Those of you who know me know that I have a tendency to get a little bit excited now and again – it is par for the course in this job. This month I am particularly giddy that I have a copy of the 2012 Plymouth Visitor Guide in my sweaty little mitts.

Creating the Official Plymouth Visitor Guide was a very special project to us here at DCA: we love Plymouth, we love to tell people why we love it and even better, by working with our fabulous friends at Fuel Communications (who worked some super design and sales magic) we were able to produce this fantastic visitor guide at NO COST to the client… that’s right, zero, nada, zilch…See – free stuff – told you it was exciting!

A foreword from the city’s newest celebrity chef, the lovely Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, very aptly describes Plymouth as a city of undiscovered gems. If you haven’t discovered Plymouth for yourself yet then grab a copy of our shiny (it’s actually matt – printed on untreated stock for the paper geeks amongst you) new Visitor Guide.

Download the Plymouth Visitor Guide here or pick up a copy from the Tourist Information Centre on the Barbican. It’s also going to be winging its way around the south west so keep your eye out for a copy while you’re out and about in the region.

Enjoy reading and I hope you have fun exploring Plymouth!

Jenny x

Posted by @MissBishops

Pretty much every week, a new social network comes along, hailed as ‘the next big thing’, and then just as quickly it’s gone again.

While I always like to keep an eye on new developments, it can become a bit overwhelming with so many new sites appearing, making it hard to pick out the real gems that actually have a chance of becoming popular.

Although Pinterest has been around for a while (it was launched back in March 2010), it has received a huge surge in popularity in recent months, and in December made Experian Hitwise’s list of the Top 10 Social Networks with more than 11 million visitors per week.

Since then, naturally, it has become the darling of social media professionals, and now people are keen to leverage it for business as well as personal use.

So what’s it all about?

In essence, Pinterest is an online pin board where people can express their interests – see what they did there?

Users create themed boards, such as ‘incredible looking chocolate cakes’ or ‘cars I’d like to own’, then pin images or videos they see online onto it. You can add comments to the things you pin, and create as many boards as you like, categorised by theme.

The social element of Pinterest comes through being able to comment on, like and repin other users’ content, follow other people to keep up with what they’re pinning and share your own content with your followers. You can also connect your Pinterest account with Facebook and Twitter, helping you to find other friends who are using it and allowing you to share your pins on either site.

Your homepage will feature all the latest content from people you are following, and you can also search by category for more inspiration. A ‘pin it’ button can be added to your bookmarks toolbar, making it easy to pin content from anywhere on the web.

How can it be used for business?

Well as Facebook was in its early days, Pinterest is designed to be used by individuals, not by businesses, and it isn’t supposed to be for self-promotion. But that doesn’t mean a business can’t create Pinterest boards, or put it to good use.

Use it as a focus group

You don’t even need to create your own pin boards to start using Pinterest. If your target customers are using Pinterest (think women aged 25-45) you could use it as a real-time research tool – find out what people are talking about and sharing right now, and use this to influence your promotions.

Show people how to use your product

One of the groups first to embrace Pinterest was the food blogging community. If you’re a food producer, you could capitalise on this by creating a board of recipes made by bloggers using your product as an ingredient. Say you make a certain type of cheese, and create a board of cheese recipes – this will show people how versatile an ingredient it is and maybe even inspire them to go out and buy it to make one of the recipes.

Share your expertise

Pinterest can also provide an opportunity to position yourself as an expert in your field. Nina Garcia, fashion director of the US Marie Claire magazine, has created boards for current and upcoming fashion trends, demonstrating her expertise – and more than 75,000 people are following her.

Something like this could work equally well for designers or architects, sharing both their own work and their inspirations, and it doesn’t just apply to creative industries either – a kitchen appliance retailer could pin the latest in cutting edge washing machines if they wanted!

Be more than just a company or brand

A company that does nothing but push sales of its own products is the biggest turn-off in social media. Think wider than just your product or service. If you own a bridal wear company, don’t just pin photos of dresses – people who might buy a dress from you are going to be interested in every other aspect of planning a wedding, so think about creating a board of stunning wedding venues or floral displays, which will show people that you really care about helping them plan the perfect wedding, and that you’re not just about making sales.


As Pinterest is all about beautiful imagery, it will obviously be better suited to some sectors than others. To get an idea of whether or not it’s right for you, take a look at the list of categories for the boards – if you can fit into one of those, chances are you will be able to think of a way to use it.

The one downside of Pinterest becoming more popular is that it has now become invite only. You can request an invite from the site itself, which might take up to a week to come through, but you can also ask an existing user for one – I’ll be happy to invite anyone who asks.

And if you want to see what I’ve been pinning, follow me at pinterest.com/natblachford – but be warned, it will destroy any healthy New Year diet you may be attempting…

Posted by @natblachford

You’d probably expect a PR man to say this, but one of the last things a business should do in the current climate is slash its marketing and communications budget.

Think about it. The primary role of marketing, advertising and PR is to generate new leads, convert those into new customers and add to the bottom line.

But the less visible your business is the narrower that pipeline of prospects becomes and the more you risk your revenues being eroded.

Our experience however is that most businesses view marketing and communications as an investment rather than an expense, so the old adage that marketing budgets are first against the wall come the economic downturn doesn’t necessarily ring true.

So why is communication so important? I would sum it up in a single word: reputation.

Your customers buy your product or service because of your reputation in your marketplace. And that reputation is invariably hard won having been built up over a number of years. Reputation is what your business trades on.

But you can’t take reputation for granted. You might be the best at what you do but you’ll get nowhere fast if people don’t know about it. Nor can you rest on your laurels. We all operate in a changing world within changing markets, where customers demand ever more and competitors snap at our heels.

So you should always be asking yourself whether you are communicating effectively with your customers and prospective customers, and whether the methods of communication – be it website, social media, brochure, PR – are reaching the audiences you need to reach.

Depending on your objectives, those audiences might also include other groups such as suppliers, investors or potential investors, and you should never underestimate the importance of using professional relationships and your existing networks to get your message across.

But when times are hard it is easy for owner managers to take their eye off the ball. If you’re in the midst of a cashflow crisis, for example, then marketing and communications can slide down your pecking order of priorities. But the last thing you want is for your hard earned reputation and visibility in the marketplace to wither away because things aren’t going well.

That’s why it’s important to have a communications and marketing strategy so that if your attention is diverted by other demands in the business (and it will, without question), at the very least you have a framework in place for continuing to manage your customer relationships.
 
It’s also important that your strategy is flexible because you will have to react to a changing landscape, economic or otherwise, and it is those businesses that can adapt that survive.

The media landscape for example continues to evolve rapidly and the growth in social media presents tremendous opportunities to communicate directly with target audiences in ways which have not been possible before.

You should also consider how to deal with threats to your reputation because perception is everything and in the days of instant communication reputations can be destroyed in minutes.

In tough economic times that threat could come in the form of lost business, poor financial performance or the need to downsize, and from our experience it’s very important that these issues are managed.

If a business fails to deal with a threat to its reputation effectively then how it is perceived in its market – whether real or not – can severely undermine confidence among customers and suppliers. And once your reputation has been undermined, it’s much harder to row back.

We have worked with businesses that have been impacted by the downturn and have credible recovery plans in place, and by communicating those plans to target audiences in a structured way they have avoided reputational damage.

Recognising these threats to reputation can be half the battle, but with the right approach a bump in the road needn’t become a full-scale crisis.

Posted by Jason - @DCAJason

The battle of online vs High Street shopping has never been more topical, with Mary Portas’ High Street review published today and towns and cities across the country fighting to get Christmas shoppers away from the computer and spending in the shops.

Retail expert and Government advisor Mary Portas has said that the growth of online shopping has left many town centres “dying”, and has made a long list of recommendations for traders and councils to try and regenerate the UK’s High Streets.

Working with both the Plymouth City Centre Company and White River Place shopping centre in St Austell, it certainly hasn’t escaped our notice that retailers are finding it increasingly hard to get shoppers through their doors.

Plymouth City Centre Manager Clint Jones has already been urging shoppers in Plymouth to shop offline (see our previous news release), but as someone who spends a good half of my day sat in front of a computer, I’d be lying if I said I was completely committed to supporting my local town centre.

Shopping online is undeniably easier – you can compare prices at the click of a button to make sure you’re getting the best deal, and browse hundreds of bargains while sat at your desk, no need to brave the rain and wind that’s currently terrorising the South West.

Many retailers that also have an online presence even offer better deals to people who visit their websites rather than their stores, further reinforcing the opinion that you’ll spend less if you shop online.

So what can local towns and cities do to bring shoppers back?

Well for me, Christmas shopping is all about the atmosphere – I want to feel festive, and a bit of gold tinsel draped over my monitor just won’t cut it.

 

Christmas lights, late-night shopping, Christmas markets, lantern parades, ice skating, Father Christmas – these are the things you can only find by actually getting out of the house and going in to town to shop. 

Yes, it’s freezing and I have to don full-on Eskimo wear to even think about going outside in December, but a festive hot chocolate or glass of mulled wine will soon sort that out…

One of Mary Portas’ recommendations is that High Streets should become "multi-functional social as well as shopping areas", which is where the effort towns and shopping centres puts into community events – not just at Christmas, but all year round - pays off.

It’s also a great chance to meet friends and catch up over the aforementioned hot chocolate or mulled wine, which is ever so slightly more sociable than conversing over email or Facebook chat.

There are certain things I will still buy online – for example if I wanted a relatively expensive electronic product, I know I could probably get a better deal – but for cute and quirky Christmas gifts (not to mention fashion inspiration for all the Christmas parties) I’ll definitely be doing my shopping on the High Street.

By going into a shop, you can also count on their expert knowledge and advice, which is probably easier and more reliable than wading through hundreds of reviews on Amazon.

There is also the “use it or lose it” mantra to bear in mind – with one in seven High Street shops vacant and shops across the country shutting at a rate of 20 per day, without the support of local people the demise of local shopping is almost inevitable.

What do you think, is shopping in town too much of a hassle, or the best way to get into the festive spirit? What would make you shut down the computer and venture down to the High Street?
 

 

 

Posted by Natalie - @natblachford

In a recent national survey, Cornwall was voted the second best county in Britain for food, narrowly missing out on the top spot thanks to a last-minute surge in votes from Lincolnshire.

It’s fair to say that food lovers in Cornwall weren’t too happy with this, but I would argue that the actual result of the poll isn’t really too important.

Even coming second shows the rest of the country how proud we are of our local Cornish produce, and the ‘Love Cornish Food’ campaign launched by Cornwall Food & Drink did a great job of showing people that it’s not just about pasties and cream teas.

The Cornish food love is definitely spreading, and I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of it through the work of two of our clients – last month White River Place launched a brand new food festival for St Austell, bringing top quality local produce to a whole new audience, and last week the Carbis Bay Hotel was honoured to host the Cornwall Life Food and Drink Awards.

The awards were a fantastic celebration of everything that’s good about food and drink in Cornwall – not just the produce, but skilled chefs, independent food shops, thriving farmers markets and most importantly the passion of everyone involved in the industry.

One of the best things about the awards is that they are voted for by the readers of Cornwall Life, so you know that every single winner comes highly recommended and is very deserving of their award.

As if the awards weren’t proof enough, the quality of Cornish food was showcased by a delicious five-course lunch served to us by talented team in the kitchen at Carbis Bay – making it a true celebration of the best Cornwall has to offer.

Lincolnshire may have come out on top in the Love British Food campaign this year, but based on what I’ve seen recently I’m pretty certain Cornwall will be coming back fighting…

Posted by Natalie - @natblachford

(Disclaimer – these are my views, and possibly not the views of the non-Cornish members of the DCA team!)