So getting back to the point in question, has anyone seen Charlie? He’s such a cheeky young snapper, he’s only 4 and he’s so naughty sometimes with lots of cheek. I have to keep him in order I can tell you! Here he is here on the right sharing my bed!!! I’m not happy I can tell you!

The peeps here at Smart Ideas thought it would be a really good idea to talk about mine and Charlies adventures, so they decided to capture it in a comic strip which has been launched in the February issue of Smart Talk.

Written by Dixie Dawg aged 10 3/4.

Imagine our surprise when clients and prospective clients emailed us some lovely comments – it seems they all thought they were receiving a mystery Valentine’s card as it arrived in a large red A4 envelope.

Grab your copy here and tell us what you think – you may even want to have a go at the caption competition….

Tell us what you think? You can see the new site here.

The calendar, aimed at Severn Trent Water users reveals a multiple choice question each day about what you should or should not put down your toilet or sink, in a fun and friendly way.

The advent calendar also has an educational message in order to reduce the number of blockages in sewers and has been produced in both HTML and Flash.

Of course we decided that we couldn’t just turn up with a couple of roller banners – being a creative design agency we needed a theme!

And the theme became ‘is your brand killing your business? which of course grew into a full blown crime scene with the chalked body on the floor, the policemen’s helmet with blue flashing lights, crime scene tape and even handcuffs.

Take a look and see what you think….
I think I need to take photography lessons though.

Point 6 of the DBA Code of Conduct recommends: ‘Members should not take part in pitches, which require unpaid work. The level of payment for pitches should relate to the time and effort involved.’

Professionalism
Considerable time and effort is required to prepare serious design proposals for any project. Creative proposals prepared without payment for a competitive pitch involving several other consultants can only be speedily prepared, scantily researched and superficial. They cannot be based on a genuine understanding of the client’s business and objectives. In short, the proposals will not achieve the standards of professionalism to which members of the Design Business Association are committed.

Abuse of intellectual property rights
Design businesses automatically own all the rights in the work they produce. If creative work is supplied in a free pitch, the client has no rights to use that work until a contract is agreed. Inexperienced and unprofessional clients have been known to ask to retain creative work supplied by all the consultancies involved in free pitches. The clients then make that creative work available to the successful consultancy with the suggestion that some elements of each design are included in the final work. This is highly illegal and alienates professional design businesses from that client damaging the prospects of the client acquiring truly effective design solutions.

Expertise
Design consultants are selling design talent and expertise. To give away creative work is therefore to give away all. This contrasts with other professions, such as advertising agencies, for whom the creative element of a project often accounts for only a small proportion of the total remuneration they can hope to gain by winning the pitch. They are sometimes understandably more willing to speculate with their creative work, although as we suggest above, the relevance and quality of that work might be open to question.

Clients pay in the end
Design consultancies are commercial organisations. They need to make a profit. If speculative pitching becomes widespread, clients would simply find the cost of speculative pitches being reclaimed through higher fees and charges throughout the industry.

Our suggested way of commissioning design
1.  Draw up a list of three or four consultancies. The DBA website www.dba.org.uk contains details of consultancies in all sectors of design, in all regions, plus their specialisations and contact information.
2.  Provide a brief indicating overall design objectives, budget and time scale for the project, including any special requirements or terms. In some cases clients will find they cannot establish a full brief until they have an opportunity to discuss a project in details with a consultancy in whom they place confidence.
3.  Interview each consultancy and ask them to submit:
· a presentation of their relevant credentials
· a methodology statement to indicate how they would approach the project
· a proposal of work stages and fees required for carrying out the project, together with the terms and conditions for an appointment.
4.  If it’s considered important that the competing consultants carry out some preparatory work for their credentials presentations, a fixed amount of money should be offered to each to cover their time and expenses.
5.  Choose and appoint in writing one of the design consultants and notify the other unsuccessful consultants.

If as part 4 above, it is considered important that the competing consultants carry out some preparatory work for their credentials presentations, a fixed amount of money should be offered to each to cover their time and expenses.

The DBA policy is based on the belief that good work stems from teamwork resulting from a firm commitment by both client and design consultant.

We’re excited to say that we are going to be exhibiting at the Business Growth Show on 26th October.

It’s a fantastic networking event with two speed networking sessions and some interesting, informative seminars. At the last count there were over 200 confirmed visitors already.

Come along and visit us -  this event is massive and not to be missed. You can even see our crime scene or you may prefer to take part in our Smart Brand Challenge!

This event is at the:

Radisson Blu Hotel Manchester Airport
Chicago Avenue
Manchester
M90 3RA

from 9:00 AM – 3:00 PM

Event Schedule 
09:00am — 09:30am  Speed Networking 1
10:15am — 11:00pm  Seminar 1
11:30am — 12:00pm  Speed Networking 2
12:15pm — 12:50pm  Lunch
12:50pm — 01:00pm  Director’s Thank-you
01:00pm — 01:45pm  Seminar 2
02:15pm — 02:45pm  Speed Networking 3
03:00pm                   Close

What our biggest challenges were
As always with a project of this nature and the number of different audience groups, we needed to understand:
• The way the different audiences work currently, how they engage with each other and the existing tools they use.
• What key trigger would encourage them to adopt ’Seek and Share’.
• The barriers to adopting the ‘Seek & Share’ due to the competitive element within the One Supply Chain.

What we wanted to achieve
Seek & Share was implemented in order to encourage Severn Trent and the One Supply Chain to find more innovative and cost effective ways of doing things (Seeking) and then to give that information freely to other parts of the One Supply Chain (Sharing) in order that both best practice and cost savings can be realised.

The service Smart Ideas Design provided
The brief for this project needed to be shaped and defined so we worked with Severn Trent and the One Supply Chain in a series of workshops to help them define the brief before we started any creative. We all needed to understand the nature and size of ‘the beast’ to be able to create the right look and feel for it.
Once the brief was shaped to Severn Trent’s ultimate goals, we started with the creative work. This entailed the design and development of a set of materials including the Seek and Share style, posters, literature and web portal. It took the form of a series of icons pictured here which are easy to understand, engaging and colourful. The icons were further added to with string men characters who are communicating via string and tin cans. The style is designed to be warm, colourful, friendly and engaging as well as completely different for a utility like Severn Trent Water.

Impact
There was both a quantitative and a qualitative approach in terms of goals Severn Trent wanted to achieve.

Quantitatively for example, there were 16,000 unique visits to the portal at the start of June 2011 and in August, only 6 weeks after implementation, this had risen to 18,000. It is anticipated that this will be around 20,000 by the end of the year. Over a set period of time, other markers are the number of new threads, the number of new responses and the number of unique visits.

Qualitatively, Severn Trent are looking to place value on the change that has been implemented. For example, the
savings that have been made through the introductionof Seek & Share.
Emily Timmins, Innovation & Skills Manager for Standards said