Category Archives: Testimonials

Thank you Mr Mounty!

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Never shy of shouting up about what clients think of us, we thought it might be nice to shout a bit more and include this rather glowing testimonial from lovely client, Peter Mounty of Lend Lease, based down in London.

Lend Lease are a global company who are one of the world’s leading fully integrated property and infrastructure solutions providers. Their global vision is to create the best places and their strategic direction is to be the leading international property and infrastructure group.

The acquisition of the Lend Lease EMEA regional business as a client came about through our relationships built up over many years with contacts within other clients who have subsequently moved to Lend Lease. Continue reading →

Smart Talk – latest news from Smart Ideas

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We’ve been beavering away again – writing articles that we think will be of interest or use to you! Please do feel free to tell us if it isn’t :)

Issue 3 is the latest Smart Talk this year and has articles on SEO as well as the top 5 mistakes made in marketing … we’ve even given you a little giggle with the latest adventures of Dixie and Charlie, our resident doggie characters.

You can grab your latest copy here:  smart talk issue 3

 

 

 

 

 

smart talk issue 3

Roll up, roll up, get your newsletter here….

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New for 2012 is ‘Smart Talk’, our newsletter which first hit the desks of our unsuspecting clients and clients-to-be in Valentine’s week! Not only did we feature a coupe of latest projects but some tips on how to make your design agency love you and some hot design facts.

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….

Seek and Share – A case study for Severn Trent

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The picture before
Severn Trent needed to reduce expenditure on capital equipment and make existing assets and networks work much harder. One route was to establish and embed a cultural change of ‘Seeking and Sharing’ within the Severn Trent team and their One Supply Chain (OSC). The project Seek and Share was born and needed to be embedded in the organisation’s own way of working that engaged both its internal team and the OSC.

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. Continue reading →

Another sparkling testimonial

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I love our clients.

As graphic designers we love being told what our clients think of us. We received this very recently from a client I have worked with for over 18 years. We’ve designed and built a number of brands for him over the years and in that time have built a good friendship through a few different businesses as he is a true entrepreneur.

“How many creative agencies have been around for nearly 18 years? How many clients have stayed with such an agency for all of those 18 years? Through a variety of businesses in a range of market places? Not many would be my guess. I have stayed with Philippa throughout because she has that rare ability to combine true creativity; commercial acumen and real world results. She is simply the best in her field.”

Mike Hurney, The Shooting Party, July 27, 2011

Top qualities: Great Results, Personable, Creative

It’s fair to say our working relationship has weathered very well despite the odd disagreement about the direction of a brand; that happens because we genuinely love his businesses as much as he does; we laugh about them now which just goes to show the strength of the relationship. We’ve also achieved some tremendous results for him.

This is some of the latest work we have done for him. Over the years we have designed and developed brands and then implemented them across many disciplines. Adverts, catalogues, websites and latterly social media and packaging. What a mix!

High praise indeed – we create design that works…

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When Alison Hughes, Senior Communications Officer from Staffordshire Police decided to comment on our work, how could we not publicise it?

“When Staffordshire Police needed to change its telephone number for people reporting non-emergencies it was important to convey a number of key messages around cost and local service as well as the number itself.

Smart Ideas produced a range of designs that could be used across various communication channels from which we selected two bold and contemporary pieces of artwork. These were developed so that they could be used as interchangeable graphics – one bold and stark and the other more personable featuring a ‘face’ of Staffordshire Police.

These were used across a number of printed materials including posters and leaflets explaining why a change to an 0300 number was necessary. The design also featured on our website, in newsletters and telephone directories and on external banners placed in key locations. The designs were also adapted for retention devices – fridge magnets and pen – to allow key stakeholders and vulnerable communities to keep our number close at hand.

Within two months the conversion rate had hit 50 per cent – half of all people phoning the force were able to call the right number immediately. This was an impressive result especially as some of calls would have come from outside the county and out of the immediate ‘reach’ of the campaign.

The single non-emergency number campaign was the beginning of a on-going relationship with Smart Ideas and subsequent requirements have been met by the same responsive and creative approach. They never fail to deliver a product that hits the mark!”