The evening will give you the opportunity to network with digital marketing peers and representatives from Forum Events, whilst enjoying complimentary drinks and canapés.

Venue:Radisson Blu Edwardian Mercer St, 20 Mercer Street, Covent Garden,
WC2H 9HD, London
Date: Thursday 21st June 2012
Dress Code:Dress up or dress down
We hope you can join us!

RSVP HERE

At the recent BIMA Breakfast Bites, Kerry Glazer, Chief Executive at AAR (the UK’s leading agency search, selection and relationship consultancy), offered a unique insight into client/agency relationships - looking at why they fail and how to reduce the risk of this happening.

To examine this in more detail, AAR commissioned a piece of research to include 26 clients and 20 agencies. The objective of this exercise was to source an overall impression of the quality of each participant’s client agency relationship, discover what factors are important to establish success, and gain insight into why these relationships fail.

Results showed that the majority of those surveyed believed that client agency relationships are managed fairly well, but that the main reason for failure was ‘avoidable’ reasons. The predominant feedback from both sides seemed to be a distinct failure to listen and lack of clarity.

Why does it go wrong? Looking at it from a client’s point of view, the four most common things that cause a relationship to disintegrate are:

• Failure to listen

• Agency inflexibility

• Stale thinking

• Lack of hunger

And from the agency perspective, the same is true, with the top four reasons being:

• Failure to listen

• Lack of hunger

• Client inflexibility

• Loss of focus and attention

Sound familiar? The results are most definitely interesting – as they show that both clients and agencies are thinking along the same lines, with a distinct awareness of why a relationship is doomed. But the question is – does anyone look out for the early warning signs? Or do we all wait until the final straw, and begrudgingly say goodbye without a word because we didn’t do anything about it?

Relationships can fail for various reasons, and if these problems are not recognised and dealt with, you get caught up in a downward spiral with a very slim chance of redeeming yourself. For a client, it seems the ultimate call for a failing relationship is when there is:

• Poor agency response

• Change of client personnel

• Agency personnel issues

There are a lot of ways to prevent potential issues. Looking at the research findings, it becomes clear that the key points to positively managing a good client agency relationship are:

• Set clear expectations/ roles

• Establishing and maintaining excellent senior relationships

• Structured relationships are more likely to last

• Clear communication

For clients, things can quickly go wrong when there is a lack of delivery and poor understanding of their business. In order to avoid this, clients need to think of agencies as clients too, and get them involved in their business.

If agencies establish and maintain strong client relationships (& vice versa), understand the brief that they are being given (clarify & ask questions) and deliver what is expected of them by setting clear expectations – they are off to a very good start. A big mistake is when an agency thinks its all going well because they connect with a client on a personal level. The truth is, if you’re not delivering what you are being paid to do, you will soon find the ‘liquid lunches’ coming to an end.

A final point to remember is that clients who work in a productive way with the right agency for their needs can fundamentally affect the success of their brand or service. So what is the ground for a solid client /agency relationship? In short, the answer lies in good partnership, and that works both ways.

In his talk to a captivated agency-centric audience, Chris emphasised that while organic growth always makes great economical sense, in an economic downturn, it is essential. He outlined several key points to developing an organic growth strategy:

1. it is ultimately more profitable, there’s less ramp up time and the team is already familiar with the client, industry, etc. Plus, the risk attached to new business is reduced
2. your best credentials with a current client are obviously the fantastic work you’ve already done together
3. can help move from a project by project based affair to a long-term sustained relationship

Chris highlighted a few factors that regularly get in the way of organisations creating a proper organic growth strategy, such as time, lack of “sexy factor” versus the rock-and-rollah lifestyle of the “new business team”, lacks its own budget and lead.

He suggests the following when crafting your plan. Focus focus focus. Keep a clear focus on what your agency does well. Don’t dabble in everything. Many agencies lose sight of what they are good at and suddenly have a case study on their website for just about anything, including those obscure one off projects from 10 years previous. Be clear about your strengths when discussing your service offering. Identify your top clients and then dig deep. Follow the leader. A team must be created that has ownership of organic development. Also, it must be led from the top to get the proper resources allocated to it (time, budget, people). Emphasise with the client. He quoted that all too often agencies look through their own lenses and sell the client what the agency believes it is good at without finding out or listening to the client’s actual needs. In other words: stop selling and start listening, folks!

Also some gems that while might seem like common sense, all too frequently are forgotten, like make sure the scale of the opportunity is weighted toward your skills; that the opportunity is of strategic significance to what your organisation’s goals are; that it’s a cultural fit and the teams all have good chemistry together!
Here are a few cheat sheet top tips:

1. Do a once over on your client list, get rid of loss clients and focus on the most rewarding accounts
2. Audit your current accounts to see what your most successful service offerings are…what it is you’re actually doing the most of, best of, etc and if it’s not a 7 or higher on a 1 to 10 scale, say goodbye
3. Make friends with procurement
4. Evaluate your external and internal strategy for client on-sell
5. Create milestones, and for god’s sake, don’t send out that agency newsletter, the client doesn’t care unless it’s personalised to them and relevantTeam team team, make sure the team is the best team for the job
6. Get out there and figure out what your client is actually interested in, reading, doing, etc.
7. Apply your already in place new business tools to your organic growth programme

There was a lively debate post the chat from Chris, and one question in particular stands out. Q: Should a company prospect and work with a client in the first year, knowing that it might be a loss lead relationship initially? The answer naturally is that each agency would have to determine what they could invest in such a relationship but that organic or traditional business development of this nature should be considered just that — an investment — and a proper budget should be set up with allocated resource.

Chris, hats off to you for the informative and fun Breakfast Bite. Thank you and we hope you enjoyed the delicious Soho House bacon butties.

A unique insight into client agency relationships – why they fail and how to reduce the risk

Speaker: Kerry Glazer, Chief Executive, AAR

• Date: Wednesday 8th October 2008
• Time: 08:30 – 10:00 hrs
• Venue: Soho House Members’ Club, 21 Old Compton Street London W1

Join your colleagues and friends over breakfast and hear Kerry’s thoughts on:

• Why things go wrong and how to avoid it. Achieving and maintaining successful relationships is of critical importance to both clients and agencies.
• For clients, appointing and working in a productive way with the right agency for their needs can fundamentally affect the success of their brand or service, and the communications that promote or support that brand or service.
• For agencies, forging successful and enduring relationships with their clients gives the agency stability, adds to their credentials and experience and, very often, creates circumstances whereby they can do their best work.

For clients, appointing and working in a productive way with the right agency for their needs can fundamentally affect the success of their brand or service, and the communications that promote or support that brand or service.

For agencies, forging successful and enduring relationships with their clients gives the agency stability, adds to their credentials and experience and, very often, creates circumstances whereby they can do their best work.

So why do so many client/agency relationships, which start out with the intention of achieving the above, go so wrong, so frequently?

In order to gain more knowledge and insight into this phenomenon, AAR has commissioned a significant piece of qualitative research to examine these relationships in depth. Hear the debrief on the findings of the research, together with some suggestions as to how you can substantially reduce the risk of relationship failure.

About Kerry

Kerry has worked in the communications agency business for the last two decades, with stints in at JWT, WCRS, Limbo (BBH) and Kendall Tarrant (now The Talent Business) during that period. She joined AAR (the UK’s leading agency search, selection and relationship consultancy) as Commercial Director in 1999, was promoted to Managing Director of the company in November 2000 and then to Chief Executive in February 2006. Kerry is a member of Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply, the Direct Marketing Society, the Marketing Society, Women in Advertising and Communications (Wacl) and sits also on the CIPS Specialist Knowledge Group for Marketing and the Support Committee for NABS.

Register now

Finding an agency from the client perspective is really difficult – harder than ever. But making a long term productive working relationship is even harder.
The aim in web design to get a straight line from start to finish. Clients try to find the right agency to work with.
Research from Jan 08, Asking about web design budgets. 29 clients with euros 465m in budgets. Of which 13 had projects >1m euros. None reported declining or flat growth and 21/27 had >20% growth. More than half bid on less than half of the RFPs they receive.

From the client’s point of view, it costs more, agencies are more selective and it’s more difficult to find the right one. When choosing a web design partner clients need to know how to ‘narrow the field’.
Ask about:
- Agency size, capacity and growth. (a growing agency is not necessarily going to be able to support you if growing at 40%pa).
- Capability and primary services offered. (trend is towards full service but everyone has strengths. Face these and publicise this).
- Industry expertise
- Region, language and cultural understanding. (global brands are concerned about global strategies on a web platform e.g. will a CMS with one structure work in Israel?)
Make your project look good in the brief! Spend the time to understand what is innovative, creative and exciting about your project.

The Foundations of a great client/agency relationship.

Ask where are we going together? Start the project with a clear outcome.
Top 3 client complaints about agencies:-
1 – the project results didn’t meet expectations (by the time you realise there’s a problem it’s far too late to do anything about it)
2 – The project experienced delays and went over budget. (ideas win business but operational problems lose it. Operational success keeps business).
3 – The agency was out of sync with the clients strategic requirements. (main causes client outgrowing the agency or client requirements change dramatically). No fault but the worst.

Top 3 agency complaints about clients:-

1 – Clients lacked an understanding of Web basics. (half new clients have never worked on a web project before. Education isn’t a budget item)
2 – clients did not dedicate enough time to the project. (clients don’t understand how long it takes to write 3 paragraphs of text in an ‘about us’ page. Getting 3 bosses to sign off on creative.)
3 – Clients didn’t invite Web agencies to the big table. (allow us to have a bigger conversation. Use our expertise, talent and knowledge but brief us deeply.)

Top 3 services offered to clients – design and/or business strategy – web design is one of the most important channels in the modern world. This impacts the rest of the business. Clients are foolish not to take advantage of this.

Get in synch – recommendations:-

- Communicate honestly and openly. Tell the whole story. (when a project goes wrong, tell the client early.
- Collaborate with your partner. Tell clients to think collaboration not delegation with the agency.
Codify your communications. The act of writing something down solidifies the relationship and cements it. Expectations come out into the open.
- Hire a dedicated, seasoned and senior project manager to facilitate your process. Junior project managers don’t know what can go wrong and have no experience of when things have gone wrong to bring to this project.
- Regularly align your strategy and your client or agency’s capabilities and vision. Make the effort to do this. Tell clients about other projects, new methods, staff, technologies you have in your team. Clients talk about new strategies.

Optimise your web design spend.

Impact of economic uncertainly on European Web design and development. 16/21 reported a zero or positive impact. Compare with client spend surveys 21% increase spend on design agency services reported for 2008. This is because 56% increase on web analytics is also expected.

Web analytics is about accountability / measurability and lowering risk. And so although more money will be spent on web but clients expect more from their spend (particularly if they transfer it from other parts of the advertising budget).

Website owners should spend on planning and project management. Money skimped here is likely to create risk.

Write the brief with the agency not at them. (overcomes the education issue).

Give experience its due. (clients request agencies who have worked in a recession before!)

Do some of the work yourself. (BUT, know what you are doing, make the time commitment and the work needs to be done as if the agency is driving the guidance)

Take responsibility for your own part of the project.
In summary,
COMMUNICATE
COLLABORATE
CODIFY

This is an exceptional opportunity to meet Craig Menzies, Forrester Research Senior Analyst and author of the Forrester Wave European Interactive Agencies Web Design Capabilities. I’m delighted to say that Craig recently joined BIMA as an Advisor to the Board

Please come along to hear and discuss with him his views on Web Design, Client / Agency Relationship Meltdown, and the Big Bad Recession.

Craig is investigating…

For Web site owners, finding the right interactive agency to take on their Web design project is hard enough, but creating a long-term healthy, happy and productive working relationship can be harder still. And on top of that, how do Web site owners and agencies get the best quality work while in the midst of an economic downturn?

• How can Web site owners and agencies get the best from their Web design projects?
• What are the common problems (and remedies) for client/agency relationship meltdowns?
• What do some of Europe’s top agencies think about how the economy will affect their businesses?

About Craig

Craig is based in London, and his research covers the design capabilities of interactive marketing agencies in Europe, and how prospective clients can work with design vendors to achieve their business goals. He also focuses on how user-centered, brand-conscious, research-driven Web design can have a positive impact on both the online customer experience and the bottom line.

Before joining Forrester, Craig was a senior technology consultant and the head of technology for Logan Tod & Co., head of technical and eCommerce for leading UK retailer I Want One of Those.com, head of database operations for one of Canada’s largest direct marketing firms, and a freelance Web designer and database marketing consultant

Event Date: 19th June 2008 | Time: 08:30 to 10:00 hrs
Venue: Bar 19/21, Soho House Club, 21 Old Compton Street London W1

Register now to avoid disappointment

At this Bite Ted will discuss how innocent drinks are falling forwards fast to gain real time research and insights whilst building a loyal culture of brand advocates online. Ted is open for questions.

Date: 15th April 2008
Time: 8.30am – 10.00am
Venue: Soho House Members’ Club
Address: 21 Old Compton Street, London W1D 5JJ
Please book early to avoid disappointment

Reservation can be made on the BIMA Web site

Ted Hunt is the Digital Manager over at Fruit Towers. There he oversees online for the innocent drinks family. At this Bite Ted will discuss how innocent drinks are falling forwards fast to gain real time research and insights whilst building a loyal culture of brand advocates online

The Channel 4 proposition depends heavily on the 16-24 demographic. They needed research to enable improved alignment with this audience. They want to plug into network culture and found three main ways that define each group, Music, Fashion and
The Qualitative research – Described 23 youth “Tribes”
there are three major groups: Indie Kids (into music); Trendys (into fashion), Townies (mainstream and no real passion).

The results of the research are up at www.uktribes.com [login: Agency, password: tribes45]. There is a mini site for each tribe group.
The Quantitative research - developed in order to court advertisers. C4 created an online game findyourtribe.co.uk and seeded this onto tribe websites using editorial. It asks tribe-defining questions. 64,000 players did the game and 50% agreed with the output ‘group’ it suggested for them.

It delivered tribal profiles for 250 brands including spend levels, technology usage and media preferences. I liked the questions “Nike – love it or loath it”. It really does define boundaries accurately – like any good golden question.

Some of the output was fabulous, including a ‘map’ of the UK terrestrial channel viewing, the ability for you to download brand maps for the tribe groups [on the tribes website above]. And that goths love Irn Bru (!).

They also found that this age group uses online and TV viewing simultaneously-= 29% SMS friends while watching a programme and of this group 75% are talking about the programme.

This knowledge is being used to shape comms plans and youth strategic thinking and programming commissions.

Ed works in New media and has a brief to “monetise” C4. He is working on Anytime, anywhere TV; moving C4 from broadcasting to engaging; and making it relevant. Overall aim is to bind advertising to content wherever it goes.

Programmes now all have official sites, related sites, bite sized downloads, podcasts. Recent campaign around “Skins” there were 60,000 MySpace friends, they seeded 3 x 10 mini episodes there and shared episode one 24 hours early on C4.com. It enabled the series to gain traction with key audiences.

New sites for C4
4OD.com – on demand video free content and to enable catch-up. Advertising funded. Gets 250,000 views per week.
E4.com – launched Jan 08 – for the social networking generation
Aplaceinthesunlive.com – property
4Sport.com – launching June 08 for the olympic sports (cycling, shooting)
4mations – animation website with Nick Park

Project Kangaroo is the latest new project, a joint venture with BBC Worldwide, ITV and C4. It provides aggregated content to a single site from each broadcaster, simple to use, advertising funded and will launch Autumn 2008.

Word of mouth is a much sought-after marketing effect but the reality is that it is hard to generate. Content can create the traction to start WOM, although it is often started with cynicism and humour or negative commentary.

The challenge for marketers is to find your audience, give them content and create a WOM effect. Knowing the motivations of your audience is key.

The audience is changing from a deferral society (where we defer to people in powerful positions) to a referral society where decisions are made collectively [which I also heard here]
The “rewards” from sharing help to enable our survival – base human desire.

Before starting on a WOM campaign, you need to understand your brand and its ‘permissions’. Is this an appropriate method for your brand. WOM works well when it can provide useful, entertaining or authentic experiences for the audience.

Case study of C4 youth ‘tribes’ – Townies, Trendies, Indie Kids. And The Guardian where they track 16 networks of friends.

This sort of research is useful because of the Hawthorne Effect when an audience engages in research the feel invested into the brand.

Knowing your influencers is important – again it varies by sector. Andrew used the acronym ACTION to identify key characteristics of influencers.

• Ahead in adoption (not necessarily early adopters)
• Connected
• Travelers – geography and digitally
• Information Hungry
• Vocal
• Exposure to Media – disproportionate

There are 6 types of connectors including owners, role models and category experts.

When using influencers, consider whether it is better to use an expert hub or a social hub to distribute your information.

By joining up influencers to the broader audience, this gives them social currency and the opportunity to strike a ’status bargain’ with the brand.

By delivering informally this allows the audience to re-shape the content to its own purpose.

Examples include Ikea Finland who found their furniture adoption was affected by snobbery in certain postal districts of Helsinki – so they built a ’snob map’ of the city which changed as more sales were made into each district. And Magic who used their ‘good mood’ branding to start the good mood film series online wiht user generated content. PS3 set up a blog just for hard core gamers 2Three Speech” which did not include PR messages. 250,000 monthly readers.

He also suggested that Net Promoter Score was the key ROI measure for these campaigns – but didn’t offer any metrics to prove the case.

Andrew’s slides are [coming... he's going to email them to me and then I'll post up the link later]
Rebecca Caroe
Here’s a photo of Andrew with BIMA organiser Charles Billot

See you at the Breakfast Bites on Tuesday.

The BIMA Breakfast Bites (B3!) is back in 2008. We’re working on completing the entire calendar for this year so you know what’s coming up but for now.

Andrew Crysell from Ramp Industry is going to kick off the first one. Ramp Industry have carried out extensive research and insight for the likes of Channel 4, The Guardian, River Island and Sony PlayStation, explores the significance of word-of-mouth, brand advocacy and the role played by content.

About Andrew Crysell

From a background in journalism, PR and digital media, Andy started Ramp Industry in 2003, specialising in research, strategy, content and awareness. With innovation and authenticity as watchwords, Ramp have produced groundbreaking work that understands and harnesses changing audience behaviour for brands like Sony PlayStation, Channel 4, The Guardian, Topshop/Topman, Ikea, River Island and Twentieth Century Fox.

• Date 18th Mar 2008

• Time 08:30 – 10:00 hrs

• Price £35.25 [Buy]

• Member Price £23.50 [Buy]

• Venue Soho House Members’ Club

• Address 21 Old Compton Street London W1D 5JJ

BIMA Breakfast Bites – The Three Series
Following this talk we will then be hosting two more in this series of three:

2) Guest Speaker Stephanie Matthews from Channel 4 on their extensive research on UK Tribes

3) Guest Speaker Ted Hunt, Digital Manager from the famous innocent drinks brand. He will talk about how innocent have put their realtime research and insights into practice.

BIMA Breakfast Bites is an education series from BIMA. These are intimate gatherings that will showcase industry specialists speaking on the most prevalent issues of the day. Bites will run every four to six weeks and will be a place to begin your thinking on a topic, facilitate easy networking and launch you into your day with some new ideas and insights.

Register now

The next bite has not yet been scheduled but is likely to be in January.

Click To Play

Download the video now so you can view it on your iPod(9.0 MB)

Yesterday’s Breakfast Bite went very well, with over 40 people nibbling on sausage sandwiches and drinking smoothies whilst listening to Damien Mulley talk about how companies use social networks to raise their profile and make more money.

Damien, a very well respected influencer in Ireland, flew over especially for the event, for which I’m extremely thankful. He has kindly agreed to publish a summary of his talk on this blog, so I won’t go into any detail.

Below is a list of attendees who registered. It’s quite possible that one or two didn’t make it, but I’m confident we were lucky enough to have almost all of them in attendance.

If I’ve included your name when I shouldn’t have, or missed you altogether, please let me know and I’ll update the post accordingly.

- Juliet Blackburn, Head of Digital, AAR
- Merran Morton, Account Director, Agency.com
- Jez Jowett, Managaing Partner, Agency.com
- David King, Director, EMEA, APCO Online
- Paul Walsh, Chair, BIMA & CEO, Segala (host)
- Scott Gallacher, BSkyB
- Paul Glossop, Head of Digital, Cake Media
- Caroline Peach, HMV Buz Development Manager, Cake Media
- Syd Nadim, Clock
- Scott Rutherford, Technical Architect, Cominded
- Colm Brophy, User Experience Architect, Conchango
- David Armstrong, DCMS
- Ross Taylor, MD, DigitalTMW
- Ed Lamb, Digital Client Partner, DigitalTMW
- Edward Beard, Sr. Analyst, Account Planning, Digitas
- Victoria Ellis, Assoc Director, Account Planning, Digitas
- Chiara Sambonet, Analyst, Account Planning, Digitas
- Anthony Robb John, MD, EasyGroupIP, Easy Group IP
- Cara Mannion, EHSBrann
- Natasha Allen, EHSBrann
- Rachael Castell, Interactive Producer, English National Opera
- Eric Forward, Founder, Forward Training Ltd.
- Suzanne Linton, MD & Founder, Freestyle Interactive
- Julie Lane, Sales Director, LBi
- Will Rolt, Biz Dev Manager, LBi
- Hal Robinson, Director, Founder, Librios
- Mariam Cook, Project Manager, Mariam Cook
- Alastair Duncan, CEO, MRM Worldwide
- Damien Mulley, Publisher, mulley.net (Speaker)
- Anthony Cohen, CEO, Founder, MyGeni
- Mrs O.J.McGaw, Consultant, OJ McGaw
- Phil Whitehouse, Community Advocate, Osmosoft
- Brian Hoadley, MD, Founder, PhunQube.com
- Doha Marzouk, Head of Innovation, Reuters
- Charles Billot, Marketing Director, Soup
- Ellie Kaye, Marketing Manager, Soup
- Kate.Taylor, New Business Account Manager, Soup
- Rax Lakhani, Social Media Director, Splendid Communications
- Felix Velarde, MD, Founder, Underwired
- Ellie Beasley, Planner, Underwired
- Holly Scothern, Zubka

Where
Soho House, Private Members Club
21 Old Compton Street
London, England W1D 5JJ

When
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
08:30am – 10:00am

How much
Members £23.50
Non-members £35.25

About the event

A brisk walk though the social networking jungle with Damien Mulley as your guide. He’ll be showing you the different species of social networks out there – ones to use, ones to avoid and ones to watch.

He’ll also give business cases for using social networks like how some businesses have made useful contacts, shared information and even made cold hard cash from the most hyped technology area in the past few years. All that and pokes as well!

Damien is flying over from Cork, Ireland specifically for this event!

About Damien

Damien Mulley is a technical writer in an IT company in Cork. He is also the organiser of the Irish Blog Awards, writes a technology column for the Sunday Tribune, is the former chairman of broadband lobby group IrelandOffline and talks to organisations and enterprises about technology trends and social media.

About the BIMA Breakfast Bites

BIMA Breakfast Bites (B3!) is the new educational series from BIMA. This series of intimate gatherings will showcase an industry specialist’s Top Ten Tips on the most prevalent issue of the day.

The bites series, which will run every four to six weeks, will be a place to begin your thinking on a topic, to facilitate easy networking and to launch you into your day with some new ideas and sparky insights.

Tickets are now on sale on the BIMA Web site so book now to avoid disappointment.

Book now

Hold on to your bacon sandwiches!

Register now or forever be disappointed. The Facebook Debate might be sold out but you still have until the end of today, to register for our first Breakfast Bite (held this Friday). We’ve already got at least 35 very cool people coming. I’m blogging about it in case you didn’t get an email from Janice, or pick up on my Twitter or Facebook pages.

If you’ve read about Mircosoft and Stormhoek in the Financial Times recently you’ll want to quiz Steve Clayton about his Blue Monster. Steve is of course, the geek in disguise working for Microsoft by day and a BIMA Executive by night.

BIMA Breakfast Bites (B3!) is the new educational series from BIMA. This series of intimate gatherings will showcase an industry specialist’s Top Ten Tips on the most prevalent issue of the day.

The bites series, which will run every four to six weeks, will be a place to begin your thinking on a topic, to facilitate easy networking and to launch you into your day with some new ideas and sparky insights.

Intruders.tv will be following the series so you can go back to the discussion as and when you want to. Not bad for the price of a continental breakfast, eh?

Read more about Steve Clayton or simply register now to attend on Friday. Hugh MacLeod and Tom Raftery will be our guest speakers for the remaining two episodes in the Web 2.0 series.

This is it, our long awaited Breakfast Bites are here. We can now confirm our inaugural gathering in London village.

What are the benefits?

• Education. If your a stake holder within the Interactive industry, such as a client, technology provider, agency or freelancer, we will help you better understand the new tools and techniques that become available in the Interactive world we live in. That is, ‘how do you make money from this stuff?’ and ‘how do you raise the profile of our brand?’
• Networking. Each event will facilitate easy networking with people you may wish to do business with.
• Intruders.tv will be following the series so you can go back to the discussion as and when you want to. They will also capture interviews with the cool and creative, so this is a unique opportunity to get noticed.

Our first ’series’ will focus on Web 2.0. Our invited experts will talk about how to embrace Web 2.0 so that you can better understand what it means for you and your business.

The series is broken into 3 episodes so that you can digest each bite and then put it into practice before attending the next.

First up with his ‘10 Top Tips‘ is Steve Clayton. Steve is CTO of Microsoft’s UK Partner Group and is in fact, a member of the BIMA Executive team. Steve will cover blogging and how Microsoft uses it in the real world. We’ll provide more information when Steve stops… eh, blogging!

Quite a few people have already tried to register for this event so I highly recommend registering now to avoid disappointment!

When
21st September 2007, 08:00 – 10:00

Where
Roof Deck Bar – Soho House Private Members’ Club

How much
Members = £23.50 [Register], Non-Members = £52.83 [Register]

Visit the BIMA Web site to register or read more about Steve.

[Update] I should have added that there are 50 tickets available.

The bites series, which will run every four to six weeks, will be a place to begin your thinking on a topic, to facilitate easy networking and to launch you into your day with some new ideas and sparky insights.

Intruders.tv will be following the series so you can go back to the discussion as and when you want to.

The first series is now set to go, with confirmed venue, speakers and dates. The last bit of the puzzle is price. What would you be willing to pay for Breakfast Bites? Remember, you’re not just paying for bacon butties. You’re paying for the exclusive networking opportunity and the chance to learn how to make money or simply raise the profile of your brand, by adopting new and exciting tools and techniques.

Please feel free to comment here, or answer our question on Facebook.

We now have confirmed dates in the diary and Soho House will be the venue. Numbers will be strictly confined to keep the educational gatherings intimate, enabling you to also share business cards with everyone else. You will need to be quick with a mouse in order to secure your place though, so fingers on the button.

Bribes are more than welcome as we enter ‘Industry Association 2.0′. I can be easily bought with copious amounts of green paper, or bottles of Corona, whichever currency you can get your hands on.

Each series will be made up of 3 episodes. Each episode will have an invited expert to give ‘10 Top Tips’. Web 2.0 is first on the agenda, covering Blogging, Twitter and Social Media (possibly Facebook).

More news soon!!

I should know about the networking side of things, I’m a networking slut of late – as seen on Channel 4 news recently. So, I’d like to ensure BIMA is at the heart of the hot collaboration that’s hitting London village by storm, whilst ensuring other parts of the country benefit from equally compelling opportunities to meet likeminded people and potential partners/clients.

Julie Lane, European Sales and Marketing Director for Lbi (one of the biggest agencies in Europe) and Executive of BIMA, is our networking events group Chair. We’re holding our first meeting this evening in a private club called Hedges and Butler to discuss potential speakers, audiences and for the first time ever, potential sponsors.

Our first partnership for events will be with Internet People. We’ve supported Robert Loch’s last two Creative Out events which were very successful and attracted great numbers from BIMA membership. To further cement the relationship, whilst maximising the full potential of our contacts list, we are about to launch a brand new monthly networking event. This one in particular is to get the crème de le crème of the industry together in a private club to mingle over a glass (or many) of wine.

• So, get in touch if you’d like to be a speaker, or you would like to make a recommendation.
• If you have some ideas about potential events that you think are missing in the industry please let me know and I’ll take it to the team.
• If you’d like to raise your brand awareness through sponsorship amongst agencies and/or brands then get in touch for advanced notification of upcoming events.