Horsemart go to the hunt...ball

This report in from Sarah Evans on Horsemart's recent social activities...

Well, Friday night saw the Horsemart team at the Southdown & Eridge Hunt Ball in Lewes. All the gals looked gorgeous in their posh frocks, and Tim cut a rather dashing 007 figure in his tux.

There was dining, drinking, bagpipes, men in kilts, and an old lady with enormous feet.

The team also did a fine job of strutting their funky stuff on the dance floor, with several moves hitherto unseen outside of captivity.

There are more photos on Horsemart's Facebook group.

Tim Gould gets massage - Photo exclusive!

This exclusive report was sent in from Gavin Davies. Please do not read on if you're easily disturbed...


Pembroke were treated to the soothing hands of a local masseuse last week. Tim Gould, in an effort to relief his executive stress, treated himself to a massage from the lovely young lady during his lunch break.

“I don’t normally like to be rubbed up the wrong way”, mused Tim, “ but my god, she’d have no problem taking the lid off a jam jar”


Those lucky enough to be in close proximity were greeted to a series of grunts and sighs from their department manager. Tim strolled off afterwards with a relaxed and satisfied expression on his face and was heard to comment “if any one needs me, please take a massage, I’ll be back in a bit.”

Photo caption: Tim practises for the upcoming TT race.

If anyone has any captions to add to the photo please feel free to email me: gavin.davies@friday-ad.co.uk

And I would walk 500 miles...

On April 11th Boats and Outboards team member Stephen Sumner will set-off on a charity walk for the charity Sail4Cancer. The walk Stephen will be doing will take him along the South Downs Way eastwards from just north of Chichester towards Brighton. Stephen's aim is to see how far he can walk in a day and in turn raise as much money as possible for Sail4Cancer.



The challenge of walking along the South Downs Way is not an easy one, the paths at this time of the year are often very slippery or muddy and there are numerous steep hills to climb and descend. Carrying a back pack with water and food Stephen is aiming to exceed the marathon distance of 26 miles!

Sail4Cancer is a charity based organisation that aims to improve the quality of life for individuals and their families who have been affected by cancer.

If you would like to support Stephen then you can sponsor him and leave messages of support here.

And it's a green light for go, go go!

Laura Mercer has just given me the details of a fun outing they had this week for a bit of client-bonding with some Eastbourne motor dealers.

Each franchise dealership in Eastbourne could nominate two people (one of which had to be the Dealer Principal ) to compete at Trax in Eastbourne. Each person was given 10 minutes to record their fastest lap time, with the winner and runner-up getting a pair of tickets to a Wembley event.

The fastest time recorded was 14.39 seconds, by Matt at Wilmoths Citroen, with Peter at Yeomans Toyota coming in as runner up with a time of 14.46. (so they were the winners). The ‘losers’ were Natalie and Amanda from the motors sales team at Friday-Ad, with their ‘fastest’ times recorded of 18.36 (Amanda) and 17.44 (Natalie).

Some of the franchises that attended the event included Audi, Volvo, VW, Citroen, Toyota. All in all it was a really great day for Eastbourne dealers and Friday-Ad.

Pictured above is Raf from Autopromotor. Despite thinking he was a bit of a Lewis Hamilton, if you look closely at the picture you will spot that not only is he wearing sensible Brogues, but he's also got his gloves on back to front! Laura thinks this might explain his "rubbish lap times"!

PR boost for our sales jobs boards

Another nice bit of PR from Onrec that gives good exposure for SimplySalesJobs.co.uk, SimplyMediaSalesJobs.co.uk and SimplyITSalesJobs.co.uk.

One of the most pleasing aspects is that we're getting quoted alongside the likes of TotalJobs and Jobsite.

The article discusses the recent trends within sales recruitment and gives indications of possible directions for this year, including the increase of social networking linked to recruitment.

You can read it in all its glory here.

The best way to be out when you're in

Another new string to our proverbial bow is a partnership with website HoneyParty.com.



It's a mixture of social networking and dating, with aim of bringing together people who enjoy going out to bars and clubs.

Like many other 'social networking' sites, people are encouraged to create a profile, upload images etc, then search or browse for people to chat to.

There's also a voting function on the site, where you can be vote for your favourite people and they can do the same for you.

The site was launched around the bars and clubs in the Dorset area, but with our extensive marketing channels we are aiming to make HoneyParty.com a national institution.

And to help us do this we will shortly be asking you to become HoneyParty volunteers, which involves you visting bars and clubs, taking photos of members of the opposite sex and asking for their mobile number! More details to follow...

New wordsmith on board

Yesterday Karla Pett joined the company in the role of Editorial Co-ordinator. She will now be producing editorial content for Boats and Outboards, Friday-Ad and Trade-It features/supplements and a whole host more.

She is also in possession of a red pen, so can proof any business, sales or marketing documents that you need her to (and make you feel like you really should have paid attention in your English classes).

Drop her an email or call her on extension 7602.

Hat-trick of promotions for Trade-It

Paul Scrivens would like to congratulate the following Trade-It people, all of whom have gained promotion:

Daren Stainton on his appointment to Field Sales Team Leader

Nicola Sanders on her appointment to Telesales Team Leader

Richard Krysiak on his appointment to Drive Co-Ordinator

Another 'monster' year for Simply

Looks like 2007 was definitely a good year for our job boards (can anyone guess the common link here? I thank you), with Simply Online announcing that they also spanked their sales target.

The target was set at £420,000 and they "scraped through" (Ian's words) with £695,192 (that's a 'paltry' difference of £275,192!).

Pictured: Ian Partington, MD of Simply Online, aged 16

Bit of trivia for you as well - our 12 job sites are due to generate £2.7 million between them in 2008.

Don't think they have anyone on the team with 'isms', so perhaps Craig might be willing to deliver a training session to the Simply boys and girls soon?

And remember in the immortal words of Craig "there isn't a big red button on my desk that I can push to make applications come in".

We're in the money

The results are in and the excellent news for the IRT team is that they smashed their sales target for 2007.

The target for the year was set at £1,315,601 and they beat this by just over £20,000 with a grand total of £1,335,643!

A special mention goes to Craig 'Hightower' Middleton, who had a target of £45,124, but ended the year on £74,477 a massive £29,353 (165%) over target!

Part of Craig's success has to be down to his sales patter, with some unique phrases that have been affectionately known as 'Craigisms'. There are literally hundreds in his repetoire, but a few highlights include:

"In the poker game that is recruitment"
"You don’t want to open pandora’s box"
"Proof in the pudding that it’s money in the wind"

And the immortal...

"I haven’t pulled it out of the book of wonderful telesales lines"

Well done chaps and by early indications it looks like 2008 will be another storming year.

Who you going to call? Ghostbusters!

A report from 'the other side' (Pembroke that is) from Gavin Davies...

The Pembroke Features Team took on the spooky team building challenge of an organised ghost hunt at the Carew Tidal Mill down in Pembrokeshire last week.

Gavin Davies, Dan Miles, Stephen Richards and Claire Lewis put their nerves on the line during séances and vigils in the old mill. Austin Charles (Britain’s third best physic medium) led the proceedings and in the space of ten minutes conjured up “witches, a one legged man, a hanged man, a missing baby, a man with an axe in his back and an old mill lady called Priscilla”!The mill sounded like a terrible place to work.

“Ghostly Orbs” or “Dust on the lense” at Carew Tidal Mill Ghost hunt.

During a séance Austin informed Dan that he had been taken over by the spirit of a monk. Dan then had a disturbing episode where he nearly collapsed and needed to be spiritual re-sussitated by a second medium. “I can’t remember a thing” Dan said afterwards obviously very effected by the investigation. Dan did not make it through the night and had to leave early.

Gavin spent most of the night stifling giggles to which he was informed that he had been processed by the spirit of a mischievous witch, and not the fact that the evening’s proceedings were a farce and a con. The remaining three survived the night to tell the tale, but does Dan miles still have the spirit of a monk haunting him? As long as he does not make a habit of it, then does it matter?

New manager for Horsemart

Congratulations to Tracy Potter who has been promoted to the position of Team Manager for Horsemart.

As you can see from the photo she can't stop smiling since she got told the news (sorry Tracy!).

wightbay.com joins the family

Last week we completed another aquisition to add to the group portfolio - wightbay.com - a classified website for the Isle of Wight.

Here's the lowdown from the news page on wightbay.com:

I am delighted to inform wightbay users that Friday-Ad, have today purchased wightbay.com.

We are delighted that they are the new owners of this great local classifed website, Marketing Director Joe Kidger commented:

"We’re delighted to have added Wightbay to our successful group of classified websites. Wightbay is the number one marketplace on the Isle of Wight, and we plan to use our experience in classified advertising to make the site even better in the future, making it easier for the island community to buy and sell for free."

Martin Potter the previous owner commented:

"I'm delighted that Friday-Ad have purchased wightbay. I had offers on the table from several companies, however I was confident Friday-Ad possessed the vast experience and resources to take wightbay forward and give it the time the site so rightly deserves. I wish Friday-Ad all success. I have been assured that the site will continue unchanged and the members of wightbay will continue to benefit from free ads."

(Ed. I think everyone's delighted!)

We're in the army now

As a prize for hitting a recent team target, the Trade-It sales guys and girls headed off to the woods for a spot of paintballing action...

Pictured are (Front row) Craig Wallberg; (Middle row l to r): Richard Krysiak, Nicola Sanders, Sue Rouse, Lisa Percival, Kayleigh Foster; (Back row) Paul Scrivens.

Mitch was also there and took the photo.

Reports are that they all had a very good time, especially Sue, although she was very dissapointed she wasn't allowed to drive the tank!

UKBike.com do a lot of good work for charity

Here's news from Boyd showing a real tangible benefit to UKBike's sponsorship of annual biking event Brightona...

Recently I attended a presentation at Brighton Hospital which was the formal hand over of the equipment that was purchased from the proceeds generated at Brightona 2007.

(l to r) Abi Golding – principal organier and founder of Brightona, Boyd, Terry Ayres who runs the Sussex Heart Trust and Matt Barnard committee chairman and organiser.
(comedy captions welcome! Ed.)

The equipment is in simple terms a sonic scalpel. This enables the surgeons to cut the epidermis of the patient allowing entry on a keyhole basis without loss of blood. This parts the skin and seals the wound at the same time unlike a laser equivalent that does the same thing but sears the wound to prevent bleeding. The sonic device enables quicker healing and results in less scarring as it parts the skin not cuts it. From what I can gather it’s an English invention which the yanks have taken up and developed into a working device, though it would appear that they are unable to use until seven years of testing etc has been completed. Litigation issues I should imagine. (Apparently it’s OK to sell back to us Europeans to use prior to the elapse of the seven year period- guinea pig anyone?).

So basically it’s a sci-fi Dr. Who device.

It saves money, reduces collateral damage and requires less blood transfusions whilst operation is ongoing and is unique to Sussex.

And whilst on a UKBike.com tip, January saw a record month for traffic figures to the site, with more visitors, uniques and impressions than ever before.

There were 92,532 visits in Jan 08, compared to 34,096 in Jan 07.

Who dares wins

With just a few weeks now before the OnRec awards ,where we have three award nominations, speculation within the online recruitment community is mounting as to who might walk away with the coveted 'Personality of the Year' award.

Those of you who have been paying attention over the recent weeks will know that both Rob Paterson and Ian Partington are up for this category.

Louise from UK Recruiter has started an unofficial poll to see who the recruitment community would like to win and who they think will win...it's a bit like the BAFTAs being an indicator for the Oscars.

You can check out Louise's blog here. Oh and see if you work out who the mystery person is she mentions?!

Your chance to have your say

Apologies for the lack of postings over the past couple of weeks (if any of you have even noticed!), but planning the marketing budgets and strategy for our 12 job boards has consumed most of my time.

I will endeavour to get back on blogging track now, but in the meantime please make sure you send me any news, comments, photos etc etc that you want to share with the company.

We have several hundred people now spread across an even further geographical divide, so take advantage of this blog as a way to keep people informed and amused. It's still mazing how much happens even within the same office, that you don't hear about.

So don't keep your stuff secret (unless of course it is top secret) -share it with your FAD friends.