2010
21
Jul
By Dan Hawtrey
We’re proud of our own work but we also pay attention when we see examples of other people’s work in a similar space. This deck is a series of screen grabs from an advocacy campaign that launched recently in the UK.
The campaign is designed to promote word-of-mouth around a new beer product to hit the market: Home Draught. It’s an ideal product for WOM marketing – by its very nature it’s a social product, something you are likely to see at parties and share with friends.
2010
28
Jun
By Dan Hawtrey
Given our experience with word-of-mouth (WOM) campaigns, we’re always interested to see what other brands are doing. This presentation shows the anatomy of Clairol’s ‘Nice And Easy’ WOM campaign, which can be found at www.confidencetoshine.com.
2010
04
Jun
By Christian Taylor
Most organisations have woken up to the social media phenomena by now, although there’s still some confusion and debate around which platforms to use, and how to maximise participation and effectiveness of these feeds. Here’s some food for thought for those of you starting out, or considering embarking on a little ‘social media spring cleaning’.
What can social media do for me?
There are plenty of benefits to using social media:
- it can build closer relationships and increase engagement with your customers and stakeholders
- it can help you to gain further insight into what makes your customers tick
- it can get your customers talking to you and to each other
- should you need to give or receive information quickly, you have a receptive communication channel ready to go. Read on…
2010
14
May
By Christian Taylor
After a global recession, which put millions out of work, it seems that some jobseekers are having to come up with more innovative ways to stand out from the crowd. Not content to sit back and wait for the right role to be advertised, some are putting the internet to work for them in creative ways, and we could all learn a lot from how they’re doing it.
Alec Brownstein is a great example. In his quest for the perfect job he spent £4 ($6 USD) on Google adwords to reach five creative directors at major advertising and marketing firms: Scott Vitrone, Ian Reichenthal, Gerry Graf, Tony Granger, and David Droga. Basically he banked on the fact that these directors would be googling themselves at some point, and amongst the search results was his ad which simply read “Googling yourself is fun, hiring me is fun too.” He got four interviews, two job offers, and according to FastCompany.com, he’s now employed at Young & Rubicam. Definitely a slam dunk for Alec!
2010
30
Apr
By Hugh Fidgen
Last week, Facebook revealed their latest tool to help webmasters “Socialise” their sites – Facebook Open Graph.
Open Graph is Facebook’s latest foray into search engine functionality and if all else fails, it’s best to think of it simply as the first step towards a social search engine. Facebook is hoping that as people browse the web they will “like” pages by clicking a Facebook button which then informs their friends via Facebook.
Open Graph will enable sites which you’ve never been to before display recommendations and information tailored for your tastes based on what you or your friends have previously “liked”. At surface level then this is just a slightly more powerful version of those buttons you see around the web which enable you to share stuff you like with your friends. But the story of Open Graph is going to be so much more than that.
2010
12
Apr
By Dan Hawtrey
A client asked me the other day to provide a cost estimate for some creative work. He wanted a concept that clearly communicates the unique benefit of his product. Something simple, powerful and persuasive. Something like the old Araldite ad with the car stuck to a billboard (ok, we might not come up with something quite as iconic as this but who knows?).
This concept would be used on the website, on newsletters and potentially offline too. Nothing strange in that… but then I realised that this request was actually quite unusual.
The product in question was a medical device to help prevent deep vein thrombosis (DVT) in hospital patients. I thought I’d try and find some other examples of medical devices that use a creative concept to get across their USP. I found very little indeed (there’s a list of the best examples below). Most medical device websites launch straight into the product features, often ignoring the benefits. If you’re lucky, you might get a big photo of the product on the homepage.
2010
12
Mar
By Hugh Fidgen
I spotted this whilst reading The Times on the train, and it struck me that this is a static version of the interactive rich media ads you see all over the “glossy” websites. Have print media agencies taken a leaf out of their digital partner’s books?
You can see the print ad on the right (view full-size). Below are some examples of some Flashy rich media ads, where cars, people and products crawl from one box to another, taking over the page:
I don’t know who got there first – this might even be old hat to the hacks of the advertising world – but it struck me as an unusual crossover that works very well.
2010
15
Feb
By Julia Strueber
The observant consumer abroad may have noticed patterned squares on their purchases. In Japan, these shapes now take up space on the side of whole houses, and seen teenagers whipping out their mobiles to take photos.
Of course, these codes contain more than just obscure patterns. Devised in 1994 for industrial use, ‘QR codes’ were employed for tagging boxes as a more information-heavy barcode. For example, the German Post uses them to keep track of packages.
2010
12
Feb
By Geoff Scaplehorn
Usability is generally trumpeted as a major consideration in website design. What is often ignored are the results of a website losing its usability – or, indeed, its familiarity. Yesterday, a number of users were unable to log on to Facebook. Why? Because they weren’t actually on Facebook.
What happened was that, for a couple of hours, Facebook slipped off the top Google rank for the search “Facebook login”. Instead, a blog called ReadWriteWeb (an excellent read, by the way) slipped into first place. Not noticing the change, users simply clicked on the top link anyway and were taken to a ReadWriteWeb article about Facebook, which looked entirely unlike the actual Facebook page.
2010
05
Feb
By Dan Hawtrey
Toyota is having a rough time of late. Faced with having to recall millions of vehicles globally, its profit for the year is likely to be entirely wiped out by the estimated $2bn cost of the recall. However, the public relations story is causing further damage to the company. How it reacts over the next few days and weeks is likely to have a major impact on the severity of this damage.
That’s where the web comes into play. Shocked and dismayed customers are sure to pay attention to the media’s cries of horror, but they will also recognise that they need to pay close attention to the official line by Toyota. They will turn to the internet to find out the logistics of the recall and the way they need to interact with Toyota and its dealers in order to get their cars fixed up. Besides actually fixing cars quickly and efficiently, the web represents Toyota’s best chance to repair some of the damage to its reputation.
