external link building.

The core phrase being ‘water softeners’, we built up a ‘map’ of related terminology to inform not only our on-page content decisions, but also our Adwords campaign. This research enabled us to target short and long-tail related language. As part of this organic strategy, we targeted and sought after relevant sources for links, using a variety of methods such as guest blogging. No irrelevant directory submissions were made during this process.

Our approach to Adwords consisted of carefully constructing each ad group for the themes of the website. These refinements led to huge improvements in click through rates as well as substantial savings in cost per click.

Key results:

Between July 2010 and July 2011, we made progress in all areas of search and saw huge increases across all important metrics, including branded and non-branded terms, as outlined in the charts above. Since July 2010, the UK Ecowater site has experienced the following improvements:

• A 284% increase in branded keyword traffic
• A 692% increase in non-branded keyword traffic
• A doubling of successful installs from Q1 to Q2 2011 due directly to website conversions and leads generated online
• Because of continual ad refinement, the click through rate (CTR%) increase from 1.97% to 7.88% between June 2010 and July 2011
• Average CPC (cost per click) 20% cheaper in July 2011 than in July 2010

Challenges:

The challenge was to lift the site up from being in a position where it received relatively few searches and an ad campaign that required some serious refinement and focus.

The challenge for us was to increase visitor numbers, conversions and leads, all of which were achieved by Q2 2011. Focussing on just a list of key phrases simply wasn’t enough and our detailed approach to content, link generation and user analysis led to the above successes.

We’re now looking forward to the launch of a new Ecowater site that has been heavily influenced by in-depth analytical analysis of on-site user interaction.

Contact us today to see how we can help your business with your search and social marketing.

With our continuing work on The Co-operative Travel account, Manchester-based marketing agency Delineo were recently tasked to promote the deals on offer this year through national press advertising for a number of cruise ship deals.

The overall aim of the campaign was to advertise The Co-operative Travel’s offers on some great value cruises for 2011 and 2012, accompanied with a large emphasis on the security and financial benefits of booking with them. To achieve this, Delineo produced half-page press advert for insertion in the Daily Express and a full-page press advert to be included in the Daily Mirror, both of which featured on Saturday 16^th July 2011 in order to communicate a number of great-value cruises with P&O and Princess.

The target audience focussed on last-minute bookers who are still yet to book a cruise for departure this year, but also the full page advert highlighted some exclusive offers for early booking, for departure in 2012 to attract further interest.

With such an emphasis placed on the security and customer confidence within the campaign, all Co-operative Travel holidays and cruises are ATOL and ABTA protected and as a company The Co-operative have over 150 years of experience and this new campaign has certainly differentiated The Co-operative Travel from their competitors. In addition, this further reassures customers who have booked with them about the security of their booking and The Co-operative are a name they can trust.

Having worked with Delineo on several successful campaigns, The Co-operative Pharmacy challenged the branding agency Manchester with promoting its new e-commerce website enabling customers to shop online.

Coinciding with the launch of the new e-commerce website, Delineo’s task was to focus on creating an identity for the Co-operative Pharmacy along with an awareness campaign to alert customers of the launch of the e-commerce website, as well as increasing awareness in-store, whilst maintaining this strong brand identity throughout.

Along with designing imagery and styling for the website, a varied range of in-store promotions were used in the form of window and store posters, postcards and shelf wobblers to increase awareness and to inform customers about the new website which stocks a broader range of health and beauty products and offers health advice.

To help build brand awareness amongst staff and to ensure a consistent brand image, internal comms were also included in the campaign.

Integrated campaign elements: Brand communication, Point of sale

Avnet, who have a long standing relationship with Manchester marketing agency, Delineo, recently set the challenge of promoting HP’s latest utility storage offer, 3PAR, among internal sales staff within Avnet. The main aim of the campaign being to promote awareness within the internal sales staff, of the product, along with the benefits of selling HP 3PAR over competitors products.

The key focus of the campaign engaged Avnet’s internal sales staff through number of different mediums including; eDM, customised landing pages and giveaways for the sales staff. The campaign revolved around playing on the term “PAR” by incorporating a golf theme, using a golf scorecard and pencil, both branded with the logo and product line ”HP 3PAR from Avnet”, this was the giveaway for the top 30 internal sales staff along with a DM piece displaying the line; “Are you up to par with HP 3PAR?”.

In addition to capturing the internal sales teams attention with this giveaway, the whole sales team were sent eDM in the form of a ‘competitive attack guide’ which provided detailed information on the key features and benefits of 3PAR and how it compares with competitors, encouraging sales staff to want to push HP’s 3PAR over competitors products. This information helps inform the sales staff of the reasons their customers should need this product, and with the strong golf imagery, shows the sales team that HP’s 3PAR could help put them a few “strokes” ahead.

The campaign provides all the facts and statistics, and subsequently a reason and desire to sell HP 3PAR over other competitors solutions. It gives the internal sales team all the information they need to sell, along with the benefits to both them and their potential customers, coupled with the engaging competitive golf imagery and the potential for the sales team to “score points with HP Storage”.

Integrated campaign elements: Brand communication, digital, direct marketing.