So at 7.30am on a cold misty morning the team start to arrive at Purley Hall near Reading. Its a stunning location, originally built in 1609 – we felt like we were walking into Downton Abbey.

The first hour is spent frantically unpacking… it’s always a relief when everyone and everything make it through the door. Lots of coffee and cake to kick start the day. Thanks to Di  (super stylist) there is always a tasty array of nibbles.

Then the big work starts; getting the right lighting, the right angles. Each individual element of the lighting is worked on separately.

Tim and Jose shout at each other through the windows as they create a little bit of spring sunshine through the leaves outside.

The new Fulham bed looks fantastic, its the first time we have really seen it in all its glory and all are agreed that its going to be a great seller.

Carolyn stays warm in the kitchen as she prepares Rebecca for the day ahead… it’s an amazing start to the day by 10.30 the first shot is looking good. There is alot required from the days shoot – we are looking for brochure cover options, contents page options, all the promo shots for the Spring campaign and if all goes well we would like to squeeze in a new mattress shot.

The secret to getting great shots is a fantastic team, great products and lots of fun. The constant distraction of Andrew new moustache for Movember fails to distract  many for too long. (they are not his real glasses)

We are trying a new format for the contents spread… the shot is amazing my favourite of the day

Andrew and Laura spend most of their afternoon with their faces glued to the monitor watching a variety of setups pouring in.

Then we open the doors and let in the freezing air as Rebecca pretends to be warm in what is becoming the coldest day of November so far. The shot is lovely, just what we need for our window posters.

No time to stop as Tim is shooting Di is setting up the next shot on the other side of the room, the new trunks are very exciting. The accessories range at F&B has really developed over the last 12 months – allowing us to try lots of new combinations.

We get to 4.00pm and now its dark outside… one last shot to do. The feathers are really starting to fly as Rebecca is blowing them all over the place. It takes a few goes to get it just right – but at 4.45 we are done. Now things really get busy we have 15 minutes to pack up and get out before the 5.00 deadline.

Sitting in the car at 5.10pm we made it  – already the conversation slides towards what we are shooting for summer…

Our connection here in the office regularly drops to below 1Mbps and peaks at about 2-3Mbps. Of course this makes doing business a little trying when you’ve got upwards of 15 staff members all uploading client artwork to ftp servers, downloading hi-res photo assets, streaming 6Music and seeing how long we can keep the Nyan Cat going…

It’s well known that something needs to happen here in Dorset to enhance the state of internet connectivity, and to that end the Digital Dorset Taskforce was set up to “lobby and negotiate with BT and other internet service providers to improve broadband speeds and access for businesses across Dorset”. The latest news is that Fujitsu have trumped BT’s offering via their Fibre-to-the-Home network, suggesting speeds of up to 1Gbps. Providing ISP’s like TalkTalk and Virgin Media can get cost-effective access to BT’s hardware, this would provide a massive boost to productivity in the area, not to mention the Halo office!

I thought about adding an image here to illustrate general internet connectivity, but all I could find were photos of network cables coming out of a hub. There’s enough of that around, so I’ll include a nice photo Daz took of Muddeford Harbour instead!

Muddeford Harbour - Taken by Daz

]]> http://www.haloassociates.co.uk/2011/superfast-broadband-in-dorset-the-state-of-play/feed 0 http://www.haloassociates.co.uk/2011/google-the-end-of-the-url http://www.haloassociates.co.uk/2011/google-the-end-of-the-url#comments Wed, 07 Sep 2011 16:46:49 +0000 Toby Pestridge http://www.haloassociates.co.uk/?p=508 read more…]]> I was driving to work last week and found myself following a small work van which was plastered with advertising stickers. One of them caught my eye, it was the word ‘Google’ followed by two separate words. These last two words were key phrases related to the company. Let’s say they were “bathroom plumbing” for arguments sake. Pretty simple, but as I sat there in traffic waiting for the lights to change, it struck me that while this company weren’t doing anything particularly new or different, they were using Google in a way that could change the importance we currently place on the URL.

The URL, or Uniform Resource Locator, is the primary means of identifying and accessing a website. The domain name, or ‘web address’ as it’s come to be known carries a great deal of weight, as it can mean the difference between a memorable, easy-to-find site such as www.plumbing.com or something obscure that’ll you’d never remember from the back of a van: www.johnsmithkitchenbathroomplumbing.biz anyone?

The importance of the URL is underlined when you learn how much some of them change hands for. Did you know, for example, that the URL sex.com fetched a whopping $14 million at auction back in 2006? Pocket change, right? Well how about insure.com, which weighed in at $16 million in 2006 [source].

Back to the plumbers van, and the “Google Bathroom Plumbing” sticker.  The whole thing was a series of simple vinyl lettering. The “Google” bit was done in Google’s signature font, and the other two words were in a simple sans-serif font. This was the only reference on the van to the company’s web presence – not an URL in sight. What they were doing was relieving potential customers from the usual challenge of remembering their domain name, and instead saying “we have such confidence in our web presence, that all you need to do is Google this key phrase and you’ll find us.”

It’s a brave move, as a company’s SERP (Search Engine Ranking Position) can fluctuate based on a number of factors, not least changes to Google’s own search algorithm which has proven successful in removing low-quality link farms but can also produce false positives by dropping “real” sites from their previously high positions.

What does this mean for the future? Will we see a move away from the domination of the URL? Will our fixation on getting just the right web address fizzle out, or in 5, 10, 15 years’ time will people still be prepared to spend tens of millions on a handful of letters? I’m not so sure, but I’ve got respect for a company who is prepared to stick their digital neck out in this way.

How confident would you be about instructing people to Google a single key phrase to find your website, rather than give them your web address? Which key phrases would you use?

Click here for more information about the Halo Effect.

The move into solid food for toddlers marks a departure for the company into a new, ever growing market. Busy mums who want real food in a convenient format they can trust. Organix have been working hard to spread the word, doing supermarket tastings. They were also at the Lollibop show recently at Regent’s Park which was a great success.