It’s a far far better place at FarHill Farm

It’s great when you get to hear about someone opting out the rat race with a vision and actually achieving it, well that’s exactly what one of our new PR accounts has done.  In the delightful Amber Valley in Derbyshire in 2006, Lynne and Clive Millard whilst out walking their dog, saw nestling at the top of the valley, FarHill Farm and immediately fell in love with the smallholding and decided they needed to buy it.  They did just that! In 2007 they moved in , Lynne, a Probation Officer and Clive a Director for an engineering firm  took up residence at FarHill Farm and Lynne said “ what this land needs is Alpacas”.  Incredulously her husband looked on and smiled knowing the dog and Misty the cat was the nearest to livestock Lynne had had to deal with.  Lynne’s voyage of discovery began from that day, incorporating animal husbandry, land management and fleece weaving; she even helped the vet with the artificial insemination of her “ladies”. The flock currently stands in excess of 8 animals and has blossomed into a fledgling cottage industry of the FarHill Alpacas and she has now engaged Tim Riley our PR Director into launching this new brand.  What a great story of self belief, determination and taking that life changing step into the unknown…

First work for Maru Swimwear

The dairy is delighted to reveal the first work for swimwear client Maru

We had been talking to Maru for some time last year before they came on board as a client at Christmas. The 36pp brochure was delivered today and will be used by the sales team from next week. We now have to get cracking on the Autumn/Winter 09 web site to reflect the products in the brochure.

No more cheesy feet in these socks !

Our new PR client Tejay Sportswear of Leicester have just released their latest innovation for their range of football, rugby and hockey socks  -  you can now add an antibacterial agent as an option for the socks, it inhibits fungal growth for in excess of 100 washes.  Fungal growth lives in socks once contaminated and ordinary washing will not remove it, leaving team kits open to skin problems like Athletes Foot .  So now you don’t have to worry who wore the socks the week before (can’t say the same for the jockstrap though!)

the dairy on film…

We have had an exciting morning here at the dairy! OK, so it’s not Hollywood – but we have had a film crew in to interview us and our Tram client Nicola Tidy on the High Five campaign that was launched recently.

Part of the campaign was to produce a film celebrating 5 years of the tram in Nottingham and via our friends at Gemini PR we were able to brief the students at the Djanogly College to produce it. The academic governing body got wind of this and are keen to promote education/industry links so are producing a film about it.

Sadly, no make up was involved – but we enjoyed the experience!!

www.djanogly.notts.sch.uk

www.thetram.net

NCT Marketing Director Nicola Tidy being filmed at the dairy

Legoland on Stream for greater water savings….

Spring is around the corner and school holidays are upon us and that means the scramble to visit to the theme park is coming and that reminded me of Stream Measurement, one of our industrial PR accounts has recently been involved in helping Legoland of Windsor in achieving water loss identification through implementing a range of secondary submeters at selected dispense points throughout the Park.  As part of Legoland’s drive to minimise waste and reduce costs, an exercise was implemented to investigate and identify the source of any leakage from the site’s supply network.  In order to pinpoint areas requiring remedial works, it was concluded that the most effective method would be a programme of metering throughout the site.

As the visitors wander through this park of excitement and thrills, they are blissfully unaware that Legoland are doing their bit for water conservation by taking a responsible and proactive approach to water consumption with this project deployment.

Stream worked closely with Engineering Consultant McKinnon & Clarke in identifying, sizing and supplying the correct meter in areas with wonderful sounding names such as Pirate Falls, Harbour and Stunt Lake and Fairy Tale Brook to name a few.

So next time you’re stood at the Fairy Tale Brook see if you can spot the meter, it’s that brass thing with dials on it!!!

more on the web….

I went to yet another interesting seminar this morning. The e-business club arranges these and they have all been very useful. This one was about making day to day use of the technologies that the internet offers us.

The biggest thing to come out of this is that real time communication (what kids call MSN!) is becoming very important in the business world.

Recent statistics show that by 2011 more than 95% of us will be using this technique in our business lives!!!

Best get home and ask the kids how they do it……

Tram 5th Birthday a Great Success

Well, after 4 months of planning, the culmination for the tram’s 5th birthday campaign finally arrived today when we celebrated in Nottingham’s Old Market Square.

Local BBC star Des Coleman hosted the event for us which included displays by the Chilwell Cheerleaders and Dako’s Flying Angels, visits from Nottingham Rugby Club players, the Lord Mayor and Sheriff, various Nottingham City Council members as well as around 300 local school children. The aim (apart from having a great celebration) was to try and break the Guinness World Record for high fives which stood at 408. With only minutes to spare, Des was fived the last time by Mark Fowles, Chairman of the Arrow Consortium (the folks behind the tram) to take our count to 413 – we had done it!

A great time was had by all and after months of work and a very busy day, the dairy team along with our friends from Gemini PR who helped stage the event managed to sit back and have a piece of ‘tram’ cake  and a glass of champagne…

 

Ecobuild 2009

It’s always nice to have a trip to London in the Spring – but yesterday my visit had a solid objective – for me to learn more about the world of green construction.

Ecobuild is an annual event at Earls Court and every time I go, I am amazed at the moves forward the construction industry has made in the world of sustainable building. The star attraction for me was Bill Dunster and his Zed Factory architectural practice. Wonder if he needs a design agency….. Nige

www.ecobuild.co.uk

It’s all just showing off!

I went to a fascinating talk last night in the DICe building at Nottingham Trent University. Mark Jones, Director of the V&A in London was speaking as part of the distinguished lecture series. His talk was titled Museums in the 21st Century. He explained about the explosion of great buildings to house museums in the last ten years – a movement that was more or less started by the Guggenheim in Bilbao. It seems like the worlds geatest architects have been queing up for commissions of this nature with names like Foster, Gehry, Libeskind and I M Pie being involved.

However, what it seems to come down to is the fact that great cities and their leaders simply like to show off rare and exotic stuff that they own! This trait can be seen even back in the day of Lous 1x who built Versailles simply to show off and prove that he was better then most.

The dairy has a display of old coffee mugs and used printer paper if anyone wants to visit!……… Nige

http://www.vam.ac.uk/

First Tram work from the dairy

The 5th birthday of Nottinghams’ tram is nearly here. Monday March 9th is the big day and the dairy has been working on the celebration campaign for five months now. The creative platform revolves around the ‘High Five’. A mixed media ad campaign is breaking this week – the star of which is a complete tram wrap.  There will then be a huge birthday party in the Market Square next Monday hosted by Des Colemen from BBC Nottingham (and One Show Presenter) including our very own world record attempt for the most high fives in in one hour. Everyone is welcome to enjoy the event from 10.30am – but if you miss it, catch on the local TV news as we have full coverage of the event.