Didn't expect this from a bandages brand

Band Aid Waterblock Tough Strips - for situations when you might be sweaty.

For some reason, whenever I think of bandages, I always revert to the typical image of parents putting bandages on their kid's elbow or something. Nice to see them break this mindset.

Also via Adland

TOMS shoes

Bought my TOMS shoes.

Conor Byrne posted about these a couple weeks ago. For every pair that is bought, TOMS gives a pair to a child in need. I like that the TOMS brand was created specifically for this reason. You can get them in BT2 for €55.

Much more info on Conor's blog.

Don't speed - or end up behind bars

Nice use of pedestrian crossing to advertise a 'Don't Speed - or end up behind bars' message.

Original post via adland

Nike - Take it to the next level

Nike - Take it to the next level.

Latest Nike ad shot by Guy Richie. To be honest, I don't think too much of it. But then again, I'm not a big football fan, so it's not for me anyway.

Found this via Scamp as always. Pop over to his blog. There is generally a bit of debate on his ad posts.

Wikinomics - How mass collaboration changes everything

If you work in marketing, and haven't picked this up yet, do.

I like the authors' explanation of 'online' which is "no longer about idly surfing and passively reading, listening, or watching. It's about peering, sharing, socializing, collaborating, and, most of all, creating within loosely connected communities".

The hardback is just under 300 pages but it is very possible to dip in and out of it.

Spike Lee + Nokia = mobile movies

Image courtesy of Federica Acosta

I see Spike Lee and Nokia are joining up to create a User Generated Movie for mobile phones, which will premiere in LA later in the year. Amateur film makers will be invited to send in their short movie clips through their phones. We get to vote on the best ones and Spike Lee transforms his favourite into another 'Spike Lee Joint'.

I like it.

More info about it here and full story at StrategyEye.

Be interesting

The Korean baby video in previous post went viral simply because it is interesting.

So how can brands learn from this?

Well...be interesting. Keeping with the music theme, Gibson are doing something interesting by providing music lesson videos at their site. This is a real value-add for their customers and a perfect link for a brand that sells musical instruments.

Hopefully they'll encourage customers to upload their own lessons or maybe set up a forum for people to buy + sell lessons from each other. How good would it be if they persuaded Eric Clapton or another guitar legend to provide a few lessons?

Surely any food brand or restaurant could provide cooking videos? I couldn't find any with the exception of Jamie Oliver - a very strong brand in his own right. I'd love if the Bombay Pantry in Dublin would upload some videos.

I stole the Gibson example from Jason Falls. He has lots more examples on how 'content is king'.

Outdoor puzzle ad

Another outdoor ad from McDonalds - a puzzle, part of their 'Extra Large' campaign (I think). The link is that apparently you'd need a large coffee to solve it. Found it via Adland.

Nice but I prefer their earlier execution.

Korean baby sings 'Hey Jude'

"Korean baby singing Hey Jude" video was discovered 3 days ago. It has been viewed over 3.7 million times so far. Source: Video Viral Chart

If you want something to go viral, make it interesting, entertaining or different.

This video is all three.

Search me

Interesting search engine that displays the pages in a similar way to how albums are displayed on your itouch or iphone. Original post via futurelab

Try it here.

Teenager creates Apple ad

This happened last October but I only heard about it this week, so apologies, but I like the story and think it is worth sharing.

This homemade itouch video was created by Nick Haley, a teenager in the UK. Apple execs liked it so much, they flew him over to LA to shoot the ad professionally. You can see the end result here (which didn't change much at all).

More info here.

Dove Onslaught(er)

Greenpeace have joined the anti-Dove conversation with a video of their own and a petition asking us to talk to Dove before they destroy rainforests.

Some quick background if you are not familiar:

Because Unilever own both Dove and Lynx, they took a bit of stick recently for having two brands that appear to have opposing views on women + beauty.

Dove's Evolution campaign for real beauty was massively successful. Their insightful campaign spoke out against the fashion / beauty industry for making women feel they must look beautiful. Their follow up video Dove Onslaught built on this theme, asking us to talk to our daughters before the beauty industry did. From a brand perspective, they had cracked it. They stood for something important and relevant to their industry. And women loved them.

Lynx (Axe) on the other hand, sell their product on the back of this sex appeal. The women-as-sex-objects images that Dove speak out against in their Dove Onslaught video do not look too dissimilar to what you mind find in a typical Lynx ad.

Personally I think the criticism they've taken is possibly a bit harsh. Lynx do feature beautiful women but it is all very tongue-in-cheek and not meant to be taken too seriously. They don't suggest that Lynx will make you beautiful - rather that you'll attract women if you use it.

However, it can't be much fun for Unilever who were really taking the high ground with their Dove brand. As a brand, Unilever look like hypocrites. What are their values and in particular to the debates on beauty industry practices? People have questioned whether their views on self esteem are just skin deep (excuse the pun) and believable - leading to a video response A message from Unilever.

I found the Greenpeace video at viralblog. More here at Greenpeace's site.

This is interesting stuff and a delicate situation for Dove and Unilever. If brands take the high ground, they need to be sure they can defend it.

John Grant talks about this a bit in his 'Green Marketing Manifesto' book where he warns brands not to promote a green or ethical position unless they can truly stand over this. Otherwise it can be seen as green washing.

Email marketing metrics: free report

Some new research available on email marketing metrics based on 300 million opt-in newsletters and campaigns in 2007.

There is some good stuff here. For example, the best days to send are Mondays, Tuesdays and weekends. Also, open rates are down by a couple percent, partly due to consumers opening emails on handheld devices.

There are a couple of good case studies here too worth a read (in particular the one on morebusiness.com).

Original post from Dave in Clientwell, who has also given his quick summary of it.

Download the free report from here.

What consumers want on websites

I wasn't surprised to read that discussion boards / forums top the list of things that consumers want to see on websites.

This makes perfect sense. People want answers quickly. They want to vent. And they have more faith in answers and reviews by ordinary people - not from companies spokespeople or marketers.

The study was by Forrester Research.

Original post via Jason Falls.

Ford invite fans to be in TV ad

I was writing about Unilever making their current 'Sure Girl' ad look like User Generated Content.

Ford on the other hand have got it right. They offered fans an opportunity to feature in a TV ad during the Uefa Champions League Final. They were invited to send in video clips of themselves and friends doing football tricks.

More info here

Don't make it look like UGC

"Tell me and I will forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I will understand" - Confucius

There is a new tv ad for 'Sure Girl' deodorant - featuring a few girls singing along to a Girls Aloud song in the back of a car. The ad is purposely made to look as if shot through a handheld camera or possibly a camera phone.

The brief must have been 'make it look like user generated content, something you might see on youtube'.

But is this not missing the point of UGC? We enjoy watching real people doing stuff instead of actors. It's more authentic.

Wouldn't it be more interesting if, instead of making the ad look like a video that ordinary kids made, it actually was a user-generated video? Let them join in and maybe see themselves on tv.

This would then no longer be a one-way message from Sure. It would be more involving and according to Confucius - more involving.

Pay per interaction with your banner ad

Pay per interaction with Eggo Banner ads on kidzworld.com


I recently wrote (Nobody clicks on 48-sheet billboards) about the poor reputation that online display advertising has among Irish marketeers.

Part of the reason, I believe, is that marketeers are measuring success based on clicks alone. Since only 2 or 3 in every thousand visitors typically click on your banner ad, you are setting yourself up for a fall.

Which is why I was interested to read that a Kellogg's campaign (for their Eggo brand) was measured and paid-for by the number of interactions with their rich media banner ads.

This has to be a good thing. More info here

Advertising that consumers enjoy

I know this got a decent bit of media coverage last year but decided to share it on anyway - as is a great example of advertising that provides a benefit.

Last summer, HP reproduced some of the world's most famous paintings for the streets of London - essentially "turning the streets into a giant gallery". HP already had a strong link with the National Gallery, where visitors can pick up high quality prints of the paintings they see. HP explained that this was simply a natural extension.

But a pretty creative one I think, where everybody wins. The Natural Gallery gets some nice promotion. HP demonstrate the quality of their printing. And the public get an opportunity to view some beautiful paintings and maybe develop a new interest in art (although the folks in this picture don't seem too interested).

Lots more pictures and other bits and pieces at The Grand Tour site.

From a brand perspective, I like this a lot. Don't tell us how good your prints are. Show us. And do something nice / useful / entertaining / good while you are at it.

VW Singing Dog Ad

My mate Elaine loves this ad and claims she might even buy a Polo because of it. I don't believe her.

But I do like the ad.

Free! Why $0.00 is the future of business

Chris Anderson, of Wired magazine and author of The Long Tail is giving away a 6,000 word preview of his next upcoming book "Free! Why $0.00 is the future of business".

Read it here.

I want you to want me

This is definitely worth a watch.

I want you to want me is an interactive high-resolution large touchscreen hanging on a wall in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

It represents the "search for love and search for self" - using data from online dating sites from all over the world.

Found via danah boyd

Less is more

Billboard in New Zealand with 132 words of copy (I counted)

Visit here for more info.

The real power of one.

When advertising, a photo of somebody looking directly out of the page can increase your response rates.

This was the advice of David Ogilvy (or may have been Drayton Bird, I can't remember). Anyway, some recent fundraising research supports this.

Paul Slovic, of 'Decision Research', has demonstrated this by measuring the contribution levels from people shown pictures of starving children. Some subjects were shown a photo of a single starving child while others were shown a photo of two children.

Those shown two children donated 15% less than the one child. In a related experiment, photos showing a group of eight starving children contributed 50% less money than those shown just one. This research makes sense to me. People can relate to individuals and their stories.

The original post is here

Image courtesy of Children at Risk Foundation (CARF) - www.carfweb.net

New report on UGC, social media + advertising

The IAB have produced a 15-page document titled 'User Generated Content, Social Media and Advertising - An overview' to help marketeers and agencies understand the landscape and the opportunites.

There is some decent information here and useful if you are new-ish to social media.

One point I found interesting was the Nielson research from last Oct which claims only 34% of consumers trust search engine ads. Another I hadn't heard before was that the average LinkedIn user is 39 years old with an annual income of $139,000.

Thanks to Alan Moore for original post.

Download the report here at IAB's site.

595 comments on economist.com article

I suggested in a recent post that the rte.ie website would be more engaging if they opened up their articles for comments. And sooner the better if they wanted to keep their visitors.

They should look at economist.com

The Economist site welcome comments...and they are better off for it. A recent article about Tibet and the Olympics prompted 595 comments in the past 8 days. This is no longer just an article or a journalist's opinion. It has become an engaging and honest debate where we can all participate, argue and, who knows, even change our minds.

I've alway been impressed with The Economist as a brand. They do charming advertising, intelligent relationship marketing and they are clearly doing the right things online.

Of course they are perfectly positioned to capitalise on web 2.0 since they are in the content business.

But then again, so are RTE.

RSS Marketing

I wonder if 'RSS Marketing' will overtake 'Email marketing' as a real marketing communications tool for brands?

I think it should.

All marketeers know the benefits of email marketing - relatively cheap, quick to deliver, often with decent click-thru rates. But the marketing guys sending out the emails are in charge - they decide when and how often they will 'target' you with their email.

Email marketing is generally a one-way communication. Usually you can't click on the reply button and email them back. I bet that most emails are signed off with a fake name. God forbid you try and contact back the people that fill up your inbox.

Unfortunately marketing people are thinking mostly about the 2% or 3% of people that respond, not so much the 97% that didn't. Sure you can unsubscribe but this can be a hassle. Instead, I personally just delete the mail.

But RSS Marketing would be very different. As any blogger knows, if you want people to read the stuff you have to say - you have to work hard. Content is king of course. You have to put the time into it. I don't think there is any substitute for time. Persuading people to subscribe to your feed is just the first step. You need to be interesting, relevant, insightful or entertaining if you want them to take time out of their day to hear what you have to say. And you have to be ready to respond to personal comments. They can unsubscribe anytime - without even telling you.

With RSS Marketing, your subscribers are clearly in charge.

How many brands and marketing teams are including RSS Marketing as an element within their communications mix?

Nomads at last

The Economist has an online special report on Digital Nomads - how wireless communication is changing pretty much everything.

You can read the special report here.

Found this through Future Perfect blog.

Go beyond The Banner

Chi-chi Ekweozor from Real Fresh TV has uploaded her slides here from the Marketing Tech conference in London’s Grange City Hotel last Month.

Definitely worth a flick through.

Sony Foam City

Another via Scamp.

This reminded me of a recent article in Campaign magazine about how the Sony Bravia Balls ad and Honda Cogs ad have kicked off a whole genre of "feel good / folky" trend in advertising.

This ad is beautifully shot but throwing stuff down a hill has been done before....

If you have a few mins spare, there are some great comments on Scamps blog worth reading "It feels like Fallon are happily perched on the top of their London advertising hill mindlessly chucking different things down it now, come on pitch for mini babybel and lets have a cheese rolling contest."

Budweiser Popcorn ad

Budweiser Popcorn. New ad from Fallon - the agency behind Gorilla, Sony Bravia's Balls etc. I'm not convinced on this one though. I'll give it a couple more viewings to see if it grows on me.

Found it via Scamp

Don't make me think. Part 2

I wrote about communicating sale offers in an earlier post 'Don't make me think'. My view is, where possible, don't talk percentages. People are too busy to figure them out.

Today, in my local shop, I bought these two products. Both offer 100% free - but Ballygowan advertise theirs as "Buy one bottle, get one bottle free".

Clearly there is not full consensus among marketing folk on this. I suspect I'll continue to have these debates.

UK online ad spend to overtake TV

The IAB say online advertising in UK will overtake TV by the end of next year.

Short article here.

Brands need to think like Radiohead

I love this. I really do.

So firstly Radiohead allowed fans to decide how much to pay for their 'In Rainbows' album. Now they're getting fans to buy their new track 'Nude' in its raw format, making it easy for fans to re-mix themselves. Fans can then upload their re-mixed tracks onto radioheadremix.com and we can all listen to and vote on the best tracks. Radiohead will listen to the best tracks.

I mentioned here that I planned to talk a bit about brands and their online strategies. It feels that for many brands, this means pumping out some advertising online. Sure, advertising may be necessary, but the real opportunity is figuring out how to use the closeness of web 2.0 to engage customers. Everybody is so close. Fans can talk with their favourite author, actor, sports athlete and of course their favourite band.

Make no mistake, Radiohead want to sell music and this latest bit of digital marketing will help them do this a lot more effectively than a suite of banner ads. I see that there are literally thousands of people voting for the mixes they like.

It would be great if they stepped it up a notch and allowed the re-mix with the most votes to be sold on itunes - and gave a kickback commission to the talented fan.

Thanks to Matt Dickman for original post.

New Balance v Nike plus ads

Found this on Adverblog. Another great ad. It's interesting to compare the Nike+ ads and the New Balance one from my post yesterday. From an advertising viewpoint, both brands are doing nice work.

The difference for me is this.

New Balance are emotionally selling 'running' - the pain, the endurance and the joy of running. The link is that their shoes are good, and this will tip the balance in favour of the good stuff (and less of the pain). Nice idea and great link into their brand name. And is a credible claim for New Balance as they make good running shoes. As a idea it feels very similar to an earlier "A little less hurt" ad from Nike.

I could watch the New Balance ad and nod my head agreeing that yes, it is tough to get up in the morning. And yes, if I am going to run, I better get good shoes. And yes, I might consider New Balance when I start my research.

Nike, on the other hand, are not just selling 'running' - they are selling Nike+. Running can be lonely and a solitary experience, but not anymore with their Nike+ shoe range. When watching this, and if I buy into this idea, I'm thinking "I wouldn't mind getting a pair of those". Nobody else has this, so no more research, except to check Nike's credentials as decent running shoes.

This has little to do with advertising actually. I'd be very proud if I did any of these ads.

It's about propositions building brands. If I were interested in connecting with others while running, it honestly wouldn't matter what kind of advertising New Balance do.

Don't make me think.

Because I've been in so many debates about this over the years, I'm guessing others have too. It's a small thing - tactical and executional but worth getting right.

When deciding on discounts and promotional offers, don't talk in percentages - unless you really have no other way of doing so. People are busy and most do not have time to figure out percentages.

For example, I know "20% off" sounds high and the argument is that consumers may not do the maths but they appreciate or feel that this is a good deal. My view is that you are better off explaining this in real absolute amounts. So if 20% works out as €1.50, then say "€1.50 off" in your advertising or point of sale.

Just because I say it here doesn't mean it is true - instead seek out the real experts such as Drayton Bird, Bob Stone, Axel Andersson and Denny Hatch. I dug out this quote from Axel - "The only percentage most people understand is 50%, and is that case I prefer half price or buy one, get one free."

Better still - test it.

One quick and cheap way to test the way offers are communicated is to do some quick Google adword tests. You'll have enough analysis within days (or hours sometimes) to allow you to roll out the higher-pulling headline in your other media.

Finally, I once even heard a suggestion to offer a 3% discount for a consumer offering. Our group spent a few minutes trying to work out if this was good value or not...

Nike+ ad

This is the Nike+ ad I mentioned in last post.

New Balance ad

A colleague passed this along to me (thanks Emer). She was impressed that they found a way to express their brand in a way that feels very natural.

I like it. I prefer the Nike+ "I'm addicted" ad though.

Buying premium online positions

Perhaps this is common knowledge but for anybody interested in online advertising - it has been my experience that MPU ads tend to pull higher responses than leaderboards ads. Not actually sure if the Mini ad here is the standard MPU size (300x250 pixels), but is approximately the same format.

Looking at the image here, I'm sure you'd agree that the Mini ad stands out more than the yourlocal.ie ad at the top of the page? Of course, Mini is a great brand, and the creative is probably stronger but think it is partly due to the legacy 'banner blindness' positioning of the yourlocal.ie banner ad. People have learned to not look there anymore. But the MPU is placed around the content.

Most brands I see tend to buy a suite of banner formats and positions. I wonder if certain brands just buy premium positions like MPUs just as they do when buying back pages of magazines or the first double-page-spread?

RTE.ie still a brochure site?

Was talking with Conor Byrne earlier and he was asking why rte.ie does not allow for comments?

I like that I can watch the Nine News online, and think some of the other features are ok too, but not having comments is a missed opportunity. Surely the online version of 'Questions & Answers' could allow for some questions?

RTE have an audience, but their online site is still one-way with no real engagement. I hope this kind of stuff is on the way. If it isn't, they might lose their audience to more progressive and interactive news / entertainment / sports / everything / sites...

Accidental Branding - free chapter

New book with series of interviews with people that 'accidentally' developed their brand. The publisher is giving away a chapter to download, as part of their marketing launch strategy - another example of the Free Love post a couple weeks ago.

This chapter is about Gert Boyle of Columbia Sportswear.

You can download it here - excerpted from Accidental Branding: How Ordinary People Build Extraordinary Brands by David Vinjamuri. Copyright © 2008 by David Vinjamuri. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. More information on the book at www.accidentalbranding.com

Original post via futurelab

3 measures of your marketing

Inside the walls of many companies, marketeers have poor reputations.

We are often seen as the fluffy creative people that like to talk about design, font types and logos. We do long lunches and spend our budgets with little concern for hard measures. Famous quotes such as "I know that half of my advertising is wasted....I just don't know which half" don't help our situation either.

It has been my experience however that most marketing folk are in fact very keen to measure their marketing investment.

What we are often missing is a common language and clarity around what measures are appropriate. As mentioned in a recent post 'Nobody clicks on 48-sheet billboards', using the wrong measure is not helpful either.

When explaining measuring marketing, I find the following 3 classifications useful (devised by Malcolm McDonald):

Promotional effectiveness
This is the stuff most people seem to refer to when they talk about measuring marketing effectiveness. While important, this is really quite a narrow measure and is the most tactical of the three measures. We use this to understand the effectiveness of our ad campaigns and communications. Outputs might include spontaneous awareness, recall, response rates, share of mind etc.

Marketing effectiveness
This includes the entire marketing mix - so not just our promotional effectiveness, but also our pricing, propositions, our use of channels for our particular customer segment. So, they might remember our ads (and love them) but if our pricing is too expensive or if our product does not interest them, they won't become our customers. Outputs here would include sales, market share etc.

Strategic Marketing
This is the broadest measure of marketing and focuses on decisions about what customer segments to target and how risky these strategic decisions are to implement. So, for example our ads may have amazing recall, our pricing is good, our channels are right and we are generating loads of sales and leading in our customer segment. But we might be chasing the wrong customer segment, which may lead to unsustainable competitive advantage. The output here is shareholder value.

Promotional effectiveness is the easiest one to measure, to plan for and is the most immediate to get results. Understanding and planning for the other two is more complex.

I think it is important that marketeers get their heads around these distinctions so they can hold their own in discussions about whether we are spending our budget wisely. There is little point in talking about 'advertising recall' if this is not the question being asked.

Hope this makes sense.

Lynx Pulse ad

My favourite Lynx ad...

The story behind the campaign is pure genius. Very unorthodox. For example, when making this, instead of starting with the ad and then briefing in the music, they started with the music and the 'dance'. The music track 'make luv' was seeded among opinion formers in Ibiza six months before they launched. Once launched, they produced a screensaver of the dance and even recruited students to do the dance at student events.

The song went to No.1 in the UK charts within weeks. A new dance had been created and Lynx Pulse had become their number one selling variant within just two weeks of launch.

All that aside, the ad itself is a classic. You cannot but love it.

Blue Ocean Strategy

This is possibly the most popular book on strategy.

I just did a quick search at amazon.com to see the star rating and a massive 155 people have reviewed it with an average 4-star rating. This is impressive when you consider that Michael Porter's Competitive Strategy has an extra half-star but from only 42 reviews.

The authors believe that companies need to break out of the competitive head-to-head 'bloody' red ocean fights and instead look at ways to create uncontested new markets. They use case studies and examples from across a broad spectrum of industries - examples include: Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, Yellow tail, Cirque du Soleil and Curves.

Blue Ocean Strategy is easy reading. And enjoyable stuff. I read it a couple years ago and have tried to push it on any colleagues that even mention the word 'strategy'. This is not a marketing book. However, part of the premise behind Blue Ocean Strategy is understanding the real needs of customers so you can deliver more value to them, while striping out anything that they do not value.

Social Media Usage amongst FTSE 100 companies

Real Fresh TV blog are doing a study of social media usage amongst FTSE 100 companies. They're just kicking if off, and have posted findings on the first ten. Of which, only one is blogging and none is involved with the likes of Facebook.

Wonder what the stats would look like for the top Irish companies?

We-think: the power of mass creativity

Just saw this on Fallon's blog.

I think I've mentioned this before, but I find something really appealing about seeing pencil / handwriting on the internet. This video is promoting a new book that explores the potential web 2.0, called 'We-think: the power of mass creativity'

New fundraising blog

Conor Byrne (an ex-colleague and a good mate) has started a new fundraising blog.

I think there is great potential for charities and non-profits to use blogs to raise funds, recruit volunteers and really explain their mission in a personal way.

Conor has lots of experience and interesting views, so no better man. Is this the first fundraising blog in Ireland?

Nobody clicks on 48-sheet billboards

The lads in Cybercom have released some comprehensive research on Search Marketing in Ireland.

I'm not surprised to see that while 80% of marketing managers believe that SEO and PPC (paid-for ads, like Google adwords) deliver "excellent" return on their investment - only 7% believe their display ads are doing likewise.

It's true that 'search' delivers better response rates than display. And most of the time, you only pay per click, so chances are, you are getting more visitors for your budget. So Google ticks all the boxes here. Everybody is happy (including Google).

But the bit I'm more interesting in is the very poor reputation of 'banner ads'.

I believe this is partly because many marketing managers measure the success of all online solely by traffic - the volume of clicks, cost per click etc. I didn't see it in this report, but there is research that claims that display advertising can improve your search results - so there are benefits to doing both in a campaign.

However, while traffic is one measure, it is not the only one. If this is the only measure you are using, you are likely to be disappointed. Your measure needs to be linked to what you're trying to do. Of course all advertising is about generating sales, but this does not necessarily mean immediate clicks.

If online is part of a larger campaign, you should be measuring your online just like you do your outdoor, radio, tv or press. Do your consumers recall your ads? Did they like them? Did they influence their view of your brand? Look at Dove's 'Evolution' campaign for real beauty which won the Grand Prix. I'm sure that 'page views' and 'clicks' were measured but this campaign had a massive influence on how people perceive the brand - and on sales.

Nobody clicks on 48-sheet billboards but this doesn't mean they don't work.