What do we do?

Default helps big brands realise big ideas online.

Who are we?

Default is a London based creative digital agency working in the fields of retail and media & entertainment. Privately owned, we have grown from providing niche marketing solutions to currently supporting a range of integrated capabilities stretching from creative through to large scale web development.

Our work is based on providing our clients with a simple approach to realising their online marketing objectives.

Whether it is an integrated redemption scheme, e-commerce, CMS, creative asset management, mobile content marketing, media download retailing or an online branding initiative, our solutions are all tracked and assessed through empirical sales analysis.

Leading Clients

• Sony Pictures Entertainment
• Pitch Mobile Entertainment
• Boomkat.com
• Monster
• Second Nature
• John Frieda
• Unilever personal care
• Last Minute.com

We are looking for a Senior New Business Developer

We would like to invite a key member to join our team whose primary focus will be to generate new business with leading global brands and maintain effective long term relationships. You will provide consultancy on a daily basis and be the point of contact for internal projects and marketing initiatives.

You will also be required to

• Project manage at a senior level
• Develop and implement an account management/review strategy for each client including regular face to face/telephone contact
• Provide media consultancy to key clients, set pragmatic targets and manage their expectations
• Demonstrate competent presentation skills
• Manage the process of lead generation right through to pitch and conversion
• Ensure the continued development of new business prospects
• Ability to create and generate new business will be key to your success in this position
• Combine your insight into market trends to provide the Board with detailed sector analysis and updates, taking their business and your career to the next level.
• Manage staff from graduate to senior level
• Monitor and report on competitor activities
• Be responsible for maximising revenue from sales of our products and services
• Keep abreast of media developments and competitor activity
• Maintain excellent relationships with key media

Skills and Experience

• At least 5 years in a senior account management role handling ‘big brands’
• Strong interpersonal skills
• Proven new business development skills & the ability to generate revenue channels
• Exceptional communication and organisational skills
• A competent sales planner and forecaster

Travel Opportunities

We have an interest in developing the US market and travelling to LA, New York, Chicago and San Francisco where applicable.

Remuneration

£60,000 to £100,000 basic + performance led bonus

I needed to make sure Prototype 1.6 was present for a javascript class I was working on, so I put this at the top of my class js file:

if (Object.isUndefined(Prototype) || parseFloat(Prototype.Version) < 1.6) throw('my_class.js requires prototype.js 1.6+');

Just one simple thing I didn’t know before today.

Updated: Monday 18th February 2008. Correction to makefile again! Apparently the previous change didn’t take =) Thanks to Peter Dunord for pointing this out.

Updated: Wednesday 21st November 2007. Corrections made to Makefile.osx naming and rubyinline install added to list.

Here is a quick guide to getting image_science working on your new leopard install. Full Credit to Michael Steinfeld for his directions on the ruby forum.

1. Install and update ruby_inline

1.1 Install

sudo gem install RubyInline

1.2 Update

• trac.macosforge.org Reference

cd /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/RubyInline-3.6.4/lib
mate inline.rb

replace

flags = @flags.join(' ')

with

flags = @flags.join(' ') + ' -lruby'
cd 
rm -rdf ./ruby_inline

2. Ensure that xCode was installed with 10.3.9 support

2.1 Install from the leopard disk.

Links below show screenshots for installing 10.3.9 support

• Select optional Installs
• Run the xcode packge
• Select customize before installing
• Select 10.3.9 support

2.2 Check if you have it installed

$ ls /Developer/SDKs/

MacOSX10.3.9.sdk 
MacOSX10.4u.sdk
MacOSX10.5.sdk

3. Download FreeImage

Link

4. Edit Makefile.osx LIBRARIES

mate ~/Downloads/FreeImage/Makefile.osx

replace lines

LIBRARIES_PPC = -Wl,-syslibroot /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.3.9.sdk
LIBRARIES_I386 = -Wl,-syslibroot /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk

with

LIBRARIES_PPC = -Wl,-syslibroot /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.3.9.sdk/usr/lib
LIBRARIES_I386 = -Wl,-syslibroot /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk/usr/lib

5. Install Free Image (ignore ppc symbol errors)

cd FreeImage
make
sudo make install

6. Install Image Science

sudo gem install image_science

7. Test

irb
>> require 'image_science'
>> true

Thanks to Tim Lucas for the corrections via James Hill.

We are seeking Ruby / Rails developers to join our existing team in both research and production roles. The role calls for a team player with good customer facing and communication skills, a willingness to learn new methods and technologies.

You’ll ideally have a consulting / software development background and will be able to demonstrate your competencies using a portfolio of sites you have been involved in designing and building. You’ll have developed content-management systems and designed applications for production-strength architectures. You’ll understand how to optimise relational databases and write fast queries. You’ll be happy working within a small team of capable and enthusiastic developers with practical processes and to high standards. You’ll have a keen eye for detail and a desire to maintain exemplary output. You’ll be experienced in taking ownership and responsibility for functional sections from conception through design to implementation and support. You will also receive training as necessary to develop your technical skills further.

The successful candidate will join a committed and friendly team.

Essential skill set

• 3+ years OO programming experience.
• Strong knowledge of Ruby and Rails
• Solid understanding of MySQL
• Standards based Javascript & CSS

Helpful skill set

• Python experience.
• Server maintenance / Shell scripting
• AJAX (if you are going to play this card you must have excellent javascript skills, not just prototype)
• Enterprise development experience a plus!

Key Responsibilities

• Carry out requirements analysis and system design with full responsibility or as part of the team
• Manage time and plan work to ensure quality output on time and budget
• Produce code to standards ensuring it is high quality, maintainable and fully tested
• Ensure projects are documented in a manner that will ease future system and code upgrades

Duration: 3 month trial period with a view for full time employment.

Location: We are based in Notting Hill, London.

Salary: Negotiable

Applicants are required to send the following:

CV

URLs exemplifying your work.

Give three web based examples of your favoured web applications. (these can be your own work and/or other websites you consider to be of merit.

Please send CV and application for the attention of Guy using our contact form

One of our key interests within the retail sector is the Gift and Greeting Card space where few publishers and supplies have yet been able to benefit from the kind of business intelligence offered by Springbolt’s Analytics on demand platform.

We are very excited to be featured in this month’s Progressive Greetings Worldwide , the Greeting Card industry’s leading magazine – article and mug shot as follows:

“‘Springbolt from Blue’

New Service makes sense of sales stats In this technology advanced age, with the help of EPOS, capturing information as to what cards have been sold when and where is not as difficult as it once was. However, turning this data into easily understandable and useful information without spending hours on the task has been something of a bugbear of card publishers.

After working on the software for three years, London software company Default has developed Springbolt, an online facility that can turn reams and reams of raw EPOS data into incisive sales reports (and easy to understand graphs and tables) for card publishers in seconds.

While not quite born into the card trade, Guy Schragger, managing director of Default has more than a passing understanding of the industry and importance of easy to use sales information as his father, mother and uncle are all directors of Second Nature greeting card company.

Through Springbolt, Default has created a web-based platform that means that publishers can access their sales data of specific customers from a computer anywhere in the world by logging onto the system. “Clinton Cards, for example, supplies publishers with the raw EPOS data for their sales, but few publishers would be able to generate reports in an easy to read format, such as the sales patterns of a particular range (or even individual design) in, say the top 25 shops at the touch of a button.

It is in everyone’s interest – the publisher’s, the retailer’s and the consumer’s – the cards are in the shops that people want to buy!” says Guy. “Springbolt’s reports help to manage a publisher’s inventory within a specific chain or store and check all the weaker sellers.”

So confident is Guy about Springbolt is that it is being offered to publishers on a monthly subscription basis with no minimum sign up. The costs vary from £360 to £5,600 a month dependent on the level of reporting required.

• Default has developed a similar system for Boomkat, a transactional website which has 35,000 SKUs and 45 million hits a month.”