I am open to both agencies and direct approaches.

Jasper Ditton
Head of Digital
jasper.ditton@marketecture.co.uk | 0161 786 8057

Contract Brief

Skills required

Here we look at those 'must-have' platforms that you should already have, and have put together a checklist to make sure that you are making the most of them.

Steaming ahead with a content marketing plan is a bit like trying to make the proverbial omelette without breaking eggs.  And though the beauty of content marketing is that you’re  probably 'doing' it in various forms anyway, as with any recipe,  it’s important to take a look at what you already have in  the cupboard.

Ideally you’ll already have a marketing automation mothership in place. But, like many businesses, marketing automation may still be on your b2b wish list. You may have an integrated platform to join all the dots for you. But if you’re relatively new to content marketing it’s worth a quick 'fit for purpose' checklist:

Your blog:

What is its core purpose at the moment?

Is it on its own domain or part of your corporate website?  Can it be repurposed to support your content campaign?  Is the platform fit for SEO requirements? Is the platform compatible for social media integration? e.g. integration with LinkedIn profiles, Google Places etc?

Your corporate website:

Does it lend itself to easily display thought leadership content? Does it already contain a knowledge centre? What are the existing conversion paths and points? Is a separate content-led microsite a better option?

2.0 readiness:

How are you currently using social media?  Do you have existing corporate accounts on Twitter;

LinkedIn; Facebook; Flickr; YouTube; Google+; Pinterest et al? Who currently runs your social media presence? How are individuals in your business using social media? Who are the enthusiasts? And the detractors? What compliance checks do you have in place? Do you have an established ‘reputation management' strategy?

Landing pages:

Is your Content Management System able to create single purpose microsites or templated landing pages? If not, it may be worth renting a technology platform like www.unbounce.com to give your content campaigns an online hub for push and pull activity, with built-in analytics.

Email system:

Most email service providers (ESPs) these days are pretty on the ball with matching new feature updates with each other. But it is worth checking that your ESP is up to scratch with core issues such as deliverability and reporting capabilities.

Analytics:

Do you really need anything above and beyond Google Analytics? Are you using any social media  monitoring tools which can be integrated into your campaign measurement?

For a content campaign to be truly effective right now, the majority of these items fall into the must-haves camp.  Of course, leverage the digital systems you already have in place, but give serious consideration to bolstering your armoury with those you may not have yet explored.

The content marketing ‘fit for purpose’ checklist is just one of the points for consideration in the B2B Content Marketing Cookbook. If you don’t already have a copy, get your hands on one today.

Content marketing has one aim: Lead generation.

One aim, achieved in three steps (we sometimes call these ‘pillars’, if we’re feeling grand):

Create, promote, convert

And that’s as complicated as it needs to be.

Create: The objective here is to develop a content marketing series which is effectively self-perpetuating. This is not about a rambling soliloquy or a single minded rant, it’s about producing a juicy piece of valuable insight that your customers and prospects will chomp at the bit to get hold of. Think of this piece as the ‘hero’ to your campaign (or the lead generation hook) and develop it with plenty of ‘spin-offs’ in mind (the bait piece content to draw your prospects in).

Let’s not sugar coat this – of the three steps this is the most arduous, but if scoped and written properly with the long game in mind, you’ll end up with a pre-packaged campaign that you can drip-feed with ease to your market over a number of months. Happy days!

Promote: Once you have your lovely shiny new content you need to get it into the hands of your prospects. So this step is all about using every relevant marketing communications tactic to do just that. You know your audiences, and as part of your customer profiling you no doubt also know the best ways to reach them.

Decisions need to be made on the most appropriate formats and channels, so take time to think about whether they’re more likely to switch on to video, a DM via snail mail or a conversation on LinkedIn.

Think about a test and learn project for your first campaign – put a little budget towards different tactics and see what works best. Trial some multivariate testing around your online campaign. Consider PR opportunities – both to your core audience and more lateral influencers. Think about external parties who might be persuaded to push your content out for you.

Above all, make sure everything you do drives traffic back to the hero piece. Because that’s where the exchange of value happens, enabling you to get that all important data in the net.

Convert: This is the critical bit. Otherwise you’re just producing ‘stuff’ without a clear goal in mind – and though it might appeal to your inner Chaucer, it’s not going to deliver on your content marketing objectives and get some leads in your pipeline.

Remember then with everything you produce and promote, all roads should lead to Rome (or your very nicely designed content landing page). Don’t give your audiences too many options. Don’t distract them with other messages. Don’t be tempted to cross sell or up-sell (the content itself can do this for you).

B2b buying cycles can be complicated things, but for the purposes of your content marketing campaign just define a simple conversion hierarchy and grade digital interactions with your hero piece and spin-off activity accordingly.

Content Marketing Cookbook Tip:

Looking for more detail on the concept of a prospect’s digital interactions?

Search for the phrase: ‘digital body language’. There is an excellent book on the matter by Steve Woods of Eloqua (marketing automation) fame.

For more info, and many more recipes for success, check out the B2B Content Marketing Cookbook

In case you missed it, the profile was taken over, its brand identity “hamburglared” and changed to that of rival McDonalds and the hackers tweeted a mass of generally nonsensical and offensive messages. It took a while to get a response from the real people at Burger King; the Facebook page wasn’t updated although a statement was later released to the media explaining that action was being taken to suspend the account and an apology to existing followers.

Needless to say, a stressful day for the social media team at BK, but was the brand really damaged?

It’s quite unlikely to any great extent, save as to a little embarrassment and a bit of banter that is likely to reverberate for a while (Tesco is still the butt of the odd horse meat related joke!). In fact, there is quite a positive spin on this. The account acquired an additional 30,000 followers in just a few hours and the stunt certainly got people talking. It would be interesting to see if sales went up as a result, too! Thankfully the attack was rather amateurish and most obviously a hacking stunt, but it could have been a lot worse if executed a little more intelligently and seriously.

Having said that, the gravity of a hacking and its potential effects have been exposed, and so it might be worth considering putting a couple of measures in place in the event that it happens to you.

1. Change passwords regularly.

It might seem quite obvious, but thinking about it, when was the last time you changed yours? Update them every couple of weeks if necessary and ensure that they don’t relate to the brand or products. (Whopper123 probably wasn’t the BK password, though!). Change passwords when a staff member leaves the company too, even if it’s amicable.

2. Limit and control access from devices

With most of us using mobile devices to interact on social media, make sure you know who has access to the account and across which devices, and limit these. (The HMV live #XFactorFiring updates spring to mind!). A misplaced mobile phone that has direct access to an account can cause no end of problems, so limiting access and ensuring that every device is as secure as possible.

3. Plan for every eventuality

Do crisis communications form a part of your current social media strategy? Does your social media policy have a management procedure in place to handle situations just like Burger Kings, much like a business continuity plan? Whilst it might seem unlikely to happen, it’s worth having a clearly defined action plan in place to ensure that matters don’t get out of hand and control is regained as soon as possible.

Serious bit out of the way, we give you the Top 10 BK hacking McFunnies!

(The following is included, alongside many more recipes for success, within the B2B Content Marketing Cookbook:

1. Think like a publisher  

Inform, educate and entertain.

Publishers know how to create and promote content. They do this stuff for a living.

For ideas on the title for your next content marketing piece, don’t search the resource library of your competitor’s website. Instead, go to your local newsagent and see how the publishing industry works to proven formulas to sell content.

You will see clearly signposted emotional benefits, blended with tangible figures that create a perception of easily digestible information:

Seven ways to get a better figure this summer...

Five new recipes to make your next dinner party something special...

Become a better guitarist in 24 hours…

The six guiding principles of content marketing…

1. 2.       Tell stories

What’s the most popular business video on YouTube?

Steve Jobs’ Stanford University address. It begins with a simple line:

“I am just here today to tell three stories.”

People can relate more to the human experience. The best content marketing strategies exploit this. It’s not always possible to create drama and heroes from your recent network installation case study. But please give it a try - people have been using stories to sell ideas since the dawn of time.

1. 3.       Give IP away freely 

A common challenge presented in editorial decisions around content is just how much IP to give away. A fear of giving the baby away with the bath water, so to speak.

Content marketing operates on a proven formula – that there is typically a huge payback for giving the market valuable information that can help solve its problems. The inherent positioning created as a trusted problem solver, rather than vendor, has huge implications for the volume and quality of leads generated.

Price negotiations down the line take on a whole new dynamic. If your prospect finds you through your high value content, then where does the negotiation power lie?

Yes, competitors may gain a bit more of an edge on how you think. But aren’t you saying something very important to them?

“If we are prepared to give this amount of good stuff away for free, then imagine how much we’re holding back!”

4.     Repurpose, repurpose, repurpose.

Repurpose is one of the most used buzzwords in content marketing. But it is a buzzword worth remembering for two key reasons:

1)      Repurposing makes your content sweat harder for you.

Multiple formats mean multiple exposure opportunities. You are just repackaging, not repeating.

Ok, so you are repeating. But the prospect who finds you through the SlideShare presentation synopsis of your whitepaper won’t care, as they still found you!

Just don’t repeat the same content on the same platform. A ‘follow’ is likely to lead quickly to an ‘unfollow’ if flogging a dead horse is the way you choose to promote your wares.

2)      People absorb information in different ways.

Let’s not get all NLP, but people are different. For every visual person who can only take on board an idea through a one minute video, there is another who much prefers long and detailed text. Different strokes for different folks – your content marketing strategy should reflect life’s rich diversity.

5.      Honesty is always the best policy

If you’re struggling to come up with valuable market insights, then you are probably clutching at straws. People can sniff out filler content immediately from the real stuff. Just be honest and move onto your next potential theme.

Also, be honest in how you outline potential solutions in the subject area you are covering – even if you don’t like them. It will gain you a lot more credibility to actually note other approaches to solving the problem that may not include your own end solution. People are going to look at other options anyway. Why don’t you save them some of the hassle in your content marketing piece?

And be honest when you’re selling. The lion’s share of your content will be real meat, not thinly veiled brochure copy. However, don’t fear putting in place signposts and calls to action that point people on the path to purchase. Just make them clear and obvious. Prospects know you are not producing content as a public service.

6.     Common sense rules

Your objective is to get your treasured content into the hands of your prospects. If you have a very niche proposition and know pretty much who the addressable market actually is, then contact them directly.

You could take the hard path and engage with them in a 2.0 community of interest. Or you could get your content in their hands directly through good old-fashioned DM and email. You don’t get any extra bonus points for the level of difficulty involved in generating a lead!

For more info and even more ideas for the perfect content marketing recipes, request a free limited edition copy of the B2B Content Marketing Cookbook, or download the eBook now here.

But put the words ‘internal’, ‘culture’ or ‘brand’ in front of change and staff in any organisation get very jittery – or just bored.

After all, change in marketing or communications has become big business and a big process with lots of well-paid, well-spoken and persuasive change consultants. And these helpful people often tell organisations that ‘change’ involves a complete overhaul.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. No, we at Marketecture say it can be simpler. And it’s mostly a matter of putting the human element back into why there is a need for change.

Take a very current problem: generating sales leads. Are your sales leads dropping? Are you feeling the recession pinch? Are you wondering where the pipeline has gone?

At a board meeting I can imagine the discussions ranging from ‘Our people just don’t cut it – we need a better culture’ to ‘We need to change our look – our brand just isn’t competing anymore’.

But it could be simpler.

Could it be a case of not having training that helps your sales team really communicate with clients or not having done anything that builds a strong feeling of team work in often remote workers?

Or could it be a case of not having actually done any marketing for a long time and now seeing the drop off in brand recognition? Today’s world doesn’t just rely on the same clients coming back – you need to both nurture existing clients in a proactive way to get them to stay with you and refer you AND at the same time show a compelling story about why you provide just what people need in your market. You can’t just sit on your laurels.

In fact, one of the biggest issues both internally and externally that often leads to the fatal discussion at senior management level about a need for change is a lack of thinking about ongoing marketing and communications and building a dialogue – not just a campaign.

Internally, messages are often via the most dull channels and are more about procedure and ‘do this/do that’ type messages than building community. Or you have the ‘fun factor’ in newsletters and stories that try to create the ‘team’ feel by focussing on ‘quirky’ stuff you may not know about staff members. What about not just sending out messages, but giving people access to tools that enable them to connect with each other? There is a lot of technology that supports a real organisational dialogue – led by teams not by communications people. And you don’t have to go hi-tech. An oldie but goodie I have used is SharePoint. While it can be pretty basic, it gives your teams the ability to talk to each other and lets them take charge of building communication and shows that even with restrictions on what you can do IT-wise, you can do more than just set up an intranet full of information.

And externally there are two key areas organisations can fall down on.

The first is doing the same marketing every year and then wondering why giving your sales team a pile of glossy sales brochures is not working as well as you hoped.

While you do need collateral of some sort – those handouts at events do often lead to sales – today’s market needs a more innovative approach and it’s about building a full picture of your organisation’s personality not just its products. For example, talking about what makes you tick or your organisation’s view on an issue that is really topical provides people with more insight and content that they WANT. Not feeling sold to and not feeling you don’t really get the market. For more on this I would really recommend getting a copy of our Content Marketing Cookbook by visiting http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/bulletin/dailynews/article/1165786/?DCMP=EMC-CONBreakingnewsfromMarketing

The second issue is taking your existing clients for granted. You may have a dynamic marketing plan focussed on new sales growth but do you have a problem with retention? Are you guilty of signing people up then letting them get on with it? Do you really think your monthly e-newsletter cuts the mustard?

What you may be missing is the messages around what you are doing differently – your innovations, your changes in product, your insights. Basically treating them like part of the family – not just a revenue stream.

With existing clients you need to remember that they refer – and referrals mean so much more than a cold call not matter how good the marketing is.

So don’t just change. It may be a new year but thinking more strategically than ‘resolutiony’ may save you a lot of money and sanity!

And with a brand, this rings even truer. Especially as belts tighten and competition is even fiercer across every sector, if your own staff don’t love you, why would anyone else?

The current flurry of internal communications roles in organisations of all sizes seems to point an awakening of the importance of internal communications and a healthy level of company love.

So you would expect to see amazing innovation in the world of internal communications wouldn’t you?

Sadly not so much.

As a marketing and communications specialist who has worked in large organisations with complex internal communications programmes, I am still astounded at how basic it can often be.

What is considered essential to any external campaign – creativity, strong strategy and marketing savvy – seems to disappear when the word ‘internal’ swaps for ‘external’.

‘We don’t have the budget’

‘Our customers are our focus: they pay the bills’

‘Our staff know who we are: they already work for us so why do we need to convince them?’

‘We try things but they don’t work. People just want to get on with their job.’

‘We just need to ensure our staff get the facts they need and are on message.’

‘We don’t have time.’

Hmmm, all very valid, on the one hand, but think about it. Your best ambassadors and assets are your staff. They breathe life into your brand. They bring innovation to your products.

And importantly, they really do sell your brand. It’s a bit of a cliché but it is in fact very true. It’s often the personal relationships between your staff and your clients that keeps clients returning – not necessarily what you see as the product USP.

A Towers Watson report, ‘Capitalising on Effective Communication 2009/2010’ (http://www.towerswatson.com/assets/pdf/670/NA-2009-14890.pdf) proves just how true that is, discovering that the better employee communications a company has, the better its financial performance.

So why does internal communications always come off second best? I would hazard a guess that it is due to a lack of proper ROI attached to internal communications functions and a lack of understanding about the real bottom line impact of good employee communications. If you don’t measure the impact, you can lull yourself into a false sense of security thinking you are doing well, when in fact maybe you are just standing still.

Typically, HR and internal communications colleagues focus on staff survey results. And while these do provide good indicators of improving staff morale etc., they rely very heavily on people taking the proper time to complete surveys, being honest and also the timing of a survey. If you have just given everyone a nice bonus, I’m sure the results look much better than any other time of the year!

So how do you make internal communications really work and go beyond the paltry staff survey?

1. Invest in ROI just like you would for an external campaign.

You measure all sorts of aspects of an external campaign and yet, rely on one uncertain measurement for your internal communications. Then you wonder why your board is questioning spend on IC projects.

Look at what you do externally and be just as stringent internally:

• Review analytics on your intranet – how many staff looked at each page, how many clicked through to your key internal campaign page, how long do they stay on your intranet and what are the most popular pages?
• Make sure any campaign or internal programme has a ‘call to action’. Don’t just ask for interest, measure response: How many people asked for more information, how many signed up for an initiative, how many then took x on board?
• Integrate with HR and management. If you are looking to monitor behavioural change, integrate this into management reviews and HR for personal development programmes. For example, if you are launching a new culture of behaviours, then how many are looking to build that into their PDP? How are scores changing in performance reviews?
• Link to finance where you can. It may not always be possible, but where you can prove through ROI that there has been a decrease in say expenditure on paper due to your IC programme for ‘paperless office’ then make sure it is part of any reporting. Putting IC into financial context helps non-communications people understand the bottom line value.

The key is to ensure any ROI can be tangible and provide more depth than a standard staff survey.

2. Don’t bore them

You may think that posters everywhere are a simple and cost effective solution, but after a while all posters begin to blur and just look like wall paper. Same with lots of emails with information – it is always nice to hear something face-to-face once in a while in this highly digital world.

Change it up and be innovative but not silly – a squeezy toy maywork for some companies but yours may just throw it away.

 3. Get real involvement

One of the cardinal sins of internal communications is either having lots of ‘internal user groups’ that add very little apart from allowing the same people to voice the same opinions, or not involving staff at all and just ‘doing unto them’.

Make sure you bring staff in as active participants to a project – bit like consultants – and use them as IC champions – spreading the love about what you are doing and how it can really benefit all staff. However, keep it to a limited pool – the larger the group the more unwieldy it will end up and be very clear on what their role is. The more defined a role, the better the outcome. After all, this should not be seen by either them, or you, as a nice to have, but as a valuable resource to developing ‘crowd sourced’, ‘real life’ communications solutions.

And like in external campaigns, peer to peer endorsement is of huge value.

 4. Take it seriously

Right from the start, this blog is all about how important IC is. So don’t relegate it to a passing comment in strategy meetings, or an add-on when HR have a new initiative. And don’t just lump it in with HR! This is a tricky and very complex communications discipline that can really make or break how your staff feel about working in your company and therefore how your clients feel about you.

Investing in internal communications is money well spent. Just make sure you don’t become lazy or fall out of love with your own company!

Google AdWords improvements

Ever wondered exactly what keywords in a searcher’s query resulted in your ad being triggered? Google has added a feature in AdWords to give us that information - it will allow us to adjust our keywords and bids accordingly. Google has also made other interface changes — including account diagnostics and new impression share reporting. Here is the link to Google AdWords announcement. In late 2012, AdWords impression share (IS) reporting will get some improvements to give us better insights, including new columns and hour of day segmentation. See Search Engine Land’s article for more information.

The changing landscape of SEO

SEO techniques and best practice are being altered at an accelerated rate. With all the various Google updates and pace of social media, being up to speed on successful SEO procedure is becoming quite a challenge. To be in the top rankings, websites need to adjust. In a recent discussion on websites, five outdated procedures were discussed in the promotion of important content, and previous best practices were considered redundant.

These included:

• Forcing the maximum amount of keywords in a minimum space
• Creating unnecessary and outmoded content for supporting target keywords,
• Buying links
• Sustaining used links
• Article spinning.

We must consider, understand and optimise the following factors in order to keep up with the SEO changes:

• Good content
• Factor to concentrate on
• Engagement
• Landscape analysis

For more information on these factors see Geekless Tech’s blog.

Tips on A/B testing

A/B testing or split testing compares the effectiveness of two versions of a web page, marketing email, or the like, in order to discover which has better response rate or better sales conversion rate. A/B testing is hitting the mainstream because it is so effective. And with so many tools available it has become very easy and very inexpensive to run. But talk to most marketers and they only have a basic understanding of the art of A/B testing.

1. Test your software - run an A/A test and test the control against the control.
2. Minimise friction – make sure forms are simple to fill out, minimise the process steps and test page length.
3. Clarity on persuasion – copy must be clear. Make sure users know where they are and what they can do along with giving them a reason as to why they should do it.
4. Interview for insights – find out what customers do on your site.
5. Learn from pricing takeaways – test different pricing with A/B testing.
6. Test social features – where you put them on the page and which ones.
7. Lower your AdWords position – test in different places and calculate the ROI for each.
8. Test the message – test ads with different copy.
9. Design with on page and one goal – just focus on one goal per page, not multiple goals.
10. Always be testing!

Check out Search Engine Watch’s article for more information.

Bridging the gap between SEO and PR

It’s been on everybody’s lips lately, SEO and PR are converging. So what led to the fact that those two industries are finally merging? What is it that SEOs and PRs have in common? Clarissa Sajbl’s blog post, gives an understanding of the two industries’ similarities as well as the need for both to adapt to current industry changes triggered by Google’s latest algorithmic changes –Authorship.

SEO in layman’s terms

And if the past three SEO presentations have gone straight over your head – make sure you at least take in some of the following SEO terms from Keepoint.

The basics for your website:

• Metadata: Formed with your pages meta tags and other data used to describe your page’s content.
• Meta tags: An HTML tag which gives information about your page. It does not affect the way your page looks but lets the search engine know the keywords and what the page is about.
• Image Alt Tags Optimisation: Text used by search engines to “read” your image.
• H1, H2, H3…: HTML heading tags – H1 is the most important, H2 the second, etc….
• Anchor Tag: HTML code which creates a link to a section on a page or to another page.
• Sitemap: A way of telling search engines about pages they might not discover. It may also include URL of pages they may miss and metadata about specific content on your site such as videos, images…

The SEO basics:

• Off-page Optimisation: Factors which have an effect on your ranking but which are not controlled by you.
• On-page Optimisation: Factors which you control such as HTML code, meta tags and keywords.
• Link building: Exchanging web links with other websites. This will increase your site’s “back links”
• Back Links: Web links placed on internet pages which will link to pages on your website.
• SERP: Search Engine Result Page – the pages which come up when you search for something on the internet.
• Bounce Rate: Refers to the % of visitors who enter your site then leave without looking at other pages on your site. A bounce rate of 50% is average, anything above 60% should concern you.
• Invisible text: Putting a list of keyword in white text on a white background.

Techniques used to create backlinks:

• Directory Submission: Submitting your website details to a number of online directories that are popular with net users. It helps your website gain visibility and also creates valuable back links.
• SBM (for web 2.0): Social bookmarking of content which has been posted in Web 2.0 sites.
• Article submission: Written articles about chosen keywords relating to your web site. They are submitted to article directories for approval. They will include a link to your page which will increase your back links.
• Forum links: Posts in forums which will contain a link to your pages either in your comment or in your signature.
• Squidoo Lens – Hub Creation: Community sites which allows you to create pages which relate to your website / keywords. They will include back links to your site and are often shared on social bookmarking sites.

Read part 1 and part 2.

After learning the basics from various tutorials, it was time to test my new skills with a mini side project. So, I decided to create a video for our b2b zeitgeist. (Read our previous blog entry on the b2b zeitgeist). This would be a great opportunity to add an extra dimension to the zeitgeist, whilst testing some newly learnt skills.

With a storyboard sketched out, I set about acquiring the video footage and creating an art direction style that would work best with the zeitgeist. With a distinctive style already established, showing the creativity of the book was at the centre point of the video. I decided to play with the RGB levels, pixels and typography which would create the motion graphics. For the audio I wanted a high tempo track so I could show multiple images along with video footage at a fast pace. This would allow me to transition between the imagery easier.

On reflection, creating this simple effective video was ideal because it allowed me to sink my teeth into After Effects. Working on a mini project like this allows you to gain an understanding of the software layout and basic tools that help out in the long run.

Roll on to next video!

The tree was decorated with apples; nuts; dates; pretzels and paper flowers. In the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the custom became quite common throughout Germany, with more decorations being added, including candles, all in the name of Christmas. Today of course, Christmas trees are everywhere and are the pinnacle of Christmas. (And presents, too, of course!).

This year, a team of Marketecture elves, led by Dave Armstrong, one of our designers, set out to create a Christmas tree with all of the special and prized possessions that meant something dear to the team at this festive time. Dave himself contributed two items to the making of the tree, being little tree decorations he hand crafted in primary school. Dave’s idea was to produce a time lapse video –the making of the tree-that would be used as the Marketecture Christmas card 2012.

After lots of fiddling and moving things around, Ben and Dave came up with a loose outline on the floor in the photo studio, ready for Dave to painstakingly stick, pin and display on the wall. He even made shelves for the heavier objects, like Craig’s bottle of champagne that has been sitting on his desk waiting for a special occasion. The tree even had cuttings from a real tree that Jasper had bought in from his first real Christmas tree at home this year.

Mixed in with all of the festive decorations Max, our client services director brought in her ultimate Christmas things: Bing Crosby’s Christmas album, and the turkey baster, so she can sing and cook in perfect harmony, and there are some other great festive albums in there, too. Lauren’s ‘Christmas Wrapping’ is her absolute favourite festive song of all time, and reminds her of the student days when she worked in a restaurant during the holidays, and didn’t mind working Christmas Day because she loved the song so much!

The big snowman stocking belongs to India, Jon’s daughter, and keeping things in the family, the great ‘Santa’s little helper’ top was bought in by our senior developer Ivor, as worn by his own little helper, daughter Cerys.

Jan bought in her favourite festive book, which she has read so many times, but still makes her sob a little. The heart-warming funny story ‘Skipping Christmas’ embodies the true Christmas spirit, being together.  And of course, it wouldn’t be Marketecture if there wasn’t a little splash of Star Wars in there somewhere. (Have you seen the shrine in our office?).

With a collection of special things, Dave set about the making of the tree, filming little bits at a time, until very late into the night, and with a little bit of music, which had to be The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. There we have it, and our Marketecture Christmas Card 2012 was unveiled for the entire world to see with delight.

Christmas isn’t just about the trees, the lights, and the gifts. It’s about the true spirit of Christmas; about getting together with family and friends, and hope and love. Again this year, we elected to donate to Make a Wish, a wonderful foundation that provides little pockets of delight, and aims to make the dreams come true for some very special children and their families. It’s Christmas, close your eyes…make a wish, and with the best of happiness and health for the festive period and beyond, we give you the Marketecture Christmas Card 2012:

Merry Christmas!