We not only delivered a Dr Who style experience for one group with presenters emerging from a full size ‘Tardis’ on stage, but literally craned in a Formula One car for another group who were presenting on the second floor!

Delegates got to sample some local flavour every evening dining around at some traditional Prague venues, and feedback for the whole event was first class!

Once ‘checked in’ by KLM flight ‘ground staff’ our passengers then met our host a KLM Captain who took charge of the game which involved packing a suitcase with 26 items, in alphabetical order in the fastest time possible. Flight Attendants were on hand to ensure fair play and with times scored ranging from 30 seconds to 5 minutes the Pack & Go Challenge was clearly tougher than it looked!

Campaign Description:
• Selected Tesco superstores and Tesco Head Office
To hit the highest footfall within the Tesco Superstores, activity took place between Thursdays and Saturdays in each store, guaranteeing that the supermarkets are at their busiest times.

• Off site chef
The cakes were baked off site prior to each day of activity, transported in refrigerated vehicles to each store on the day of activity, ensuring the freshness of each product.

• Sampling team (Tesco Entrance)
The sampling team consisting of two Brand Ambassador, wearing Half Baked Cakes branded uniform was placed at the entrance of each store. Working from a branded table they decorated each cake on location allowing shoppers to taste the freshness of each individual sample.

As well as directing customers to the specific aisle of the cakes the Brand ambassadors bought product to the sampling area. Allowing shoppers to place product in their trolleys for immediate purchase without the need to find the specific aisle. The staff also handed out product information leaflets for shoppers to read whilst making their way around the store and remind them of the sampling activity.

• Regional Supervisor
mcm provided an extra regional team supervisor on site, free of charge, who visited the stores throughout the day to oversee the efficient implementation and check on the smooth running of the campaign.

• tesco Head Office
To further increase the awareness of Half Baked Cakes a sampling day at Tesco Head Office was carried out. This allowed the management and buyers of Tesco to taste first hand the quality of Half Baked Cakes.

Results:
• Sales of product increased on the day by over 400% from usual sales figures.
• The client was extremely pleased with the activity and looking at expanding the activity into 2013.

Campaign Description:
• mcm creative group provided high calibre promotional staff to distribute leaflets hand to hand, on busy high streets close to each Jane Shilton store in various cities around the UK, primarily targeting female adults.
• The activity took place over 5 consecutive days simultaneously across every city to capitalise on peak shopping times and achieve maximum audience reach.
• The staff located themselves within the busiest areas of each city, targeting competitor stores, busy commuter links and high footfall street locations.
• Official street permits were utilised in each relevant city to avoid heavy council fines

Branding:
• The teams were kitted in branded jackets and bags with Jane Shilton logos. These looked very smart and stylish, and gave instant credibility for the Jane Shilton brand.
• The branded uniforms helped increase the overall impact of the campaign, and also helped ease interactions with members of the public.

Results:
• Throughout the campaign almost all recipients were happy to accept and retain a leaflet.
• Of approximately 85% of recipients who took a leaflet, more than 75% were also happy to hear the summary information about the Jane Shilton sale and the offers which were being promoted.
• Store managers were pleased with the support they received from the promotional staff and commented that many sales were made each day from the customers which the promotion staff brought into store.
Some of their comments included:
“Great staff, really made a difference in our sales figures – Eastbourne
“Fantastic team, really worked hard in terrible weather – Banbury
“The girls were fantastic and really helped with our sales – Nottingham

The purpose of the event was to motivate, update, engage and deliver in-store. It was important that these messages were presented in an engaging yet fun manner with the Store Managers Conference notoriously being top of the list in delegates calendars and a ‘must attend’ event. The event day was a great success, and attendees had a good time with the mix of business and fun which we facilitated on stage throughout the day.

Feedback has once again been exceptionally positive and we are all are now looking forward for 2013! Oh, and congratulations to all this year’s winners!

There was a packed agenda consisting of several keynotes, theatre sessions and best practice workshops plus time for one-to-one networking and a Gala dinner on the first night.

We developed a staging design and technical support solution, taking into account a tight budget, which gave Keynote speakers a professional for their presentations whilst being impactful to delegates. Onsite our team supported the speakers in rehearsals, including those from HP, Cisco and IBM, to ensure they were comfortable for their sessions. To ensure clear ownership of the event space we produced several types of branding around the two hotels, including hanging banners, window graphics and room branding with sponsor logos.

With so many different things going on across two hotels it was critical that we carefully plotted all the requirements into detailed technical floorplans and created clear briefings for the venues.

The event was extremely well attended across sessions, and deemed a great success by delegates.

Not that long ago the highest profile rebuke for a big business was a product recall – worse if you made baby food of course! And despite Gerald Ratner’s finest efforts it still took a relative age for his business to collapse. Today businesses big and small must protect their reputation like never before, and with blogging, Twitter, Facebook and the Internet itself, it’s never been harder. The digital equivalent of herding cats!

And that’s the difference today. You don’t really know who the enemy is or where they are at any one time. Previously, an investigative journalist could be ‘PR’d’ (although they would all claim they couldn’t), a rival Board may try to muddy the waters, and occasionally a shareholder revolt would need quieting down. Today your most lowly customer or humble colleague could be the start of a huge anti brand uprising. Using (anti) Social media to populate stories and evidence against your years of hard work and investment.

I recently decided to ‘compaign’ [sic] – the complaining campaign – against two leading hotel chains. One for giving me such a horrible room at full price, and one for letting flies invade and eat my breakfast buffet. Within minutes of posting evidence in pictures on Twitter and soliciting several re-tweets, I had received messages from the two brands offering me compensation and their remorse.

Businesses now employ people full time to monitor and manage even the smallest uprising (mine was quashed within a lousy 60 minute/12 re-Tweet threshold). These ‘people’ must have eyes and ears everywhere!

We help some of our clients with their communication strategies, and that gives us a great insight into how today’s boardroom feels and deals about its customers or shareholders, and in a day and age where you don’t need to do a ‘Ratner’ to bring the boardroom walls crumbling down around you, reputation has never been harder or more crucial to maintain.

Good luck!

The challenge was to think innovatively to transform the usual internal conference venue to a space which looks and feels different to previous years and is as exiting and visually pleasing as the years before it.

The audience consisted of the Top 100 leaders across the business as well as the eight management board members.

A jam packed two day itinerary saw a variety of activity including the all important half-year results announcement made by MD Andy Street, a celebratory dinner and entertainment dinner piece with some stunning visual video effects which were cleverly pulled together by our in house video department.

The following day we were joined by a celebrity chef – for a live cooking demo, then later that morning a review of the marketing strategy took a quiz format of ‘Have I Got News For You’ which we developed with the client using small voting keypads on each table.

The afternoon was all about looking ahead to peak Christmas trading and focused on cascading the key business messages to the senior leadership team and not to mention the first viewing of the spectacular new Christmas TV advert.

Having worked with the group for over 6 years we have built a trusting relationship and our partnership approach with our client meant the event was a huge success once again.