Following the results we were also asked to share our thoughts on what we thought our clients should be doing in 2011. We put the feelers out to everyone here at The Workshop and collected everyone’s answers.

This is what we came up with:

• Be yourself and be authentic. With more marketing channels than ever, it’s important to know who you are and what your customers like about you.
• Broadcast less and converse more with your customers. Integrate your social media streams with the rest of your marketing.
• Test and refine. Use analytics and user feedback to guide development. Don’t be afraid to change direction if you need to.

And there you have it. Feel free to share your own musings on the upcoming year by sending us an @reply through Twitter!

What is Pass IT on?

There are 10 million people in the UK who still don’t or can’t access the internet. Pass IT on asks web users to pass on their enthusiasm for the internet to their friends, relatives or colleagues who are offline.

What’s that got to do with The Workshop?

We’ve been working closely with UK online centres over the past few months developing the Pass IT on offer, strategy, and websites, which went live last weekend.

As well as helping forge the strategy behind the initiative, our creative team has developed, designed and written two websites for Pass IT on and UK online centres – one for individuals and one for partners. Cleanly designed and user-centred, the websites give individuals and companies a toolkit of resources to help get more people online.

Helping get one million online

Pass IT on is aiming high: UK online centres along with partner Race Online 2012 hope to get one million people online in two years. We’re hopeful that the websites we’ve lovingly created attract the right kind of visitors who will in turn Pass IT on to as many people as they can.

This autumn, we’ve been providing communications consultancy, helping the company’s directors and company communications team reach out and speak to employees across the UK.

Making the most of Talent

Morrisons’ Talent guide outlines the company’s vision for developing employees’ skills and helping them to build a career in the organisation. The idea is that with talent and determination, staff can work their way up ‘from shop floor to top floor’.

Tiina Carr, one of our directors, is working alongside Morrisons’ Director of Human Resources to look at the philosophy behind their values, leadership, talent and performance. The result will be a set of guides that lie at the heart of Morrisons’ new HR philosophy and can be used by the company’s top 1000 senior managers.

The Talent guide ties in with the new Morrisons Academy, which develops staff and helps them to gain a nationally recognised qualification for carrying out their day-to-day work. It’s an enterprising initiative that’s caught the eye of Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, amongst others.

The Workshop on TV

Norman Pickavance, Morrisons’ Director of HR, also appeared on a special edition of ITV’s Tonight programme, ‘Make me an apprentice’, a couple of weeks ago to talk about Morrisons and their work on The Academy. It was great to see some of the communications we’d designed for The Academy scheme being beamed into households across the UK!

‘Make me an apprentice’ also featured Norman talking about Morrisons’ commitment to the government’s Backing Young Britain campaign, which encourages businesses to support young people into employment by offering work experience, apprenticeships and other opportunities. We were pleased twice over as The Workshop also developed the Backing Young Britain website just a couple of months ago.