For one night only! Cats on a hot tin roof! No, make that KATs on a hot coal bed!
The Colchester NSPCC Business Group is organising a Charity Firewalk Challenge on Wednesday 27th April. It’s at the Weston Homes Community Stadium – home of Col U – in the evening, and we want YOU to come and take part!
All the money we raise – and we want to bring in around £6,000 from the event – will be spent on local services for local children in need.
It sounds like a crazy thing to do, but when organisations like St John Ambulance have used it to raise money, you know it must be OK. We’re looking forward to it, and it should be a great event – lots of fun, completely different and in a very good cause.
It’s run by Blaze Firewalking, one of the longest-established and most respected companies of its kind. They give everyone who takes part a private, two-hour motivational fear-busting seminar, to give us what we need to walk unharmed across 20 feet of wood embers burning at 1,236 degrees Fahrenheit!
It’s one of those events that people get a real buzz from. We’ll all have fun together – and we’ll be talking for weeks afterwards about how we can’t believe we did it*.
AND we’ll raise a load of cash for the NSPCC!
Go on, call 01206 765544 and book your place today.
Find out more about Blaze Firewalking and their stringent safety procedures: www.blazefirewalking.com
Find out more about the Colchester NSPCC Business Group: www.colchesternspccbusinessgroup.org.uk
* But if anyone has last-minute doubts, they can drop out whenever they like!
We won!
We’re very happy to say that we won this year’s Business Innovation of the Year Award at the Colchester District Awards. The awards – organised by Newsquest, which publishes the Colchester Gazette and Essex County Standard – were handed out at a ceremony at Charter Hall on Friday night, 26 November.
Our innovation is a unique ‘time credit system’ for retainer-based clients. Instead of a conventional monthly retainer, we basically sell our time. With each client, we put together a monthly plan which sets out the number of hours we’ll work for them, and how we’ll spend that time. It makes the work we do adaptable to a client’s needs, allowing them to buy more time in a month or roll their hours over to the next month.
Many marketing companies’ clients don’t feel they get value from conventional retainers – and believe they’re paying for time the company isn’t really spending on them. Our way keeps clients happy by giving them the service and the results they want.
Like many innovations before it, we think it will be adopted by others, and soon become standard practice across our industry.
Contact us to find out more, or check out what our happy clients say!
Colchester’s biggest annual fundraising ball was a huge success again this year, raising our biggest ever total: £6598.20 to help the vital work of the NSPCC in the local area.
Held on Saturday 13th November at The Moot Hall, over 100 people came to the event, and enjoyed:
- wonderful catering by The Lemon Tree
- outstanding five-piece band Soul Kitchen
- casino tables
- caricature artists
- stilt-walking fire-breathers!
Kat Creativ Director Katie Skingle – who chairs the Colchester NSPCC Business Group – says: “It was another wonderful evening made possible by our main sponsors Colchester Lion Walk, Feathers Hair Salons, Weston Homes and Weston Business Centres. We’re proud and pleased and I am, as always, extremely grateful to my fellow committee members for their huge efforts and never-ending dedication to this worthy cause. Every year, we aim to hand over a bigger cheque to the Colchester NSPCC projects than we did the year before, and I’m pleased to say that with the successful fundraising activities we’ve managed to achieve throughout this year we will indeed be able to do that again for 2010!”
Sally Phipps, Deputy Head of Local Fundraising London North and East of England/Community Fundraising Manager, says: “We’re so pleased to have such a fantastic group of supporters in the form of the Colchester NSPCC Business Group who have raised such wonderful sums to support the vital work of the NSPCC.”
We don’t give out awards ourselves, but we’ve got to hand it to Fox Biscuits for setting up the spoof British Biscuit Advisory Board, and fooling several hundred council Health and Safety bods into filling in their questionnaire about biscuit-related injuries!
Not only that, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents actually came up with some real figures when the press picked up on the story. Apparently, an average of 400 people a year go to A&E after an altercation with a cookie. Mind you, that’s only funny if you’re not the woman who stabbed herself in the hand while trying to prise a Smartie off a gingerbread man…
We’re trying to give up biscuits, but even without the occasional sugar rush, we’re still full of PR and marketing ideas ourselves. Earlier in the year, we gave a client their second-biggest sales month ever with just a simple e-shot. That’s £5,000+ of orders with just 80 words!
Want results like that? Call the Kat!
Harry Potter creator JK Rowling is the UK’s most influential woman, according to the National Magazine Company (who publish things like Cosmo and Esquire). Anyone who can multi-task enough to write a bestseller while being a single mum gets our vote. Did you know, she also donated £10 million this year to set up a new multiple sclerosis research clinic in Edinburgh? Now, that’s impressive.
We did think the National Magazine Company’s list might have had more weight if Victoria Beckham hadn’t come second, though! Did the boys at Esquire have something to do with her selection? (If so, our token man, Chris the copywriter, says he doesn’t rate their judgment.)
If you want two tough, influential women handling your marketing, check out our results and give Kat Creativ a call!
Kat Creativ was named Best Business in the Community at the Essex Chronicle Business Awards on 23 September. We were thrilled to be recognised for our work on the Colchester NSPCC Business Group – but especially chuffed to get the award just as we’re gearing up for the NSPCC Emerald Ball.
This glitzy event is at the Moot Hall, Colchester, on Saturday 13 November, and aims to raise £10,000 for the NSPCC’s local work. Find out more and book tickets on the website.
One of the great ironies of PR is that if you’re good at it, you might end up with a dodgy image yourself. Let’s call it Mandelson Syndrome.
Peter Mandelson was one of the architects of New Labour, with a hand in all their election victories – one of the reasons behind Tony Blair’s success. But he had to resign not once, but twice, and the Labour Party rank and file hated him. Alastair Campbell suffered from Mandelson syndrome, too.
Now, it’s Andy Coulson’s turn [http://www.prweek.com/uk/news/1027159/David-Singleton-long-Coulson-cling-on/]. It’s been alleged that when the Downing Street press supremo was editor of the News of the World, he was a bit of a naughty boy. The way we look at it, though, his main problem is that he’s too busy looking after David Cameron’s image to have time to look after his own.
If you’re short of time, but want the kind of coverage Andy Coulson would love about now, call Kat Creativ! We’ll work for you without a thought for ourselves – because our image depends on the results we get for you!
Welcomes Andreea Moldovan on work placement for the next 8 weeks through the University of Essex’s short work scheme!
Team KAT bid a fond farewell to Richard Stephens as he comes to the end of his year’s work placement with the company…keep in touch Rich!!
