Cold nights, crisp mornings, hustle and bustle in all the shops. Yes it’s that time of year again, the time of year the whole agency gets into the Christmas spirit by racking their brains, putting on their festive thinking caps and coming up with some fabulous new ideas for the Red C Christmas card!

It can be a bit tricky coming up with totally new ideas each year for the agency Christmas card. Everyone wants to create an idea that’s witty, quirky and totally different from previous years. And with the incentive of 6 bottles of Champagne up for grabs, we all soon got cracking in our groups to produce some great ideas!

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I’ll admit it to you all… I love Star Wars. And I’d love to have the powers of a Jedi. If I did, I’d use my Jedi mind-trick powers to stop unwanted ad clicks. Or better, I’d use my mind-tricks on an imperial storm trooper and get him to tell people to move along.

Ah well a man can dream… a man can dream.

Google does have a few tools, however, that we can use to help us direct our PPC ads at the people we want to see them and hopefully by-pass the ‘looky loo’s’, saving us money and improving our return on investment.

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Have you heard of Direct Mail packs receiving multiple bids on ebay? I hadn’t either until I searched for ‘Rapha’ on ebay a few weeks ago. Rapha produce super stylish, retro tinged clothing for the road cyclist and is quite an aspirational brand for me. In fact completely aspirational as I don’t own a single piece of their clothing yet! The direct mail pack that was subject to intense bidding on ebay was a simple 16-page leaflet with ravishing full bleed black and white photography, no prices and few words except for the web address and a list of products. It sold for an incredible £8.50. Extraordinary customer behavior by any brand’s standards I think, let alone one that only launched in 2004 with one core product; a super expensive softshell jacket. Did I bid for the DM pack?  Of course not. I already had a copy of my own stashed safely away.

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I’ll be honest with you. I don’t usually spend much time looking round for new artists or unusual pieces of artwork. However last year I came across the artist Emma Hack, and instantly fell in love her work.

She uses body art on human bodies and blends them into detailed backgrounds to create intricate and fascinating photographs. Through a lot of dedication and hard work her career has developed from children’s face painting to makeup artist to a body illustrator.

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Google Analytics is a fantastic FREE tool for showing you everything you would need to know about your website: who’s viewing it, how many are viewing it, what they are looking at, how long they are looking at it and whether your advertising campaigns are working. But with so much information available at your fingertips it’s difficult to see what you should be looking at and how you can use it.

Below is my detailed guide that should help make things clearer. It shows the top reports you can get through Google Analytics and more importantly how they can provide insight that will help when making important business and marketing decisions.

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On a recent scouring of the web for marketing news, I stumbled across this fabulous story about copywriter Alex Brownstein. Fed up of not being able to get in front of some of New York’s finest Creative Directors, he devised a PPC strategy to get himself noticed by the likes of Scott Virtrone and Ian Reichenthal… by playing on that egotistical moment when these guys would Google themselves!

Marketers have for a long time now realised that by focusing on long-tail keywords that have less competition, not only will you pay less per click, but you will also have a higher conversion rate. In fact this conversion rate can be as high as 200% when compared to short-tail, or generic, keywords.

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There’s a strange smell at Red C… and no it’s not even coming from Julian’s gallons of Paul Smith aftershave or Nick’s fish dinners. This week has been a busy one, to say the least but it’s funny how much you learn about your colleagues when you are sat in the studio until late.

Jennie and I passed the hours last night playing the marry or push off a cliff game (ok, I played that game whilst Jennie worked hard being all creative). Tonight whilst searching for appropriate imagery for a very important email, we have discovered that even Wayne falls for Julian’s junk food bribe when push comes to shove. He was found last night indulging in a spicy chicken wing in the Red C canteen.

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Have visitors to your site added items to their basket only to abandon it before checkout? Has someone gone to your ‘request more details’ page only to leave before requesting said details? Has someone rung your doorbell and run away before you could answer?

Well Google can help. Maybe not with the doorbell thing, for that get a dog, a BIG dog… either that or sit behind the door for hours on end just waiting, patiently waiting for that foolish doorbell ringer. For the other problems Google have added a ‘Google Audiences’ tab to your AdWords account.

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The phrase ‘time flies’ is testament to my experience at Red C. It’s been six months since I left and I still miss the place!

Before embarking on my annual festival trip to Glastonbury in the summer of 2008, I was elated to find out I had secured the Junior Account Executive placement. However, panic soon struck! As a student with no relevant, practical business experience I was naturally overwhelmed and nervous as to how I could make a positive contribution to Red C. Those insecurities soon disappeared when I realised I was surrounded by people (both in the account and creative departments) who were willing to help, advise and guide me if need be.

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As fellow marketers it can’t have escaped your attention that the marketing landscape in which we work is changing at an amazing rate.  The way we communicate with our customers isn’t the same as it once was and it is certainly going to continue changing over the forthcoming years.

Traditionally, we have spoken to our customers via direct mail, email, tv, radio and the telephone.  However, due to the boom of social media this one-way communication flow is changing into a more dynamic two-way conversation.

In my view, the major change that has occurred is social media is giving our customers a voice; it’s giving our customer’s power.  So whereas the customer was only able to affect our business through their purchasing behaviour they can now have the power to influence our future by what they say about our brand, product and service offering.  However, although these are undoubtedly exciting times they are times that should be treated with caution as we have very little control as to what our customers say about us and we have even less control over who they speak to.

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