Picking up from where Julian left off on Day 1, I started my day at Earls Court by throwing myself into a seminar on “stories of multichannel marketing success” and started to quickly understand why Julian had been so impressed the day before!

“Consumers now have a megaphone”

Grabbed my attention straight away.  The marketing landscape has changed dramatically. If we only look back to the year 2000 – it is enough to make me feel like I have been part of a pretty impressive revolution! Previously as marketers we all focused on a “push” strategy, we planted ideas in consumers heads, told them what to believe, and what to buy. The interaction was all one way and we just kept on banging our big marketing drums!

Times have changed…

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Technology. It does not like to stand still does it. In fact it makes me smile that if we grabbed someone from ten years ago and dropped him or her in the middle of the Technology for Marketing & Advertising Expo at Earls Court in London… they would probably think they were at least 100 years in the future.

It’s very easy to walk round here and look at some stands and just say ‘Wow, that’s clever’. It’s also very easy to attend some talks that really get your mind racing with the possibilities for your clients… so it’s probably a good job I’m spending today and tomorrow here then!

Thanks to it being painfully slow to get in, I missed the special keynote presentation from Google. From what I could gather, they are saying mobile phones are the future and they were amazed how many people relied on mobile browsing during the ash cloud crisis of 2010.

Anyway, despite missing that talk, here’s what I did manage to listen in on, on day one.

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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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Ok, I’ll be honest with you. Spending an evening in a bar surrounded by ad-industry types while some bloke dressed as a kitten gives a talk is pretty much not high on my ‘fun things to do on a Tuesday evening list’. But the promise of meeting some advertising-types who have a passion for the web kind peaked my interest when Rubber Republic invited me to attend the first KittenCamp in Manchester.

KittenCamp is a monthly meet-up for web-loving ad industry type people to chat memes and drink beer. Why is it called KittenCamp? Well I made the guess that because meme rhymes with creme that’s how the name came about. Sadly after chatting with Chris Quigley, from KittenCamp organisers Rubber Republic, I found out that actually KittenCamp is just the result of a brainstorm in a pub over a few beers.

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Last year, like many brands and organisations, London Fashion Week flirted with Social Media by having event details, links to stories and comments posted on Twitter and Facebook… so far so very 2009!

This year, though, sees London Fashion Week take a great leap forward by embracing even more Social Media technologies and making London Fashion Week open to the masses rather than the privileged few… and they’ve done it in some predictable and also some surprising ways.

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Banksy is probably one of the most famous artists alive. His stencil-style ‘guerrilla’ art became his trademark along with his strong anti-war, anti-capitalist and anti-establishment messages. His first pieces appeared on the streets of Bristol and London in early 90’s and many more have appeared around the world since.

Although his art carries strong political messages they are also quite amusing and daring… in 2006 he left an inflatable doll dress as a Guantanamo prisoner in Disneyland to bring attention to the conditions of the terror suspects. He’s also believed to have smuggled a fake picture he created of a smiling Mona Lisa into the Paris Louver museum and hung it near the real one.

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Integrated agency Red C has won a three-way pitch to expand the role of online marketing for AGA Rangemaster Group, which celebrates the 300^th anniversary of its foundry this year.  The agency has been appointed to work on a number of brands including AGA, Fired Earth, Divertimenti, Falcon, Rayburn, Rangemaster and newly acquired Mercury.

“Each brand represented a very different challenge,” explained Red C Managing Director Adrian Rowe.  “For example, AGA already has a strong social media presence thanks to its passionate customer base and iconic status, whereas Falcon, which benefits from a strong commercial heritage, is aiming to raise its profile with those with a passion for cooking.”  The agency recommended a different blend of PPC, search engine optimisation, social media marketing and e-mail programmes for each brand.

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During the 1980s and 1990s, two giants of the soft drinks world went to war. In the red corner we had the Coca-Cola Company. In the blue corner was PepsiCo. While Coca-Cola would entice us with the ‘New Coke’ before seducing us back again with ‘Classic Coke’; Pepsi used a whole host of pop and movie stars to show us they were the ‘Taste for a New Generation’ and even went as far as demonstrating to us that the average person on the street preferred Pepsi thanks to their ‘Pepsi Challenge’.

Just when we thought the marketing landscape was getting a little dull, we now have a new battle on the horizon. Instead of battling to quench your thirst… this time we have a battle to satisfy your online search needs. Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls… let’s get ready to rumble as Facebook, Google and Microsoft go to war in the battle to become the undisputed heavyweight champion of the search engines.

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