Based on the former location of the Electro Works, this building is quickly becoming recognized as one of the most inspiring offices spaces in Europe, gaining coverage across the globe. With a unique “Helter Skelter” installation, that can take occupants from the 3rd floor to the ground floor in 7 seconds, the offering is something very special.

With a project as prestigious as Electric Works we were looking for digital specialists that we could trust. Rckt were exactly what we needed, and more. They gave the project a suitably impressive online presence, giving Electric Works the prominence it deserves.

Toby Hyam
Electric Works

The site works not only as an introduction to the brand and space, but is an integral part of the internal systems for both occupants and management alike. From online conference booking to hiring equipment, all can be done with consummate ease. The site was an integral part of creating the buzz surrounding the build and launch.

Electric Works: Helter Skelter and external shot

www.electric-works.net

www.peterandpaul.co.uk

Sheffield City Council has recently embarked upon a major project to transform the way they use the Internet to deliver services and information. Learning of rckt’s specialist skills with intelligent design solutions the Council asked us to help them put their users at the heart of the review.

Firstly rckt had to build a logic around the process, investigating the purpose and content of the existing website, in order to learn what kind of user we needed place at the centre of the project.

Analysis of web usage feds into exploratory workshops

A review of web usage, analysis of user feedback and population research then led to the creation of web personas. These personas allow the project team to think like their users, humanising the design process.

The personas created for Sheffield City Council

In a large organisation such as ours it is often difficult to keep sight of our end-users. The tools that rckt have given us allow us to do just this. Based on logical assumptions the personas also combine clever insights and real personal information, allowing us to get into the minds of our target users.

Julie Bullen
Head of Customer Services, Sheffield City Council

Image by: timparkinson

It’s an often quoted fact that more graduates stay on in Sheffield than in any other UK city, and Sheffield regularly tops the charts when it comes to best student city. The heart of the ‘Sheffield Made Us’ campaign encourages students, past and present to share their memories and experiences of how their time in Sheffield made them who they are.

Rckt created a suite of above the line material to support the campaign which included an overall identity, You Tube channel, print advertising, outdoor media and online banner advertising.

So, if you happened to study the University of Sheffield and have some great memories to share why not visit their You Tube channel and submit your own memories!

http://www.youtube.com/user/SheffieldMadeUs

Over recent years the University had been creating video content, but this needed bring together into one powerful online home.

Rckt know us very well, and have a intrinsic understanding of our brand and its values. They have brought this brand understanding to the fore in creating a single home for our online video content. This gives us a great platform to use for student recruitment across the world

David Stanley
The University of Sheffield

Youtube Channel

The North of England’s best research-led universities have come together to form a unique collaboration to enable business and industry to access world-class knowledge and gain a significant competitive advantage. This prestigious project chose Rocket to deliver their online presence.

The needs for all the universities needed to be met, and it’s quite an impressive line up: Durham, Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield and York. So we did well to impress them all, even though we say so ourselves.

Rocket continue to expand our expertise in the higher education sector and this project takes the number of universities we have worked with to almost 30, if you include the European institutions that are involved in the ESTOOLS project.

Have a little look at the N8 research website yourself.

We’ve been a trusted and popular provider of all sorts of creative services to the University of Sheffield for a few years now and the most recent offspring of this great relationship has been the creation of a brand new website for the University’s Executive MBA. The Management School asked Rocket to create something a little different and particularly wanted to tap into our experience of professional business to business communication.

Despite working with the University many times this project had a little unexpected twist. An off-line advertising campaign was well into the planning stage by the time Rocket came onboard and the launch date had already been set in stone. This meant we only had a couple of weeks from winning the work to making the site live. But everyone here at Rocket thrives of this sort of challenge. We worked together with our University pals and delivered the whole website in record time.

EXCLUSIVE! Government figures released today proved a direct link between dentists and Benzine emissions, a known carcinogen, in the Sheffield area. When plotted on a map, the figures clearly show the correlation between the density of dentist surgeries (stars) and the quantity of Benzene pollution (darker purple means more pollution).

Of course that is pure Bad Science – not that it stops the tabloids from using the figures in that way.

The government launched a new website today to encourage people to mash-up it’s data. As you would expect, the various branches of government hold a vast mount of statistics and data, most of it paid for by the taxpayer, but not available to the public. This site aims to encourage people to come up with innovative mashups, websites and services using it. Putting it’s money where it’s mouth is, it also claims to have made gigabytes of government data, from census figures to NHS data, available to work and play with.

One service which I’ve immediately had fun playing with is the Office of National Statistics’ Neighbourhood Statistics
site. It enables you to browse a vast amount of data, from the number
of people working in your neighbourhood, to the air quality. You can
also compare one against the other on Flash maps, and get
hold of the data through the APIs.

And the wrong statistical conclusions you can come up with this
service are amazing – surely years worth of stories for the Daily Mail
/ Daily Express / etc. For example, it only took me five minutes of hard journalistic research to discover the shocking exclusive above.

Making public data available is a massive step in the right direction, although they could still learn a thing or two about making APIs friendly and easy to access – whereas services like Digg, Amazon and Last.fm make their APIs dead easy to register for andget started, many of these new government sources force to you to register, and undergo a manual approval process at their end before you can start using it. Their documentation also seems to be fairly verbose and heavy on the public-sector speak.

So now to pitch our idea – the tabloid scare story generator…

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Back in the autumn we proudly announced that along with our pals at Peter and Paul, Rocket had been selected to create a stunning new identity and web presence for the landmark Electric Works.

Well now the wintery depths of February have been illuminated with the launch of the website. The Electric Works is a new digital media centre which offers cutting edge IT infrastructure, innovative meeting spaces and informal chill out zones in the heart of the digital campus – taking shape close to the mainline railway station in Sheffield’s city centre.

The website is designed to introduce the building and facilities to potential tenants. It includes a detailed floor plan which allows potential tenants to quickly find their ideal office by finding one that fits the right number of people. Thanks to its integration with the site’s content management system, the floor plan gives a real-time view of which offices are available.

Rocket has been appointed to create a stunning new identity and web presence for the landmark Electric Works. The Electric Works is a new digital media centre which offers cutting edge IT infrastructure, innovative meeting spaces and informal chill out zones in the heart of the digital campus – taking shape close to the mainline railway station in Sheffield’s city centre.

Strong competition dominated the two-stage selection process, with two Sheffield firms coming out on top. The winning proposal came from a joint effort of two of the city’s creative trailblazers, Rocket and Peter and Paul. Andy Barratt from Rocket, who led the bid team, said: “We wanted to give this project the very best, simply no compromises on anything.

“With the combination of skills Rocket and Peter & Paul have, we know that we can create something very special for Sheffield and the Electric Works.”

Electric Works will be a stunning addition to Sheffield’s growing creative and digital industries and. It is a reflection of the real creative talent here in Sheffield that a project of this importance has been given to local agencies. The Electric Works is due to open in Summer 2008 and the launch of the new brand before Christmas will mark a major step forward in the marketing of this unique development, raising awareness of the project in the region and beyond.

Watch this space (well website really) for more updates soon.

Sheffield International Venues (the company behind such well known venues as Ponds Forge, Don Valley Stadium and the Hallam FM Arena) appreciate the power of e-mail marketing in communicating with their customers. So when it came to getting a promotional e-mail out to members of their Fitness Unlimited gyms, they called on Rocket to provide the design and technical infrastructure to deliver it to their members.

While they have used e-mail marketing in the past, the previous systems have lacked the sophisticated personalisation and response tracking we offer.

The first step was to redesign the layout of the e-mail to be more effective, while retaining existing campaign branding. Rocket advised on rewriting the e-mail’s copy in order to make the benefits and calls-to-action more succinct. The final step was to deliver the e-mail to thousands of recipients, timed perfectly to coincide with when the sales team were fully
staffed and ready to deal with the responses.

The result was a campaign which saw a response rate way in excess of the industry average, and additionally gave SIV detailed data about the responders, including self-cleansing the e-mail addresses which were no longer deliverable, allowing them to improve the quality of their marketing data.

Fitness Unlimited have now moved their quarterly newsletter (previously printed and distributed to tens of thousands of gym members) entirely online, in a move which makes their communication more immediate, and is also is environmentally friendly -reducing paper usage and carbon emissions in their distribution.