January 3, 2023
This month we have been working on our usual mix of branding and digital creative production and working hard on our retail clients’ Christmas marketing campaigns, which certainly kept us busy at the end of last year!
We worked alongside the creative young minds of Bristol City College, where students created a range of unique and innovative products from a brief we provided. We were so impressed with the quality of work produced and the creative ideas that came from the students this year; you can read more about the project below!
The Fanatic Digital Marketing team was nominated and had the honour of attending the UK Search Awards 2022! More about the event can be found under the Digital heading below.
We also had the pleasure of welcoming Sean to the Fanatic family this month. See how he’s settling in, in his Q&A further down!
This is the second year we have been working with the City of Bristol College Graphic Design department to help their students gain the experience of being briefed, and then presenting their work within a commercial environment. This year we set a brief to create the branding and packaging for a line of English Alcoholic drinks, specifically Wine, Mead, Cider to a spirit, influenced by our work with Lyme Bay Winery. We also spent some time with the students, who are studying for an HND, in a workshop talking about their ideas halfway through the 2-month project process.
We were presented with a great variety of ideas, including the brand Humble, presented by Sabrina, with a clear concept dating back to the idea of Mead being sent from the heavens for the humble worker. Tying in the fact that the drink is a honey base, and illustrations of worker bees, completed a great brand story.
Another idea was presented by Tom, where the Mead was presented in three levels; the queens higher level, the worker mid-level and the darker spicey Drone’s Desire, all coming together in a fantastic stacked bottle set, which emerges from a hexagon section gift box.
Gia presented a Cider concept based on the English skyline, using heritage fighter planes hand-painted illustrations and bold, clean colour schemes to execute three striking can designs.
In recent times, many of our Umbraco projects have included the creation or updating of websites to .NET Core. As the latest releases of Umbraco require .NET Core, this implementation of .NET brings about significant changes to the code’s syntax and structure. Our development team is constantly learning, using new techniques and researching the latest ways of coding to keep our technologies at the forefront of the industry. During Umbraco migrations, especially with our bespoke coded apps that run alongside our Umbraco websites, there has been a lot of R&D going into this area recently.
One instance had our developer, Phil, struggling to find a solution. After trying Google, stack overflow and our usual resources, he was unsuccessful in finding the answers he needed. Instead of continuing to search, Phil turned to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, an unlikely but helpful ally. This AI tool has learned from an impressive amount of data online and can provide answers and clarity on even the most specific requests. After posing his question to the AI, Phil received two different solutions to the problem, each accompanied by an explanation of how the function would work. It was truly impressive.
We find the ChatGPT raises the bar of what we can expect from a search, when AI is used, most impressively the ChatGPT can actually give opinions as it has included a forum and social chat within its learning source materials. Cool, but scary stuff!
The UK Search Awards celebrates the expertise, talent and achievements of the search industry and has been running for over a decade. It is regarded as the premiere celebration of SEO, PPC and content marketing in the UK, and this year Fanatic had the honour of being nominated in 4 categories!
Being nominated for the Best low budget campaign, Best local campaign, Best use of search – Health and Best use of search – Travel / Leisure was a huge honour. Despite not winning any awards this time around, it was great to see the work we are doing getting the recognition it deserves. Our teams have worked hard to create some amazing campaigns, websites, designs and much more over the years and to see Fanatic nominated in so many categories was a lovely way to finish 2022.
Hattie, Digital Marketing Exec.
It’s been great so far, I’ve been made to feel very welcome. After working in a remote rural location for a couple of years, it’s nice to be back in the hustle and bustle of the city!
I have spent the last 10 years doing digital marketing in-house for e-commerce websites selling all kinds of products, ranging from swimwear to organic foods!
During my interviews, it was clear that Fanatic have a culture of going the extra mile (and a bit further) for their clients, which really appealed to me. I’m glad to have joined such a passionate, creative and driven team.
I’m enjoying being in the studio in Bristol, there’s a great atmosphere about the place and the team are all so friendly!
I’m looking forward to working closely with everyone across all of the teams. It’s already clear that there is a huge wealth of knowledge in the company. I’d like to pick up some new tips on design and development while continuing to increase my digital marketing knowledge.
In my free time, I love to be creative! Design and illustration are two hobbies I enjoy, I also print some of my designs onto merchandise which I sell on Etsy.