Welcome to our last working week of the year!
Yes, the team are having a nice long and well overdue break as the office closes this Friday and will remain closed until Wednesday 2nd January, when normal service will be resumed!
In addition to wishing all of our clients, friends, suppliers and supporters a Very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, we thought that to end the year, we would take a look at a our highlights from 2012.
So here is the Cloud 9 review of the year, some of it great, some of it not so great, but we gave it a shot, and we are still here to tell the tale!
January was a combination of highs and lows, with the low being our ill-fated New Year New You exhibition in West Bridgford. Despite a major promotion to attract visitors, all of our exhibitors were left hugely disappointed by the low audience numbers and who could blame them! Maybe our choice of Ken Clark to open the event was not on target and even the hunky chaps from Nottingham Rugby Club couldn't attract the crowds - maybe it was just too early in the year and the good folk of Nottingham were not ready for change!
The Fresh PR Awards were also judged in January down at BMB in London and we had record numbers in terms of entries this year, so much of the month was spent prepping the PR Awards.
February was a venue hunt like no other as we looked at potential hosts for the Fresh Creative Awards Judging, everywhere from Hastings to Hull. In addition, we ventured to several key business events in our local area and decided that the only way is networking was to be our new mantra!
February also saw the launch of our new hire service, Dazzling Table Displays. With a variety of great decor to help theme events, to date, we have hired out everything from Lava Lamps to Peacock Feathers this year and we have plans to increase our stock in 2013!
March kicked off with the Fresh PR Awards at the Deansgate Hilton in Manchester and was a very successful event with over 250 guests celebrating creativity and innovation in the communications arena.
We also attended the initial filming of the Fresh Creative Awards work with the team from McCann Erickson in Birmingham, up in the Lake District, with Mrs Bogg, Mum of Dylan from Big in Leicester. This charming campaign, which featured three industry Mums, has been incredibly successful this year and thrust Fresh very much in to spotlight.
The call for entries for Fresh went live in April and without a venue booked for judging, we ventured down to the Cotswold Conference Centre for a nosey around and had an incredibly enjoyable weekend!
April was also the Conference and Hospitality Show in Leeds and the last How Do Awards, in addition to a very special event celebrating the 50th Birthday of a dear friend of ours in Manchester. Once Upon a Teacup Vintage Afternoon Tea Parties, which grew from this initial birthday party, is now doing a roaring trade in the North West and we can't recommend them highly enough!
May saw one of the best fam trips we've ever enjoyed at Cloud 9 with a fabulous trip up to Glasgow with Q Hotels to the Westerwood Hotel. The Westerwood Hotel &Golf Resort is one Glasgow hotel not to be missed and is located in prime territory whether you are craving the
city buzz or the simple pleasures in life. With the recent opening
of the M80 motorway, allowing extremely easy access to the hotel,
The Westerwood Hotel & Golf Resort is now only fifteen minutes
from both Glasgow city centre and Stirling giving you a world of
options that other hotels in Glasgow could only dream of.
We also went to the launch of the new St Georges Park site, which as well as being the site of the new FA Training Academy, is the home to a brand new Hilton Hotel and Hampton by Hilton Hotel. Located in the heart of England, near Burton-Upon-Trent, St. George’s Park is set in the National Forest, in 330 acres of beautifully landscaped
parkland.
June was certainly a mixed month. In between all of the Jubilee Celebrations that meant a few short work weeks, we also helped celebrate our friends at Orchard with their 20th Birthday Party and attended the inaugural bursary event staged by Birmingham University with the Beattie Foundation.
The plans to host a Royal Ascot Ladies Day event in Nottingham was not quite so successful and despite being sold out with stalls selling everything from jewellery to jam, tickets were harder to shift so unfortunately we had to cancel the event...
July should have been the CIPR Northern Conference but this was postponed until October, meaning most of the month was given over to processing the entries for Fresh, which was no mean feat this year as numbers were up by around 40%.
We also celebrated another legendary birthday - another 50th - of a great friend and valued client up in Manchester as well as squeezing in a variety of site visits to a range of new venues for the CIPR.
August was all about Fresh again, as we held judging over four days back down at the Cotswolds Conference Centre. Entertaining 30 creative, digital, design and media directors is no easy job and despite terrible weather, we had a very successful trip and managed to extract a really good spread of results from the incredible entry levels.
Once the nominations for the awards went live it was all hands on deck as the normally quiet month of August was busy with ticket bookings for the event - something we don't normally see here at Cloud 9 until the kids go back to school!
September saw the launch of When the Lights Went Out, a film by our friend Bil Bungay, based on a true story - Yorkshire, 1974. Britain is in recession, the oil crisis and black outs
loom large. The Maynard family move into their dream house, only to find
a "presence" already living there. Len, Jenny and their daughter Sally
must struggle to keep their already-fragile family together as they are
attacked by poltergeists. Soon it becomes apparent that Sally is their
main focus of attention. The house becomes a living nightmare. They must
exorcise the evil spirits for them to survive.
October was certainly the most manic month of the year which kicked off with the Fresh Awards at the Midland Hotel in Manchester. Over 350 guests celebrated creativity and did their utmost to "Make their Mums Proud".
This was closely followed by the CIPR Northern Conference, in its new date slot and at a new venue, Leeds Metropolitan University and their Rose Bowl Building. Headline speaker was Max Clifford and a wealth of industry professionals contributed to a very busy schedule on the day which was heralded a great success.
From this we went straight to Ettington Chase in Stratford to co-ordinate a weekend event for Beachcomber who were celebrating an Academy Reunion with Travel Agents from around the UK.
November was Awards month with us attending the PR Week Awards with our clients Kantar Media and being guests of the PRCA at their awards which continues to grow each year. We even managed to sneak a picture with the host James Nesbitt (and yes we know the smoking is not good but he did nick one!).
We also celebrated with the team from McCanns who scooped the Grand Prix at the Cream Awards in the Midlands, a real culmination of the work they had put in to the Fresh Creative Campaign this year.
And, we went with Mercure for a rather special Willy Wonka themed night in Coventry at one of their hotels which was very fattening, but enjoyable all the same!
December has been given over to planning for 2013: Both Fresh and Cloud 9 celebrate 10 years next year so we have big plans, website revamps, celebrations and a host of client events already in the diary!
And in between all of this we have worked out, we have seen around 36 hotel reps, visited some 46 different venues, provided venue searches for around 23 events, attended six business seminars, been to four charity balls, networked the life out of Nottingham, hired out hundreds of decorations, delivered six destination guides and got through a box of teabags a week - Its no wonder we need a break over Christmas!
So, whatever your plans for the festive season, we wish you well and we'll be back on Wednesday 2nd January.
Enjoy!
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