Five Things We Love About Living at The Orchard

After almost three decades, Apple Print and Creative finally has a home of its very own. It is now 3 months since the move to our new premises, The Orchard.

Having settled in, here are some of the things our staff loves the most about our new location in Abex Road:

1. More space – the sales team are very happy there is now room for clients to visit us without having to practically sit on our laps! We also have a great boardroom for formal presentations to clients, or just to have an informal chat about your needs. Our managing directors Jane and Andrew even have their own spacious offices.
2. The improved arrangement of space – all of our offices are now upstairs, whilst all of production takes place downstairs. No more getting lost, as often happened in our maze of a previous building, with this new layout! It has also been a great chance to reorganise ourselves – a new start gave us the opportunity to really think through the best way to make the space work for our needs, and the needs of our clients … which have changed hugely over the last 27 years.
3. The amount of natural light – we’re spoilt for windows here at The Orchard! The studio and managing director Andrew’s office even enjoy dual aspect views.
4. Plenty of car parking – no more shuffling cars around, so no more excuses for being late to client appointments! There are parking spaces reserved especially for visitors if you come to see us.
5. A great central location by the canal off Bone Lane, well located for deliveries to clients in the Newbury area, and for clients to call in and see us.

Most of all, we love having a place to call ours, and a secure long-term future for Apple Print and Creative… we’ll be here for many years to come!

So drop in for a cuppa if you haven’t already seen our new home for yourself … we look forward to many more clients calling in!

Mondi, Premier Paper and UK printer, Apple Print, collaborate for the Digital Printer Awards

Vienna, Aug 22nd, 2012 ─ International paper and packaging producer Mondi is working together with Apple Print & Creative of Newbury and The Premier Paper Group, the UK’s leading independent paper distributor, on a submission for the prestigious Digital Printer Awards. Organised by Whitmar Publishing, the Digital Printer Awards recognise innovation, creativity and excellence in digital print.

Apple Print is a well-established business offering a full printing service including lithographic, digital and large format with a fantastic creative studio on-site.

Andrew Watts, Joint Managing Director of Apple Print, commented: “We are delighted to be invited to participate in this exciting initiative with Premier Paper and Mondi.  We are a highly talented team with over 20 years of experience within the design and marketing industry and welcome the opportunity to have our success recognised through the Digital Printer Awards 2012.”

 “Working together with The Premier Paper Group and Apple Print, who has expertise both in creative design and digital printing is an exciting opportunity. This collaboration combined with Apple Print’s in-house creative team will bring out the best in paper and print technology and innovative design,” said Johannes Klumpp, Marketing and Sales Director for Mondi Uncoated Fine Paper.

The winners of this year’s Digital Printer Awards will be announced in November 2012.

Why We Like Working With Apple Print

Here at Jokers' Masquerade we have been working with Apple Print on various hard copy offline marketing initiatives for the last few years. We're also based in Newbury so the fact that Apple are local was an important attribute for us. We wanted to work with a local company so we would be able to receive and review the proofs quickly and also support another business located within the same area.

One of our first projects that was honestly handled with tact and probably just the right amount of urgency was a magazine style brochure called Visage that we added to all orders that were placed on our website. We have since worked with Apple Print to produce header cards for products as well as various fancy dress themed leaflets and flyers.

Apple Print and Creative Celebrates 25 Years of Print

Thursday August 11^th was the date of the big 80s themed fancy dress celebration to mark 25 years of the business successfully creating and crafting printed materials. Apple very kindly invited Kate and Donna to attend. Both wore our Space Invader fancy dress costume to the event held at the Faraday Road studio. Both received various requests to walk sideways in homage to the computer game.

Apple Print actually launched their new website at the event, which is a nice new modern look. In composing this blog post I actually asked Nigel, our resident graphic designer how he feels about using the Apple website to which I received an unusually concise response saying “It certainly conveys their services clearly, you can find your way around the site easily. I also think their friendliness comes across through the site” What a nice chap. Kate, who was no longer wearing the Space Invader costume at the time of being quizzed shared that “Its very quick and simple to upload artwork to their client area”. That certainly sounds like two very positive reviews of the new website.

Here's a photo from the celebration:

We've worked previously with both Andrew Watts and Barbra Frost and both were very helpful, they provided a personal and professional touch and make us feel very confident that they are on top of things. That personal touch and the willingness to go just  a little further is why we like working with Apple.

This was a guest post by Jokers' Masquerade fancy dress, where they are currently fighting over which is the best new Halloween costume.

Must Blog more.........

So I was just walking back from lunch with the Graphics team and I bumped into a friend who suggested I was not blogging enough so I promised I would write an update today....and true to my word here it is.

Since the start of April sales have been very tough, we have been slightly under target and really working hard for all we can get in...that seems to have been turned around now as the amount of sales incoming is back up to great levels – this is a relief to the sales team and means we should finish the year on target. We do need more though as I realise my board are going to be looking for continued growth in 2012/2013, so if you know of any great sales professionals that want to work for a growing business please send the my way.

We have had a great couple of weeks with new clients, finished off some really big design and marketing projects and started some real fun jobs – we have an intern called Naomi who has joined us for the summer and is doing really well as well as Emily who is on work experience for a few days. We are looking for a new designer at the moment to help us expand the team as well as a marketing assistant ........I also need a PA and will be starting to look to fill that role over the next month.

The production team are also doing well...our machines have been flat out and we have just confirmed delivery of our new digital press, exciting stuff all in all and more to come with our news that we will be moving to a new building we have just exchanged contracts on....which this space for updates on when and what will be happening there.

It’s been a great day over all and as I started by saying we all popped off to McDonalds for lunch and our work experience girl Emily seemed to eat the most...that’s her below – have a great weekend and watch out for my post next week.

Be mobile.....deliver content for my phone....Please

I use my phone a lot - I am not kidding it spends more time in my hand than almost  anything else. In some ways I miss the days when I could not be contacted 24/7 but to be fair I have had a mobile since I was 18 so that would have only avoided my mum calling me home for a bath and hair wash! I do everything you can think of with my phone, but there is one thing I don't do with it....can you guess? No? OK then...I will not use websites that cant deliver it's content optimised for my device.....come on webmasters it's only a bloody style sheet, you could do it quicker than finding a funny Michael Mcintyre joke, which to be fair could take quite a while but I am sure you get my point.


Even though modern Britain has a semi decent mobile network (Unless you are on o2 anywhere North or South of Newbury) your website graphics should be scaled down for the slower network speeds, the content delivered should match what user experience you client base craves or should expect. Would it surprise you to learn that now almost 50% of UK web users used their mobiles to surf, browse,  ride the tide of the world wide web? Without looking at the Analytic's it's hard to tell what these Mobile web users think of your Non-Mobile friendly web content but some figures suggest an 85% Bounce rate for this kind of user experience - that's right be afraid....you ARE losing business or even the chance for business.  CALL TO ACTION - give me a call or an email and I can explain where to start.....go on...you know you want to.


I like to buy online for things I cant get in the high street, I can get very busy at work so I look up directions when I am on the move, I want to book tickets when I see a Poster for a show I want to go to - business is tough and hard work demands more on all of our leisure time so make it easy for us to have fun, spend or even just find a Phone Number - I have an unnecessary love of talking so have someone there when I ring.....Blah, I can go on and on......Be Mobile...even my blog is! I am also doing a workshop that touches on this subject next week at a BMG event in Reading ....you can learn more here http://www.bmgevents.co.uk/

Standing out from the Crowd

It today’s fast paced world I am always amazed when I hear the phrase “Marketing don’t work for us” or “our business is Different” – if you want to see your business prosper or even hold its own then you need to be better known or more in the face of potential clients than your competitors.

It seems so obvious but having a joined up campaign is one sure way to marketing success – come up with a budget .....double it, then watch the spondulas roll in?!?!? Ok it’s not quite that easy but it will help if done right ”IF YOU CANT MEASURE IT THEN IT DOES NOT EXISIT” is one thing to remember, you always got to know if what you are spending is having any effect. I work in a sales environment, OMG it’s amazing right now – I have a ton of ways to improve my pipeline and I can do it all in an hour after the day ends.

• Join groups on LinkedIn and engage – ask for help and you’ll get it aplenty – try to help and you’ll get noticed.
• Join related forums for your market group – also be where your clients are on-line – Backlinks to your website can be gained this way as well as the positive impact you have.
• Write a Blog......DOH!!

Here at Apple Print & Creative we are now offering a Social Media service, helping our clients without resource to get themselves involved and “Join the Conversation” .......why pay us? Simple answer, because it’s important.  Our Business Plan is about growth, if yours is then you should be looking at these services. Remember, if you do approach social media yourselves then have a plan, this is still marketing and should be treating as such. So that's:

• Pre-plan
• Listen (to your potential target market and competitors)
• Design your message and Social Personality
• Set some goals 
• Join in
• Measure results (else why bother)

The measure part is super important or you wont know what the successes have been - I am a Guest Speaker at a BMG event in Reading at the Madejski Stadium in April, Web Analysis using Google Analytic's will be my subject, if you would like to learn more then clicky here......

That’s my short blog for this week – Next week look out for Print Technology, I will be explaining why traditional print is back and here to stay and how to continue to stand out in todays market.

The crazy world of print and design

I just noticed that it’s been two weeks since I last put fingers to keyboard (the new “Pen to Paper”?) so I thought I ought to run through what we have been up to here at Apple Print & Creative. I also thought that we could look at the way we are using “Print” to help promote our clients businesses.

So, this week QR codes have featured quite a bit, not just on the designs we are offering but on the clients provided designs as well, I was beginning to wonder if these fabulous little things would ever find a place in everyday marketing but it looks like they are finding their way. The main thing here (again) is that they link to a “MOBILE enabled” website / Page / Signup form, remember, if your QR is scanned you can bet your life it was with a mobile device..... if I was on twitter right now I would use this hashtag #Nobrainer.

Along with QR’s we have been using variable data, this is where you provide me with a database of info and we target those people with DM’s specific to them, be that Male or Female, Partner/Reseller, BWM or Audi owner – we make it personal, in a nice way J - the statistics speak for themselves, 36% increase in response rates, response times up by 34% for direct mail campaigns using targeted data – So if you have a database and want to get a result then this is the way forward. If you add a quality Telesales campaign to something like this then the ROI can be fantastic.

•  Target Individuals
•  Small Groups
•  Tailored Offers
•  Personalised for extra Impact

Ready for some linked up thinking........how about Personalised Direct Mail with a Personalised QR code to the clients very own Micro Site? Call us todiscuss....we'll take your marketing to the next level.

So we have looked at digital printing, clever variable data usage so how about good ol fashioned leaflet campaigns? Well, if you have the right market these can be a fantastic way of getting info out to as many people as possible, come on, someone has to read the materials that fall out of Newspapers, Magazines and Newsletters. The thing to remember here is that  design is key, catch someone’s eye with a clever design or a attractive call to action and you’ll have a great chance of getting engagement – this is a little bit of a blanket approach with little or no follow up but can yield great results or even just keep your brand in front of people.

So it’s back to basics, if you do it, Target it – the model for Social Media is all about finding out about your clients and their needs, your offline marketing should do the same but also has more of a chance of being seen in today’s Information age.

Before I forget.....our competition for March is to win an iPod Touch.....see what other people have won here and enter now..............