Can an old dog learn new tricks? That’s what Jeff will be hoping. Yes, Mr Coghlan is going back to school.

2010 was a fantastic year for Matmi. It was one of the most productive years in Matmi’s history. Awards galore. Dozens of web, iPhone, iPad and Android games developed. Entire promotional campaigns packaged up and successfully pushed out into the digital stratosphere (Optathlon for one).

It has now been 10 years since Matmi first stumbled onto the digital stage and its founder is now going to learn how to run a growing business efficiently and effectively (not that it hasn’t been a fun and wild ride for all involved so far).

As we mentioned a while back, Matmi was fortunate enough to win ‘Best British Business’ at the Siemens’ British Business Boost Awards. Part of the prize for winning this is a jazzy, state of the art phone system. The other prize is for the MD of Matmi to be enrolled on a fantastic course at Cass Business School (City University, London) run in partnership by ‘Your Business Your Future‘. The course is aptly titled ‘Better Business Programme‘

The course programme is for ‘owner managers who are ambitious to build a better business and create a better future for their business and for themselves.’

If you don’t mind (and even if you do..), I am going to indulge in a bit of fantasy….imagining what the future may hold for Matmi. For 10 years, Matmi has been run by Johnny Depp’s brother from another mother (…and father). A man who’s creative mind never stops whirring and can cause him to dash around the office like a tornado, throwing out ideas at a million miles an hour. With the little Matmians frantically trying to keep up.

This scene promises to be a thing of the past, thanks to the ‘Better Business Programme.’ All ideas storyboarded and planned out. Scheduled meetings, jobs ticked off and all things catalogued. Matmians managed and the creative force that is our beloved MD controlled and focussed. THIS is part of what we at Matmi expect to arise from an old dog learning new tricks.

Here’s a few words from the man himself:
“Matmi has had a fantastic decade with an impressive list of clients which has grown year on year. This course should teach me how to maximise our own profits from EVERY project, something we may not have been so successful at all the time. It should allow me to work ON the business rather than IN the business. Help me do the parts of the job a Managing Director of a growing company should be doing. I want Matmi to become one of the leading International players in the digital media industry. (…Maybe become so successful that I can work from a hut on a beach). ”

2011 promises to be an even bigger year than the last….the ‘teenies’ even grander than the ‘noughties’. So off to school you go Mr Coghlan, and don’t forget your packed lunch…

...scariest pupil ever!

The power of branded entertainment

Compare The Market’s meerkat campaign is a fantastic example of branded entertainment at work. In the crowded and, frankly, boring world of insurance it’s delivered humour, originality, the ‘talkability’ factor (as Matmi did for Vimto) and most important of all, direct and willing engagement from buyers with a previously unexciting brand.

The fact that the spoof went so far as to have an actual Compare The Meerkat website and other spin-offs was a stroke of genius. Many of us have fallen for the proud and brave Aleksandr and his faithful but long-suffering assistant, Sergei – and we’ll miss them when they go.

Or will we?

The award-winning meerkat campaign is becoming another example of how to do branded entertainment well. Audiences are hungry and fickle. Set their expectations and they expect nothing less. In fact, they expect more. (Psychologists will have a name for that, I’m sure).

The campaign is losing momentum now. Rather than continuing into 2011, it should have quit while it was ahead – or taken a completely different direction. “Simples” may have made the Oxford English Dictionary but now even it has become ordinary. Lifespan? 2 years.

Even so, meerkats have done Matmi a favour. They’ve opened the eyes of the so-called ‘gurus’ of the marketing and advertising world to the power of branded entertainment, and proved that traditional advertising has had its day.

Folks, branded entertainment is what Matmi does (best) on a daily basis – and we’ve been doing it for a decade now. Boring product? Crowded market? Budget cut? You know who to call. Before your competitors do, if I may be so bold.

Sincere thanks to Alexsandr & Sergei. We owe you (or is it the other way round?) Mmmmmm. Penny.