Back when I was a student, there were a couple of songs that everybody seemed to go gaga over. The first was by a band called Stiltskin entitled ‘Inside’ and the other was by an act called Babylon Zoo whose song was called ‘Spaceman’.

Both of these songs are notable for the fact that they became so well known in the UK because they were first aired to the British public via Levi adverts. In the case of Spaceman, the interest in the track resulted in it going straight to number one, where it stayed for five weeks. The track also went to Number 1 in the single charts in twenty-three countries and at the time Babylon Zoo held the record for the fastest selling single for a UK debut artist.

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There has been a scandal at the World Cup and no it doesn’t involve a dodgy penalty decision or some kind of WAG swapping saga. Instead it centres on a group of around 30 scantily clad Dutch ladies who were removed from a game and arrested. Yet it wasn’t their lack of attire that got them into trouble… the crime was them taking part in the dark arts of “ambush marketing”. So what exactly is ambush marketing? Basically, it’s a marketing campaign that takes place around an event but does not involve payment of a sponsorship fee to that event. That means companies taking part in such sneaky tactics benefit from free association while also reducing the effectiveness of any rival brand’s connection to the event.

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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…

On 10th March 2009, the BBC’s Today current affairs radio programme ventured into the world of viral marketing by uploading a video to YouTube. The ‘viral’ – a video that rapidly gains popularity by being distributed and shared on the internet – was created as an experiment to see how widely the three-minute ad could spread in a short amount of time.

As of 31st March 2009, three weeks after being uploaded, Inside Today has been viewed nearly 55,000 times and has been emailed, instant messaged and blog linked across the planet. So far, so good. But the experiment has had its critics, with many questioning whether the Today promotional video can really be defined as viral.

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