Thursday 17th November 2011- why is this such a significant date you may ask? Well I shall tell you. At approximately 11pm on that very day, at the Ramada Jarvis, Manchester, Red C won an MI award for the Best Retail Marketing Strategy on Jessop’s! Whoop! Celebrations all round. You may be thinking that’s fab but what does it mean? Why were we worthy of this win? Well as you read through this you’ll find out the intricate details of what a winning retail marketing strategy involves….

Who are Jessops?
Jessops is the UK’s largest specialist photographic retailer with 208 stores. Visit any of these to enquire about a camera and you’ll leave furnished with a wealth of knowledge and insight about the product in question. However, Jessops’ emails didn’t exude the same enthusiasm, expertise, personality or product range that they offered. This was a key factor in the failure of their emails to convert sales, especially when combined with a design that was dull and uninspiring. In a crowded marketplace, having enthusiastic staff with this level of expertise can be a key differentiator for customers. Jessops needed to make effective use of their emails to communicate this to their database of customers.

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I don’t have a great track record when it comes to April Fools.  Two years ago I greeted my wife by covering my head with tomato ketchup and lying motionless at the bottom of the stairs.  My wife finally started talking to me again on April 4^th.

Last year I had the brilliant idea of playing a prank of Julian.  I called into the office with a fake voice and informed reception that Julian’s precious and beloved Saab had been hit by another car in the car park.  Although Julian fell for it, I have a horrible feeling the last laugh will belong to Julian given his new lofty status as MD!  I’m not expecting a pay rise anytime soon.

Anyway, despite not quite hitting the mark with my April Fools activity over the past two years I’m happy to say that 2011 was different.  As I’m happy to report that I’ve been involved in two April Fool scams for Jessops that have created quite a buzz!

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After undertaking the successful  rebrand of High and Mighty we were tasked with producing a weekly e-newsletter that would be sent to the High and Mighty database.  The newsletter needed to reflect the new look and feel for the brand, as well as promoting the range of products and services available both instore and online.

Red C created a template that incorporated the key elements of the brand which included informative style tips, quirky quotes and added value pieces such as comical Youtube clips. These, combined with a range of products that linked directly to the website created a hardworking yet visually appealing e-newsletter.

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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:

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At Red C we firmly agree with Dr Seuss and what he wrote with regards having fun…“It’s fun to have fun, but you have to know how”. And we certainly had some fun with one of our clients, Swinton Insurance, when we created an email that promoted Alien Abduction Insurance.

Obviously, this isn’t a real product. It was just a bit of fun that we thought we would have on April Fools’ Day. And it was so much fun that the technology news website, Techradar.com, voted our hoax email campaign one of the 10 best April Fools’ Day hoaxes on the web alongside Google’s Animal Translator App and Virgin Media using ferrets to lay broadband cables.

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To entice the Freemans customers online and to get them to start thinking about Christmas early, Red C developed a fun game to provide some theatre around the daunting task of Christmas Shopping.  We developed a charming Rudolph character to deliver various Christmas Gift ‘riddles’ via email to the customer base.

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