117 miles, fifteen riders, five support vehicles and seven support crew, it took a lot of organising and a lot of determination to get to Aberdovey this year.

Great conditions when we got underway at 6.30am, warm morning sunshine and a light breeze, soon got us speeding along and where well ahead of schedule by lunchtime but there were very challenging big climbs once we got into Wales and didn’t get to the finish line until 7pm.

The views where fantastic and with some very quick and twisty descents our minds where kept from those aching legs.

Pete

As one of the organisers of this special event we'd welcome you to join the cream of the marketing community on Wednesday, October 13th to debate, collaborate on and contest the hot topics that affect our industry.

This year, the joint DMA/IDM annual conference will focus on the four things that marketing professionals have told us that they’re most actively seeking from their marketing community – support, advice, ideas and the opportunity to collaborate.

Held at the fabulous surroundings of Lancashire County Cricket club in Old Trafford, Manchester, the event will focus on digital marketing in the morning and future trends in the afternoon. We’ve brought together experts from a variety of fields including digital gurus, expert practitioners, strategic thinkers and creative planners. Each presenter aims to stimulate, provoke opinion and provide you with ideas that you can implement straight away into your business.

We’ll hear from some of the UK’s biggest brands: Aviva, Toby Carvery, All Bar One and Santander. In fact, it’s a must-attend event for anyone who wants to gain a competitive advantage in today’s rapidly changing marketing landscape.

What you’ll learn - How to manage digital marketing - today’s main challenges - How to develop a strategic approach - finding and retaining customers in the digital arena - How social media can be made to pay - How to analyse your data to take a single customer view.

The benefits for you - Improve your knowledge and hear about successes from fellow marketing practitioners - Gain a unique insight into the latest thinking and stay one step ahead of the competition - Air your issues and get instant answers directly from the experts.

For more info go to the DMA LinkedIn page

I was delighted to hear this week that Amanda has been nominated for a couple of Staffordshire Criminal Justice Awards. She has been nominated for an ‘Outstanding Contribution to Tackling Youth Crime’ award and the ‘Volunteer of the Year’ award for her mentoring work for voluntary organisation – Axis.

The scheme identifies young people from challenging backgrounds and provides them with positive role models for up to a year. The mentors engage them in new activities and work with them to increase their confidence, aspirations and attainment.

Amanda is currently working with her fourth mentor and as well as finding this personally rewarding, it helps to formulate a deeper understanding of how communities operate and how different engagement strategies help to drive behaviour change.

Fingers crossed that she wins!

The marketing industry is changing, both in terms of what agencies can deliver to clients and what clients want from their marketing services agencies. So, does that mean that the structure of agencies also needs to change to keep pace?

The Marketing Industry Network is set to throw the cat amongst the pigeons by exploring the question: Do agencies and clients still need suits? David has been invited to speak to defend the role of account managers in playing a vital role in managing client relationships while helping to develop their business.

Date: 28 September
Venue: The Studio, 3rd Floor of The Hive, Manchester
Time: 6 – 8:30pm (drinks and nibbles included)

The event will also hear from agencies that have done away with the ’suits’ completely and encourage their clients to work directly with the creatives behind their campaigns.

David, together with the other speakers, will investigate which approach works best in today’s fast paced digital age.. It promises to be a hotly contested debate, so join us and let us hear your views on the way forward for agencies and clients.

If you would like to attend please contact Caroline on 0141 559 6066 or drop David a line.

For those interested in keeping up to date with developments in the digital world you'll be interested in the first Manchester-based Digital Lounge event taking place on Wednesday, 22 September between 7.00 - 9.00pm at The Circle Club.

This is the first session of the Digital Lounge outside of London so it provides a fantastic opportunity for digital marketers to meet and network.

You can expect a lively debate which will be led by Peter Houston of Advanstar. Peter is a digital strategist and blogger and a good friend of the Digital Lounge.

At Advanstar Peter is responsible for the content strategy and editorial management of the company's online and printed titles. Peter's must-see session will focus on the dramatic changes that the publishing market will face as technological trends transform the sector.

His talk will focus on the three main publishing pillars of audience, revenue and content. If you're in digital marketing, this is a not-to-be-missed chance to brush up on your knowledge of future trends.

For those new to the Digital Lounge, this informal networking club has been at the forefront of digital trends since 1997. Digital Lounge now has over 2,000 members from the digital community and is welcoming 100 - 200 new members every month.

Join them at digital-loungers.co.uk

The event is priced at £25 for members and £50 for non-members. However the first 100 to register will receive a complimentary ticket. Quote code DL0910.

The Circle Club is Manchester's premier private members' club for creative,media and professional people.

Junior Account Manager needed for rapidly growing Midlands agency. Due to significant growth this year we are looking for someone to help manage existing clients and assist with our new business activity.

A proven track record in agency account management would be ideal but is not essential. More important is that you are a highly motivated and confident individual who enjoys building relationships with people at all levels. Strong written and verbal communication skills are essential. You must be comfortable working in a team environment and have an interest in education, employment and training. For more details click on this job description

Finding the right work experience can be a valuable and rewarding experience. Yes Agency is currently featured in The Drum magazine as an agency which offers work experience to school leavers and graduates. If you're interested in joining us drop us a line at ask@yesagency.co.uk or complete The Drum enquiry form here

The agency team are encouraged to spend some time during their working hours to purse their own interests. And during the election period I worked with the Labour campaign team in Broxtowe in Nottingham.

This two-way marginal seat had a popular Labour candidate who had broad support from independents and Liberal Democrats as well as his traditional Labour supporters. The Conservatives fielded a woman who had mounted a strong local campaign over the last two years and had the benefit of significant more funding than any of the other parties.

In addition to the traditional political technicques of door to door and telephone canvassing the main parties used targeted direct mail to woo floating voters. The Labour strategy was multi-faceted with targeted messages to postal voters, known supporters of other parties and variable messages depending on which part of the constituency you lived in. A special team was established by Labour to build alliances with Conservative and Liberal Democrats. Plus our candidate made pledges designed to appeal to each group of these voters.

This was not enough however to prevent the Conservatives from winning the seat (after 3 counts and with a majority of just 389). We took some comfort in the fact that though the national swing to the Conservatives was 3.8%, the swing in Broxtowe was less than 2%.

As marketers we have much to learn from how politicians communicate with the electorate. We also have  much to give in helping to craft messages and tailor communications to different groups.

More and more agencies are turning to public sector tendering as a solution to the tough challenges thrust upon the industry by the recession. Because, as we all know, troubled times lead to special measures (to coin a public sector phrase).

On the face of it, public sector contracts are seen as the holy grail of agency accounts. Guaranteed spend. Tick. A commitment to fair play. Tick. Sustained budgets whilst others are squeezed. Tick. And for the benevolent souls amongst us, there’s a cause worth working for. Double tick. So, we should all be honing our tender writing skills then. Or should we? Read more

Pete reaches the finishing stages of The Uttoxeter half-marathon last sunday with a grimmace . "It was windy, cold and blinkin’ hilly". He finished in 1hr: 38mins: 52 secs. Well done Pete!

Well the team managed to successfully complete the Krypton Factor Assault Course in North Yorkshire yesterday. We climbed a 40 foot tree, zipped down a wire, jumped into muddy pits up to our waists, rolled under logs, ran through mud, crawled through tunnels, swung on rope-swings and generally tired ourselves out completely for the Direct Marketing Association. We combatted fear (mostly mine) and raised £600 for Help for Heroes (the overall event raised around £4k). A great day had by all.

Amanda McDonald

This week I've been judging the creative work from Advertising students across Europe for the Ad Venture competition for the EFCCE (the European Foundation for Commercial Communications Education). It's been a fascinating experience to be on the receiving end of lots of proposals, and to see how these talented students tackled the brief. Some of the campaign ideas are fantastic, but what was really interesting is that a brief can be tackled in so many dramatically different ways.

It's a great competition and shows us, the jury, that there are lots of work-ready undergraduates just waiting to slot into our industry. Plus, there's a few lessons to be learnt for us in how we present our ideas...

Amanda McDonald

A new website has been launched in David's constituency of Broxtowe in the run up to the General Election. broxtowe2010.co.uk will keep track of events and news over the four weeks of the election campaign.

Pete has been playing a dual role in the latest client campaign we are working on. He can be seen here modelling for the shoot, before actually re-touching the shot and creating the artwork! We decided to draw the line at asking him to plaster the wall while he was there.

Amanda McDonald