Many organisations face problems directing visitors – whether to a city centre office with complex road layouts, or to a visitor attraction in a previously unfamiliar location. While many aspects of our lives have migrated online, we still need to deal with a concrete world – in every sense of the phrase – and that can prove surprisingly difficult sometimes.

There are tried and tested methods that can help to varying degrees. Printed maps or written directions offer different levels of guidance and convenience; they can be saved as PDF files and downloaded from websites or sent as email attachments. But they give no visuals clues that help either drivers or pedestrians – and they often seriously struggle to explain car-parking arrangements. If you’ve ever asked for directions and heard “It’s hard to describe but …” or “there’s a sort of big blue thing on your left …”, you’ll appreciate the problem.

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From 1 March 2011, there is an important change in the legal scope of the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) Code, which will be extended to include:

Advertisements and other marketing communications by or from companies, organisations or sole traders on their own websites, or in other non-paid-for space online under their control, that are directly connected with the supply or transfer of goods, services, opportunities and gifts, or which consist of direct solicitations of donations as part of their own fund-raising activities.”

As CAP point out, this doesn’t rule out promoting causes or ideas (which may be the case with campaign groups or social enterprises), although it does cover any material that in any way solicits donations. Nor does it mean that websites cannot contain material – such as editorial or public relations material – that is not marketing.

But the revised Code recognises that web pages, email campaigns or social media presences (your Facebook page or LinkedIn group are both “non-paid-for space online under your control”) don’t need to quote a price or include a ‘Buy Now’ button to fall within the extended remit, nor do they need to “seek overtly an immediate or short-term financial transaction or include or otherwise refer to a transactional facility”.

The ASA and CAP will be allowing a six month period of grace to raise awareness and educate business on the new requirements of the CAP Code, and that period of time could be wisely spent seeking their advice and that of your Internet services partners and providers.

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yourpeoplemarket.comBased in Milton Keynes and founded by a team of recruitment experts, yourpeoplemarket.com is a new fixed fee online recruitment marketplace that connects employers and recruiters. Designed to take advantage of competitive market conditions, their online recruitment marketplace puts employers in control of the recruitment process, posting jobs at a fee they set, engaging with a recruitment community based on performance and complete transparency, and achieving significant cost savings.

As a company that has not only put marketplace transparency at the heart of recruitment – employers can, for example, rate recruiters on a range of criteria based on their own experience of using their services – www.yourpeoplemarket.com has brought a new approach to the online market whereby easy, quick data capture and the effective management of client communications is key to maintaining competitive advantage.

Yourpeoplemarket launch campaign emailIn light of this, yourpeoplemarket.com has adopted the services of Virtual Viewing’s EMMA (Email Marketing Assistant) email campaign and newsletter management system. Indeed, their use of EMMA has been both critical to the success of this young business and sophisticated in the use of some of EMMA’s more advanced features.

After initial consultation, during which we provided analysis and review of the initial yourpeoplemarket.com system build (focusing particularly on usability and functionality), we developed an HTML email newsletter template design that reinforced the website branding, and created an EMMA account.

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Video is making a real difference to our online viewing experience, and many companies are now exploring the best way to incorporate video into their online presence. Online viewing is growing dramatically, providing significant and unique opportunities to grow brand awareness, convey company missions, values and ethos, promote both products and services, drive web traffic and uplift sales in B2B and B2C marketing – an opportunity that Virtual Viewing, working in partnership with A2S Works, can help you to realise.

They say a picture paints a thousand words: moving pictures say even more. The following video illustrates just some of the points we make in this article (as well as introducing us):

So where do you start? – read on to find out more.

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From the outset, the world wide web was designed to be a medium for collaboration and interaction: indeed, one of the main triggers for its initial development was to allow scientists to share their information and research with each other online.  This line of thinking has been traced back to a historically significant essay, As We May Think, written in 1945 by Dr Vannevar Bush, the US Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (a copy of this essay is still available online). Having directed the American scientific community to support the wartime effort, he was concerned with the peacetime application of technology to more constructive means: his ideas included a (hypothetical) model for a ‘collective memory machine’. The video clip below shows an animation – itself made in 1995 – that shows how his machine, the ‘memex’, might have looked and worked: it’s hardly as coolly iconic as an iPad, but modern technology has still barely scratched the surface of some of the ideas his essay contained.

We usually accept that widespread take-up and adoption of different technologies can be unpredictable (we’re still using fax machines, for example, but the idea of micro-payments has been explored for at least 20 years with little sign of mass take-up), but the speed – or lack of it – with which we adopt them can still be surprising. Sci-fi writer William Gibson once memorably observed that “The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed”, and a look at the invention dates of many everyday items does prove his point (sms messages, 1992; digital camera, 1975; GPS, 1978; credit card, 1950; mobile phone, 1947; microwave oven, 1946; robots, 1921; radio, 1895; battery, 1800).

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As you may have already read on our blog – or on theirs – our long-term clients, Lumbers Jewellers of Leicester, are undertaking an epic adventure to raise money for charity: they’re rowing – yes, rowing – from Lands End to John O’Groats. Or, as their strapline would have it, “1097 miles, 12 oars, 6 men, 3 weeks – and 1 boat!”. Celebrity Row, as the epic journey has been christened, is being undertaken in aid of four richly deserving charities: Rainbows Childrens Hospice, The Princes’ Trust, The RNLI, and The Samantha Dickon Brain Tumour Trust.

As one of the sponsors for this laudable endeavour, Virtual Viewing has been lending a very technological helping hand. We’ve set up a dedicated micro-site (click here to view in a new window), with its own blog (click to view), and its own Twitter feed. Since the crew set off on 29 June, we’ve also been sending out an email newsletter to over a 1,200 people to keep them up to date on their progress, and cross-referencing all this activity in Lumbers’ own email newsletters (compiled and despatched by Virtual Viewing, using our EMMA EMail Marketing Assistant service) and blog (also created and maintained by us).

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Virtual Viewing has always been proud of its long history of ‘giving something back to the community’: even the extensive list on our website can give only a flavour of the degree of our involvement.  We’re equally proud to say that some of our clients are equally committed to the life of their own cities, and to raising welcome funds for deserving charities. Indeed, we’ve been working closely with one such customers, Lumbers Jewellers of Leicester, to help them to raise awareness – as well as funds – for a forthcoming charity event that certainly represents an ‘oarsome’ challenge.

Dominic Gommersall, Lumbers MDStarting on 29 June, a team of rowers – including MD Dominic Gomersall (shown left) and Watch buyer Paul Bassett (shown right below), as well as prominent Leicestershire businessmen and sporting stars – will row from John O’Groats to Lands End. The title of their most recent press release gives you a hint as to the scale of their endeavour: 1097 miles, 12 oars, 6 rowers, 3 weeks. And 1 boat…

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Despite the Internet having been very much a business reality for several years, we still see many organisations whose approach seems to be “we’ve built a website, the world will now flock to it”. We don’t like to be spoilsports, but the ‘If you build it, they will come’ may have made a great hook for Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, but that was the movies – and what came were ghosts. Not big shoppers by and large, the dead. So can we suggest a more pragmatic approach that reaches out to the living without crystal balls or Ouija boards?

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While web developers have often been torn between giving clients every bell and whistle they expect on one hand, and delivering high levels of website usability on the other (one man’s animation is another man’s irritating distraction), there are times when the bells and whistles strike just the right note. If a picture paints a thousand words, video can paint infinitely more – and capture something that words and static images simply cannot.

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