What?! Has Matmi been exposing itself again?

The answer is “Yes” but in a good way. The lovely people at International Mobile Monday asked Matmi to get involved in their inaugural event in Manchester (get the acronym now?), and given that the debate was “Mobile web vs. mobile apps” we felt we could make an insightful contribution.

I took a place on the panel in front of 100+ of Manchester’s finest mobile minds last night, alongside 2Ergo, Apadmi, Capsule CRM, Code Computerlove, Magnetic North and the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC).

Horses for courses

It was a lively meeting with plenty of input for web and apps – but can you really pit one against the other? Given converging technology and putting consumers first, the debate decided not. Irrespective of the conduit, it’s about giving customers what they want, where they want it, when they want it – and that means selecting the right horse for the course.

With Tim Haysom from WAC sporting an unmissable “HTML5″ T-shirt, we also got into the depths of languages and geeky stuff – but that probably helped some of the less technical in the audience understand more about the cost, platform and platform migration implications when selecting a development language.

As a lover of Flash, what d’you think about me turning up to the next event on 12th September sporting a “Flash Forever!” T-shirt? Maybe not – I’d probably get arrested before I arrived – but that could be interesting in itself.

Thank you!

Big thanks to the guys at Apadmi for organising the event – and I hope to get along to the next one. MoMoLo (the London version) has been running for a couple of years now and the initiative kicked off in 2000 in Finland originally.

We’re really pleased to be involved – and it’s good to see you’ve found your way back to the birthplace of computing (joke). You’re very welcome in the north.

Let me know about that T-shirt…… . Enjoy, Jeff.

This awards stuff could start to get a bit embarrassing (but we’ll manage somehow ).

Corp Comms Magazine hosted the fab “Monster Digerati Party” last night at Delfina, a location that’s almost as crazy as we are (it’s a converted chocolate factory in Bermondsey). The occasion was its annual Digi Awards - and for the second year on the trot, Matmi carried off a win. The Optathlon campaign for United Airlines with our US partner, Barrie D’Rozario Murphy, picked up Best Integrated Campaign which we’re absolutely delighted about!!

Many thanks

We beat off some pretty stiff competition too, by the looks of it, including Aviva, Thomson Reuters, Rentokil and Southern Water (commiserations, guys). Many thanks to the judges and the editorial team at Corp Comms Magazine for all their support – and for a great night out.

Weirdly, in deepest darkest London, we ended up in deep conversation with the guys from Sigma, also visiting from our very own Macclesfield. Our paths had crossed before at the Big Chip Awards - so now we’ve got a helluva repuation to live up to with them, because Matmi picked up 5 awards on that memorable night out! I’m glad we didn’t bump into them this morning though, because hayfever plus hangover plus missing lens in sunglasses has definitely taken its toll.

I bet the lovely people we’re meeting at an international entertainment company and an international electronics company today will be really pleased to see me.

Game on – but slowly – and thank you again, Corp Comms. We’re made up. Jeff (just).

Very well, thank you!

As regular travellers down that fine line that separates genius from madness, we’ve had a very interesting trip in the last week crossing between pride and humility.

In our own back yard (the North West of England), Matmi broke its own records and the Big Chip Awards’ records too by carrying off 5 gongs in a single evening! That included New Media Agency of the Year and the judges’ Grand Prix for United Airlines and the Optathlon campaign with our US partner, Barrie D’Rozario Murphy.

Still stunned, 3 days later we started another new trend by picking up a nomination on the worldwide stage at Cannes Lions – only 2 months after becoming an Official Honoree of The Webby Awards. Cannes Lions is the Oscars of the global advertising/marketing industry and The Webbys is its equivalent in digital marketing. 2011 marked our first ever entries on the worldwide stage – and we did the North West (and the UK) proud!

It’s quite a dilemma though.

On the one hand, the recognition is amazing (hats off to the marvellous Matmians) and on the other hand, we’ve just set expectations out there pretty high. That’s a large responsibility for a relatively small agency, so we’ll have to trust that our reverse Tardis tactics (being bigger on the outside) will hold fast in a larger universe.

I know it’s been said before – what’s the point of dreaming if you don’t dream big? We do – and we’re going to have to dream up some pretty amazing concepts, campaigns, characters, craft and karma to top our tenth year (and it’s only halfway through!)

With humble thanks to the Big Chip Awards, Cannes Lions, The Webbys and the How Do Awards too, we believe it’s possible.

Dream on,
Jeff.

With both Jeff & Stewart on holiday, it was time for the rest of the Matmians to show what they’re made of.

We sent Jesus and James to last night’s Big Chip Awards, picked up FIVE awards including New Media Agency of the Year AND the Grand Prix – and apparently broke the record for the most Big Chip Awards carried off on a single night!

Jesus’ tweed suit caused a stir – and after making so many appearances on stage and on Twitter (“Jesus is his name, Matmi is his game, tweed is his fame”), it’s clear he’s set a new fashion trend. That’s interesting for a company named after a Thai silk based in a silk-making town and there are plenty of puns to be had about weaving Matmi magic – but unsurprisingly, we’re a bit slow this morning so you’ve escaped this time.

I spoke to the Chief Matmian this morning (before 9am – which is a first) and as well as thanking the judges, our clients, our American partner Barrie D’Rozario Murphy and our lucky stars, the people he would like to thank the most is the amazing Matmians. And it’s well deserved.

You guys have slaved hard, always kept the faith and never stopped coming up with ingeniously wonderful ideas. We’ve had quite a tough year so far and this clutch of awards goes to show how dedicated and determined you really are.

“I am not worthy…..” could be the words I put into Jeff’s mouth (but he did have the good sense to surround himself with a bunch of multi-talented people, so we can’t leave him out completely).

Jesus, James – how d’you fancy going to the Cannes Lions next week? After last night’s spectactular success, I have high hopes that the Matmi tiger may roar loudly in the south of France. Whether it does or not, please make sure that every Matmian congratulates themselves today.

You have a lot to be proud of. It’s a privilege to have your company in our company.

Celebrate! And take a look at what all the fuss is about – here’s our Grand Prix winner in glorious technicolour. Penny.

With ‘game-ification’ being a hot topic, our CEO is becoming increasingly in demand on the speaker circuit. (And our sincere apologies again to Kam Star, MD at Playgen, and all the team at Digital Shoreditch for having to cancel at such short notice – looks like you had a blast!).

In fact, Matmi co-sponsored the event with Microsoft Advertising (making us chuckle to be a David alongside this Goliath) and over 120 people from top London agencies and big-name brands came along to find out what all this ‘games’ fuss is really about.

I think we made an impression.

Several million impressions, actually. It’s ‘situation normal’ to us, which makes it so much more interesting when people continue to be astonished by the audiences we can attract through a well-designed and well-executed branded entertainment release or ‘game’, as the traditional advertising world has been saying (in a rather patronising voice, mostly).

The tide is turning now though because there are so many more ways for people to skip the adverts and TV viewing figures are dropping like the proverbial stone. But make the advert a piece of entertainment – game, personalised or otherwise UGC enabled, an amusing/off-the-wall advert (eg – Evian’s roller skating babies, Cadbury’s drumming gorilla, even the age-old Hamlet and Smash adverts of the 70′s) and it’s a different story.

Instant engagement. Repeated engagement. Unprompted pass-on. Increased talkability. Better cut through rates vs. non-entertaining content. And these things can be measured – very accurately. The ‘traditional agencies’ are having to re-think and re-assess – and in fairness, a lot of them are. (We know because we’re helping quite a few of them up this specialist learning curve – after all, we’ve been doing this for 10 years now).

At heart, everyone loves to play games and be entertained – and here’s how brand-e.biz reported the event. Many thanks Steve & team for a great event and I hope we can field Jeff to you as a speaker again – he’s pretty engaging himself when he gets going.