Canmol: The Wales Marketing Awards 2012

More than 200 marketing professionals from across Wales attended the Canmol Awards Presentation Dinner at the Mercure Holland House Hotel in Cardiff on 5 October 2012. Congratulations to the winners and commiserations to the shortlisted entrants who didn't quite make it through.

We have lived through interesting times since 2008, when the Wales Marketing Awards were created by The Chartered Institute of Marketing in Wales. The overall quality of entries has been impressive since day one, but what is more impressive is the way that Wales is continually adopting and adapting to technological change and new opportunities. Canmol demonstrates that not only are Welsh organisations keeping up to speed, they are also adding value through exceptional innovation and creativity. To reach the shortlist of these prestigious Awards is an achievement in itself and many worthy submissions fail by the slimmest of margins - the task of the judging panel gets harder every year.

And the headline winners are ....

In alphabetical order:

AutosOnShow
An excellent example of the adage "marketing is a process, not an event". Creators of an innovative system for self-produced video ads, the company has continued to refine its product and marketing through research, customer feedback and the credibility and PR gained from Canmol 2011 and automotive industry awards.

Celtic Quest Coasteering
This owner-managed activity provider demonstrates that enthusiasm, curiosity, application and motivation can drive even the smallest business to success. Largely self-taught, Celtic Quest uses dynamic photography, video and copy as part of an integrated Internet and PR strategy that includes excellent use of social media. At the beginning of this year Visit Wales:Share Wales recorded an interview with owner Cleo Browne. To view, go here.

Confused.com
The "Don't drive in high heels" information campaign rings the bells on corporate responsibility and highlights the point that in the modern digital marketing environment useful information is often more effective than the hard sell.

Earthfall (Lewis Gwyther)
The dance and physical theatre company's "At Swim Two Boys" campaign demonstrates sophisticated planning for a wide range of media and mechanisms intended to extend touring reach, increase ticket sales and build profile amongst peers and audiences. All targets were exceeded by several factors and the judges were particularly impressed by the stunning still and video imagery.

Limegreentangerine
Richard Parks 737 Challenge for Marie Curie Cancer Care. In 2011 the former Welsh International made history by completing ascents of the highest peaks on each of the world's continents and standing on both North and South Poles - all in seven months. Limegreentangerine worked on this multi-media campaign for two years, engaging sponsors, film makers and the giving public, for total expenditure of under £6,000.

For more information on Canmol, click here.

Visit Wales : Share Wales

Avid followers of this blog will have noticed that things have been quiet since the end of January. The reason is that interesting developments have been in play. At the end of February I was appointed to the post of Editor, Visit Wales:Share Wales, part of the Welsh Government Digital Tourism Business Programme, which went live in late February. This is a new initiative to encourage information sharing and co-operation between tourism businesses in Wales. Part of my role is to focus on various aspects of the digital environment and to 'horizon scan' for upcoming developments. This pretty much supersedes what I had in mind when setting up this blog and provides the resources to develop much more content. Once fully embarked on my new post I will give some thought to a new direction for the blog. In the meantime, I encourage everyone to sign up to Share Wales, reap the benefits of the information stream and participate in the co-operative initiatives and the Forum. Go to http://www.sharewales.com/.

Word Clouds & Spiders

A couple of weeks ago I posted a two line blog that gave an example of a word cloud together with a link to the original source text. Since then, coincidentally, word clouds have featured as graphic devices at a number of conferences that I have attended and in more than a few pieces of promotional literature that have been thrust under my nose! It seems that word clouds are becoming trendy again. Whether the fashion will last is, perhaps, questionable; but word clouds have their uses beyond trendy graphics. So my original word cloud blog has been deleted and replaced. For those that know, it is worth remembering that word clouds were also known as "tag clouds"; for those that don't, here's a heads-up.

Put simply, tag clouds, word clouds or "weighted lists" are a way of visualising the prominence or otherwise of words in a body of text. There are many uses of word clouds, including technical applications to do with web site navigation. But at the most basic and most useful level, word clouds can be used as a simple test of web site content at a time when content is ever more important for search engine optimisation [SEO] - see my August 2011 blog on Google Panda Guidelines.

Along Came a Spider...
Search engines use "spiders" to trawl web sites and rank them in various ways. Many of the ranking criteria revolve around the quality of the textual content, including the prominence of keywords that are relevant to the subject matter and might be used for Internet searches. I have always argued that rich content is a prerequisite for Internet effectiveness, whether for high search engine rankings or (far more importantly in my view) for engaging and retaining the interest of visitors. Word clouds give a snapshot of the texture of written material and, within limits, can indicate where it might be adjusted to increase its attractiveness to spiders.

A Word Cloud based on the first section of my "Destination Marketing Revisited" blog.

To view the original content, Click Here.

A Word of Warning
Strong subject-orientated copy will, in the majority of cases, produce spider-friendly content automatically. If your word cloud seems to give predominance to unimportant words, or if the most desirable key words are under-represented, it is obviously possible to fine-tune the text by reducing the occurrence of irrelevant words or increasing the frequency of the most significant. But it is dangerous to sacrifice readability to search engine optimisation - stiff and contrived content will lose readers very quickly; and search engines are not the only way of driving traffic to web sites, as regular readers of these blogs will appreciate. Finally, search engines are adept at spotting content that is heavily repetitious in the use of key words.

 A Word Cloud based on the "Marketing" page of the BFA web site.

To view the original content, Click Here.

Create Your Own Word Cloud
There are a good number of web sites that offer free word cloud creation, as a google search will reveal. The examples shown here were made using the Wordle site: click on the "Create" tab to begin. A number of graphic styles are available. Converting the result into a reproducible format is a little complicated, but the best route seems to be:

1) Click on the "Open in Window" button to generate an applet of the cloud.
2) Make sure the applet is the live window and take a screenshot (hold Alt and press Print Screen). This saves the applet on your clipboard.
3) Open a Word document and press Ctrl + v to save the applet.
4) Click on the applet, go to Paint (select All Programmes from your Start Button, then go to Accessories > Paint).
5) In Paint, go to Edit > Paste then Save. Enter a file name and select a destination (say, My Pictures in My Documents) and save as Jpeg.
6) Crop the image to eliminate screen edges.

Wales and the Sea: Call for Info & Events

The Maritime Heritage Trust Wales have circulated the following request for information. The intention is to set up an online information source for all things maritime in Wales. The resulting web site will be a useful promotional tool.

2012 sees the launch of Wales and the Sea : Cymru a’r Môr. One of the first things that the Wales and the Sea : Cymru a’r Môr initiative needs is information.

Information about events, festivals, attractions, talks etc. - in fact anything maritime related that will be happening in Wales in 2012. We know there is lots going on and have details about some of them but not all. So this is a plea for your help.

Please tell us about anything that you are involved in organising. Also tell us about anything else that is happening in your locality or elsewhere that you are aware of.

Don't worry if you think that someone else might have told us, we'd rather hear twice than not at all. You may not have full details, but again don't worry, we will do any necessary follow-up investigations.

We will add all items to The Maritime Heritage Trust - Wales website and to the dedicated website for Wales and the Sea (soon to be created).

We will feed the information into our Twitter and Facebook accounts.
It is the intention to produce a diary to go in forthcoming editions of MHT News Wales.

So the event will benefit from a lot more people knowing it's happening and hopefully as a result get higher levels of participation or spectators.

Please let us know by mailing us at support@maritimeheritage.org.uk whenever you hear of something you think others might be interested in.

Many thanks

The Maritime Heritage Trust - Wales