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Britain’s Greatness

22 Sep

I was en route home from another meeting heavy day in London and reading The Times this evening when I stumbled across an article on a new campaign by Mother, promoting Great Britain. (Note I’d link you to the article but I dont pay The Times subscription fee – a similar article can however be found on the Metro.

In both articles they report a negative reaction to the new campaign, designed at getting overseas visitors onto our shores, pulling apart the campaigns portrayal of GB citing the big complaint at intending to get

“people to think, British people are the most talented in the world. That’s wonderful, I’ll come’ The alternative is that they will think: ‘Says who? I’m from the United States and I think we’re better”. – The Times.

Mother's latest ad campaign

This is a valid point. Yes, the advertising undoubtedly reeks of us Brits going out there and boldly claiming that Creativity, knowledge, heritage, music, sport, entrepreneurs, innovation, shopping, green and countryside is Great (Britain) . And yes, by claiming they’re great appears to claim by default that we’re superior but, let’s be honest, all advertising is self-obsessed “look how great our product is” in one way or another, more so when it comes to travel. Let’s take a reality check perhaps you just wouldn’t meet many Americans anywaywho dont believe we are a nation of pompous old fools who believe in an empire, wear tweed and definately think we have the upper hand.

David cameron on the other hand, defends the two-thirds publically funded campaign

In 2012 there will be only one place to be. There are so many great things about  Britain and we want to send out the message loud and proud that this is a great  place to do business, to invest, to study and to visit – David Cameron IN Metro

Yes David, I agree with all of the above but to then state that its a great way to counteract the rioting picture,  showcase modern Britain and celebrate Olympic excitement  (which is increasingly creeping up on us like a corporate wicked witch) is definately not the case.

No it doesn’t address Britain as a multi-cultural destination, it doesn’t challenge perceptions or showcase the reasons why Britain should be a must-visit destination in recession hit times. It simply reads as a conceited CV of someone you wouldn’t employ. A list of all of our Greats and no acknowledgement of the human qualities that actually make Britain great and totally unique. The family-owned bakery, the old man’s pub (if you can find one), the iconic curry house, the crazy man on the corner and the fish and chips on the pier. In keeping it Grand  we’ve lost the reality and charm that people do fall in love with.

Maybe the line should have been “Holidaying is Great <Britain>” – cue picture of suitable old guy propping up the bar with fag in hand and guiness in the other. Actually scrap that. There is no bar, there is a smoking ban and, god forbid, we even start to suggest binge drinking…..!

Another terrible campaign… this time its No7

5 Feb

So after I declared my hatred of the irritating pantene/cat deeley/swissh campaign I was upset this morning to see another ad that appears to be a direct copy.

Dont upload a swish, upload a wink….. *yawn*

- these ads are so similar I’m sure the same concept boards could have almost been used.

That said Boots have at least made some positive changes within their exquisite curl campaign…

  • The campaign URL is more memorable
  • They allow video and photo uploads
  • The campaign sits within Facebook allowing user interaction with the brand, and the brand is responding quickly
  • The prizes, although low value, are encouraging trial by proving lots of product winners

And No7, despite your terrible advertising, I’ll still buy your mascara – because it’s good, not because of a wink, and an exquisite curl sample would be lovely ;-)

Pantene Swissh – The most annoying ad on TV?

19 Oct

It’s probably either testament to me being a core target for Pantene or evidence of how much crap TV I watch that the Pantene (and Cat deeley) Swissh ad seems to be hitting me everytime I hit the remote control. As I sat this morning watching New America’s Next Top Model it hit me yet again and, rather than cringe at Cat Deeley’s terrible “Swwwwissssh” voice over, with laptop poised and ready,  I thought I’d check out the website that Cat keeps telling me to look at – more out of marketing curiosity as opposed to learning how to swish my locks.

The first stumbling block, and marketing error – make the URL easy for the consumer to remember (and type)… I went online and typed in the URL as I heard from Cat ”Visit make a swish dot com”

Nothing there…

Error 2 – make sure you make it easy for users to find the ad if they dont remember the URL. Surely if you’re spending a huge chunk of TV budget you can afford some PPC advertising around some of the key terms swish, Pantene, Cat Deeley….. I googled Pantene Swish, thinking this was the obvious, and went to the brand site (top result) – I reached a static page about swishing and was shocked that a TV ad was backed up by 3 steps on how to swish – surely there had to be more?! Error 3 – There was more content (see later), just not linked from that site!

Determined I rewound on the SKY PLUS to double check the URL on screen (Error 4 – how many consumers would really do that!)  and realised that the voiceover of “visit make a swish” was slightly misleading… It should have been

  Make, hyphen, a, hypen, swissh with two s dot com.

Not quite as catchy…

Once there the campaign site has a lot more content from both the brand, and consumers. I wont review it’s challenging usability, nor the relevancy of the content back to the brand but it appears to have some impact with 995 swisshes uploaded and 17k views (Visited Oct 2010). In terms of KPIs I dont know what they would have intended but, considering the media backup that this campaign is getting, and based on the sort of KPIs I know I would set for this type of campaign media spend,  this seems to be at face value a disappointing level of interactions – although without seeing the figures or final ROI I can’t really comment!

I think the key challenge with this campaign is what makes the content interesting – whilst uploading a swissh to enter a competition is an incentive to participate, there isn’t really a massive incentive to explore the content or engage further. There is only so much interest, and so much viewing of “swisshes” you can do! With such a minority of individuals within the population actively uploading content, and the majority of consumers only prepared to share, comment, or passively view brands,  ensuring that there is interesting content for the majority is almost more important for these mainstream brands.

That said there is a good attempt at through the line integration with this campaign. The TV advertising tying into the digital work, partnership deal online/offline with Cosmopolitan including an investment in a 3D cover to grab impact, a blogger outreach program and ending with an experiential stunt in December with the worlds biggest Swissh at the clothes show live.

I can’t help but think this campaign will do well on the impacts and see an immediate uplift in sales / trial purely due to its consistency in it’s approach and frequency of impacts that it must be achieving. Despite this, for long term brand impact, and for it’s creativity in the digital space this FMCG brand, as with many others, still have a lot to learn to digitally engage audiences fully and truly involve or immerse them in the brand, although perhaps this was never an objective in the first place…

FHM: Points activity

12 Apr

I was having a ponder at FHM earlier and was intrigued by their user profiling that they now have.
I’m not a regular user or visitor to the site so I’m not sure if its a new feature to the site or something that’s been around for a while but in order to take part in competitions and promotions on site you have to accrue points to be able to enter them.

The premise of this works: Why shouldnt FHM reward those users that they feel are most loyal or heavier users of the site. It links back to the idea of data versus experience that I explored in an earlier post. To enter the grand prix competition you need to have had 45 interactions with the site. Iromically they note in their instructions (as to how you gain points) that you could frantically click the mouse for each point.

Does this mean that they are rewarding users who are consuming the site or rewarding the users who can be bothered to click. It makes sense that the theory of rewarding loyal users should be the case. Particularly because each point is earned on each click. If a user is reading 2 or 3 pages on the site (or looking at 10 – 15 female pictures) they will easily accrue the points.

Will be interesting to see if they take this profiling or reward mechanic further over the coming months.

Compare the meerkat: Part 2

21 Mar

I’ve been surprised by how many people are still viewing my thoughts on the Compare The Meerkat campaign by compare the market.com.

Launched just after Christmas the brave brand marketeers went for memorability using a fluffy persona (cadbury’s gorilla anyone?!) and went on to take the campaign through every medium possible. This is the part that interested me. Working for a full service digital agency I know how difficult it is to get absolute integration. Having multiple agencies and stakeholders all buying into one idea and being able to execute cross channel is a challenge for the marketing manager and ensuring all are on board but its something that VCCP managed to spearhead and achieve.

So its full offerings:

Spoof website

TV ads

PPC search

meerkat

Facebook

Twitter

 

Had to just update this to include the bloopers!

Data Versus Experience

20 Mar

I’ve been meaning to post up my paper to this blog for a while but, as with many things, its easy once you’ve finished something to push it to one side and forget about it!

My paper looks at the balance of data versus experience. Its a conundrum many online brands are faced with. Do they capture all of the data on consumers that the research department wants (to understand),  that the marketing department needs (to prove effectiveness) and the business insists on (for commercial understanding) OR do they throw caution to the wind and put the brands digital experience with their consumers ahead of registrations, locked content or tracking.

To quote:

data means the possibility for brands to have an appropriate and personal dialogue with you, the consumer, has never been more achievable, with the tools and data allowing tailored insight, and messaging that simply wouldn’t have been possible 20 years ago. It’s become a partnership that can be made as simple or as complex as the brands marketing team dictate, but it’s a process that’s made relationship building a statistical science rather than an emotional hunch.

The paper goes onto explore these looking at the likes of Tesco Loyalty card, Amazon, Bailey’s and Gurgle as differing examples of how  data can enhance as well as dictate the whole consumer experience.

Comments and thoughts welcome!

Data and Experience

Wispa Gold: The comeback

20 Jan

Back in Oct 2007 Wispa came to market as a revived brand from the 90′s. At the time a spokesperson from cadburys said

“We get letters about the Aztec bar and the lime barrel in the Dairy milk tray”. But this is on a whole different scale. This is the first time we are going to give the internet a change to prove itself and see whether it is all hype or genuine”

The company claimed that social networks and internet pressure (with an online petition of 14k names) convinced them to revive the brand.

Cynics or the marketeers amongst us will be looking at very good PR (and with Mad.co.uk having pointed out back in August ’07 that Publicis were appointed to launch Wispa back into the market this seems likely) and now, 18 months later, the buzz is back.

The “bring back Wispa Gold” group on Facebook now wispa-goldhas 17k members and growing swiftly. According to the text on the page once they hit 20k members Cadburys will relaunch the chocolate bar. Cadbury playing to the public pressure or Cadbury engineering this perceived want in the first place?

The idea of nostalgia is always an interesting one and, if you have the right product for the right memories, something that can’t fail to eventually come back full circle and back in vogue.

Wispa, regardless, have done an amazing effort at integrating with the social networks, recruiting brand fans and fulfilling the nostalgic promise back to their brand adorers. Their recent campaign “for the love of Wispa” couldn’t help but fail to bring a smile as their site proceeded to recruit advertising stars and then film an ad, screened as their ad, just about how great wispa is.

Will be interesting to see whether the gold phenomenum comes to an on shelf product and how Wispa continue to build their fanbase around their product: How long can nostalgia last and a brand thats been brought back to life go back to being another mainstream brand that lies shouting for attention on shelf?

Comparethemeerkat.com

14 Jan

Aleksandr OrlovHad to post when this campaign landed in my facebook inviting me to become a fan of Alexandr Orlov – a meerkat.

The campaign spearheaded by the aggregate guys behind compare the market.com has a clear appeal for a younger audience and a nice standout amongst the other brands that rely on their daytime TV slots and repetitive techniques to get brand recall (not that I’m knocking the possible effectiveness of that!).

My encounter with the campaign started with total unawareness and a simple invite to become a fan of the furry friend and, thanks to tongue in cheek copy that is totally blatant from the beginning you can only feel warm towards the campaigns meerkat star. The marketers behind it have respected that lulling users into a relationship with a meerkat (should any marketer actually believe this is sensible) and then revealing it as a ploy to purchase car insurance is sure to have a negative affect on relationship power so its obvious, its predictable but its actually pretty clever!

It is for honour of my family and meerkats all over the world that I make comparethemeerkat.com.

However, recently, this great ambition has been made look foolish by people looking for a cheap deal on their car insurance. People who are looking for comparethemarket.com

The campaign clicks through to a fully functioning site that, despite the gigantic cross promotion of comparethemarket.com (even on landing on the site it double checks you don’t want to go there instead) continues to take you through to a site that fully functions as a meerkat comparison site! In particularly I’m loving the FAQ section:

  • Can I save up to £300 on my car insurance with you?
  • No, is true comparethemarket.com could save you up to £300 on car insurance*, but I am not anything to do with that. I am comparethemeerkat.com. Meerkat.

The clear links that have been pulled through with the site, the social app (facebook and Twitter) as well as the TVads (that I’ve not seen as yet) show an integration and brave move by the brand that relies on the success of the meerkat to bring success to the comparethemarket brand.

I for one previously saw the brand as an aggregate sitewith very little personality and, for now I may temporarily move from being confused.com to giving the meerkat a little bit more attention than I did before!

 

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