All at Applied Signs & Display.

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Applied Signs & Display have won a Nomadic Display ‘Teddy’ Award for a Modular Custom Build Display, produced last year for Fannin Ltd. to use at Biomedica ‘08.  The annual ‘Teddy’ Awards recognize excellence in display among exhibition companies across 30 countries.  Applied Signs & Display’s award was in the highly competitive ‘Island Display’ Category, where a high degree of creativity and usability is expected. The Dublin-based display & signage company, currently in their 21^st year, are particularly proud of the award, as a record number of companies entered the competition this year.

Fannin’s winning stand was a tailored ‘Versatility Kit’ Display – this unique display system is an all-in-one, multi-purpose display/exhibition stand which can be reconfigured to create backwall and island displays in sizes from 6m x 9m down to 3m long. Applied Signs & Display sales manager Sean Lally explains the appeal of this award-winning display:  ‘The beauty of the versatility kit is that it incorporates a tower, a lockable room, counters, flatscreens and informal meeting areas in a package that can be reconfigured to fit almost any exhibition space.  It can be branded with fabric, graphics, backlit panels and laminates to ensure a fresh look each time, and it’s proving hugely popular due to its cost savings and green credentials when compared to traditional custom build displays.’  This display system is available to hire and buy from Applied Signs & Display.

Futher details on the Teddy Awards are available from the Nomadic Display Website.

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Made from renewable/recyclable bamboo, 100% post-consumer waste/100% recyclable laminates, 100% post-consumer waste/100% recyclable carpet, and 100% recyclable celtic cloth/water based ink graphics, this display is a result of Nomadic’s long-standing efforts to create the ‘green’-est display stands possible: Even standard Nomadic Display portable stands adhere to sound standards:

- All Aluminum pop up frames and components are fabricated with 80% post-consumer recycled content

- Velcro®-compatible fabrics contain polyester made from 100% certified, post-consumer recycled plastic bottles.

- Reduced its company-wide consumption of paper for communications, transactions, management, and record-keeping systems by half in the past year.

- Promotional materials are printed on 100% recycled, elemental chlorine-free paper products certified by the international Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).

The winning exhibit, named ‘Dream Green’, also won Best Trade Show Display in the American Corporate Identity Awards.

Dream Green, Award winning portable exhibition display stand by Nomadic Display

Source: Exhibitor News Network

Further Details of Nomadic Display’s Environmental Policy

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In the US there are reports that casinos are seeing a steady footfall but some customers have cut their spend by up to 50%.  In Vegas for example, casino gambling is said to have fallen 15% last year, and shares in the MGM Mirage and Las Vegas Sands fell 95% in the year to March.  Lotteries in the US report a fall in the region of 5% – so it seems that consumers in the lottery habit are more reluctant to change their ways.

Back home in Ireland, it would be reasonable to assume that, given our extreme difficulties compared to international trends, our gambling indutry may be feeling more of an impact.  Indeed as early as July 2008, The Irish Examiner reported that Bookmakers takings were down 17% on the previous year.  The tote’s figures also declined but by a smaller amount, down €279000 to 25.7 million.

In the case of arcade gambling, Pachinko, the wildly popular slot/pinball game found on every Japanese street corner, positively thrived in the 1990s recession there, and evidence suggests that despite a 12% contraction in the Japanese Economy in the final quarter of last year, Pachinko takings rose by .5% in the same period, and by .9% this January alone.

So perhaps gambling is not the worst business to be in at the minute.  But what are the other industries thought to buck the trend in a recession?

Some are predictable, such as:

• Second Hand Selling
• Debt Collection Agencies
• Repair Services
• DIY supliers
• Education and Retraining/Reskilling services
• Healthcare & Counselling

Some seem less obvious though:

• Video Games – perhaps because people are staying in to save cash – I have heard that takeaways and DVD rental is booming but the video games one is news to me!
• Ultra Luxury Items – the thinking is that the ultra-gazillionaires who buy these items are not necessarily affected by the recession, so private jets and private islands etc. are still in demand
• Motor Vehicle Towing – perhaps people skimp on maintaining and servicing their cars so they suffer more breakdowns
• Self Storage – people downsizing their homes need to store their belongings until things pick up

Read the full lists here, here and here and let me know your thoughts.

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There are as many resources on how to do social marketing, as there are networks so rather than provide a whistle stop tour of the social web in 2009, I’ve elected to introduce you to the Irish Internet Association’s Social Media Working Group and the sterling work they’ve been doing over the past twelve months.
The Social Media Working Group seeks to support businesses in the development of strategies for engaging with social media, including blogging, social networking, community sites, RSS, tagging, and podcasts. IIA 2008

The committee members consist of a diverse range of skills and disciplines ranging from social media, web development, marketing, to PR and education.

Although their main output: Guides to Social Media for Business are restricted to members of the Irish Internet Association, they also have plenty of tips and advice available to the general public and one I’d like to particularly highlight are the weekly blog posts containing Social Media case studies.
Each week a committee member writes a case study on a particular area of social media that has caught their attention, the tone is ‘how to’ providing the reader with step by step descriptions of how a particular campaign was designed, implemented and measured – certainly a must read for anyone thinking of dipping their feet in social media in Ireland today.

However, the Working Group’s formal output is not the only rich content on offer as many of the members provide valuable resources themselves.
For example, Eoin Kennedy from Slattery Communications writes an excellent PR blog entitled ‘Thoughts on Communications in Ireland’ and here you’ll find many tips and checklists on how to go about raising your profile online.
Bernie Goldbach from Tipperary Institute does an interesting video round up of tech news in the Sunday papers on Qik.com which is also syndicated on fellow committee member Campbell Scott’s now global social network IGOpeople.
Krishna De aka Ireland’s social media ambassador is also a member of the working group, she’s on every network and if you’ve ever seen her present at her many speaking engagements, you’ll agree her passion for social media is infectious and her many resources are definitely worth a browse.
Last but not least, I’d like to mention the IIA’s Roseanne Smith who is always online and at hand to help with your every social media whim.

Joy Redmond is the co-founder of Flexitimers.

Joy started her career in 1996 as Marketing Director of Newmedia, one of Ireland’s first web design companies. She remained agency side working with Zartis.com and Campaign HTDS before moving client side to become online marketing manager of IngredientsNet.com (a joint venture between Fyffes and Glanbia). Before setting up Flexitimers with Dervla Cunningham, Joy was a lecturer in E-business, research and marketing in the Dublin Institute of Technology and was Course Director of the Masters in Business & Entrepreneurship. She is a mentor on the Wexford County Enterprise Board and a member of the Irish Internet Association Social Media Working Group.

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As the first network in Dublin focusing on executive, managerial and professional job seekers, this club has much to offer its members:

- the members are highly skilled in their sector and share contacts to help fellow members trying to reach specific recruiters or break into a new sector.

- Job leads will be shared at each fortnightly meeting, helping disseminate placements across the group and increasing the number of opportunities each member is exposed to.

- Optimum Training, the facilitators of the club, coordinate the networking and provide career counselling and professional training to each member at a reduced cost.

- The club will also provide executive job seekers with something that can be difficult to access otherwise – moral support from others in a similar position. This type of social back up can be crucial when a redundancy has left the job seeker in shock or lacking confidence to take a step in a different direction.

- This type of network can also benefit those who are still in employment but have been scared off changing jobs because of the current eceonomic climate.

- Contact Aaron Downes for further details – downesad@gmail.com

Another example of a people taking positive action in the face of the non-stop doom-and-gloom at the moment. Would love to hear your views on this or any other such initiative currently going on.

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As of today we have 204 followers and we were ranked 355 in a recent survey of Irish Twitterers by Irish Blogs. Give twittering a go. And be sure to follow us at http://twitter.com/appliedsigns

Some Useful Sites For Twitterers

Top 100 and Top 1000 Irish Twitterers

NearbyTweets: Find Twitterers Near You or By Location & Keyword – great for business searches

Aggregator of Irish Tweets – follow http://twitter.com/irishblogs to be included in the stream.

Twitterholic.com: Find the most prolific Twitterers (lots of big names in here)

WhoShouldIFollow.com: Find Twitterers similar to those you already follow

StrawpollNow.com: Create Simple Polls on Twitter

RememberTheMilk.com: Use Twitter as a to-do list and reminder service

GroupTweet.com: Tweet in Private to a select group of friends or colleagues

Twuffer.com: Schedule Tweets in advance

Twittad.com: Advertise on a particular Twitterer’s profile or monetize your own page

Twalala.com: ‘Mute’ or filter certain twitter updates to streamline your twitterstream

TwerpScan.com: Scan for Twitter Spammers

UseQwitter.com: Get notified when someone un-follows you

Twellow.com: Search the Twitter Golden Pages

EasyTweets.com: Brand and Trend tracking on Twitter

Tweetwheel.com: See your followers and their followers graphed in a ‘wheel’

Twitterless.com: Graph your followers over time and track un-follows

Twitter Mosaic Create a visual mosaic of your followers to display on blogs etc.

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Topics covered at the event included migration, flexicurity, active aging and working time.

This was an impressive job which used the space and light of the building well, and by all accounts it was fun to set up too (especially for the alpinists who hung the hanging signs!).

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December ’07
January ’08
April ’08
June ’08
October ’08
December ’08

And you can join our mailing list here…

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The return of the event got me thinking of the various designs and venues through the years, and I thought it would be fun to post up some of the photos we have of the backdrops we have produced and built over the years. There are some gaps in our photo records which I will try to fill in if possible. Which is your favourite?

1994
1995
2000
2004

2005

2006

2007

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