Taking in the once bustling Brantham factory estate, sub team B enjoyed the benefits of Andrew’s local knowledge with some interesting tit bits as they surveyed the quiet, dignified beauty of the Decoy Pond.

Once the Manningtree to Ipswich train line was crossed, the route took a turn for the worse in terms of conditions under foot. The group leaders, clearly more experienced campaigners across England’s green and pleasant land, were sporting much more suitable footwear than the less experienced Sub Team B. Roxanne in particular picking the peculiar option of sparkly, sequined plimsolls to cut through the mud and wet grass, before having to send for more socks when she reached the final destination. The leaders stormed ahead, surveying the path. Despite looking fairly confident that they were leading the sub team in the desired direction, they never entirely convinced that there wouldn’t be a sudden flash of orange at any moment as the Ordinance Survey Map was whipped out to confirm the route.

The pace of the walk, whilst mostly fairly brisk, was slowed by the consistent photo opportunities, taken advantage of by co-walk leader Caroline. Camera responsibilities were shared by Caroline and Sub Team B leader Kate to ensure every angle of every walker was rigorously covered.

With not long to go the group were alerted to the site of non-walker Aaron’s Geocache, and after a quick reccy of the contents (and some irresponsible comments of potential new contents by some members of the group), the home stretch was attacked, the leaders and Sub Team B finally coming together to form one happy group.

The sight of the office was a welcome one as feet were soggy and muscles were saggy. The group collapsed into their chairs to enjoy a well earned cup of tea, while looking back on their morning’s marathon effort.
Sadly, once we’d logged our route on the Walk to Work website www.livingstreets.org.uk, the effort didn’t turn out to be quite as marathon as we had hoped, with the distance calculated burning off not even one delicious muffin, let alone a Marathon bar, or should that be Snickers? However, we did save 0.59 kg of CO₂ each, collectively saving the planet from a whopping 2.95kg of Carbon Dioxide, making it all worthwhile.

With only one staff member being local to their offices in Brantham, and others coming from as far away as Hadleigh and Thorpe-le-Soken, an agreed starting point at Lawford has been decided upon and the best route of approximately three miles, plotted.

Partner, Caroline Foster explains: We came across the Fresh Ways to Work stand at the recent ISSBA exhibition and because of where we all live in relation to where we work we thought the Walk to Work Week might not be practical for everyone but after a team meeting we felt that was far too defeatist and a compromise was made”

“We fully support the drive for businesses to be more socially responsible and thinking about our daily car use in all areas not just urban is something we all need to look at and make changes, even small ones, where necessary.”

The Write Impression is a Commercial Writing and PR Company and Client Account Manager, Petra Hornsby is hoping that a good brisk walk will enliven the creative flow: “Providing the weather is kind and we are not battling the wind and rain I am hoping we will all arrive at the office invigorated, with clear heads and ready to tackle the day. We might even manage a creative meeting along the way!”

Caroline concludes: “We will be wearing company t-shirts, wellies if wet and our colours of purple and white so any motorists passing us are welcome to toot their horns and wave – it will help remind us why we are doing it!”

For more information on the Walk to Work Week visit: www.freshwaystowork.org.uk and www.livingstreets.org.uk

Partner, Caroline Foster remarked, ‘As a successful and rapidly expanding Suffolk based company we are delighted to be exhibiting at the ISSBA Suffolk Business Exhibition again this year and even more so because we have booked a larger stand in order to put on a diverse display of our published client work. We’ll also be offering incentives and a fabulous prize draw for visitors who come to see us on the day. Look out for the purple bunting!’

The ISSBA Suffolk Business Exhibition is being held on Wednesday April 25 between 2.00 pm and 7.00 pm at Trinity Park. It is free to attend and open to all and is an ideal opportunity to meet up to the 1500 or more expected visitors.

So if you were one of the 1.3 million who received an e-reader and are in the 92% with an Amazon Kindle then you can download and start creating your very own positive advantage.

Follow the link to download the book and remember you can leave a review and read the 5 star reviews that have already been left just days after the release.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chariots-on-Fire-ebook/dp/B007HONT28/ref=cm_rdp_product

http://www.theendlessbookcase.com/shop/products-page/ebooklet/chariots-on-fire/

Our undergraduate PR Intern Roxanne joined two specialist journalists to try their hand at flower arranging with The Write Impression’s client, Beverley Nichols from Jades Flower Design. Here, Roxanne talks about the workshop, along with photographs of the step by step stages culminating in her spring inspired hand tied bouquet.

Firstly, I would like to begin with my level of creativity when it comes to all things ‘arty’, I am left-handed, an excuse that seems to go everywhere with me from art classes when I was at school to wrapping presents at Christmas time. I explained this to Beverley and she told me not to worry and said that she actually teaches flower arranging left handed so I should pick it up fairly quickly.  I must say I was very surprised at just how quickly I picked it up.

Once we had cleaned our stems of all foliage Beverley told us to lay out our materials in a neat order, and we began with a large arrangement using various foliage, wax stems and cream avalanche roses. We practiced the ‘spiralling’ technique before moving on to arranging a bouquet of just roses. It was quite difficult to create a round pattern, and Beverley gave us all a good tip which was to stand in front of the long mirror in her workshop and tilt the bouquet towards the mirror to see where we needed to add extra roses to get that rounded shape we were looking for.

Our final, (and my favourite) arrangement was a hand tied bouquet using cream roses and fuchsias. We each had different colour fuchsias which made it less competitive although at times there was what we called ‘flower envy’. However this vanished once all of the bouquets were completed and tied as we were all very pleased, a key quote from the workshop was from one of the journalists who when looking in the mirror said; “I wish I’d had this bouquet at my wedding,” followed by “doing it myself would’ve saved me an awful lot of money.” Beverley then talked us through the concept and process of her Brides on a Budget courses, explaining that she helps with ordering the flowers, choosing the design, making sure it matches with the brides dress and she also added that many Mothers choose to make the brides bouquet as a special gift.

Another interesting point that came from the course was the realisation that the course gives you a taste of flower arranging and makes you realise that you can buy supermarket flowers and foliage, and create your own arrangement based on the skills that you pick up during the workshop, Beverley mentioned that one of her many flower arranging courses is how to style your supermarket flowers, which is great for those who wish to carry on the skill but within a budget and can access the flowers conveniently.

Overall I really enjoyed the course and found it quite therapeutic; I was very impressed and pleased with my hand tied bouquet and when I got home I followed Beverley’s instructions and cut the stems, before putting them straight into a green vase to really bring out the spring colours.

Ashley is the son of Caroline Foster, partner of The Write Impression, for who the experience of being part of such a big movie was as exciting as it was for her son. For Caroline filming was a bizarre experience as a mother, “there was one scene in particular where Ashley was in the mud screaming for his mother in the film, I just wanted to run to him.”

Filming also threw up some interesting situations for Ashley, who came to face to face with a life sized dummy of himself, “They had to make a life-sized wax model of me. I got a bit freaked.” It was also unnerving for Caroline, “It was a bit freaky seeing this dummy of Ashley. It is a bit unsettling seeing your child like that.”

Ashley Foster plays Nathaniel Drablow, The Woman in Black’s son, he said, “It was very exciting to be starring in such a big movie, Daniel Radcliffe was really nice, I also met Ciaran Hinds and Liz White. The whole experience was great, at times it was quite scary but the whole crew were supportive and made filming enjoyable.”

All the team at The Write Impression are very proud of Ashley and have been caught up in the excitement of the release of The Woman in Black. Below is Ashley’s interview in the feature supplement ea man in Saturday’s East Anglian Daily Times.

The aim of the Week, which runs from 5^th-11^th February, is to raise awareness of business and personal life coaching. Coaches around the world are offering a variety of activities and pro bono services in their local communities to share what coaching has the ability to do.

It also heralds the launch of the ICF Global Coaching Study. This survey of the phenomenal growth of the business and life coaching industry worldwide was based on 12,000 respondents from 117 countries. It follows the first survey in 2007, also undertaken by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which was one of the largest pieces of research at the time.

If you think a business or life coach could help you, see the UK ICF website www.coachfederation.org.uk for some useful pointers on what to consider, and how to find a coach.

At The Write Impression we like to always look on the bright side, and what better way to lift our morale than to share our amazing successes for our clients over the last few weeks. By January 3 two of our clients had been interviewed on local radio, we had seventeen pages of magazine features and more than thirty pages of newspaper coverage – not a bad way to start 2012!

Aside from our press release guarantee, it’s really important that we continually measure our success, both for our clients and our own team here. So, as well as our cuttings (many of which are displayed on our office walls), we have a success board reminding us of what’s coming up – it’s full up already for January 2012.

Looks like 2012 is going to be a great year for The Write Impression – we hope it is for you too!

Remember that old adage that businesses don’t plan to fail – they fail to plan. So make sure that your marketing plan has an opening summary (which you will probably write last) and includes content that reflects your business strategy, outlines your marketing objectives, and concludes with your action points.

In the process, you will be considering who your clients are and how best to reach them. Then think what your business is all about, what your objectives are and how to achieve them. When looking at your marketing objectives, you should be assessing your strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Don’t forget to be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-specific. And if you really enjoy analytic techniques, try the Seven Ps: Product, Pricing, Place, Promotion, People, Processes, Physical evidence – and even that elusive Pzazz.

As you move towards working out your action plan, make sure you look at resources, cost, and control – in other words, who is going to take responsibility for putting the plan into place, and how and when are they going to do this.

Finally, take a leaf out of Walt Disney’s book (or film). “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” It certainly worked for him.

An example tweet that we posted this week was #Advertising costs exceptionally more than #PR, and the effects are not as long lasting as those of #PR. #presspacks http://cot.ag/tKOQbE. Here we hash tagged the subjects which were advertising and PR, we ended with the point to the tweet which was for people to look at our press packs and as they have prices on them they can compare to the prices they may have received for advertising. So we not only hash tagged press packs but we also slotted in the link to our press packs. The importance of this tweet was to drive those reading the tweet to our website. Twitter Marketing for Dummies states that when developing your brand story on twitter you should; share client success stories, (check) we tweet links to our press cuttings and re tweet our clients tweets, share your company history (check) we have filled out an about us section at the top of our twitter and lastly share your personal opinion (check) only in small doses, too much can get you into sticky situations.

Our social media pages are now becoming as influential as our website. It is important to make sure we remain active. We have decided to upload our press pack pages onto Facebook as a way of reminding people of the different services we offer here at The Write Impression.