With a background in design, later followed by psychology, my decision to explore advertising surfaced with the desire for creativity and a keen interest in human behaviour. So after hours of people watching and doodling I thought I’d study the subject in more depth, and went back to Uni to do a psychology of advertising MSc.

Psychology of advertising explores the many aspects associated with how ads are designed and executed, in order to effectively influence consumer buying behaviour. This might include various cognitive functions such as attention, perception and memory, as well as cultural and behavioural factors that drive our decision-making processes.

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How do you feel when you see an established brand name baffle you with a new product? One that’s not associated with the infamous brand name you know and love?  Well, you either trust the brand name enough to love the product, or you’re completely baffled, wondering how on earth the product has anything to do with the brand name!

Sometimes, even the most tenuous link between brand and product can actually work rather well – who would have thought that a musical instrument manufacturer Yamaha could become such a successful motor vehicle company?  Or that Coca-Cola lip balm would really take off?  But with every successful idea that sends a product soaring off the shelves comes another brand’s dismal failure at extending their name into a new field – welcome, reader, to the fabulous world of brand extension.

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This year is the 25^th anniversary of a very significant event for me, an event that has led directly to me being here today.

In 1986, as a young direct marketer working for home shopping giant GUS, I was lucky enough to attend the Montreux Symposium, on the Lake Geneva shoreline (as Deep Purple put it).  At the time, the week-long Symposium was the biggest event in Europe for the direct marketing industry, and attracted some major speakers.  But for me, the single most significant session, one that profoundly affected my approach to direct marketing, was a ground-breaking live demonstration and seminar by Professor Siegfried Vogele, founder of the Institute of Direct Marketing in Munich that is now owned by Deutsche Post.

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The use of eye tracking in the research environment is growing significantly as a result of major advances in the sophistication, power and ease of use of the technology, according to Tommy Strandvall, the Global Training Manager for Tobii Technology at the international eye tracking conference held in London on the 9^th and 10^th of June.  Certainly, there was a real buzz about the conference on the day that my colleague Rosemary and I attended as speakers to deliver a session on findings from a major email eye tracking study that Red C is undertaking in 2011.

In fact, Tommy set a very high bar with his own presentation at the opening of the second day of the conference, with some remarkable live demonstrations of beta technologies, including a much-anticipated Tobii set-up to eye track mobile devices such as smartphones and iPads.  We enjoyed a live demonstration of Tobii Glasses, a lightweight eye tracker capturing data on a device not much bigger than a smartphone.

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At the weekend I got a whole day to myself. No errands to run, no one coming round to see me. It was a rare treat I was determined to make the most of. So what did I do with my time? I got in some online gaming of course.

You see I’m from a generation who have been brought up on a healthy diet of video games. From the illustrious original Nintendo to the not so well known Sega Dreamcast – I’ve played them all. So it comes as no surprise that when I heard about the Gamification of the web and the positive effect it is having for businesses, I had to find out more.

So just what is Gamification?

Gamification is the idea that you can apply the elements that make games fun and engaging to things outside of a game environment… like your standard company or ecommerce website. It’s a technique that is becoming increasingly popular as more and more consumers become addicted to games such as Farmville and enjoy participating in social apps like Foursquare.

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The last time a future King got married I was only seven years old, and to be honest I was probably too busy playing with my X-Wing to care about watching some stupid wedding. However, 750 million people apparently didn’t think it was stupid and tuned in on their TV sets to watch Charles and Diana walk down the aisle.

I’ll be honest with you; this whole marriage of William and Kate isn’t something that I’ll be tuning in to watch on the TV. But having discovered how much effort is going into the social media activity for the wedding, I will be taking a look at how things run on the big day… purely out of professional curiosity.

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Comic Relief is arguably the highlight of charitable TV marathons in the UK, and has been since its inception in 1985. Originally, fundraising for the event was focused around buying red noses and getting sponsored for sitting in a bath of beans.  But that was then and now things are done a little differently. Despite the financial pressures of a recovering economy affecting everyone, this year’s total broke all previous records. Were the British public particularly eager to part with their cash? Or could social media have played a part in helping them reach such a grand total?

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As marketers we don’t expect things to stand still. We’re always searching for new trends and ready to try new channels and methods to get our client’s brands out to the consumer market.

Facebook is one of those channels that doesn’t stay still for long. 2010 saw the launch of Facebook Places. Now not far into 2011 and we’ve already seen the launch of Facebook Deals, with the likes of Debenhams, Starbucks and Mazda all jumping straight on the bandwagon. But I think one thing every marketer should be keeping a close eye on over the coming months is the new Facebook Messages.

There has been much speculation since Mark Zuckerburg announced his plans in November 2010, both as to what this means for Facebook users and more importantly for us, how it is going to affect the way we market to them. Some think it won’t make much difference, yet others are heralding it as ‘the end of email’. Whatever your personal opinion or business agenda, it is now gradually being rolled out to all Facebook users, and a few of us at Red C have been testing it out.

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Technology. It does not like to stand still does it. In fact it makes me smile that if we grabbed someone from ten years ago and dropped him or her in the middle of the Technology for Marketing & Advertising Expo at Earls Court in London… they would probably think they were at least 100 years in the future.

It’s very easy to walk round here and look at some stands and just say ‘Wow, that’s clever’. It’s also very easy to attend some talks that really get your mind racing with the possibilities for your clients… so it’s probably a good job I’m spending today and tomorrow here then!

Thanks to it being painfully slow to get in, I missed the special keynote presentation from Google. From what I could gather, they are saying mobile phones are the future and they were amazed how many people relied on mobile browsing during the ash cloud crisis of 2010.

Anyway, despite missing that talk, here’s what I did manage to listen in on, on day one.

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A great movie tagline

I’m not afraid to admit that I’m a big film buff, I’ll hold off on going as far as to call myself a Geek… but let’s put it this way; if you came up against me in a movie quiz I’d quite happily put money against me beating you.

One thing I love just as much as the movies, however, is some of the increasingly clever ways that we are told of a movie’s impending release. From some great copy lines to superb looking adverts to online viral campaigns that play with you; here are a few of my favourite campaigns… feel free to share some of your favourites too!

A simple start… a great line of copy

Before we get into all this new fangled web stuff I thought I would share with you my absolute hands down favourite copy line of any movie poster I have ever seen. Yes, to me it really is that good. And it’s a line of copy that is widely accepted to have contributed to a huge rise in ticket sales for what was essentially a B-movie.

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