Our email marketing skills are doing us proud this year, producing great results for our clients and receiving another three award nominations.

The Jessops campaign has received two nominations: Best Retail Marketing Strategy & Campaign & Best CRM Strategy & Campaign. Whilst our strategy for Swinton has been recognised in the Best Financial Services Marketing Strategy & Campaign category

Now in its third year, the MiAwards identify and highlight the very best in marketing, media and communications agencies, teams and individuals across the whole of the UK.

Which makes our fourth nomination even more special for everyone at Red C towers and something we are all very proud of – North West Marketing Business of the Year.

So all fingers will be crossed on 17^th November and hopefully it wont just be champagne we’re picking up at the Gala Awards ceremony.

Every now and then you come across something so brilliant that it jumps out and demands your attention. When I was recently introduced to the concept of ‘cinemagraphs’, I had one of those moments. Read more…

50+ women would like to have fun with fashion again. That’s what JD Williams discovered when they conducted a research panel with prospects and customers of their That’s My Style brand. So when it came to creating the DRTV ad for the Spring/Summer 2011 collection, making customers feel confident with fashion again was something they were keen to push.

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When Build Center (one of our clients at Wolseley) called us with an urgent brief to spread the word about their £3 loft insulation plus free delivery promotion, we knew we had a real challenge on our hands. Not only did we have just over a week to develop the campaign and roll it out… they wanted us to deliver something a little out of the ordinary to maximise the impact. Cue one Mini, one woman, 17 rolls of loft insulation, a 56-link chainsaw and a 2 minute viral ad. Read more…

I was watching Harry Hill’s TV Burp on Sunday afternoon and it was whilst he was refereeing a fight between a “commercially available instant noodle product and River Cottage’s immediate noodle pot based item” that a rather random thought occurred to me.

What would happen if online marketing was to have a fight with offline marketing? Which one would win? Which one is more effective? Well for me it’s easy. Though I love the more traditional offline forms of marketing I think there is only one winner… and it’s online all the way.

So what am I basing this view on?  Why do I think online marketing is the heavyweight powerhouse of the marketing mix?  Well, my view is very much dictated by four key factors.

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At Red C we were chuffed to bits when we were shortlisted for the NatMag 100 award, which is a new initiative that gives agencies and their clients the opportunity to win a multimedia ad campaign across the entire NatMag portfolio of 24 brands, including Harper’s Bazaar, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, Esquire and Men’s Health.

As part of the NatMag 100 Award, media and creative agencies were invited to devise the most innovative, creative ad campaign for an individual brand, utilising a combination of the brands in the NatMag portfolio and platforms to target women or men in the UK.

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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.

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Music videos have always been a source of cutting-edge creativity and have often been where some of the world’s finest Directors have cut their teeth and built their reputations. And the latest music video from Canadian band Arcade Fire continues this tradition thanks to their music video done in collaboration with Director Chris Silk and Google.

Basically, they have created a music video for the song The Wilderness Downtown that allows the viewer to have a place of their choice featured in the video. To create this personalised music video experience, the video uses Google Maps and has been created in collaboration with Google who have used the project to demonstrate the capabilities of the modern web.

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Small is beautiful. Following on from Julian’s theme of little ideas that can be hugely impactful, one of my favourite street artists, the anonymous Slinkachu, fits neatly into this category.

His on-going microscopic street art project, ‘Little People in the City’, is utterly charming in terms of minimal representation of the human condition. Basically, he custom-designs miniature models from train sets and makes them over with modelling clay hoods etc, plus a few props. After putting them in their own real life scenario, interacting with subjects from Big Ben to bird poo, he then leaves his painted creations to fend for themselves in big bad cities. Poor little people. But not before documenting snapshot evidence of their short-lived existence; i.e. until the street-sweeper swish them away. There’s loads of photos on his website and in book, which is delightful. In fact, it was the most interesting artifact I found in the St Ives Tate Gallery at first visit.

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Here at Red C towers it’s safe to say there are plenty of cake lovers. Now that’s not saying we have lots of fat people here… no it’s just that we appreciate a good bit of cake with a cuppa now and then. Out of all the cakes we love here one type goes down better than most… and that’s the lovely cupcake.

So we were really chuffed to bits when one of our regular freelancers went into business for herself making cupcakes. Top freelance designer, Sarah Wilson, has applied all the wonderful skills she used to show when designing things for print and for the web and applied those same talents to making the most scrummy cupcakes we’ve ever got our gobs round!

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