Archive for March, 2009
Building on Lucie’s post about Highland Spring’s Comedy Awards mauling, check out this footage of Tom Hanks, er, ’plugging’ Sony in a keynote presentation at the Consumer Electronics Association Show International back in January. Start watching from 1:40. My favourite moment? “They write the lies but I tell the truth.” Glorious.
By Tim Crow on March 9th, 2009
Tags: Default, Film, Product placement
The team behind Powerade’s InnerGear campaign is celebrating today after picking up the ’Best Communication Campaign featuring Sponsorship’ at the highly regarded MCCA Best Awards last night.
Entered by Synergy, Coca-Cola GB’s sponsorship consultancy, the campaign’s striking photography, of Team GB athletes doing their individual sports naked, caught the judges eyes. The win is the second in a row for Synergy campaigns. In 2008, Guinness, with its title sponsorship of the English Rugby Premiership, was the victor.
Fingers are now crossed for both the Hollis and Sport Industry Awards 2009 for which the Powerade InnerGear campaign has also been short-listed.
By Sara Wilson on March 6th, 2009
Tags: Beijing 2008, Default, Guinness Premiership, London 2012 sponsorship consultants, Olympic sponsorship consultants, Olympics, Rugby, Sponsorship consultancy, Synergy, Team GB
On Monday the Aviva Ocean Racing team took to the water again. This time there were no ocean crossings involved: it was all about recognising Dee Caffari’s phenomenal double world first achievement here in the heart of London. What better way than to bring her racing yacht Aviva down the Thames and open Tower Bridge in her honour?
Dee’s story captured the capital’s imagination and she was joined by BBC London, ITV London Tonight, the Daily Telegraph and the Square Mile’s daily free sheet City AM.
Dee took the chance to thank her supporters, loyal followers on the campaign website and her sponsor, Aviva. The international company’s 57,000 employees had the chance to follow Dee’s incredible journey around the world and 30 lucky London based staff were able to join the celebrations on Monday night. This was followed up with a unique opportunity for Aviva’s London staff to visit Dee and Aviva during their lunch break yesterday.
By Caroline Ayling on March 4th, 2009
Tags: Dee Caffari, Employee engagement, Sailing
Hot on the heels of the announcement that ITV has asked the Government to consider plans for a three-way merger with Channel 4 and Channel 5 that would challenge the BBC’s dominance, Lastminute.com is one step ahead having already united the three in their latest advertising campaign.
Featuring thousands of people all over the world giving a thumbs-up, the ‘Mexican wave’ commercial was broadcast consecutively across the three channels between 9.50 and 9.53pm on Saturday 28th February.
Intended to promote their ‘Do more good stuff’ messaging, the commercial has been followed up with press ads and an online promotion to win tickets and holidays by guessing the number of thumbs up shown in the TV execution.
I like the fact that there is nothing over complicated about this campaign – just a simple idea, done very well. Definitely gets the thumbs up from me.
By Kelly Russell on March 3rd, 2009
Tags: Advertising, Brand marketing, Television
In one of the most touching tributes to celebrate the life of children’s TV presenter Tony Hart, over 200 fans gathered outside London’s Tate Modern at the weekend. In recognition of Tony’s much-loved sidekick, the animated character Morph, a flash-mob of plasticene Morphs were displayed on the Southbank, drawing in large crowds throughout the day.
Hart’s legacy touched generations of children who were encouraged to paint and draw over a TV career that spanned 50 years, before his death, at the age of 83, earlier this year.
‘Morph Mob’ was a compliment to Tony’s unflappable “you can do it” approach to art and creativity. Morph was certainly capable of extraordinary feats of metamorphosis and spoke an unintelligible language that only he and Hart seemingly could understand. None of this mattered on Sunday. The event, organised on social networking website Facebook, involved members of the Hart family with Tony’s daughter, Carolyn Williams, invited to judge Best Morph in Show.
Fantastic; flash mobbing at it’s best and in true Tony Hart spirit; the doyen of DIY art.
PS. I’d love to say that Tony Hart inspired me to draw brilliantly from a young age but I have always been a rather hopeless artist and never quite made it into The (infamous) Gallery. I think I tried at least once, as did 6,000 other kids a week apparently. I had no chance.
PPS. One question and I do hope Tony will forgive me. Was Morph a man or a woman? Very difficult to tell on closer inspection…
By Stephanie Branston on March 3rd, 2009
Tags: Facebook, Flash mobbing, Television, The Arts
Amongst all the clamour extolling the numerous marketing values to Twitter, this morning I came across a sage example of when it can rather spectacularly backfire.
Last week’s UTalkMarketing.com newsletter displayed a lead story on the subject of Twitter: a Marketing Director’s guide to utilising the platform best, a list of do’s and dont’s for PR’s and the like. The whole article is definitely worth a read for those of you considering using the service for more than your own personal ramblings, but particularly worthy of note is the now classic ‘Watch your mouth’ anecdote teaching all Twitterers when they should know to keep quiet.
Ketchum, the US PR and marketing agency, keen to impress upon their client (FedEx) their expertise in all areas of social networking and digital media marketing, sent a young executive by the name of James Andrews to their HQ in Memphis for a meeting. Unfortunately, the said executive was rather too down with the kids, and sent out a tweet upon landing using his own personal moniker @keyinfluencer, decrying the desperately uninspiring state of his client’s home city, in his own tweet words:
True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say ‘I would die if I had to live here’
Perhaps more savvy with social media than Mr. Andrews had anticipated, FedEx employees, already following Andrews on Twitter, promptly caught the offensive Tweet and emailed round the offending tweet internally (copying in the top executives in FedEx’s front office as well as the corporate comms department) – all before Andrews had even set foot through the door.
Safe to assume he received a less than warm reception upon arrival – in fact, the full response that FedEx immediately sent through as a Direct Message to Andrews is now available online. As well as a public FedEx statement on the incident. Check it all out here.
And so the term CLT (Career Limiting Tweet) was born.
By Lucie Bartlett on March 3rd, 2009
Tags: Blogging, Brand marketing, Public relations, Social Media
Senator Kerry said recently that sponsorship is an “idiotic abuse of taxpayer money” and proposes legislation to ban financial institutions that receive state bail-outs from spending any money on sponsorship. This makes me angry, not because I disagree with him (I do, but I’m with Voltaire on the subject of democracy: I may disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it), but because it displays ignorance of staggering proportions and undermines my personal faith in the democratic system. Nobody wants to believe that they elected an idiot.
First, Sen. Kerry is wrong to single out sponsorship. If he has issues with brand investment per se, then the whole marketing establishment should be the subject of his proposed legislation. Which opens up a whole ‘nother can of worms, because then he’d essentially be saying “let’s ban failing companies from enhancing their competitive position in the marketplace”.
Secondly, he’s actually doing sponsorship a favour by asserting that it is the very visibility of sponsorship and its activation that draws attention to these failing institutions. Visibility is an objective of most sponsorships and publicity campaigns generally, so thank you Senator for elevating sponsorship above other disciplines.
Third and most damaging of all, for the good of the nation and the economic world generally, it is a job of a government to support failing institutions by giving them every possible chance to get themselves back on their feet. If anything, I’d argue that the US government should be paying for their sponsorships and marketing activity – particularly when these are likely to be focused on restoring public confidence – rather than cutting them off at the knees.
Makes me mad, this does. And I’m not even American.
By Scott Garrett on March 3rd, 2009
Tags: Brand marketing, Sponsorship
I’ve never quite got all the hype around Banksy, the pseudo-anonymous British graffiti artist with an international reputation for his artwork. However, I still like the idea of owning one of his prints especially for the attractive investment of 1p. Thanks to a promotion running with Brahma beers just now, that dream could become a reality, all the more appealing given the current economic climate. Brahma, the most popular cerveja in Brazil which will celebrate its 120th birthday next year, has launched a promotion for one winner to buy, for £0.01, an original print of the ‘Trolleys’, currently being housed at 3, Newburgh Street, London.
Known for his headline making stunts, Banksy’s anti-establishment “cool” has certainly made him highly collectible. Celebrity fans include Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and Damien Hirst. Always controversial (with no obvious links to Brazil that I’m aware of), it’s not known whether Banksy will be present to hand over the print to the lucky recipient at the secret location on 27th March.
I suspect he won’t but definitely worth a punt (and a pint) regardless.
By Stephanie Branston on March 2nd, 2009
On Friday of last week, I finally fully embraced the world of Twitter (better late than never). Given all the press garnered by the social media service in the last couple of weeks – including a full page feature in the FT on Thursday – I thought it was about time I learnt what all the fuss was about. Safe to say, I have been unreasonably addicted all weekend.
In the interests of fully inter-linking my online presence (with no expectation of any tangible consequences), I duly added an RSS link to my Twitter feed to my own blog and, in turn, my Twitter profile links back to my blog landing page.
Imagine my (perhaps naive) surprise when my blog Dashboard this morning displayed an instantaneous leap in traffic figures from Friday onwards – and I hadn’t even posted anything new on Friday. Thus, I can only ascribe this bizarre heightened interest in my random musings to joining the Twitter universe.
Admittedly, when the average views figure for my posts tends to linger around the 30 mark (with a high to-date of 87), this humble ‘leap’ still only draws 125 views a-day. But, while I appreciate that such traffic is unlikely to crash the WordPress server any time soon, relatively speaking, that is a 4:1 increase in web traffic, solely derived from opening up that additional avenue to my blog through Twitter.
Or at least I assume so. The raised figures were maintained through the weekend, and I can’t imagine that the usual ramblings on Vanity Fair, Gossip Girl and the Olsen twins were that ground-breaking.
All hail Twitter – the latest undeniable force in self-marketing. Just imagine what it could do for brands and sponsors too…
By Lucie Bartlett on March 2nd, 2009
Tags: Blogging, Digital marketing, Social Media
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