Search Sense

It was a simple choice for me. Do we hold on to Spannerworks as a name, or embrace what everyone is trying to create at iCrossing and work together to develop a great international organisation?

As the past few weeks have gone by, however, I have been really touched by the positive comments from so many people, clients, suppliers and journalists. I somehow expected indifference but what I got was what so many people have been telling us for a long time - we have a special team of people and a reputation that, over ten years, is very positive. As one journalist put it to me ‘Spannerworks have become synonymous with search and digital marketing‘.

I’ve felt quite emotional at times.

When I set out to start the company in 1997 I wanted to carve a specialist niche out for Spannerworks. We grew organically and embraced the opportunity that was presented to us in search dynamically. That ’start-up’ mentality is one that I believe we still have. Our people are still very much a close team and it’s been interesting to see the debate unfold about what we individually now call ourselves, are we iCrossingers, iCrossings?

People obviously need feel an identity related to the organisation where they spend so much time. If the values can combine in mutually beneficial ways a brand becomes live, robust and authentic.

I look forward to a renewed sense of everything that Spannerworks stood for and a revitalised vision that now encompasses Brighton, London and the USA from where I write today.

A heartfelt thanks to all who helped us get this far, I really look forward to building iCrossing in the UK and beyond.

Today, and after 10 years of building one of the UK’s most innovative and successful digital marketing companies in the UK, Spannerworks is taking on the iCrossing brand in the UK.

The integration will strengthen our position as we continue to provide our clients with global access to technology and agency-wide services, including natural and paid search, social media and content, display advertising and user experience. This does not diminish our heritage in search, but builds on it, by enabling us to continue promoting search as the common pathway to all digital marketing.

To mark the occasion, we are distributing a video release of global CEO Jeff Herzog, and CEO of iCrossing UK Arjo Ghosh, discussing the brand integration, and vision for iCrossing and digital marketing as a whole in 2008.

The above video is interactive, offering links to other sources of information on iCrossing, our spokespeople, and some of the work that we’ve been pioneering in integrated digital marketing. Hover over the logos as they appear throughout the short film to view a description of the additional resource they provide, and click on them to open-up the information in a new browser. A PDF transcript of the video is also available as a download.We hope you enjoy the video, and continue to support us under our new brand.

About iCrossing UK
iCrossing, formerly known as Spannerworks in the UK, is a global digital marketing company that combines talent and technology to help world-class brands attract, engage with and acquire customers.

The company connects digital marketing services – including paid and natural search marketing, social media and content, display and creative, user experience and web development – to create digital marketing strategies that deliver compelling brand experiences and unrivalled ROI.

iCrossing works with world-class brands including Coca Cola, HBOS, TUI and Virgin. Founded in 1997, the agency employs over 550 people worldwide with over 100 people in the UK.

Find out more at www.icrossing.co.uk or contact us on +44 (0)1273 828100 or results@icrossing.co.uk.

Even if Spannerworks’ bloggers took a few days off over Christmas, the festive season wasn’t short of news on the subjects dear to our hearts.

Silly season set in not long after the last roundup, with a rash of Christmas-themed stories around search and the internet. Search queries after the big day revealed a lack of appetite for leftovers, but our favourite was the Google Maps mashup that let kids of all ages track Santa on his rounds. The fun was over in the new year, though, with Yahoo! announcing the demise of its 12-year internet veteran Yahoo! Picks.

Computing Which? announced that Bebo is the best-performing social networking site, with the magazine narrowly rating its security above arch-rival Facebook. As if to prove the point, Facebook users have since been warned about an application that may be a ’social worm’.

Potentially the most important story of the last couple of weeks is the much-anticipated launch of the Wikia Search alpha, though it caused widespread disappointment. Writing on Kocchi Kade after some of the dust had settled, Nilhan Jayasinghe explained that his feelings had turned to apathy.

“I’m no longer angry at the crappy results or the fact that their crawler had managed to completely miss my site,” he wrote, going on to explain how the infant search engine lacked sophistication when it came to attempts to manipulate results that other search engines had kicked out years ago: “On a search for ‘cheap flights’ it even pulls in a picture of some bloke, just cos he said he’s interested in cheap space flights,” he lamented.

However, there may be light on the horizon for Wikia, as Nilhan explains: “The clever bit comes once the user base start to provide their expertise.

“This may yet do something useful or at least vaguely interesting… I love the idea of using social signals to drive search, but this is not going to fly anytime soon and I’m guessing never.”

Open source

Antony Mayfield took a break over Christmas, and managed to hold out for 17 days between 2007’s last post to Open and the first of 2008. He’s back bigger than ever, though, racking up ten posts in the five days to 9 January.

Picking up on the Facebook social worm scare, Antony says that for most users this is likely to be far more important than Facebook’s newfound enthusiasm for data portability. He warns: “It’s… confirmation of every IT department’s fears / warnings about why people shouldn’t be using FB at work (any by extension, any other social media applications). A setback, then, for advocates of giving employees access to social computing tools freely in the workplace…”

Antony also discusses the use of Twitter as a peer-reviewing platform. In a follow up post on the Tweet Scan search tool for Twitter, he reflects: “Have to say that if you’re working with an entertainment brand especially, searching Twitter for reviews / mentions must be one of the best most instant ways of getting feedback…”

Feedback was all the rage on Hackbash, after student journalist Dave Lee picked up on the wording used in Spannerworks’ advertisements for its current journalist vacancy: “I have no problem with people wanting to enter the world of PR,” he wrote. “What I have a problem with is when jobs such as this are advertised as journalism. Journalism it is certainly not.”

We agreed with Dave’s assessment: the wording didn’t sound like journalism to us either, so we pulled the advert and rewrote it to better describe what we do.

The position is still open, so please get in touch if you’re interested.

Christmas is upon us all, but you’d be hard-pressed to tell it from the rate that various Spannerworkers are cranking out blog entries.

On Wednesday, Arjo Ghosh heralded the arrival of Spannerworks’ very own spider, as ‘Spiderman’ Alain Robert scaled the outside of our 27-floor London building. The weekend before, however, he was wondering whether the Knol project meant he would be forced to take sides between Wikipedia and Google in a battle for the world’s information.

“Personally I think that Google will make Knol earn its place in natural results fairly,” he concluded, “but at a cost to commercially orientated websites, many of which have been forced to invest more into the Adwords campaigns over the past few years as a result of algorithm tweaks.”

Such thoughts haven’t been troubling Antony Mayfield, who many of us in Content & Media suspect of knowing the world’s information in the first place. As if to underline the point, he’s produced a impressive 11 posts on Open in the last fortnight, covering topics as diverse as Channel 4’s education programming, a military influence on the language of marketing, and, er, dining in Didcot.

Nilhan Jayasinghe has been a little quieter than Antony, but he notes a subtle but important change to the way Google regards subdomains, now treating them in the same way as subfolders on the main domain.

Antony’s also been covering a topic dear to the hearts of Spannerworks’ journalists: the ongoing rumblings at the NUJ as it struggles to keep pace with the changes in the trade. He explains that, in his lecture to a post-graduate class at the Cardiff School of Journalism:

“One of the things I hope I got across was the amazing opportunities that the web presents for doing things differently and for going direct to (attention) market with interesting ideas and approaches.

“Makes me wonder what the role of a union is in this age for journalists. Should it be to focus on employers and policies or ways of encouraging journalistic enterprise?”

Still on the subject of journalism, Charlie Peverett has been taking corporations to task for hijacking the language of environmentalism. He wonders on Hackbash whether it’s time that journalists got a little “strict with the terminology”:

“Organisations are falling over themselves to say that they’re ‘going green’. They may mean that they’re carbon-offsetting their transatlantic travel or sourcing their food locally or have recently insulated their loft space.

“But when organisations that have taken a few small steps to modify their own profoundly unsustainable behaviour are labelled ‘green’, by themselves or others, we should put our feet down.”

So, with many Spannerworkers looking forward to a week off after an amazing year, we bid you a happy Christmas - at least Dax Hammond has entered into the festive spirit, although we’re not sure Raymond Briggs would approve of IRN-BRU’s take on his Snowman classic.

We did it! On the 7th of September 2007, 8 Spannerworker’s successfully reached the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, the worlds tallest free standing mountain. We have been raising money for a Children’s Home in Moshi, Tanzania, The Amani Kids Home, which is run on donations.

So, we want to say a massive thank you to everyone who has supported us along the way - our clients, our colleagues, and our friends and family. You have all been absolutely wonderful and we could not have done this without you, so thank you again. Notes and from the team and pictures of our journey are here.

The total amount raised currently stands at £12,402.72. Our target was £10,000.00.

Valerie Todd, Director of the Amani Home, says:

“Spannerworks’ dedicated support of Amani Children’s Home over the years is unparalleled.

The Spannerworks’ team’s climb up Mt. Kilimanjaro will make it possible for Amani to build a playground. For children who had been living on the streets, the chance to play and explore will be a wonderful gift for them, and an important part of how Amani restores hope and joy to their lives.”

In summary, we are totally chuffed that we all managed to climb Kilimanjaro, nobody got hurt or really ill, and we raised a shedload of money for a dedicated charity. Being able to visit the Amani Home and see how the money will help was really important to us, and we are even more pleased that we smashed our fundraising target.

Asanta sana!