On Sunday the 7th of March 2010, our own Co-founder Phil took part in the Paris Half-Marathon in aid of the Haiti earthquake.
Phil sprinted alongside 22,000 fellow runners on a 21,097 kilometre race through the streets of Eastern Paris. The weather was not in his favour unfortunately, with cold, wet and windy conditions.

Despite the set backs, Phil ploughed through, starting at the “Esplanade du Château de Vincennes” and finishing at the same point, with a brilliant time of 1 hour 46 minutes.
With our Account Manager Maddie currently taking part in the Big Cycle Challenge in India, we have been provided with inspiration for us all to get involved in the bigger picture.

Well done Phil!

Blogging is almost the grandfather of social media. There are millions of blogs and bloggers worldwide, some read by millions, others by only a few.But, done properly, blogs can be a very important part of social media marketing for small businesses. Here’s why:

Convey your brand personality - even the best websites can be a bit dull. The best way to spice up your site is to include a blog. Here you can be more informal and get across your personality and the personality of your brand.

Demonstrate your knowledge, experience or expertise - blogging is a great way to demonstrate that you know what you are talking about. By going into greater depth on a subject you will engage with your visitors and demonstrate your knowledge

Make your website feel alive and up to date - static business websites can often feel as though they are ignored and are rarely updated. A blog will give regular, dynamic content that is changing on a frequent basis.

Give your customers added value - by blogging regularly, you can give visitors yet another reason to come back and visit your site, especially if you are using RSS or Twitter to send out updates about your recent posts
Help with search engine optimisation - a blog is a great way to build extra visibility with the search engines. Make sure your content is relevant and includes plenty of your popular search keywords.

Give visitors a reason to buy - whilst your website will give visitors lots of information about your products or services, your blog will offer a way for you to demonstrate why they are important or valuable. This could be through tips, guidance or possibly even case studies.

Become a thought leader - by blogging on a regular basis, you will build up a following in your industry and this will improve your recognition and publicity far and beyond your traditional customer base.

Valuable content for other social media channels - with so many social media networks out there, the challenge is often knowing exactly what content to share. Having regular blog posts provides a vast array of new, fresh content that you can tweet or share to your heart’s content!

Show you care - the time and effort that you dedicate to blogging will show to your website visitors that you really care about this business and are happy to go that extra mile

Embrace the blogosphere - blogging isn’t the end of the matter. If you are really going to make a blogging strategy successful, you need to be out there in the blogosphere commenting on other blogs and joining in the conversation. If you do this, your blog will be better known and your traffic will really start to grow
What else is there? What other reasons do you have for why small businesses should blog? Let us know in the comments!

By Social Small Biz on November 29, 2009

On the 3rd of February 2010 our own Mash Co-founder Phil Edelston conducted a presentation named the “Ingredients of Marketing Mix”.

He delivered an engaging and inspirational session to a group of thirty ambitious students, all of whom harbour an ambition to become successful entrepreneurs.The presentation was part of a three day course linking in with NACUE - The National Consortium of University Entrepreneurs (www.nacue.com) which took place at the London Metropolitan University. Phil aimed to provide a detailed and practical coaching strategy covering key points such as:

• The background of marketing.
• What a marketing strategy is.
• How to put a strategy together.

Phil prepared by digging back into his own university lectures, using his own knowledge and experience combined to deliver an interactive and productive presentation.
Once the basic points were covered, Phil focused on marketing in today’s society and the accessibility that has been created through the current digital and social media.

As a widely expanding and popular domain, the participants were able to benefit in learning how to use these opportunities to their advantage.

As a successful entrepreneur himself (Phil co-founded Mash - www.mashmarketing.co.uk and Dylan* - www.dylanlondon.com ), Phil’s aim is to empower up and coming entrepreneurs, assisting in fast tracking their goals and provide any knowledge share that can help drive successful marketing initiatives through their businesses.

You can link in with Phil through www.linkedin.com/in/connectphiledelston

Our two co-founders are active members of an organisaton called EO (entrepreneurs organisation - www.eonetwork.org) and often come back to the office with stories of brilliance from commercial and social entrepreneurs from across the globe.  On Tuesday, they went to an EO24 Event to listen to a brilliant entrepreneur called Bill Liao, founder of Xing.com.  Bill is a serial entrepreneur, having taken part in 7 IPO’s in his career and works predominately in philanthropy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_liao).

Bill’s is currently involved in a building a new organization with resources and partners to reforest 20 Million Square Kilometers of our precious Earth.  To read more about his amazing new business, and to actively participate in helping change the World, visit his website on www.weforest.com and become a fan on facebook. http://www.facebook.com/WeForest?ref=ts

We want to help Bill achieve his goal, and hope that you’ll sign up too.  We can all make a difference.

Is none other than the mighty Paul Hanson a.k.a. Frog.

Frog has delivered to the highest level all year round and consistently goes that extra mile for us. Not least when recently he stepped in last minute to help avert a bit of a van and stock crisis at some very unsociable hour on the M6.

It really is appreciated by us all here at Mash and this award is in recognition of someone who truly appreciates the teamwork and partnership focus we need throughout our campaigns.

Frog informs us that he has already started work on building a trophy cabinet.

We love a confident Masher…

Mash were out in force at the Annual Field Marketing and Brand Experience Awards at the Marriot Mayfair last night.

We received a ‘highly recommended’ Silver Award once again. We felt we were in with a really strong chance of Gold but no matter, it was still an awesome night and we’re over the moon at the success of this year.

We have delivered over 235 projects this year alone, working with some of the coolest brands on the planet at gigs, festivals and events all over the UK and Europe. We have a lot of work in the pipeline for 2010 already, some of which we will start planning and booking very soon. We’ve also got an awesome new development on the database front and hugely improved interactivity in the new phase of the website.

Lots to come, and lots to celebrate.

Not least our Mashers themselves. Without them nothing would be possible and as if to prove this very point - a team of our girls and guys did us immensely proud at the awards last night effortlessly hosting the guests and presenting the awards - with class and professionalism that only Mash can offer!

Here’s to a fantastic year ahead.

July’s winner of the coveted prize is Martine George who is based in Leicester and has produced a string of fantastic performances over the last few months and over the 3 years she has been a true and loyal Masher.

Masher of the Month :: July 2009 :: Martine George

Recent highlights include; consistently great work on Anchor (praised by some hugely influential clients at RAF Waddington (Lincoln) and Lambeth County Show!) and Samsung Jet.  Martine managed to work consistent 12.5 hour days in Canary Wharf then drove up to Derby immediately after to do 12 hr days on consecutive days.

All with a fantastic smile on her face. A worthy winner - well done!

Last Sunday, Mash ran their first Superjam party in Brixton. There were scones, laughs and tunes aplenty with everyone thoroughly enjoying themselves and going home knowing they had taken part in something truly special and meaningful.

Fraser Doherty, the teenage entrepreneur behind the hugely successful start up Superjam, had a vision: A world in which he hosted the most amazing tea parties for the elderly in his native Edinburgh.

Egged on by his Gran, who used to take cream teas to house bound elderly residents in her area, Fraser decided to act:

‘I was inspired to get involved in entertaining housebound elderly people by my Gran. When she originally made jam, she would make jam and scones and cakes and take them to all the elderly people in her area. These were people who didn’t ever get out of their homes and rarely had visitors, so my Gran would take my brother and I with her and we would play our musical instruments or share stories with them to brighten up their day”

As an astute business man and purveyor of fine jam, Fraser had a great base from which to launch the Superjam tea parties.

He rang round a few of his favourite business partners to get their support. With their help, the parties started to take place. Since April 2008, he has run well over 100 events, with up to 500 guests at each, all over Scotland, England and Wales.

Now offering live music, dancing and, of course, SuperJam and scones, the tea parties have gone far to improve the lives of the elderly that participate.

The guests have a wonderful afternoon every time, and are grateful for the invite. One guest even said that it made him ‘feel like a person again’, since he had made such a great new group of friends.

Fraser soon realised that the tea parties were very popular, and had real potential. He decided to call in a favour with his buddies over at Mash.

The idea was to work in partnership, utilising each parties strengths - Superjam providing the jam, Mash coordinating the next event.

The aim is to get the right partners on board, and roll these tea parties out, nationwide. We are full of ideas, and open to suggestions - why not come down and get involved at the next party?

Ideally, by 2010, we want to be hitting six cities, once a month, with a total of 72 tea parties throughout the year.

We are sure you’ll agree, these tea parties are a great idea. As clichéd as it sounds, you don’t often get an opportunity in your working day to give something back.

At the Superjam tea parties, we aim to:

Put on a spread - tea, scones, cakes
Get active - music and dancing
Build friendships - swap recipes AND home baked goodies
Learn something new - knitting and bridge

At the next Superjam tea party, 200 guests are expected.

Get involved - for more information please contact Emma Massie-Taylor on 0207 939 7670 or emmamt@mashmarketing.co.uk

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We’d also like to make special mention of the band who played for us all at the Superjam party last Sunday. The fantastic Gabby Young & Other Animals had played until 4am at the Wiltshire Jazz festival that morning but arrived with a real desire to get involved and appreciate what the event was all about. They went down an absolute storm with some beautifully harmonic and haunting melodies and ensembles. A real treat.

Please do look them up as they are well worth going to see live.

For more info on the band please go to www.mypsace.com/gabbyyoung or email: gabbyyoung@gmail.com

This is a great week down at Mash Towers. After 4 years of hard endeavour, thousands of hours of hard graft and a lot of standing on soap boxes and talking about how our industry needed to change, we have won our first GOLD award for excellence. The ISP Award for Service Partner of the Year 2009 is in recognition of our added value partnership with our client BMT and all of the dedication and focus that has gone in to delivering the hugely successful School Foods Trust campaign.

We are passionate advocates of great promotional staffing, disciples of excellence and real supporters of change through innovation in our sector. We are immensely proud to have been recognised with this award and want to thank all of our fantastic clients, partners who have had the foresite to allocate their staffing fulfilment to us as their specialists and work with us as partners rather than clients, thereby providing the dynamic that has enabled us to innovate and perpetually improve our product and service offering. We would also like to send a huge thanks to our wonderful book of brand ambassadors, our Mashers. Through their dedication and commitment to our business, they have enabled us to over deliver on our campaigns, raising the bar in staffing fulfilment and adding substance and credibility to our ‘excellence in staffing’ mantra.

Thank you one and all!