Restaurant of the new Ramada Plaza Hotel, Southport with a view of the bridge over Southport's Marine Lake

We are pleased to have just finished some new photography for Southport’s new Ramada Plaza Hotel. It is nice to do quality work but what really excites me about this job is the way that we are making the images available to many potential users across the world.

With a new hotel to promote, Sales Manager - for the Ramada Plaza, Southport - Georgia Hayes has her work cut out. With a ‘new build’ hotel like this, how do you get people around the world aware of the hotel, how it looks and how it feels to stay there? We hope to contribute in some part by making the images we have shot of the hotel viewable, down-loadable and usable - by way of a ‘Creative Commons Licence’ - to a global audience. Putting the images at high resolution on our Flickr account with Tags and Links should help anyone who is looking for images of Southport find the images and use them. If they appear in any features illustrating Southport, so much the better.

This is a new approach we are taking with our images whereby the intention is to have as many eyes looking at the clients approved images of their product as we can. In the past many photographers instincts have been to closely guard and restrict the use of images. However, for some purposes this approach may be counter productive and not always serve the clients best needs. We will not always give our copyright away but for some clients in some situations this may have major benefits. You can see a larger range of images shot for the hotel here. Alternatively, you can view the images on our account at Flickr.

Once again, using the Flikr API, means that the images you see here are not only viewed on our site serving as our portfolio and accessed dynamically - pulled in ‘on the fly’ from Flickr - they are also on the Flickr site being found and viewed by a global audience.

If you want to find out more about how you could benefit from having images of your product or service take advantage of these techniques call us or send an email. We will be very happy to talk to you.

Their task was to conceive, design and market a fictitious product and then present it ‘Dragon’s Den’ style to a panel of local business experts.

I thought the idea for the event was brilliant and the ingenuity and confidence shown by the participants was inspirational. Well done West Lancashire District Council and the WEB group.

Participants in the event can download images from our website. They firstly need to email Lisa Ratican at West Lancs District Council to obtain a user name and password.

Once you have obtained your password come back to this page and click onto here to go to the gallery site. If you want help in downloading images click here.

Neil Hickson - creative|mixed|media

useful links:

Women Excelling in Business

West Lancashire Investment Centre

(L-R) Kim Hodgson (Ladies Champion) Philippa James (Ambassador for Pennine Lancashire Festival of Food & Culture) and Daniel Carr (Mens Champion) World Gravy Wrestling Championships - The Rose and Bowl Pub, Bacup - 25th August 2008 - Image © Creative Mixed Media 2008 - www.creativemixedmedia.co.uk

Philippa joins the judges panel and does her fair share of ‘ogling’ the greasy bodies. This is the latest edition of a series of videos that we have done with Philippa called Philippa’s Kitchen. Others can be viewed on our YouTube Channel here.

The World Gravy Wrestling Championships is part of the Pennine Lancashire Festival of Food and Culture. Enjoy.

We did a full day’s shoot for the magazine at Hazlewood Castle near York a few months back and we are very pleased with the results. Isobel from Real, Manchester is a fantastic model and Donnette Lathbury (as usual) creates a great range of looks with hair and makeup. Dresses were supplied by The Swanky Bride, Bouquets by Twigs.

In the same edition is a shoot we did with jewellery supplied by Cottrills of Wilmslow. Amanda went for a ‘traditional sweets’ them as a back drop which worked a treat.


Bookmark this on Delicious

In today’s cluttered world of the internet, getting yourself found is just the beginning. For your web site to really work well for you it has got to ‘give’ people something; give them some kind of benefit. This could be information, entertainment, a special offer, just something that they see as a benefit to them and worthy of them clicking onto that button that says RSS Feed, bookmarking you or saving your link to their ‘delicious’ list and wanting to come back again. I have a whole list of sites that I regularly go back to because I know that they will have something new for me to read, learn or otherwise benefit from. Those people work very hard to keep me coming back and they realise the investment they are making in enticing me back is well worth that effort. Sometimes I have bought from them, sometimes I have just passed their address onto my friends and colleagues and often I just find their content of interest or benefit to me. The value for them doesn’t necessarily come from the direct route of me purchasing something. It can be as subtle as this; having me visit their site and linking to them, helps them in their quest to get in front of the people they really need to be seen by. Quality footfall (that is people who stay on a while and read or otherwise consume something from your site) helps in your search engine ranking; we would all like to be top of the relevant Google page.

Perhaps you are too busy already and you barely have enough time to read this post. Why would you want a constant stream of people coming back to your web site? Well, even if you are over run with work at the moment, you should never let your marketing guard down. We have all done it, I know I have. Sometimes you get so busy you become complacent almost looking forward to a ‘minor’ downturn so that you can have a break and get back to some kind of normal life. Backing off the marketing effort is the wrong cure for this particular problem. Markets are constantly changing. When things do get quiet and you wonder why there isn’t much work coming in, it is probably already too late to start thinking about marketing. 

Think of this analogy. You may remember the old coal fire that many of us used to have at home. If you didn’t keep the fire fed with coal and you noticed it was getting cold in the room, the fire was either already out or, if you were lucky, would take a great deal of effort to get going again with a long period of no heat, lots of puffing and lots of smoke. Marketing is coal fired, not gas fired; there isn’t a reliable and instant source of heat that can be turned on and off at will. The fire of sales has to be constantly stoked with the coal of marketing; turning prospects into money can be a slow burn affair. 

Keeping a constant supply of readers happily heading to your web site and consuming its contents is a good thing to have. They may not be ready to buy from you now and perhaps they never will, but they will help with keeping that fire going. Our task is to help you fill those pages and keep visitors coming back for more. - Neil Hickson

I have been a freelance photographer working for Lancashire Life Magazine for 8 years now. During that time I have covered all manner of events from food to fashion, landscapes to interiors, black tie balls to celebrity interviews. But what I am currently most excited about is their use of our Youtube videos for their website.

Our long standing client Philippa James has recently become the food columnist for Lancashire Life Magazine. You can see what she has been up to for the magazine here. Philippa is BIG in the personality department and passionate about food and local produce. Several months ago Philippa and Creative Mixed Media produced a pilot food podcast/video cast and now we have started to produce them on a regular basis. With nearly 2000 views to her credit (at the time of writing) these videos are giving people the ‘Philippa experience’ world wide. If you want to see the first edition of the video feature, ‘Philippa Goes Shooting’ and how Lancashire Life have incorporated it into their site, click here.

By embedding our Youtube channel videos into some of their pages, Lancashire Life have interesting content for their readers and we get more viewers for our video content; ‘win win’ I would say. If you have any comments or would be interested in collaborating in a project with Philippa or work on your own project, send a comment or drop us a line. Neil Hickson, Creative Mixed Media

Working with a presenter like Simon, we can set up a temporary studio on your premises and record several such sales sessions in a day allowing you to have the power of such online selling techniques right there on your web site under your control. For the right products, these sales techniques really work.

David Kirkwood

Northern Lights clients were treated to an inspirational talk by leading creative consultant and internet marketeer Dave Kirkwood on Tuesday 12th August 2008. Dave, who was part of the team who launched laterooms.com, gave the audience some accounts of his career highlights so far. Dave also gave a quick guide to what businesses should be looking at if they want to be effective with their marketing efforts.

We must hold up our hands here and confess that Dave has been giving some mentoring help to Creative Mixed Media. We have been busy soaking up his advice for a couple of months now and it really has enlivened, focused and transformed our business.

Northern Lights Audience