We are now a Top 10 Email Agency

Cowan Group are delighted to have been ranked at number ten in the recently published NMA list of the top ten email agencies. Gaining one place since last year’s poll, I am especially pleased to see that we have achieved this, not as an email broadcaster, but as a pure creative digital agency.

With over three-quarters (78%)* of marketers using regular e-newsletters as their preferred form of contact it is clear that email is still an important part of the marketing mix. With access to email becoming easier with the dawn of smart phones and integrated platforms such as gaming consoles and the much anticipated iPad we still acknowledge that email is a powerful tool when used alongside any campaign.

I think that our success in this area reflects how our creatively led approach is proving to be very effective and shows our dedication to making every piece of work count when it comes to working with our clients. Since the very beginning we have always focused on how we can be the most creative, most responsive when using email as a direct marketing tool.

Since founding Cowan Group five years ago, email is still a core method of communication for our clients and we always strive to produce the best creative work possible with beautiful artwork and compelling copy.

We intend to continue to achieve the high open and click through rates that our clients have come to expect when working with us and being IAB Chairman of the Email Council for the third year running I look forward to continuing to offer our thoughts and advice in 2010.

To see some examples of our work, or to find out how we can help with your marketing please check out our website: http://www.cowangroup.co.uk

*NMA, 19^th November 2009, http://www.nma.co.uk/features/email-marketing/3006894.article

This ideal forms the mantra for everything we do at Cowan Group and stems from the early days, back in 1999, when I first started applying creative, direct marketing techniques to email.

To celebrate our new top 10 position in New Media Ages Marketing Services guide for Email Marketing I thought I’d share with you the story of my first ever email broadcast…

It was 1999, we’d just started edesigns.co.uk and after launching our e-letterhead product we were asked to do what was one of the first viral email marketing campaigns for the Marketing Week Email Conference.

We came up with a viral campaign based on Pass-the-Parcel. At the time there was no way to broadcast emails in bulk, the likes of Expedite Fax were just getting to grips with the idea, and so we had to build a broadcaster.

The job of doing the actual send fell to me. The instructions from the developer were explicit in the order to which we queued up the email addresses, assigned the subject line, loaded in the graphical content and started the send, in batches to be safe, and whatever you do “DO NOT PRESS THE BACK BUTTON” in the browser.

The broadcaster we built literally sent each email one at a time, albeit pretty quickly, creating the email, assigning the personal information, queuing it up to send, adding the MIME formats, confirming broadcast then onto the next one in the list.

Going through the entire sequence each time, with a load of batches to get out, took quite a bit longer than we had anticipated and time wasn’t on our side. So I started thinking it would be ok to speed the process up. One way I noticed to do this was to hit the back button. It didn’t seem to affect things too badly and actually sped the queuing process up dramatically. So out the emails started to fly…

I little while later, broadcasting still going, my phone rings.

“Hi Mate, how you doing?”

“Yeah okay thanks, what’s up?”

“Well, I really like the Pass-the-Parcel email you sent me, I’ll be coming to the event, but I really didn’t need it 16 times….”

I wish I had a picture of my face as I ran to the broadcast computer and pulled every wire I could grab from the back of it. This was the fastest way I could think of to stop the broadcast quickly and abruptly.

This taught me a some valuable lessons; listen to the developer, don’t try and take short cuts, and if you ever have to press the send button always check everything is setup absolutely perfectly – I still get sweaty palms doing a big send as now-a-days a million emails could have been sent before you know anything is wrong…

“I’m 22, Young people spend hours a day on Facebook, Myspace, Youtube etc… This should be on the front of all popular networking sites, youtube and all over the internet… this video only has 4566 after a month online! More campaign money should be spent on online advertising to get your message across! everybody is tired of bits of paper through the door and along with the pizza menu and an unwanted newspaper… Hope you do well in the election!”

This made me think about social media and the up and coming election so I asked our Cowan Group social media expert to do some digging, here are his findings…

Last election more people didn’t vote than voted for the winning party (approximately 26 Million voted)… So what are the political parties doing to change this and get everyone voting?

In light of Facebook’s recent announcement to encourage young British people to vote in the UK elections, (see here) we wondered what the political parties themselves are doing with social media to communicate with the 23 million active UK users of Facebook, and millions of other users on social sites such as youtube and twitter.

According to recent statistics (updated today) Facebook and Youtube are the fifth and third most popular websites in the world and Facebook currently accounts for over half of all visits to social networking sites in the UK with YouTube at second with over 17% of visits.

So why isn’t “more campaign money being spent on online advertising”?

Well how much is being spent?

Last year the Guardian reported that “The COI, the largest advertiser in the UK, co-ordinates the government’s £540m annual marketing and communications spend [and] the COI spent more than £270m on advertising and digital marketing in the year to March”

So with all this money being pumped into the advertising campaigns, which include digital marketing how have the parties got on? Let’s see some recent stats on their social media pages:

LibDem

– 12,004 Followers on Twitter

- 16,569 Fans on Facebook

- 97,807 Channel Views on Youtube

Conservatives

- 25,485 Followers on Twitter

- 39,403  Fans on Facebook

- 207,083 Channel Views on Youtube

Labour

- 13,761 Followers on Twitter

- 18,406 Fans on Facebook

- 263,712 Channel Views on Youtube

Not bad you might say but bearing in mind the statistics we’ve seen about users of social media, it seems that comparatively not that many people have been inspired to get involved in supporting their party online…

By way of comparison President Obama, with a strong social media team amassed an impressive 8 Million fans on Facebook, 3.6 Million followers on Twitter and 22 Million channel views on Youtube.

With no UK political party yet to break the ‘One Million Mark’ on any social site perhaps the focus hasn’t been in the right place? Maybe too much time spent waging SEO war?

Or perhaps the politicians are a little too apprehensive about exposing themselves to the uncensored responses online publishing illicits? It’s not hard to blame them when the media is tracking their every post and comment, waiting for a social media scandal – many of which we have already seen and many of which I am sure are still to come! (*update – latest social media scandal)

Either way it seems strange that while the Conservatives promise to give Britain the fastest broadband in Europe if they are elected (see article) they seem to have attracted an online fan base of only a quarter of the number of people who voted for them in the last election…

It’s becoming politics 2.0 – with more media and information being accessible to more people than ever before. For example, type in your postcode on this site to find out how your local MP voted on key issues – technology is changing the way politicians behave and it is becoming more difficult for tricky issues or contentious opinions to be swept under the rug as accessibility both to information and to the individuals themselves is now attainable to anyone with a computer or Smartphone.

Perhaps the upcoming online Q&A (which will see a partnership between Facebook and Youtube) will drive further online engagement for the parties:

Facebook and YouTube users to grill party leaders

And at the end of it all, will the Facebook fans, Twitter followers and Youtube subscribers convert into, what us marketing agencies would equate to sales – votes?!

We shall see…

This is a long overdue decision, and one that supports a theory I’ve been advocating for some time. Gaming companies need to maintain a focus on being the best in each area they operate in, rather than constantly up and cross-selling to their existing players.

There are a number of risks to this strategy, most obviously:

1)       In an industry with high customer churn, you can’t afford to offer new players a sub-standard experience because you are focussing on a different audience segment.

2)       In theory it’s cheaper to cross-sell to your existing customers. But it gets significantly more expensive when you are alienating them with irrelevant messages.

3)       You lose focus on what’s needed to make the specific offering a success, rather than a specific message.

In an industry with such high costs of acquisition per player, it’s understandable that we want to minimise costs wherever possible, and drive up lifetime value of customers. But for every poker player that became a casino player, how many left Party or had their brand affinity and loyalty reduced?

Successful gaming companies have looked at making each element of their offering stand alone to the same high standards as that which made their premium offering such a success. If you focus too much on cross-selling, you start giving the answer to questions such as ‘what do poker players want from a casino?’ far too much weight in your customer experience, communication and marketing strategies.

The simplest, and most successful route, is to concentrate on producing the best specialist offering you can and then working out the communications and engagement strategy for each customer segment. With greater focus, you can test specific offers and experiment with the strategies that will deliver the most profitable results – not necessarily cross-selling, but referrals and social media testimonials.

Up until now, agencies of their ilk would have built their campaigns around TV, but here the core concept was built around digital first, and with TV seen as a ‘bonus’ supporting channel.

Combine this with Martin Sorrell’s recent prediction that he expected 20% of major client’s marketing spend to be on digital within the next five years, and we see a clear demonstration a medium that has matured. Successful companies are now asking ‘how can we best reach and engage with our target audience’ rather than falling back on their traditional staples.

This is a reflection of the way Cowan Group has been working for the past 18 months. The idea comes first, and we then look at the most effective way of rolling that out to meet our client’s objectives; regardless of whether we can deliver it in-house or not.

If you are still recommending your traditional disciplines without giving alternative solutions appropriate consideration, then you are doing your clients a disservice.

Consumers demand much more now, and your clients aren’t far behind them.

If you wish to donate anything, Bronya is working through the Hospital itself at www.saintfrancishospital.net

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“I’ve now been in Zambia just 12 days, but wow, what a week  or two .. it’s been a real baptism of fire with good, bad, ugly.. and truly tragic parts to it.

I arrived at St Francis Hospital last Monday with another new doc (Al) after traveling for 25 hours non-stop to be told that they were so desperate for Dr’s that we were to start work AN HOUR LATER… aghh…

What a welcome! Part of me balked at the prospect of not being able to simply collapse into bed, but I was also glad that I really had arrived at a place where I might be of some use.

Hospital life here is mad, and grim.
Really and truly grim.

They are in urgent need of more drugs, more re-agents to run tests with, more staff, more equipment…more everything.

They are also in urgent need of patients who come to hospital while they’re still well enough to treat.

I’ve seen babies and children die here EVERY DAY of diseases that are 100% preventable or treatable.

I see children every day who are so malnourished that their skin is falling off them, forming terrible open painful sores, and whose whole bodies are swollen from lack of sufficient good food.

An Hb (haemoglobin) level of 2-3 here is routine; (normal is >12 for the non medics among you); I saw a child with an Hb of 1.7, his blood was as runny as water,  I had no idea you could still be alive with these kind of figures.

There is a SCBU here (special care baby unit for premature babies) but it simply consists of wooden boxes with a light bulb for heat and a bowl of water to humidify the air… and cockroaches crawling through them (they like the heat) and these poor scrawny scraps of babies desperately fighting to stay alive against the odds… if they lose weight, there isn’t even enough formula milk to feed the prem’s – so if mum’s milk doesn’t come through they simply lose weight day by day until the milk eventually (hopefully…) does.

People come to hospital so incredibly sick. It’s unreal.

For some reason I’ve been put on the paediatric ward – which is chaotic – kids are brought in unconscious every day. All day, every day. More kids who are floppy, lethargic or just plain old unconscious. One was even brought in dead. (that was a shock.. .and then to have to tell the parents).

The intensive care section (the 8 cots nearest the nurses station…with 2-3 children per bed) is filled with kids who would be intubated and ventilated at home.

These are the kind of sick kids you rarely see at home but were they to have been lucky enough to have been unwell in London, they would have had several consultants standing next to them, and no one leaving their side. They would be having minute by minute observations, hourly blood tests and their own nurse.

Here they get max. 10 minutes from a Dr (twice a day, although I am up-ing the ante by trying to review them in between too). If you try and spend longer, well – I have about 100 kids I need to see each morning (with the aid of a medical student on elective, thank goodness – I’d be lost without her extra hands!) and I need to be in clinic by the afternoon. So if I spend too long with one, then others down the line lose out.

But what these kids really need is regular reviews, regular checks to ensure they’re going in the right direction- and if they’re not then for something else to be done for them… But this just isn’t possible.

And as for nursing care… The nurses are their mum’s (or worse their grandmas) who have very different ideas about what their children need. They hate oxygen and nasogastric tubes because they associate them with the sick children who they see die, so they think that the oxygen kills the babies.

So you’ll have a severely dehydrated child- who is too lethargic to drink. But when the parents refuse an ng tube, the nurses don’t tell you so they end up even sicker – you see them 6 hrs later, even more unwell.
It’s painful.

When their child is sick and they’re refusing oxygen or pulling it off their child… it’s so frustrating.
And even if you try to sit down and explore these ideas with them and try to persuade them otherwise – well, to do that you need an interpreter = a nurse, who is often way too busy (and demotivated) to spend much time trying to change these mothers’ minds.

Children dying here is an accepted part of life.
Way too accepted.
It kills me.
The suffering is just terrible.

The adult wards are a bit better – not least because I feel far more confident dealing with adults – and they have more reserve anyway.

But still the crazy severity of disease – and COMPLEXITY too! These patients tend to be HIV +ve, often with really severe infections… but we don’t have the resources to easily figure out what is going on.
(medics among you – I don’t even have access to a K+ ! or a bili/ LDH/ ALP!! Forget about reliable microscopy. No cultures. And Ct scans exist on another planet altogether).

It’s all quite “blue peter” – there isn’t the right equipment so I’ve been taught how to make do with what there is.

I was putting chest drains into babies this week: the chest “drain” consisted of a green cannula attached to an iv giving set, whose top end has been  chopped off with my pen knife – REALLY! no sterile scissors round here! (no non sterile scissors either.) this end is then stuck through a needle cap (yes. take the needle out and use the plastic cap as a tube! .. that is after you’ve sawn off the end of the cap.. again, with the invaluable penknife. which is then pushed through a rubber bung  into a jar of water for the seal).

Luckily there is an amazing Dr called Shelagh who’s been here for 10-12 years. She’s a paediatrican (but great all round) and when there are no other Dr’s here she ploughs on alone. Alone! On call every night!
She is warm and lovely and a true font of knowledge.

Less luckily for me, once I’d turned up she (quite understandably!) finally had the chance to take some time off work (her 1st days off since November) to spend time with her kids. So I didn’t even have her guidance the 1st week. It was hairy . now she’s back but has unfortunately caught malaria..  so on my own again!

I have to say this is definitely the toughest thing I’ve ever done and I feel utterly inadequate at practicing medicine without the resources I’m used to having at my fingertips..

It’s mad that the people here are so much more severely unwell than those at home and yet I have so much less help to look after them in terms of tests or nursing support.

So whats the rest of my time here like?

Well I have my own bedsit here – my heart sank a little when I first saw it but then I told myself to pull myself together as its probably palatial by most of my patients’ standards..

Now that I have scrubbed it with bleach and put up some photos its starting to look more homely.
There is an ongoing battle between me (& my broom!) and all the African wildlife that wants to invade my room. I’m hoping the gecko I spotted on my wall 3 days ago will come back as they’re wonderful for getting rid of these blasted cockroaches, bugs, ants and all the other wonderful insects that are keen to get to know me!

And once outside of my room.. eek! There are snakes.. seriously. Aarggh. Have to be really careful at night.
Have seen lots of patients with snake bites (and even a kid bitten by a crocodile just up the road!) and several people struck by lightening… even more killed by lightening..
(the thunder storms here are INTENSE!)

The redeeming feature of my time here has been the other Dr’s here.. although when I arrived there were only 2 Dr’s here already, another 2 have started since. So there are now 6 of us incl. Sheila who lives here with her husband and 6 children. (all these gorgeously blonded tanned cuties wandering around barefoot! So gorgeous!)

The other doc’s are lovely and on the ball and are great to work with. There’s also medical students here who are all really great too. (gosh – Without them it would be impossible to get through all the work!) and 2 fab midwives… so quite a strong ex-pat network who all help each other through what is truly a tough time.

In the evenings when I (finally!) finish work, if I’m not on call,  we all sit and chat or watch a DVD and it makes this whole place bearable.

Or I’ll put some music on and dance round my room (nothing changes!) and try to put some of this madness behind me..

So its been a hard first week.. it feels like I’ve been utterly cut off from everything and everyone I’ve ever known and dropped into a totally new existence.

The mad thing is that it’s my “old” life that feels unreal- all shiny and clean and soft and easy – and it’s THIS harsh existence that feels like the REAL version of Life.

(& in all honesty, it IS. This is how the majority of the world still lives. And how humanity as a whole experienced life until 100 years ago).

It kind of feels like I’ve been living in the Truman show and have only now seen outside the saccharin sweet world I’ve been in until now.

(& yet I’ve worked out in the developing world before… I guess never before with this much responsibility .. and I guess never having to live rurally for a long time before either).

I’m hoping it will get easier as I start to get to grips with what we CAN offer people here, and get a better sense of how to work effectively in such a resource poor setting..

(tho apparently – and I was aghast to hear this – this is supposed to be one of the best hospitals in Zambia!)

I think it will also get easier once I’ve settled in and seen “normal” Zambian life – we only see the dark side on the wards. The people here are so charming and friendly that I’m sure I’ll love exploring the area once I get a chance to!

Anyway, if you’ve made it to here then I’m impressed you’ve tolerated my ramblings… but it’s been quite cathartic writing this!

Bronya xx”

I think it was mainly due to the fact that after all the rumours and debate I was expecting Apple to deliver something that wasn’t so, how to put this – expected.

With other launches Steve Jobs has managed to pull together a presentation that builds up to a point where you are left wondering how they have achieved such amazing sales figures and advances in technology and then towards the end of his presentation he hits you with the infamous “just one more thing” and reveals the amazing iMac, iPod or iPhone…

Alas this wasn’t to be and quite a few of the bloggers where caught by surprise “0:21AM This is the ultimate tease. We’ve got a sneaking suspicion there’s a lot more to come.” Engadget (http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/27/live-from-the-apple-tablet-latest-creation-event/).

That said, having now watched the full Keynote (http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/specialevent0110/) my mind has been swayed to thinking that, for what this product has been created for, the iPad is actually, as Steve kept saying, magical.

The iPad is designed to be easily usable, comfortable to hold and carry out the tasks that say a household would expect from a device created to be interacted with as and when you need it.

How many of you sit in front of the TV with the laptop on, or more recently browsing on your iPod touch or iPhone? This exactly where the iPad comes into its own.

I’ve seen a few comments about the size of the frame, from what I can see this needs to be wide as when you hold the device your thumb comes over the front. Without the frame this would mean your thumb encroaches onto the screen which simply wouldn’t work.

The other question raised is why there is still no flash on this device.

Anyone who knows me will know that I can be quite the conspiracy theorist and this comes true when thinking about the missing Flash issue.

Is it because Apple knows that the touch interface will simply not work with Flash? or is it more a case of if the devices ran Flash, Apple couldn’t rely on the control they have through their software when building Apps because everyone would use Flash instead? Thoughts please!

Whilst I want an iPad for the house, I think, as always, I’ll wait for the next version to see if it comes with a webcam. That said if Adobe pull their finger out and port some lite versions of their software to work with the iPad this may just sway me. How amazing to sit and doodle ideas and ping them over to Darren for input.

Finally we live in a time when we play with devices that until recently where only available on the Star Trek Enterprise… (Star Trek pad). I still can’t wait until we hand out iPads to the agency team, are constantly connected and sharing our ideas with clients and each other, transferring files, music, photos and collaborating together in real-time from wherever we are in the world. That day is one step closer today and it is pretty cool.

Keep up the good work Apple.

Now, while all these different projects are incredibly exciting, stimulating and interesting, delivering them on time to the required standard requires some specific and rare skills.

I’ve been working in agencies for 14 years, on small web builds to global marketing campaigns, and the one thing that has been consistent across all of the successful  projects has been the excellence, dedication and knowledge of the producer, or project manager as they used to be known.

It is vital that everyone involved understands that the producer is in charge of the entire delivery process, and what he/she says goes.

At Cowan Group, we make risk assessment a major part of our project planning, and the security of not just the project but the entire client relationship is in the hands of the producer.

Anyone who has ever been involved in a major project understands the need for firefighting and getting people to pull together in times of crisis. But what’s great about a good producer is their ability to hide the matches from any pyromaniacs involved, if you will excuse the extended metaphor.

So, at Christmas time, let’s all stop and thank the producers who, although often unsung, make our lives run as smoothly as possible.

And if you’ve got good ones, treat them well and reward them properly. They are worth their weight in gold.

Below is a short piece from my sister about her run and some words from my brother Serge, Maddies’ Dad.

Marcel

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http://www.justgiving.co.uk/milou-rose0

My mummy passed away earlier this year on August 22nd and even though people are probably wondering why I am running to help Madelene my niece rather than a cancer research charity, I know this is what my mummy, ‘mumskin’ as I called her, would have wanted me to do.

You see Mum wasn’t into all this cancer research stuff. She never really accepted that she had a horrible disease. Our mummy, my dad’s beautiful wife, our Doll Doll’s wonderful daughter, was the most bravest woman in the world. Even with the amount of pain she was in, she always managed to make herself look presentable. With her make-up and her ‘fab’ dress sense, she would always say, “Bumble (it’s what she called me, don’t ask) always, no matter what, take off your make up at the end of a night and make sure you put it back on the next day, as I do”!!!

So I’m running this marathon on behalf of my mum and to raise money for PACE, a special school my beautiful niece Maddie hopes to attend.  Any amount raised will help keep this wonderful school open, as it is primarily funded by charitable donations. Maddie is the most beautiful, smiley 2 year old you will ever come across and don’t be fooled because she knows everything that goes on around her, she just needs a little help to move across a room.

Any amount you can give is really appreciated by my mum, Maddie and all the family xxx

Below is written by my brother Serge, Madelene’s Daddy (please take the time to have a read)

When you think beyond the last two years it is hard to remember mum before the horrible disease took control of her. One thing that always stuck out was her positive nature, sometimes to the point where it wound me up, but she would never listen to negatives, only wanting to hear the good and ignoring the bad.

There were a lot of parallels between mum and my daughter Madelene. They were closer and had more in common than many people would have believed, unfortunately for the wrong reasons, but you could always see a connection between them. Maddie and Mum were diagnosed the same week, a horrendous week in November 2007 and their long but very different and difficult journeys began. Throughout this time I started to recognise parallels, whether it was the drugs they took (the same on occasion), the muscle spasms or the good and bad days they were having. But as time went on mum went from denying that Maddie would be different to slowly starting to accept her condition and taking time to listen to her physical impairments, while at the same time she also started to accept her own predicament. I do feel that at some point they crossed over, Maddie’s pain eased as if it was almost absorbed by mum.

Mum was stubborn, she didn’t want to know what would happen and only wanted to hear that she was going to be okay. The same attitude was adopted for Maddie “Of course she will walk Serge”, “She is developing like any other baby”. She was always the same for her own condition – irritatingly positive! Trips to the doctor were difficult.

The use of the word ‘chemo’ scared her so much – as soon as it was mentioned that she would not have to lose her hair she would jump at the chance of trying the drug. That was mum – her vanity was more important than health, she was beautiful and she did not want to lose that.

When she went to the clinic in Germany she packed a swimsuit, two evening dresses, a sarong and a sun hat. She nearly didn’t go – not because of the treatment but because the room did not have a view and a double sink! Yes, maybe there was a hope she could do some sunbathing but ultimately it was her support blanket and it is how she managed to get through and fight over the last 2 years.

She was incredible and an inspiration, she refused to follow the usual course, a hindrance to the Oncologist but all the same – unique and I am sure a lesson to anyone she met during her treatment. While my mum is no longer with us to help, her spirit lives on. She has transferred some of that irritatingly positive nature on to me…. while others around tend to be a bit more realistic or practical about Maddie’s future, I still believe that she will lead a wholesome life albeit somewhat different to the social norm!

I still have hope that she will say the words “mummy” and “daddy”, be able to feed herself and have an argument with her younger sister Emily…. but how do we get there? Looking at all of the options PACE seems by far the best in order to give Maddie the best opportunity in life.

You see, PACE is a school for the physically disabled and while many of the children at the school have a good level of intellect, their physical disabilities slow down their whole development to the point they fail to hit those milestones so important in early years! PACE offers the opportunity for all the Children to fight together to achieve the maximum potential from their lives.

Recently we went to the Children’s Challenge event at Stoke Mandeville Stadium (which many of you know about from the sponsorship), and it was inspiring to see so many children, as well as Maddie, trying so hard to achieve what me and you take for granted day-after-day. Whether it is walking five steps or speaking our first words, there were children at the event doing it for the first time, whether using walking sticks to make those steps or pointing their eyes at a computer screen in order to generate those first words.

The concentration and courage on every child’s face was like none I have seen before – an inspiration and I implore anybody to see it for themselves. These children have been dealt a horrible hand in life, yet it doesn’t seem to faze them and they all work incredibly hard to achieve those milestones that we all take for granted. Maddie is in the early years of her battle… the kids at this school are aged 4 and upwards.

Maddie attends the Parent and Child Group at the moment and although she was given the chance to do her challenge which she passed with flying colours…. she still has a couple of years to go before she joins full time, but it is so important we have a school in existence for her to join…. the government don’t want to help so we “Joe Public” need to. Besides helping this marvellous school go from strength to strength I do think it is important to highlight how Maddie got her cerebral palsy. Two words ‘Strep B’, please pass this link to anyone you know who is currently pregnant or thinking of having children. http://www.gbss.org.uk/content.php?section_id=3&sub_id=8&content=GBS Whilst Maddie is beautiful and has a smile that lights up any room, the damage caused by this horrible infection led to her meningitis and septicaemia and in turn her brain damage and cerebral palsy. Maddie is unable to sit or stand unaided, she cannot use her hands, she cannot talk, she cannot feed herself…. although she can give the best cuddles!!!!

Milou is running the marathon for a wonderful cause and we are so grateful that she is doing this for Maddie’s future and all the other children with Cerebral Palsy at the PACE Centre… it means the world to us and we will be cheering her on every step of the way. I just hope that it is not all in vain and that this is just the start of a long awareness campaign for a fantastic school that is there for mine and so many other families.

When mum lay in the hospital bed in Frankfurt two weeks before she died, she turned round to me and said “When I get out of this place and better I promise that I will start helping a bit more with Maddie”.

Mum is out of that place now and is finally getting the opportunity to help Madelene…. Serge