2 years! Really?

Ok, so I have been busy. Didn't think I was THAT busy. 2 years between posts is a long time but quality shouldn't be rushed. In saying that this is more of a rambling reintroduction than what could be classified as qulaity per se.

As you are no doubt aware nothing has interesting has really happened in the last 2 years. Technology hasn't advance much and there has only been a couple of startups which seem to be quite promising.

Anyway, what better way to relaunch the blog than with an angel or two?
Lynx Angels

Oh, I think this augmented reality stuff might be quite new...

Water way to advertise!

Before any of my five faithful followers write to tell me how bad the pun in the title is let me show you how it ties to the rest of this blog post. I was looking into green alternatives to the normal marketing techniques and came across a company from the UK called CURB. They refer to themselves as a natural media company and use a variety of natural mediums including, you guessed it, water! Their mission statement is to impact consumers without impacting the environment, using nothing but natural materials. That and some great creative ideas.



The above advertising for SEALIFE London Aquarium was done using their Sea Tagging technique.

It's a simple idea but all the best ones are. According to head of marketing, Peter Kerwood, it cost millions to make the SEALIFE London Aquarium a world-class attraction, while London-based CURB used little more than saltwater and a stencil to market it. "Sea Tagging" as it's called, is as simple as that. Guerilla teams dress in scuba gear created an aquatic sprawl across London, spraying more than two-thousand sea animals on buildings and sidewalks, creating an experiential marketing campaign totally relevant to the Aquarium.

The beauty of this technique is that the salinity of sea water makes it more resistant to evaporation than freshwater meaning they can last for up to hours, and after that you're left with a dusting of sea salt. CURB is the same company that pioneered turf cutting and snow tagging, and the logistical beauty of zero impact campaigns like these: no permits.

The CURB site has loads of great examples of their eco-advertising. I love the simplicity of the "clean" graffiti but the crop circles are out of this World!!!

T Mobile does it again

T-Mobile is getting good at these big public advertising stunts over in London. First, they organized the spontaneous dancing in Liverpool Street Station. Then, last Thursday, they managed to get 13,000 people into Trafalgar Square for what they thought might be another dance-a-thon, but which turned out to be a collective karaoke rendition of "Hey Jude" (above). The American singer Pink showed up and joined in, too, for some reason. These flash-mob stunts, coordinated by Saatchi & Saatchi, are less notable for how they reinforce T-Mobile's brand message, which is the typically vague "Life's for sharing," than for the brand-specific way in which they're mobilized: via text message to T-Mobile customers.

Courtesy of Tim Nudd AdFreak

The Time Scale of Word of Mouth - What's the Shelf Life of Your Buzz?

This diagram and text are taken from the Buzz Canuck blog. The full post can be found here. It is interesting to see how powerful experiential marketing can be. When executed correctly it can help promote customer evangelism.

Experiential marketing - providing a transforming and immersive experience for a fan, customer or influencer, typically in the form of an event - lasting impressions of what the brand stands for and who it attracts may have ongoing attraction for participants (as only 10% believe they ever receive a positive customer experience anyway, this can come as a nice surprise), however, given experiential nature - feelings and memories do wane off over time unless repeated

Relevant occasions where used: where full scale experience can't be provided to all prospects (automobile sampling), creation of lifestyle brand/sentiment, affiliation with lifestyle property or values and where customers or fans like to congregate offline for entertainment, information, aesthetic enjoyment or escape


Customer Evangelism - the nirvana of brands seeking community strength - customer evangelism and zealotry, where oftentimes organization of this form of word of mouth is hosted by the fans themselves not the company (Ikea positive fanatics, Apple fans ) - this is truly the area where lifetime value of the customer plays a role as brand loyalty and affinity can span decades - obviously, from an orchestrated word of mouth approach - this takes year over year investment, company-wide embrace of customer/community centricity and dedicated resources to incubate sustainable enthusiasm

Relevant occasions where used: where the customer experience is so good, where a strong trust bond has been built up between brand and customer, premium and/or well-differentiated brands, brands with a strong point of view and experience that lives it, where employees are as big in the brand as most rabid customers

So as the women bar owner in the Blue Brothers movie responds to the question- "so what kind of music do you have here? Oh we have both kinds, country and western". I find word of mouth is considerably more discriminating and variety-driven.

Heineken Follow Up

In a follow up to their hugely successful walk in fridge ad that I previously posted Heineken have released this:



It is a lesson for making sure your get the brief correct...! Not as cool (pun fully intended) as the original but I still want one.

Who told you about Susan Boyle?

One of this week’s most widely reported and talked about stories has been the appearance of Susan Boyle, a 47 year-old singer from Scotland, on the show Britain’s Got Talent. If you haven't seen Susan or heard of her meteoric rise to internet fame where have you been?! Susan has taken the World by storm and in only a few days has become one of the biggest viral hits of all time. According to Visible Measures and Mashable Susan Boyle related videos had achieved 93.2 million views by 10pm ET (USA) on Sunday.

How did everyone find out about it? Word of mouth used to be a face to face recommendation however with social networks such as facebook and twitter the reach has increased exponentially while the personal recommendation remains. Obviously this is one of the advantages of social media and I am not telling you anything new. In the case of Susan Boyle it is great to see a good news story getting the treatment. As the people at Domino's know only too well it is usually the bad experiences and the detractors which get the attention.

The tendency to spread bad news is human nature and is beautifully illustrated by Mario Vellandi in response to a challenge by David Armano on the Logic & Emotion blog.



Perhaps bad news travels well as it is inherently more interesting, shocking, confronting. Whatever the reason it is great to see the SBP (Susan Boyle Phenomenon) spread across a variety of networks solely on the basis of the underdog coming good. Best of luck Susan although I doubt you'll need it.

Fancy a game of Chess?

BMW makes an audacious move here in its battle against rival Audi. The latter apparently erected a billboard taunting, "Your move, BMW," for its redesigned 2009 A4, on a thoroughfare in Santa Monica. Shortly thereafter, in a bit of inspired luxury auto one-upmanship, signage for BWM's M3 sedan appeared across the street with the line, "Checkmate." It's a fun, in-your-face concept that's fast earning kudos in auto and ad media worldwide. (Juggernaut Advertising, an independent agency in Santa Monica, created the response ad for BMW of Santa Monica.) Audi should just shrug it off and respond with an ad proposing "Two out of three?"

- Tim Nudd AdFreak