Free samples

It's nice to see someone else has a liking for tactile, printed things. Tim Milne from Aromatic has started a concept in the UK with the Royal Mail to send out 30,000 of these sampler boxes with a range of products from toiletries to candy to books and music.
I particularly like the idea about sending people the first chapter or two of a book - an idea we also had recently for one of our clients. In the digital world we live in there is something pleasantly satisfying about ink and paper.
From The Long Tail blog

HSBC lets travellers compile their own magazines

This is a great bit of marketing from HSBC Premier. At Heathrow T1, they gave travellers the opportunity to hand pick up to 32 different articles from a range of magazines to be bound into their own, pensonal title. What a brilliant idea - great brand and product fit, engages with the customer and adds value. The consumers in the video seem pretty happy.

Courtesy of PSFK

This is an interesting development for book writing. Get a famous author to write the first and last chapters of a book and then recruit 28 budding amateurs to fill in the middle. THe book will be released digitally chapter by chapter online from March 10th.
From Springwise via PSFK

Agent Provocateur valentines day mobile campaign

Warning, this video is for adults only.


Original version here

It's the latest marketing campaign from UK lingerie firm, Agent Provocateur. In the video, a woman exacts her revenge on her boyfriend who has to work late on Valentine's Day. As you'd expect there's a lot of sexy lingerie on show which may in itself be fairly shocking to some people, but it's the ending that shocked me. Watch the video to see for yourself. It may seem harmless fun, but if the situation were reversed, it certainly wouldn't be seen as acceptable.

Apart from that, it is a good example of relevant and engaging content which I believe was downloadable onto iPhones, so I'm sure got seen more than a few times.

Smashing Magazine

I stumbled across this fantastic site this evening which I'd advise you to check out and bookmark if you have any interest in graphic design. There's an interesting blog and a section entitled 'inspiration' where there are collections of wonderful design examples groped into themes such as - movie posters, vintage fonts, stop motion videos, etc.

Check it out here

Marketing in a recession

Maybe I'm just not in a great mood, but I'm getting a bit sick of everyone and his dog giving the same two bits of advice for marketers in a recession:
1. Don't even think about cutting your budget, spend more!
2. Shove all your spend online, it's the ROI medium

It's not that I necessarily disagree with these bits of advice, but they already seem to have turned into the mantra for agency folk. Playing devil's advocate (as I so frequently do), let's just think about the two statements.

There are several studies showing that brands who maintained or increased their investment during a recession were more likely to be more successful in the years that followed than those brands who decreased their share of voice. It seems quite logical too - if competitors are dropping their spend, then you can get a disproportionate SOV.

The problem is that this is a bit simplistic because we haven't faced an economic crisis of this magnitude since before marketing studies were being conducted, so what happened 'last time' isn't necessarily the best indicator of 'this time'. When you see companies going bankrupt that 12 months ago most people probably considered very solid - I think most CEOs and CFOs will want to ensure they are still operating in 5 years rather than thinking about what their market share might be if they increase their spend now. There's also a category consideration. The additional SOV that you get during the recession is surely going to have different levels of impact depending on the product category. Having twice the SOV for luxury cars when nobody is buying probably won't really make that much differece, but I can see how for FMCG, it seems logical.

When it comes to online, you can't disagree that online lends itself to fantastic analysis. What bugs me though is that just because you can count it, doesn't mean it's always going to be the best option. There's lots of evidence to show that for many mass market products, mass media channels offer better value than online. I know that search and performance marketing are very controllable and effective channels, but surely they also perform well for well known brands that consumers have confidence in. Dropping all of your brand investment may not be a wise mid-term approach. There's also the lack of evidence - does anybody really know that shifting money to digital is the best thing to do in a recession? Even during the last recession 10 years ago, digital marketing and online consumer behaviour was totally different.

Maybe (just maybe) it could be in some of the ad agencies interests to push online because of the production dollars they can bring in?

Anyway, that's my thoughts. As I said, I don't necessarily disagree with the advice, but think we have a responsibility to be a bit more thorough and considered before making sweeping generalizations.

I'll get off my soap box now...

The man with five mistresses

Click fraud blackmail

I've just read an interesting article on TechCrunch about a company called LeapFish in the US, who punished a client who declined to advertise with them by clicking on their Google link 50 times (Google charge on a cost per click basis so this may have cost a few hundred US$) and then emailed the client to inform them of this in the hope they would re-think their decision. Full article here. Nuts!

Here in China it is fairly common for some media owners to blackmail advertisers who don't support them by threatening negative PR stories unless they get what they deem a fair share of the media budget. A few years ago we encouraged several clients to stand up to this and even spoke to a TV station about doing an expose but unfortunately most of the clients deemed it too risky.

Airship advertising

We were having a meeting in the office (37tf floor of an office tower in downtown Shanghai) when this airship camre careering past. The image isn't great as my camera focused on the dirty windows rather than the blimp but you can see the effect.
The blimp has a huge LED style screen on it's side which was playing a 15" car TV commercial (no sound). The first time it went past almost everyone in the office ran to the windows to have a look. The resolution of the screen made it look very low quality, although I can't argue that it achieved cut through. By the time it had circled us four times, it had started to annoy me though.

Promotional items as a media channel

I read an article recently on Media Post about the cost effectiveness of using advertising specialties (promotional gifts) as a media channel. This site is registered users only, but you can view the original research at the Advertising Specialties Institute.
The article claims that on a cost per impression basis in the US, it is cheaper to use branded caps, pens and bags as an advertising medium than any of the mainstream media - TV, newspapers, magazines, etc. This is certainly interesting for anyone who works in media, especially during these difficult economic times when cost effectiveness is more important than ever.
When I read the full report I thought the methodology looked extremely flawed. For example, in working out the cost per impression for a cap, the total impressions are worked out as: worn 6 times per month, for on average 7.1 months and each time it is worn, an average of 79 people come into contact with it = 3360 inpressions for a single cap. Using claimed recall for complex analysis like "on average how many people do you come into contact with each time you wear a cap" is going to have a huge error margin. I find it hard to believe that the average promotional cap is seen by 80 people every time it is worn or that they are worn on average 45 times - I've received dozens of these over the last 10 years and they are generally worn at an event and then thrown away or into the back of cupboard (there's my reliable sample size of one).
Furthermore, the comparison of a single brand logo with a full commercial, especially audio-visual is very difficult as the impressions certainly aren't equal in terms of how powerful they are to evoke shift in behaviour.
The study does have some interesting questions regarding favor towards the companies providing promotional items which probably not surprisingly, is generally very positive.

Despite its flawed methodology, the report is still worth a read if you work in marketing and I'm sure that for the right brands with the right objectives, promotional items could work a treat.