It’s becoming ever rarer to see Flash used as an integral part of websites as a result of the rise of CSS3/ HTML5 and the massive amount of benefits that they bring to web design.

Often flash was used to gain ultimate control over how the user could interact with a website, along with how it looked. Although this came with its benefits such as animation potential, interaction potential and the ability to choose from whatever font that was at your disposal, it also had a lot downsides. One of the most common frustrations was the fact that many were built without the facility to bookmark or share a page, something which is expected of almost all websites.

HTML5, being the latest installment of the Hyper Text Markup Language, has lots of additional tags, meaning lots of additional potential. It’s now beginning to replace the Flash virtual machine (the Flash player), as these new tags allow the designer/developer to replace a lot of the functionality that was previously Flash’s domain. The key word here however is ‘beginning’, as browsers do not yet fully support it (see how well your browser supports Flash).

The increase in browser-support of CSS3 also means that designers can maximise the potential of websites because the subtle additions that it brings can result in a far more enjoyable experience for the user. The biggest and most talked about benefit it brings when used in conjunction with HTML5 is responsive design, something which couldn’t be done in Flash (if it has I haven’t seen it). The fact that the same website can now be taken across many different screen sizes and devices, delivering the same experience, is a big bonus and has lots of positive connotations when things such as brand loyalty are taken into consideration. It’s supported on almost all major mobile devices and an announcement by Adobe stating that they were killing mobile development of Flash in favour of HTML5 could be the nail in the coffin.

So what does this mean for Flash developers?

In the announcement from Danny Winokur, Adobe’s VP, he said:

 HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively.  This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms. We are excited about this, and will continue our work with key players in the HTML community, including Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM, to drive HTML5 innovation they can use to advance their mobile browsers.

This means that Flash developers don’t need to worry too much as long as they keep up to date with which features can be replicated in HTML5. Adobe will be working with all of the key companies in the web to transfer Flash’s capabilities, ultimately resulting in work becoming HTML5 rather than a Flash format. People can still use the same development tools and knowledge as their skills will be leveraged by Adobe.

Could this mean that Flash’s capabilities will eventually be brought to mobile devices?

Possibly.

Adobe and Apple had an ongoing dispute up until recently over Apple’s lack of support for Flash. Both sides had good arguments, however it seems that with Apple’s decision not to support Flash on iOS coupled with their massive mobile-device market-share may have driven Adobe to make the decision that they have done. This may result in HTML gaining far more features at an accelerated rate, with more interaction possibilities for mobile devices.

Aside from that, flash will have it’s place for quite some time to come. For example, currently HTML5 only supports 3 video file types, and is by no means on par with Flash in terms of being a platform for games.

** UPDATE by Luke Sherran – 16/05/2012 **

After attending a CS6 conference today, we found out that Adobe is still investing in Flash but the focus is on high end applciations like game development and video players. Adobe are really pushing their suppor of HTML5 with most of their products, and they have now decided to stop supporting mobile devices completely. It would seem that the focus is now to keep Flash alive until HTML5 has progressed enough to replace it, so I won’t expect there to be much more innovation or technology upgrades.

Media Pro UK Ltd and SEO Creative have been trading for 3 years this weekend, and we have a lot to celebrate!

Out of the Terrible Two’s

Tears, tantrums and technology

The terrible twos are a time when many children learn the word ‘no’, tantrums are rife and parents often need to work hard to get their toddler to behave. In business, year two is a crucial year when many businesses can fail and so a lot of work is needed to nurture your company.

SEO Creative has had a growth spurt during its 2nd year and if you see our year in 2011, you can see how busy we were, we with 2 office moves, new content writers and new staff. Today we are also welcoming our web design apprentice Carl to the team.

As a business we have had a few tantrums as Google has thrown a lot at us from a SEO point of view, meaning our SEO strategies have become more creative to continue to get great results for our clients. Technology is adapting; in 2009 when we started the business, mobile was not as important as it is now, but today one of our web design considerations has to be mobile and responsive design.

We started the business in 2009 as a bunch of freelancers who offered agency standard website solutions at freelance costs. We could offer this as we worked from home, and even though the company has evolved since then, with moves to a home office and then moving to Grosvenor House in Altrincham last year, we still work hard to keep our hourly rates low and standards of website design high.

As our company has grown we have had the privilege of working with some fantastic clients and have done some amazing work on SEO and internet marketing campaigns, as well as designing some great websites.

Forget Cookies – lets eat Cake!

Today we want to forget about cookies and celebrate our birthday with some cake! We have had a cake made up with our logo by local cake designer, Sweets by Sarah, and she also made us 15 lovely geeky cupcakes.

The cakes represent some of the services we offer, from left to right we have, HTML 5, Twitter (Social Media Management), WordPress development, Magento Development, Flash, Adobe, Google (SEO), Photography, Boxing Websites (via BoxPro), Mobile app and website development, Bing (SEO), EMail marketing, Google plus (Social Media), Facebook (Social Media) and PHP development.

Today SEO Creative would like to welcome Carl Fairclough, our new design apprentice! The apprenticeship is in association with Oldham College, and takes our office numbers to 6 so the brew round is starting to become a bit more of a challenge. Carl will initially be working on a range of internal projects, but we’re hoping to get his creative input on some live projects in the not so distant future. Luke Sherran, Managing Director of SEO Creative, said:

“Carl has a pure design background and is very creative. I’m very excited about his potential input into our online projects, and I’m positive he’ll fit in well with the rest of the team.”

Carl is also going to be writing a weekly “design apprentice” blog for our website, documenting his experiences and the things he learns each week in relation to his curriculum.

What are Cookies

Most people in the UK do not understand what a cookie is and how it affects your website browsing. However by May 26^th this month websites in the UK are expected to notify the public if they are using cookies on the site, and to give them the option to opt in or out.

Cookies are a simple text file used by your web browser. When you visit a website for the first time they are downloaded onto your computer. By downloading a cookie onto your computer, website owners can see if you have visited the site before and in some situations display different content that would be more applicable to a user that has already seen the site.

It is estimated that every website drops 14 cookies on average. Only 32% of these are from the website itself and the other 68% are from third party analytic’s or advertisers, and more often these days are social media sites that feed into the website.

Essential Cookies

Essential Cookies are cookies are, as the name implies, cookies that are needed for the website to function properly. These are usually cookies that are on shopping carts and security pages. Other essential cookies are needed to help pages load quickly by distributing the sites workload.

Non Essential Cookies

Non essential cookies are cookies that are not needed for the site to work, in particular, advertising cookies that display certain adverts and may advertise something they know you are interested in from your browsing history. Many adverts are affiliate links and these links will track a user from one website to another website, so the referring website can earn commission on a sale. These cookies are non essential cookies.

Analytics

Analytics tracking uses cookies to see if you are a new visitor and how you use links on the site. This helps website owners improve their websites based on the different usage of new and returning users. In many cases cookies are not intrusive and are not needed for the website to function, however in some cases cookies are needed or are used to display specific adverts.

Cookies have been used to improve websites for years as website owners track which links are used and how many pages users look at on a website. By having this information website designers have been able to develop websites that are easier for people to use just by tracking how the majority of people use websites and where they may have problems.

The EU Cookie Law

On May 26th 2011 the EU cookie law was brought into play for most EU countries. The new EU legislation means that users need to know if a website is tracking their information and have the option to opt out. The UK was given an additional year to adhere to this regulation but time is ticking away and all websites targeting EU consumers are supposed to be in line with the EU regulations by the end of the month.

This law has come about to protect users privacy when browsing the internet and to protect them from unwanted advertising and marketing. The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) are responsible for enforcing the EU Cookie law in the UK and if you are found to be in breach of the new regulation you could be subjected to a £500,000 fine.

Although the EU Cookie Law is for countries in the European Union it also affects any websites that are targeting countries in the EU, so an American website targeting the UK would still need to comply.

If your website only uses essential cookies then the EU regulation is that users do not need to opt in to use the site. Sites that use non essential cookies must notify users that they are using cookies and ask them to opt in.

The Cookie Controversy

There has been a lot of controversy surrounding the EU Cookie law as many website owners may not understand what is required of them and there is also a lot of confusion as to what cookies are deemed essential and non essential.

Cookies and Analytics

There has been a lot of disputes over whether analytics tracking is essential or non essential, a website can very easily run without analytics, however the website will not have any evidence to improve and give users what they want without this analytics tracking, therefore inhibiting growth and the user experience.

The general consensus is that analytics tracking is deemed to be non essential even though it is not an offending cookie, in that it isn’t tracking personal information and using this for advertising or marketing. It is an issue and sites that use any form of analytics tracking will need to find a solution to let users opt in.

Will every website have an opt in for Cookies?

It is the website owners responsibility to provide an opt in for users.

There are millions of websites online and many are owned by small business owners that had a site built simply for an online presence. They may have analytics installed but have no idea that this uses cookies and don’t even know about the EU law.

So far it is estimated that 95% of websites have not offered a solution for the EU cookie law and we have 2 weeks until the deadline. That is a lot of websites doing a lot of work to comply, and I would imagine a lot of the sites do not have a clue that this is to be put in place.

This also poses a problem for the ICO to enforce, as other than the big companies and websites that are obviously using cookies for advertising, are they really going to slap a £500,000 fine on Mrs Jones who lives down the street and has Google analytics installed on her website that sells home made cakes?

Cookies and the economy

It has been estimated that the EU Cookies will cost the UK economy billions. In some ways this is good but in others this will only worsen cash flow situations of small businesses.

Cookie solution development costs

Most websites are built by website designers and developers who are commissioned by the website owner. This means that most website owners will not have the skill set to develop a solution for users to opt in and use their website. Depending on the development solution you choose for your website it may cost you a few hours or a few days of development time.

This might be good news for web designers and developers, but is an added cost for small businesses which may effect cash flow when times are tight. In many cases the only cookie issue will be analytics and it may be cheaper to remove this analytics tracking. But of course, this will hinder the progress of the website and could affect the long term business decisions and conversion rates.

Cookies and conversions

Analytic’s tracking is used to help a website do well in search engines, target the right keywords and improve content and design on the website. All of this will help websites improve their conversion rate and generate sales. Without analytics, websites would have no data to make improvements to the user experience and generate sales.

Conversion rates have many attributes and one area that often limits conversions is the use of pop ups. Website users often associate pop ups with advertising and are put off websites that use them, making them less likely to convert. One of the cheapest solutions for the EU cookie opt in is to have a pop up which explains the website is using cookies and asking the user to opt in. This use of pop up and language will in many cases be off putting to the average website user – you know people who don’t know what cookies are, and that they are not all bad.

With website users now having to opt in you are adding another click to conversion. You are also adding the mis-trust in many peoples mind that they are being tracked and the chances of conversions are more likely to be reduced. This could be a big blow for some websites and industries and because of this could cost the UK economy a lot of money.

EU Cookie Solutions

If you are not sure what cookies your website is using you can use Ghostery to do a cookie audit on your website and see what cookies your website is leaving.

We have found a number of solutions for the EU Cookies and can adapt a solution based on your website and your needs. If your website is WordPress, Joomla, Drupal or Magento ECOmmerce we have an out of the box solution that can be added to your website just get in touch to find out about your websites options.

Sadly, our resident office Stormtroopers TD-421 and TD-422 don’t really like this day – too much partying and emphesis put on the good side of the Force, not the dark side. As Darth Vadar says:

Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the potential of the Force.

They thought they would help with the crushing of the small Rebel Alliance by trying to stamp out the day, at least here in the SEO Creative office!

Good effort boys, now back to reading about the Google Penguin update… stat!

For all you professional photographers out there – the above picture was taken with my trusty Nokia N8, no flash, set to “Macro/Close” and the colours and tone tweaked in Adobe Lightroom. Image exif: 1/35s, f/2.8, ISO 104 and focal length of 5.9mm.

Yesterday Mark Zuckerberg hinted that changes to Facebook would save lives, and today we can see these changes, you can now put down that you are an organ donor on your Facebook timeline.

Facebook Timeline

Facebook Timeline is a new way of displaying your Facebook profile, it lets you add images and events in chronological order, so you can backdate certain posts and major events. This was rolled out for all users earlier this year and as usual was met with some controversy however it added some Google plus style functionality which meant you could manage posts and who could view your profile. You can now subscribe to public posts and have various friends see particular posts, such as work posts going to work friends. These added privacy settings are not obvious and many people still don’t realise how much of their personal information is public.

That being said timeline is a revised design of your profile and does let you back date important events such as births, weddings etc. Now you can add the important event of when you became an organ donor.

Organ Donation

Organ donation is a very serious subject as many people whose lives depend on organ donations are waiting in vain due to so few people being organ donors. Many people do not wish to donate organs due to personal or religious beliefs, however, some people are happy with the idea of donating their organs but die unexpectedly without signing up, purely because it was not accessible, or they assumed they had plenty of time.

You see a lot of well meaning viral shares on Facebook, such as ‘like this if you support our heroes at war’. A recent example of this was the Kony – invisible children video that went viral, however liking and sharing a post or video on Facebook will not actually contribute to a campaign other than raising awareness.

You do have to applaud Facebook for realising the power they have and finding a way that could do good. By adding ‘organ donation’ to timeline, this will pop up in many people’s news feeds reminding people that they want to be on the organ donation list or at least making people think about whether this is something they want.

Mark Zuckerberg has said;

“Today, more than 114,000 people in the United States, and millions more around the globe, are waiting for the heart, kidney or liver transplant that will save their lives. Many of those people – an average of 18 people per day – will die waiting, because there simply aren’t enough organ donors to meet the need. Medical experts believe that broader awareness about organ donation could go a long way toward solving this crisis. And we believe that by simply telling people that you’re an organ donor, the power of sharing and connection can play an important role.”

You can write any information of why you decided to become a donor or any supporting information to really make the event more interesting and when users hover over the donation feature you can get links on the nearest registry office.

Here you can see the video of how to do this;

This is a great idea to raise awareness for this cause and hopefully we will see an increase in people registering to be an organ donor, but I do wonder if we are sharing to much information on Facebook.

Google has started to bring up comparison results for credit cards and finance in a very controversial move. Has Google just become the most powerful affiliate site on the web?

Don’t be evil

Google has a mantra ‘don’t be evil’ but do they practice what they preach?

The reason so many people use Google above other search engines is the quality of the websites they display and relevance for particular keywords. A lot of people trust Google to give them relevant results and won’t display sites that are untrustworthy.

Organic results in Google’s search engine are crawled and their positions are determined from relevance for particular keywords. You can also see sites that get good positions using Adwords, this is a sponsored campaign where the site is bidding and paying per click, however some relevance is put down to the quality and relevance of the site, but the more you bid the better your chance of displaying high up in Google’s listings.

So these are ways in which sites can be displayed in Google’s search engine pages, of course Google local, shopping, image and news all play a big part but these are also determined through some sort of relevance.

Some of the recent updates, such as Google local and Google shopping feed, are essentially copying business models of other websites and knocking them out of the running. This trend seems to be getting worse, not only are Google’s results skewered at the moment from recent updates, but now we are seeing comparison results being pulled straight into the organic pages.

These results are coming straight in below the sponsored ads and completely dominate any organic listings, which on my computer are below the fold.

This in effect is acting as the most powerful comparison site on the web, normally you can Google the keyword ‘compare credit card’ and you would see plenty of comparison websites that offer the best deals and earn money from these referrals and commissions.

By showing these comparison results in the search engines this makes the need for comparison sites obsolete as customers can eliminate one click and improve conversions. This is a great way for Google to make additional money but not great for comparison websites and everyone employed by them.

Do as Google says; not as they do

There have been many updates to Google‘s algorithms and the sites that have been hardest hit have been affiliate websites and sites that make money through above the fold advertising.

The reasons behind these penalties, were, that adverts do not enhance the user experience therefore any site with above the fold advertising should not do as well in the search engines. That is a really good explanation as to why all the affiliate websites are now struggling but why then can Google justify so many above the fold ads in its own pages?

I guess it all comes down to money!

Has Google gone too Far?

No body really thinks that Google is ‘evil’ or worse than any other privately owned company but this move looks like it could be the start of complete dominance. Google is wiping out the competition and this will cause job losses. You cannot blame Google for wanting to make money but is it doing so at the loss of its own reputation?

At the moment this comparison scheme seems to just affect credit cards and finance but how long before they roll it out to all sorts of other products like insurance and energy? Will they stop there and start comparing supermarket prices?

By using their position as the leading search engine, they are in fact taking advantage of consumers by providing this service in return for compensation. I am not sure if people will realise this move and stop using Google or this move will just cement the companies position as one of the most successful businesses in the world.

I will leave you with this one thought though…

Over the years there has been opposition to News Corporation having control over too much of the press and media; but if most people use Google, who can control what websites, news, businesses and even images are displayed and not displayed, should we not be a little nervous?

At SEO Creative our name speaks for itself that we believe in creative SEO but what is the difference between creative SEO and other SEO methods.

What is Creative SEO

Creative SEO is a very broad term and due to the nature of creativity could mean absolutely anything.

Old fashioned SEO used to be buying links using the keyword you want the site to rank for as the anchor text. This would be combined with some on page work that would make the site appear more relevant; in many cases this would be enough for the website to do well. The biggest factor was making sure you had more links than your competitors.

Paid links are against Google guidelines and for many years this worked but Google started to pick up the footprints left behind by link farms and other paid links. Since Panda, and more recently Penguin, and SEO that only uses these old fashioned SEO techniques found their websites were subject to an over optimisation penalty.

Creative SEO

Creative SEO is breaking from the normal strategies and it works in a number of ways.

Instead of just beating your competitors with links we looked at other areas of Google search algorithms to find ways in which you can improve your site, this had an additional bonus that in many areas we would actually be improving the website from a usability point of view which helped improve conversions.

Although Google is coming down hard on links, link building is still needed but we like to create great content that means your website gains links naturally, as Google intended. Again, this kind of creative SEO is a bonus in improving your search engine traffic and also getting valuable traffic using these links.

We would love to tell you that paid links don’t work completely but the cleverer the SEO the better they can hide these ‘identifiers’ of paid links. Therefore link building in many industries is still a necessity however depending on the industry and your website we can look at unique ways in building links that build your brand and reputation to your customers as well as to Google.

Creative SEO is the future

Google will continue to change its algorithms to try to stop people manipulating the search engines. Recently the results in Google have not been the most relevant so we can expect more updates to come, if they cannot improve the search engines for the better then we may see more users turning to other search engines such as Bing.

Creative SEO looks at all the search engines and no matter what Google throws at us we can be sure that your site will be easy to find in the search engines and have excellent content that converts.

We are always looking at the changes Google rolls out, in other countries as well as the UK to see what tests are being done, we anticipate a few more changes and try to be pro active and creative in our SEO techniques.

As far as I was concerned, as a SEO, my job was to improve websites so they did better in the Search Engines, got more traffic and made money. So why is it more and more people are tarnishing SEO’s as the bad guys.

Throughout time there have been a lot of bad guys, fictional and real, the ones we tell our children about to scare them into being good and the ones we protect them from. In fiction good needs evil, as without the bad guys there is no need for the good guys and you have to admit the bad guys make the story entertaining and we just love to hate them.

SEO’s are bad guys

As SEO becomes a better known industry it seems that more and more people are assuming SEO = bad guys.

I remember in the old days if I explained what I did for a living I would be met with blank stares, or people smiling and nodding. Now people respond in a different way; they understand enough about SEO, in their opinion, to taint us all as spammers and some people even think we are hackers. This kind of reaction I usually put down to ignorance but even forums and large companies don’t seem to know better.

SEO is not split up into black hat and white hat, good and bad, much as in life, it is very much shades of grey very few people are whiter than white in everything they do, but I can hand on heart say that I have never done anything that would hurt another site.

Forums

More and more forum and website owners are subject to spam from what I would consider bad link building from not very good SEO strategies, so it is understandable that they may be cautious of SEO’s, but what happened to being innocent until proved guilty?

A year or so ago I joined a popular parenting forum as I was a new Mum and thought the support and networking from over Mums would be useful, I made the mistake of using my main email account, which so happens to be a SEO account.

I participated in a few conversations, never plugged  my business or any of my clients and never once posted a link to an external website. I did, however, come across some cyber bullying a group of mums were attacking another Mum for formula feeding and not breastfeeding, this was obviously upsetting the Mum and never one to keep my mouth shut, I posted that it was the Mum’s choice and they should leave her alone ( I did not say formula was better or recommend a formula, I did not link to any thing in this, I just wanted to stop the bullying).

This action led to the forum owners looking closer at my email account and they removed my posts and emailed me telling me I was no longer welcome as I was a spammer. The only way they could have come to this conclusion was from my email address (which they admitted) and although there was obvious cyber bullying going on I was perceived as the bad guy.

In reality most SEO’s that use spamming as a technique are not daft enough to use an email address that has their company name or details.

Companies that should know better

Well known companies should understand that SEO is a common practice and although a few black hat SEO’s may do something unethical, most of us are professionals who are trying to make the internet a better place. We are not  hackers and we don’t use phishing methods yet when setting up accounts many companies will just decline your registration if using a SEO email.

A recent example I heard of this weekend was where SEO, Heather Lloyd Martin from SEO Copywriting, was automatically declined due to having SEO in her domain name. A company such as Paypal will make a lot of money from SEO companies, who use their service and help website owners make more money. It is understandable that some small business owners may not realise that not all SEO is spam but large companies really shouldn’t come to this conclusion.

SEO’s are good guys too

So, if we are to believe the hype, all SEO’s are spammers, hackers and would steal your babies milk if you let them close enough. Although SEO does have a few bad eggs these are not the companies and individuals that typically do well. Every industry will have the odd chancer and company that are not entirely above board with their business plan and methods. In these industries the individuals are marked as the black sheep rather than the whole industry becoming tainted.

Google has the mantra ‘don’t be evil’ and as people would perhaps see Google as being the good guys then I suppose SEO’s are the bad guys. This is not the case, SEO’s are helping sites do better in Google and we adapt everytime Google throws something new into the mix. Even Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts, admits Google does not hate SEO, he mentions that some people do use bad techniques but even lists a lot of ways in which SEO will help users and “make the world better”.

At SEO Creative we try to incorporate SEO with social media, inbound marketing, conversion rate optimisation and other internet marketing techniques that increase traffic and sales not just get your keyword to a high position in the SERPs and give you more links than your competitors. Long campaigns that help your whole site do well and secure lasting positions and traffic levels are more important than short term wins from spammy techniques yet until more people become better educated about the SEO industry.

Negative SEO

Now black hat techniques and spammy link building are being identified by Google, it does leave us open to negative SEO, this is by using negative SEO techniques to bring down a competitor. This is another area that will continue to tarnish the good SEO name.

If your site comes under attack of a negative SEO technique then you could lose business, money, and jobs, the recipients of a negative SEO attack can address the issue bit once the damage is done they many not be able to afford to carry on. In these cases it is understandable that SEO’s are perceived as the bad guy, even though someone has had to pay for this work, the service being offered is not one that can claim to ethical.

Make some noise for nice SEO’s

SEO companies really need to start to make more noise about what they are doing, more transparency and success stories. We advise our clients to let people know the good things they are doing, case studies, unique selling points but SEO’s who can turn a small business into a large business can have data proving the turnaround their campaigns can make in turnover, as well as successfully building a client brand just takes these ‘wins’ as the norm.

Bad guys do well in movies, not in SEO

Villains and bad guys have their place, it isn’t in a reputable SEO company, so please people, stop assuming it is.

The fact of it is, as Google rolls out more and more updates that identify spam techniques, even the bad guys of SEO may soon be out of a job; letting the rest of us have fun creating innovative SEO campaigns that help your business. Even in the movies the bad guys have their counterpart hero. Although bad guys are essential for a good storyline in the movies I would not miss the bad guys of SEO from the industry,  and even in the movies bad guys usually get their comeuppance in the end.

Last night was the annual How Do award and although we were busy working on deadlines last night we followed the hashtag on Twitter to see how our friends and other Manchester SEO‘s fared up.

As we know Manchester and the North have some of the very best digital agencies who are technically proficient as well as being very creative so every year awards such as the HowDo awards have some really outstanding nominations. It must have been very hard for the judges to choose the winners.

Here is a list of all the winners from last nights events;

Personality of the Year

Andy Carter, group managing director of GMG Radio.

Creative agency

Refinery

Shortlisted

BJL Group Ltd

driven

Liquid

Raw

TBWA\\Manchester

The Neighbourhood

Uniform

Digital agency

Code Computerlove

Shortlisted

Blueleaf

Creative Lynx Ltd

Fat Media Ltd

KMP Digitata

magneticNorth

Mando Group

Rippleffect

SEO & PPC agency

Latitude Digital Marketing Ltd

Shortlisted

Branded3

Click Consult Ltd

First Internet Marketing

I-COM

Lakestar Media Ltd

PushON

TheEword

Social media agency

Brazen

Shortlisted

Brazen

IAS b2b Marketing

Juice Digital

Modern-English Digital

Smoking Gun PR

Media agency

MEC Manchester

Shortlisted

MediaCom North

Media sales

talkSPORT Regional Sales Team

Shortlisted

Global Radio – North Region

GMG Radio – Smooth NW

IPC Media

News International

Out of Home International

Real Radio NW

Media website

Wirral Globe (Newsquest)

Shortlisted

97.4 Rock FM – 97.4 Rock FM Facebook

cumbria24.com – cumbria24.com

deltatre Media – Rugby World Cup 2011 website

ilovemanchester.com – ILoveMCR.com

Manchester Evening News – manchestereveningnews.co.uk

Radio Today – RadioToday.co.uk

Typocom Visual Communication – www.creativetimes.co.uk

Mobile application

Apadmi and Live Talkback – The X Factor Mobile Application

Shortlisted

Apposing – CSL Sofas Augmented Reality iPhone App

Atomicom – Bang Bang Racing THD

deltatre Media – Rugby World Cup 2011 Mobile Applications

Liverpool Football Club – LFC Connect

MMU & North West Film Archive – Manchester Time Machine

Mosquito – Auto Trader iPhone App

Persian Cat Press – The Gift: An Interactive Storybook

PR agency

De Winter

Shortlisted

Bell Pottinger North

Brazen PR

Euro RSCG PR

Kenyon Fraser

Tangerine PR

The Write Angle

Weber Shandwick

Independent production company

Lime Pictures

Shortlisted

Blakeway North

Curly Productions Ltd

LA Productions

MADE IN MANCHESTER LIMITED

Maker Projects Ltd

Savvy Productions

Live event of the year

Manchester International Festival

Shortlisted

BBC – Sports Personality of the Year

Clear Presentations  - North West Regional Construction Awards 2011 (NWRCA2011)

Glasgows – Lyreco Sales Convention 2011 – “Hard To Beat”

GMG Radio – Blackpool Illuminations Switch On 2011

Maynineteen & Manchester Arndale – Denim Surgery at Manchester Arndale

SK Events – Liverpool Food and Drink Festival

The fresh Group – Santander UK Convention 2012

Magazine

All Together NOW! – health and disability publication All Together NOW!

Shortlisted

B2B Marketing / integrated communications campaign

Cameron Wells Communications – Integrated marketing campaign for PMI Health Group

B2C Marketing / integrated communications campaign

Vimto Soft Drinks – Vimto – Seriously Mixed Up Fruit – Lowrider campaign

Radio station

107.6 Juice FM

TV programme

Blakeway North – Cutting Edge: Breaking a Female Paedophile Ring – Channel 4

Shortlisted

ITV Granada

LA Productions – Moving On – Series 3

Lime Pictures – The Only Way is Essex – a Lime Pictures Production for ITV2

Lime Pictures – Hollyoaks – a Lime Pictures Production for C4

Liverpool Football Club – Liverpool FC – Live! Carling Cup

Nine Lives Media – Small Teen, Bigger World (BBC Three)

Urban Canyons Ltd – NINJA Shadow Warriors

Newspaper

Asian Lite

Shortlisted

Asian Lite

Cheshire West and Chester Council – Talking Together

Chorley and Leyland Guardian

Lancashire Telegraph

Lancaster Guardian

The Bolton News

The Times – The Times Business Insight

Westmorland Gazette

The events seemed to go really well with lots of happy tweeters despite some controversy before the event started. The organisers of the event had a dispute over who actually owned the awards and the website after one of the founders left to start a new company.

But as with all good events, the show must go on and despite Helen Ramsbottom, the How-Do ltd representative  being ejected from the venue, the awards went on without any more hitches.

All the agencies up for awards deserved to be there and with agencies such as ICOM, PushOn, Brazen and Creative Lynx in the mix, the standard of work submitted must have been excellent.

Congratualtions to all the winners and nominees and we will see you next year