Privacy & Cookie Policy

1. Who we are

Hive Creative Media (“HCM”, “we”, “us”, “our”) is the data controller responsible for your personal data. We are a creative agency providing brand identity, web design, video production, and ongoing creative support.

If you have questions about this policy or how we handle your data, contact us at: hello@hivecreativemedia.co.uk

2. Data we collect and why

Contact form submissions

When you submit our contact form, we collect your name, email address, the service you're interested in, and any additional information you provide. We use this to respond to your enquiry and assess whether we're a good fit for your project.

Legal basis: Legitimate interest (pre-contractual communications) and, where applicable, your consent.

Website usage data

We may collect anonymised data about how visitors use our website (pages viewed, time on site, referral source). This data contains no personally identifiable information and is used solely to improve the website.

Legal basis: Legitimate interest.

3. Cookies

Cookies are small text files placed on your device when you visit a website. We use the following categories of cookies:

Strictly necessary cookies

These cookies are required for the website to function and cannot be switched off. They are usually set in response to actions you take such as setting your privacy preferences, or filling in forms. They do not store any personally identifiable information.

• hcm-cookie-consent — stores your cookie preference (accepted / necessary only). Persists in localStorage, expires when you clear site data.

Analytics cookies

We use Google Analytics 4 to understand how visitors interact with our website. These cookies (for example _ga and _ga_*) are only set if you accept all cookies via our cookie banner. If you choose “necessary only”, no analytics cookies are set.

Video cookies

Pages that feature embedded video use Mux to stream and play it. When a video loads, Mux sets a first-party muxData cookie to measure playback performance (such as buffering and video quality). This supports the video functionality and does not identify you personally. See Mux's privacy policy.

Managing cookies

You can change your cookie preferences at any time by clearing your browser's site data for this domain. You can also manage cookies directly in your browser settings — most browsers allow you to block or delete cookies. Note that blocking necessary cookies may affect how the site works.

4. How long we keep your data

We keep contact form submissions for up to 24 months from the date of receipt, or until you ask us to delete them. After that period, we securely delete or anonymise the data.

Analytics data (if collected) is retained for a maximum of 26 months in line with standard analytics platform defaults.

5. Third-party services

We use the following third-party services that may process your data on our behalf:

• Sanity.io — our content management platform. Sanity stores structured content used to build this website. No personal enquiry data is stored in Sanity.
• Vercel — our website host. Vercel may log basic request metadata (IP address, browser type) for security and performance purposes. See Vercel's privacy policy.
• Mux — our video streaming and analytics provider. On pages that contain video, Mux processes playback data (including a first-party muxData cookie) to deliver and measure the video. See Mux's privacy policy.
• Google Analytics — website analytics, loaded only after you accept all cookies. See Google's privacy policy.

We do not sell, rent, or share your personal data with third parties for their own marketing purposes.

6. Your rights under UK & EU GDPR

You have the following rights regarding your personal data:

• Access — request a copy of the data we hold about you.
• Rectification — ask us to correct inaccurate data.
• Erasure — ask us to delete your data (“right to be forgotten”).
• Restriction — ask us to limit how we use your data.
• Portability — receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format.
• Objection — object to processing based on legitimate interest.
• Withdraw consent — where processing is based on consent, you may withdraw it at any time without affecting the lawfulness of prior processing.

To exercise any of these rights, email us at hello@hivecreativemedia.co.uk. We will respond within 30 days.

If you believe we have not handled your data correctly, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk.

7. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we will update the “Last updated” date at the top of this page. We encourage you to review this page periodically.