The PR department here at Cube Creative is working on very exciting things for The Year of Health and Wellbeing. We have just linked up with Bury actress Gemma Atkinson and her partner Liam Richardson (Martial arts expert from BGT) to announce a year-long photography challenge (www.photos.yearofhealthandwellbeing.org.uk). What a nice couple. Look out for press coverage in the Manchester Evening News, Didsbury Magazine, Bury Times and Chester Standard...and much more.

PR work experience placements now available

We are on the look-out for exceptional people interested in PR work experience with our MANCHESTER office BUT you must have either a PR degree or some PR work experience.

Cube Creative Group includes a small (but rapidly expanding) PR division that represents clients in the healthcare sector (public and private), consumer and trade/B2B brands and others that are, well very niche. PR is a real mixed bag, fun but labour intensive, and we want you to be prepared to roll up your sleeves, get stuck in and make the role your own.

That is what is going to make you stand out and help you MAKE YOUR MARK.

Please read the following CAREFULLY:

Are you HARDWORKING, ENTHUSIASTIC and RESULTS DRIVEN? Do you want to establish a career in PR?

We are offering PR work experience placements. These are unpaid assignments and there WILL be opportunities for more permanent roles for the RIGHT candidates. We are a small PR team and have to grow sensibly and organically. Work experience candidates are an invaluable resource for us and in return you will receive one-to-one training and experience. We pay reasonable travel expenses.

We want to hear from people who are willing, committed, enthusiastic and GENUINELY interested in working in PR.

Ideally you will have a PR degree or some experience of working in PR. Due to the popularity of PR as a career, we will ONLY consider those with PR degrees or PR experience. If you have worked in similar areas we will consider you but you must ensure that you tailor you approach to us accordingly and describe accurately why you might be considered. You need key transferable skills such as good writing, good communication and confidence.

Typical activities include you undertaking PR and media research to support a variety of interesting PR accounts and the writing and distribution of press releases. You will work alongside our PR Director in creating interesting and newsworthy content for social media and marketing purposes, and gain invaluable experience of what it is like to work in a fast paced PR environment.

Please email alison@cubecreative.co.uk for more details.

Our esteemed colleague Paul Basson is donning the Lycra this Sunday for the 60 mile Manchester to Blackpool bike race in aid of The Christie. Please help him reach his target of £500 by visiting his Just Giving page at http://www.justgiving.com/Paul-Basson

Our new and very successful PR division is taking off and we are looking for a special person to join and help support our team of PR experts.

The position is initially temporary for six months, with a view to becoming permanent after that.

Cube Creative represents clients in both the business-to-business and consumer sector, and we are ideally looking for executive with healthcare PR experience as this is the main thrust of our current PR work.

What we need from you:
Good writing skills
Good web2.0 and social media skills and experience
Enthusiasm and common sense
A sense of fun and easy to work with
A wiliness to learn and grow with the department
A relevant degree or the equivalent
You must have experience of working in a PR agency or in-house for a healthcare related business.


Key responsibilities and typical duties:
Working on high profile B2B and B2C accounts
Writing press releases and copy for different media channels
Maintaining client relations alongside the PR manager
Supporting the account managers in their day to day duties including associated admin such as PR proposals, monthly reports and press cuttings

This is a brilliant opportunity for a talented Account Executive to join an established North West agency

To arrange an interview please contact Alison Short at Cube Creative: alison@cubecreative.co.uk

Trafford College Creative Technology student Peter Screeton is the winner of the inaugural Cube Creative Talent Incubator competition, which will see his design work showcased across the Trafford Borough of Manchester.

We set up the Talent Incubator to provide local students with real life work experience to add to their CV, which will help differentiate them from the crowd.

Competition between graduates for design jobs is huge; there are over 50,000 undergraduate design students in the UK all competing for employment. This figure includes many graduates from the talented Greater Manchester region.

Students on the Creative Technology Foundation Degree worked on a live brief for Trafford Council to create a brand identity, including a logo, typography, colour schemes, and a website layout for a new online data collection and analysis facility called Info Trafford.

Our studio manager and senior creative Gary Smith plus business development manager Jason Burgess acted as creative consultants on the brief, giving creative and industry guidance throughout the project.

Peter fought off tough competition and well as seeing his website published, he has been awarded a one week work experience placement with us. Priceless!
Gary Smith said: The work produced by the group was outstanding and Peter was a worthy winner - we are sure that his design talents will go far. We are looking forward to his time with us when we will be looking to enrich his design talents with real life design agency processes and scenarios.

Peter added: I am really proud to have been named the winner for the Cube Creative Talent Incubator. The project has been a fantastic experience and I am really looking forward to my work experience placement, along with seeing my designs go live. Working for a real client has taught me lots and hopefully I will be able to make industry contacts which will help find a job when I finish my degree in two years time.

Cube is retained by NHS Professionals, the UK\'s largest provider of managed services to the NHS, placing over 50,000 flexible healthcare workers into more than 2 million shifts each year.

System Host is at the forefront of cloud technology enabling optimised virtual working, 24/7. Its state-of-the-art facilities provide unparalleled availability of applications and data over high performance fibre communications

Cube\'s newest client is Synergy Health, the brand leader in decontamination services, decontaminating more than half a million surgical instruments each year.

Homecare Support provides personal care across many parts of the country through eight dedicated offices, either directly or on behalf of commissioners.

We are please to announce that we have now been awarded ISO 9001

A big thank you to all the team!

Coca-Cola suffered the second largest fall of $9bn in the value of its brand during the year, sliding from third to 16th in the rankings.

Coca-Cola has dropped out of the top 10 brands for the first time as consumers opt for healthier drinks and new technology companies enjoy an increase in their brand values.
In the annual analysis of the top 500 global names by the consultancy Brand Finance, only one UK brand – Vodafone – ranks in the top 10 after HSBC lost that status. The survey, published on Monday reflects the impact of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill on BP, which slumped 53 places after suffering a $3.4bn (£2bn) loss in brand value.
Coca-Cola suffered the second largest fall in the value – $9bn – during the year, sliding from third to 16th.
But the largest faller in value terms was Nokia, whose chief executive, Stephen Elop, this year told staff the company was like a man on a 'burning platform'.
Elop used his emotive language to illustrate that Nokia was being outmanoeuvred by Google's Android operating system and Apple's iPhone. According to Brand Finance, Google is the number-one brand in the world, while Apple has moved up 12 places – the second greatest rise – 'supported by innovative design, a very loyal consumer base and well-executed marketing activities'.
Google is valued at $44bn, just above Microsoft at $42bn, while Apple is in eighth place at $29.5bn. The supermarket chain Wal-Mart, in top place until usurped by Google, is in No 3 spot after suffering the third largest fall in brand value, $5.1bn.
In a table dominated by US companies – 13 of the top 20 are American – Vodafone is seventh with a value of $30.6bn.
Brand Finance explains the improvement in Vodafone's brand value as a result of its investments in Africa and Australia. 'Despite being the world's most valuable mobile telecoms brand, there is still further potential upside, principally across its partner market network – now present in over 40 markets – which could return more value from the brand to both Vodafone and its partners,' Brand Finance said.
David Haigh, chief executive of Brand Finance, said: 'From a global perspective, five of the top 10 largest growers are technology-related companies, reinforcing the importance of embracing technological innovation to give a seamless, value-enhancing brand experience.'
The company works out the value of the brands by calculating how much it would in effect cost to rent the name, and takes into account sales forecasts.

We are please to announce that Cube have been short listed in the 'Red Rose Awards 2011' for 'Creative Business of the Year'.

The Lancashire Business View Red Rose Awards will celebrate the outstanding achievements of real businesses in our region and will be rewarding and recognising businesses which have not only survived but thrived in incredibly challenging times.

The Red Rose Awards will feature 18 categories, plus a special Editor's Choice Award.

Business sectors, as featured in the pages of Lancashire Business View, will be represented, along with awards for organisations of differing sizes.

Entries will be judged by an experienced and high-profile judging panel featuring some of the region's leading business figures, chaired by the editor of Lancashire Business View.

The awards will be presented at a black tie dinner on Thursday 31 March 2011 at Winter Gardens, Blackpool.

Click here to view the Short List

Lancashire and Cumbria Cancer Network has selected Cube Creative to develop its new trust website.

After a competitive pitch Cube demonstrated its creative ideas coupled with the Cube Core CMS (content managed system)
was the right choice to enable the trust to communicate effectively online with its stakeholders across the North West.

The site is now in development

Mersey Arts Health & Manchester Arts health are delivering an online resource to showcase best practice in arts and health programmes that can lead to improved health and wellbeing.

Cube Creative are delivering both websites that will enable professionals in both arts and health to search through a bespoke online library to find that latest information and thinking on the correlation between arts and health.

The bespoke built Cube Core CMS driven website will enable the search of up-to date information leading to informed decisions on commissioning arts and health programmes.

After a rigorous pitching process Cube Creative are delighted to be selected by the team at Cash Management Systems to deliver a rebrand to drive their marketing in 2011.

CMS saw Cube as the right fit to help develop their business and engender more long term partnerships in the changing landscape of the financial and retail marketplace.

Starting with a full re-brand Cube will work with the team to throughout 2011.

Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust Trust has selected Cube Creative to develop its new trust website.

After a competitive pitch Cube demonstrated its creative ideas coupled with the Cube Core CMS (content managed system) was the right choice to enable the trust to communicate effectively online with its stakeholders across the North West.

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 'well, we better get some work in now' and here we are 10 years later.

A massive thank you to all the team and clients over the past 10 years!

We would like to thank everyone for their support over the past year and we look foward to working with you during 2011. Thanks Again!

Our offices will be closed over the Christmas period. From 4pm 22nd December until the 4th January.

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

Click here to view our Xmas Card

After months spent collecting and collating the data of hundreds of recommended agencies, the Recommended Agency Register's definitive guide to the Top 100 marketing services companies outside London has been revealed.

Cube Creative Group have been awarded Top 100 status and entered this elite group at number 53.

The ratings are across pre-defined criteria:

• client service
• creativity
• value for money

Only agencies which pass this quality threshold make it into the Recommended Agency Register and only these agencies are then invited to appear in the Top 100.

More than 400 marketing companies outside London were invited to take part in this review and each one submitted turnover, profit and employee figures for the most recent and previous financial years.

All agencies in the list have been highly rated by their clients through the RAR's ratings programme.
The agencies in this elite group not only have the high regard of their clients, but have also demonstrated that they have remained strong in spite of difficult trading conditions.

The primary criteria at the heart of this poll are the quality of client results and efficiency of how a business is actually run. The pre-cursor for entry into the Top 100 is that businesses must deliver a high-level of customer satisfaction.

Click here to view our Position in the RAR Top 100 Agency

Click here to view our RAR profile

Design students from Trafford College have become the first to benefit from Manchester agency Cube Creative's Talent Incubator initiative.

Working in partnership with Trafford Borough Council, the students have been given the opportunity to work on a 'live' project for the Council with the production of Info Trafford, an on-line data collection and analysis facility, supported by Cube's digital and creative team.

The website will become a data observatory, the concept of which has been successfully pioneered in London with the London Data Store, and will serve as a definitive source of the demography of the borough. It is expected that the website will become a valued information source for health care professionals, businesses and the public providing access to everything from illness trends to choosing a school or buying a property. The challenge for the students is to make the site creatively appealing, accessible and inviting to a range of different users and Cube's Talent Incubator will support their progress and development.

The Manchester-based agency introduced the Cube Talent Incubator to coincide with its 10th year in the business during which it has become a preferred partner to local government, the NHS and academic institutions up and down the country; as well as a private sector companies of all shapes, sizes and sectors. Achieving Recommended Agency Registration (where clients recommend agencies to others) for the second consecutive year the company is keen to re-invest and encourage new talent emerging in the North West.

'We know that Manchester is a real hot-bed of creativity,' says Cube's Managing Director Mark Frith 'We are seeing some fantastic work originating in this part of the country and we are keen to capitalise on the high calibre of graduates who have studied here.' Despite seeing a virtual explosion in its Digital division Frith accepts that Cube can't employ every graduate but wants to ease some of the barriers to getting that first 'big break'. 'There are over 50,000 undergraduate design students in the UK currently who will all be looking for jobs in a very competitive industry in the near future. By allowing students to work with us through their colleges or universities on real projects we can support the development of their CVs and offer work-placement prizes to those who produce exceptional results.'

The first project with Trafford will run until February 2011 and will see the students work on brand identity, typography, colour schemes, layout and content development. An overall prize of work-placement at its Manchester studio is being offered by Cube in addition to coaching and mentoring throughout the project.

Dawn Shields, Head of Creative Arts and Media at Trafford College said '...opportunities of partnering with leading industry professionals are invaluable to our students. Working directly with local industry helps to ensure that our course content matches the needs of both the employer and learners. Cube and Trafford council have already been generous with their time and input into the initial stages of the project giving students a real insight on what it would be like to tackle this kind of brief if they were working in the industry today...'