Christmas Colouring Competition

Posted on 15/12/2011 by Richard

This years colouring competition entries have come in a wide variety of style.  Take a look and vote for the one you like the best :)

( Poll is at the bottom of the page )

 

Which snow man do you like?

View Results

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Christmas is nearly upon us

Posted on 21/11/2011 by Patrick

At m4 we’ve been in the festive mood for the last few of months, we have been preparing various items for clients for the big Xmas retail push leading up.  We have been working on in store POS, Xmas ecards, Dealer Xmas promotions, and Xmas brochures
- the only regret for one of our Account Directors, Jo, whose passion is Xmas baubles -  that, as yet, she has not been able to persuade any of her clients to produce any branded ones, despite pitching the idea for at least the last two years.

Xmas Promotional range of Samsung Flexslim and Navibot vacuum cleaner

Our latest offering just going into stores now is a range of product wraps and POS stands for the Samsung range of Flexslim and Navibot vacuum cleaners (shown above).

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Part 3: Wheels and brackets

Posted on 01/11/2011 by Patrick

The straight forward parts of this are bolting stuff on where it fits, well you would think so anyway. Turns out mostly things don’t fit together as they should so some lateral thinking, or “force”, is required.

After a bit of back and forth the car had a set of wishbones, trailing arms and brakes fitted. With the springs in and set of wheel on there the car could be lowered to the ground and rolled about for the first time.

It was the ideal time to test fit the engine as well, after some head scratching to place and bolt down the gearbox mount it dropped in rather nicely.

Many other steps followed including fitting fuel lines, brake pipes, hand brake cabled (which needed shortening), assembling the pedal box which was customised with roller bearings to make the pedal movement extra smooth, the steering column was attached, the hole it went through moved, a bracket system created for the radiator, an oil cooler installed, fuel filter and pump system design and laid out, water pipe work planned, gear stick selected for extra short shift!!

A long list which took much longer to install that it did to write the last sentence, some photos, many more on the build log.

 

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Flexible – so you don’t have to be

Posted on 10/10/2011 by Patrick

FlexSlimAt m4 we have nicknamed this – the “bendy lady” campaign – recently completed for Samsung White Goods, an above the line campaign has been created for the new stylish Flexslim cordless vacuum product.  Initially launched at the Boat show, the campaign will roll out across press and below the line later this year.

Watch out in stores in November to see the new Xmas promotion POS and packaging we’re currently working on for this unique product.

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m4 welcome new client

Posted on 10/10/2011 by Patrick

M4 Design CompanyFollowing a recent pitch, m4 are pleased to welcome Hitachi Europe as a new client and we look forward to working with them over the coming months.

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Welcome to Sheridan

Posted on 30/09/2011 by Patrick

M4 Design CompanySheridan joined m4 this month and brings with her a wealth of experience in the IT and Telecoms industries having worked for both IBM and Vodafone for last 16 years.

She is experienced in all elements of the marketing mix, including the creation of literature, in-store POS, Direct Mail and e-mail marketing, as well as project management. She has joined the SEO department as a researcher and internet site author. Sheridan lived in Barcelona for 7 years and speaks fluent Spanish (which is handy for gossiping with Maria !)

She is passionate about anything food related and has shelves groaning under the weight of her many cookery books. She is married with two boys, Max and Louis, and helps out with football at the weekend.

Her claim to fame is that she went to college with Elizabeth Hurley and her mum is friends with Alan Titchmarsh. However, he still hasn’t re-designed her garden!

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Welcome to the latest addition to our team at m4

Posted on 22/07/2011 by Patrick

Lisa Rhodes, who has come from an EPOS ecommerce company working with retail websites covering a wide range of different retail sectors. She has worked in SEO for over three years and has a variety of on and off-site skills needed to make a campaign successful including; content creation, link building, HTML & CSS, social networking and working to improve conversion rates.

Lisa is a vegan, a quarter Italian, and loves drum & bass…  She did a 200 foot bungee jump off a crane and liked it so much that she did it again jumping off backwards! Lisa is obsessed with cats, has a twin brother who is 6 minutes older than her and has greeny, grey-ee, blue eyes.

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Go for no, the new way to ‘do’ sales.

Posted on 21/07/2011 by damian

A big thanks to Richard Fenton and Andrea Waltz for their excellent ‘Go for No’ seminar on Tuesday in Bracknell.

The basic premise of the event (and their book and DVDs) is that by aiming for ‘No’s instead of ‘Yes’s, you get more chance of getting the later. Because there is more attached to getting a ‘Yes’ than a ‘No’, the pressure is off and it shows in your demeanour.

One of the reasons we don’t achieve the results that we want is that we spend too much time focussing on the results. By not being attracted to the result, you can make ‘No’ propel you forward, rather than stop you.

You can tell your story to as many people as you can, as fast as you can. Those who want it will take it and those who won’t, won’t.

By placing the value in ‘No’ rather than the ‘Yes’, you make ‘Yes’ the destination but ‘No’ is how you get there.

The following facts and figures may absolutely astound you, as they did me. Apparently, 44% of people give up after the first ‘No’. 22% give up after the second, 14% after the third and 12% after the fourth. And yet… 60% of all customers say ‘No’ four times before finally saying ‘Yes’.

So that means that the 8% of the people who stayed with it after four ‘No’s managed to clean up the full 60% of customers. No wonder there seems to be a top ten sales team in every company!

And what’s more, those customers who had been saying ‘No’ all along go on to thank the saleman for staying with them!

So the message was clear…. Place a bigger value on ‘No’ and take pride in them.

Or as the saying goes: ‘What’s in the way… is the way’.

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More space inside

Posted on 20/07/2011 by Patrick

Samsung G-Series More Space InsideJuly sees the launch of the new above and below the line campaign for Samsung G-Series Refrigerators produced by m4.

Following a creative presentation to the client, and further consumer testing, the final adaptation chosen visually demonstrates the space capability of this premium product.
m4 have produced the complete end-to-end production of the print ad for the national campaign for both consumer and trade press and this is further supported by full in-store POS kits and consumer leaflets for both independents and national retailers.

Watch out for our next campaign for Samsung on the new Flexslim Vacuum range of products…

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Win without pitching: the bug bear of the design and media industry

Posted on 07/07/2011 by damian

Every now and again I get an html for a seminar drop into my inbox with this subject heading.  I never read them, just press delete, but it set me wondering today following a slightly awkward telephone conversation with the new marketing manager at an existing m4 client.

Basically I turned down a request for m4 to do a pitch with an existing client who knows what we do.  It was offered to us as a “free pitch”, for which most of us in the design world read as: get at least two or three of your design team to research, put all their best ideas down and spend a week producing concepts, and then present to the client with no clear idea of if it will come to anything. Plus you won’t get paid for your creative ideas, as that’s part of the pitch.

The new marketing manager at this particular existing client, perhaps understandably wants to make an impact on the company as part of their new position, so has decided to put the work out to pitch to present new ideas to their MD.  I happen to know from experience the MD in question is less than generous with his marketing budget and won’t spend unless he absolutely has to – so taking this into account, I decided to decline.

Free pitching is one of the bug bears of the design and multi media industries, there’s been a lot of debate about this over the years, and agencies tend to either be completely for or against it.  In an ideal world every agency would take the standpoint of refusing to work for absolutely nothing, or for the whiff of a possible job, but how do you make your own decision on this – particularly when it is for a budget that won’t make much impact on your bottom line.  Usually it’s the agencies really needing more work who will throw everything into a situation like this just to win the job. But at what point do you consider the impact this will have on your company? You will need to fit this in whilst servicing your existing paying clients and work, and if you lose the pitch based on competing against unrealistic prices rather than creativity or ability, the moral of the staff will suffer.

Here at m4, we’re very lucky to work with some fabulous clients, who know and trust the work we do, and understand that we do it with the utmost of our creative and production abilities for the best possible price. Indeed on many occasions we put more into a job than perhaps we have quoted, as we want to do the best possible job for our clients.  Our ethos is that as a full service agency we should not only get to know our clients and their customers, but encourage them to get to know and trust us too, so that work can be done with the greatest efficiency for both client and agency.  In the last week alone, from just a couple of our clients, we’ve been briefed on 15 different projects, without any requests for doing any part of it… for free!

Which is what I suppose you would call a WIN WITHOUT PITCHING situation?

Jo Thomson
Director at m4

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