Big Cat brings CSI: The Experience to Birmingham

Birmingham based 360⁰ agency Big Cat, have secured a deal as the UK territory partner for an exciting new interactive entertainment experience, from EMS Exhibits the official international booking agent and promoter of CSI: The Experience – coming to Birmingham in February. Big Cat has been selected to deliver the event management & logistics, PR, social media marketing and design implementation.

February 26 sees the UK premier of CSI: The Experience which takes visitors on an exhilarating journey through dark alleys and hot deserts, to gather evidence and crack the case. CSI: The Experience will be making its UK debut in Birmingham next month in the country’s busiest shopping centre, Bullring Birmingham. The hugely successful attraction will challenge and stimulate all its visitors. CSI: The Experience is developed by the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History and produced by EMS Exhibits, a division of Event Marketing Service GmbH under a license from CBS Consumer Products.

Nick Morgan, CEO of Big Cat Group said: “This year is set to be an exciting year for Big Cat. CSI: The Experience will be the second international attraction that we have opened in Birmingham after a successful 3 month run of Bodies Revealed at the Custard Factory; part of a wider initiative to bring world class events to Birmingham as oppose to London and Manchester.

“We’ve been meticulously planning the project for some time now, and are excited to see all of the teams hard work come to fruition. The Bullring is a fantastic location for CSI: The Experience and we are delighted to be opening the first attraction in the busy shopping centre.

“The show has already visited Vienna, Dublin, Warsaw, Budapest and Las Vegas, all of which have been great successes. We’re hoping that the Birmingham experience will continue the trend.”

On piano-playing cats and the future of film making

Written by Anthony Tattum on 26 Aug 09 at 10:20am

I am no expert on film making. There, I have said it, so my following comments are based on observations and research. Film making is changing. More specifically: how to make a living from it as a small indie.

Nora playing the piano

I was participating in a conference, Hello Digital, a screen and digital media conference and festival which we [Big Cat] helped organise last year. Film makers were asking a guy from Channel 4 how to make money from film making any more when people download them for free?

The internet has forced a lot of traditional industries to rethink their business models. The media, high street retail and insurance to name but a few have seen revenues decimated by online competition.

There may be a light at the end of the tunnel. Rupert Neate reported in the Telegraph today that the Google owned website YouTube has extended a scheme to share advertising revenues with prolific creators to include one-off video which “goes viral” and proves very popular. The notion of employing global social platforms to distribute content and gain infamy or money is nothing new.

Lauren Luke, a 27-year old from Newcastle-upon-Tyne has dropped out of school and become Britain’s most successful YouTube video creator offering beauty how-to tips.

At present only US-based users will be able to participate, but YouTube has said it intends to extend the scheme internationally. But does this mean that to make a living our highly creative film makers will have to “sell out” and produce piano-playing kitten videos or film their friends doing death defying stunts?

Big Cat Communication blog is launched

As promised last week, Big Cat’s seperate departments have started launching their own blogs.

We have lift off!

The first to go up is our PR blog run by Natalie Hartland. She will be giving advice, comment, ideas and general thoughts from the world of PR and communications. The blog has its own twitter feed also.

Obviously it is a very much industry focused blog that will hopefully become a valuable resource for people in the sector.

Our marketing and events blogs are very close to launch and I will of course keep you updated on their happenings.

This blog will start to focus more on Birmingham and Social Media rather than trying to cover advice and comment from our four departments.

Hi again, Sharkey and George reporting from the board room……

We have been having a great time in the BigCat office this month, lots of visitors and interesting things to report on….

After recently celebrating Birmingham Pride here in the fish bowl (George is gay) we became excited to over hear that the creative team will be working on floats for Pride London on the 4th of July. The home office has commissioned us to create their float … rumour is that it will be a Shakespeare themed float, that ties in with this years ‘Come out and play’ theme. George is more than excited and is hoping for an invite to ride along on the float.

The PR and Marketing team have had yet another success within the mystical world of social media after winning a contract for Bournville College. Sadly I don’t think the College has anything to do with Bournville chocolate – It would be a major perk of the job if we got some freebees thrown into the bowl.

Another visitor we have had is a nice chap called Alan Fraser; he’s the CEO of the YMCA Erdington and has been working hard to raise money to build a big social housing development. Alan has asked the PR team to help him raise the remaining £1.5 million needed to complete the build – imagine all the fish bowls you could buy with that!!

As we are Brummies born and bred (Seacago, Brindley Canal) we are in full support of the new Buy Birmingham campaign, we have had a huge response from companies that would like to sign up and pledge to encourage prosperity within Birmingham. Let the team know if you would like more information or would like to join up….they are a friendly bunch and would be happy to help!

We overheard Katy will be leaving us after a year of work experience, we will miss her as she used to clean our bowl, not sure who will do it now?! Arghh!! Katy will continue her summer working in a glamorous events job in America, we may have to jump into the canal and swim to holiday with her – she’s worth it!

If you can’t pop into the office to meet us then please write to us, we enjoy receiving fan mail.

Goodbye for another month, next month I hope we will have some more exciting stories to tell you

Enjoy the sunshine – Sharkey and George x

360 Tips: Social Media strategies and KPI

New social media consultants are starting up the world over with the advent of web2.0 and its incredible grip on modern interaction. The majority of these consultants have a history in PR and Marketing and as the three mediums lend so well to each other, it’s easy to see where there is cross over.

Big Cat has been working on social media clients for several months now and we have settled on a strong and scientific strategic model that, fingers crossed, will continue to deliver results.

Most of our model is based around what you would imagine; objectives, tactics, KPIs, content etc, but trust me, these did not come about easily and a lot of tweeking continues to be done to perfect our model. So far it has proved successful with even the greatest cynics.

Firstly, social media is all about content. You could do everythig right, but if content is poor, no one will care for your campaign or your blog and you’ll soon find yourself in front of a furious FD armed with a balance sheet and a grim determination to find a part of your body to accomodate it. Make your strategy content focused, breakdown all the types of posts you will write, topics, date of publication, why it is relevant and ensure they are tailored for your audience.

Keep your objectives front of mind, make sure that everything you do is geared to achieve those objectives and make sure your client is aware of the synergy. As KPI is the hot potato of social media, excelling in getting across strong objectives and proving you can achieve them is superbly important in convincing a company that social media is worth investing in.

And that’s the big one: KPI. How do you quantify a social media campaign; followers, friends, comments, page views, unique users? Look at your clients website, see how they would quantify the success of their website and adopt those indicators. Chances are there will be a call to action portal that can be posted at the bottom of each post. Oh and one last point: Don’t, under any circumstances, try conning the reader or be salesy in your posts, tweets etc. You will be sniffed and unfollowed before you can say ‘Twitter Twattergy’.

At the end of the day, remember what benefits social media has and simply apply them to your client. Dialogue, attraction, engagement and exposure are all advantages of social media, if you can prove how that will make a company money, you are on to a winner.

Creative Republic’s Media Skills Masterclass

The good people of Digbeth and Birmingham were treated to a masterclass in media skills with guest speakers Ian Taylor (Marketing Birmingham), Anna Blackaby (Creative industries editor, Birmingham Post), Marverine Cole (Sky News) and Jon Bounds (All round social media good guy). They were all pooled together by the much thanked Lyle (@creativerepublic.org.uk), who was treated almost like a prophet and weathered the compliment tidal wave like a seasoned pro.

Ruth Ward (Rewired) and Helga Henry (Fierce Earth) chaired and compered the event respectively, while an American gentleman (apologies there was alot of names to remember, and I’m not good with names at the best of times) presented the final activity, a press release crash course (with some car crash results!).

The wine was provided by Barefoot, which was happily endorsed by Helga and manifested in a Churchillian speech about Birmingham’s creative industry.

The evening started with light refreshments and some light networking with an ever increasingly familiar group of creatives. Followed by the four speeches and a press release workshop. I shalln’t go into to much detail of the minute by minute activities of the evening as I don’t think that’s necessarily the most significant thing about Creative Republic evenings.

As much as I enjoy the content of such meets (and I do), what Creative Republic do excellently is link together all the sections of Birmingham’s proudest industry. It was said last night (I forget by whom) that one of the best things about Birmingham is how well connected it is, and I have to agree. I moved to Brum in June and love the fact that at every event you go to, everybody knows everybody, and not only that, everyone supports everybody. Everyone in Birmingham’s creative industry is passionate about shouting about it and passionate about the talent in the city.

360 Links for April 16

Apologies for the lack of action recently, but I have now returned from Spain (tragically not as brown as I would have hoped).

Events: Creative Republic Media Skills Masterclass

Good event coming up on Tuesday 21 April at Fazeley Studios, Digbeth hosted by everyone’s favourite republic. If you’ve never been to a Creative Republic event, I strongly suggest you do; Helga Henry and Stef Lewandowski et al are really switched on and do some great work educating, promoting and bringing together the creative industry in Birmingham. To sign up for the event, free of charge, follow the link.

Social Media: The Benefits of Social Media and SEO

Top tips from Lee Odden on increasing SEO as well as running through why social media is such a strong marketing tool, if used correctly.

Marketing: 5 Marketing myths worth testing

Randy Vaughn highlights some marketing myths, some I agree with, others less so; but a good read non the less with an interesting viewpoint on marketing a business.

Creative Design: Sprite design challenge

Some of the results from the Sprite design competition (always a great way of getting good designs for next to nothing).

Results from our Poll: Fully Integrated Strategy

Thank you to all those who got involved in our poll, it is always interesting to know what the wider world is thinking.

The fully integrated strategy option came out on top, closely run by aggressive marketing, with consolidation coming in a lowly last.

I have to admit, I agree with our readers (although I would), I think in these troubled times a full on, gung ho campaign of blanket marketing is too risky to the point of reckless and can create the perception of disrespect to the customer. I do, however, agree with it in principle. During dark times is when a company must show its teeth and I am a firm believer that the best form of defense is attack. Perception is everything for a company and a strong awareness campaign creates an image of strength and prosperity despite the gloomy economic climate.

By a fully integrated strategy, as most of you will be aware, I mean a marketing campaign that is supported by various other services. In my post about the strength of ‘Cadbury’s crunch marketing’; I case studied a perfect example of how separate services can compliment each other, creating springboards with which to push future campaigns off. Naturally PR and marketing work very closely in an integrated campaign, mainly because media buying creates leverage for editorial but also because a particularly eye catching story can create a buzz that can then be exploited with a targeted advertising splash.

Consolidation, as most of you agreed, is a weak option. Just holding ship is no way to keep a company, sure it is the safest but cracks will appear and eventually you will run out of resources. Sometimes you’ve got to the leave the safety of hibernation and go find a new kill. I’m sure I’m missing a good reason why should simply shutting the flood gates and waiting for the storm to subside is a good option but I can’t see one. This isn’t the worst position mankind has ever been in, and there is still plenty of money to be made for those willing to stick their neck out.

What is the best way to beat the crunch?

360 Links for 19 March

Marketing:The future of Twitter

Here is an insight into the monetization of Twitter. Hopefully it’s not true, I think sponsored tweets would be crass and counter productive for everyone. Obviously, as I do it myself, I think having a company presence on Twitter is a great way on connecting to people, but it must still be used in the proper way, information sharing etc, not just slapping ads in people’s faces.

Personal: URA Star

I know it is none business related but it is a great event with really strong messages that effect all of us, particularly those of you with children. The star Witness is a great guy, really switched on and does some good work through his Foundations for life charity. You can follow him on twitter also and support the welfare of local children.

Creative Design: 10 Amazing brands

Our creative director, Jason Liggitt, is a massive fan of great branding and these are some fab examples of branding that have become part of our collective psyche.