With new commissions for diva’s website, research, campaign management, creative design and event management services, diva is seeking new people to join the team across all areas of the business. New clients include the pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, York City Council, NHS Warwickshire and Coventry, NHS Wakefield, East Riding of Yorkshire Council and the Centre for Public Health.

The new work is not just a result of diva’s highly proactive approach to seeking out and winning new business across the UK. The company has always benefited from referrals from clients who are pleased to recommend our services based on the positive experiences they have working with the team.

“It’s great to see the fruit of all our labours in both delivering great work and proactively working on getting new business,” says Amanda Pearce, Director. “Our strategy of combining a highly focused and committed approach to meeting our clients’ expectations which means we both retain clients and they recommend us, coupled with the ability to win competitive tenders is really paying off, despite the challenging economic climate.”

The company is currently recruiting for four roles, New Media Designer, Senior Account Manager, Account Manager and Account Executive.

But for those of us without psychic powers, it’s never that easy.

We know that by nature people are inclined to reject messages of correction if they conflict with their current beliefs and behaviours. Those that accept messages, and have strong intentions to ‘change’ usually still prefer to stay in their comfort zone with a firm grip on habit and denial while sitting as close to ‘norm’ as is socially acceptable.

Part of our role as a social marketing agency is to empower people to take responsibility for their behaviour and make positive changes in their lives, by creating awareness, promoting valuable, sustainable choices and at some points giving a nudge or even a shove.

To achieve this we need to gain an understanding of the variables – the attitudes and beliefs that lead to behaviour outcomes in our target audiences. We typically use a mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods to do this. Across our projects we go into local communities and meet a variety of different audiences, often engaging with typically hard to reach audiences such as young adults, ethnic minorities and those with mild to moderate learning disabilities; which, as well as giving us a deeper understanding into these audiences, also reminds us of the importance of social inclusion.

It is vital that the facilitator of each group, regardless of the audience has the right level of tact and tone. We often use an intuitive, iterative approach in our research, and the flexibility that this approach allows is especially useful when seeking explanations for behaviours that can be hard for participants to articulate.
 

Five tips for facilitating focus groups

1. Take time to introduce yourself and the project to participants. Be open and honest about what you are trying to find out, and how the information will be used, in a way that will not intimidate or put participants off sharing. The discussion group is an opportunity for participants to share their thoughts and ideas, so it’s important to emphasise how valuable their opinions are.
2. In large groups, try to initiate a rhythm of feedback that allows you to keep control and make sure everyone gets the chance to speak.
3. It’s important to build a rapport with your audience as gaining participant trust can influence how much participants want to share with you. You don’t want anyone to feel like they’re being interrogated but it’s also best to avoid being too informal as participants may not take you seriously.
4. After each section summarise and clarify what has been said, and ask the participants if they agree with the summary. This ensures your research accurately reflects the feelings of the participants, shows them that you are listening, and gives them the opportunity to reflect on what they’ve actually said.
5. Before you finish, always ask the group to identify the most important thing they have shared with you during the session as this is a great way to find out what your target audience feels is most significant.

Since then, animation has drastically moved forward. Windsor McCay, Warner Bro’s, MGM, Walt Disney and Pixar, among others, have made a massive impact in revolutionising the way animation works. From animating paper cut-outs to using celluloid transparent film, even making an entire film on a computer, each significant contribution has earned these creative pioneers recognition, and has ultimately stamped their mark on animation history for years to come.

There is no question that the benefits of animation have not only been reaped for entertainment purposes, but also by advertisers and marketing companies. 1955 saw the introduction of commercial television broadcasting, and during these early years, up to a third of TV adverts were animated. Brands such as “Murray Mints” and “Kelloggs” were quick to realise the potential of animation – Kellogg’s saw a great opportunity to bring life to the hand-drawn character’s already used on their cereal boxes.

In 2007, Bupa produced a series of animated TV adverts creating typical scenarios that people may face regarding their health and wellbeing. The overall style of the animation was not too dissimilar to the “Mr Men” cartoons. This approach created a warm and gentle tone, ultimately leading to an over 25% increase in enquiries year on year.²

Reasons why animation is a powerful marketing tool

• Practical – With no physical boundaries, animation can show scenes that a camera cannot shoot.
• Cost Effective – Animating a car crash is a lot cheaper than physically wrecking two vehicles!
• Shareability – Our 2D animated “Game on” campaign proved that education CAN be fun!

Here at diva, we constantly look for the best way to tell your story. Video is a great way to create a more engaging and thought-provoking campaign, though sometimes it may not always be the most ideal or affordable option. For example, demonstrating a complex process such as recycling steel into zinc, or referencing video games in order to get the message of “Safe Sex” across to a difficult target audience of young males.

There’s no doubt that animation is a great way to spice up, or indeed lead any campaign. If well- produced and distributed on the right channels, the return on investment could be invaluable for many years to come.

That’s why we’ll keep on using animations as the option that gives entertainment, shareability, and best of all, as Alfred Hitchcock noted, flexibility:

Disney has the best casting.
If he doesn’t like the actor, he just tears him up.

1. http://www.ukessays.com/essays/animation/animation-tv-commercials.php

2. http://www.theblackhole.co.uk/case-studies/16

Web browsers are responding more swiftly to these changes than they used to, resulting in a faster and often compulsory upgrade cycle. Google’s Chrome browser, for example, has been silently updating itself on your computer with each new release (currently it’s up to v17). And although there are still some discrepancies with the agreed standards, all current browsers will recognise (most of) the latest HTML5 and CSS3 features.

But what about those of us without the luxury of administrator control on our work computers, who can’t authorise a download or an update? In many cases across the public sector, employees are at the mercy of whatever web browser their IT department last installed – and more often than not, this is the web developer’s arch-nemesis, Internet Explorer 6.

Although launched in 2001, IE6 maintains a 1.4% share of the UK browser market; not much compared to the ballooning figures for Firefox, Chrome and mobile web browsers. However, many of our clients within the public sector see a vastly higher figure than this – sometimes as high as 40% – and usually do not have access to software later than IE8, itself nearly three years old.

These skewed statistics present our web team with some tricky design challenges. Clients naturally want to exploit the latest web features, as do we, and want their audience to get broadly the same experience regardless of where they’re coming from. Many professional developers have come up with tempting ways to sideline IE6 users, such as serving them a simplified or unstyled, text-only layout. Whereas these options are clever, timesaving ways to offer all users a semantically correct experience, they are not feasible for us to use with our higher than usual set of IE6 users.

At diva we use a web design approach known as progressive enhancement – adding layers of visual and interactive fidelity to a solid structure that will work even in the obsolete web browsers of a decade ago. This way, all visitors will receive the same information and general experience, and the vital content of the site is made accessible to all.

However, this design approach must go hand in hand with client education, to make sure there is an understanding that their website will not look identical across all browsers, and the reasons why. Progressive enhancement creates browsing benefits that can’t be seen – smaller page sizes, future-proofing, even better search engine rankings – but it can sometimes be hard to see past any design discrepancies. It also exposes the limitations of creating initial designs as a flat image rather than a working, interactive prototype.

The number of our clients and customers still using older browsers is much higher than average, but progressive enhancement is a positive, flexible approach for any web designer. Our champagne is already on ice for the day that IE6 eventually dies off completely, but the ever-changing mobile web landscape promises to offer a whole new set of challenges, making us better designers every day.

I for one still go back to the old version for one very good reason. The new version does not support PDF reports as yet, which is a really useful feature for marketing meetings and sending performance summaries to clients and colleagues. Google have heard the outcry for this feature on their forums and have promised to add it to the new version shortly. Power to the people!

Here’s a quick round up of the main features and how we’ve been using them.

Dashboards

You can now create multiple dashboards to suit the type of reports you are interested in. For example you could create a dashboard called ‘SEO’ (Search Engine Optimisation) that will instantly show you all the metrics that you need to find out how your site is performing with search engines.

Real-time Reporting

This feature really makes sense now the web and social media have become so reliant on being responsive. Real-time reports show the traffic on your site immediately as opposed to before, when it took around 24 hours for stats to appear.

This feature is really addictive as it can let you know who is visiting your site right now, what that person is looking at, where they came from and what device they are using.

Example of use – Monitoring the impact of a tweet or email campaign

Keyword Clouds

If you remember the popular trend of tag clouds on websites a few years ago, you will recognise this type of feature. Keyword clouds essentially gives a visual representation of the search keywords visitors used that ended in a visit to your site. Finding trends is now far quicker and easier to understand.

Flow

This is a really handy feature that I think will help draw attention to key stats which you may have previously overlooked due to how difficult it was to evaluate them. This feature visually demonstrates the “flow” of visitors through your site, showing which order pages were visited and at what points visitors left the site.

This sort of tracking is especially prominent in e-commerce sites to identify where in the checkout process customers leave which can inform improvements in user experience (UX).

Site Speed

How fast your site loads is obviously really important not only for SEO and whether a visitor bothers to carry on viewing your site but also because mobile searching is now becoming more popular and connection speeds are usually slower.

The biggest search engines actually use your sites speed when working out your page rank, as they would rather serve their searchers with a faster page than a slow one. This new feature allows you to easily track each page of the sites response times and even shows how it performs on different browsers. Pass these reports on to your web developer for advice on improvements.

Improved Mobile Reporting

We are being asked for more and more mobile development (both Web apps and Native apps) so this new improved feature really helps us to understand our clients’ sites visitors and make decisions about which smart-phone devices to prioritise development on.

This feature now includes a comparison of mobile traffic and non-mobile traffic to your site; great information to convince stakeholders of the importance of a mobile optimised site. You can also get a report on the type of devices, phone brand and carrier of the mobile traffic, which even includes a photo of the devices named in the report.

Here is a great learning resource if you would like to get the most from the Google Analytics service. http://www.google.com/intl/en/analytics/iq.html

If you would like any help with your Google Analytics please post a comment below.

The ‘Sefton Shorts’ competition was designed by diva to engage young people in sexual health and relationship issues in a creative way.

Working with local colleges, the diva team supported students to create a series of short films. The competition entries have been received and now it’s up to the public to find the next Martin Scorsese or Kathryn Bigelow!

The ‘grand prix’ award for best film will be announced at a Hollywood-style awards ceremony on 23rd February 2012 at The Plaza in Crosby.

Winners for Best Audio, Best Editing, Best Script and Best Actor will be chosen by a panel of judges, which includes Dr Mark Fremaux, Programme Leader for Television and Production at Edge Hill University, Liza Williams, Health Reporter for Liverpool Echo and Morag Reynolds, Public Health Lead at NHS Sefton.

To watch the videos and cast your vote for the best film, visit the Sefton Shorts website.

Infographics take complex information and data sets, and make them easy to digest in a visually stimulating design. They aim to be a unique and interesting form of “data visualisation” (or “data viz” if you want to be down with the kids.) The Internet is stuffed with information and the infographic helps visualise that information simply, accurately and clearly.

Design trends come and go but infographics are here to stay. Brands like The Guardian, Google and The NY Times use them regularly. Even President Obama can’t get enough of them (http://www.whitehouse.gov/auto-industry-resurgence). All sorts of organisations are using infographics to build their brands, educate their audience and drive traffic to their sites. And since infographics show information in such a highly shareable bite-sized format you can also use social media to spread your message far and wide.¹

The best infographics are “simple enough to read but creative enough that to make you look twice.” So what’s the best way to go about making sure your infographic stands out from the crowd?

Be Obvious: Your infographic should demonstrate key ideas clearly and concisely. It can show other facts and information but don’t let the main conclusion of the data get lost in the shuffle. Think about what you’re showing and what you really want to focus on.

Be Helpful: It shouldn’t need a Statistics degree to understand your infographic so make sure you build your data and explanation right into the heart of the graphic. Put simply, if your readers need more than a few seconds to understand your infographic, it’s no good!

Be Honest: Don’t bend the data to better suit your conclusion or design. Cite your data sources and allow readers to dig deeper into the data if they want to. It’s just like they told you at school, “always show your working.”

Be Clear: Design isn’t just about making things pretty. It’s about making things work, and in the case of infographics, that means representing data accurately and clearly. When creating infographics spend the time to properly analyse and understand the data because then the really interesting story behind the numbers and spreadsheets will shine through.

For the last couple of years infographics with little substance still made an impact simply because they were something new and fashionable. Now you need to try a little harder. Put in the time to think about the story you want to tell and show some clear insight. The point of infographics is to help the reader to understand the data, show the hidden patterns and make complex ideas easily understandable.

And if they just so happen to look beautiful then that’s the cherry on top.

¹ http://www.marketingcharts.com

diva has worked with ITM Power since 2010, designing their websites as well as providing creative design and printing services for product launches, signage and the company annual report.

As the momentum continues to build around their ground-breaking work, we look forward to supporting the ITM team into the future.

Co-created by service users, for service users, the smokefree mental health resource tells the stories of people who have quit or reduced smoking and offers tips and advice to help inspire others to do the same.

Following a public vote in which the video competed against other entries from around the world, it was announced that ‘Today I Can’ had made it into the top five videos.

The competition was developed by the WHO as part of their response to the globalisation of the tobacco epidemic and the WHO’s work to support people’s right to the highest standard of health.

Watch the video below: