it’s elementary

It’s Valentine’s Day, but for us today is a special and exciting one for a very different reason.

We’re delighted to announce that today marks the beginning of a brand new agency – Threepipe – formed through the merger of Threepipe Communications and Blowfish Digital.

We’re a social bunch here at Threepipe, and so a recent invitation to join our Co-Founder Jim for a mystery evening of activity was met with both delight and intrigue.  After days of speculation, it soon transpired Jim’s plans were far grander than any of us had dared to anticipate – we were to enjoy/endure (delete as appropriate!) an evening on four wheels at the Roller Disco in Vauxhall. With office bets placed en-route as to who we suspected to be the niftiest Threepipe skater, it was soon time to lace up and get rolling…

A few weeks ago we wrote about our Tough Mudder exploits – eight hardcore Threepipers tackling a 12 mile obstacle course in aid of our chosen charity, the Heart of Kent Hospice.

With our fitness levels nowhere near where they should be, the team decided to take drastic action, and we recently devised a weekly training session held in the local park incorporating sprints, circuits and interval training, using exercises that involved a variety of muscles to get everyone in shape.

Taking time to think strategically, to take a step back and to think about business can often be a rare opportunity. Pressure means we are all thinking about what is immediately ahead of us and how to solve these pressing challenges.

Google’s last wave of algorithm updates has changed SEO forever.

For years, many webmasters and SEO practitioners tried to manipulate Google’s algorithm by using link farms and paid links. In 2011, Google released the Panda update to lower the rank of “poor-quality sites”.  A year later, Penguin came along to target websites that were using “black hat SEO” techniques or participating in link schemes.

Interesting news this week that Sports Interactive, the makers of the Football Manager video game, had invited 10 agencies to pitch for its £60,000 six month launch campaign. This was apparently justified because it is difficult to find one agency that can cover the sports, consumer and lifestyle sectors.

They say that the best approach is a hands-on approach – well the execs at Threepipe certainly put that theory to the test in a recent career development exercise, designed to teach us the tips and tricks of pitching for new business.

When you picture a typical PR training session, you visualise half a dozen fresh faces all sitting around a boardroom table, whilst a wise PR fossil tells you exactly how it’s supposed to be done. You take it all on board and go away feeling enlightened – but the real test is how effectively you implement the skills and knowledge you’ve gained into real working scenarios.

It’s National Gardening Week, which has marked the perfect beginning to an exciting campaign launch for one of our clients, leading toy brand Mookie. Mookie, licensee for The Hive Toys has teamed up with bee charity Adopt-a-Hive, in an effort to raise awareness for the rapid decline in bees in the UK.

To highlight this issue facing our flying friends, we have kick-started the campaign by releasing the results of a revealing poll of 2,000 British parents on the topic. To support the campaign, we have also launched on-pack promotional stickers on The Hive branded toys which will offer young bee lovers the chance to win their very own beehive.

Each year, Threepipe nominates a charity to support through a number of fundraising activities, such as the Three Peaks Challenge which a number of us undertook last May on behalf of Great Ormond Street Hospital.

We have been exploring new and innovative ways of developing all our AMs and Execs here at Threepipe; providing experiences that reach far beyond traditional training. People can work in PR or digital marketing for years without having any real experience of pitching for new business.

Having recently merged, we also wanted to provide opportunities for our PR and digital people to work together and learn about the ways that each and every medium and channel can add value to a client, to challenge the ways that they would traditionally look at solving problems.

We are delighted to be working on a video content seeding campaign for our charity client Practical Action. One of Practical Action’s ambassadors, Gisele Bundchen, has made a short video that is raising awareness of the dangers of cooking indoors. In developing countries, the smoke from indoor cooking fires kills more people than malaria, with 2 million lives lost each year. Threepipe is seeding the video with key online influencers that are motivated by charitable causes to raise awareness of this campaign.

Next month (May 9th) we at Threepipe are excited to be hosting The Future Laboratory who will present their insight into global retail trends for the next five years.

The annual report from The Future Laboratory has become one of the most anticipated pieces of research within the retail sector. With so much change happening, we are expecting a fascinating event.

For the sports team at Threepipe, each March brings about the annual Football League Awards [client] – an evening celebrating players, clubs and their staff as well as supporters and members of the local community from The League’s 72 member clubs.