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…

Back in November I attended the NatMag 100 conference at the Saatchi Gallery in London. One of the many interesting talks on the day was by the Future Foundation, who highlighted a few emerging audiences such as Media Madonnas and Digital Divas… audiences who are becoming increasingly hard to sell to thanks to the way they consume their media… essentially these people are disengaged.

It can’t have failed to escape you that over the last few years more and more consumers are becoming disengaged. Many of them sit at home watching the TV with their Smartphone by their side or their laptop or iPad on their knee surfing the web as they catch up on their favourite soaps! In fact it is common knowledge that as a result of this, these consumers are no longer saying, “persuade me and I’ll buy from you” they are saying, “entertain me and I’ll engage with you”.

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A great opportunity to get a postcard pin-up in a blog article

25 – 35 – 35. These are not the vital statistics of some ill-proportioned beauty contest winner. They actually refer to the number of characters we, as Adwords advertisers, have to play with when trying to get a message across to a potential customer.  Needless to say, when it comes to writing Adwords ads, every character counts.

What makes a good ad?

The first and hardest rule is relevance. If your ad is not relevant to your user’s search query you’ll miss out on a lot of potential clicks. So how do you make your ad relevant? Well the first thing to do is ensure your keyword or phrase appears in the ad headline – and once in the content as well, ideally. This will ensure your keyword/phrase appears in bold on the search results page, helping your ad stand out from any non-optimised ones.

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Manchester based full service agency, Red C has created a new 30 second commercial for Hoseasons, starring model, actress and TV presenter Denise Van Outen.  The ad, which airs on Boxing Day is the first time back on our screens for Hoseasons since 2007.

Created by Red C’s Creative Director, Julian Gratton and Copywriter, Stuart Clark, and directed by Chris Gaffey from Mob Films.  The ad sees the Legally Blonde star walk, cycle and dance her way through a variety of different Hoseason holiday properties.

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We’re pleased to announce that Adrian Rowe will become Chairman with immediate effect, leaving Creative Director and Deputy MD, Julian Gratton to take on the full time role of Managing Director of the business.

Adrian Rowe has lived and breathed direct marketing for nearly 30 years, carving out a career first in the home shopping sector with spells at Empire Stores, Next and Great Universal Stores.  After moving agency side in 1991 with Interpublic agency SBW, he helped to found Red C (formerly RSCR) in 1994. His contribution to the industry was recognised in 2001, when he was made an Honorary Life Fellow of the IDM.

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I’ve worked on lots of interesting projects in my short time at Red C, but none have been more exciting than the viral campaign I’ve just finished working on…

I was part of a team that was challenged to promote an offer of free delivery on £3 insulation rolls from the Build Center. Due to the ad being viral, comedy seemed the perfect route, so as we do here at Red C Towers, we scratched our chins until we came up with an idea. Ours focused on one hapless individual with the impossible task of trying to get huge insulation rolls into her car. Rather than give in, this woman’s determination pushes her to incredible (if not a little insane) lengths to ensure she packs her car.

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Red C Account Director, Steve White, he’s a funny one. Not content with banging on about how Spurs are now effectively European champions following their victory over Inter Milan the other week (pffft!), he’s now on the verge of making an even bigger fool of himself with his “online is better than offline” tirade.

The thing is, what Mr White fails to grasp is that Online Vs Offline isn’t a boxing match, or a playground scrap, or a my-dad-is-bigger-than-your-dad-type argument. No, no this is bigger than that. This is about war.

Preparing for battle

See, your online marketing is like your infantry, your ground troops. These are the communications you send in to do a job and report back instantly. And that’s what they do. You send your email, people respond, you get results. Job done. You’re in and out and back home in time for cigars and a debrief.

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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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As forward thinking marketers it is one of our many jobs to seek windows of opportunities, for our clients. We actively seek new ideas and ways, in which brands can be brought into the fore front of customers minds. For our account team, staying ahead of the game for our client, Swinton Insurance, certainly paid off last week.

Working alongside the personal lines marketing team we are always actively looking for what I like to call “windows of opportunities” to push client boundaries and expectations of our agency and ultimately to reach into consumers’ minds.

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A recent Facebook update by a good friend of mine got me thinking a great deal about the creative mind. His update simply said that he was looking forward to reading his son’s story entitled ‘The Adventures of Captain Potato and the Bin of Time’.

I also had with my 11-year-old son stay over this weekend, and again was amazed at how his mind works, how he is intrigued about everything, and is capable of such bizarre trains of thought that lead to some incredibly daft conversations.

With both my son and my friend’s son there will no doubt come a time when the most common phrase they hear will be ‘grow-up!’ They’ll hear it from their teachers, fellow classmates, other adults and as they get older, their colleagues…. Which if they are not careful, could hinder the creative sides of their brains.

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