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Sarah Carter joined CW in May and in her first few weeks has already showed her creativity on a range of projects, from i-PDFs and corporate branding exercises to employee magazines and newsletters.

The 23-year-old graduated from Birmingham University's Institute of Art and Design with a First Class Honours degree in Visual Communication in 2009. For the past year, she has been working as a freelance graphic designer, including redesigning her former University's prospectuses, as well as some of its internal and external comms.

Sarah said: “One of the things I love about design is the variety of the work, and my first few weeks have definitely been varied!

“Everything you see has been designed in some way and I think it's a real responsibility to work as a designer and get it right. When I'm not designing, I'm usually thinking about it or blogging about it.

“Other than that, I enjoy reading and also trying out a few new cooking recipes, mainly involving curry.”

“It obviously doesn’t get any better than that and our challenge now is to maintain it and ensure we continue to exceed client expectations,” says business development director Nigel Clegg.

A key objective of the survey was to determine the importance clients place on a number of different values and the extent to which CW measures up to them.

“Perhaps unsurprisingly in the current climate, Value for Money was judged most important followed by Experience of Agency Staff, Design Flair and Project Management,” said Nigel. “We’re delighted to report that in these four areas our clients say we exceed their expectations, and in all others we meet expectations.”

Moving forward, clients identified hot topics for the future as measuring the effectiveness of communications and embracing digital communications (selected by 59% and 37% of respondents respectively) – both areas where CW is actively involved and developing new tools.

Among the positive comments received from respondents were:

“Lots of agencies provide good design and a good service but CW stands out as providing a better relationship and better interaction from a client focus perspective”

“I trust CW always to deliver a good result with a minimum of fuss”

“Always deliver and don’t rip you off!”

And in response to the question, “Has your opinion of CW changed in the past 12 months?” one client put:

“I didn’t know CW 12 months ago and my opinion has certainly changed…now they are an agency I trust and love to work with.”

The survey was emailed as an interactive-PDF to all current clients in the first quarter of 2010. For more information on our survey or to conduct your own employee or client survey please contact Nigel Clegg

“Communication is most effective when it is clear, concise and simple. Despite all the smoke and mirrors with which many try to mystify us, at its heart effective communications is essentially good journalism…designed to be noticed and targeted to be relevant.”

“But, I’m still writing news stories after all these years,” he says. “Despite the boggling variety of new channels and formats, the ability to distill facts into simple, engaging copy remains the communicator’s most potent tool.”

With two young daughters, much of Stefan’s spare time is spent shuttling them to and from their chosen pastimes, but he is gamely rekindling his love of sailing.

His experience covers a whole range of companies and organisations both large and small, and although he has worked with a number of FTSE top 100 and 200 groups, including; Barclays, BP, Inchcape and National Grid, he is equally at home dealing with SMEs.

“When all is said and done, no matter what the size of the organisation, they are all trying to communicate and get their message across to their audience in an effective, entertaining and eye-catching way.”

Spare time is taken up either at the athletics track or at the cricket ground. He has been a cricket coach for a number of years and now also has level one athletics coaching grade and level two officials grade. Despite taking up most weekends, his own children are usually competing at the same events, so it means he can make himself useful whilst watching them take part!

“I get involved in every aspect of the business, our processes and procedures, clients, suppliers, accounts, staff…you name it. It’s always interesting and I love it – until I get the run around from a call centre that is…”

A lunchtime run or trip to the gym usually calms the nerves and keeps her fit! Mandy has also been busy recently supervising the building of her new house, though she says her biggest achievement (presumably after a particularly frustrating session with a call centre) was completing the London Marathon.

“As a change driver in CW, I introduce financial and business improvements to streamline our operational efficiencies so we can service our clients more effectively.”

Away from work, Melissa can be found entangled in yoga poses. She also volunteers, including providing strategic input to a non-profit organisation which offers the opportunity for basic education, particularly for children with disabilities.

“I love the variety and working with our great team to really break down a brief and come up with results that really wow the client with something they couldn’t see coming!”

Away from her Apple Mac, Paula enjoys running, visiting the cinema/theatre/pub (not necessarily in that order) and traveling, especially to America where she hopes one day to live and work.