Green Cathedral - News 2004

GC was proud to be part of the Eden Project's winter long festival "A Time of Gifts", by creating a unique eCard and microsite. Described as the "Eighth Wonder of the World", the Eden Project asked GC to create a visually stimulating flash eCard and supporting microsite to publicise and encourage bookings for the Time of Gifts celebrations. The viral eCard offers a choice of designs and message compositions to be sent to friends and family. The supporting microsite exhibits enchanting imagery and sound to give a taster of some of the activities, such as ice-skating on the lake at night.

GC partners with the Open University

December 2004

GC's partnership with the OU offers dedicated resources, account teams and other benefits for digital communications, including consultation and online marketing. The first project that GC was engaged in was the design and development of a strategically important internal web site with screensavers and creative concepts, communicating to staff its re-branding aims. Since then, GC has devised landing pages for the OU Business School to capture the attention and invoke dialogue between enquirers for certain professional courses and the OU's administration. GC and the OU are currently planning future online projects.

Christmas Media Campaign for Avon

December 2004

During the two months leading up to Christmas, GCDM ran a media campaign and a viral games campaign for its client, Avon. The objectives were to drive traffic to the ecommerce site and place a Christmas order ‘Get Christmas wrapped up 3 for 2 mix ‘n' match any gifts', as well as increasing awareness of the online shop ‘Christmas without the queues.' The creative was placed in a variety of media such as Handbag, i Village, New Woman, Yahoo and many more. With the viral games campaign, GCDM's sister company, Green Cathedral Interactive, created an interactive game which involved putting presents into a sleigh. The aim of the game was to help a bear called ‘Snuggly Duggly' to assist Santa in delivering all of the presents in time for Christmas. The more presents collected, the higher the points scored.

GC creates online tool for Which? GM-food campaign

December 2004

GC continued its strong partnership with Which? by developing an interactive tool for the campaign to choose GM-free foods. The production team at GC created a flawless system, allowing consumers to email Margaret Beckett, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to demonstrate public opposition and hopefully cause a change in policy over GM material and its cross contamination with non-GM crops grown in the same area. Further information can be found at www.which.net/campaigns/food/gm.

GC Collaborates with Imperial College on Video Search

November 2004

Green Cathedral has signed a licence agreement with Imperial Innovations, the technology commercialisation arm of Imperial College London, to explore ways to commercialise a novel video search technology. For some years, GC's R&D team has been interested in digital video search, specifically in text-based search against a transcript of narrative and dialogue. The multimedia group headed by Dr Stefan Rueger at Imperial's Department of Computing has been working on a new method to extract subtitles from broadcast video signals and to place the subtitle text in a searchable database. Dr Michael Woodley who leads GC's R&D activities will work with Dr Rueger to create a demonstrator of the Video Content Transcript Search technology in order to explore its commercial potential.

GC sets web service standards for Cambridgeshire County Council

November 2004

Green Cathedral has created a modern and intuitive web presence for Cambridgeshire County Council, offering a higher quality of service to its public in line with government ICT strategy. Prior to the redesign being undertaken, the main online presence for Cambridgeshire County Council did not afford access to the council's vast and valuable content in a functional and logical manner. The newly designed site by GC offers a welcoming environment in order to encourage citizens and businesses in the region to revisit and interact with the council's wealth of information. Joanna Leung, Web Channel Development Manager comments, "They have truly understood our project briefs and turned them into well-structured, usable and accessible designs". To visit the site, go to www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk.

GC partners with Atkins for pilot Picture Messaging Profile

October 2004

Continuing its partnership with Atkins Management Consultants, GC has designed and developed a Picture Messaging Profile (PMP). The tool facilitates the capture, management and transmission of images, improving the processes of companies with field workers, such as Highway Agencies, National Health Bodies, Police and Surveyors. For instance, in the event of a road accident, with the PMP, a Policeman can take vital pictures for further investigation, which at the touch of a button can be sent to a central image databank, allowing the images to be stored, indexed and assessed by other Officers.

GC redesigns new Cambridge Building Society web site

October 2004

Green Cathedral has launched an improved, more efficient and accessible web site for 'Community Business of the Year' award winner, Cambridge Building Society. For over 150 years Cambridge Building Society has played a major role in the development of local home ownership and savings. GC met their requirements to serve a disparate audience and enhance the Society's community identity by providing an intuitive, easily navigable and aesthetically pleasing online presence. Carole Charter, Assistant Marketing Manager said, "overall we were very pleased with the service provided during this major project and look forward to continue working with Green Cathedral when updating the site". The site can be found at www.cambridge-building-society.co.uk.

Jason Cartwright involved in setting up SMA-UK

October 2004

Jason Cartwright has joined a working group of search engine marketing professionals to help set up the Search Engine Marketing Association UK (SMA-UK). The mission of the UK based trade association is “To provide a service to search marketing individual professionals and companies by helping to establish a favourable operating environment, by providing a forum for discussion on non competitive issues and by providing information to assist them in their business.” To find out more about SMA-UK, please view www.sma-uk.org

Green Cathedral turns Harvard Business School event interactive

September 2004

Green Cathedral has seen an instant response to the launch of the interactive site for next year's Harvard Business School (HBS) Global Leadership Forum for alumni. HBS, one of the world's premier business schools, runs a Forum each year to encourage alumni to explore timely and significant issues through cutting-edge faculty research. The IVY League university chose GC to migrate the existing manual paper-based booking and administration system to the Web. Sherry Coutu, President of the HBS Alumni Club of London said, "I love the system that you've built. All in all, it has empowered our team and delivered all the functionality we need to run events more cost effectively and efficiently."

GCDM wins the Debenhams account and drives its Affiliate Marketing programme

September 2004

Debenhams has appointed GCDM to run the majority of their digital marketing processes on their behalf. This month, GCDM helped drive its affiliate marketing programme to help boost sales, increase brand awareness and provide them with a good, measurable ROI. The programme will generate a wide range of media coverage supporting Debenhams' overall marketing strategy. Paul O'Donoghue, Managing Director of GCDM, commented: “Winning the high profile Debenhams account is testament of our consulting and digital marketing capabilities and we look forward to working with them to build and implement a highly successful, profitable digital marketing strategy.”

Jason Cartwright appointed to SEMPO Committee

July 2004

Jason Cartwright is approached by The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) to assist them in establishing a UK presence and decides to join their UK Committee. Jason is also appointed to their Education Committee who is responsible for reviewing articles, training documents and other literature before they are released into the public domain. “SEMPO was formed to help spread the good news about search engine marketing (SEM). SEMPO exists to fill the gaps in awareness and understanding of SEM, including educating marketing managers worldwide about what SEM is and how properly implemented SEM programs can provide some of the highest returns on investment possible in the marketing world today. The industry is still in the early stages of using SEM as a new way of demand generation for products, services, and information. The time is ripe for SEMPO. Companies of all sizes have Internet marketing managers that use techniques like banner ads, yet many don't know what SEM is, or are unaware of real-life use cases that demonstrate some amazing ROI."

Danny Weston joins GCDM as Operations Director

July 2004

Danny Weston has joined GCDM as Operations Director this month. Danny has a vast amount of experience in digital marketing and previously worked for Deal Group Media where he was involved in project managing a number of new business propositions including tracking software and affiliate management tools and launching these to market successfully via a number of online channels. Prior to this, he spent two years working for the UK Government assisting in the marketing and promotion of BTI web sites and intranets for international business fairs. Danny has worked for clients such as the DTI, Dialaphone, the AA, William Hill, NatWest, John Lewis and Comet.

GC Launches “AA” Accessible Web Site for National Extension College

June 2004

Green Cathedral has redesigned the web site for the National Extension College with a strong emphasis on web accessibility. The NEC offers distance learning to people of all ages and uses its web site to provide course information, resources and materials to all its users. In line with the new legal requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act for accessibility, the new NEC site offers a high degree of usability and accessibility allowing users to manipulate text sizes, background and foreground colours and to interact with the site using screen reading software for the visually impaired. The new NEC site can be found at www.nec.ac.uk.

GC Sponsors 24th Cambridge Film Festival

June 2004

GC is proud once again to be supporting the Cambridge Film Festival, now in its 24th year. Michele Ide-Smith, Special Projects Manager at GC, commented: "We are delighted to continue our involvement with the Cambridge Film Festival and wish the Festival staff every success for 2004. Since the re-launch of the Cambridge Film Festival in 2001 the Web site provided by Green Cathedral has become much more interactive. The audience reviews and voting proved to be very popular last year and we hope the Web site will help contribute to the Festival buzz again this year." The Festival web site is at www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk.

SEO Campaign for AXA

May 2004

GCDM has been commissioned to manage the search engine optimisation for AXA-IM (Investment Managers) sites. This involves servicing of the corporate web site (www.axa-im.com), which is an immediate extension of service to the UK web site (www.axa-im.co.uk). AXA also asked us to give a search engine optimisation overview and site usability presentation to country e-champions. As part of the brief, we also submitted some of AXA's web sites to local search engines – these included the UK, Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Luxembourg.

GC Launches Cambridgeshire Drug and Alcohol Action Team Site

May 2004

Green Cathedral has launched a new web site for the Cambridgeshire Drug and Alcohol Action Team (Cambs DAAT), a multi-agency partnership working to implement the National Drug Strategy and comprising senior staff from the main organisations in the county involved in tackling drug related issues: County Council (including Education and Social Services); NHS Primary Care Trusts; Police; Probation; District Councils; HM Prison Service; representatives of local services. See www.cambsdaat.org.

Clarityn appoints GCDM for 3rd consecutive year

April 2004

Clarityn is working in partnership with GCDM to run a dual online marketing campaign this summer comprising of a pay per click and search engine optimisation programmes. Paul O'Donoghue, commented “We are delighted to be working with Clarityn for a 3rd consecutive year and supporting them in achieving their online business objectives.”

GC's "LayerActive" CMS powers the new multilingual FIA.com web site

March 2004

Green Cathedral has used its "LayerActive" content management suite to help the FIA build and launch its new web site for the 2004 season. The key driver was to create a presence in line with the stature and reputation of the organisation responsible for regulating motorsport, including (amongst others) Formula One and the World Rally Championship. The new FIA.com website was launched to the public on the eve of the first Grand Prix of the 2004 season, and received in excess of half a million page impressions over the course of the first race weekend. The site itself is hosted and managed by Green Cathedral.

GCDM creates multi-lingual newsletter for Avery

March 2004

Avery appointed GCDM as its sole Digital Marketing agency at the end of 2002 and its digital marketing strategy started with email campaign launched in April 2003. This email campaign has now developed into a monthly newsletter, which is sent via email and is produced in English, Czech, French, German, Polish and Spanish. GCDM handles and manages its distribution sending it to all the respective areas.

MacIntyre Charity appoints GCDM

February 2004

MacIntyre Charity, a UK-based charitable organisation that provides assistance to children and adults with learning difficulties, has engaged GCDM to manage its pay per click (PPC) keyword programme as well as an ongoing search engine optimisation (SEO) programme for the site. The aim of the online marketing activity is to ensure highly targeted traffic to the site and to ultimately promote and make themselves accessible to the people that need them and their services. GCDM's sister company, GC, also works with MacIntyre Charity providing them with web site development and updates to the site.

Phonesync Signs Landmark Deal with BT

February 2004

Phonesync Limited, a GC subsidiary, has signed a major deal with BT Wholesale. The deal will enable BT to market and sell the Phonesync wireless phonebook synchronisation system as a BT product to be entitled "Mobile Directory Backup". Stuart Horwood, managing director, BT Wholesale Markets said, "Mobile Directory Back-up is the first in a series of personal directory applications and services from BT Wholesale. This is an exciting new service that will change the way users store their directory data. We were keen to address and support the identified market for secure, directory content back-up and provide piece of mind for consumers and business alike."

Phonesync Wins DTI Grant to Develop 3G Compatibility

January 2004

Phonesync Limited has been awarded a maximum (£75,000) DTI Research Grant to begin the work to develop 3G compatibility for its mobile phonebook backup and synchronisation software. The award was made primarily in respect of the pure innovation the company has demonstrated in its existing 2G/2.5G product. Phonesync Limited, spun out from Green Cathedral in 2003, has enjoyed considerable and very rapid success with its SyncML based over-the-air phonebook synchronisation product, which it licences to large brand organisations who, in turn, become Phonesync Service Providers (PSPs). The company's first customers were O2, Freeserve and Opera Telecom, who now offer their own branded Phonesync services to their customers.

Green Cathedral Ranked Top ICT Provider in East of England

January 2004

Green Cathedral has been awarded first place for Information and Communications Technology provision in the Business Weekly New Year's Honours list. The Honours list, which covers the entire East of England region, is judged according to nominations and votes on standards of service, quality of work and value for money. Described by Business Weekly as the best in the business, GC was acclaimed for providing leading digital communication solutions, that are not only visually dynamic but also informative and functional.