Responsive web

Posted on May 9, 2012 by leepeckgroup

There’s been a lot of buzz on the internet recently about “responsive” websites. I’m sure you’ll be aware… (if not, skip ahead to the examples below and then come back here!) – but what does it actually mean for clients and developers? Well put simply, a responsive website is one that will automatically adapt to any screen resolution or device (i.e. mobiles and desktops). Ever looked at a website on a mobile phone only to find it looks different when viewed on a desktop? There is a good chance that a responsive design was used to develop it (these websites can also be produced using other methods, but that’s another blog entirely!).

Now for the technical bit. Responsive layout is implemented using CSS3 “media queries” (stay with me) – put simply, a set of “if” statements that go something like this:

@media only screen and (max-width : 600px) { /*Your styles go here*/ }

In plain English this means “if the device you’re viewing the website on is less than 600 pixels wide, do these styles“. And that’s pretty much all there is to it from a development point of view – from here, the development time largely depends on the complexity of the design.

The responsive web
Websites in all shapes and sizes

Word of caution though – a responsive design is something that really needs to be thought through (and agreed with the client!) right from the beginning of the web design and build project i.e. before the design stage. It’s no good having a site developed, then a year down the line asking the developer to “make this responsive”. In some cases, this might be possible, but it is obviously better (and more cost-effective) to develop it from the start. This may all sound great – a website that works on any device, but there are some downsides to responsive layouts – I’ve outlined a few pros and cons below.

Pros:

  • Your website will still be fully usable regardless of screen resolution
  • One website that works on any device (mobiles, tablets and desktops)

Cons:

  • Takes additional development time (i.e. cost!) to implement
  • Loading times – even if elements of the website are hidden through CSS, they exist in your markup (i.e. HTML), therefore they are still loaded regardless of visibility resulting in wasted bandwidth.
  • Ideally needs to be thought about from the very beginning – can be tricky to implement in an existing website
  • Requires the Designer to be aware of how elements of the website will ‘shift’ according to size of the browser. Not necessarily a ‘con’, but your designer must fully understand and be able to implement (training may be required!)

You will notice that I have listed more cons than pros, but the two ‘pro’s are really big ones. Having your website automatically adapt to work and be fully usable on pretty much anything will not only show clients that you are fully up-to-date with the latest technology, but will also mean that your websites could still look great even on devices that aren’t out yet!

If everything I’ve said above has given you a headache, have a look at the examples below (ideally on different devices) to demonstrate graphically what I mean:

Notice how the layout changes depending on which device you view it on? You can also replicate this effect by resizing your browser window if on a desktop computer. That’s pretty much the basics of responsive layout!

James Wills, Digital Developer

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Make your mark with the right experience

Posted on April 30, 2012 by leepeckgroup

The summer months see a peak in students looking for work experience and we always try to offer a quality experience in the PR team.

Tips on working in PR

Not the best way to spend the day

There is some tea making of course (we all have needs!) but students joining us have the opportunity to contribute to our ‘live’ campaigns with everything from their fresh ideas through to demonstrating their research and writing skills. They can also learn about how an integrated agency operates, the importance of developing the right strategy for a client and how fit you need to be to reach our office on the top floor!
Some students arrive ready and willing to learn, some have even now joined Leepeckgroup on a permanent basis – but sadly some are a disappointment.
And it is the latter category that has prompted this week’s blog. I’ll try not to let it my rant get out of hand so instead I thought a list of things you should and should not do would be a good starting point.

  • Do
    Be enthusiastic – this goes such a long way
    Contribute – we love new ideas
    Ask questions – we work in PR so we love to talk
    Tell us what you want to learn – this is your opportunity to add value to your CV
    Demonstrate that you have an aptitude for PR – why else would you want to work here?
    Expect variety – this is one of the great benefits of agency work
    Treat the experience as you would a proper job – you never know when we might be looking for staff
  • Don’t – (and all these are based on previous real experiences!)
    Send a badly spelt application letter for work experience, in an industry that is built on good grammar – read it first
    Arrive late or even not at all – not the best impression to make or work ethic to abide by
    Sit quietly in the corner – this is not the time to be a wallflower
    Dress as you might do for a night out in a club
    Think social media is the only strand to a PR campaign
    Spend the morning gluing on your false eyelashes – no, I’m not joking

Alyson Marlow, PR Director

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What’s up doc?

Posted on April 20, 2012 by leepeckgroup

So let’s imagine, you need to see the doctor. You’ve woken up
with a great big wobbly, dangly thing hanging off your left cheek. You think to
yourself “That doesn’t look quite right. Wasn’t there last night…was it?” The
fear grabs you by the throat. A telling dropule of sweat starts its descent
between your shoulder blades. You feel the heat rising in your face. “God, I’d
better have Dr Whatsername check it out. There must be a cream, an ointment, a tablet, anything for that… surely!” 

So there you are, twitching anxiously in the Doc’s chamber. She pokes the ‘thing’
twice with a wooden spatula. Lifts it away from your cheek and examines its
underside; her brow knitted in deep, diagnostic contemplation.  Your heart’s beating like a 1950s typing pool;
your brain tumbling through the times of your life, desperate for a shard of light to illuminate the catalyst for this terrible carbuncle. 

“It’s coming….. here it is…. she’s going to hit me with it…….!”

In your mind, your screw up your eyes to shield the blow. “Mr Cook. You have danglititus… a rare condition, but eminently curable. And you’re in luck. My colleague, Dr Wotsit, specialises in this area. He’ll have you back to your old self in no time.”

You think about this for a moment – then you reply –  “That’s bollocks Doc. I reckon it’s wobblyosis. Thanks for your time. I’ll have the requisite cream for that please. If you write a prescription, I’ll be on my way.”

It’s a bit obvious where I’m going with this right? You hire/consult/recruit professionals for their expertise, their experience and their knowledge. The agency : client relationship can often miss the point. Yes, there’s certainly more subjectivity in advertising than medicine. But what we do bridges the gap between truth and experience. And we practice our dark art every day, all year. So telling your agency ‘you don’t like pink’ is a bit like telling your doctor to check your prostate through your ear.

I thank you.

Paul Cook, Creative Director

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PR – not lip gloss and spin!

Posted on April 13, 2012 by leepeckgroup
SeaCity opening with James Cracknell

James Cracknell opens SeaCity Museum Southampton

More often than not, when people ask what I do for a living and I say, “PR”, they will smile and nod politely, pausing for just a moment before asking, “What’s that?”

There are many definitions of what public relations is in practice; creating and maintaining relationships, understanding different groups of people and engaging with them, identifying and publicising key messages.  There are also many opinions of what it is, including catchphrases like ‘creating a buzz’ and ‘spinning a story’ (my least favourite), but what does any of it actually mean?

This week, I’ve experienced a pretty special example of what PR means and I’m going to share it with you.

I’m a girl who shunned the idea of a university education and learned through experience. I chose to work in communications for the police and I did this for seven years. Thanks to some hard work, great mentors and a decent amount of luck I’ve actually become a PR professional and a month ago I made the move into agency life with Leepeckgroup – and jumped straight in at the deep end.

For five years Southampton has been working on the planning and building of the SeaCity Museum (www.seacitymuseum.co.uk ), a world class maritime museum with a focus on the story of the Titanic and the many crew who were lost from the city. The grand opening came in only my fourth week here.

Over the years I’ve worked with the press on many occasions, but never quite like this – I’ve now escorted enough people around the museum to get a job as a guide! In the last few weeks, I’ve worked with my lovely new colleagues to make sure that every request for an interview was answered with a relevant person willing to speak publicly (not always an easy task!), responded to bizarre requests for information, convinced those undecided journalists that they’d miss out if they weren’t there for the opening event and made the requests for television crews to attend with only hours to go ‘no problem at all’, while all the time keeping an eye on Facebook and Twitter for regular updates and photos. I even met double Olympic gold medallist James Cracknell!

As Southampton marked the passing of a century since the Titanic set sail and the museum doors opened for the first time, I assisted journalists and photographers from the UK, Australia, Poland, Germany, France, Switzerland, China, Japan, Canada and Northern Ireland get every detail and image they needed to tell the story to the world and encourage visitors to this fantastic new museum.

A huge accomplishment for me but an even bigger one for Southampton.

Events like this don’t happen every day, or even that often, but they do provide moments to remember and show what good PR looks like. It’s being very organised, and it can mean long days and sore feet, dealing with a lot of different people at once and sometimes getting answers out of nowhere, but I love every minute. It’s such a great feeling to see a story you put together on TV or in the paper, hearing an interview you set up being played out on the radio, or speaking to someone who has come along as a result of seeing coverage you arranged. And that great feeling gets even better when your client hears or sees it too, and thanks you.

Though we might not be in front of the camera or centre stage, you can be sure a PR person is there, making it all happen

Liz Pusey, PR Account Manager

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What’s the word?

Posted on April 10, 2012 by leepeckgroup

Leepeckgroup blogFor Christmas I had an iPad.
It’s amazing and has changed the way I shop, check my utility bills, emails and socialise, but now I have a problem – too many user names and passwords to
remember! 

So what should I do?…

Make a list and put it somewhere safe?  Keep all my passwords the same? (Probably not a good idea) Download the latest software that’ll remember all my passwords?

Or

Cleverly construct a password that relates to the website I need to create a password for?

The latter option sounds pretty elaborate but it may help.
Basically the idea is that you take the initial letters of a line from a memorable song. E.g “Shake it like a Polaroid picture” This would give you the letters SILAPP which is resistant to a standard “dictionary
attack”. You then stick in a couple of letters or number that derive from the site name. E.g I can decide to always use the first and third letters of the website I’m on so for example: If I’m on iTunes the first and third letter – I & U will be added to SILAPP and Hey Presto… I have an adjustable password. And it can work from site to site.

That said I’m still tempted to opt for a cryptic list devised with good old pen and paper (that’s until put it somewhere SO safe I can’t find it!)

Lisa Moulton, Graphic Designer

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The sea is not the limit

Posted on April 4, 2012 by leepeckgroup

In marketing we’re generally taught not to believe in fate, ‘it’s  the ads that make things happen’. But sometimes, it’s hard not to believe in a predetermined route for us all…

Almost exactly six years ago I was lying flat on my back in a park in the middle of Southampton, staring up at the blue summer sky above me pondering what the future might hold.

No, I wasn’t a poor, hapless down and out, wondering where my life would take me, but rather a student fresh out of university who had just a week earlier been offered his first job in Southampton.

That very day I had travelled down to Southampton from my home city of Bristol to find myself some new accommodation in the city. After a day of walking around the city looking at suitable (and some unsuitable) rooms – lying on my back in the park seemed like a reasonable way to spend the hour before my train arrived to take me back.

I’ll never forget that hour of just laying and thinking because it was an hour in which I vividly remember feeling incredibly excited about the journey I was about to start out and on and also incredibly daunted – what if I didn’t like my new career?
What if after six months I ran home to my parents, terrified of this non-student life? What if, after 50 years of hard work I didn’t leave any kind of mark on the world?

Six years later, I now remember that afternoon with a wry smile, because lying on the grass then I had no clue that I was a mere 50 metres from the future site of SeaCity Museum.
I didn’t know it at the time, but six years later I would be working on the marketing and PR for the Museum, which will be opened in a public ceremony on the 10th April by James Cracknell. In fact, the Leepeckgroup team and I have now spent the past six months creating the brand and preparing the marketing & PR for most of the visible (and some not so visible) aspects of the Museum. If I lay on that same spot today, I’m pretty sure I’d be able to see at least ten different pieces of branding and marketing material produced within the four walls of our agency.

Yes, there are people within Southampton City Council who have worked on the SeaCity project since well before I even arrived in the city, and yes, there may be people who have had a greater influence on the Museum than we have had at Leepeckgroup, but still, everyone at this agency is incredibly proud to be involved with a building that will be a key feature in Southampton for the next century.

When April 10th arrives, the eyes of the world will be on Southampton (think three letter words like BBC, ITV, Sky, CBS, ABC) and there will be one chap in the background smiling not just because the Museum is opening, but also because he’s answered three questions he asked himself six years ago:

What if I don’t enjoy my career?

I do.

What if after six months I run home to my parents, terrified of this non-student life?

I didn’t

What if, after 50 years of hard work I didn’t leave any kind of mark on the world?

I have

Watch  SeaCity TV commercial

Rich Watts, Client Services Manager

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The £22 computer – your kids plug themselves into the net!

Posted on March 26, 2012 by leepeckgroup

I grew up programming some of the first commercially available computers. In fact I was shocked when visiting the London Science Museum to see some of them in a glass case!
My daughter was shocked to find out that YouTube didn’t always exist and that you needed a tape deck (a what!?) to load up a program!
It did however make me think. In those days if you wanted to make a computer work then you had to have real technical knowledge. You needed to program it to make it work.
My parents thought I was some kind of genius and didn’t understand a word of what I was talking about, only that it cost a fortune!

As technology has accelerated, our need to understand ‘how’ has fallen away. Computers, iPads and mobiles are easy to take for granted.
As a nation of consumers we demand instant connection to entertainment, shopping and business through our magical electronic windows to the world.

Yet the IT industry continues to report a lack of technically skilled people. Technology progresses but the creation of equally clever good people doesn’t match and the gap broadens.
So what’s the answer? – Start ‘em young.
Strip back the technology to it fundamental parts so its easier to understand – cue entry of the Raspberry Pi. http://www.raspberrypi.org

The Rasberry PI is a full blown computer that costs just £22! It’s really a small circuit board with an HDMI (TV) connector at one end and USB (keyboard) at the other.
Plug it in and away you go. Set to be the latest in ‘cool’, volume of sales crashed RS component and Farnell websites in a matter of minutes of going on release.

So what is the point? – It means every kid in the UK could have one. It becomes part of their IT learning process. They have a device which follows them through their school life from the day they make it add up 1 + 1, to later in their education when they develop complex applications and video streaming. Plus when they get bored they can catch up with their favourite programme on iPlayer.

Let’s show the world we are a nation of creators not just consumers!

Julian Macey, Digital Director  

Take a look here http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TgR74Kp6Ws4

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Is it time your site went mobile?

Posted on March 19, 2012 by leepeckgroup

I’m laying out another mobile website (i.e. a site designed specifically to work on smartphones and tablets).

One of the most challenging parts of doing this is making sure it functions on all mobile devices with the same finesse and style. And as mobile phone producers seem to make a point of making sure no two have the same spec, it’s no mean feat.

The question is… is it worth the effort?

Here’s my perspective, wearing both my designer hat and my ‘avid smartphone user’ hat (the former headgear is significantly more stylish than the latter which is a bit nerdy…):

• In 2012, there are more mobile phones than people.

• A good portion of the public only have access to the internet via a mobile device. This mainly applies to young people, but, hey, they are the future.

• 4G is just around the corner. This is set to make mobile connections faster than most people’s broadband speeds. Only 0.2% currently have access to but already it accounts for over 6% of traffic. Ofcom announced just the other day that there are plans to get it fully up and running this year. I’ll believe it when I see it!

• Using QR codes in your advertising can instantly connect to you the public but these only work a smart phone or tablet as you need a camera to scan it. Personally, I didn’t believe people would take to QR codes, but word has it that, in the US, over 14 million people scan them every month.

• The majority of ‘normal’ sites general look fine on my iPhone (yes I’m an Apple junky) but navigation and clicking the tiny buttons can be tricky to say the least. To stay ahead, it’s worth having a site which works as well on a mobile as it does on a desktop (a challenge for designers, but that’s my problem and we relish solving it).

So there it is. My take is that the future of communication is firmly mobile, probably more so than any of us even know right now.

Screens come in all shapes and sizes in 2012 and to stay user friendly and looking good, online designs need a good dose of practicality and techie know how.

To feed this need, my design techniques are having to become more flexible than a Bolshoi ballet dancer … and I’m loving it.

Leon Flemons, Graphic Designer

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Great execution – bad idea

Posted on March 5, 2012 by leepeckgroup
Cheese n Onion?

Am I the only person who doesn’t like the latest idea from
Walkers? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gou1jnjFaJg&feature=watch_response
The campaign “named “what’s that flavour”, has called upon the public
to identify three mystery flavours for a cash prize of £50,000 each.

The new flavours have been broken down into three categories
– dairy, spice and meat. And flavour suggestions have ranged from bratwurst,
cheese and chive, mint and lamb and pastrami.

As one of the most well known food brands in Britain I am
amazed that their message is anything other than our crisps taste like the real
thing.  Generally speaking I would have
said that when consuming a food product you should not only be able to identify
its taste but also be reassured that it’s not artificial – the complete
opposite of how I interpret the message of this campaign.

Despite not being the biggest fan of its concept, the
campaign has been executed brilliantly and I have been reminded of it virtually
every day, either on TV, print, online or through social media.

Both the TV and radio adverts use a popular song that has
been altered to feature the name of the campaign as well as the voices of well
known and current celebrities making their own guesses.

The help of the celebs has also been used to create
interesting and “exclusive” snippets of videos and interviews on the website,
which have been promoted through Facebook and Twitter. Both of the social media
tools have seen a surge in popularity with Facebook “likes” currently at
260,590 people and 19,499 people following the Twitter account.

The official TV advert posted on YouTube has received nearly
60,000 hits. And visitors to the Walkers website can make their own version of
the popular TV ad by remixing a series of short clips.

In print, Walker’s have released clues and hints throughout
the campaign to maintain interest as well as emphasising the prize of £50,000
for each winning guess. These have also been used as teasers on both Facebook
and Twitter.

This integrated “360 degrees” approach successfully targets
consumers using a number of different media channels making a campaign message
(whether you like it or not) difficult to forget.  For me, this demonstrates how having a good
idea isn’t the only thing needed to make a campaign effective.  Of course it’s important, but the work and
planning that goes into implementing a campaign and targeting an audience is essential
in making it a success.  

Rachel Morton, PR Executive 

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Best foot forward…

Posted on February 13, 2012 by leepeckgroup

It’s cold…cold and dark! Not the best thing to entice you out of a warm, snugly bed and convince you to get up and get ready for work. That aside though, this cold weather actually makes me want to walk to and from work…although it is slightly severity dependant!
I hate walking in the rain or strong wind (one step forward two steps back if you catch my drift) but I love walking on a crisp, cold morning when the sun is low; not only does it wake me up in myself but it makes me feel better about life in general. The walk to work is invigorating and can actually set me up for a good day – I walk at about a zillion miles per hours so I can quite literally stomp out any frustration – and the walk home clears my head and makes sure that my partner doesn’t get me arriving home still talking about work!

However, walking to and from work carries another big benefit for me…saving money! Gym memberships are notoriously expensive and, even if you do get a good deal, can anyone say they go enough to get their money’s worth? I know I wouldn’t – my last relationship with a nameless gym ended after my first year with them in which I probably only got about 3 months use out of it!

So, now I use the commute to work as my excuse to exercise! I grab my scarf and gloves, wrap up warm, plug my headphones in and off I trot – metaphorically not literally, although I have been known to chuck in the odd dance move when no-one’s looking!  And when I arrive at the office, not only am I more awake, I’m also more relaxed, more creative and more ready to get on with the work on my to-do list.

Next time you’re in your car in traffic or stuck behind someone who’s not going as fast as you want them to, glance out of the window and look for the guy walking along, mouthing the song words and sneaking in a sly arm movement….it’s probably me and although I may not get to work as quickly as you, at least I’ll have enjoyed the journey!

 Daniel Ferrett, Account Executive

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