So I found myself watching Inception, for around the 100th time, over the weekend and besides being a cinematic masterpiece there is actually a marketing lesson to be learned, a lesson of context.
Posted by Matt Rennie on April 8th, 2013
So I found myself watching Inception, for around the 100th time, over the weekend and besides being a cinematic masterpiece there is actually a marketing lesson to be learned, a lesson of context.
Posted by Matt Rennie on April 8th, 2013
In the wake of the recent horsemeat contamination scandal, corporate reputation has never been higher on the agenda for the food industry than it is today. Now, more than ever, food companies must consider the reputation implications of every operational decision they make, and think carefully about how they communicate those decisions to the trade and consumers. Read the full post
Posted by Judith on April 3rd, 2013
Interested to read this morning that the UK is leading the world when it comes to using mobile devices to shop. Reported on the BBC, the average annual UK spend/head is £1,083. (Australia is second with £802). The exciting context of this is the size of the inexorably increasing prize that’s on offer. In 2011, only 8% of total online sales (£68B) were generated by mobile in the UK, up from 4% the previous year.
Posted by James on December 13th, 2012
Plato said “those who tell the stories rule society”. That was more than 2300 years ago. So why is storytelling now seen as critical to modern marketing and why have companies such as Nike, P&G and Motorola hired storytellers to their marketing department and even the board?
It’s largely driven by consumer’s mass consumption of content across platforms. And because without a guiding narrative weaving through your content marketing efforts, your product or service, is just a product or service, it holds no emotional connection with your customers.
Stories give your business meaning, stories are shareable, stories are less likely to be turned off or tuned out from, they’re unique and they can move people to action.
Redbull understands the art of transmedia storytelling beautifully. Its Redbull Stratos stunt saw 8 million people tune in live to its youtube channel to watch Felix Baumgartner hurtle to earth from space. It succinctly distilled its proposition “Red Bull gives you wings”, into a captivating stunt, which in turn garnered millions of pounds of earned media. And without one single product mention or cutaway. And yet in a heartbeat you get the brand.
Where authenticity was once the buzz word, brands should feel empowered to make their fact more interesting with fiction. We’ve been taught to make our comms single-minded, simple an uncomplicated, but now, we should perhaps be a little rough round the edges, adding layers and allowing consumers to co-create and unfold the story themselves.
Great examples include Rayban’s All Tomorrow campaign turning its Facebook fan’s stories into personalised animated films, Hiut jeans adding a unique history tag to its clothing and allowing consumers to upload pictures and storied of where they went and what they did to the HistoryTag website. Even Coldplay’s Mylo Xyloto album, which has now transcended into a comic, and potentially even a film. Social media is helping to fuel this storytelling revival, and it’s by no means brand-led. Social Samba, a Facebook application allows users to develop their own storylines and then share it with friends to join in the narrative has seen hundreds of thousands of new stories created.
Our role as marketeers is to burn through the indifference of consumers and give them a compelling reason as to why they should choose our brand over the next. The art of storytelling delivered through content marketing is that very tool.
Posted by James on December 4th, 2012
Forget the dodgy Christmas songs on the radio in October – for me it is the ‘Holidays are Coming’ ad from Coca-Cola that signifies the start of the Christmas period. It is the best Christmas ad ever!
The long-running ad campaign was stopped in 2001 (after a new marketing director took over!!) but re-introduced in 2007, after Coca-Cola HQ recieved some pretty heavy public pressure (so it says on Coca-Cola’s Wikipedia page anyway).
My six year old son Joshua saw the ad last night and thought it was ‘awesome’. You could see by the look on his face that it had the same affect on him as it did on me some 20 years earlier!
It just goes to show, sometimes the best thing a new marketing director can do is not make the big change everyone is expecting. It takes a pretty brave person to do that though, because by doing that you are automatically saying your predeccesor got that bit right!
Posted by Greg on November 18th, 2012
The peeps at Finn have been celebrating this week, both regionally and nationally! We’re very much in awards season, and we’ve had some great recognition for some of the campaigns we ran in 2012.
CIPR Awards
At last night’s CIPR Awards, we picked up three Gold awards – one in the Public Sector category for the Merseyside Winter Health Campaign as well as best use of social media & best digital campaign for lovetubs.
We also picked up two silver awards, one in the social media category for Morphy Richards Innovators and one in the digital campaign category for Fox’s Christmas Puddings. A particularly fruitful night for Finn Digital!
PRCA awards
Finn achieved a “highly commended” award in the category of small consultancy of the year at the prestigious national PRCA awards, held this week at London’s Park Lane Hilton. Hosted by the professional body that represents PR professionals, the award is particularly poignant for Finn, as the only agency outside of London to be recognised on the night.
The Grocer’s Marketing, Advertising and PR (MAP) Awards
Finn was also a finalist at the Grocer’s MAP awards, which recognises teams representing some of the nation’s most prominent food and drink businesses. Finn was nominated in the category of social media for its work for Fab Ice Lollies, creating a Facebook ‘Pass the Parcel’ application to celebrate the brand’s 45th anniversary.
Thank you to all our clients and everyone who was involved. Roll on 2013!
Posted by Julia on November 16th, 2012
Back in January Apple announced iPhone sales figures that showed they were selling more units per day than babies being born world-wide - if ever there was an announcement that marked the true arrival of the post-pc era then this was it. Subsequently, the digital community has been buzzing with activity around how to ready digital content for a world in which consumers are using an increasingly diverse range of devices to access content.
It’s posed some big challenges for brands of all sizes and it’s not just an issue of visuals, there are some pretty fundamental changes required in the way we produce and manage content for consumers. With 2013 creeping around the corner, we’ve put together a guide to help businesses get themselves in shape to truly capitalise on the post-pc era.
Posted by Ian Thomas on November 5th, 2012
This year’s CIPR Northern Conference focussed on whether the PR industry was fit for the future and I attended this week, looking forward to hearing from industry peers, well-respected journalists and some of the country’s biggest brands to explore the challenges and opportunities that our industry faces.
It’s given plenty of PR food for thought and one of the challenges raised among the workshops, panels and speeches, was around why the public relations industry isn’t as well-regarded within the business community as we’d like it to be.
Posted by Jess on November 2nd, 2012
A couple of us attended the CIPR Northern Conference yesterday. Whilst it was a useful day with some interesting and insightful speakers, I’m not ashamed to admit that the main pull for me was the final keynote speaker, Max Clifford.
Ahead of his talk, we were inspired by Telefonica’s head of comms, Nicola Green, who told of the brand’s step change in PR and strategy for delivering PR which genuinely benefits the business and the board, and gained a useful insight into the rise of internet TV by a range of broadcast experts.
During the morning sessions, of course, the subject of PR’s own reputation came into debate and some of the conference delegates had clearly done their research on Max, citing him as the reason for PR’s sometimes less than squeaky clean reputation. They’d scoured the newspaper archives and let rip during his Q and A session, questioning his honesty, ethics and role in PR’s public and professional status.
Whilst Max has represented some controversial characters in his time, his answers showed him to be a generally good man, who stands up for what he believes in. Whilst he might charge celebrities and wannabes £20,000 per month for representation, he also represents ordinary people free of charge, who have taken a hammering in the press and he genuinely believes to be in need of help. And he’s got some of them out of some pretty tricky situations. Is it his fault that people want to read about Big Brother stars and footballers who are up to no good? I think he’s simply found himself a niche.
For me, the problem with PR does not lie with Max. Earlier on in the day, a panel session included BBC Look North’s political correspondent, Len Tingle. Len made a plea to gathered PRs, reminding them that he cannot do his job properly when his inbox is full of irrelevant stories, including news from Nottingham and interesting events which happened yesterday. Surely one of the problems with our reputation is this?
If we do our job to the highest possible standard and take on board Nicola’s advice about the reasons behind our campaigns and how to shape them, I think we’d be in a much better position. Let’s get the nuts and bolts of our day-to-day job right, before we start pointing the finger.
Posted by Julia on November 1st, 2012
Each month we host 3,2,1 Share, a chance for the agency to get together and share knowledge. Back at the beginning of the year, I blogged about the ever growing trend of collaborative consumption; a shift from ownership and mass consumption to sharing, bartering and lending.
Last night I clocked an advert from Argos, pushing its Toy Exchange campaign. This caught my eye, as it was a surprisingly different, and very modern approach for the retailer. In short, you donate unwanted toys in exchange for a £5 off voucher, the toy is then given to Barnado’s for them to sell and raise money for the charity.
For a retailer which is in a pickle with its finances, this appears to be a bold move, clearly focussing on brand. However, as consumers demand more and more social responsibility from the companies they buy from, this will be an interesting one to keep watch of, to see whether the Toy Exchange will help play a role in improving the fortunes of this ailing retail business.
Posted by James on October 30th, 2012
