Something to Hoot About

Over 100 giant owls will be taking up perch across Birmingham for 10 weeks next summer as part of a fundraising initiative.

The Big Hoot, launched last Wednesday night at the Ikon Gallery, will see more than 100 individually-designed 165cm-tall owl statues appear across the city – local artists will then customise the owls.

The initiative is being organised by public art specialists Wild in Art, in conjunction with Birmingham Children’s Hospital, and funded by a host of corporate sponsors from across the West Midlands.

Since 2008, Wild in Art has become the UK’s leading producer of mass participation public art events. They have launched similar exhibitions across the globe, including the highly successful Gromit Unleashed initiative – where sculptures representing Gromit of “Wallace and Gromit” appeared on the streets of Bristol throughout 2013.

OWB have been involved with the creative element of the project since its inception. Wild in Art were looking for inspiration for the Birmingham character that could be considered both representative of the region and educational too.

“We loved the fact that the bird represented flight and migration – perfectly aligned with our diverse culture in Birmingham” stated OWB Director Shari Bryan, so from then on there was only one choice.

In 2008 a BBC News article reported that the world’s largest owl – the Eagle Owl – had taken up residence in Birmingham. Since then, a number of sightings of European Eagle Owls in and around the Birmingham area have been reported.

Once the owl had been chosen OWB worked alongside Wild in Art to create the perfect identity for the initiative. And thus, The Big Hoot was born.

Speaking at the launch event, Sarah-Jane Marsh, chief executive of Birmingham Children's Hospital, said: "The Big Hoot is a hugely exciting venture for Birmingham as a city and we at Birmingham Children's Hospital are honoured to have been selected to benefit from the half a million pounds we hope to raise as a result.

"This donation will help to support the ground-breaking work we carry out at the hospital, but more than that, the Big Hoot will also inspire pride in our much loved city and offer families a fun and free day out exploring everything that greater Birmingham has to offer."

Sally-Ann Wilkinson, director of Wild in Art, added: "Our public art projects have a proven track record of increasing tourism and heightening the profile of our host cities, and we're confident that this will continue in Birmingham, as visitors and residents alike discover the city through this unique and visually stunning artistic trail."

The Big Hoot has already attracted national media coverage with the BBC News website reporting on its launch: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-29722659

OWB have developed The Big Hoot’s website – www.thebighoot.co.uk – and created sponsorship packs for people who want to get involved with this initiative. An online pack can be found here: http://thebighoot.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/The-Big-Hoot-Sponsor-Pack-23-October-2014.pdf

You can follow The Big Hoot on Twitter @thebighoot2015, like The Big Hoot on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/thebighoot2015 and follow The Big Hoot’s Instagram activity http://instagram.com/bighoot2015. 

Windsor Academy Trust Open Evening

The latest client to join the OWB roster, Windsor Academy Trust, held an open evening Thursday night for prospective students at their High School and Sixth Form College.

Attended by over 500 students looking to make the jump from high school to college education, the Windsor Academy Trust Sixth Form stands out in the Halesowen area for its wide choice of courses and small, personal classes consisting of a student, teacher ratio of 11:1.

OWB looks forward to working alongside Windsor Academy Trust in the future and maybe teaching them a thing or two about marketing.

The Penguin is back – where’s Batman when you need him?

This past weekend, Google unleashed Penguin 3.0 – the latest update to its algorithm – AKA a blooming big headache for SEO specialists worldwide.

Penguin 3.0 is the sixth (releases only go up in whole numbers when they have a significant impact on queries) in a series of changes made to Google’s algorithm, the first of which was launched in 2012, in order to combat webspam and black hat SEO tactics.

SEO professionals have been anxiously waiting for the release of Penguin 3.0 due to the major impact caused by the previous updates. When you’re hit by Penguin, you usually have to wait until the next release cycle to see if your changes have resulted in a positive impact on your search engine performance, and many will have been waiting since the previous release back in October 2013.

If their clean-up methods have been successful, they’re likely to start seeing some improvement in traffic over the next few weeks. If not, they will need to make further more changes and wait until the next Penguin update. Now you can see why this causes such a headache!

It is important to bear in mind that whilst some websites may experience declining search rankings they may not have been penalised by Penguin. The Penguin update causes a huge amount of links to be discounted, so the value that these links may have once had will no longer pass over.

So any websites that have received value from these links may suffer a decline in visibility, even though the website has not been penalised itself.

Confusing, hey? Welcome to our world!

Fortunately OWB’s team of caped crusaders are well versed in tackling Penguin and the problems that arise from it. Who needs Bruce Wayne?

If you notice a drop in traffic and/or search engine visibility, please call us immediately on 0121 766 6571.

We will perform a free analysis to see if you have been hit by a Penguin penalty and advise you on what you should do next.

The OWB team is greatly saddened to hear of Jules Bianchi's horrific accident last weekend at the Japanese Grand Prix.

In 2013 we were immensely proud to have the opportunity to sponsor Jules and feature on his helmet for several grand prix. We also had the pleasure of joining him at a race weekend in Monza and a track day at the Jonathan Palmer motorsport facility where he scared the pants off us during a track drive. He is a great guy, happy to share his passion for motorsport and we wish him all the best and hope for a speedy recovery.

What a week of rugby coming up...

...with a ripper tonight at Rybrook Rolls Royce and Specialist Cars I'm looking forward to meeting Martin Johnson CBE and Neil Back MBE...more details will follow in this mege egg-chaser of a week..