Help us give money to rural Yorkshire businesses

Posted: October 29 2009 in News

Iris have been asked by Yorkshire Forward to come up with promotional campaign to promote three potential funding streams (worth £63 million over next 5 years) to rurally based businesses in Yorkshire.

The Background
Essentially there is a pot of money that’s being made available to a wide range of rurally based businesses in our region, and we want to make sure that everyone who is eligible for the funding knows about it. If your business is in a rural area, or if you work closely with food producers, you could be eligible for funding from The Rural Development Programme for England.

There are three different types of funding depending on the kind of business activity you’re involved in and what stage your business is at — click the links below for further details. And just in case you were wondering, you don’t need to be running a farm to be eligible — any business that’s based in a rural postcode can apply.

The Solution
Firstly we have made a rather nifty online database that lets you see if you are eligible — why not check it out to see if you can apply for a grant?

“How are you promoting this?” I hear you shout. Well, without a huge advertising budget to splash out on a TV ad we decided to do something a little bit different and rely on your good nature and ambition for the region (yes that’s right, YOUR good nature!).

We have produced a raft of marketing materials to promote the funding and ask that you include some of it in your next set of communications – whether it’s a banner on your website, a printed letter that you send out to members or customers or an email into which you include a snippet of text about the funding. In short, if you’ve got the space we’ve got something that’ll fit it!

Click here to download a number of case studies, letters, banners, emails, text snippets, and links
Also, if you have something specific, for example a space that requires something more bespoke please contact me: benhall@irisassociates.com

http://www.yorkshire-forward.com/helping-businesses/rural-businesses

Hedgehogs and ostriches help Yorkshire’s businesses

Posted: February 11 2009 in News, Work

A 48-sheet poster from the campaign

On the 10th November we launched a new, high profile marketing campaign for local regional development agency, Yorkshire Forward. The campaign aims to raise awareness and encourage take-up of the extensive range of public sector business support in the region during the current unprecedented economic conditions. The campaign will run until the end of January 2009 and promote the core message for the campaign ‘When the going gets tough – get free access to expert advice and financial support from Business Link Yorkshire’.
 
A plethora of activity is taking place to promote the campaign including 48 sheet billboards, online banner campaign, web-pages, targeted emails and direct mail that have been distributed across the Yorkshire region.