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.

Read more…

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

Read more…

Picking up from where Julian left off on Day 1, I started my day at Earls Court by throwing myself into a seminar on “stories of multichannel marketing success” and started to quickly understand why Julian had been so impressed the day before!

“Consumers now have a megaphone”

Grabbed my attention straight away.  The marketing landscape has changed dramatically. If we only look back to the year 2000 – it is enough to make me feel like I have been part of a pretty impressive revolution! Previously as marketers we all focused on a “push” strategy, we planted ideas in consumers heads, told them what to believe, and what to buy. The interaction was all one way and we just kept on banging our big marketing drums!

Times have changed…

Read more…

After all the pigging out over the festive period, lots of us are worrying about our expanding waist belts, cursing the extra mince pies on our hips and making New Year’s resolutions to hit the gym and get our bodies back in shape in time for our Easter holiday. But looking around, maybe we don’t need to keep striving to achieve that washboard stomach. Maybe fat is the new thin? Maybe it’s time you discovered the world of Marketing to the larger lady.

It seems like curves are in fashion all of a sudden. We’re seeing a growing trend in the use of plus-size models on the runways, in magazines and as part of advertising campaigns. And according to Yildiz Blackstone, the president of Luca Luca, “fashion is cyclical, but this is a trend that is going to stay… it is healthy to have curves.”

Read more…

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…

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?

Read more…

No matter how hard you may have tried, not many people managed to escape the ‘Big Freeze’ that hit Britain a couple of weeks ago. The whole country pretty much came to a standstill when snow and ice covered the UK, in what was some of the worst weather we’ve seen in thirty years.

Businesses and schools across the country were forced to close when roads became impassable and public transport ground to a halt. Even us hardy folk at Red C struggled to get into the office, with only those that come on foot making it here. With so many people off work, you’d have thought the high street would be bustling, but figures from Footfall indicate that shopper numbers on 5th January were down 13.5% on last year. 53 of the 285 stores in Meadowhall shopping centre, Sheffield were closed on this day, and The Trafford Centre in Manchester only managed to open half of its stores and restaurants - before closing the entire complex at 4pm. Read more…

Marketing is not a nostalgic business. With the constant emergence of new technologies, advertisers need to keep bang up to date to avoid being left behind. Just think back a year. At the beginning of 2009, Twitter was still a relatively niche social network, Spotify wasn’t yet available to the general public and search engine Bing didn’t even exist. One year on and all these technologies may be fundamental to creating a successful advertising campaign.

So what’s next? What will the ‘big thing’ of 2010 be? Well, I’m not going to try and predict that, but I will tell you what will make the next ‘big thing’ happen – and that’s the Ubiquitous Network. In fact, I’m confident it’ll change the future of advertising and marketing forever…

Read more…

I love shopping online. I can do it from the comfort of my home, not having to rush from shop to shop and then back to the first shop again, deal with fitting room queues or worry about buying something before closing time. If I have something in particular in mind then it’s also great being able to search for it with the whole internet at my fingertips and specify what price, colour or brand I want. And I’m not the only one! According to Nielsen over 875 million of us have shopped online, with that number increasing 40% from two years ago. And despite falls in sales on the high-street, online shopping has seen a 13% rise on 2008 with the most popular purchases being Books, Clothing & Accessories, DVDs & Games, Tickets and Electronic Equipment.

But shopping online can sometimes be a bit solitary. It doesn’t replace going shopping on the high street with your friends and picking out clothes together and it doesn’t replace the buzz you get from having loads of shopping bags full of new things that you can’t wait to try on again at home. So that’s why online shopping had to evolve into something more visually and socially appealing. And with the boom in social networking sites and niche communities social shopping was born.  OSOYOU was one of the first online shopping communities and was launched in 2007. It acts as an aggregator of fashion and beauty products with 49 of the top retailers on there. But shoppers can also create their own profile, chat with each other in forums and drag products into their own “style file” to show off their most wanted items.

Read more…

Believe it or not, Mahatma Gandhi is a bit of a hero of mine. I forget how many times I’ve said to people “Be the change you want to see in the world”… which I always confess is stolen from the great man himself.

One of the lovely things about Social Networking is how it has galvanised people into creating interest groups with the aim of creating change in the world. A quick search on Facebook under Darfur reveals one kind fellow promising to give $1 to every 1,0000 people who join his Facebook group.

Although such campaigns have the best intentions, you never really get to see whether they have worked or not, mainly because these groups have such lofty ambitions. There are, however, Social Networking sites out there that have a better plan… a plan that involves changing the world one small piece at a time.

Read more…