So another year draws to an end, and now’s the time you start looking back at the things that made it memorable. Naturally, being a self-confessed advertising nerd, some of the best moments of this year came in the form of the brilliant advertising campaigns I saw. The ads that made me instantly think ‘awww, I wish I’d done that’. That happened quite a few times in 2012, but I managed to narrow those moments down to five. Take a look below and see if you agree with my selection!
Favourite TV advertising campaign of 2012

From John Lewis’ time travelling ‘Never Knowingly Undersold’ to Paddy Power’s ‘Chav Tranquiliser’, there were lots of TV commercials that grabbed my attention this year. But for me, none of them came close to DirecTV’s hilarious Death by Cable campaign. Why? Because they made loads of TV spots, and they all managed to be hilarious – and that’s some accomplishment.
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Any student looking for a placement will tell you how hard it is. It’s difficult finding time to fill out application forms around assignments, deadlines, and most importantly round your social life – a definite challenge even for the most organised person. You have to be fully committed to the search and really invest time into researching each role and company before you can answer questions, ultimately you have to prove you can jump through hoops in just a couple of pages of A4. (My favourite application question “If you were a biscuit, what biscuit would you be?”.

Selling yourself in.

If you are lucky enough it’s onto the next stage of the process- interviews! Interviews are equally as hard, especially when you are up against other students who study similar degrees. I learnt quickly that you had to really make yourself stand out from other candidates in order to get the job. I did this by highlighting my extensive work experience and extracurricular activities and relating these back to the role. I feel that these areas really helped me in being successful with my application at Red C. An interview is your only opportunity to sell yourself, make a good impression, and persuade why the company to invest in you.

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It’s arrival was hailed as an opportunity to generate tourism and increase economic activity across the UK, so there was no doubt that London 2012 was a once in a lifetime opportunity for businesses to rake in the benefits, so why did it end up causing no end of grief for businesses across the UK?

With the likes of Adidas and Coca-Cola paying copious amounts of money for the privilege of becoming London 2012 official partners, the IOC (International Olympics Committee) created branding laws in order to preserve the exclusivity of these world renowned sponsors. The sole aim of this committee was to ensure no one was using the Olympics brand unless they had paid huge amounts of money for the privilege. Not only had the IOC created a protective layer around the word Olympics, the Olympic symbols and the Games’ mottoes, they also created a legislation against unauthorised association, banning non-sponsors from using images or wording that may suggest a close link to the Games, preventing the unauthorised use of words such as ‘London’, ‘London Twenty Twelve’, ‘Gold’, ‘Silver’, ‘Bronze’ and, most ludicrously, ‘Summer.’ Dubbed by critics as the ‘Brand Police’, the IOC then had the authority to impose whopping great fines of up to £20,000 on anyone that engaged in such activities.

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Advertising agency self-promotion is a wily old beast. Being given carte blanche for a piece of new business dm may seem like a creatives’ dream, but anyone who’s ever had a crack at the perennial Christmas card brief knows that in order to give your agency standout, whatever you come up, no matter how pretty, needs to have some really solid thinking behind it.

And in our case, an injection of something a little bit weirder.

Of course, when I said ‘carte blanche’ I actually was referring to the new double-dip recession version which can be defined roughly as thus: ‘Do what you like, but don’t take the mick’. Fair enough. Blowing the cash for our Christmas party six months before the event wasn’t going to make us popular anyway, so the wooing of potential clients with a personalised Tom-Jones-a-gram was (sadly) out of the question.

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Been to the shops lately? Take a trip and you’ll notice that things aren’t quite as you’d expect them to be. Lots and lots of famous brands have gone all patriotic on us, casting aside their brand guidelines in honour of Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee.

From product packaging being splashed with old Blighty’s red, white and blue to complete product name changes, it seems every brand is jumping on the jubilee bandwagon this summer. The burning question is, who’s done Britain proud and tied their brand to this very special occasion with diligence and honour and who has the potential of being sent to The Tower? Here’s a look at some of the best and worst cases.

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“Utterly disgraceful…disgusting to the point of being nauseating…cheap and disrespectful propaganda!”

It’s fair to say that Daily Mail readers didn’t like it one bit: a 90 second commercial, commissioned by the Argentinian government, showing an Argentinian athlete, training for the Olympic games. No problem with that, you might say. But here’s the rub. This chap (Argentinian Hockey Captain, Fernando Zylberberg to be precise) wasn’t training down his local sports centre. Oh no. He was training in the Falkland Islands capital of Port Stanley, on a war memorial built to honour British servicemen who died in World War 1. Not only that, the ad concludes with the slogan, “to compete on English soil, we train on Argentinian soil.”

And there in lies the problem. The Falkland Islands, as everyone knows, are recognised as a self-governing British Overseas Territory, under British sovereignty (though the Argentinian’s dispute this). The ad was aired following months of political bickering between London and Buenos Aires over the issue. And it’s that slogan which got the normally level-headed and reasonably minded readers of the Daily Mail up in arms.

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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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My evening with John Hegarty started one cold November evening in the centre of Manchester and ended on the snowy slopes of Saas Fee in early Feb. What I thought would be a one night only thing snowballed into early morning meetings, train journeys, evenings on the sofa and even a quick 10 minutes over lunch…..

On that late Thursday evening back in November, Julian Gratton, Managing and Creative Director of Red C, had double booked himself with a Pearl Jam gig or Bradford City game…  some unmissable ‘life or death’ type event. The only problem was he had purchased much-sought after tickets to an ‘Evening with John Hegarty’ held in Manchester’s art museum. After much agency squabbling I got the available ticket and accompanied our Head of Creative to Hegarty’s promotional talk about his newly released book, ‘Turning Intelligence into Magic’.

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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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I have a real love/hate relationship with those emails that pop into my inbox before I even open my eyes in the morning, tempting me to must-buy experiences, weekends away and 10 vibroplate sessions.  These emails may appear harmless, but the promise of self-improvement and gourmet food just proves too hard to resist for me!  And such is the reason for Groupon’s success…

The name Groupon comes from the term “group” and was developed by now CEO, Andrew Mason in 2008.  It grew out of a website called The Point, where you can start a campaign and ask people to participate and deliver action because of the strength in numbers.  Just as the campaigns need a ‘tipping point’ of people to become viable, Groupon needs a certain number of buyers to make the deals valid.  This collective buying gives us the access to the deals which just seem too good to be true.

To date Groupon serves 500 markets and 44 countries.

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