Thursday, 26 January 2012

The Facts on Freelance

So.....thought we’d mix things up a little this week and give you some sensible information about what makes us a bit different here at Grape and Grey… There are a few things but Freelancers are among them. Not the fact that we deal with them, but the way we work with them:

How??

  1. You need a freelancer (PHP Developer, Project Manager, Flash designer, you know the sort of thing)
  2. You get in touch with Jez at Grape and Grey on jez@grapeandgrey.co.uk and explain what you need
  3. He alerts the team
  4. We find one for you
  5. You meet them / view their work/ Skype them or telephone interview them and say, “Amazing! Let’s go for it”
  6. Freelancer turns up for work and does incredible things for you
  7. We invoice you an introduction fee (subject to the length of the contract)
  8. You say, “ Now THAT is what I call reasonable”
  9. You pay the single and exceptionally reasonable invoice and keep the freelancer for as long as you need him/her (yes, really)
  10. We say ,“Thank you very much”
  11. Freelancer invoices you for his time
  12. You say, “ Grape and Grey, you rock, we’ll be coming back for more”
Simples.....
There really is no fuss, no bother, no mess, no time wasted. If you want to see just how simple and QUICK (I might add) our freelance service is, drop us a line and we’ll prove it…

Friday, 20 January 2012

It’s all in the stars...

Ok, as I was saying...”and so the blog was born”...we’re now two weeks old and someone, once upon a moon commented that the internet was a special place where we could all immediately be part of one happy (..?) family, share our thoughts, dreams, secrets, ambitions and so it goes on....well.....we’re still waiting....is there anybody out there...? .. We know there is as we log our stats !!! .Hey, we just want to hear from someone..... Anything, from anybody....C’mon!!! Can’t believe you creative types, you marketing gurus of the net are cloud-shy and don’t have something to say to us...(preferably polite, constructive, interesting, witty, could be slightly edgy, but hell, we’ll take what we can get)...let’s hear from you.....hello..?!

Ever feel like you’re talking to yourself...? Well, I’ll keep going for now...

This’ll do it, I’ll tell you a little more about what we’ve been up to here...bound to create a stir, a reaction, a feeling of “yeah, I get you..God, those guys at Grape and Grey are good, they just smash it every time” Or...”What the*****!! Get a life !...”

So, here at Grape and Grey Associates, we’ve been busy, VERY busy. Yeah, you bet we have....We’ve been visiting folk, chatting to all sorts, finding out stuff, actually really cool stuff like clever types’ predictions.....Maybe it was your prediction,...? Maybe we’ve spoken to you....?? Maybe you want us to...? Or maybe you just want to write something on our blog...well, we’d love you to !

The prediction this week was about what we could expect from the transportation of digital information globally over the next 12-18 months.... (see, I was listening when the fire alarm went off!) and, well, we can expect a lot. A significant amount of it, according to one source apparently depends on business capacity, economies of scale and how to use time zones constructively, like the people on the faraway island of Samoa who actually deleted a day (30th December 2011) out of their calendar so that their economy could flourish on the same time zones as their neighbours...Well, not so silly after all. Many scoffed at the concept, questioning such a decision and how it would benefit their economy, well, they knew enough to know they need to compete and change to be competitive.

I’m just guessing here that you think in those terms all the time, not necessarily deleting days out of your week, although you’ve probably wanted to especially after a heavy Thursday night (working to late and tight deadlines, what did you think I meant..?)But the world is changing all the time.

So how do you think you need to change to keep the success you’ve enjoyed for now in our highly competitive industry ..? Well, one common link is people, their attitudes, their abilities, their desire and determination to succeed and make things happen.

Oh, we’ve met a few of those this week too...actually, extremely inspiring and talented people who just do and think clever things for a living...If you need some in your team, we’d love to hear from you.

..hello..?!

Friday, 6 January 2012

Head In The Cloud



Hi, thank you for taking the time to look in on our blog…I’m guessing you’ve never heard of us before which is why you’re here, so allow me a couple of moments to introduce ourselves:

Grape and Grey Associates are a newly established digital media recruitment company….WAIT!!!!.....it gets better…. We have a wealth of experience within the media and recruitment landscapes…TRUE… The team offers a unique and select service within the core hubs of London and Brighton….ALSO TRUE!

We provide a range of opportunities across all disciplines within new media (YEP) and seek to deliver a quality and bespoke experience for both clients and candidates alike…SO TRY US…

We’d be very happy to hook up for a chat and a coffee and find out a little more about you and how our services can accommodate your business needs.

Enough about us for now… as Mark Twain once said, “Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today”…..you have the number and the email….

Let’s turn our attentions to the blog:
The team agonised tirelessly on the blog; what to put on it, what should we call it, how it should look, where the logo should go and so it went on and on…but the key question on all of our lips after our solid 15 minutes without a break (well, we’re kind of busy here) on the subject was: why do we want one? That did take time.So, we all went away and thought about it for some time, and then one genius (that is, one of the many here) came up with the following: “dunno”.

Talk about disappointed of The Cloud. Not quite the razor-minded, sharp-tongued IT cookie we had all been lead to believe that he was. Then we realised, that’s why he’s in IT and we’re not. So the rest of us put our heads together while he made the tea and came up with: “let the cloud do the talking”…and so it was born.

We’d like to invite all you droplets of rain out there to add your views to ours and help us create our blog storm. We’ll offer you our opinions on a myriad of subjects from who we meet and what we see …it could be your team at your office, you or your boss (and maybe you’ll guess right one day !) we’ll also be covering media, technology, design and all those other juicy topics from across the globe….

Here’s looking forward to your thoughts too…ps we’re big boys and girls at Grape and Grey and won’t cry if you disagree!

Let’s try a quick one to get started…

Email is Dead......
Only the new CEO from IBM chose not to use it to say hi to her new troops..What was Virginia Rometty thinking when posting a clumsy video message which took ages to download to her new techno-savvy crew..? Well looks like VW are following suit on the email ban…with the German car manufacturer turning off their employees’ Blackberry’s out of hours….what say you…? Good idea…bad idea or don’t rightly care…?