Career Opportunity - Senior PHP Developer

We're looking for a talented senior developer to lead our technical team.

As an experienced developer you will be involved with the maintenance of existing websites, and the development of new desktop and mobile sites. You will be responsible for leading development and managing the existing technical infrastructure. Working closely with our current developer, digital lead and programmer, you’ll manage the development and quality of our digital offering. 

Drawn to You

There are those people who doodle, and there are those who draw. As G&C's Steve Benn opens his sketchbook to us, it is clear that a doodler, he is not. 

Illustration and painting have always played a huge part of Steve’s life. “At an early age it allowed me to combine two of my loves – drawing and cars,” he explains. He set his sights high right from the beginning, sketching Porsches and Lamborghinis, paying close attention to get the proportions right, before shifting the focus of his subjects to surfing and ocean-scapes. 

The Importance of Local Search: 5 Essential Steps to Getting it Right

Did you know that local search is one of the fastest growing categories of online advertising? With predictions that 30% of all searches will be local by 2015, there’s no denying that local search is more important than ever.

Local search can drive pre-qualified leads to your website - consumers who are already interested in purchasing your products or services with the potential to result in conversion. Your business cannot afford to miss out, especially as major search engines, like Google, place a heavy focus on local search.

Amongst the myriad of updates that Google announced last month in its official Inside Search blog, they pledged to make “improvements to ranking for local search results.” Google ‘Venice’ aims to “improve the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal”. In simpler terms, this means that significant changes have been made to Google’s local search – broad search queries will now return super-localised organic results.

Google can now show you different search results based on your location. So if your Google location is set as Melbourne, and you were to search a specific location-based topic, like ‘hairdresser’, you would get different results to those of someone located in Sydney.

While the full effects of Google ‘Venice’ are yet to reveal themselves, local, smaller businesses are seeing themselves listed on page one for generic search terms, which used to be exclusively reserved for larger companies.

Light Painting

Come over to the dark side. And bring a torch – we're about to enter the mysterious world of light painting with G&C's very own Ivan Krpan.

Next time you're walking to the corner shop, there's a possibility a group of fearless photographers are moving beneath your feet, searching for the perfect backdrop to their light painting experiments. One of these dark-dwelling adventurers is Ivan Krpan, and his group captures the darkest of Melbourne's long forgotten buildings and graffiti-strewn tunnels.

Creative Campaigns 2011

To kick-start a bright new creative year here at G&C we thought we'd share a few innovative campaigns that caught our eye in 2011.

McDonalds Pick n Play

Creating brand interaction on the streets of Stockholm.

5 successful social media strategies

1.    Research your competitors and what else is happening in your industry. Check the Facebook and Twitter pages of your industry leaders – this will provide key information about what to do and what not to do.

2.    Create a 12-month content plan and categorize your posts. For example, on Mondays always post about a new initiative in your industry, on Tuesday post a customer testimonial and on Wednesday post about one of your products. You will most probably need to reassess down the track and consider your analytics: some days fans may respond better than others.

Social Update

It's not up for debate anymore, it's ever-present and growing: social media and web 2.0 has provoked a fundamental shift in marketing. Information now finds the consumer rather than the consumer finding information.

Tesco Homeplus Campaign

This is one of the best Digital Campaigns we've seen in a while! It works on so many levels.

Aquila Shoes

Taking a successful 50-year-old quality Australian brand, with over 30 retail stores nationally, into the digital age was an exciting prospect. The challenge was how to take the brand personality we had developed for Aquila over the past decade and translate it into a truly full-service online store offering.

Harnessing the power of one of the world’s most powerful e-commerce platforms – Magento – we were able to structure a fully capable store that scales with Aquila’s growth and is flexible enough to let the brand personality shine through. The online store includes industry-leading product cataloging, secure payments and customer order management alongside strong online design, functionality and usability for the user.

The Importance of Audience

We could go straight into SEO and discuss all sorts of ways to optimize your website or other digital project but one thing very close to my heart is making sure that the fundamentals you start with are sound.

I’ll use an example from my hobby, a car club in which I spend my spare time working on the website, creating articles, maintaining a free marketplace, posting member stories and building event galleries.

The success of the website has shown a lot of members who own their own businesses that the web has huge potential in connecting with potential customers. Unfortunately though, not all of them have understood that although customers can find them quickly and easily (well, not always unfortunately), customers will also judge them just as quickly and just as easily.

What's in a Name?

What's in a name? Plenty...

Have you ever been so bored that you've read the fine print on a can of Coke? I have. In fact, I've studied Coke cans very closely as protecting trade marks is what I do – and a can of Coke illustrates how important a name or trade mark is.

The Coca Cola Company doesn't bother actually making bubbly drinks, they leave that to the various bottlers around the world. So what does the Coca Cola company actually do? In short – they licence their trade mark, the unique name for their product. The registration certificates for the Coca Cola trade marks registered around the globe are probably the most valuable pieces of paper in the world!

Ryco Radio Campaign

“If, like me, you’re in the business of servicing cars, the sound you’re hearing will be music to your ears … it’s a Ryco filter being put through its paces at their dedicated testing lab.” So explains the friendly mechanic in the first of three radio spots in our recent campaign for Ryco Filters.

Celebrating 70 years of proven performance in Australian cars, Ryco Filters needed a radio campaign that spoke to mechanics in a voice of authority, to help encourage trial and cement their position as a quality, trusted product.

Following extensive research we developed a radio campaign telling mechanics how the engineering and testing of Ryco filters leads to products of greater value than both less expensive and original parts – value that can be passed on to their customers.

To do this, we created three ads that convey these messages – one set in Ryco’s testing lab; and two set in a mechanic’s workshop environment. Each gives a compelling reason for mechanics to choose Ryco over alternative brands.

Unfolding Google Maps

Google Maps set the benchmark for online mapping technologies. And in opening up its code to user customisation and adaptation, Google Maps has redefined the information delivery model.

At G&C we’ve recently taken the opportunity to harness these ‘Styled Maps’  capabilities for a couple of our clients – Aquila and Australand.

Building Interia Burwood

Australand needed a complete branding and marketing strategy for their new development in Burwood, Victoria. Starting with little more than  a location and an outline of the basic housing product, we applied our  dedicated approach and began building the brand from the ground up.

A thorough research and strategy period resulted in several relevant naming possibilities, all with unique visual personalities – all hitting our conceptual proof points. The clear winner in our feedback meetings with Australand was ‘Interia Burwood.’

Because of the architectural aesthetic of the project, the concept we developed to support the brand was ‘Designed Family Living.’ With this, we tell the story of how everyone has something unique they possess that’s special to them, and that Interia Burwood is the perfect place for the things that matter in their lives.