Cogent Beekeeping: September 2018.

Time flies when you're having fun.

It’s October, the seasons are turning. As the leaves turn orange, the nights draw in and pumpkins become mandatory, we reflect on what’s been a very busy month here at Cogent HQ.

September kicked off with the launch of the all-new Marston’s Vegan Menu. We created the ‘Moving Mountains’ campaign and online #nomeatchallenge quiz to support the tasty new vegan options now available at Marston’s pubs.

Whilst this meat-free menu impressed taste buds all across the UK, they also impressed the likes of animal ethics charity PETA as they presented Marston’s with The Best Vegan Menu award at their annual Vegan Food Awards.

Aside from delicious recipes and new menus, we also launched Marston’s new Christmas booking system across 650+ of their pubs. Kick-starting the festive season, we’ve created Christmas themed emails, social assets and animations in support of their new booking system (even if it is only October!)

In the meantime, our PR team have also been up to lots. First up they took part in an exciting event to celebrate Green Sheep Group receiving the Queen’s Award for Enterprise (congrats!)…

…and then the launch of QED Geotech’s brand new National headquarters. 

That’s not all. Our PR team also hit the streets to film new content for Supercuts salons’ new RE:FRESH campaign. Needless to say, we had lots of fun and came away with some really great stuff!

Now on to a little bit of SEO. Despite Cogent being in the part of the country furthest away from the sea (fun fact about Meriden alert), our SEO team headed down south to sunny Brighton for #BrightonSEO. After attending 32 talks, our very own SEO expert, Blake, even managed to bump into SEO legend himself, Rand Fishkin!

Feeding our hunger for insights about Homemovers, we spent a bit of time at the NEC this month. First, we headed over to Autumn Fair for a day of trend spotting. We even got to listen to Theo Paphitis give a talk on small businesses, retail and the road to success.

It wasn’t long before we headed back to the NEC for Glee, the garden show. It was this visit that inspired our most recent thought piece on our blog: Are Millennials Redefining Gardening?

In true togetherness fashion, we also saw two of our clients collaborate this month in support of #LearnerDriverWeek. An initiative created by Marmalade insurance and now officially sponsored by Kwik Fit.

Next up, congrats were in order as Gareth, our Growth Director, was named one of the inaugural BD100 after being shortlisted by The Drum. Woohoo!

And, there’s more! September also saw the launch of npower’s Energy HQ website; the new home for all their marketing leading service propositions. 

In the true spirit of togetherness, we also signed up to become the official design partner to Birmingham & Solihull RFC – who are more commonly known as The Bees. This means we’ve been designing new graphics to brand up their ground and have reworked a whole new look and feel for their game programme. COYB!

You know what they say. Work hard, play hard. We’ve certainly done a bit of that this month as the Cogent ping-pong battle commenced. Safe to say, I was knocked out in the very first round (GO ME!), but the competition is heating up as contestants go head to head in a bid to be crowned Cogent Table Tennis Champion 2018.

This month we also got our bake on (who needs Mary Berry anyway?) as we came together to celebrate Macmillan’s Biggest Coffee Morning. Our very own Finance Director took home the star baker prize thanks to her mouthwatering coffee and walnut cake.

Whilst all this was going on, two members of our Propagation Hub headed down to Hertfordshire to host a social media workshop for a great bunch of local business leaders. 119 slides and a lot of intense learning later, our delegates left feeling inspired and full to the brim with lots of new info!

September also saw the launch of our most recent work for Yorkshire Water – Wipesaur. This behaviour change campaign sets out to tackle the problem of flushing wipes. We developed an education pack to be used in schools to teach kids what can and can’t be flushed down the toilet. Alongside lesson plans, we also created a fun activity pack featuring our gruesome Wipesaur.

 

 

That’s a wrap for this month’s Beekeeping. We’ll hit you up next month with more juicy gossip, new work and photos from our annual pumpkin carving challenge. For now, it’s over and out from us. Enjoy October, everyone!