It only seems like yesterday... it was a Monday morning, we was sat in our new office with the coffee bubbling away in the corner and Mark said 'we'll, we better get some work in now' and here we are entering into our 10th year.

A massive thank you to all our staff and client over the past 9 years

Happy Birthday Cube!

Quality in everything we do is a 'statement that we use regularly at Cube. It is with this in mind that we are now 100% committed to gaining our ISO:9001 Quality Assurance Accreditation through one of the UK's leading accreditation company's; The UK Accreditation Bureau. This exciting development means that whilst we already employ the most effective quality systems for clients, that these systems will finally be recognised as effectively providing clients with all the quality assurances that they will need. The program of gaining our accreditation has already commenced and we anticipate being able to announce our successful accreditation within the next couple of months.

Watch this space for further information.

We would like to thank everyone for their support over the past year and we look forward to working with you during 2010. Thanks Again!

To say Thank You to all our clients we will be making a donation on your behalf to NSPCC.

Our offices will be closed over the Christmas period from 3pm 23rd December until the 4th January.

Click here to view our Christmas E-Card

The tree is up, the mince pies are out and we await the arrival of the fat man. As is customary at Cube we have just drawn up our Secret Santa list, the names are allocated, and the rush is now on to purchase a suitable gift for fellow Cubeoids. The last couple of years provided some interesting presents, including Winter Vegetables (?), and arguably the worlds ugliest ceramic cat. So obviously we are all worried about what is going to surface this year...

But may we take the opportunity to wish all our clients, colleagues, suppliers and friends a fantastic Christmas, and a wonderfully prosperous New Year.

Cube are delighted to have been appointed by the Advancing Quality Team at NHS North West to help deliver the
message of this innovative programme to enhance standards in patient care.

Advancing Quality is taking place in 24 acute trusts across Northwest England, and it aims to give patients a better experience of health services, and ultimately, a better quality of life.

The programme is initially measuring standards in five clinical areas: heart failure, heart bypass, heart attack, hip and knee surgery and community acquired pneumonia. It will incentivise improvement in the quality of care provided to patients by measuring three quality indicators: Clinical Outcome Measures, Patient Reported Outcome Measures, and Patient Experience.

Over its initial three years, it is anticipated Advancing Quality will save the NHS in the Northwest £17 million, by:

• saving 141 lives
• avoiding 159 complications
• reducing re-admissions by 248
• saving 20,811 hospital days

It will help hospitals to reduce their costs significantly and safely, allowing them to reinvest their savings in improving facilities and care. The expertise and reputations of doctors and nurses will also be clearly acknowledged. They will be able to expand their skills and knowledge by sharing what works well in their hospitals or clinics - and what doesn’t - with colleagues across the region.

We are pleased to announce the expansion of the Cube team with the arrival of Gary Smith our New Studio Manager

Gary and has spent the past 15 years in various creative agencies managing the design/ production.

Gary is a key part of Cube's commitment to ensuring the quality of the design/ production output is 110%.

The team at Cube welcome Gary, to a long and successful future.

Adding to our already impressive suite of NHS websites, Cube recently won a competitive pitch to work on the development of HCHS's new website. As always, it's a great pleasure and privilege to work on a health service project, and look for ways to differentiate and implement new and relevant technology for our Health Service clients.

We were exceptionally fortunate recently to be awarded the opportunity to work on the Annual Report for Trafford Council. Usually staid and heavy going, Annual Reports can vex the most creative of agencies, fortunately the brief included the words 'make it fun', and we have. The bright, easy reading approach has made a (usually) heavy going piece, into something that even the most light of readers can appreciat

We are pleased to announce the expansion of the Cube team with the arrival of Paul Basson our New Business Development Director.

Paul is our 'face man' (remember the A-Team) and has spent the past 13 years in various design agencies winning and working on projects for such clients as Electronic Arts, Shell, 3M Healthcare and Salford Council to name but a few.

Welcome to the Cube collective Paul - resistance is futile.

Cube Creative Limited has met the necessary criteria required to be able to provide funded creative services. The initiative, operated by NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) and New East Manchester, has been set up to provide up to £4000 worth of guaranteed funding for businesses in the region wishing to invest in creative services.
For more information visit http://www.creative-credits.org.uk/gallery/99/view or telephone Mark Frith on 0161 920 0011

Cube has recently been busy with legal software giant, LexisNexis. As well as re-launching 3 key packages for the bluechip multinational, and providing creative and new media solutions for a product launch, Cube have also been involved with their upcoming user conference, helping to co-ordinate the marketing and implementation of delegate recruitment via traditional and new media avenues, as well as producing personalised, bespoke delegate information.

Cube have recently been awarded the Protomed account working specifically on the Biodose brand; the worlds most advanced Total Medication Management System.

The work that Cube have been immediately commissioned to produce includes full brand communications guidelines, sales and marketing collateral and advertising campaign.

Cube have recently been awarded a position on the High Growth Program being run by NWDA. With over £10m funding, the NWDA is aiming to assist 1000 North West based companies take advantage of their growth potential and Cube, after a stringent pre-qualification process, are proud to have been awarded this very exciting opportunity. You can read more about the Program funded by the NWDA at Click here to find out more

Cube Creative, one of the UK's leading specialist NHS Design & Marketing Agencies is currently working with a number of NHS organisations on re-branding projects. Sandwell Mental Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust have been working through a consultation and design process with Cube for over 4 months and are very near to completing their re-branding, as are the provider arm of Liverpool PCT who commissioned Cube to manage their re-branding as well as the organisations website and intranet. Much more recent is the news that North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust have appointed Cube to managed their re-branding process through every stage of creative and stakeholder engagement.

Cube's Managing Director, Mark Frith says,'We are totally committed to delivering a value for money service to all our public sector clients and are extremely proud of our association within NHS Comms right across the entire country.'

How to publish a huge directory of certificates that change on a frequent basis, but need to be up to date and easily accessible by end users, and also function on-line as well as offline.
After much discussion, and deliberation, Cube offered up the solution of an interactive CD, using Flash elements to ease end user navigation, and offering the benefits of massively reduced production costs (less the 10% of the cost of equivelant print costs). The beauty of the solution is that the directory can now be updated quarterly instead of yearly, and actually costs less! As well as reducing the waste and cost of print based solutions.

These are tough times; times during which you need to look at things differently. It’s just not good enough to do things the way in which you always have nor is it good enough to do things the way that everyone else is doing it. If you want your business, product or service to stand out from the crowd then you must lay down some challenges, challenges to your marketing and creative agency and challenges to yourself.

I’ve got another question for you...what precisely do you want to achieve for your product or service? Do you want to TELL people about how good it is, how it will change their lives, how it will be the best thing since sliced bread? Or do you want to SELL your product or service in such a way that they will understand it, accept it and ultimately, buy it? I know the answer, and so do you! And that is why you should SELL and not TELL.

I’m reminded of a small piece of work that we produced here at Cube a few years ago for a fairly high profile company. The client had a huge spend in mono advertising to generate sales leads from which they hoped to convert into appointment and eventually, into sales. Over a number of years their advertising had developed creatively, but there again, so had every one else’s. They were not generating the number of leads that they used to and as such challenged us to take a look at their advertising and to increase their lead generation. It didn’t take long to realise that they were in a very competitive environment. If anyone’s ever looked at the mobility pages in the tabloids, it’s like a jungle, with every column inch being crammed full of ’call to actions’ and’BOGOFFs’. Our challenge was to create an advert that stood out amongst all the others to increase the clients lead generation. We found out that the publications production departments (we used to call them compositors in the old days) struggled to get everything to fit because of the different sizes and shapes of all the ads. The solution was simple... a strip ad that ran the entire width of the page! It was different and stood out! It cost less than the client’s previous 8x5’s and most importantly, as it ran across the top of the page, it helped increase leads by 17%, our job done and all within a budget of less than 1000 pounds. It worked, and it worked well, because it was different! It was different enough to stand out and different enough to get someone’s attention!

So when you want to SELL your product or service, make sure that you do something differently, whatever it is, I guarantee you won’t regret it!

Being our first NHS client from many years back. And also our preferred charity for our fund raising excursions. We were delighted to be asked recently to look at re-develop and re-design their suite of magazines, and jumped at the opportunity to fulfill their brief to give them a new look and feel. With the last of the 3 quarterly newsletters just delivered we are ecstatic that the projects have been so well received universally at The Christie.

Cube have been fortunate to assist Wigan Council in their recent re-branding of corporate and social communications. The new range of literature will be rolling out over the upcoming months and reflects this modern, innovative council. The new style will also be used through a range of other social and corporate marketing material in the upcoming months.

Also we have recently been awarded the rebranding for Rochdale Council and various publications for Trafford Council.

Cube have recently completed the design and production for the media rights catalogue for one of the Londons leading media company's; DCD Media. The catalogue is instrumental in enabling DCD to market and sell its music and entertainment rights for world famous artists and US and UK programmes. Cube's creative solution for the catalogue, not only hit the right note but was also instrumental in assisting DCD whilst attending the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.

If not, here’s today’s buzziest buzz on the Web you simply must know: the two search monsters Google and Yahoo! now got new company: Bing.com. Just a few days ago Microsoft replaced its MSN and Live search engines with this new one. All searches from MSN and Live are now directed to Bing, and - like it or not, but Bing’s results are not exactly the same as in the old Microsoft’s SEs.

What does this change for you in particular? Simple: if you earlier targeted MSN (and probably Live Search), you need to optimise your sites for Bing. And even if you ignored MSN before, you’d better catch up with the new Bing.

Looks like it’s gonna bring a good share of traffic to our sites.