October 20, 2009
Maglabs’ parent company Magnet Harlequin has won the prestigious Print Week ‘Pre-press Company of the Year’ award 2009. This award underpins Magnet Harlequin’s position as the UK’s market leader in the provision of Creative Production and Brand Management services.
Magnet Harlequin’s high quality, value-driven business model, double-digit growth and solid foundation of integrity and technology saw it edge ahead of its competitors within this very competitive and highly acclaimed category.
Here’s what the judges had to say about Magnet Harlequin:
Magnet Harlequin, which will celebrate 30 years’ service to the UK graphic arts industry next year, impressed the judges with its high-quality, value-driven business model, which has fuelled double-digit growth for the past two years. Uxbridge-based Magnet’s success has been built on the solid foundations of integrity and technology. It’s recently introduced monitoring programme reports performance levels back to customers, reminding both them and Magnet’s employees of the excellent quality, service and value it offers. In the past year, the company, which has always strived to remain at the forefront of pre-press technology, has also launched Maglabs, a wholly-owned subsidiary that has gone on to develop and champion emerging technology across multiple business functions. Magnet Harlequin’s ability to streamline processes has saved hundreds of thousands of pounds and minimised speed-to-market for its clients. Thanks to its ongoing investment in talent, technology and innovation, it is also helping to “re-define pre-press provision” in the UK.
Posted in Magnet Harlequin
October 20, 2009
Maglabs is delighted to announce that AVON has joined the Maglabs client family and have secured a second promotional microsite with discussions on further web and mobile promotions to run in 2010. The first site went live in August in order to promote their support for their breast cancer charity; a microsite that asks people to count kiss marks in order to win a special lipstick.
A spokesperson from AVON commented “working with Maglabs was so easy, you wouldn’t believe the issues we’ve had in the past to these simple sites up and running. Maglabs made it painless and straightforward which is why we are looking forward to working with them moving forward”.
The second project is due to go live in December offering every AVON customer in the UK a prize and allows AVON to build their customer base for marketing purposes whilst also growing their representative sales force.
Posted in Digital, Marketing
October 7, 2009
Maglabs attends its second year at Mipcom in Cannes this week with our small stand at the show. In attendance David Knight, Andy Travis and Robin Sturmey will be here until Friday October 9th. While we will be meeting are existing customers NBC Universal, Universal Pictures and Fremantle Media Worldwide, we will also be meeting a combination of new content providers, entertainment and media creators and distributors from around the globe. We may also get to sit in on the key note speeches from filmmaker Morgan Spurlock and Simpsons masterminds Matt Groening although we have no intention of going supersize with Morgan.
Posted in Update
July 28, 2009
The creative team lead by Rik Moran, at Magnet Harlequin have just launched the successful update to the Accept Responsibility site for Pernod Ricard
Jean-Manuel Spriet, Pernod Ricard UK chief executive, said:
“The ‘Accept Responsibility’ website remains the focal point of the campaign and all collateral and marketing communications will continue to direct consumers to the website. Three new interactive tools have been introduced to the site, to further increase its appeal to younger adult consumers: ‘Wheel of Excuses’, ‘Have Your Say’ and ‘Tell someone you care about’. The ‘Wheel of Excuses’ portrays real life situations where consumers make excuses about the amount of alcohol they consume, ‘Have Your Say’ encourages users to express their views on the campaign and ‘Tell Someone You Care About’ gives users the option to forward the campaign creative’s to family and friends”.
It’s supported by a large online and offline campaign which runs until the beginning of September. The ad placements have been selected using demographic targeting on websites including MSN, Facebook and Yahoo to ensure they reach the 18-24 year old consumer. They are also using the new digital music service Spotify to run audio and banner binge drinking ads.
Posted in Digital
July 20, 2009
After reaching the final of the prestigious E-Business Excellence awards, Maglabs walked away with the ‘Highly Commended’ award.
Maglabs development of a marketing resource management system (MRM) for retailer World Duty Free called the Brand Terminal was praised by the judges for the way it improved the client’s efficiency in implementing its retail point-of-purchase print. In particular its use of Adobe LiveCycle technology enabled it to deploy a fully featured system, with the power of Adobe Acrobat to manage the approval and annotation process without the need for any software to be installed by the end-users
This is the latest in a long line of awards and accreditation the Maglabs business has received in recognition for its high standard of quality services and products.
Posted in Update
June 7, 2009
Maglabs is a trusted supplier to NBC Universal and the Universal Pictures family having been providing internal marketing systems and digital and mobile marketing activities for 7 years. Over the past year Maglabs have been working alongside PictureBox, NBC Universal’s subscription on demand service available in the UK, Poland Singapore, to provide a new branded website to optimise SEO and a back office marketing and operations scheduling system to drive business and operational efficiences. The first phase of which – a new look front end to the website – went live on the 1st July to support PictureBox’s launch on Virgin Media.
Posted in Marketing, Systems
May 12, 2009
Maglabs has been voted as a finalist for the BPIF 2009 Awards of Excellence in the E-Businesscategory. The winner of the award, which focuses on a combination of the excellence of the work done and the businesses themselves and is this year sponsored by Print Week, will be announced at a Gala event in July at a Park Lane hotel.
Maglabs Joint Managing Director Andy Travis comments
“With ecommerce, and its ability to make profound and rapid impacts on organisations’ cost-base and value generation high on companies agenda at the moment, we are delighted to have our market-leading work in the marketing communications functions further endorsed. We thank the judges for this recognition and our clients for the opportunities which they provide to partner with them to fulfil our mission – to bridge the gap between today’s opportunities and tomorrow’s technologies We hope that they will share our pride in the work which we have done together.”
Posted in Update
April 14, 2009
Although Maglabs was only incorporated as a company in January 2009, its incubation as a stand-alone division within Magnet Harlequin dates back to the start of 2008.
Thinking back over the year, my overriding experience with Maglabs seems to have been one of uplifting camaraderie as the team (and the new building) has come together from differing parts of Magnet Harlequin and from outside to form a genuinely cohesive team, led by one of the best Boards.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you – colleagues, partners and clients – for your tremendous support during our first year. Starting a company is always challenging, and doing it ’on the run’ no less so; but the strenuous efforts made by all and the evident and infectious enthusiasm and energy has made it all worthwhile.
Despite the distractions of the start-up, the team has managed to surpass their three core objectives by demonstrably exceeding clients’ expectations, increasing performance-related pay and high double-digit net earnings growth.
So, with our first behind us, we face the future with alacrity. Whilst subject to same economic uncertainty as all businesses, this in no way diminishes our ambition, optimism and justifiable self-confidence. Knowing that our work has never failed to deliver rapid return on investment via reduced costs and enhanced efficiency is as compelling to brand owners today as it was – and will continue to be.
Posted in Update
March 27, 2009
Following development activity throughout 2008, Maglabs has become fully ISO 14001 accredited.
The company is already identified as one of the UK’s top 10% businesses, nationwide, in terms of minimal emissions. In addition, according to data provided by Xerox, we have now become one of only 2% of the UK Graphics Arts and Media companies which is ISO 14001 accredited.
Joint Managing Director David Knight comments “I’d like to thank the Head of our Environmental Committee, Kevin Derbyshire, and the rest of the committee for their fastidious, enthusiastic and infectious leadership of this initiative. This accreditation serves as tangible evidence of our company-wide, authentic commitment to work with our clients and partners to minimise the negative impact on the planet which our endeavours cause”.
Working with Maglabs enables our clients to address some of their corporate and environmental challenges. May have long histories of Environmental and Corporate Responsibility and Maglabs shares their values and helps to contribute to the delivery of their environmental objectives.
Posted in Update
January 5, 2009
Following the opening of the new Maglabs headquarter building in West London, the company has also added a new Development Centre in the heart of the City of Edinburgh. The new centre is to be overseen by Technical Director, Ian Sherratt whose role now straddles both UK sites.
Sherratt comments “Attracting, developing and retaining the best talent in our field is critical to our success. With an advanced community of developers in Edinburgh, we have immediately attracted some excellent talent to the Development Centre. Moreover, being located in Central Edinburgh, near to the mainline stations, we can realistically welcome programmers from all key conurbations in Scotland.”
For more information contact ian.sherratt@maglabs.net
Posted in Update