Blog
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Top 10 creative tips for employee engagement
Gallagher recently released its annual ‘State of the Sector’ survey on what’s trending in internal comms (IC) and employee engagement. It understandably reported that 2020 had been a year like no other…24th March 2021 -
Heartfelt internal communications
Ever since Boris announced his roadmap out of lockdown, HR departments and internal comms teams have been considering the best ways to transition people back to the workplace or adopt more permanent…
24th March 2021 -
Much more than free lunches!
Premier League (PL) players and their clubs often get a bad rap. However, there’s few people who wouldn’t acknowledge Marcus Rashford’s incredible role in alleviating child food poverty. And while his efforts…
24th March 2021 -
90 minutes could change your thinking
On March 31, our very own Lucy Swanston will be hosting the Data Marketing Association’s (DMA) virtual panel discussion on Marketing Automation in Print. Hear from tech providers, agencies and brands on…24th March 2021 -
Sounds good on paper
Direct mail’s importance and impact grew during Covid. It’s no surprise then that 41%* of businesses plan to increase spend on ad mail this year. Gotta Love Paper®! Mail remains important because…15th March 2021 -
Webinar: How do global brands manage internal comms?
We’re hoping to host a live Q&A session in early 2021 with Gail Roberts, Global Internal Communications and Engagement Manager at Costa Coffee. Hear what lessons she has learnt in her decade…
23rd December 2020 -
Marketing in 2021; EPIC predictions
I was reading The Drum recently where Samuel Scott reflected on the three biggest media trends of 2020; increased TV viewing, a US decline in smartphone usage, and cinema advertising revenue down…
18th December 2020 -
Print vs digital; the gloves were off
In November, I tuned in to watch industry giants debate if ‘digital communication is more important than ever in building brands’. It was a topic being discussed by the Debating Group, which…
15th December 2020 -
It’s the perfect storm for doordrops
With much of the population still staying close to home there’s never been a better time to use highly targeted doordrops to increase your business. We’ve worked on three such campaigns since…
25th September 2020 -
Maintaining the perfect blend
What’s it about? Costa Coffee has over 3,800 coffee shops in 32 countries. Its Essex Roastery is one of Europe’s largest, producing 45,000 tonnes of coffee a year. And for 10 consecutive…
22nd September 2020 -
The secrets to a LTR; you could win an Amazon voucher!
I read recently that the Obamas are celebrating their 28th wedding anniversary and Michelle produced a podcast to mark it by sharing her secrets to a long-term relationship (LTR). One of the…
18th September 2020 -
The perfect diet for gaining pounds: a case study on Natural Animal Nutrition
What’s it about When the owner of Northants-based Natural Animal Nutrition (NAN) made healthier changes to her own diet, she was inspired to investigate what she fed her dogs, which proved the…
9th September 2020 -
Managing collateral remotely
Before Covid-19, your salespeople could just pop over to marketing and ask them to order them some product leaflets to send out to prospects or give to distributors or dealerships. Or volunteers…
4th September 2020 -
Marketing through Covid-19; what have we learnt?
Hmm, where do you start with this one? Best I start with my own experience. When the crisis hit, I don’t think I was alone in that pretty much all of us…
23rd July 2020 -
Internal comms come to the fore!
The Institute of Internal Communications (IoIC) recently reported that 71%* of its profession had seen significant increase in its workload and capacity during the Covid-19 crisis. No real surprises there! What did…
19th July 2020 -
Keep calm & communicate
Back in April we created and launched our ‘Keep calm and communicate’ hub. It was a site where businesses and communities could access, share, personalise or print official Government and WHO public…
2nd June 2020 -
Uniting church communities; a case study on The Churches Conservation Trust
What’s it about? National charity, The Churches Conservation Trust, has saved over 350 churches from falling into disrepair. Without donations, and the support of over 1750 volunteers, many of these irreplaceable examples…
15th May 2020 -
Nutshell Creative and Vpress launch ‘Keep calm and communicate’
Nutshell Creative, have risen to the United Nation’s (UN’s) open call to creatives to help disseminate reliable public health messages about Covid-19. We have developed an easy to use online resource where…
22nd April 2020 -
Vividness is the key to influencing customers
I read a very interesting article recently about the potential comeback of catalogues in increasing uplift in ecommerce sales. Can you remember the joy you felt when those huge tomes landed on…
6th March 2020 -
How Tech has Turbo Charged “Traditional” Print
In this fifth blog in my Power of Print series, we will start to examine some of the key technological advances that have transformed the print industry. Some such advances have led…
16th July 2019 -
Print Touches our Hearts
In this fourth article in my Power of Print series, we are going to explore the importance of tactility in an increasingly digital world. Touch is the first sense we develop as…
15th June 2019 -
Print in Our Homes, Hearts and Minds
In the third article in my Power of Print series, I am going to delve a little more deeply into our relationship with print. A series of sophisticated studies over recent years…
15th May 2019 -
Trust Me, I’m in Print
Following on from my last article, An Oasis of Calm in a World of Scrolling, today I will start to examine what is driving print’s growing effectiveness in our digital economy. This…
8th April 2019 -
An Oasis of Calm in a World of Scrolling
There is a lot of chatter in our industry about the resurgence of print marketing, painting a picture of a David and Goliath-like fight back against the all-powerful digital marketing. Following a…
25th March 2019 -
Talking Bout My Generation
One of my favourite television moments comes from The Simpsons. There is an episode where Bart and Lisa explain to Homer that they are MTV generation X and feel neither highs nor…
10th February 2019 -
The role of print in ‘judging books by covers’
The old saying of ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ is used in common parlance to mean don’t form an opinion based on someone or something’s appearance. This old idiom came…
17th December 2018 -
One man’s junk is another man’s treasure
I was listening to the radio the other week when Kylie Minogue was being interviewed about her new ‘Golden’ album and she revealed it had also been released on a limited edition…
24th April 2018 -
Look for the pain, look for the gain
As we hurtle towards March, fed on a TV diet of How to Lose Weight Well and mailings of gym memberships and ‘miracle’ weight loss solutions, I have sickening ennui of the…
5th February 2018 -
Too good to be forgotten
At the end of last year there was just one point separating us from taking number one slot in the local pub’s music quiz. But we lost it because we didn’t remember…
8th January 2018 -
The proof of the pudding…
I confess that when it comes to Christmas pudding I don’t make my own, I buy one! But with a huge choice out there, I like to find something ‘tried and tasted’…
21st December 2017 -
What’s the Price of Loyalty?
I got my car insurance renewal last month and it was higher than the previous year. So, I did what we’re all actively encouraged to do; I used comparison sites to ‘go…
21st September 2017 -
Oldschool Rules; a tale of spare ribs and data protection
I was at a barbecue recently enjoying some spare ribs when someone asked if we should be eating pork if there isn’t an ‘R’ in the month. Much debate ensued to the…
27th June 2017 -
A Good Direct Mail Harvest
Seeding thoughts for a good DM harvest Cometh the Spring, cometh a fresh crop of plant catalogues through your letterbox. And, in truth, I fall for it every year, bewitched by the…
19th April 2017 -
Data Spring Cleaning; don’t just sweep it under the carpet
I was listening to the Chris Evans breakfast show the other week when he mentioned it was National Spring Cleaning Week. Who knew? I was intrigued, and looked at the website to…
21st March 2017 -
Just Being Sociable
What would us Brits talk about if we didn’t have our rubbish weather? Forgiving the pun but it’s a real ice-breaker if you’re stood next to a complete stranger and want to…
21st February 2017 -
Avoiding ‘Fail Friday’ – Marketing Resolutions
I was listening to the radio the other week and heard the announcer say that a lot of new year’s resolutions are already broken by January 8th. But apparently it’s the third…
24th January 2017 -
Personalisation is for life, not just for Christmas!
I remember reading a Post Office survey about Christmas that claimed two thirds of us receive presents we don’t like but are too polite to ask for them to be exchanged for…
8th December 2016 -
Champagne or prosecco?
I was reading a quote the other day attributed to the inspirational speaker Simon D Campbell, which read: “Success is like a bank account…before making a withdrawal you must first pay in;…
8th November 2016 -
The Gentle Touch
We are, as you may have noticed, very big on personalisation here at Nutshell Creative. This is because it works. If you take a quick look through our portfolio you will see…
27th September 2016 -
Walking in different shoes
I want to start this article with a question – How many genuinely unique products or services do you, as a customer actually buy? I am not talking about small, individual, USP…
10th August 2016 -
Glug And The Creative
A few weeks ago we let Tony & Tash, a couple of our creative types, out of the office to attend the Glug vs. The Tech off – Creatives vs. Coders event.…
26th July 2016 -
Not Falling Backwards
You are probably familiar with the trust fall exercise where someone closes their eyes and drops backwards, hoping someone will catch them. The thing about trust though is that it’s rarely as…
6th June 2016 -
What Does Word Of Mouth Actually Mean
This is a sort of two-part article following from a recent general discussion about advocacy marketing. If you haven’t read the previous one (and you are not familiar with the notion of…
25th April 2016 -
Quality talks but only if someone is listening – Advocacy and your brand
I am currently binge watching a TV show on Netflix. The reason I started watching it was because a friend suggested it to me. It’s an example of the most basic form…
16th April 2016 -
Beginning, middle, end. What actually is cross-media marketing?
We all need order and structure in our communication. If you want proof, ask a four-year-old to tell you a story. They will probably start ‘Once up a time…’ after that, of…
11th March 2016 -
A Big Pat on the Back – Business Excellence Awards ’16
You know when you get out of bed in the morning on a cold winters day, and you look out of the window at the grey sky and beating rain? There is…
15th February 2016 -
Getting on our bikes – A local business marketing case study (pt 2)
In any marketing campaign, there is a tipping point. It’s a sort of bridge between the concepts, themes and ideas, and the practical application of the design in the real world. I…
18th January 2016 -
Getting on our bikes – A local business marketing case study (pt 1)
We ran an article recently about how we had decided we could bring big business marketing approaches to small business environments – and of course budgets. Just quickly for context, here at…
14th January 2016 -
Fluffy vs Misfortune
So Thursday was the day we’d decided to get the Christmas decorations out the office loft. Unbeknownst to me, as I’m 6ft 3, I’d automatically been selected to have the honor of…
16th December 2015 -
Cooking up a Storm – The Committee
Last weekend I decided to pay a long awaited visit to my parents. Having not been there in nearly a month (which I knew I was going to get it in the…
19th November 2015 -
Talking but Not Screaming – Five Tips For Marketing Your Small Business
When you run a business, you are often pulled in several different directions at once. Despite your best efforts, things seem to go from zero to a hundred miles an hour in…
18th September 2015 -
How ‘Small’ Business Can Do ‘Big’ Marketing.
We have been very successful here at Nutshell Creative. We work with some pretty big names, and of course we are very proud of our client list because that is the best…
11th August 2015 -
The Retail Rapids – How effective data utilisation can help retail through turbulent waters
Anyone who works in retail will tell that that the industry has undergone a huge change in a relatively short space of time. As a result, the once seemingly unassailable dominance of…
27th July 2015 -
Transform your customers’ shopping experience forever with beacons and stickers
Have you noticed how an increasing number of customers are using their devices in-store to research and compare products? Do you fear that you may be losing out on sales and marketing…
30th June 2015 -
MAPP, Consumer Data & the Cupboard Under the Stairs
It’s funny what you find when you are having a tidy up. The other day I decided to get rid of some old clutter and in a moment of optimistic fervor I…
30th June 2015 -
Are You Ready for ‘Mobilegeddon’?
From 21st April 2015 Google started to change the way it indexes websites by boosting the ranking of mobile-friendly pages on mobile search results. According to Google’s own research, Internet use on…
24th April 2015 -
Premier League Reading Stars
Here at Nutshell, we’re big believers in the power of the visual image and the written word. And when we get the opportunity to combine our passion for these with two other…
19th March 2015 -
The future of direct mail
Okay, we have to admit it – we love Direct Mail; it’s what we do so we’re going to tell you how effective it is and why you should be using it.…
3rd March 2015 -
Offline vs online: How to get personal with your print
There is often a misconception from marketers around what personalisation actually means. It’s not just about adding a customer’s name to the top of the email or piece of direct mail –…
1st December 2014 -
MAPP and Marketing Week Live
Over the years Nutshell have been quick to innovate and realise the potential of online communications and their position within the marketing mix; we have invested heavily into a cross media platform…
25th June 2014 -
Cross Words – a guide to marketing speak
Too much marketing speak? Our tips to understanding cross-channel, multi-channel, cross-media, marketing automation… Going down this journey into, well what do we call it? At the end of the day the objective…
4th June 2014 -
Engage in the right way!
I recently read an article where the forecast is that there is going to be increased spend on marketing for 2014. That’s great if it’s true; because it indicates the financial climate…
20th May 2014 -
Cross-Channel Marketing – The facts
So what really makes a good design agency? There are 1000’s of us in the UK alone. Do you appoint an agency on how creative they are, the clients they currently work…
20th May 2014 -
Frustrating Communications
With more focus on content marketing and cross-media; companies have been going crazy and all of us at Nutshell have been receiving many different types of communications; some brilliant, some not! Here’s…
2nd May 2014 -
Design and data had a baby
In every company there is the need to demonstrate expenditure – where the money goes, how it is spent and the effect it has made. Usually this is outlined in multi-page brochures…
2nd March 2014