Gray & Osbourn, a leading niche clothing brand in the UK premium home shopping market, have appointed Red C to expand the role of online marketing and broaden the brands appeal to attract new, younger online customers. The business was founded as a division of Selfridges in 1989 and is now owned by the N Brown Group. Red C won the business in a 5 way pitch that included the incumbent and came down to a final 2-way shoot-out.

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Spurs 5 - Arsenal 1. Get in!

My school years are long behind me now, but I still have one or two memories of those days that I recall with fondness, now and again.  Bunking off double geography with Sarah Kirsopp when I was 16 is one. The other is a conversation I had with the 6^th Form’s Career Officer, Mr Kennedy.

The conversation started with a question we’ve all probably been asked.

“What do you want to do when you leave school?”

My enthusiastic response wasn’t greeted with the warmth or indeed excitement that I anticipated.

“Don’t be ridiculous White!  How on earth do you expect to be centre forward for Tottenham Hotspur?”

I left that meeting thinking to myself, “I’ll prove Mr Kennedy wrong, I’ll show you.  Mark my words”.

To be fair, whilst I haven’t completely given up on the dream, I have to admit it looks like Mr Kennedy was right.  But it’s not all doom and gloom.  Today I have actually found something I genuinely like doing.

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Have you ever read Nineteen Eighty-Four? It’s about an everyman living under an oppressive totalitarian regime. The ‘proles’ are kept in a controlled state of poverty, living under almost constant surveillance and being ‘educated’ on a daily basis to believe in the inherent good of their government and the inherent evil of others. All in all, it’s a terrifying fiction. Well, if you can call it that. In fact, the regime in the novel closely resembles many real-life regimes of the twentieth century. And, much like the citizens of George Orwell’s dystopian world, the billions of human beings living under these govenments were mostly genuine and wholehearted believers. Their corrupt leaders successfully brainwashed  them into thinking they were living the good life, even while terrible things (war, poverty, oppression) happened all around them. There’s no denying it’s an impressive feat. Yet you can’t help but wonder: how on earth did they do it?

Consider Adolf Hitler for a second. Just how did a small man with a silly moustache convince a nation of perfectly ordinary people to revere his Nationalsozialist Party, to give erstwhile chums up to concentration camps and to greet the promise of aggressive war with arms wide open?

Through manipulative, powerful advertising campaigns – that’s how. He may have been a cold-hearted, hate-filled Nazi git, but Hitler was an undisputed master of propaganda.

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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.

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It’s fair to say over the last year and a half our campaign for the Swinton Mystery Tipper has racked up a few awards. Two DMA Awards, two ISP Awards, an IDM Business Performance Award, a B2B Marketing Award and now the icing on the cake… two IPA Effectiveness Awards!

The IPA Effectiveness Awards are recognised by agencies and clients as Adland’s most rigorous awards scheme because entrants have to prove to a jury of experienced clients that their communications strategies have worked in hard business terms.

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We’ve had some pretty big books in reception over the last couple of weeks, so thanks to Tracey Gibbs and her fab collection of photography books… we have a tiny one this time. But don’t let the size fool you… these photographs are as amazing as any of the ones you may have seen in those big books!

Mick Williamson makes small, intimate photographs; with an intuitive feel for light, contrast and texture, he captures the fleeting moments of everyday life, finding beauty in the smallest scenes and details.

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It was billed as creative flair versus strategic nous. Those blokes in jeans and trainers versus those guys in suits. It was a hard fought match… for fifty minutes the game was too close to call, but a late flurry by Creative sealed victory for the boys with Macs and sent the PC guys running home with their tails between their legs.

With the help of some Precision Burner energy drinks saved up from a pitch for EAS… Creative were primed to take this game by the horns from the kick off. But credit to Account Handling… they were more than our equal for a long time and even took the lead a few times which only spurred on my brave warriors… dressed in black and playing like footballing Ninjas… we raised our game and produced some wonderful flowing football.

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Have Pixar ever made a bad movie? I don’t think so. Couple of average ones (Cars, A Bug’s Life) perhaps, but no real duffers. In fact, I reckon pretty much all of their output is undeniably outstanding. And 22 Academy Awards, 4 Golden Globes, and 3 Grammys says I’m not the only one. Needles to say I was well up for Up.

What I love about Pixar flicks is the way they transcend generations. On the surface they’re kids films, movies full of wonder, colour and laughter. Yet just below the surface lurk some quite (and sometimes heavy), adult themes. Sibling rivalry in Toy Story; separation and parenthood in Finding Nemo; family dynamics and depression in The Incredibles; abandonment in Toy Story 2. I could go on. Up is no different.

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I like handy guides… especially ones that stay with you for years because of how incredibly useful they are. One such guide is Alan Rosenspan’s 101 ways to improve your response, which quite frankly borders on being invaluable!

In the guide, which you can download here, Mr Rosenspan shares with us little tips that prompt people to respond to Direct Marketing communications… thus increasing the effectiveness of marketing spend.

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Direct mail may still hold a slender lead as the most dominant form of Direct Marketing, but things are definitely changing. Recent technological developments are giving marketers more and more opportunities to get their message directly to their audience. In years to come both mobile marketing and social networking may be the most effective forms of Direct Marketing, but right now the biggest rival to the DM pack is undoubtedly email marketing.

The practice of contacting customers and prospects through email has really taken off in recent years. In fact, The Direct Marketing Association estimated that US firms alone spent over $400 million on email marketing in 2006 – and the technique has only grown in popularity since. The reason for this is simple… email marketing has a number of benefits over traditional DM and door drops. Read more…