So imagine this. You’ve been tasked by a major TV Network to promote an animated series with a guerrilla marketing campaign. Your idea is a winner, and involves you sending some electronic devices (that resemble a character from the Aqua Teen Hunger Force) to several major cities so that some hired help can place them in places that have a high footfall.
Then you wake up on the morning of day one of your campaign to hear that a member of the public has spotted one of your devices and thought it weird enough to report it to the police. The police then call the bomb squad asking for help in identifying a device. They then shut down part of a major highway and the public transportation system while they disable what they think is a bomb with a smaller explosive filled with water.
I love billboards. It’s the huge format that captivates me. They’re like giant canvasses placed in the city or at the side of a busy road that scream ‘look at me!’ but only for a few seconds otherwise you may walk into a lamppost or drive into the back of someone else’s car.
Over the years I’ve seen some stunning billboards that have had me turning green with envy. The best ones are those that have words and pictures that work together in such a clever way that they catch the viewer’s attention, communicate quickly, and stay with them for a few miles down the road… and ultimately stick in the back of their mind for a lot longer.
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.
Over the past few years we’ve all had to tighten our belts. People want more for less and supermarkets have reacted to this by focussing their marketing on pushing cheap, value products. In contrast to this being a ‘foodie’ has become more fashionable than ever. From our love of TV programs like Come Dine With Me to the adverts made sexy by that highly annoying M&S lady, everyone is wanting a piece of this pie.
Granted, there have always been fads but now food has a cultural significance of its own. We’d love to be known for being an amazing cook and throwing the best dinner parties around. We feel the need to buy organic products rather than bog-standard own brands and if like me when you get to the counter at the supermarket you probably find yourself checking out the neighbours trolley in a keeping up with the Jones’ style.
The brands that have picked up on this trend have done it with gusto. By making a stylish alliance with their brand they are appealing to women like me who love both fashion and food.
Our client Swinton has over a million customers for which they have an email address and we had been working with them for a few months on some of their product focused emails. We knew that there was much more they could be doing with email marketing and wanted to push the boundaries for them. Our triggered email activity was first discussed in January when we received a nice timely email from Pizza Express offering BOGOF on all pizzas to celebrate the fact that the snow was finally melting and people were now able to get out to eat again. This triggered our own thoughts – “Wouldn’t it be great if our Swinton emails could be a bit more timely and relevant and well…. interesting really!”
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.
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.
If new products can come and go, why can’t the stores that display them do the same? Well they can, and this is known as ‘Pop-up retail’. Over the last year there has been a surge in the pop-up phenomenon. You may ask the question what exactly is pop-up retail? As I discovered, it can only be described as something that is a temporary venue — the space could be a sample sale one day then a host to a private cocktail party the next.
Pop-up retail is specifically an idea or mindset that allows a company to create a unique environment that engages their customers, as well as generates a feeling of relevance and interactivity. The main trend encompasses “popping-up” one day, and disappearing the next – creating a sense of being fresh and relevant – fantastic attributes for any brand. Read more…
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube… not what first springs to mind when you think about politics. But over the last few years, more and more politicians have started using the internet as a tool to drum up political support.
When the Presidential elections in the US got under way in 2008, Democratic candidate Barack Obama used the internet to great effect to raise funds and gain supporters in his race to be President. His success has seen UK politicians follow suit and with the current general election, UK political parties have been pushing their online activities more than ever. Below are some examples of what they’ve been up to:
TV ads. I have to say… I love them. They are the main reason I got into this business in the first place… to create some arresting TV Advertising that my mates might talk about down the pub. One thing that has always infuriated me about TV Advertising, however, has been the inability to really effectively target them like you could other forms of advertising.
Well, it looks like those little niggles I have could soon be a thing of the past, thanks to the thing that has been nicknamed Smart TV. Its real name is Targeted Substitutional Advertising (TSA) and it looks like it could be the thing to deliver accountability and personalisation that digital media advertisers have enjoyed for years.
So imagine this. You’ve been tasked by a major TV Network to promote an animated series with a guerrilla marketing campaign. Your idea is a winner, and involves you sending some electronic devices (that resemble a character from the Aqua Teen Hunger Force) to several major cities so that some hired help can place them in places that have a high footfall.
