I’m not going to crow about this, but I said in the last newsletter that if you do something good, something good will happen to you. And I was right – thanks to you and your support.

D’you remember the viral game we produced for this year’s Red Nose Day for Comic Relief?

• “Let It Flow” went to No.1 in just five days, ready for Red Nose Day itself (www.viralchart.com) and stayed in the top spot worldwide for the next 2½ weeks.
• It was played in 149 countries worldwide (including the Vatican City…. Mmm) and we’re almost at 4 million plays in as many weeks.
• And it’s created a 20% click thru to the Comic Relief website. Amazing! If you have any doubts about the reach, speed and power of viral marketing, we suggest you think again!

Sadly, we didn’t win Comic Relief’s Digital Challenge to “spread the most red online” (which was also amazing considering that we outplayed the winner three times over in our first week…. ). And we’re still in the top five worldwide (they’re only in the top ten).

But we’re not bitter…. . We made a lot of new friends and had a lot of admiring feedback from the digital community. And the lovely people at Comic Relief were delighted: “Many thanks to Matmi for making a massive contribution to Red Nose Day this year!” said Sara Davies, their New Media Officer. (Sara left the week after – I hope it wasn’t because she backed the wrong horse).

Thank you all for your support – we got a couple of name checks in New Media Age magazine (type “Matmi” into the search field at www.nma.co.uk) and a write-up on the Manchester Digital website. And we got an automatic entry into the New Media Age Effectiveness awards which are announced on 27^th May, so watch this space. Unfortunately, Comic Relief couldn’t tell us what donations “Let It Flow” was directly responsible for, but we hope it was at least a six figure sum.

So do something good today. It’ll be worth it.

(Does that sound like Jamie Oliver or the L’Oreal adverts? Or both?!).

I’m off! Kind regards

Jeff

Well its the first time I have written on our blog even though its been up fo over a month. I was planning to write on here quite often, but at the moment were just in the middle of planning an office move, which is taking up all of our spare time.

Yep thats right, we have a new office. After numerous years at the Adelphi Mill in little wee Bollington, we have out grown our little home and we are moving to some fantastic new premises.

We are moving into the town Macclesfield in the heart of Cheshire, right in the centre, located in a lovely old courtyard. I have never moved premises before, so I’m fairly nervous about it. The builders were meant to start last week but they have now delayed their arrival and have informed we that it will be tomorrow. Are all builders the same? Do they ever start on time?

Anyway we have decided that once we move that we are going to make a fresh start. We are investing in a new computer network, new furniture, a new phone system and some more staff. Talking of staff, if there are any flash programmers out there looking for work, please get in touch.

We are even going to have a virtual receptionist! More on that another day. The move should happen within the next month I hope.

We were originally planning to move the Manchester thinking that it would look better for potential clients to see that we were based in a City, so we would be taken more seriously. The problem was finding the right property in Manchester. We soon realised that it was going to be too difficult to make such a move and that it did not really matter where we are based. The only thing that really matters is how good our work is and we think its pretty special.

Are we the only serious viral games company in the North? It seems that way, let me know if I am wrong.  The only problem with being up North is that an increasing amount of our clients are based in the South, especially London. London now seems to be my home at least once a month. I don’t think I could live there full time, its a bit too manic and expensive for me.

Do those in the South truly still think ‘its grim up North’?

Anyway enough of the waffle. I will let you all know when our move is complete. Wish us luck.

Jeff