Jun 26, 2008 | Coconut in the Media
Coconut Creatives director, Sarah Carlile is a regular contributor to the national franchise magazine, Franchisor News.
The magazine contains a whole range of useful information from franchising overseas to ensuring your have a solid franchise agreement, as well as news and views from throughout the franchise industry.
Sarah’s contribution this issue looks at the topical concern of using marketing consumer data legally, protecting your intellectual property and brand and includes some useful tips and contacts.
To view the magazine online visit www.franchisornews.co.uk
Jun 10, 2008 | Coconut in the Media
Coconut Creatives have been invited to publish a range of articles in several magazines to respond to the increased interest that business people have in marketing.
Featured articles can be found in the national Making Money Magazine sold in Tescos and WH Smith, Start Your Business magazine also sold in WH Smith and independent retailers and the national Franchisor News magazine which serves the franchise industry.
“We are delighted to offer marketing features to complement the magazines existing articles and information,” says Coconut Creatives founder, Sarah Carlile. “We have been writing articles for the press and online sources for some time now and it is our pleasure to help spread the word about marketing through established and reputable magazines as well.”
Coconut Creatives Directors, Sarah Carlile and Christopher Cook also sit on the South West Regional Board for the Chartered Institute of Marketing and work tirelessly to help improve the awareness and standard of marketing practices UK-wide. “It is vital that a company’s marketing function starts from a strategic level so that it maps in with the direction of the business plan. Campaigns and promotions are then created to meet the objectives set out at this strategic level and we have found that our clients see and achieve much greater success by approaching marketing in this way,” explains Christopher.
For further information about Coconut Creatives contact Sarah or Chris on 01963 31030 or email helpme@coconutcreatives.co.uk.
May 27, 2008 | Clients in the Media, Coconut in the Media
Coconut Creatives launched a franchise recruitment campaign for Murcia Villas last month and within the first 48 hours they had received over 40 enquiries for their franchise package.
The campaign started with a series of online messages and later continued into national press opportunities with a write up in the Daily Mail in early May 2008.
Information about the Murcia Villas franchise can be found at www.murciavillas.com along with details about the business and how it all started several years ago.
“This franchise package suits individuals that want to improve their lifestyle and live in a warmer climate,” explains Sarah Dyer, founder of Coconut Creatives and Murcia Villas account handler. “I worked closely with Hugh and Fiona, owners of Murcia Villas to understand their business and the type of person that would be interested in this opportunity.”
With the first franchisees now operational, a second signed up and several other hot prospects booked to fly out to Spain for a tour of the possible franchise zones, the future of the business is very optimistic. Initially, Sarah set realistic objectives for 2008 with Hugh and Fiona. “Having a solid and achievable set of objectives for any project is absolutely essential. The objectives act as mile stones to show how successful the project has been,” adds Sarah.
Coconut Creatives work with a range of owner managed businesses on a variety of projects to help achieve specific objectives. Visit coconutcreatives.co.uk to review some recent case studies and to find out what other clients think about the Coconut team.
Hugh and Fiona James outside their Murcia Villas office in Spain
May 27, 2008 | Clients in the Media, Coconut in the Media
Coconut Creatives was delighted to attend the Greats Awards with client, Shared Earth in London on 22nd May.
The Greats Awards set out to recognise not only the top independent and multiple gift retailers regionally and nationally but highlight many of the finest retailers in the UK and Shared Earth were short listed for the Best Multiple Retailer Award 2008.
“I am extremely pleased to be nominated as one of the 5 finalists for the Best Multiple Retailer Gifts category. I see this as recognition not just for Shared Earth, but for our staff and producers in over 30 countries,” comments Jeremy Piercy, founder of Shared Earth.
Shared Earth provided over 300 reusable jute bags to hold the goodies offered to each attendee on the evening to help spread the word about reusable bags. Coconut Creatives work with Shared Earth on a number of products including supporting the Daily Mail’s recent Banish the Bag campaign which aims to banish the use of plastic bags within the retail environment.
As well as being the UK’s largest independent retailer of non-food Fair Trade products, Shared Earth offer the best selection of recycled products, including bags made from crisp packets in bangladesh, toy cars made from tin cans in Madagascar, office stationery from computer boards in the UK, wall hangings from old saris in India and jewellery from recycled glass in Chile. With sales both on and offline via wholesale and retail channels, their marketing needs to have an integrated and targeted approach. Coconut Creatives has recently assisted in the set up of their second website www.sharedearthnewsandmedia.co.uk to deal with the large number of press enquiries and stories that have been generated through the PR campaign. All types of customers and business affiliates can now go to this website and find content relevant to them.
Late last year, Shared Earth also launched the first Fair Trade franchise in the UK which is capable of doubling the sales of independent non-food Fair Trade products sold nationally. This is an exciting development which has opened up the industry with a wealth of new opportunities for many individuals who wish to work for themselves in a fairly traded retail environment. Coconut Creatives continues to work with Shared Earth on a number of projects including franchise recruitment and PR. Watch out for their latest story featured in the Mail on Sunday on the 8th June.
Jeremy Piercy and Tammy Hullis proudly display two of their reusable jute bags at the Greats Awards on 22nd May 08.
Apr 10, 2008 | Clients in the Media, Coconut in the Media
The Coconut Creatives team attended the National Franchise Marketing Awards ceremony in London last Friday evening.
Coconut Creatives was pleased to attend the event with the Directors and Consultants from Franchise Your Business after assisting FYB on their stand at the International Franchise Exhibition in Olympia earlier that day.
Coconut Creatives founder, Sarah Dyer was invited to sit on the top table with John Hancock, Managing Director of Venture Marketing who organise the event, the National Advertising Sales Manager of the Daily Mail and the the expert team of Judges for the evening. Included within the judging pannel was a Chartered Institute of Marketing representative.
The evening included hilarious commedy from Frankie Boyle and concluded with dancing and the three attending Coconuts; Sarah, Sally Butters and Chris Cook were pleased to be some of the last guests to leave, along with ARC Media’s Fiona and Sam!
Coconut Creatives Sarah and Sally with the Franchise Your Business team at the National Franchise Marketing Awards.
Apr 7, 2008 | Clients in the Media, Coconut in the Media
Fair Trade Company Shared Earth has donated £10,000 for the creation of the first sustainable community centre in India. Managing Director Jeremy Piercy handed over the cheque to the John Lally International Foundation outside Shared Earth’s head office in York, which is to fund a new community centre in Goa.
John Lally was extremely active in the environmental movement before he died in his late 20’s. He persuaded the council to give over a disused landfill site as a conservation area, and helped to raise several hundred thousand pounds to set up the UK’s first eco community centre on the site. This now forms the template for the Goa project.
The new Goa centre in Moira, will be promoting environmental education, sustainability, community enterprise, recycling and agriculture for all the community and also includes a kindergarten. Using an old Portuguese-style house renovated to 21st century standards, the Centre will be carbon neutral forming a community base for environmental enterprises in agriculture, recycling, garbage collection and other small scale non-polluting industries.
Shared Earth actively campaign against the use of plastic bags with their jute bags made in India which boast a selection of logos such as ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’, ‘Use me till me bottom wears out’ and ‘Say No to Plastic Bags’. They also backed the Daily Mail’s Banish the Bag campaign which also formed part of their PR plan undertaken by Coconut Creatives.
“Fair Trade is making such a difference,” explains Jeremy. “Critics are quick to question whether the Fairtrade logo is just another way of businesses to profit. We are ensuring that the profits of our fairly traded goods directly benefit those communities that require assistance and this Goa project is a classic example.”
