Ever feel like you have so much on that you wake up in the wee hours in a cold sweat? Do you find yourself arriving at work exhausted just thinking about your ‘to do list’?
Over capacity? Don’t worry, you are in good company.
Twitter has been plagued this week by ‘over capacity of tweets’. For those of you not akin to Twitter, in a nutshell; too many people are trying to use their service at the same time. This is possibly due to some little world sporting event called the World Cup being played at the moment....
But what a nice place to be in. Your service is being used SO much that it temporarily keeps going down. What business wouldn’t want to be in this position?
Now, some would say, that it’s bad planning and that the geeks technical genius’ at Twitter should have foreseen this and increased capacity. Well, perhaps they should have, but being on such a worldwide scale, I guess it is hard to keep up.
ITV marketing department however, should hang their heads in shame about their preparation for the World Cup. They are sharing coverage with the BBC and had lucked out on getting the rights to the opening ceremony and first match screening rights. Now, being held on a Friday afternoon, I think even my four year old niece could have predicted that one of their largest audiences would be those working in their offices and wanting to watch the first match at 3pm on a Friday afternoon.
Unfortunately my niece doesn’t work for ITV and so they were therefore caught out when their online service crashed about 10mins into the first match due to ‘over capacity’. But don’t worry, that was soon forgotten when they switched off their HD service less than 4 minutes into the first England match and over 1.5million England fans watched Gerrard score England’s first (and let’s hope not last) goal of the tournament.
I’m guessing that the ITV Head of Marketing is not having the best of weeks.
Some things you can plan for, other times you simply need a hand when the workload just gets too much and you physically cannot do everything yourself. (Please be warned that the following paragraph is a shameless plug).
If you need a hand with marketing and communications but you don’t have the resources or budget to hire someone full time, ever thought about hiring a marketing professional on a project or retained basis? I’ve been working for a retained client, cfes Ltd www.cfes.co.uk since March, providing them with PR & Marketing work for 16 hours each week. So far, I’ve worked on several marketing and sales promotions for them, I’m in the midst of rejuvenating their website copy, delivered new company literature, got some trade PR branding and worked with them on sales pitches and presentations. Hopefully they’ll agree that my 16 hours a week is working for them.
(OK, shameless plug over, you can come out from behind the sofa)
It has been a week of mailshot’s in the world of Zzing this week though. I’ve been getting out a dental construction / decontamination mailer out for cfes this week along with preparing another one for them on air conditioning. Then there have been my own Zzing mailers which I’ve been steadily getting out. Fingers crossed they get some results as direct mail still gets a really good response even in this day and age of technology – I guess most people get so many emails every day that they are more likely to read a mailer when it comes in the post than an email in most circumstances.
Hope you all enjoy the rest of the world cup, let’s hope the ITV coverage gets better anyway! I’m going to miss England’s next game as I’m attending a “decontamination in dental practices” conference in Loughborough – yes, the world of marketing is all about lunches, press launches and decontamination seminars.
Happy Fathers Day to all those Dad’s out there too (and a timely reminder for those of you who may have forgotten that it’s this Sunday!)
Until next time....
Tuesday 15 June 2010
Wednesday 2 June 2010
I'm still here...
Remember me? Yes, I’m the lady who used to bombard you every week with a new update on the world of Zzing and how my business was going.
Well, to those of you who have been wondering and even more so to those who have been ASKING (aren’t you lovely?) where the latest instalment has been, here it is. No, I haven’t gone out of business and started working in Tesco’s. No, I haven’t won the lottery (more’s the pity) and eloped off to the Caribbean to sit on a yacht and have George Clooney bring me cocktails and no, I haven’t been in secret training and been called up by Fabio Capello to partner Rooney up front in the England squad (mind you, I reckon I could beat Lampard on penalties, but that’s another story).
So, what have I been up to? Well, where do I begin...
It’s been a busy time with my biggest client, cfes Ltd (www.cfes.co.uk) as I’ve been working on some Dental promotional sales material and promotional campaign as there is new legislation coming into the healthcare industry for infection control and cfes design and build dedicated decontamination and sterilisation units. Well, you did ask... I’ve also been working with their other divisions on some air conditioning literature and the company brochures have also gone to print. Oh, and I’m currently updating their copy and content on the website. Yup, they are keeping me busy. Really, really nice company to work for though and a lovely bunch of people.
By the way, “Hi Phil!” *waves manically* (Phil works in the cfes Business Development Team and mentioned he read my blogs so I had to mention him!)
I’ve also been working for some other companies on some rebranding and design work which has also kept me out of mischief and been finishing off one of the large market research projects for one of my other clients.
We did have May didn’t we? It FLEW by, could not believe it yesterday when I realised it was the 1st June.
I guess also, as the weather has been so lovely, I’ve been out and about a lot more. We held our own rowing regatta and then each weekend, we’ve had another regatta (my club is doing really well this season so each Monday morning I have little voice left or sound like Marlene Dietrich because of all of the shouting and cheering of the crews). Hockey summer season is also in full swing and I’ve been getting out on the water rowing with my buddy Mia. The boy also took me to Weymouth the other weekend for a weekend’s mountain biking on the hottest day of the year. He came ‘this’ close to killing me with the hills we went up and down. It’s fair to say, I am a glutton for punishment!
Now starts the ‘generation of new business’ mode. I have a couple of quotes on the board awaiting for either a yes or no, but, being the ever pessimist, I’m not counting my chickens so if they come off, great, but if they don’t then I have to get some new work in. My new Zzing flyers went to print today and fingers crossed they print correct this time, last week I was in despair when the cover dimensions were wrong. I thought I may have to revert to handwriting flyers and using potato printing at one point but, luckily, I have very understanding printers so they are reprinting it now as the designer has supplied the artwork with the correct dimensions. Phew. Thank crunchie it was for me and not a client...
My lovely friends at Vertical Leap passed me on another prospective client today for some possible copywriting for their website so again, lots of things in the air. Let’s hope some of them stick as they fall back to earth.
I best go, got a few more things to do before I clock off for today as I will be doing something which I have been trying to do since January when I set up on my own. Play golf. Vicki who runs Tiger Ink printing and I have been trying to play almost every week and it seems that as soon as we pencil a date in to play 9 holes, we both have something crop up with work and we have to cancel. But this week we are determined to play 9 holes otherwise we knew we would keep putting it off and before we knew it, the clocks would have gone back and it would have been too dark to play!
So, adios for now. I hope it won’t be as long before the next instalment of Zzing, but I can’t promise anything!
PS. If you wanted to see what some of Zzing client’s say about our services, take a look at our website www.zzingmarketing.com. Failing that, this is what one of the clients said about some recent market research Zzing undertook:-
“We employed the services of Penny Glazzard, ZzIng Marketing, as she was recommended to us by a supporter of the se² partnership. We chose to work with Penny due to her professional, positive and supportive manner and because of her excellent marketing background that we felt fitted with the needs of our project. Penny worked on a specific project that covered the whole of the South East region and we were particularly impressed with how thorough and comprehensive she was. The final report that Penny produced was professionally written with some really good ideas for how we could develop our business going forwards. Thanks for all your help Penny!’
Rachel Crossey, se² partnership
Well, to those of you who have been wondering and even more so to those who have been ASKING (aren’t you lovely?) where the latest instalment has been, here it is. No, I haven’t gone out of business and started working in Tesco’s. No, I haven’t won the lottery (more’s the pity) and eloped off to the Caribbean to sit on a yacht and have George Clooney bring me cocktails and no, I haven’t been in secret training and been called up by Fabio Capello to partner Rooney up front in the England squad (mind you, I reckon I could beat Lampard on penalties, but that’s another story).
So, what have I been up to? Well, where do I begin...
It’s been a busy time with my biggest client, cfes Ltd (www.cfes.co.uk) as I’ve been working on some Dental promotional sales material and promotional campaign as there is new legislation coming into the healthcare industry for infection control and cfes design and build dedicated decontamination and sterilisation units. Well, you did ask... I’ve also been working with their other divisions on some air conditioning literature and the company brochures have also gone to print. Oh, and I’m currently updating their copy and content on the website. Yup, they are keeping me busy. Really, really nice company to work for though and a lovely bunch of people.
By the way, “Hi Phil!” *waves manically* (Phil works in the cfes Business Development Team and mentioned he read my blogs so I had to mention him!)
I’ve also been working for some other companies on some rebranding and design work which has also kept me out of mischief and been finishing off one of the large market research projects for one of my other clients.
We did have May didn’t we? It FLEW by, could not believe it yesterday when I realised it was the 1st June.
I guess also, as the weather has been so lovely, I’ve been out and about a lot more. We held our own rowing regatta and then each weekend, we’ve had another regatta (my club is doing really well this season so each Monday morning I have little voice left or sound like Marlene Dietrich because of all of the shouting and cheering of the crews). Hockey summer season is also in full swing and I’ve been getting out on the water rowing with my buddy Mia. The boy also took me to Weymouth the other weekend for a weekend’s mountain biking on the hottest day of the year. He came ‘this’ close to killing me with the hills we went up and down. It’s fair to say, I am a glutton for punishment!
Now starts the ‘generation of new business’ mode. I have a couple of quotes on the board awaiting for either a yes or no, but, being the ever pessimist, I’m not counting my chickens so if they come off, great, but if they don’t then I have to get some new work in. My new Zzing flyers went to print today and fingers crossed they print correct this time, last week I was in despair when the cover dimensions were wrong. I thought I may have to revert to handwriting flyers and using potato printing at one point but, luckily, I have very understanding printers so they are reprinting it now as the designer has supplied the artwork with the correct dimensions. Phew. Thank crunchie it was for me and not a client...
My lovely friends at Vertical Leap passed me on another prospective client today for some possible copywriting for their website so again, lots of things in the air. Let’s hope some of them stick as they fall back to earth.
I best go, got a few more things to do before I clock off for today as I will be doing something which I have been trying to do since January when I set up on my own. Play golf. Vicki who runs Tiger Ink printing and I have been trying to play almost every week and it seems that as soon as we pencil a date in to play 9 holes, we both have something crop up with work and we have to cancel. But this week we are determined to play 9 holes otherwise we knew we would keep putting it off and before we knew it, the clocks would have gone back and it would have been too dark to play!
So, adios for now. I hope it won’t be as long before the next instalment of Zzing, but I can’t promise anything!
PS. If you wanted to see what some of Zzing client’s say about our services, take a look at our website www.zzingmarketing.com. Failing that, this is what one of the clients said about some recent market research Zzing undertook:-
“We employed the services of Penny Glazzard, ZzIng Marketing, as she was recommended to us by a supporter of the se² partnership. We chose to work with Penny due to her professional, positive and supportive manner and because of her excellent marketing background that we felt fitted with the needs of our project. Penny worked on a specific project that covered the whole of the South East region and we were particularly impressed with how thorough and comprehensive she was. The final report that Penny produced was professionally written with some really good ideas for how we could develop our business going forwards. Thanks for all your help Penny!’
Rachel Crossey, se² partnership
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