Semantic's Christmas Single!!!
22 December 2008
Update: Obviously we've now removed the 12 Days of Christmas from the homepage... but you can find it dedicated web page for your continued watching enjoyment.
Well, that's more or less it from us for 2008. If you haven't seen it yet I'd recommend Day 10 of our 12 Days of Christmas - the Semantic Christmas Single.
Find it on our homepage, and click "10" from the options available... then you can sit back, relax, and enjoy the site of supposedly grown men making fools of themselves.
In the meantime here are a few photos of the "12 Days" Creative process :-)
Have a great Christmas, we'll be back on Monday 5th January 2009.
Posted by Nick Warren at 2:40 PM
2 comments
12 Days of Christmas - the Semantic Way
14 December 2008
Question. What do Helicopter Gunships, Snare Drums and Rap Music have in common? Answer. They all appear on Semantic's Twelve Days of Christmas".Yep we've taken our traditional Christmas Card a little farther this year, and are bringing you twelve little video gifts between now and Christmas Eve.
They may not be great art, but we hope that one or two of them will make you smile.
Happy Christmas to all of our Blog Readers.
Nick, Mike, Chris, Neil & David.
Posted by Nick Warren at 6:39 AM
2 comments
Making our own weather
04 December 2008
Just this week we've heard of two web agencies in trouble... at least one of them is gone for good. It reminds me of the time Semantic flat-lined. Summer 2002.The truth is that we played a lot of golf that summer... there wasn't much else going on. The office was dead, disturbed only by flies and tumbleweed. It certainly wasn't disturbed by a ringing phone. The only calls were from the Bank Manager, wondering who had died.
He was right in a way. The web market had collapsed. We were still doing odds and sods for existing Clients, but coming into work felt strangely like arriving at a wake.
But we learned a lot. We learned that running a business in a falling economy is like sailing in light winds... way harder than normal, but ultimately rewarding.
I learned the real meaning of commitment - talking your wife into risking the family home will do that. It's a conversation that gets serious real fast - so you'd (damn well) better be committed. And that wasn't all. We learned how to stick to our principles, how to support clients with their own problems, and how to keep cheerful. And finally we learned the value of that oft-repeated (and oft-ignored) phrase... "cash is king". (In fact it's not king, it's way more important than that. During that long hot summer it was water - dribbling away).
These days I think of that time as Semantic's right of passage. We'd had it easy until then, and Semantic was a young, cocky business that thought it had all the answers. But that summer we were set some grown-up challenges. 'Quit bragging', the economy said,'show me if you've got what it takes'.
It was touch and go for a while as things got worse. The flies died of boredom. I became almost good at golf... it was that serious. At one point I said to Mike, 'We have two more weeks to get this right'.
I won't bore you with our recovery, except to say that in some ways the real Semantic was born that day. The lessons learned during that lean period have kept us lean, strong and careful ever since.
There are way worse things in life than going out of business, but surviving harsh times brings it's own rewards. Perhaps that's a small crumb of comfort to those who are finding things tough right now. The outlook may seem dismal but my advice is to be great anyway, be happy anyway... deliver the best work you can anyway.
Screw the outlook. Good companies will survive... and great companies get to make their own weather.
(These days my golf is heroically, awe-inspiringly bad... and that's something to be proud of.)
Posted by Nick Warren at 5:57 PM
1 comments