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30 August 2006
This year, for the first time since 1999, I took two consecutive weeks off for my bucket-and-spade break, and even braver... I moth-balled the laptop. No email, no web... not even a mobile. Bliss.But yesterday was payback. I opened Apple Mail to find out how much email I had in the holiday folder, even I was surprised.
Now some of you will be thinking "Gee, that Nick is a popular fellow", and you'd be right. My inbox was stuffed full of generous offers of help... from people I'd never even met! I've got exclusive stock-market tips, incredible mortgage offers, proscription drugs at insane prices... plus the chance to enhance a certain part of my anatomy... not to mention the numerous young ladies apparently keen to help me use it. Gosh the Internet is a friendly place.
And I'm lucky too. I've won three separate lotteries for a total of more than 30,000,000 euros, and I have the chance to cash in further good by helping the widow of an African Finance Minister move some money into the UK. I'll get 10%!
But let's not get carried away... I have had my share of problems. Several banks, including a couple I was unaware I had accounts with, have had security scares... and need me to send them my username and password to fix the problem. My ebay and paypal accounts are similarly afflicted. I've also had bills for things I cannot honestly remember buying, but I can fix everything if I just double-click on the attached file.
Just a normal couple of weeks at Semantic then.
Total emails: 7880, Total useful emails: 48
Posted by Nick Warren at 3:54 PM
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A Tale of Two Beings
09 August 2006
Remember in a previous entry, Nick introduced the new Semantic game phenomenon - "Drawn Apart"? Well it has been taken to another level in round two!Mike opened the round by drawing two, very curvaceous three-toed feet...
..you'll never guess how the round ended... with a complete story involving two beings, presumably from the planet Zogg. Take a look for yourselves...
I hold my breath in anticipation for round three!! Bring it on!
Posted by Chris Moses at 1:50 PM
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Nick loafs off!
08 August 2006
Just a quick reminder about my upcoming holiday, which starts next Monday (14th - 28th August). As you know I do almost nothing here anyway, so the presence of Mike and Chris in the office throughout my break will surely mean business as usual.You can reach them on the normal Semantic number (023 8076 3820) or individually as below if you want to save them having to get up from their desks, although in fairness they both desperately need the exercise.
Mike - 023 8076 3821 or mike@semantic.co.uk
Chris - 023 8076 3819 or chris@semantic.co.uk
Obviously we have plans in place with some of you who have ongoing projects, but if anyone needs to speak to me before the 29th, or has plans for that period we should know about, please get in touch in the next couple of days.
Lest any of you become jealous of my indolence you should know that I will be spending my holiday with two small children... and it will therefore involve little actual rest, but much standing at the bottom of slides.
Posted by Nick Warren at 9:48 AM
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What Happened Next...
03 August 2006
Yesterday I reprised a blog post from March 05 discussing the sad news that one of our favourite clients was leaving her job and moving on to pastures new. (See Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.)In the post I predicted that we would lose the account to an agency preferred by her replacement, and we did. This happens sometimes and there is nothing much to be done about it... and in this case we lost a huge Client that put Semantic's name in front of thousands of people from around the world.
So why am I smiling as I write this?
Here's why. In the 'Breaking Up' post I also talked about the potential upside... about the way in which clients moving jobs tends to spread the Semantic meme into new companies... that eventually turn into new opportunities for us.
And yesterday that happened.
We went out for a very pleasant lunch with our ex-client, who, it turns out, begins a new job on Monday as the Marketing Manager for a specialist financial services firm... and a new web site is high on her to do list.
Of course I am still sad that we didn't hang on to the original client, but that's life. What's more important (to me) is how the relationships we build with clients work for us over the long term.
Good luck on Monday, Karen!
Posted by Nick Warren at 8:32 AM
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Breaking up is hard to do (Reprise)
02 August 2006
On the 18th April 2005, on a blog far far away... I wrote the following post titled, 'Breaking up is Hard to Do'.I'm reprising it now because of something that happened today, which I'll probably write about tomorrow... so I guess this is kind of an appetiser.
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Recently our main contact at a major client told us she was moving on... news that is always met by a slight turning of my stomach. When you work hard to build relationships with people it always seems a bit unfair when they decide to go in a different direction. For a start their replacement is often someone completely unknown, and may have their own favourite agencies, and sometimes politics means that the old guard (e.g. us) are sacrificed as a matter of course... which appears may happen in this case.
A bummer then...
Well no, not necessarily. I recently put together a weird kind of family tree, a diagram of our clients since June 1997. It makes interesting viewing... because it shows me where my clients have come from.
At Semantic we make a big deal about the fact that we DO NOT ADVERTISE for clients, all of our work is referral based in one way or another. We make a big deal about it, but we've never really thought about it. We rely on doing great work and providing a great service... thus our works (and our clients) become our marketing/sales team.
So this family tree allowed me to see the relationships that have evolved over the past eight years, and how getting one job brought in another, how helping one client delivered another... you get the picture... a kind of biblical, A begat B begat C thing.
It turns out that about 70% of our 2004/5 work can be traced back to a single handshake in 1997. That day I met a guy about a job that came to nothing, but he went away and built a small ad agency, who we worked with for a while. Then, and this is the critical bit, the ad agency died leaving the partners to find new work elsewhere.
My first thought when we heard about their demise was 'shame'... but the Client Family Tree shows how much we have benefited. As the partners moved into other firms they took the 'Semantic Virus' with them... and sure enough, eventually, we have worked with almost all of them again... bringing in some major clients.
So I would like to wish our friend well in her new job, and look forward to speaking to you sometime :-)
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Can you guess what happened today? Sure you can, but I'll tell you more tomorrow.
Posted by Nick Warren at 2:44 PM
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