Cody Technology Park Free Coffee & Cake Event

As Christmas was fast approaching we had the bright idea to combine our bottomless Christmas cheer with an opportunity to introduce ourselves to everyone on the Cody Technology Park campus by offering free teas/coffees and cold beverages as well as branded Christmas themed cupcakes. We set to work on organising and planning the event which would involve us having a stand to inform people about who we are and what we do... but mainly to display our freebie merchandise and our elegantly crafted cupcakes.

Cody Technology Park is a business complex with over 60 companies, many doing very high tech things, a bit like us! We decided it was time to start networking, so this is the first of several events we're planning to continue in the new year, on all sorts of themes that help make 'everything web' easy to grasp and understand. After all, that's what we do!

We designed and ordered pull-up banners, leaflets, pads, pens, mugs, rice-paper cake toppers and arranged and designed some free beverage vouchers for the on-site coffee shops and restaurant. The banners served to demonstrate what we do as a company and some examples of our work at a glance, whilst our leaflets were more of a "white-paper"; offering free advice on common website mistakes. Our branded pads, pens and mugs were some little useful giveaways to ensure that we remain in the consciousness of those we met - at least a little longer than it took the coffee and cake to disappear! Luckily our festive red corporate colour suited the Christmas theme without too much tinkering!

I also decided to put together a short animation (which will hopefully be available online shortly) to demonstrate our offering using Adobe After Effects. I found the experience of making the video very enjoyable and can't wait to get my teeth in to some more projects like this in the future. Perhaps we could produce something like this for your company? (Please let me!) They say an image speaks a thousand words... and a moving image speaks a million!

On the morning of the event word spread very fast. We started early (at 8am!) and a hundred mugs, pens, pads and leaflets had gone by 9:30am! It was an interesting social experiment in some ways... coffee and cake isn't a hard sell you'd think, although some people still remained suspicious of our Christmas cheer - but we managed to successfully de-Scrooge most passers-by! Quote of the day was... "Why are you guys being so nice?"! It struck us that many companies might spend thousands on marketing budgets, just to introduce their brand and their offering - but coffee and cake was a simple and approachable way that brought us some real human interaction, and that's priceless. Because we work on a secure site there are strict rules surrounding photography which meant that we couldn't photograph any of the the 200+ people who swung by for a coffee but let me assure you - at times it was chaos!

It would be criminal if I didn't reiterate the point from my previous blog article - Why you need a branding document because it was our brand guidelines and resources that helped to easily transfer our brand to a whole range of media in an easy and eye-catching way... consistent and immediately recognisable. Another memorable quote of the day was "What, none of this is stock photography?"! Every icon, every photo, every example of our work was proudly created by us. Why not check out some examples of our work?

We had great fun hosting the event and even if all that comes of it is the fact that we managed to convince some people to walk away smiling and feeling a bit festive, then we feel we did a great job! We would definitely like to host a similar event in the future - maybe even for Easter (Real Life Digital themed chocolate eggs? yes please!) and we also plan to offer Cody Technology Park tenants some free seminars on web design and development.

The future looks bright here at our new premises in Farnborough. If you think that we can help you with your digital requirements get in touch with us. Who knows... maybe we'll buy you a coffee and a cupcake if you missed out this time! Merry Christmas one and all!