Welcome 

Welcome to the first edition of Montagenews, a bi-monthly ezine to keep you updated with all the latest industry and client news.

This year Montage is launching its New Media Department, offering its clients Blogging, Pod and Video Casting and Search Engine Optimisation. Last Autumn blog search engine Technorati was tracking nearly 60 million blogs - it’s big business and an effective way to move your company high up the search engine listings and keep people informed about your news. In our next newsletter we will be taking a look at these services and how they can benefit your organisation.

We hope 2007 is a good year for your business.


Aime Southgate, Creative Director

Client News
•Green Team Win!
•Battling The Bugs
•Building Partnerships
•Counter-Terrorism Boost

Agency Update
•New Appointment
•Bioscience Success

On The Grapevine
•West Is Best
•Blog On!

Green Team Win!

Playing the National Lottery just got greener. Camelot visited the Eden Project in Cornwall to unveil a package of measures to reduce its environmental footprint, including a switch to green energy, a reduction in carbon emissions, and tickets printed on 100% recycled paper.

The Eden Project’s Sustainability Director, Chris Hines said: "This is welcome news from Camelot. We live in times when there are huge challenges of sustainability. Big changes can be achieved by big organisations and Camelot's footprint is considerable. Their policies affect millions of transactions with millions of people. The bigger the company the bigger the positive effects for the environment."

Battling The Bugs

A company at the forefront of the fight against the MRSA superbug is developing new technology to speed up tests for other potentially deadly hospital infections.

Acolyte Biomedica, based at the Tetricus bioscience business incubator, has developed a rapid MRSA screening test which reduces the time taken to diagnose the killer bug from days to just a few hours.

Its unique BacLite test is proving to be a powerful weapon in the battle to reduce the spread of MRSA and could potentially save hundreds of lives and millions of pounds for the NHS each year.

Building Partnerships

A flagship housing development involving leading timber frame designer and manufacturer, Prestoplan, has won the prestigious Housing Project of the Year category in the 2006 Builder and Engineer Awards.

Prestoplan, which provides early design input as part of its service, sent its team in ahead of the build to enable Kier Partnership Homes to redesign the original block and brick layout to include Modern Methods of Construction. The existing foundations from the original building, a public house, were reused and incorporated into the development in Dagenham, Essex, saving £280,000.

Counter-Terrorism Boost

The International School for Security and Explosives Education (ISSEE), a West Country company that provides counter-terrorism training to businesses and organisations across the world, is the latest to benefit from the involvement of YFM Group, managers of the £25m South West Ventures Fund, securing £250,000 from the fund.

The investment will enable ISSEE to develop the UK Centre for Homeland Security at its 55-acre former RAF Chilmark site in Wiltshire and grow the business internationally. The school trains people from commercial, military and law enforcement backgrounds in a range of explosives and security-related subjects.

New Appointment
Montage has appointed former Bristol commercial radio station chief, Dev Chakraborty, to head up its new Media Buying and Planning arm, bringing more than 17 years’ of experience across the broadcast and print media. Dev began his career in sales with local newspapers before joining Pirate FM radio, where he rose to the position of Sales Director. He went on to positions as Managing Director at both Star 107.2 in Bristol and its sister station in Stroud.

Bioscience Success
Tetricus, located on the Porton Down Science Park near Salisbury, has appointed Montage to run a communications and marketing strategy to support its business objective of becoming market leader in the provision of business incubation and development services for bioscience companies.

Tetricus offers specialised office and state-of-the-art laboratory facilities, including extensive wet laboratory facilities. The Tetricus Bioscience Incubator provides young companies with access to facilities, services, specialist support and investment capital.

West Is Best

Life is local – 3⁄4 of the workforce work within 10 miles of home – with media following the trend: regional papers are now the most important source of local news.

www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk

Blog On!

People are increasingly trusting of blogs: PR Week reports recent research as having found 30% considered newspapers to be their most trusted media, but 24% favoured blogs, ahead of television (17%) and email marketing (14%).

www.prweek.com