Imagine it’s a Monday night and you’re sat on the sofa watching Coronation Street. Roy Cropper is cooking up 2 Walls sausages on Warburton’s bread with a dollop of Heinz ketchup for Steve McDonald. Normally we wouldn’t know which brands Roy uses in his cafe, nor see any brands at all on the street – except for fake ones like Newton & Ridley ale in the Rovers Returns! But this could soon be the future of your favourite soap thanks to the new ruling by the Government to allow product placement on UK television.
Product placement is a form of advertising that uses branded products or services placed in a context devoid of adverts – like a TV programme or a film. Previously the government had always denied commercial broadcasters the ability to take payment in return for placing products on screen; however earlier this year Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw announced that the Government would be allowing it for the first time in television programmes.
As we all know, in any relationship, it’s the small things that matter. Yet what many people don’t realise is that it’s not only in our personal relationships that small things can have a big effect… they can also have a similar result in the relationships marketers, brands and companies have with their customers or business partners.
And why do small things matter? Well, as anyone who has ever bought a girl flowers knows; something small but effective can have a kind of result that is absolutely out of proportion to the cost.
When I was a kid I had a friend who lived next door whose dad was in the Territorial Army. The best thing, as far as I could see, about having a dad in the Territorial Army was that he would come home on a weekend in an old Army Land Rover… an Army Land Rover that was perfect for firing-up our boyhood imaginations.
You see, this was not just any Land Rover in our eyes… it was a Nazi Land Rover! A Nazi Land Rover carrying the Ark of the Covenant to a secret lair where it would be opened in some bizarre ritual. Cue then lots of walking down the side, sliding underneath and jumping on top of this battered old vehicle as my friend and I took it in turns to be in intrepid archaeologist… Indiana Jones!
At the beginning of every year marketing experts begin to predict what they think will be the next big thing in marketing and advertising. In the past we have had the year of the mobile, the year of Twitter and the year of Social Marketing. Yet in 2011 in the UK, it could be that it’s not something new and technologically advanced that is the next big thing but something tried and trusted… the VAT-free direct mail pack.
Thanks to George Osborne’s planned rise in VAT on 4th January from 17.5% to 20%; it could be that the marketing departments for financial services clients turn to the good old VAT-free pack to help stretch their budget further.
Monopolies are a bad thing, we all know that. It is a universal truth that greater consumer choice creates competitive pricing, innovative products and a fairer world for all. Giant corporations that merge, acquire, undercut and annihilate their way to total domination are looked upon with fear and distaste. I remember, as a student, reading ‘No Logo’ by Naomi Klein and being enraged by the plight of the independent coffee shops, delicatessen’s and family run enterprises that had been crushed by the giant corporations.
As a result I, like most people, have an instinctive predilection to root for the plucky underdog as a response to the dominance of a competitor. It is this basic human instinct that companies like Virgin, Apple and Airbus have used to their advantage to become the global corporate giants they are today. In all areas of my life I will always give the little guy my business, even if it takes more of my time and comes at a premium. All areas, that is, except for the search engine I use. When I’m looking for anything online I’ll always choose Google.
There has been a scandal at the World Cup and no it doesn’t involve a dodgy penalty decision or some kind of WAG swapping saga. Instead it centres on a group of around 30 scantily clad Dutch ladies who were removed from a game and arrested. Yet it wasn’t their lack of attire that got them into trouble… the crime was them taking part in the dark arts of “ambush marketing”. So what exactly is ambush marketing? Basically, it’s a marketing campaign that takes place around an event but does not involve payment of a sponsorship fee to that event. That means companies taking part in such sneaky tactics benefit from free association while also reducing the effectiveness of any rival brand’s connection to the event.
Before I start this blog, I’ve set myself some ground rules. Simply because I know there are lots of blog postings, articles and galleries on the web dedicated to really funky and creative business cards. There is nothing wrong with these cards… it’s just that one of my biggest niggles about fancy business cards is that they don’t fit in my business card holder, or my wallet for that matter!
Ok that may be a bit old fashioned of me. But I like my business card holder. It serves the lovely purpose of holding lots of business cards that I can flick to in an instant. The only problem with it is that if the card is larger than 3.5 × 2 inches… I have to get the scissors out, or it just gets lost. And until someone invents a business card app for my iPhone, I’m going to stick to paper.
About six and a half years ago I gave up smoking, having smoked for well over ten years. Giving up was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life, and I take great pride in the fact that I did it without the help of plastic cigarettes, patches or funny-tasting gum.
To a certain extent I quite miss smoking. I used to love the chats that I had with Jim, Neil and Nick in the dingy smoking room. I used to love lighting up after a really good meal and savouring the tobacco with a coffee or Cognac. More than anything, though, I loved the advertising… that was until the Labour Party introduced the legislative bill known as the ‘Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act 2002’.
Google Analytics is a fantastic FREE tool for showing you everything you would need to know about your website: who’s viewing it, how many are viewing it, what they are looking at, how long they are looking at it and whether your advertising campaigns are working. But with so much information available at your fingertips it’s difficult to see what you should be looking at and how you can use it.
Below is my detailed guide that should help make things clearer. It shows the top reports you can get through Google Analytics and more importantly how they can provide insight that will help when making important business and marketing decisions.
Our recent farce of a general election, where the bottom half of the UK turned blue and the top half red and yellow with some orange dotted around in between, brought it home to me how different the UK is and how we have gone back more to being four separate countries more than any time in our recent past. This has implications for us as marketers I believe that we need to take into account more.
Having spent the run up to, and the actual election, in Scotland it proved a very interesting experience. Travelling up through the country from Cambridgeshire – true blue agricultural East Anglia – into Yorkshire, Cumbria and then most of the length of Scotland, the blue conservative banners disappeared and the yellow banners (not of the Lib Dems) but of the SNP, started to appear everywhere. Talking to Scottish friends, they feel very nationalistic and have no interest at all about what goes on in Westminster, identifying very strongly with the SNP and indeed that was borne out in the actual election result.
Imagine it’s a Monday night and you’re sat on the sofa watching Coronation Street. Roy Cropper is cooking up 2 Walls sausages on Warburton’s bread with a dollop of Heinz ketchup for Steve McDonald. Normally we wouldn’t know which brands Roy uses in his cafe, nor see any brands at all on the street – except for fake ones like Newton & Ridley ale in the Rovers Returns! But this could soon be the future of your favourite soap thanks to the new ruling by the Government to allow product placement on UK television.
