Praising the many inspiring achievements of volunteers, community projects and courageous individuals, it was a hugely successful and very well supported event. Huge congratulations must go to the very proud winner of the Child of Courage Award, Millie D’Cruz Parsley, and also to Jenson Belkevitz who was commended in that category and was also named the overall People’s Choice Award Winner on the night.

All of the winners and nominees on the night had some extraordinary stories which are all deserving of great admiration and we want to pass our congratulations to them all and to everyone involved in the event who helped to create a night that the city and its people could really be proud of.

Read the full article from the Milton Keynes Citizen.

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Office Opening Hours

Our office hours will be slightly different over the Christmas period, the timetable is as follows:

Friday 23rd: Open 9.00-3.00

Monday 26th: Closed
Tuesday 27th: Closed
Wednesday 28th: Closed
Thursday 29th: Open 9.30 – 4.00
Friday 30th: Open 9.30 – 4.00

Monday 2nd: Closed
Tuesday 3rd: Back to normal!

If you anticipate anything being required in or around this period,  let us know in advance where possible and we can make preparations to meet the requirements.

Deadlines

Publication dates and deadlines are also likely to be affected. If you have any queries about a specific title, get in touch and we’ll gladly make any enquiries for you.

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Louise brings an excellent blend of digital recruitment knowledge, advertising experience and account management skills to the team so we are very pleased to have her on board.

We’ll be making some changes to the team page in the near future so expect to see the new faces soon!

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Helen will be working on several current projects as well as developing her own base of clients. We’d like to welcome her as part of the team and if you’d like to say hello then you can call the office on 01908 371177.

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More details can be found on the careers page.

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Organisations are losing thousands of pounds, being tricked by companies sending out invoices with wording along the lines of “if you don’t return this form your advert will not go online/into print.”

Don’t allow this to cause you panic. Instead spend 5 minutes looking for the following suspicious signs:

- VERY short booking deadlines and attempts to rush you into signing an agreement.
- Request of payment directly without consulting your agency/finance department.
- No company registration number on the website.
- Poor website design.
- No advertising (i.e. banners or buttons).
- Non-local phone numbers (i.e 0844 or 0800 numbers).
- Location (Usually given on invoice but never shown on the website): Google Streetview will allow you to see this. Often you’ll end up looking at someone’s house, not a place of business.
- Lack of website content – a low number of pages, no articles, no news, no company details.

Check everything you can, addresses, websites and company registration numbers particularly. Is a listing on there really worth thousands of pounds? If this is the way that they have to operate to earn money then it’s unlikely. You could advertise in the national news for the types of costs appearing on these invoices.

We are urging organisations to be extremely vigilant to stop this from happening.

If you book your advertising through us, you will never see an order form or invoice from anyone else, it will always come from us.

Businesses, Registered Charities, Public Bodies, NHS trusts, anyone can be targeted. The more aware everyone becomes of this kind of malpractice the less damage will be done, and hopefully we will see far fewer of these operations. Please notify colleagues, hiring managers, internal communications teams and any others who can help to prevent this from happening.

If you aren’t 100% certain, trust your instincts and don’t commit money to anything. Feel free to call us and we’ll look into it too for you, no matter how small your concerns are, we’d rather spend 5 minutes checking an offer than allowing organisations to be tricked out of thousands of pounds.

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The end of the year has it’s implications for advertising too and it’s not all good news we’re sorry to say. In line with circulation levels and web audiences,  TES have issued new recruitment advertising rates:

Online

Bronze package now £550
Silver package now £800
Gold package now £1,050

Sponsored Job package now £250
Featured Employer £750 – £1,000

Print

Colour will go from £35 to £38 per column centimetre + cost of online package
Mono will go from £25 to £28 per column centimetre + cost of online package
Composite rates will be £1,100 for the first two vacancies and £300 thereafter

The above will come into effect starting September 1st 2011.

If you need to speak to your account manager about the above, or anything else at all, please call 01908 371177.

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The effect that this will have on the current investigations, particularly relating to the newspaper and research archives is coming under close scrutiny already with rumours this morning suggesting that there are possibilities of records being destroyed.

The question is, is this a move made out of remorse, or is it a far more calculating business decision? No doubt the majority of the public and the rest of the media world will have a very strong opinion as to which.

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The link between the editorial and commercial aspects of a major newspaper generally only comes into consideration when looking at demographics. Not this time. The journalists at the centre of the investigations have caused a sudden and direct loss of revenue. No doubt several of the Sunday tabloids will be in for an increase in advertising revenue in the next few weeks. The question is, how does the News of the World recover from such an massive negative impact?

One has to wonder if in a few weeks time the furore will cease and advertisers will return. Or will this episode cause genuine irreparable damage to the business in the long term? With the completion of several quick and reactive surveys by Survation, it has already been identified that over half the readers state that they are less likely to buy the paper if all the allegations are correct, and almost 60% believe that advertisers should withdraw their spending.

Alongside the immediate advertising impact, there is also the implication that this has on News Corporation’s potential multi-billion pound buyout of BSkyB. Whilst not officially involved in the investigations in any capacity, Ofcom has expressed a clear interest in the progress of the case. This could potentially have an impact on the bid, based on the requirements in place for “fit and proper broadcasting”. It will almost certainly slow any progress, with speculation and suggestions that at this current time the bidding activity should be postponed until the investigation is complete.

It’s almost certainly the single biggest impact that journalism has had on associated advertising spend in recent years. The amount of information spread about the story both virally and socially also means that it’s unlikely to fade into the background any time soon.

And there’s more news here: News of the World: Stop the Press!

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As with most emerging technology, mobile marketing found its place whilst being utilised as part of commercial communications, giving advertisers the opportunity to contact their audience in almost any location. True to the historic trend, recruitment soon followed and employer campaigns began incorporating SMS response channels, QR codes & Tags and dedicated mobile compatible recruitment sites which could be linked to by taking a photograph of a print advert. In the early application of Bluetooth “proximity” Marketing, consumers were amazed when they received special offers as they walked past a shop window or restaurant. In the current marketplace we can choose from literally thousands of customised applications.

All very cutting edge in theory. But straightforward in practice (assuming you aren’t planning on hand-coding your own app).

The more complex and innovative our communication channels become, the more suppliers there are investing in making them accessible and practical for the commercial market. That’s why it only takes a minute to create a QR code and why there are web developers who build second versions of websites which are compatible with smartphones as standard. In essence there’s very little reason why recruiters shouldn’t embrace mobile technology, given the relatively low cost and amount of effort required, particularly if you’ve got an agency assisting in planning and executing campaigns for you. As always, there are those who will be ahead of the curve, taking the biggest risks and possibly reaping the greatest rewards for their bravery. Trends suggest however that the uptake for new technologies is constantly speeding up, so the reality is it may not be long before mobile plays a major part in recruitment marketing for employers of all sorts. After all, it’s widely predicted that the majority of internet usage will eventually shift to mobile devices rather than desktop machines.

If all of this high speed change strikes you as somewhat concerning, it shouldn’t worry you too much because the same age-old rules will apply. As with all channels, what you really need are some clear objectives as to what you want to get out of a campaign coupled ideally with a budget and your agency should give you an honest answer in terms of which paths you can go down along with enough guidance for you to understand the implications and requirements. With a clear strategy in place and the right technical partners to take care of the tough stuff, it will suddenly all seem as simple as booking a classified in the local rag.

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