How well do you know your city and the people that live in it? Ever wondered how city life changes when the sun sets? Well this year Big Cat have teamed up with one of the UK’s leading social enterprises, The Big Issue to offer you a unique look at Birmingham at the dead of [...]

Unless you’ve been sitting in a very dark room for the past 12 months you’ll have undoubtedly seen the arguments for and against the High Speed Rail link between London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds.

Well today Phase 1 of the controversial project has been given the green light by the government. Whilst many people are shouting [...]

Video views are the currency of YouTube and in some cases I mean this quite literally. For those of you who are only just realising the potential of this platform, here are my five tips to gain more views:
1- Give your video Title/Description/Tags a lot of thought
YouTube gives you a lot of power to [...]

It’s divided opinion among web and print designers since it’s beta launch a few months ago. With some in the web community heavily critical of Adobe’s Muse software, which aims to make web design more accessible to print designers and non-programmers. The main criticisms being that Muse creates extremely untidy code that isn’t SEO friendly, [...]

Companies are looking for more meaningful and creative ways to push their brands out to target audiences. The simple text based press release no longer cuts it especially as newspapers up and down the country are now going digital. With fewer newspapers around, securing coverage in the local paper is becoming more and more difficult [...]

Last week saw the launch of Birmingham’s digital week, which celebrates the city’s achievements in digital innovation and brings people from various sectors together to discuss the impact and value of technologies for professional, creative and cultural industries.
On Tuesday 15th November my colleagues from Big Cat and I had the chance to participate in a [...]

Over the past 110 days or so Google+ has officially been open to the public and last week it’s doors wide open to business use.
Uptake to Google+ is estimated at 1 million members per week but so far there are not any solid stats on how many businesses are using it but from a first [...]

More and more companies are diving into the world of Augmented Reality (AR) in order to provide memorable customer experiences and to bring a sense of fun to their brand. Last week Nivea launched a new AR campaign which enables its target market to see Rihanna perform in front of their computer screens.  All customers [...]

October 2011 saw final preparations put into place for the grand launch of Bournville College’s new multi-million pound campus in Longbridge.
Encompassing services from across all departments, Big Cat Group were tasked with officially launching the new £66 million facility.
12 months in the planning, Big Cat were awarded the contract following a competitive pitch with a [...]

Cask Marque, a pub accreditation scheme, are using smartphones to “gamify” pub going. The Cask Finder app (on Android and iOS) allows drinkers to locate pubs, check in to them, and accrue points that mean – of course – prizes. This is just one example of a growing trend to use mobile phones within hospitality [...]

A week has passed and after numerous foot massages, hot baths and the odd pint or two, the Big Cat bosses, Nick Morgan and Anthony Tattum have finally recovered after competing in last week’s BUPA Half Marathon in Birmingham.
After months of grueling training in rain storms and heat waves and even signing up to a [...]

October is always a busy time for the Big Cat’s. Not only is it Nick Morgan’s Birthday but it’s the companies birthday as well and this year we’re celebrating 11 years of continued growth and success.
The whole country across all sectors has felt the pinch of the credit crunch. Many businesses have fallen at the [...]

With business booming at Big Cat we felt it was about time we expanded our Marketing and Communications team so we can continue to deliver award winning campaigns which wow the nation. So, logically this months Q & A is with the latest addition of the Big Cat family, Hannah Wood. A self-confessed creative perhaps [...]

Planning a social media campaign that works can be a tricky task. 90% of all campaigns are said to fall flat within the first month, the key reason being audience figures not meeting critical mass, therefore the campaign never really going viral. September saw Big Cat team up with energy and communications company Glide and [...]

So, what’s your favourite colour? Perhaps you’re a traditional primary colour type of person, who likes a passionate red or maybe a cool blue? Perhaps you’re a little more sophisticated and like a nice teal? Ever thought about owning your favourite colour? Well now you can thanks Dulex.
Working alongside humanitarian charity, UNICEF, Dulex are offering [...]

This festival season has seen the lines between music festival and traditional food festivals blur beyond recognition.  Over recent years attendees at a music festival could expect to be served greasy burgers, greasy burgers or greasy burgers.
Some of this year’s crop of festivals (not even the food specific ones) have seen the quality of their [...]

This week sees the launch of the gaming industry’s first live TV advert.
The real time adverts for Xbox’s ‘Gears of War 3’ will publicise the number of people playing the game online at the time of broadcast.
The interesting thing about this campaign is that it relies on the product already being used by the customer. [...]

This year is a big deal for The Big Issue. 2011 marks the 20th Anniversary of the first Big Issue hitting the streets and to coincide with the launch, the team behind the publication are working on a number of fantastic events being held up and down the country.
Birmingham will be playing a key role [...]

Six months ago we posted a blog about the lack of good street art around Birmingham City Centre, with the majority only being specially commissioned pieces. I visited Nottingham recently and saw a huge mural spanning the entire ground floor of an abandoned building. Not only was this in a busy part of the city [...]

The UK’s entertainment industry has seen a new partnership formed this week which is set to enhance the West Midlands offering of world class events.
Birmingham based marketing experience agency, Big Cat Group has this month been awarded a six month contract to assist the NEC in sourcing and delivering blockbuster events best suited for its [...]

Scary concept for any PR however there’s been a lot of talk over the past 2 years about the death of the press release and how the digital landscape is re-shaping how traditional publications source their news.
Would social media and digital content really put the nail in the coffin of the good old press release [...]

The notion of an interesting and inspiring office space is a totally alien thought for most office workers today who would generally associate their work space with words such as mundane, boring, dreary, and dull. Could spaces that are thought of by workers with negative descriptions cause a lack of motivation and dissatisfaction at work?
Physical [...]

This month Big Cat are celebrating becoming certified in ISO9001.
ISO allows a company to follow set processes and procedures, minimizing the risk of error and we feel it’s been beneficial for our company in many ways. We’re giving our clients the consistent approach across the board and we’re making sure they receive quality service.

ISO helps [...]

Whilst doing some research for a prospective new client last week we came across this nice little marketing stunt by DHL.

The high impact visuals utilise the space on and around an escalator in one of Hong Kong’s busiest subway stations and despite being rolled out nearly 5 years ago, the viral nature of mobile videos [...]

Over the past few years Big Cat Group has developed and managed a range of world class events including Bodies Revealed, CSI: The Experience, Tutankhamun – His Tomb and His Treasures and most recently The World of Princess. To give you an insight into how these events are secured and delivered we thought we’d put Senior [...]

This past week, the Big Cat Office has looked like a jumble sale with every nook and cranny filled with either a bean bag, BBQ equipment, bunting or some form of party paraphernalia.
No, we haven’t been preparing for the annual Big Cat Summer BBQ but instead counting down the days to Jamaica Live, a 1-day [...]

Biddle & Webb has been an auctioneer in Birmingham and the West Midlands for over 50 years. This year  it decided to re-evaluate its brand including a new logo and print collateral.
Big Cat have taken a great pleasure in getting involved in this project and have worked hard alongside other partners to deliver strong results [...]

6. Partners – events massively benefit from partners who can influence their networks. Event marketing messages that are syndicated via their website, blog, social network or database gain much more gravitas than unsolicited ones from a new event. Partners can provide third-party or word-of-mouth endorsements for your event that are much more powerful than an Ad [...]

Networking is a vital concept that all businesses need to embrace in order to gain contacts and maintain them. Business revolves around using the resources and knowledge of your environment to succeed. Without taking these concepts into account a business will not reach true potential. Having for the last five weeks been working with Birmingham [...]

Top 5 innovative event technologies to make your event really reach the stars.
We are forever hearing how fast technology is evolving and that the latest must-have gadget is being shelved just weeks into its release with its predecessor already in production. It’s hard to imagine how certain technology-based products can progress to an even greater [...]

OK, so you’ve taken the plunge to commit to social media. You understand that the more you engage your customers the more likely you are to keep them. And you know that the way to do that is to engage with them without resorting to interruption tactics and sales messages.

Once you have a strategy, it’s [...]

Last week I attended a conference titled Social Media in a Corporate Context  (SMCC), organised by Communicate Magazine, as a Live-event Blogger. It’s difficult to find a really useful conference that is informative, interactive and filled with interesting case studies, but this event fitted the bill.
Attending the event was a great opportunity for me to [...]

The British brand of premium desserts Gü, founded in 2003, is running a brand relaunch campaign with a colossal budget of £2M -which is one of the company’s biggest marketing investment so far. With this significant amount, Joseph Liu, Senior Brand Manager at Gü Puds hopes to reach consumers who haven’t tried the brand yet [...]

The news seems to be saturated at the moment with arguments about the censorship of ‘adult content’ in music videos. Every time you turn the TV on there seems to be a new focus group jumping on the band wagon targeting artists such as Rihanna, Lady Gaga and Britney Spears for their sexually explicit music [...]

Recently arriving in New York for it’s third year was the 99% Conference. Run by Scott Belsky, founder of Behance, the conference focuses not on the generation of ideas, but their execution. Whether it’s personal projects hidden away in your sketchbook or the stack of notes following a brainstorm, one of the hardest parts of [...]

Brand identity – maybe a bit clichéd but a strong, clear brand is an important element of any event. The brand can either help build trust or else convey a confusing message. The brand can be supported by an event or programme title, which gives a more in depth description of the event.

Content – [...]

Monday 16th May saw the PR team head down to the Docklands in London to manage a press day for the Monster Energy Extreme Freestylers tour, and what a day it was.
Not used to the manual labour that the Events team endure on a daily basis, Big Cat PR rolled up their sleeves, erected 30ft [...]

The 19th May 2011 is a date that will be remembered by a vast majority of the Birmingham business community for one reason only – BYPY 2011. This highly prestigious awards ceremony recognised the talent that really is on show throughout Birmingham covering such categories as Communications, Financial and Legal, with the overall winner being [...]

DDB Auckland had an original idea to advertise the brand of shorts Superette in New Zealand. Some relief plates had been placed on the benches, seats of the shopping centres and bus stop in the trendiest areas. Once they sit down, only people who wear short shorts or short skirts become the ambassador of the [...]

2011 is looking incredibly busy for events at The Old Library, with a string of beautiful weddings and swish corporate events ahead of us. We kicked off the spring with a fabulous event for Umberto Giannini’s local west midlands salons. Having previously used the space for their yearly awards ceremony, the event organisers at Umberto were more [...]

Earlier this month we were tasked with giving a long standing client a brand new advertising campaign to see them through the next 12 months.
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) have worked with Big Cat since 2009 and since then have changed their advert designs on a quarterly basis. This time, they [...]

Team building is a big business for venues nowadays with sessions coming in all shapes and forms, many of which our events team have covered down at the Old Library. However April saw the tables turned as the Big Cat’s were allowed out of the office and into the big wild world.
The day arrived and [...]

As everybody grabs an ice cold beer to sit out in the sun, Big Cat toasts to winning three exiting new clients: Reed Midem, bloc hotels and Aston Business School.
Reed Midem is one of the world’s largest marketing and event organisers, specialising in Television, Interactive Content, Music and International Property. They are heavily involved in [...]

April has certainly been a busy month for Big Cat Group. Not only have we won marketing contracts for Aston Business School, bloc hotels and Reed-Midem but we’ve also just been appointed to provide PR, marketing, social media and media buying support for Monster Energy’s Extreme Freestylers event which is hitting Cardiff this July.
The event, [...]

It’s been near impossible to avoid the hype and media exposure around Prince William and Kate Middleton’s big day over the past few weeks and it seems that everybody wanted a piece of the action. Described as “a gift to the marketing and PR world” the wedding has seen all manner of companies jumping on [...]

Birmingham-based full service agency, Big Cat Group has recently been appointed as event and marketing consultancy for two of the city’s top membership organisations, Birmingham Forward and Birmingham Future.
Established in 1990, Birmingham Forward is an inclusive, independent, non-aligned corporate membership organisation which provides a platform through lobbying and events for its members to be clearly [...]

Bowman cited in McCormick ‘Rio and Beyond’ said “as a series of widely publicised environmental catastrophes signalled globalisation of environment concern, society had entered the last stage of process that took humans from hearing, to understanding, to using, to abusing, and now, to worrying about the physical and biological world around them.” 
As consumers have been [...]

Big Cat Group had a rather unexpected surprise thrust upon them today. We have been named one of the top 50 event companies to work for in the prestigious Fab 50 awards, organised by trade publication, Event Magazine.
The campaign, which kicked off a few months ago involved Event Magazine searching for the top event companies [...]

The day started at 4.30am on Sunday 13th March 2011 in typical Irish/English weather with cold drizzling rain. The large road closure scheme we had organised with the Birmingham City Council started on the morning of the parade so all the event infrastructure needed to be built in little over 4 hours which included, a [...]

The problem with writing a blog on South by South West, the interactive conference in Austin Texas (SXSW) is that it covers everything: innovation, technology, marketing, design, journalism, gaming, health, philanthropy and more…
But that’s the great thing about it too. The breadth of ideas is astounding, even mind blowing.
2011 was SXSW’s 25th anniversary but for [...]