We are pleased to announce that Chris Marsh of Melbourne Hosting has been picked as the winner of our helicopter flight experience. Chris impressed us most with his Tweeting, photos and reasons as to why he wanted to win the flight experience. The competition was run in conjunction with our helicopter marketing campaign which saw us release 50 radio controlled helicopters to companies across the UK and beyond.

On hearing the exciting news, Chris said “Thanks very much guys, I’m made up!”

Chris will join our MD Jon on the flight which will take off from Manchester and fly over the skies of the north west taking in some of the iconic landmarks along the way. The flight is scheduled to take off some time in May.

Congratulations Chris! ]]> http://www.space48.com/news/melbourne-get-airborne/feed/ 0 http://www.space48.com/news/space-48-get-shortlisted-for-the-big-chip-awards/ http://www.space48.com/news/space-48-get-shortlisted-for-the-big-chip-awards/#comments Thu, 26 Apr 2012 12:37:16 +0000 jo http://www.space48.com/?p=5183 The sky was grey, the rain was falling and it was set to be just an average Thursday morning in the Space 48 offices. That was until Jane opened her inbox and discovered

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The sky was grey, the rain was falling and it was set to be just an average Thursday morning in the Space 48 offices. That was until Jane opened her inbox and discovered a ruddy congratulations email from the organisers of the Big Chip Awards 2012!

We are delighted to announce that we have been shortlisted for Best Online Brand Development with our Optimise Internet/Space 48 rebrand. We are up against TBWA and Mosquito in the category and are really pleased to have made the shortlist with such renowned names.

Back in October when we began the task of rebranding from Optimise Internet to Space 48 we never expected the response to be as big as it has been, so to get shortlisted for an award for it is testament to everyone’s hard work and efforts.

The awards take place on 5 July 2012 at the Palace Hotel in Manchester with a champagne reception, dinner and party ’til late. It promises to be a great night and we’re all looking forward to the ceremony, no matter the outcome.

To view the shortlist and read all about the Big Chip Awards, click here.

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A few of us had received remote control helicopters over Christmas and had brought them into the office for a bit of lunchtime fun during the abysmal winter months. Sure enough, laughter and fun ensued which then led to us all buying helicopters. No lunch was complete without a competition to land our choppers on a mug top or the office printer. They became-and still are-part of the Space 48 landscape.

It was during a meeting one afternoon when we were thinking of unique ways to promote Space 48 it dawned on us: we needed to use the power of the chopper to help us on our mission.

The Process

The task to source 50 green helicopters, reams of green wrapping paper, oodles of batteries and create a suitable buzz began.

The enormity of sorting the above out was soon realised and we set about on our individual jobs to make this idea a reality.

Who we targeted

Compiling the list of clients and companies we wanted to send helicopters turned out to be a challenge in itself. We wanted to send them to clients and partners who have been instrumental in our business or to companies who we thought might benefit from knowing about our existence as Magento Enterprise Partners. The list we had originally put together was rather large so it took a couple of attempts to refine it.

We chose a mixture of companies from sports and fashion retailers to creative agencies. We researched who best to send the parcels to for each company and then decided when and how best to send them.

Take off!

We created a teaser letter which was sent by first class post two days before the parcel to create a buzz. The helicopters once wrapped, batteries added and branded up, were sent out by courier two days after the letter.

Read the letters we sent out here

The Response

The whole purpose of the PR exercise was not to necessarily gain new clients right away, but to raise awareness of who we are and what we do. If we gained some clients as a result -direct or indirect- then that was considered a bonus. The last thing we wanted to do was appear spammy or as if we were hitting the hard sell.

Within a day of us sending out the initial letters we were already getting Tweets about them. The buzz was exactly what we had hoped for and the hype continued to snowball over the coming days until the helicopters themselves started arriving on people’s desks. In addition to the letter we created a page on our website where people could upload images and videos of their helicopters and also enter to win a helicopter flight experience.

Some of the brilliant photos and comments we had from people…

Chris Marsh, Melbourne Hosting “Exciting letter in the post from @Space48ers today…”

Hack Manchester “Thank you to Space 48 for our epic gift. We love you guys!”

‎Stephen Elldred, Effortless Skin “Just found the perfect launch i(Pad) for the gift from Space 48!”

Daniel Ashcroft, KMP Digitata “Received a free helicopter from Space 48! Our lunchtime activity is sorted.”

Jordan Wilson, PushON “Massive thanks to Space 48 for my new toy! Currently refueling before take off.”

Mike Carter, Orchard “Impressive chopper. Awesome DM piece from our friends at Space 48. This is ace, thanks guys!”

Gemma Hargreaves, Manchester Science Park “Well this is a bit cool Space 48!”

Sherrie Rhodes, SweetTooth “Is this the surprise headed our way?! Exciting!!!”

Steve Gale, CTI Digital “Woohoo, toys for Steve have arrived from those nice chaps @Space48ers. Now to make good on my air wolf video promise”

Matt Booth, Northern Digitals “Received a great pressie from @space48ers. Looking forward to getting it up in the air.”

Brandon Egley, GoOutdoors “Look what arrived for me to play with courtesy of @Space48ers.. fun fun!”

The Outcome

All in all, the helicopter mission has been considered a great success for us and has without a doubt raised the profile of Space 48. We’ve gained a lot more followers on Twitter and received some interesting enquiries from companies via phone and email.

A recent night out at Manc Digi Bowl saw someone who we’d sent a copter to taking the effort to come over to thank us for the gift, he was genuinely chuffed…it warmed the cockles of our hearts.

Mission complete.

We also donated one of our much sought after lime green helicopters to one of the winners, well done to Andy Nicol of Sputnik – hope you enjoy your new toy Andy!

The site features the very latest in HTML5 and CSS3 techniques, customised pricing integration with customer’s internal systems, customisable multi-column drop down menus and latest products/best sellers home page carousels. Other features include:

• Product catalogue import
• Customer import
• Customer management of favourite product lists

The feedback we have had from Armstrong Richardson and other clients has been great and they are very pleased with the new look website. We hope you like it too!

Everyone has felt it, those dreaded nerves before you go into an exam! It doesn’t matter how much revision you have done, how well you know your subject matter, there is always that niggling doubt. So that’s why our thoughts were with one of our developers today who went in for the Magento Certified Developer Exam in Manchester.

Being Magento experts, we want to ensure we are the very best at what we do. Part of that was acquiring our Magento Gold Partner status, but the next stage of that was keeping said status up to date and in doing so we needed to get some of our team certified (in Magento, not just because they were a bit crazy).

So off to Manchester Tony went and after a studious 90 minutes, our developer emerged victorious! Exam paper in one hand and raised fist to the sun (well at least this is how we pictured him).

Magento say:

“The exam is geared towards professional developers that have real-world experience with Magento implementations. The exams provide a way for qualified, experienced Magento developers to demonstrate and validate their skills.“

http://www.magentocommerce.com/certification/

We just think it’s another great reason to have a chat with us if you are considering an eCommerce website or thinking of updating the one you already have.

So a big WELL DONE to Tony who becomes the first in (hopefully) a long line of certified developers here at Space 48.

Matt has been playing golf since a young age and, at just 23, he certainly has a bright future ahead of him. We feel very privileged to be part of his imminent rise to success!

His first tournament, the 1836 Tour took place yesterday at West Lancs Golf Club in Blundellsands. Matt’s first leg of the tournament started off nicely with a good drive down the centre of the fairway which ended up with a solid par.

The last 6 holes were a very tough stretch for Matt playing into wind the whole way but he got through all with pars and finished 8th place which was a brilliant result. A very promising start for Matt!

Space 48 shall be supporting Matt the whole way, offering him guidance and hopefully building an exciting site for him at some point too.

We wish him the best of luck in all of his forthcoming tournaments.

Follow Matt and track his progress.

Jon was the biggest winner of the night pocketing an enviable £40 and was last seen boarding a plane to Tenerife clutching a yellow lilo. This was closely followed by Karl who’s winnings were unknown at the time this went to print although he has turned up to work today with a new jumper which has caused considerable speculation. George and Tony also managed to scoop a couple of wins which helped pay for their lemonades and bus fare home (BFH)

The girls failed to win a ruddy thing which didn’t dampen their spirits in any way whatsoever* and the partying continued well in to the early hours in Manchester City centre.

Another great night out…roll on the next!

* Complete lie.

Think you can help us out?

Read on.

Download hi res pdf version here

*Exaggerated for purposes of ad. ]]> http://www.space48.com/news/awesome-developer-wanted/feed/ 0 http://www.space48.com/seo/melbourne-hosting/ http://www.space48.com/seo/melbourne-hosting/#comments Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:08:58 +0000 jo http://www.space48.com/?p=4287 Since the year 2000, Melbourne have been providing mission-critical hosting services, with a special focus on never being beaten on ethics, service and value. Melbourne are

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