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We work hard at what we do and take pride in every project we deliver to our clients.

So being human, it gives us a warm feeling inside when someone says ‘thanks’ or ‘we love your work’. Whether this acknowledgement is conveyed to us in simple email or attached to a bunch of flowers it matters not and makes us realise that everything in life is worthwhile.

Such an acknowledgement was received this week in the form of a simple card from one of our long standing clients whom we do ad-hoc work for, who thanked us for the work we have recently done for her company.

The gesture wasn’t expensive (the cost of a card and a stamp as can be seen from the pic above) – but it makes us feel good and you get bet your bottom-dollar the next time this client wants some work doing, we’ll give her more value than she pays for and in double quick time.

We are only human after all and given the nature of our industry, we have some big egos to massage.

Happy days!

One of our clients, Steve Wade: a director of the engineering company Auto-Lift UK Ltd in Bradford had a kidney transplant from his brother back in October 2000.

As a way of “giving something back� Steve is planning to raise funds for the UK charity Kidney Research UK by undertaking the gruelling 26 mile inline skating marathon at Hillingdon Cycle Circuit in London on the 31st August 2008.

We think Steve’s efforts are tremendous and his cause is a worthy one, so we’d love it if readers of our blog could help Steve raise cash for this worthwhile charity which does a lot to raise awareness of and develop treatments for kidney related conditions for people of all ages.

You can sponsor Steve directly online through his Just Giving page at www.justgiving.com/stevewade

You can find more about Kidney Research UK on their website at: www.nkrf.org.uk

If you’re a client or associate of ours and are planning a fundraising event for charity or some other worthwhile cause, please tell us about it and we’ll give you some exposure here on our blog.

Don’t forget to visit Steve’s sponsorship page with your credit card at the ready.
 

The Hub and Spoke Business Model

Keyclicks is a UK based creative design agency that works on a ‘hub and spoke’ business model. Such working arrangements are sometimes called ‘creative hubs’, ‘creative networks’, ‘creative clusters’ or perhaps ‘creative collaborations’.

The Idea

The idea behind our business model is simple.

The central ‘hub’ is made up of a small team of employed business professionals which includes, project managers and administrators whilst the creative design and development aspect of our business (the ‘spokes’) is delivered through independent and talented creative professionals who are experts in their own disciplines of design, web development, marketing or video production.

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As a creative, people orientated business our biggest overhead is salaries which takes up over half of our cost-base.

Other overheads such as office rent, IT and licensing etc take up the rest (not to mention the teabag bill). So given the limited amount of physical infrastructure we have in place i.e. we don’t have a big suite of offices; when people come to see us I’m sure it must pass through their minds as to why we charge what we charge for our hourly rate.

Don’t get me wrong here! We know we’re not the most expensive agency in the region; however we also know we’re not the cheapest. We believe it’s a question of balance and we charge what we need to charge to maintain the level of experience and expertise for the range of services we offer without asking you to help fund some swanky state of the art offices in the centre of Leeds or Manchester.

On this point by the way, we recently spoke to a Leeds based law firm who wanted to emphasise the fact that they had an expensive LS1 address as a selling point on their website as they genuinely believed it was a USP for their business. Being a typical Yorkshireman I couldn’t see how this could be true and offered advice to the contrary.

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Kim Underhill joins the Keyclicks team this week as a “Business Support Administrator” working out of our main Cleckheaton office.

This basically means she’s tasked with the objectives of keeping everyone up to date with their paperwork, making sure the communications between us and our clients flow along nicely and that everyone in the office has their fair share at doing the washing up and making the tea (are you listening Jaimie?).

Kim comes from a customer support background which has spanned a number of years and is looking forward to the challenges of her new role.

The next time you call into the office, if you speak to Kim; why not welcome her on board?