There is no doubt that the last few months have been tough and difficult on everyone. We, like many in our industry have felt the pinch and had contracts and clients have to pause activity as a result of the global crisis afoot.
Here at Colehouse, we have been incredibly lucky over the last quarter in that we have not had to lay anyone off and been fortunate enough to have grown our client base and team during the period. We have been able to continue business as usual, with the slight change of working remotely and still being able to offer services, unwavering in quality, to our amazing clients.
Wherever possible, we have done our best to help our existing clients tweak and change aspects of their ideas to help them too find new ways of working and continue to run their business during these uncertain times and absence of face-to-face contact. We have helped provide insight on how to convert to digital, and helped promote each event that turned virtual for 2020, alongside every necessary change that has been made.
Clients and Campaigns
Flat Caps Coffee
With the unprecedented nationwide shutdown of the hospitality industry due to the outbreak of coronavirus, our long term client Flat Caps Coffee knew they needed to make quick changes to their business model in order to stay connected with customers and keep their presence alive in preparation for when restrictions eventually lifted.
During the nationwide lockdown, we worked with Flat Caps to implement a full website redevelopment, revamping creatively and structurally to enhance Flat Caps’ existing website and incorporating new design ideas to increase online sales, website traffic and basket value, creating an entirely new revenue stream.
We were able to create a seamless shopping experience for Flat Caps’ online customers to enjoy, and shifted the focus of the website to being predominantly an online store, which provided visitors with useful information of how to find the physical store, important updates and the all important food and drinks menu, ready for the stores reopening.
Vocabulary Ninja
Vocabulary Ninja is a fantastic provider in high-quality teaching and learning resources which are extremely helpful for teachers and homeschoolers! Promoting the importance of vocabulary within the modern education curriculum, whilst equipping schools with the strategies, resources and most importantly, the mind-set to make vocabulary a priority in schools.
Our rebrand and relaunch was devastatingly effective helping increase sales 45x as well as many other impressive statistics. Most importantly the customer feedback so far has really touched us. We have exciting plans for global expansion of resource offerings and best-selling Bloomsbury Kids books, as well as new offerings of which we’re excited to share (keep your eyes peeled!).
The Porky Pint
A recent pub acquisition lead us into the F&B world. The Porky Pint is one of Teessides hidden gems of a pub. It is a lovely traditional real ale bar located in Billingham that offers a warm, friendly atmosphere to share a drink with family and friends and enjoy some amazing food! We have been working closely with them on their print design for all new branded menus and coasters, assisting with social media posts, as well as helping them to amp up their website.
With hospitality reopening after the nationwide lockdown, it was important for The Porky Pint to have systems in place to make their reopening as safe as possible for guests. With this in mind, we helped to implement a booking system onto their website, making it really easy for guests to make a table reservation and feel reassured eating and drinking out, knowing they would have their own allocated area.
Hidebound
Hidebound are an incredible business with such an amazing back story – for over 25 years handcrafting the most amazing leather goods. With Hidebound, we first visited their workshop to hold their products and do an initial photo and video shoot with their products to create an awareness video about their brand. After the first shoot, we then went back with full photography set up to shoot their products in a studio setting for purposes of still ads and more assets for the videos. Furthermore, we created more stylistic adverts really honing in on their exciting features in major films and TV shows. With the awareness videos and the stylistic ads, we were able to put these adverts in front of fans of certain TV shows and films and also historical fans too, leading to conversions.
Freshly Baked London
Our most recent client onboarding is the wonderful Freshly Baked London! They are the original scented self tan indie brand, offering a range of luxurious self tanning mousses in 7 different scents, made with natural ingredients, vitamin infused, vegan and UK made. We will be soon launching an amazing campaign with them in order to help increase their sales and raise their brand awareness as a whole.
Events Taking A New Shape
When the global pandemic caused the world to go into lockdown, there was no doubt that events were going to have to take a new approach, which soon led to most 2020 events resorting to going virtual. We have had the pleasure of working closely with Bring It On North East, Dynamo & Dynamites, #CyberFest and are back for another year with Build IT Right!
Bring It On NE is a yearly event in the North East for future engineers. It allows the students of today to gain more insights into engineering from all the amazing companies that are at the exhibition. However, in March this year, they had to make the difficult decision to cancel the 2020 exhibition due to the coronavirus. Nevertheless, they have been able to introduce Virtual Bring It On NE, which allows students to watch videos each week from different engineering companies and gain an insight of how their engineers got into engineering too! We have had the great opportunity of taking control of their social accounts, creating content, promoting the online event, as well as learning more about engineering from each of the videos!
Recently, we were asked to work with Dynamo on their Dynamo Conference and as we speak, their Dynamites Virtual Awards ceremony on a fully specced paid media campaign to help with awareness, award nominations, and most importantly to celebrate the North East technology scene.
We’ve also been involved in promoting #CyberFest 2020 for the first time, as we have seen a huge appetite to find out more about the North East’s premier infosec event.
Build IT Right has announced it’s gone fully digital and we’re super proud to be back working with them on that again, as they go ahead with world class speakers such as Liz Keogh from Lunivore Limited and Anne-Marie Imafidon from Stemettes.
All of this work has been a result of our ongoing partner relationship with BeaconHouse Events, who we personally think deserve a massive shout out for their innovation and ‘never say die’ attitude throughout the most turbulent time for the conference and live events industry.
New Starters
Throughout the whole madness of the coronavirus, we have been lucky enough to recruit three new team members. Elycia joined right at the beginning of lockdown as a Digital Marketing Executive while continuing her studies at Teesside University where she is going into her final year of a Marketing Degree, gaining valuable experience and helping…
Harry recently joined the team as a Junior Designer, following roles at Triads and most recently Venator. He has really hit the ground running, assisting in editing video promos and advertising content for our clients, as well as delivering incredible photoshoots and designing print media.
Alina joined us at the beginning of September and has been a great asset to the team already in the month she has been here. She is currently completing her apprenticeship in Software Development with us and has enjoyed getting to know the ins and out of the role whilst learning at the same time!
Although the last few months have been difficult to say the least, we can’t wait to see what the future has in store for us and we can’t wait to continue working with existing clients and some new!
