“Smell gas? Act! Call 0800 111 999. Save the number in your phone today.”
We were delighted to work with Cadent to publicise this life-saving message with clear, concise instructions on what to do if you smell gas. Our team created an animation that has reached over half a million views (and counting!) on YouTube. We aimed to deliver an accessible message while refining the campaign mark.
Watch the animation here:
Objectives
Cadent set out to raise public awareness of gas safety through a focused campaign titled “Smell, Act, Call”. A key campaign requirement was to subtly develop the campaign mark whilst ensuring clarity and accessibility across all content. The “act” stage of the campaign needed to be emphasised as an important part of the process if you can smell gas.
Challenges and Requirements
Development of the Campaign Mark
Cadent required the existing campaign mark to be refined without losing its core identity. We aimed to enhance its visual appearance whilst remaining recognisable.
Clear and Accessible Content
Elements across the campaign needed to be easily understood by a broad audience. With a specific focus on the “act” icon, the campaign’s overall message needed to be easily interpreted.
Structure and Hierarchy
We were tasked with making sure that the number, message, and icons were visually balanced, with the emergency phone number placed last in the hierarchy for optimal comprehension.
Our Approach
Animation Creation
We designed and created a dynamic, engaging animation to capture the essence of the “Smell, Act, Call” message. Using clear, accessible visuals, we ensured the message was direct and memorable. We seamlessly incorporated the campaign mark, with a little enhancement but maintaining the original design.
Accessible Icons
In particular, we focused on developing the ‘act’ icon, to make sure it was communicated in an easy-to-understand way. By using simple, bold shapes and colours, the icons were universally recognisable, which is important for a campaign of this nature.
Visual Hierarchy
We carefully structured the animation, giving importance to the main message before introducing the emergency contact number. This hierarchy was important as we needed to ensure the audience understood the main message before noting the critical information of the phone number.
Social Media Assets
As well as the animation, we developed a comprehensive suite of social media assets. Including banners, carousels and cover photos tailored to specific platforms. We ensured consistent messaging and visual branding across all the content.
Results
The “Smell, Act, Call” Campaign for the Cadent animation gained plenty of traction, with over 500,000 views on YouTube! Our campaign assets successfully met the client’s requirements, ensuring the message was delivered clearly and resonated with the target audience.
To find out more about Cadent and their various resources and information regarding gas safety, visit their website.
Do you have a project where you’d like support from a creative and strategic team? Get in touch to have a chat, we’d love to hear from you!
Ellingham Hall is a luxury wedding venue and its business has expanded hugely over the past few years. As is expected, to accommodate this growth their site has been added to and altered at various stages over this period. When the time came for us here at Blumilk to reorganise and redesign parts of their site, we recognised it as an opportunity to improve their user experience (UX).
Here’s why it’s important to provide a positive user experience and how we applied this understanding to Ellingham Hall’s website redesign!
Providing a Positive User Experience: The Supermarket Analogy
For most businesses, customer satisfaction is an absolute top priority as this factor often determines the likelihood of a person making a purchase, inquiry, referral, or return. Due to the many digital developments over recent decades, this requirement to satisfy customers’ needs and intentions has slowly but surely crept into online – as well as physical – spaces.
Supermarkets are often used as an analogy for search engine optimisation, website redesigns, and UX. Whilst we might not think about it when we go, supermarkets are very carefully planned in various ways. For example:
Isles are laid out specifically to influence the route made by shoppers e.g. having checkoutsspanning the width of the storeto make it as easy as possible to pay
Isles are clearly labelled and follow an intuitive order/hierarchy
Products are labelled andplaced in specific ways to encourage greater attention to certain products e.g. ‘grabbable’ items are placed at the entrance and by checkouts to encourage impulse purchases
The warehouse section is always out of site of users, similar to the ‘back-end’ or ‘off-page’ elements of a website
Cold/freezer sections are often grouped together for greater efficiency, just as navigation bars use groupings
Websites can be considered as much a ‘space’ as anything else in the physical world because they also require planning, navigation, and maintenance. Over time, pages will be added and removed, links will be changed, content will be altered, images will be uploaded and deleted, links will be added, and so on. If this isn’t regularly reviewed, this can start to damage what’s termed the UX.
The Ellingham Hall Site: What Was Needed?
When Ellingham Hall approached us to redesign their website we were excited at the opportunity and challenge ahead, recognising it as a great opportunity to improve their UX.
Getting started, we devised some specific objectives to help us accomplish this aim, which were to:
Make it easier for Ellingham Hall to update and upload changes to the site
Make their navigation function more consistent across the site’s pages
Alter the templates used on some pages to make the site more mobile friendly
Make Ellingham Hall’s popular gallery page more search friendly
Create and implement consistent call to action buttons on necessary pages
In theory, these changes would improve the site’s UX by reintroducing consistency to the site and making it more seamless and intuitive to use. These changes would also give Ellingham Hall more influence over the user journey, allowing them to encourage users along predetermined or favourable routes.
The Ellingham Hall Site: What Did We Do?
This was a particularly interesting project as it was very varied, involving multiple specific parts of the site.
We started by reviewing the current sitemap and proposing a more effective version which used our custom templates in a more consistent way across the site’s various pages. We then changed the layout of these pages to incorporate more content and to showcase the amazing photography of the venue, which is a key driving point for the site.
Once this was done, our talented developer created a bespoke search and filter system for their gallery page. This means that people can easily search for their wedding photos within the large gallery without wasting time.
Then we turned to the buying journey and thought about how we could use buttons to streamline the buying journey. We added a consistent ‘Book a Private Viewing’ button to the top right of the screen so that users can get to this crucial step regardless of where they are on the site. We also included an expandable ‘Contact Us’ and ‘Private Viewing’ button for both desktop and mobile versions of the site.
These changes may seem subtle but in unison they contribute to a seamless, improved UX. Importantly, Ellingham Hall will reap the benefits of this redesign for years to come as the results will be cumulative over time.
Here at Blumilk, we’re always looking to tackle problems preemptively and for ways to exceed our clients’ expectations. Regardless of the size or type of business or project, we will always find effective business solutions to help propel your business operations. Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions, from graphic design to digital marketing and from brand development to advertising campaigns!
Here at Blumilk, our central aim is to better connect our clients to their customers and audiences via effective marketing and communication services. We know we’re doing our job right when our clients are expanding their customer base, being chosen for awards, and establishing their authority within their sector or field.
It can be daunting for companies large and small to choose an agency to deliver a project, strategy, or campaign. It takes time from both sides to find the most effective fit and to develop a working relationship so that we can better understand a client’s needs and requirements.
Here at Blumilk, we have 20 years experience providing marketing and communication services for clients across multiple sectors on both a regional (e.g. Northern Power Grid and Alnwick Gardens) and a national level (e.g. various NHS trusts and CCW). Here are some examples of what we have recently produced:
Central to this track record is that we have a very collaborative approach for all our projects and campaigns, preferring to create a collaborative bond with our clients, rather than simply consulting them. We do this by taking the time to get fully understand their business needs, challenges, and opportunities from conception to completion, and have found that this yields the best results.
We would like to take this opportunity to welcome all our new clients (you know who you are!) and to acknowledge and appreciate our existing clients who we have been constantly building a long-lasting relationship with. We are proud of the work we produce and we are more excited than ever to see what the future holds, and to see how we can find gaps to evolve and innovate.
Would your business benefit from creative and digital business solutions to help you better grasp your opportunities? Don’t hesitate to drop us an email or get in touch with us here to find out more about how we will help you excel!
The UK, together with their partners Italy, are currently hosting COP26 in Glasgow where Net Zero will be discussed and plans laid bare.
The United Nations have been bringing together world leaders from nearly every country on planet earth for more than three decades to discuss and reach an agreement on how to tackle climate change once and for all.
The race to Net Zero, Blumilk believes, is everyone’s responsibility. Whether you’re a global organisation or Sandra at number 22 you must ‘do your bit’ to lower your carbon footprint and leave a healthier world for future generations and the nature with which they’ll share our world.
What is the Paris Agreement?
At COP21 held in Paris in 2015, an historic agreement between every country involved was made to fight global warming together to achieve well below 2 degrees, aiming for 1.5.
It was at this summit that the Paris Agreement was born.
(Video credit: United Nations)
Under this agreement, each and every country involved made a commitment to bring forward national plans on how they will play their part in reducing emissions. These are known as the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
These NDCs are set to be presented at the summit with countries clarifying their plans to reduce their emissions.
Sadly, the Paris Agreement has not made enough necessary changes to limit global warming so now is the time for the world to pull up its socks and take action now before it’s too late.
COP26 Goals
Yes, the commitments laid out in the Paris Agreement are ambitious with reducing global warming by 1.5 degrees by 2050, however, by following the steps below, we can still aim for this crucial result:
Accelerate the phase-out of coal
By making the transition to zero coal burning, an incredibly damaging fossil fuel and most carbon-intensive will play a huge role in keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees.
Curtail deforestation
The lungs of the world, forests are crucial in the fight against global warming by absorbing the damaging carbon dioxide from the air. Crucially, when forests are cleared or disturbed, that carbon is released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.
Speed up the switch to electric vehicles
Electric vehicles emit far fewer greenhouse gases and air pollutants than their petrol or diesel counterparts. ‘Battery solutions are the catalyst that will drive our society to an electrified, zero-emissions future. It is the next industrial revolution; some call it the green revolution. The next decade will see unprecedented change’ (Orral Nafjari, Britishvolt CEO & Founder)
Encourage investment in renewables
Aside from the economic benefits of using renewable energy, the environmental impact is enormous. Generating energy using methods that produce zero greenhouse gasses will significantly reduce air pollution.
(UN Climate Change Conference UK 2021)
Adapt our efforts to protect communities and natural habitats
Some argue that global warming began with the Industrial Revolution as early as the 1830s with the last seven years being the warmest on record.
More than a million species are at risk of extinction by climate change (earthday.org).
Climate change can’t be ignored and COP26 is encouraging countries to adapt their ways to ‘protect and restore ecosystems while building defences, warning systems and resilient infrastructure to avoid loss of homes, livelihoods and even lives.’ (www.ukcop26.org)
How much will the fight to net-zero cost?
OK, we know what needs to be done but how will the world afford it? In order for countries to follow through with their commitments, at least $100bn in climate finance must be mobilised.
International financial institutions are receiving pressure to unleash trillions in private and public sector finance required to meet the global net-zero targets.
We must work together to deliver on our net-zero promise.
For organisations, lowering your carbon footprint can sometimes feel like a minefield but Blumilk is on hand to simplify your efforts and make sure that not only do your actions stack up but your branding, communications and campaigns do, too.
Due to launch Blumilk’s ‘Your Net Zero’ campaign is a first of its kind solution to assist organisations in their zero-carbon efforts through concise, truthful and impactful communications using a range of mediums including animation, digital content and collaboration to assist your plan ‘for better.’
From sustainability pledges to energy and carbon reporting to your CDP climate change disclosure and annual director’s reports and a whole host of other elements that will allow your organisation to be perceived as leaders in the race to zero.
Blumilk has worked alongside some of the UK’s most ambitious start-ups, SMEs and national organisations on their sustainability brands.
We will also work with specialist carbon offsetting consultants who are able to work with you on your approach and SBTi targets so that’s another area Blumilk have covered.
You can register your interest and we’ll be in touch as soon as we launch or if you have a question or would like to know more about other Blumilk services, you can contact colin@blumilk.com
Usually, Blumilk are huge fans of getting into the Autumnal spirit at this time of the year.
Whether we’re huddled around a fire pit with our bobble hats and oversized scarves or drinking our hot chocolates covered in marshmallows – we always seem to mark the foiled plan to burn down the Houses of Parliament with a bit of a bang.
But this year, it’s all going to be a little different. There may be no organised firework or bonfire displays to light up the skies, no meeting with friends at your local to warm up over your favourite tipple however we hope you can still mark the occasion at home with a piece of homemade Parkin (this lockdown’s banana bread?), snuggled up on the sofa in front of the fire.
Similar to every year, firefighters have begun to speak out to reinforce the dangers around bonfires and fireworks and with less of the organised fun, it’s predicted that people will turn to celebrate at home.
As you know, any kind of firework display, either home or organised, comes with its own set of risks and Blumilk have been working with one of our clients, Western Power Distribution, which covers the Midlands, the South West of England and South Wales, on a Guy Fawkes safety campaign.
Safety experts at Western Power Distribution are urging anyone who is planning bonfire celebrations at home to keep fireworks and bonfires away from power lines and substations – and always to plan their event in daylight to make sure they stay well away from electrical hazards.
WPD Health and Safety Adviser Eddie Cochrane said: “Bonfire night celebrations will be on a much smaller scale this year because of coronavirus restrictions but that doesn’t mean the safety message is any different.
“It is vital that people are aware of the dangers posed by electrical equipment when they’re planning bonfires and fireworks. On a windy night, flames and sparks can easily be blown onto overhead power lines and may cause power cuts or electrical surges.”
Blumilk created an eye-catching campaign that has been pushed out across social media for the week before 5th November.
You can see more work we have done in the utilities sector here.
Whatever you do to celebrate this year, stay safe!
As we step into 2021, here at Blumilk, we thought we’d take a look at some of the digital marketing trends that are inevitably going to make an appearance this year.
The content we use to interact and engage with our audiences is about to go next level where innovation is concerned – or so we predict and our ears are pretty close to the ground!
Whether you’re a business owner or work within a marketing and sales department, it’s critical to your success that you take a long hard look at your strategy for 2021 and start thinking about the upcoming trends we’ve set out below.
Don’t have a strategy or looking where to start? We can help with that here. So, ask away!
Organic search: monitoring core updates and EAT
Throughout 2020, we saw a significant impact on organic visibility thanks to the latest core updates. These new search results should be monitored so you can continue to adhere to the latest search quality guidelines.
Forget keyword stuffing and a gazillion backlinks, Google caught onto that one in 2010 – if you want your website to perform and outrank, you need to get with the core update programme.
Organic search: looking at opportunities from structured data and SERPS features
Structured data has seen an intense revolution, and is a constantly changing facet of SEO. Throughout 2020, we saw structured snippets within SERPS which is the first evidence for a future trend.
If you’re not totally up on what SERPS, Wordstream has a great article here that explains all of the marketing jargon you probably (don’t) need to know.
Paid search: assessing the use of optimised machine learning
Many businesses may look to consider optimised machine learning as an external service, as it is now a significant aspect of paid and organic search, for example in Google Ads.
What is Machine Learning, we hear you cry. Well, expertsystem.com have a great explanation:
“Machine learning is an application of artificial intelligence (AI) that provides systems with the ability to automatically learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed. Machine learning focuses on the development of computer programs that can access data and use it to learn for themselves.”
Ad optimisation testing to become more sophisticated as ad platforms develop
Two-thirds of spending on digital ads currently goes on Google and Facebook, a figure which may only increase. This consequently increases the importance of optimising these platforms as part of your marketing strategies.
Blumilk are experts where paid media and ad platforms are concerned so don’t feel you have to figure it out on your own. You can get in touch with us here.
Adoption of changing social networks
A large part of 2020 was affected by the Coronavirus pandemic, which has given rise to newer video platforms such as TikTok and Reels. In terms of social awareness, these platforms will continue to be just as popular if not more so in 2021 so we suggest you determine your best angle and reach for your camera.
Privacy wars: review the implications of increased customer privacy protection on advertising effectiveness
The release of Apple’s IOS14 has attracted some rather dramatic headlines surround the privacy of ad targeting business. Going into 2021, it may be more important than ever to find a reassuring balance for customers between their privacy, and your advertising effectiveness.
If in doubt, post nowt is the way we would say it up North. We can’t stress to you enough the importance of respecting your audience’s data. If you’re unsure, you can read this handy guide on GDPR friendly ways of communicating here.
Ensuring visuals fit zeitgeists
First impressions will never fail to be important, and thanks to innovations in interactive design, you can utilise this to boost conversions. Think outside the box and consider some of the latest design trends for your website, such as colour gradients, minimalist landing pages, various website personalisations, and many more that are likely to continue as we travel through 2021.
Using conversational marketing to increase conversions
Conversational marketing involves various forms of dialogue between your brand and your prospective customers throughout the customer service or sales process. You can use numerous communication channels to achieve this, but some of the most popular include:
Emails
Websites
Online chats
Social media
Video calls
Chatbots
Applying big data analysis and machine learning to improve customer email targeting and website personalisation
As a business, you are no longer limited to newsletter and email campaign broadcasts. Looking into 2021, you can make use of a more sophisticated approach by taking into account lifecycle engagement reporting, and consequently basing targets on this data.
Increase conversion to sales through online and offline channels
Modern technology means that there are numerous opportunities for testing, which you should take advantage of in 2010. Data from 2020 showed only one-fifth of businesses to have a structured programme which is a figure that can be drastically improved.
Improving email personalisation through lifecycle and behavioural segmentation
Using personalised email marketing techniques is showing fantastic potential for delivering effective and relevant communications to customers. Using personal and display ads as well as integrating social and the web will increase prospects and integrate channels. Lifecycle segmentation may include categories such as first-time buyers, defecting customers and inactive customers.
Who knows what other marketing tech trends will come to light throughout 2021? We are eager to find out! In the meantime, feel free to contact us here for further marketing advice.
Thankfully, we’re one of the lucky ones who have managed to go from strength to strength during the pandemic. Still, we could have murdered a steak bake but hey.
21 years ago, Blumilk was just beginning. Our founders, Colin and Adam had a vision that they were going to change the landscape of branding and visionary delights for some of the UK’s most prominent businesses, growing with them and succeeding along the way.
Growing the business
Now, thanks to an unfathomable amount of hard graft and an unwavering appetite for giving clients an incredible feeling of success, 21 short years later we are one of the most trusted Creative Agencies in Newcastle.
We often ask ourselves why and we always come back to the same answer: we really do care about each and every one of our clients.
Our entire culture and ethos are built on understanding the smaller start-ups looking for an agency to help them build awareness of their brainchild to the huge powerhouses of the utility sector who require experts to assist them to navigate the marketing helm.
Studio Director, Wendy Robson, says: “Although, I haven’t been with Blumilk since the very beginning, during my 13 years here I have had the pleasure of meeting and working with some of the country’s leading creatives and business people as well as the variety of clients that have trusted us to enable their continued growth. Long may it continue!”
Client Director, Lauren Hindhaugh, mirrors Wendy when she says: “We take the time to understand our clients and thanks to not only our incredible creative force, we have the business acumen to back up key business decisions that have assisted our clients in increasing productivity, performance, and profit.”
Blumilk thrives under the pressure of creating bespoke business solutions that enable business owners, marketing managers, stakeholders, and start-ups to up their game.
And, it isn’t all about having a cutting-edge website, it’s about the whole picture. It’s about understanding your business, your people, and your clients and putting together a plan of attack that will address the gaps, improve your market share and increase your profits – that’s what it’s all about anyway, isn’t it?
And what about the C-word? As a nation, it’s one of the most difficult climates we have ever had to negotiate so, if there’s anything we can do to help, please get in touch with colin@blumilk.com.
But, in the meantime, stand by for our quarter centenary birthday, we’re going to make sure it’s a BANGER!
