Make
love with the exhibition |
11
May, 2008
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This
week I spoke at the Museum
& Heritage Show about how cultural
venues can communicate with their audiences with more engaging
participatory marketing.
One example of this is the website our team has created to promote
the LOVE exhibition at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle. This
mini-website not only gives information about the excellent exhibition,
but
also lets users curate
their own selection of artworks from
the Tyne
and
Wear Museums collection and email their creation to friends.
It is great fun, give
it a go!
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Dragon
Boat Race |
8
May, 2008
|
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One
of our oldest clients Madventurer asked
us to join them for the Durham Dragon Boat Race last weekend.
This fundraising event lets amateur teams compete for glory
on
the waters of the River Wear on traditional Chinese Dragon Boats.
Our joint Madventurer-Sumo team started well, winning our first
race, but with a poor second run we missed our chance for glory
and had to retire to the bar instead.
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Waygood
Art Boutique |
1
May, 2008
|
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Waygood,
the new multi-million pound contemporary art centre which will
open in Newcastle next year, launched its Art
Boutique on the
site of the development yesterday.
The boutique is a new commercial gallery selling
work by artists associated with Waygood. As part of our work
developing the branding for the new venue, we created a colourful
sub-brand for the boutique which can now be found on marketing
materials, merchandise and bags.
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i
like... museums |
26
April, 2008
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The
'i like...
museums' website
was the focal point of a marketing campaign Sumo created for
the North East Regional Museum Hub last
summer.
Visitors to the website could choose from over
eighty trails which guided them to the region's museums
and galleries, based on their personal interests. They could
also create their
own trails (and over thirty people did).
The website
has just been shortlisted in the 'Best Use of User-Generated
Content' section in the North
East Digital Awards. This accolade
follows the campaign being shortlisted in the International
Museum Communication Awards last November.
Following the success of 'i like... museums' we have been
comissioned to develop a follow-up campaign to promote the region's
museums this summer.
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Web
2.0 for Museums |
23
April, 2008
|
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We
have just uploaded an article Jim has written for Heritage365 magazine
about Web 2.0 for Museums and the changing expectations of internet
users.
Click
here to
download it.
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Shetland
Museum & Archives |
18
April, 2008
|
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I
was delighted to hear that our friends at Shetland
Museum & Archives have reached the final four in the Art Fund Prize for museums
and galleries (formerly the Gulbenkian Prize).
SUMO has worked with the team at the museum
since 2004, developing the branding for the venue and more recently
our design team has helped them to develop a range of interpretive
panels and leaflets to guide visitors around the islands.
My last visit to the museum was a few weeks before the museum
opened and it looked fantastic. The team at Shetland Museum
and Archive, the
architects and the exhibition
designers deserve
every accolade they get.
The winner of the £100,000 prize will be announced during
a ceremony in London on 22 May 2008.
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BBC
Innovation Labs, Day 5 |
18
April, 2008
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The
final day of BBC
Innovation Labs started with each of the ten
companies pitching their ideas to the Commissioners. Having
heard the ideas at the start of the week I was amazed at how
far everyone had come.
The same was true of our own pitch, whilst at times during the
week I had felt that the BBC mentors had been hard on us, it
was now clear that they had helped us to develop the way we described
our idea from something that took several minutes to a concept
anyone could grasp in ten seconds.
We presented last with our five minute pitch explaining our idea
and why the BBC should comission us to develop it further.
The Comissioners commented on how impressed they were with the
whole group and then gave feedback on each of the pitches. Four
of the ten companies were comissioned including SUMO.
It was a great end
to a fantastic week and we are excited to be working with the
BBC and to be given the chance to work with their team to take
our idea further.
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BBC
Innovation Labs, Day 4 |
17
April, 2008
|
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I
woke up feeling positive after a long night's sleep. I now knew
how I was going to present our pitch the following day; all
I had to do was bring it all together.
David was making good progress too; what had seemed impossible the day
before had come together incredibly fast and he had a working proof of
concept by lunchtime, allowing him to log into the office and do some regular
SUMO work while I brought the pitch together.
I had what I felt was a pretty comprehensive draft of the presentation
by three o'clock which gave me a couple of hours to practice presenting
it before a pitch rehersal to the BBC mentors.
The rehersal went well and the mentors suggested only a couple of small
changes, meanwhile David had a chance to show off his proof of concept
to Jason DaPonte who was impressed that we'd managed to get the proof of
concept put together so fast.
By the end of the day I was pretty sure we had a winning concept.
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BBC
Innovation Labs, Day 3 |
16
April, 2008
|
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Day
three of BBC
innovation Labs was the first time we would get to
discuss our idea with the BBC Comissioners.
Most of the morning was spent pulling together a rough presentation which
we could use to pitch our idea. The Commisioners arrived at midday and
Jason DaPonte, Managing Editor of Mobile Platforms, listened as we presented
him with our idea.
He asked if we thought we could put together
a proof of concept before our final presentation on Friday. Basically,
we needed to prove that we could put together the technology so that a
mobile
phone could be detected by our hardware and that would automatically
update a Facebook profile.
David was worried. He'd put together some server-side software to do something
similar for another project, but could he get that to update a Facebook
profile in
a day?
I was facing a crisis of my own, I just couldn't work out how to present
our idea. I sat in our workspace till eleven trying to figure it out, but
with no luck.
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BBC
Innovation Labs, Day 2 |
15
April, 2008
|
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Day
two of BBC innovation Labs started with me and David presenting
two personas (Personas are profiles of people who might actually
use our product or service) which
we had created to test run our 'Lifecasting' idea. One was the
perfect user for our idea, whilst the other would be a hard
sell.
These personas were used to develop a user lifecycle scenario, from
how they might hear about our 'product' through to how they would use it.
The day included lots of input from the BBC mentors and I have to admit
that at times it felt like they were giving us a hard time. Over the course
of the day, the way we described our idea changed a lot and at 5.30pm we
presented a much more concise five minute pitch to the group.
It had been a hard day of debating the idea back and forth, but
just when we thought we could head to the bar, we were asked to prepare
a five minute description of our idea for the following morning.
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BBC
Innovation Labs, Day 1 |
14
April, 2008
|
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Innovation
Labs is a one week development programme which gives
independent New Media companies the opportunity to develop innovative
new products
and
services for
the BBC.
We won one of ten places on the North East and Yorkshire Lab with
a proposal based around developing a mobile based 'lifecasting'
application for the 'Skins' generation. Myself (Jim) and our lead
developer
David make up the SUMO team for this project.
Our lab is at Swinton
Park in North Yorkshire and brings together
ten companies from the region and a group of mentors who will be
working with us through the course of the week to develop our ideas
from the initial proposal to a pitch which we will give on Friday
to the BBC Comissioners.
Our day started with games to get to know each other which certainly
broke down the barriers.
After lunch one of the BBC mentors, Frank Boyd, spoke to the group
about analysing our ideas through Edward de Bono's theory
of six hats thinking. We had to pitch the idea which won us a place
at
Innovation Labs to another
group, who
approached our proposal from Yellow Hat (Positive) or Black Hat (Negative)
perspectives. They then had to repeat our idea back to everyone on
Innovation Labs and suggest any improvements that thought we should
make (Green Hat).
This was an interesting start to the week and really made us think about
how clearly we could describe our idea.
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The
Late Shows |
15
April, 2008
|
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The
Late Shows is an annual cultural tour which this year takes
place on May 17th. Twenty venues which would normally
be
closed in
the evening are staying open late for one night only to bring you
an unrivalled night of fun-filled activities, one-off events and
sensational exhibitions.
We developed
the website for
the event.
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Waygood
Art Boutique |
15
April, 2008
|
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The
new multi-million pound contemporary art venue in Newcastle, Waygood,
is starting to take shape and in the next few weeks their Art Boutique
will open on High Bridge Street.
SUMO developed the branding for Waygood, and the boutique gave us the
opportunity to develop a colourful sub-brand (which we love).
Get along to High Bridge on May 1st to see it for yourself.
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History
of York |
20
March, 2008
|
 |
I
am delighted to announce the launch of the BETA version of one
of the most exciting websites our company has produced, History
of York.
The project brings together Museums & Heritage organisations
from across Yorkshire to create an educational resource and a marketing
tool for York as a destination for those interested in history.
The project was led York
Museums Trust and funded by York City
Council.
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Fresh
Awards |
9
March, 2008
|
 |
Having
won over forty Fresh
Creative Awards over the past few years, SUMO
is working on the 2008 call for entries. We have chosen to go
for a theme based around military decorations, with adverts asking
'Does your work deserve a medal?'.
Jim has also been invited to be a judge for this year's awards.
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Quiet
Riot |
7
March, 2008
|
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The
Quiet Riot is a world record attempt which aims to gather together
1,000 people from all walks of
life wearing
mp3
players
to move and dance in silence in Durham City
in a communal space.
We designed the Quiet Riot logo.
Quiet Riot will take place on Sunday 13th July at 12 noon. For
details send your contact details to info@tinarts.co.uk
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Dancing
the World |
7
March, 2008
|
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We've
just launched the marketing campaign for the Dancing
the World festival
which takes
place in Newcastle this May.
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Journal
Culture Awards |
1
March, 2008
|
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Last
night I attended the Journal
North East Culture Awards as a guest
of the Sponsors
Club for Arts and Business. I wasn't sure what
to expect, but it was a good night and reminded me of all the creative
work happening in the North East.
I was especially pleased to see Durham
City Arts win 'Best Event in Durham' for their Literature
Festival. We have
been working with the festival since 2001 (winning quite
a few design awards along the way) and they have been one of our
favourite clients ever since.
Having seen what they have planned for this year, I am pretty sure
that this isn't the last time they'll be celebrating at the Culture
Awards.
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National
Trust |
22
January, 2008
|
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Having
worked with The National
Trust for the past couple of years, we
are pleased to have won a two year contract to produce literature
for the Yorkshire & North East region.
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Dance
City |
19
January, 2008
|
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Dance
City, the National Dance Agency for the North East of England
has appointed SUMO to develop their offline and online communications
following a four way pitch.
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Waygood |
7
January,
2008
|
 |
Waygood is
a multi-million pound arts development in the centre of Newcastle.
SUMO has developed a strong new brand for the organisation.
You can watch a video about the Waygood development here
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Sumo is an award-winning,
multi-disciplinary design
firm.
We work with interesting clients
to help them to communicate with their
audiences through design,
in ways that excite, engage and inform.
Sumo
71 Westgate Road
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE11SG
T. 0191 261 9894
F. 0191 261 9010
Conferences
We are often asked to share our knowledge by speaking at conferences:
The Changing Role of Marketing in Museums
Heritage365 Marketing
Conference
June 18, 2008
Wellcome Collection, London
Writing
Writing gives us the opportunity to clarify our thinking and share insight, you
can download our articles below:
Web 2.0 beyond Facebook
Heritage365 magazine
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