Simple Simon says you’re gonna be No.1!

Simple web site helps brand to No.1 UK OTC skincare position by becoming powerful charity, recruitment and partnership campaign promotional tool.

Simple is, today, the UK’s No.1 Over The Counter Facial Skincare brand. Built on over 50 years experience in caring for all skin types, this journey to market ascendancy has been a potent combination of teamwork, product development and powerful market and audience awareness.

Simple takes as much pride in using the right ingredients for your skins’ needs, as it does in creating all the relevant building blocks to help it reach this remarkable achievement.

One of the cornerstones of the program has been the use of www.simple.co.uk as a powerful communications, commercial, recruitment and partnering vehicle. In recent months extraordinary effort and creativity has gone into generating some ‘best-in-class’ campaigns like SkinTrition™, Search for a Simple Star and the Simple Challenge.

As a key part of the Simple Brand team, Idealogy’s Director of Digital Demand, Simon Johnson, and his team were asked to turn these campaign concepts into natural, user-experience driven, on-line environments by using simple.co.uk to it’s fullest extent and incorporating a vivid, memorable and valuable web experience - at the same time providing advice, nutrient knowledge, healthy eating recipes, games, the opportunity to make important charity donations, and a social-media style recruitment platform.

Technically, the front-end campaigns were simple enough (no pun intended) but the back office was a functional minefield. Getting all kinds of publishable data to link and be searchable, from ingredients, nutrients and recipes. Acquiring personal data, encouraging 3rd party voting and behaving like a Facebook style social utility by matching Simple brand characteristics to personal attitudes, values and lifestyles. Using a viable e-commerce model to generate £50,000 of donations for MacMillan, the UK’s best-loved charity, to help improve the lives of people affected by cancer.

And, on the face of it, we did a great job. Such powerful and emotive communication and technical competence has helped push Simple’s brand awareness and, ultimately, it’s market position to the top of the pile.

But don’t let anyone tell you that it was simple getting there!

Posted by Idealogy

Rabbit, rabbit, bunny jabber, yup, yup!

A psychologist might say that a young lady who spends excessive time playing with her little bunny, and with a track record of many midnight trips with a prone Oscar (the Dwarf Lop Rabbit!) to Pet A&E, is a strong indication that things are not all well in the hutch.

Despite her lapine tendencies, one of Idealogy’s newest recruits, Shelley Crouch, is hardly ‘hopping mad” – which is exactly the point! Getting her to come out of her shell has been the biggest challenge.

Her work, as one of our cross-media designers, is high, high quality. Her willingness to learn new disciplines, such as web based design and HTML and CSS coding – no worries! And her strange passion for Trance music makes her fit right in with the, let’s just say, eclectic musical oeuvre of the Idealogy Design team. And she loves the slightly ‘bloke-ish’ humour that glues the whole thing together.

But now, well into her 2nd year, things are changing – she’s become a strong defender of her design principles and a regular contributor to a broad range of digital matters. And we’re waiting for the moment when she tries to recruit a few of the lads to dress up in wigs and prance around the IOW Bestival. Perhaps more to the point, she’s not afraid to have a dig at her managers. In fact, to quote Chaz and Dave, “now I don’t mind ‘avin a chat, but you have to keep givin’ it that”

So, to put the psychologist in his place, we’re all very happy that Shelley is now well and truly out of her shell.

The problem we’ve got is getting her back in it!

Posted by Idealogy

Thank Flikr it's Friday!

It's that time again, so get over to Flikr and have a look at some of the things that Idealogy have been dreaming up for our clients lately.

You know you want to...

Posted by Idealogy

Simple SkinTrition™ - natural ingredients, great advice, fabulous skin, all within a vivid on-line experience.

Simple, the UK’s No.1 Facial Skincare brand, has over 50 years experience in caring for all skin types, even the most sensitive. Simple prides itself on using only the ingredients that your skin needs - and nothing that it doesn’t, so you can trust the natural goodness in all products. Simple skincare isn’t just about how you look on the outside, it’s about looking after the inside too, which is why the experts at Simple have developed Simple SkinTrition™.

As a key part of the Simple Brand team, Idealogy were asked to turn that vision into a natural on-line environment, extending simple.co.uk and incorporating a vivid, memorable and valuable web experience providing advice, nutrient knowledge, healthy eating recipes and games.

And, on the face of it, we did a great job…a more detailed blog will follow soon.

Posted by Idealogy

Analog or digital? Left or right side of the brain? Town-y or country girl? Anna keeps us all on our toes...

How well do any of us really know Anna Ecuyer, Idealogy’s very own Bristolian?

The story so far - Anna joined us from a local PR and Design Agency, but prior to that, the greater part of her career was forged on the London Agency circuit. So, nothing the provinces could throw at her was going to be tougher than that experience.

When her husband Toby landed the key role as Creative Director at a leading super yacht, luxury motor and sailing yacht design consultancy, Anna didn’t think twice about changing to a life by the sea or, for that matter, committing herself to her career with an out-of-town consultancy – and that was where her (to date) 6 year relationship with Idealogy began, progressing from her initial role as Senior Designer, to Client Services Manager, through to her role today as Key Account Manager, handling the relationships and account services for many of Idealogy’s leading B2C Clients.

So what does she find so engaging about her work at Idealogy? Well, in her words, it was “the first time I really felt the ‘benefit’ of leaving London and the change of lifestyle.” And this highlights the most valuable characteristic about Anna’s approach to her work –achieving a sustainable work/life balance. She works fantastically hard, and is one of the most, if not the most, diligent worker in the business. But ask her and she’ll say, ‘I work like this because I value the time I get to spend by the sea, in the forest, with my boy, walking Polly (her beautiful Hungarian Vizsla, and now the Company dog), doing interior decorations, and, of course, gardening’.

So, actually, we do know an awful lot about Anna, and, by return, she knows an awful lot about her colleagues – which is another thing she finds intriguing, compelling and, lets say it, bizarre about Idelaogy. It feels like working alongside nutty uncles, older brothers and strange, twice removed cousins. So, it’s a dysfunctional yet highly individual family. But what she revels in is her own space, within her hectic working and social lifestyle, to watch good movies by the fireside, to try to read lots of books and to get back to her piano playing roots.

For those of us who think we know her, theres a lot of stuff we possibly don’t realise – and that’s a good thing; a constituent part of keeping a balance and keeping a distance. “Work is great, but life is so much better…”

Yep! She’s going to continue to keep us all guessing!

Posted by Simon Dover

Getting your teeth stuck into Finance - It doesn’t have to be a pain in the neck!

For over a dozen years, Charlie Blake (she’s a lady!) has been responsible for the financial management of Idealogy and for Selling Ideas before that. Initially she joined as a Financial Assistant but quickly became the mainstay of everything money-side in the business, working to develop internal systems, proper project finance records, at the same time building solid, long-term relationships with clients and suppliers alike.

And, as with jobs of this nature, she’s had to take the rough with the smooth – finance is never a straight path – using the good times to create systems and methods in preparation for the much heralded (and now very real) downturn. But she has committed wholesale to the challenge while also finding the time to raise two lovely girls of her own, Hannah and Gracie, and there have been times, we’re sure, when she may have thought that she’d bitten off more than she could possibly chew. Her response? Up the qualifications, skills and experience and lets see what we can continue to improve or cost control!

Charlie loves the ‘continuity’ of the business and, by that, she means that many of her colleagues have been in the business as long, if not longer, than she has. So she knows the people side of the organisation intimately, she has many friends within, and loves that there are no subjects that are taboos. Except when it comes to her other passions – horror or vampire movies and The National Trust. Both of those tend to get people, except the weirdoes, rushing for the exit doors.

No matter – she soldiers on, knocking over hurdles that continually get placed in the way of SME’s. She’s now worked on 3 internal reorganisations and is still smiling, because she marks it down to experience. Add to all this her long-term commitment to improve her CIMA qualifications, her role as a School Governor, a full-time Mum, and her new iPhone, and life is, at best, a difficult act to balance.

Good to know she’s sinking her teeth in with such relish!

Posted by Idealogy

Social Networking vs. Browsing… And the winner is!

Facebook finally outstripped Google for visitors last week. Its been coming for a long time and they’ve finally done it! Facebook is now the most visited site in the US beating Google into second place.

Those of us in the industry who watch this sort of stuff, had predicted this moment for some time, but even so, its crazy to think that more people visit Facebook, a social network site, than use Google’s search engine. Really? So what we’re saying is that, actually, we  catch up with each other, play games, watch videos, check messages, browse photos and personal profiles and generally hang out with our friends, family, colleagues and old school friends more than we search for stuff online!

Well, I suppose when you say it like that, it makes perfect sense… Congratulations Facebook

Read more here.

Posted by Simon Johnson