At the moment we seem to be getting more and more Olympic related advertisements as the country gears up to the London 2012. With so much money thrown behind sponsorship deals and having athletes as brand spokespeople, you’d think there would be one campaign that would impress. Yet, the campaign that has most impressed me this year has to be the marketing activity being conducted on behalf of Sir Ridley Scott’s forthcoming movie ‘Prometheus’.

Now I’ll be honest with you. I don’t have that much interest in the Olympics, and I am a big movie fan… so my views are probably biased. Yet as an ‘Ad Man’, I am genuinely in awe with what I am seeing created to raise awareness of Prometheus. Now forget about the flashy website and the teaser trailers and international trailers that come attached to any movie release… what I want to highlight are some of the cute and clever things that have been done to raise awareness of what will probably be one of the year’s biggest films.

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If you’re like me you probably receive a lot of emails, however being an email marketer I sign up to every email going. When opening my Outlook on a morning I usually hit the delete button on most of my emails unless the subject line is really enticing and jumps out at me.

Two years ago, the volume of emails sent was around 247 billion worldwide each day and it has been predicted that this will double by 2013 to 507 billion messages sent every day. So the question is, how do you combat the competition and really stand out in people’s inboxes? Well, there are many different strategies you can use to approach this and one of these is the power of personalisation. When done well it can achieve high engagement from the recipient, delivering a relevant and personalised marketing message in a way that isn’t achievable in any other medium.

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I’m coming to the end of my placement at Red C now and what an experience it has been! Since my last blog before Christmas we’ve been kept busy and I have thoroughly enjoyed being kept on my toes. However, as I start to catch a breath through a slightly quieter time I can really reflect on some of the things I have been lucky enough to experience whilst being here at Red C.

Something which I enjoy about my role here is the development of my creative side. I’ve always enjoyed creative writing and although I’m not artist I like to make and create things. Something which I didn’t really expect was that observing creative processes would develop the way I think about things and although the role I am in is production based I’ve had some cracking opportunities to be creative.

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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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For an online retail store the top spot of a search engine results page for any product you sell is the holy grail of online marketing, it is like having the prime spot on the high street or the biggest and best shop in the mall. Of this lucrative cherry there are also two bites, organic and paid listings.

One online company seems to have achieved this lofty goal in fairly short order, namely one worldstores.co.uk.

In an apparently shrinking market of home and garden furniture Worldstores.co.uk is thriving and last year boosted revenue by 70%. So how did they do this?

First some background information.

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As a designer, there are a few skills I’m required to have. Coming up with new and exciting ideas, bringing those ideas to life and generally making things look pretty. However, never in my career have I had to showcase psychic powers and predict the future to be able to do my job, that is, until I started working with @mediaquery.

What is @mediaquery?

@mediaquery is a relatively new feature of CSS which can be used to dictate how a website or email renders on particular sized screen such as a mobile device or desktop computer. I won’t bog you down with the details, but basically the way @mediaquery works is that the code is hidden in the email and only comes to life when it detects that your screen is below a certain size. As soon as it detects that you’re using a device with a smaller screen, it switches on the hidden code which manipulates and overrides elements of the email, changing its look and structure to suit the smaller screen.

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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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Foreign restaurants are an absolute goldmine for bad spelling. Most of us have enjoyed a giggle at the ‘innovative’ dishes that pop up on menus in exotic climes… like the ‘friend eggs and tose’ I had for breakfast in Thailand, for example. Delicious it was too.

In this context, typos are funny, endearing and completely forgivable; they don’t negatively affect your opinion of the restaurant or the quality of the service you expect to receive. But what about when you visit a new business online? If you’ve got no prior knowledge of the company, how do you feel if you open their website and it’s full of spelling mistakes and bad grammar? Bet you’d be more suspicious than I was tucking into my friend eggs… Read more…

It’s less than a week to go until our new campaign for cottages4you and VisitEngland is launched, so we thought it would be a good opportunity to look back on everything we’ve achieved – boy has it been a whirlwind few months!

This project started over 6 months ago, when we were asked to pitch for a joint campaign with cottages4you and VisitEngland. That in itself presented quite a challenge: 2 separate clients each with a different objective. It meant we really had to put our heads to together to come up with a cracking ad that essentially met 2 briefs! We knew it would be tricky but we couldn’t wait to start.

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We have a rule at Red C.  If you attend an event, seminar or conference you must share your learnings and experiences with your colleagues and clients via a blog article.   So here is my report on Day 1 of the ECMOD Direct Commerce Show.

Power Panel – Where is the growth?

Speakers; Aamir Ahmad, MD, Dwell; Gerald Dawson, CD, Long Tall Sally; Kevin Hague, Partner, M8; Joe Murray, Founder, Worldstores; Nigel Swabey, CEO, Scotts & Co; Nick Wheeler, Chairman, Charles Tyrwhitt

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