24th January 2012 by Thomas
Retrospective: ICO Media in 2011
Here is Part Two of our retrospective for 2011 and what we have been doing for the past year.
If you have been following our activities, you may be aware that we started up a media relationship management service (also called ‘public relations’/PR) called ICO Media in 2010. We recently added a new section to our website to outline our approach to media relations for online games.
So… ICO Media in 2011 was very interesting for us. We took on more PR clients, and the team had a greater variety of tasks to juggle than in the previous year. We experimented with tools to improve efficiency, learned a lot about what works for us, and streamlined our processes quite a bit.
Tags: 2011, ICO Media, retrospective
Posted in Events, ICO Partners
(No Ratings Yet)17th January 2012 by Thomas
Retrospective: ICO’s consulting in 2011
Every year, we take the opportunity during holiday down time to reflect on what we have done in the previous 12 months, and to plan a little bit for the coming year. We’re just about to undertake our formal 2012 planning now, so I thought I’d share some of our findings about 2011.
We do a range of different kinds of work, so it can sometimes be a challenge to explain, but maybe splitting the summary into two parts will help to reduce confusion! In this post, I will talk about the consulting and the market intelligence work we did last year (as they often go hand in hand). In a future post, I will talk about our media relations activity.
Posted in Events, ICO Partners
(No Ratings Yet)11th January 2012 by Thomas
Happy 2012!
Wow, we haven’t posted in a while, have we? We’ve been keeping very busy with new clients, new starters, holidays and all sorts… but now it’s a brand new year and a perfect time to start again.
2011 was another really good year for us, if a bit of an emotional roller coaster with both Martin and Julien leaving for greener pastures (not sure that Julien is finding Sweden greener than Ireland, but you get the idea!). We’ve also recently welcomed several new members of the PR team that we’ve been remiss in not mentioning before now. This will be fixed Soon™, at which time you’ll learn more about (in order of appearance) Nora, Katja and Gemma. But that’s another post.
We’ve got a lot coming up in 2012. More clients (probably), more market research (definitely), more things to share with all of you. And we hope, more new encounters, more surprising games, and more fun for everyone.
All of this to say that we also wish you all loads of wonderful things for this coming new year!
Visual designed for ICO by Beatoa – as were the previous years’ designs
Posted in Events, ICO Partners
(No Ratings Yet)8th November 2011 by Thomas
KGC 2011 – The European market: past, present and future
Diane and I are in Korea this week, attending the KGC 2011 in Daegu at the moment and in Busan for the Gstar from Thursday.
This morning I gave a lecture entitled “Past, present and future of online games in Europe” and, as usual, I am sharing the slides over here and on slideshare:
Posted in Events, ICO Partners
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)27th October 2011 by Thomas
Looking to open an office in Europe?
Over the past couple of years, we have worked with many clients on projects to open a local office in Europe. They all had different objectives, budgets and priorities but with time, we were able to discern some patterns. Much of the information we collected for them and, in some cases, the recommendations we made were based on the same basic criteria.
Of course, each company is unique, and what matters the most for one will not be very important for another, ultimately leading to a different decision. But the dataset was almost the same, and we have re-purposed it into a commercial report, available for sale on our website for anyone interested.
The report is about 34 pages long. About a third of it is dedicated to general data on European countries, while the rest of the report is dedicated to detailed descriptions of our most recommended locations across the 6 most popular countries for European offices (France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and the UK), including general appeal of the location, accessibility and cost of living.
This report is pretty important for us, because it is the first in a series of commercial reports we’ll be offering for sale on the website. We have always been about sharing our expertise widely to help companies make the right decisions about starting up in Europe, and while we are happy to share our knowledge openly (at conferences and speaking engagements, for example), we also need to pay our bills. We are very aware that not every company has the budget to cover consulting fees, but we hope that some will be able to buy the report and benefit from it. If it leads to further consulting work for us, that’s great too!
So without further ado, I’m pleased to present ‘European Office Locations‘! Stay tuned for the next in our series, coming soon.
Posted in Events, ICO Partners
(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)25th October 2011 by Thomas
Julien’s leaving us, and we’re sad.
I really don’t want to write this post, because putting it down in writing will make it true, and I would very much like it not to be. We can’t avoid it any longer though, so here goes.
Tags: 7 stages of grief, blackmail pictures, denial, honey badger, Julien, polar badger, snowy badger
Posted in Events, ICO Partners
(No Ratings Yet)21st September 2011 by Diane
ICO is hiring – encore!
As we add more clients, it is now time to develop our team, and so we are back on the hiring track – and this time we are looking for another Frenchman or -woman (French speakers from Belgium, Switzerland, Quebec, North Africa… are also very welcome of course) to work with us on the PR side of ICO Partners, ICO Media.
Below is the description of the profile we would be looking for, along with the responsibilities this person would handle.
Who we need: A flexible, autonomous and motivated communications professional with a passion for online video games
Skills and requirements:
●Graduate in public relations, journalism, marketing or related programme
●Native French speaker
●Fluent in English (other European language a plus)
●Minimum 1 year’s experience in a position involving direct contact with the media
●Autonomous, with good organisational and planning skills
●Able to work to short deadlines and under pressure
●Strong communication skills, both spoken and written
●Sound judgement in dealing with media
●Ability to work with and analyse data
●Self-motivation and sense of initiative
●Strong business acumen
●Interest and knowledge of online games
●Skills and experience in online marketing is a strong plus
Responsibilities:
●Managing direct relationships with journalists in several European territories
●Writing and/or translation of Press Releases and Media Alerts
●Developing and updating media lists and contact databases
●Participating in daily media relations tasks, including collection and analysis of press coverage, reporting, organization of events, working with related service providers to support projects, etc.
●Assisting with market research projects
●Participating in product testing as required
Remuneration : To be discussed with the candidate, based on experience
Location : Brighton, UK
Reports to: PR and Marketing Manager
Hours: Full-time, 37.5 hours per week
If you are a motivated person passionate about online games, and the above description did not scare you, please don’t hesitate to send us a CV and cover letter at jobs@icopartners.com
A bientôt!
Posted in Events, ICO Partners
(No Ratings Yet)30th May 2011 by Thomas
Abschied
That’s Farewell in German. Exactly a year ago, Martin joined ICO Partners as the first non-partner employee. It was a big step for us and quite a big risk for him. I remember telling him that there was a chance that the growth we were predicting would not happen and that it wasn’t a “safe” position, especially considering his very secured role at NCsoft at the time. The fact that he actually accepted the offer and made the leap of faith for us meant a lot to me.
We are now a year later, a lifetime at the speed of things these days, and Martin has decided to go back. Back to his first love and vocation, community management. While he had some opportunities to work on that field for some of our clients, that wasn’t the core of his role and it seems the calling is making itself known to him again. But he is also going back to Germany. After 6 years abroad, mostly in England, another calling, possibly cultural, most likely culinary, has made itself heard and won. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Events, ICO Partners
(No Ratings Yet)8th March 2011 by Thomas
LFG? Expanding the Media Relations team
We are just back from GDC and we had a very good time there. We caught up with friends, clients and prospective clients and it has been a busy week for sure.
One of the direct consequence from GDC is that we are going to be busy in the foreseeable future and possibly a bit *too* busy (if such a thing could be possible). And it looks like it will be time now to expand the team again and we are now opening a new position in our Brighton office and you can find the full job description here:
Job Description: Junior Media Relations Executive
Who we are: ICO Partners Ltd., a small but fast-growing online games services consultancy and media relations agency based in the southeastern UK. Find out all about us at http://www.icopartners.com.
Who we need: A flexible, autonomous and motivated communications professional with a passion for online video games
Skills and requirements:
● Graduate in public relations, journalism, marketing or related programme
● Minimum 1 year’s experience in a position involving direct contact with the media
● Autonomous, with good organisational and planning skills
● Able to work to short deadlines and under pressure
● Strong communication skills, both spoken and written
● Sound judgement in dealing with media
● Ability to work with and analyse data
● Self-motivation and sense of initiative
● Strong business acumen
● Native in either German, Spanish or Polish
● Fluent in English
● Interest and knowledge of online games is a plus
● Skills and experience in online marketing is a strong plus
Responsibilities:
● Managing relationships with journalists in one or several European territories
● Writing of Press Releases and Media Alerts
● Developing and updating media lists and contact databases
● Participating in daily media relations tasks, including collection and analysis of press coverage, reporting, organization of events, working with related service providers to support projects, etc.
● Assisting with market research projects
● Participating in product testing as required
Remuneration : To be discussed with the candidate, based on experience
Location : Brighton, UK
Reports to: PR and Marketing Manager
Hours: Full-time, 37.5 hours per week
Contact: jobs@icopartners.com
You can also download the pdf version.
You are free to spread the word around you as well!
Posted in Events, ICO Partners
(2 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)26th January 2011 by Thomas
A brand new year
Arguably, we are well into January already, but the rule says it is still fine to send new year wishes until the end of the month.
ICO had a very good year in 2010. We grew our team, adding Martin and then Julien to our talent pool. We took on new clients, strengthened some of our ongoing relationships while building new ones.
That meant maybe a fewer number of blog posts than we would have wanted, but overall, it is also growing with us and we are very happy to have such a nice follow-up of the content we are publishing here.
We will keep working on it, and we hope that our readership will appreciate the topics we will bring here.
All this to say that we are very happy with the start of the new year and we wanted to include you in our wishes and hope for you all the best in 2012.
Posted in Events, ICO Partners
(No Ratings Yet)