Yes is currrently working with Nottingham Credit Union to promote their savings and loan plans to those who live or work in Nottingham. Many folk are sucked in to a downward spiral of debt with door step money lenders charging extortionate rates of interest. This often prevents their customers from ever getting out of debt. We are currently reviewing their suite of literature and are looking forward to helping to promote them over the coming months.

This week I've been appointed as a SFEDI Ambassador. SFEDI is the organisation responsible for accrediting small business advisors. As an ambassador I'll be involved with helping to support those involved in starting or running their own business. One of the things I'll be involved with is establishing a road show event, in conjunction with the DMA, targeting small businesses to advise on direct marketing practice.

Today David and I went to the launch of the Creative and Media Diploma in Stoke-on-Trent’s cultural quarter. We were excited to learn about the more collaborative way that the Diploma will work with education and business, hopefully yielding a selection of job-ready young people for us creative people to bring into our industry. The event was hosted by Jo Blagg at the Regent Theatre who is keen to bring together representatives from all areas of the city to make the new qualification a success.

Amanda McDonald

There's an interesting opinion piece by Nick Backhouse (ex director of McCanns) in the current IDM Journal in which he looks at the effect of the credit crunch on the way marketers target customers. The 'recency, frequency and value' approach to modelling data now needs reviewing in the light of the downturn in the economy. Whether you're involved in financial services or retailing customers attitudes have changed significantly. They're more cautious about borrowing and more interested in getting value from their local supermarket. Although Nick doesn't develop an alternative approach to segmentation he does conclude that there are new opportunities for those of us involved in marketing to develop new thinking around targeting and segmentation.

David Patrick

Today we tapped into some sharp young talent at Staffordshire University. As with all agencies, our 'house' work often struggles to win our attention and plays second fiddle to our clients' projects. So we created a competition for the Advertising and Brand Management BA students at Staffordshire University to suggest a 'big idea' for our new website. The ideas were very strong and we were delighted with the thought that the students had put into their creative work. We'll be developing one of the ideas over the next few weeks, thanks to the winning team - second years Lauren and Becky. A fine contribution was also made by the other teams who presented, and we'll certainly be keeping an eye on their development over the next two years of their course.

Amanda McDonald

Our recent research report into how so-called ‘deprived’ communities operate has recently been featured in industry magazine The Drum. Our research delves into the reasons why communities that are perceived as ‘deprived’ often have the highest levels of cohesion. Which, incidentally, is something that many local authorities are encouraged to measure in their Local Area Agreements. The report also discovered from interesting insights into how these communities consume media differently to their more affluent peers. Feel free to call us to discuss some of our findings in more detail.