Pod1 Blog

Pod1 have been engaged by Cushman & Wakefield, the world’s largest privately held real estate services firm, to develop an online marketing strategy to support their service lines in achieving their business objectives across their global network.

The project’s prime aims are therefore to further raise awareness of the Cushman & Wakefield brand, to help increase acquisition of client prospects, to support sales and to increase the retention of existing clients.

This will be achieved through a combination of online CRM (Customer Relationship Management), email marketing and website marketing to encompass the global business, with Pod1 taking responsibility for everything from the strategic planning process through to the final implementation.

Founded by J. Clydesdale Cushman and Bernard Wakefield as a property management company in New York City in 1917, Cushman & Wakefield is now the world’s largest privately held real estate services firm with over 10,000 employees and 145 offices in 46 countries around the world.

Pod1 have been engaged by Cushman & Wakefield, the world’s largest privately held real estate services firm, to develop an online marketing strategy to support their service lines in achieving their business objectives across their global network.

The project’s prime aims are therefore to further raise awareness of the Cushman & Wakefield brand, to help increase acquisition of client prospects, to support sales and to increase the retention of existing clients.

This will be achieved through a combination of online CRM (Customer Relationship Management), email marketing and website marketing to encompass the global business, with Pod1 taking responsibility for everything from the strategic planning process through to the final implementation.

Founded by J. Clydesdale Cushman and Bernard Wakefield as a property management company in New York City in 1917, Cushman & Wakefield is now the world’s largest privately held real estate services firm with over 15,000 employees and 221 offices in 58 countries around the world.

Awesome blog entry from the Co-Founder of Panic Inc, detailing how Japan is shifting from using URLs on adverts, to showing people the search terms they should use in their favourite search engines.

It makes sense, right? All the good domain names are gone. Getting people to a specific page in a big site is difficult (who’s going to write down anything after the first slash?). And, most tellingly, I see increasingly more users already inadvertently put complete domain names like “gmail” and “netflix” into the Search box of their browsers out of habit — and it doesn’t even register that Google pops up and they have to click to get to their destination.

See the full post here

Recently I was searching for certain big brands on Google and I started finding a new feature in the results, which Google has quietly slipped in there. It’s a search box that site beneath the site links in some brand name searches. I first saw it on results for Virgin Holidays (One of Pod1’s favourite clients), but there seem to be a few other sites, such as Audi which also have this box.

The search box apparently allows you to search the site without needing to go to it first. This saved a fair bit of time, especially with graphics heavy sites that take forever to load. I managed to get to the page I wanted in about half the usual amount of time.

The first question I heard when I asked other people about it was ‘How do I get that for my site?’ The answer, of course, was ‘I don’t know,’ a very common problem when it comes to Google and natural search. The inevitable next question is ‘ Will it affect natural search rankings?’, however I don’t think this will be the case.

As far as I can see the main factor in whether a site is ‘blessed’ with one of these boxes seems to be the amount of searches that take place on a site. Unfortunately, this is not a good reflection on site structure and navigation. While I wish all my clients had a search box like Virgin Holidays, I can help feeling proud that visitors don’t have to use the search box to find the page they want.

As the search box becomes as standard as site links have become now, the benefits and drawbacks of it will become more apparent. For the moment though it’s just something cool to play with, a sign that Google is still trying to be innovative on some level.

Pod1 has just launched the French version of the micro site for the Kenwood kMix range which uses 3D rendering and animated images so users can see the products from any angle.

The site was originally launched in conjunction with an online competition and promoted using a banner campaign with ads placed on BBC food, the independent, the guardian, good house keeping and easy living.

The kMix site was designed to convey both the elegance of the design and the durability that has come to be associated with the Kenwood brand. Each of the products is associated with a different quality, Style, Design, Iconic & Harmony, while the images are fully animated in 3D to show each one off in full detail.

As an added incentive each appliance also comes with its very own recipe recommendation for inspiration.

Kenwood has a well deserved reputation for creating quality kitchen appliances to suit every household and every kitchen need since 1947. This new range continues this tradition and enjoys the benefits of 60 years experience partnered with the most cutting edge design principles.

Thursday 13^th March saw the 5^th anniversary of the prestigious, invitation only, Media Momentum Awards organised by investment bank GP Bullhound at Sketch restaurant in London. The awards were conceived to recognise both the best known and up and coming in the digital media industry by selecting just five winners from an elite pool of fifty.

This year Pod1 was selected as the featured digital agency of the year and as such we were responsible for the visuals and the evening’s presentation.

According to the panel "Competition was fierce this year, but ultimately everyone involved in the awards is recognised by the industry as someone to watch", the committee was made up of representatives from Google, Olswang and 3i amongst others.

The results for the five individual categories were; Fastest Growing Company ( winner – Mobile Interactive Group ) Vision and Future Growth Potential ( winner – YouGov ) Best Management ( winner – The Search Works ) Best Execution ( winner – Net-a-Porter ) Uniqueness Of Offering ( winner – Vibrant Media ) Digital Media Personality Of The Year ( winner – James Murdoch ) and Judges Award ( winner – YouGov ).

As well as the best in category prizes, the top 50 companies are also arranged into a league table based on revenue generated over the preceding two years with Pod1 coming 15^th out of 50 with a growth of 351.7% .

Manish Madhvani, Co-founder and Partner of GP Bullhound, said: "Media Momentum recognises the hottest, fastest growing digital media businesses in the UK.  We recognise the best of the best – wherever they are in the UK and whatever aspect of digital media they’re involved in."

As a complete newbie to the SES events I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect but I was hoping this would be an informative day out. I guess I was looking for a combination of some ‘top tips’ and some ‘myth busting’.

Let just say I wasn’t disappointed. I’ve read a few other posts about the event, some more positive than others, and if you were expecting a trade show and exhibition you’d be disappointed but if you were looking for a top notch informative seminar then this would be right up your street.

I started the day with the keynote presentation “The Changing Search World”, which was as good a place to start a day of SEOism as any.

The first problem arose trying to decide which of the presentations to attend, so after much deliberation I chose the following sessions;

News Search & SEO - This was a very useful session for me and I picked up lots of tips as well as reinforcing what I already new with good presentations from Greg Jarboe, Lee Odden and Tim Gibbon.

Blog & Feed Search SEO – This wasn’t quite as relevant for my clients but triggered a couple of good ideas we can use like a Widget for e-shop clients that notifies users of the item of the day, new stock & sales items.

Podcasts & Video SEO – Some interesting stuff here like Google only indexes videos if they have been posted on sites like You Tube, Metacafe etc. letting user do the hard work for them by applying the tags & descriptions.

Balancing Organic & Paid Listings – Paid V’s Natural Search, the age old question PPC or SEO (well not that old as neither have been around for long). The answer DO BOTH;-)

Linking Strategies – This was tricky how do you turn down the opportunity to listen and hopefully learn from some of the industries big dogs but it did clash with the new kid on the block Social Search Overview. In the end the allure of the perfect linking strategy won me over, and on reflection it was the right choice as the nice people at SES have put all the presentations online (including all the ones I missed) http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/london/presentations.html.

So in summary a great day out informative and well worth a look, I’ll definitely be there again next year.

   Pod1 were chosen as the featured agency for GP Bullhound (Media Momentum) to create the visual installation the awards.

The event yesterday was at Sketch restaurant in the West End, so we took full advanatage of the fantastic venue by using bold liquid-effect animation that covered all four walls of the Gallery. That, combined with some classic tunes made the night a memorable one for everyone!
S x

For the April edition of .Net Magazine, the founder of Pod1, Fadi Shuman, was invited to contribute an article focusing on ecommerce. The article provided the Pod1 viewpoint of the current status and future direction of ecommerce. There is also a particular focus on what aspects offline retailers need to evaluate when setting up a successful ecommerce shop.

"Second generation ecommerce sites are much more design-led, with a focus on how the user interacts with the site and their journey to purchase."

Fadi Shuman also discussed how this journey to purchase is made easier with a reduction in the number of clicks a visitor has to make to complete the checkout process. In order to utilise this knowledge, Pod1 developed the innovative single page checkout.

The article also discussed the guidelines that Pod1 adheres to when designing and developing an ecommerce site. While some guidelines appear to be purely common sense, such ensuring the website accurately reflects the brand, they can often be a problem area for ecommerce websites. These guidelines have helped to deliver a number of successful ecommerce sites, including those of Kurt Geiger and Links of London.

For the April edition of .Net Magazine, the founder of Pod1, Fadi Shuman, was invited to contribute an article focusing on ecommerce. The article provided the Pod1 viewpoint of the current status and future direction of ecommerce. There is also a particular focus on what aspects offline retailers need to evaluate when setting up a successful ecommerce shop.

"Second generation ecommerce sites are much more design-led, with a focus on how the user interacts with the site and their journey to purchase."

Fadi Shuman also discussed how this journey to purchase is made easier with a reduction in the number of clicks a visitor has to make to complete the checkout process. In order to utilise this knowledge, Pod1 developed the innovative single page checkout.

The article also discussed the guidelines that Pod1 adheres to when designing and developing an ecommerce site. While some guidelines appear to be purely common sense, such ensuring the website accurately reflects the brand, they can often be a problem area for ecommerce websites. These guidelines have helped to deliver a number of successful ecommerce sites, including those of Kurt Geiger and Links of London.