At the moment we seem to be getting more and more Olympic related advertisements as the country gears up to the London 2012. With so much money thrown behind sponsorship deals and having athletes as brand spokespeople, you’d think there would be one campaign that would impress. Yet, the campaign that has most impressed me this year has to be the marketing activity being conducted on behalf of Sir Ridley Scott’s forthcoming movie ‘Prometheus’.

Now I’ll be honest with you. I don’t have that much interest in the Olympics, and I am a big movie fan… so my views are probably biased. Yet as an ‘Ad Man’, I am genuinely in awe with what I am seeing created to raise awareness of Prometheus. Now forget about the flashy website and the teaser trailers and international trailers that come attached to any movie release… what I want to highlight are some of the cute and clever things that have been done to raise awareness of what will probably be one of the year’s biggest films.

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If you’re like me you probably receive a lot of emails, however being an email marketer I sign up to every email going. When opening my Outlook on a morning I usually hit the delete button on most of my emails unless the subject line is really enticing and jumps out at me.

Two years ago, the volume of emails sent was around 247 billion worldwide each day and it has been predicted that this will double by 2013 to 507 billion messages sent every day. So the question is, how do you combat the competition and really stand out in people’s inboxes? Well, there are many different strategies you can use to approach this and one of these is the power of personalisation. When done well it can achieve high engagement from the recipient, delivering a relevant and personalised marketing message in a way that isn’t achievable in any other medium.

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I’m coming to the end of my placement at Red C now and what an experience it has been! Since my last blog before Christmas we’ve been kept busy and I have thoroughly enjoyed being kept on my toes. However, as I start to catch a breath through a slightly quieter time I can really reflect on some of the things I have been lucky enough to experience whilst being here at Red C.

Something which I enjoy about my role here is the development of my creative side. I’ve always enjoyed creative writing and although I’m not artist I like to make and create things. Something which I didn’t really expect was that observing creative processes would develop the way I think about things and although the role I am in is production based I’ve had some cracking opportunities to be creative.

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At Red C, one form of communication we have always been fascinated by is infographics. They can transform a large collection of statistics, facts and figures, into easily digestible and visually alluring pieces of design, and make learning information easier, less time consuming and more memorable.

So when we decided to offer our expertise on building an email list, we thought, “what the heck”, rather than produce a large and time consuming write up on the topic, we’ll provide the information in an easily digestible and beautiful looking infographic. It actually took a lot longer than we thought it would, but boy, it was worth it!

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Ever heard of Tide Detergent? American brand, big orange container, pretty pricey… Me neither. That is, until a few weeks ago when news stories exploded all over the web about the product being stolen from stores across America.

Yes, you read that right. Bizarrely, rather than steal cars, cash registers or wallets, many thieves are stealing Tide Detergent and then selling the stuff on the black market.

You’re probably scratching your head thinking, “why Tide?” Well, according to the authorities, there are several reasons: Tide is instantly recognisable due to its bright orange bottle, it’s one of the most expensive brands of laundry detergent and it doesn’t have serial numbers, so it can’t be tracked.

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Have you ever wondered how many people in the UK own dogs, how sceptical we are as a nation about the paranormal or how much time the average Briton spends watching TV each day? That might seem like an unusually diverse set of statistics, but there’s one internet resource that can answer each and every one of those questions at the click of a button. It’s called Britistics.

Created by the self-confessed statistics-lover Matthew Rowett in 2011, this unique data visualisation project uses official British statistics (from reputable sources like the Office for National Statistics and OnePoll) to create an all-encompassing picture of modern Britain. Or rather, a series of pictures of modern Britain. You see, what makes this resource so fresh and exciting for me, as a graphic designer, is the way in which all the dry statistical information is laid out. There’s no two ways around it… Britistics is a work of graphical genius.

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After a huge advertising campaign, a lot of hype and a considerable amount of technological expertise, on June 28^th 2011, Google+ was born. The plucky new challenger stood up against (if you can call anything with the backing of the world’s most popular search engine that) the mighty behemoth of Facebook. This was a chance for those with their social networks covered in pointless status updates, endless photos and incessant pokes to start again and enjoy a much cleaner network that you could be much more engaged in.

To begin with, Google made the strange decision to launch it as a work in progress, a project; it began very stripped down with just a stream service, photos, hangouts (which got much better as time went on to be fair) and circles. There was an awkward party feel when you got there. You hear it’s going to be great but then you get there and it’s just a small group of friends you always see, and everyone else who turns up merely announces their arrival and then sits down, waiting for something to happen. It felt a little silly at the time, and I have to confess I had a hangout with my flatmate… while we were both in the living room. For most people that’s where the relationship ended, and after a week or so everyone went back to their crowded Facebook because at least it wasn’t lonely.

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Twelve months ago I became a mum for the first time. Little did I know that I was also going to become a marketers dream… and discover a whole new marketing world of marketing to mums!

From the moment you discover you are pregnant, an entire new world opens up that you never previously knew existed. There are new areas of department stores that you have never ventured into and websites you have never visited.  And you suddenly get inundated with freebies – lots and lots of them. At no other time in your life do you have brands actually wanting to give you something for nothing!

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Sometimes you come up with an idea that even you think will never come off. Especially when that idea doesn’t have a place in the budget, nowhere in the marketing plan for it to go and involves a Hollywood filmmaker. Yet if there is one thing that our ‘The Shot’ social media campaign for Jessops proves, it’s that if an idea is good enough, people will get behind it and help you make it a reality.

Since we won Jessops as a client, Stuart (Red C’s Senior Copywriter) and I had wanted to do something to help Jessops promote the HD movie function of DSLR and Digital Cameras to the Jessops customer base. We also thought we could connect Jessops to the next generation of filmmakers and camera enthusiasts by creating a short film competition that would spread like wildfire through word-of-mouth.

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For an online retail store the top spot of a search engine results page for any product you sell is the holy grail of online marketing, it is like having the prime spot on the high street or the biggest and best shop in the mall. Of this lucrative cherry there are also two bites, organic and paid listings.

One online company seems to have achieved this lofty goal in fairly short order, namely one worldstores.co.uk.

In an apparently shrinking market of home and garden furniture Worldstores.co.uk is thriving and last year boosted revenue by 70%. So how did they do this?

First some background information.

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