We're completely bowled over to tell everyone that we've just opened a brand spanking new studio in the heart of London.

The new studio will help us serve our London clients much better and give us a much needed base in the city.

Our pad - over 2600 square foot of open plan warehouse space will soon be home to a dedicated London team of around 15 people consisting mainly of creative and account peeps.

As well as recruiting specifically for London, we'll also rotate some of our Bristol guys to work on specific projects and pitches so they can have the best of both worlds.

London has always been part of our plans, so it's very exciting to have it up and running. But don't worry, for all our clients who love coming to Bristol - you're still very welcome and we know how much you appreciate getting out of the big smoke!

We're on the hunt for 5 new senior designers, 3 new account directors and 2 new producers to work out of London which will help kick start our new team and start to put into action our very exciting plans for the capital.

Watch this space...

Our new London contact details

E3 london
Central Court,
25 Southampton Buildings,
London,
WC2A 1AW

e. info@e3media.co.uk
t. +44 20 3043 4080

We're really pleased to announce that after a competitive three-way pitch E3 was appointed by Principality, Wales' largest Building Society to develop their internal people development programme - called Quest.

Quest is a programme that focuses on 'people first' - it encourages employees to take ownership of issues that affect them. It guides employees through a well-thought-out development programme from selection through to career development, support, training, etc...

The website holds guides for managers to support and train their teams and to encourage the employees to make the most of their career at Principality. Through Quest, Principality wants to change the culture of the society and make people more passionate about and proud of their work.

The idea behind the creative was inspired by the map that Principality created. This map visualises a journey, an adventure - a Quest, which can be adapted in the way each employee sees best fit to their career.

We're delighted to have just been selected to work alongside the Countryside Agency for the next 2 years!

We will be supplying a whole host of digital services to the Countryside Agency after winning a competitive pitch last year last and the contract that will see us working in partnership with them until the end of 2007.

The Countryside Agency is the government agency charged with working to make the quality of life better for people in the countryside and the quality of the countryside better for everyone.

We're already in full swing with the new web site which will act as a portal to a range of external resources, as well as being the home of the Countryside Code, and the public interface for viewing 'Open Access' maps - more commonly known as the 'Right to Roam'.

We've even started a dedicated little account team to work with both the Countryside and Environment Agency (an account we also won last year).

We won our very first project with the BBC to help them design and develop their new comedy portal called Soup which will launch very soon.

After an extremely strong competitive pitch last year against six other agencies, E3 and sister company Wildfire were jointly appointed to work with the BBC for twelve months.

The brand new site is aimed at finding and supporting up and coming comedy talent and it's been a complete blast (to say the least) sourcing and helping to develop the material over the last six months.

We're now nearing completion of the development of the website and it should be officially launched by the BBC in March. Once live it will provide a high-profile platform for aspiring stand-ups to present their own audio and video sketches.

As well as being able to create their own online profile for talent spotters, both amateur and professional comics will be granted access to a vast multimedia archive of BBC content to help them improve the quality of their work.

So not only will the site help and support new comedy talent by showcasing their work to a global audience, we're also told that hungry BBC producers will be diligently scouring the site to hunt down the new Peter Kay's, Alan Carr's and Dara O'Brien's.

"Soup creates an online community for anyone who wants to make people laugh" says Web site editor Vicky Dolan from the BBC. "It offers advice and tips for those who want to get into comedy".

E3 and Wildfire have both put team members on the project, with E3 developing the site and Wildfire providing content and the benefit of their experience in running websites aimed at specialist 'communities'.

Stuart Avery, Joint Managing Director of E3, said: "This is the most important project that E3 and Wildfire have worked on together. With our experience of web development and Wildfire's specialist knowledge, we were in pole position for the business. In fact we managed to beat off ten other agencies for the two year project".

"Joining forces is part of our overall strategy to widen the range of support we can provide clients and increase our position as a full service agency".

Another win we're really chuffed with.

We've been trying to work with the V&A over the last two years and at the start of the month we were told E3 had won a pitch to develop 2 major new microsites for the museum.

Yipeee!

We'll be developing sites to promote 2 exciting new photography exhibitions, the first looking at work produced in China since the mid 90s and the latter will showcase the artist Diane Arbus, an influential New York photographer.

The China exhibition, called "Between Past & Future" features new photography and video from China and opens on the 15th September 2005.

The microsite, like the exhibition will bring together works by younger artists from mainland China, many of whom will be exhibiting for the first time in the UK and will comprise of a host of highly individual responses to the successive waves of change that have swept through China's economic, social, and cultural life. In addition to introducing a remarkable body of work to UK audiences, the project will provide insight into the dynamics of Chinese culture at the start of the 21st century.

The second microsite will be developed to promote a new Diane Arbus exhibition called 'Diane Arbus Revelations' which opens later in the year. Diane Arbus is one of the twentieth century's most important artists and this will be the first international museum retrospective of her work in more than thirty years. The microsite will feature a snap shot of the artist's most significant photographs along with a whole host of supporting exhibition information.

Photography by An Hong, 'untitled' 1998, © An Hong

We were completely bowled over to be 1 of 4 short listed companies for Design Week's best interactive - commercial award.

The global world village was a six month project for Orange and is part of their global portal Orange.com, which we look after. The village features a whole host of interactive features including a calendar of world events, games, an etiquette section and a 'make your own character' section. This section gives users the ability to develop their own little animated character that reflects their personality and lets users share information and facts about each other.

The judges particularly liked our global world village characters that guide users around the content and features of the site in a way that "made them smile".

The 30 strong judging panel included Sebastian Conran, Hilary French (Royal College of Art), Tim Molloy (Science Museum) and Tom Roope (Tomato).

Our project was short listed alongside interactive projects for Sony, Aardman Animations and Alexander Mcqueen, companies we are proud to sit alongside.

To find out more about the world vilage, click the Orange feature block on the left.

PSA Peugeot Citroën has appointed E3 to the group's first ever digital media roster. As an approved supplier, E3 will take a share of the company's £1.5 million digital marketing account.

A handful of other firms have also been appointed to the roster, ranging from small technical suppliers to large creative digital agencies. The roster will support PSA Peugeot Citroën's online activity for the foreseeable future, being reviewed annually and taken to market every 2 years.

This is the first time that a roster of digital agencies has been created for either of the marques and it is hoped that appointing suppliers for the entire group will provide cost benefits and synergies. However the two marques will continue to operate independently and there is sufficient breadth among the selected agencies to avoid conflicts of interest.

Among the projects that will be supported by the agencies is Peugeot's new HDi turbo diesel campaign. The TV and press campaign was launched in December with the strapline 'We've cut out the filth' and highlights the manufacturer's reduced emission diesel engines. Roster agencies have been invited to submit creative proposals including E3 for developing an online strategy to support the campaign, which will include a dedicated HDi microsite (so fingers crossed).

Vanessa Kinnafick, Sales and Marketing Buyer for the PSA Group, said:

"The roster has been developed to ensure we consolidate our outside digital media support and benefit from the right spread of skills across all our business needs. The roster will primarily supply services to support UK campaigns and initiatives, however our central marketing department based in Paris may call on the support of the UK for specific international projects."

E3's Matt Ramsay, who was involved in developing Peugeot's original website said:

"The digital channel is increasingly important for the automotive industry. It is a highly competitive market where there is constant pressure to be at the forefront of developments. Peugeot Citroën has a clear strategy for growth centred around innovation in environmental protection, comfort and safety. To be joining the team at this point is extremely exciting."

"The appointment is also a great reinforcement of E3's automotive sector credentials and of our commitment to working with world famous brands."

Colin Barnard, New Media Manager for Peugeot, said:

"We were looking for an agency that could, on the one hand, demonstrate creativity, but on the other, respond clearly to a business case. It was important that the work presented would produce tangible results and meet the objectives of the site. E3 achieved both of these and did it so well in fact we could have picked the proposal off the shelf and implemented it straight away."

E3's appointment by PSA Peugeot Citroën comes in the wake of several other significant wins in the past few weeks - including TONI&GUY and the Environment Agency. Mike Bennett, joint Managing Director added:

"This is a great win for us. It proves that our strategic and ambitious approach to new business is beginning to pay off."

A project designed by E3 at the start of 2004 has been hailed as the best educational web site of the year by Yahoo UK. The project called 'Your Amazing Brain' was developed on behalf of At-Bristol and the Welcome Trust. The site is aimed at young children and teenagers alike and includes a whole host of interactive features including games, online tests and experiments.

The site was chosen out of over 100 submissions and has made the team at At-Bristol (and us too) very happy!

Check out the site here www.youramazingbrain.org.uk

E3 has announced plans to launch a whole new proposition and business strategy for the agency. It will see the agency reposition and expand existing services into a number of specialist divisions focused on user experience, creative, advertising, marketing, technology and mobile. Each division will have a dedicated head, tasked with driving that part of the business.

According to Joint Managing Director Stuart Avery, the move is in response to E3's client's needs:

"We are focused on really driving the business forward in the next three years. In order to do this we feel we need to further expand our offering away from design and build to become much more full service.

"It comes as our client relationships evolve away from one-off projects to retained strategic relationships. We are also seeing briefs from our clients focusing on specific services such as online advertising, mobile or customer relationship management. The new proposition allows our clients to work with a specialist division or with the agency as a whole for larger projects."

E3 are in the process of establishing a mobile division which will include a dedicated R&D team to offer a range of mobile services to new and existing clients, a move that has come as a direct result of opportunities with E3's main mobile clients Orange and O2.

Stuart Avery added:

"Mobile is an exciting space and we're ideally placed as an agency to exploit these opportunities. We have delivered several mobile projects over the last twelve months and have seen many clients acknowledge that it is becoming part of the overall marketing mix. Therefore the creation of a dedicated mobile R&D team seems a natural progression for us."

"We also love the fact that this is so different to the approach taken by any other digital agency - and looks at the concept of brand from a new and radical perspective," concludes Mike.

The new brand can be seen in action on the newly redesigned E3 website at www.e3media.co.uk

The award for E3's "Parent To Parent" CD Rom was commissioned by the National Deaf Children Society Charity and was designed to support parents with deaf children to maximize their children's skills and abilities.

E3 fought off strong competition from the likes of DNA and Euro RSCG to scoop the award, demonstrating the best use of digital media to maximum effect in order to communicate the values, objectives and activities of the charity and to enable users to interact.

The BIMA's (British Interactive Media Association) are the most important awards in the UK interactive calendar. The judging process is acknowledged as the most thorough and respected, with 16 industry leaders including the European marketing manager of Google, BBC's head of interactive development and the editor of Revolution (the industry's leading magazine) casting their critical eye over a total of 300 submissions from agencies up and down the UK.

Mike Bennett, Joint MD stated:

"It's a fantastic night. Last year we were short listed for 5 awards but were only managed to be commended on 4. To win this year in such a high profile category is a great endorsement of our creative and technical team. The whole company is completely chuffed".

The BIMA comes hot off the heels of E3's sister company Punch Media winning Charity Web Site of The Year, in the Charity Times Awards for the redesign and development of Adoption UK's web site in October www.adoptionuk.org.uk

World-renowned hair salon group TONI&GUY is embarking on a major new web strategy to redevelop its international web presence and introduce an e-commerce facility to its existing site.

The company has drafted in E3 Media to redevelop its main web site to ensure a consistent brand identity across the thirty countries where the company operates.

The company's investment will have two main objectives. Firstly it will support TONI&GUY's brand position as market leader and will underpin the group's artistic credibility. It will also boost interaction with its external audiences by allowing clients to purchase the company's commercial and professional product ranges.

Secondly the site will support communication with internal audiences. As the majority of TONI&GUY salons are franchises, the site will help keep franchisees informed of company developments. It will also ensure that the brand's identity is applied consistently across all its territories by enabling UK and international franchises to download marketing collateral and brand guidelines via an extranet. Among the materials available for download will be excerpts from TONI&GUY's dedicated TV channel 'TONI&GUY.TV' and features from the group's recently launched client magazine.

The site will also support TONI&GUY's training programmes by providing e-learning facilities for stylists. The web will support the courses delivered by the company's worldwide network of training academies, by incentivising learning through course tasters.

TONI&GUY also plans to provide web templates for salons, providing a content management facility so that individual salons can post details of pricing, stylists' credentials and even enable clients to book appointments online.

Head of TONI&GUY Media James Tarbuck said:

"With the world wide growth of the company our communications Systems had to be re-addressed, we achieved this by creating TONI&GUY Media, which includes TONI&GUY TV and the TONI&GUY magazine, these have clear objectives to work for our clients staff and overall business'. The website will facilitate all of these objectives."

TONI&GUY's PR and Communication Director Harriet Evans said:

"With a vast international network of salons the web is one of the most important vehicles available to us for both internal and external communications. This project is about ensuring that we stay at the forefront of technology and use the internet to its maximum effect."

Mark Nicholls, Design Director of Mascolo Design, TONI&GUY's group design team added:

"The web strategy is about bringing the brand attitude to the web and redirecting the design and identity. It is also about harmonising all our communication channels such as the TV and the magazine."

Natasha Green, Account Director at E3 Media, said:

"TONI&GUY was looking for an agency that could bring a fresh design approach to reinvigorate its web presence. To be chosen from ten other agencies is a real tribute to our design team - working for an organisation for which design is so important will be a real inspiration for them."

The first stage of TONI&GUY's new web presence will go live in late 2005, with further elements added over the course of the next twelve months.

E3 Media has become one of just three digital media agencies to be appointed to the Environment Agency's roster of new media agencies.

Fighting off stiff competition from over one hundred others, E3 joins two other companies who will supply all the Environment Agency's internet and web-marketing requirements.

The creation of the Agency's first new media roster comes as the organisation mounts a major operation to redevelop its services for electronic media. This includes the complete convergence of its intranet and internet to a single set of standards - to enable information to be tailored according to the audience. The major project, which involves significant change within the business, is expected to take up to two years.

Other major milestones will be the redesign and development of the main Environment Agency site www.environment-agency.gov.uk and the creation of marketing tools to support World Environment Day, a global event which takes place in June. The annual initiative aims to raise awareness of environmental issues, encouraging the public to take part in activities to improve quality of life and raise money for environmental causes.

Simon Ashley, internet manager for the Environment Agency, said:

"We are facing some big challenges over the next few years, in particular with the convergence of electronic services, and we needed agencies with the right mixture of skills in design and marketing to support us through this process.

"E3 were shortlisted because they had the right technical skills. It was then down to a true cultural fit - they were willing to listen and we had a good interactive discussion where it was a real exchange of ideas rather than a one-way process."

Matt Ramsay, director of E3 Media, added:

"We identified early on that a true user-centred design approach was needed where we analyse the type of tasks carried out by visitors to the sites and develop them accordingly. The Environment Agency site receives a large number of visits from a wide variety of audiences - one of our recommendations was extensive interviewing and user-testing to ensure all their needs are fulfilled."

Earlier this year we were ranked number 3 digital design agency in design weeks magazine's top 100 design businesses, we were amazed to be in at number 10 last year so we're really chuffed with number 3 this year!