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.
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.
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.
Over the course of the last two years I have been involved in several conversations regarding what we should do with dormant or unresponsive email subscribers. These conversations have always been rather enjoyable due to the complex nature of the issue.
One side of the argument has always been that once an email address has been dormant or unresponsive for 6 to 12 months then it is quite right to remove the address from the email file but I tend to sit on the opposite side of the fence.
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.
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.
My name is Steve White. I’ve had an accident and I’ve woken up in 1982. Am I mad, in a coma or have I gone back in time…. or has the advertising world gone nostalgia mad!?! Well, although my wife will certainly vouch for madness. I can confirm that the latest trend in advertising is leading me to have my very own ‘Ashes to Ashes’ moment.
It simply can’t have escaped your attention as to just how many big British retailers have gone ‘nostalgic’ with their campaigns over the last year or two. M&S, Persil, Virgin, Hovis, Milky Way and John Lewis have all used campaigns that hark back to their past. But why are so many brands going down this creative route? Why are so many brands looking back and not looking forward?
If I had a pound for every time a client asked “Are we emailing our customers too much?” I would be a very rich man. However, if I had a pound for every time a client asked if we were sending too much direct mail or are we broadcasting our TV or radio adverts too much then my bank balance would be no different.
Did the marketing team behind the infuriatingly more-ish Go Compare campaign debate whether their adverts were being shown too much during peak times? I very much doubt it. On New Years’ Eve 2008 did Pepsi worry that they were going a little over the top when they launched their new logo with a week-long ‘promotional extravaganza’ in Times Square. Of course they didn’t. So why do email marketers continually question their strategy when it comes to frequency and volume?
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.
