On Tuesday afternoon everyone at Catalysis eagerly scurried off to Skills Matter for another inspiring away day. It was jam-packed with debates on social media strategy, account teams showing off their latest campaigns and a brilliant session with Catalysis favourite Richard Vranch, the acclaimed impro performer.
We kicked off with various account teams telling us all how they work and sharing some of their showcase projects. It struck me how diverse and creative they all were and just how lucky we are to have open-minded clients that trust us. The highlighted projects ranged from some very cool animations we’re doing with Tom Baker as part of an upcoming pan-EMEA consumer product launch, a highly successful (not to mention technical) blog that we write and manage right though to a series of events and unconferences we run for software developers. It really is amazing what’s going on at all the desks around you at any one time at Catalysis.
Social media is obviously a topic close to our hearts and we’re always keen to get new perspectives and hear from other experts. We were still on a high from winning another social media account last week (we’ll tell you more as soon as we can), so we were eager to exchange notes with our first guest of the day, social media practitioner Naheed Hanif. Naheed shared some of her insights about social media influence, which in turn sparked some internal discussions about what our clients typically want from us. Generally speaking, clients ask us two things about social media: what do they need to know about it and how they should approach it? The ‘what’ question is quite easy to answer – we run tailored workshops to get them up to speed. The second ‘how’ question is the part we relish – building and implementing a social media strategy that suits that company, its customers and its market.
Richard Vranch then ran a brilliant session which had everyone up on their feet, in fits of giggles and playing various games that involved words, miming and team work. For example, in groups of three we had to speak in one voice as if we were one person, from Amanda Knox to Genghis Khan. Richard asked us questions and we each answered by contributing just one word at a time. The resulting answers were hilarious. While the games appeared to be pretty juvenile, silly and a lot of fun, they actually taught us a valuable lesson. They illustrated the need to listen to others, acknowledge their idea, and build on it. If you stick to this principle, you can build something great that you wouldn’t have come up with alone.
Mixing it up
To wrap up the day we took the team to bar Ninety-Eight for a mixology masterclass. Our Justin Lee Collins look-a-like mixologist took us through the intricacies of making some awesome concoctions, from Elderflower Julep through to a Mai Tai. It ended with a highly competitive cocktail making competition, with the geekily named ‘Vanilla Plus’ cocktail stealing the prize. Of course, ‘Cocktail del Mar’ should have been the winner…
See our Facebook page for pictures of the day. We are always looking for different activities for our away days – in the past we’ve done circus training, wine-tasting and cooking. A friend recently told me about a team drumming day that her company had done. Have you done anything great with your company on a corporate away day? If so, let us know – the more unusual the better.
Yes, there’s Peter, Sean and I clearly working in harmony as Oscar Wilde !
I seem to remember that Peter nearly always said ‘genius’ during that exercise.