Q. When is a typo not really a typo?

A. When you invent a whole new character!

How do you pronounce café when you put the flair on the f?

This has all the ingredients for a classic Sign Writer vs Copywriter fight.

Spotted in Ullswater in the Lake district by Stu

Native’s Stu Lonsdale and friends running in the Edinburgh 10K to raise money for Schools for Hope - www.schoolsforhope.com

Native’s friends Dexter (pictured) and Janet Dulin Jones paid us a visit this week whilst they were over from LA.  Dexter came appropriately dressed in black and orange.  Check out Janet’s work here – www.storytellerla.com

Our US CEO, David Stirling has just spent a very busy week helping to organise the annual celebration of all things Scottish in New York. This is called Tartan Day and takes place every 6^th April, the anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath.

This is a very social event and this year brought together over 2,000 Scots who walked the length of Avenue in Manhattan on 10^th April. You can see more at our New York Scots group

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=20776000893&ref=ts

and New York Scotland Week Facebook pages

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=8471151742&ref=ts

It is also a great opportunity to network, establish business contacts and also appreciate the real affection that the US people have for Scotland and the Scots.

Native is delighted that our client and good friend, Brian Cox has been elected by the students to be the new Rector of the University of Dundee.

Read more here.

a.       Get Twittering

Twitter is something you have to work at. Set up an account via twitter.com and get started. Use TweetDeck on your PC or Phone to set up searches for your company, competitors and key words you are interested in.

b.      Understand the rules

It is not just about tweets, there are a range of other services. Start by understanding how has tags work, how to retweet and how direct messaging works. http://hashtags.org

c.       Be creative

It is just not a Sales Channel, other uses include Product Development, Customer Service, Research and Event Marketing.

d.      Measure what you are doing

This takes skill and time and as a result needs to show a return on this investment. Whenever you Tweet a link, use a shortening tracking url so that you can link it to your Twitter account and see aggregated results for all your tweets and start to understand the traffic you have created. If you run an analytics programme, set it up to track Twitter traffic – Google Analytics

e.      Engage properly

Make sure you have something to say regularly. Remember that, like all good marketing, it takes imagination, time and effort

Vic (middle santa) and friends (left and right santa) took part in the Edinburgh Santa Run at the weekend.   The 1.5Km run around Prince’s Street Gardens raised money for the When You Wish Upon a Star charity.

As a leading creative agency we believe that to succeed in the future that our clients should be using us to develop cross-media campaigns. This would allow marketing messages to move from one channel to another, seamlessly.  This is increasingly being facilitated by technology and it’s on-going integration – so much so that a “360-degree digital, PR and advertising campaign will be the norm in the future”.

We incorporate many of the newer marketing methods into our work and into our client’s campaigns, whether social networking, pay per click, natural search or blogging and see this only increasing as time moves on. We live in a truly global world and the need to integrate across media increases on a daily basis.

We believe that the days of offline and online marketing communications being separate are truly gone. That is why we provide an integrated approach to all we do, whether using Social Media, Strategic PR to gain a “share of voice”. This always needs to have a consumer focus and be part of compelling stories that engage and excite your audience. We would always recommend having conversations with your clients and consumers so that you create “Independent Advocates” for your company, organization or brand. The ability of PR to tell stories means that agencies are advising clients on a range of issues that include internal communications and CSR.