Helge Tenno recently led me to an excellent presentation by Tom Himpe. One slide suggests marketing needs to be more useful than just 'messaging'.
What if this beer mat, advertising The Irish Times, actually had a crossword on it?
This simple change would transform it from an ad simply telling us (messaging) about their newspaper to a much more useful service. It would become something to do while waiting for our mates to arrive. And as it would be more involving, it would get higher recall and in a way, is a nice way to allow people to experience one feature of their product (their newspaper).
When I first glanced at this in a pub, I thought this is what The Irish Times had done. I was so impressed. But at a second look, I realised the crossword was already filled in, and this was, in fact, just messaging. It was just an ad. How disappointing.
However, I did get a chance to talk to their marketing director, who said they were planning to bring real crosswords to the beer mats. In terms of logistics, they could set up a freetext number or website with answers for those of us not so good at crosswords.
We'd need a few pencils too I guess...
3st Jan update and correction - My mistake. Clearly I wasn't as sober as I thought I was. The front of the beermat was actually blank on the front. Sorry Paul F and Irish Times. Lovely work.
