CalMac Taxis on Street of Glasgow

Really liked this wee campaign from Caledonian Macbrayne who have just launched a fleet of CalMac branded taxis with the familiar livery and lion rampant brand on the streets of Glasgow!

Inside, seats are fitted with adverts featuring inspirational views of the islands we sail to, with rear window stickers adding a quirky finish.

CalMac warned however, "If you find yourself in and around Glasgow city centre this weekend and happen to hail a CalMac cab, beware, you might just be tempted to change your destination and head for the west coast!"

Great marketing campaign guys!

Golf Tourism Scotland to Host Summer Seminar

Golf Tourism Scotland (GTS) has announced that it will host an all-day forum on Tuesday 6 July to discuss the future of golf tourism in Scotland. The high-profile event will form a key part of the celebrations marking the trade body's fifth year of campaigning for the golf tourism trade sector.

Hosted at Murrayshall House Hotel in Perthshire, the all-day national forum will bring together an impressive line-up of key-note speakers from both public and private sectors to discuss what the next five years hold for golf tourism in Scotland. As a result, trend spotting will be the order of day along with a healthy dose of best-practice guidelines, with some educated and inspired projections for the future.

Included in the exciting programme of speakers is VisitScotland's director of visitor engagement Malcolm Roughead (OBE), Scottish Enterprise's head of tourism Eddie Brogan, Scottish golf development manager for the SGU and SGLA Andy Salmon and Lee Derrick, owner of the multi-faceted marketing agency Blue Spinach.

Also giving their insights into what lies ahead will be Seamus Coen, a regional general manager at Macdonald Hotels and Max Hare, a German tour operator serving a host of European countries including Scotland.

"It's an extremely exciting line-up, made all the more intriguing by the theme of forum," noted GTS chairman Nick Hunter. "We've given them a fairly strict brief to identify key trends that will influence their sector and reveal how they intend to develop their organisations within these parameters. It will be a fascinating day, finding out what the future holds for each of us."

With more speakers still to be announced, the GTS 'Gimme Five' forum will be an intriguing and pertinent event for the entire golf tourism industry.

Dornoch Firth Golf Pass look for The Edge

The Edge are absolutely delighted that we have been selected by North Highland Tourism to develop an on-line presence for the recently formed Dornoch Firth golf development group.

Following a recent presentation at Royal Dornoch Golf Club, The Edge have been asked to produce a new brand for the group and then take it to a new website supported by an aggressive social media campaign. The project which brings together five courses in the Dornoch Firth area - Royal Dornoch's Championship Links and The Struie, Tain, Brora and Golspie.

Director Ian McCaig was delighted at the news, "We work with an extensive range of tourism businesses in The Highlands and the securing of this project is really exciting. We know the area well having worked with the courses previously in the Highland Golf Classics and recently we just launched the new websites and on-line marketing strategies for the refurbished Royal Golf Hotel in Dornoch and The Royal Marine Hotel in Brora. Late last year we were also delighted to go live with a website for Dragons Tooth Golf Club near Fort William."

The Edge are also working on a new blog for Castle Stuart Golf Club which support their current website and have been heavily involved recently in the project management of the Cup Final single for Ross County recorded by Highland band Torridon.

"We recognised late last year that we were working with more and more tourism businesses in the area and decided that we needed a permanent presence in The Highlands. We were delighted therefore to bring on Nairn based Sue McCulloch to work with us on key projects and this is proving highly successful and increases dramatically our direct communications with our clients. An office in Inverness is now a very serious possibility for The Edge"

The work on the Dornoch Firth Golf Pass follows on from work done in recent years with First in Fife Golf, Links with History, the Ayrshire Golf pass and Scotland's West Coast Golf Links

The Edge also created the website and Blog site for industry body Golf Tourism Scotland

"We're proud of the work we've done for golf tourism in Scotland and we hope that we'll continue to build the relationships with this most important of industry sectors throughout the rest of this year." finished Ian McCaig.

Moray Firth Radio Support Ross County Song

Great support for one of their local teams from MFR in The Highlands. The radio station has got fully behind the promotion of the Cup Final Single, "We're On Our Way" which was recorded only two weeks ago at The Ironworks in Inverness.

Not only are they providing great airplay for the track but they've add the Edge designed logo and banner onto the from page of their website with a link through to how supporters can help getting the song into the charts.

The Edge have provided marketing support not only for the logo design but also in pulling together elements of the original recordning and working with The Music Kitchen in edinburgh to ensure the track was available the week of the final, Ian McCaig was delighted with the results so far. "Dingwall has only a population of I think about 5000 and for the track to chart even in the Scottish Top Forty would be great fun!"

The Edge have previously had "chart success" before with a UK Top Ten with Runrig and The Tartan Army and a Top Forty with Pudsey, Tartan Army and "We Have A Dream".

The support from MFR is helping the track go viral and it's looking that even with it only being available on iTunes that it could well chart high in The Scottish Top Forty this weekend.

Visit Moray Firth Radio online for more information

We're On Our Way Downloads Page

It's just over a week until Ross County hit the A9 and all B roads' off it south to Hampden Park for the biggest game in the club's history - their Scottish Cup Final showdown against Dundee United.

The whole of the North Highlands is buzzing and we're guessing that not much else will happen this week beyond Inverness. The Staggies really are on the Way.

And talking of which the iTunes single which we've been helping promote is dues for release on Monday morning.

To keep the momentum going we've created some online promotional material for Torridon to ensure that Ross County fans - and anyone else who wants to - can easily promote and find their way to downloading the single and hopefully get it into the charts next Sunday. Wouldn't it be perfect just as the open topped bus pulls into Dingwall with the Cup...

iTunes
The single is only available to buy on iTunes from Monday 10th of May. All proceeds will be going to Highland Disability Sport.If you don't have an iTunes account you'll need to set one up - pretty painless - click to find out How to Set up an iTunes account


Anyway both of the banners below link directly to the page selling Torridon & The Staggies "We're On Our Way".

A4 Poster Download
We've also asked Ross County fans to download and print a poster (right) to encourage sales from Monday.

That can also be downloaded from here.

We're On Our Website Way Banners

If anyone wishes to drop the code for either of the banners below into their blog or their website it can be done from The Torridon & The Staggies Downloads page

Integrating Email Lists and Facebook

Interesting little App from our preferred email marketing software partners ConstantContact which allows you to create a list sign up on your Facebook page.

We're just pulling together all of the elements of the integrated online marketing campaign for The Royal Golf Hotel and its sister hotels Loch Ness Country House Hotel in Inverness and Royal Marine Hotel in Brora and whilst creating their email tempalates and sign up lists we added the Sign Up tab to their Facebook page.

The Facebook Fans (or likees!) can now click on the the Join My List tab and sign up as they would from the hotel's own website. Seems to us a useful tool in bringing together opportunities for multiple distribution methods.

You can try ConstantContact for free for up to 60 days and of course The Edge will work with you in developing it into your overall online marketing campaign.

Find out more about ConstantContact with The Edge

Golf Tourism Video Gets Expo Broadcast

The Edge were delighted to have worked with Golf Tourism Scotland to produce a short corporate video to highlight their raison d'etre, aims and objectives and partnerships.

The video was scripted, story boarded and finally mixed down by The Edge Studios with superb video production from Studio Scotland.

It's not the first video production that we've pulled together over the years and there are a couple of more projects in the offing. However in working through the many stages of the project you can't help but thinking that the use of video will become increasingly important in a whole host of business sectors helping to get clear unambiguous quality and product messages across online.

We've still got some final edits and voiceovers to do for the final DVD version but the Expo version of the GTS video went down quite well on what was one of the shows busiest stands.