Paddy Power destroys amazon rain forest! Of course it did'nt

Over the last few years’ bookmaker Paddy Power, has made a name for itself using controversial stunts for self-promotion. It started this in 2010 when it erected the largest ever ad hoarding on Cleave Hill which conveniently faced the Cheltenham race course ready for the gold cup. Other stunts followed, from adding a jockey to the 3,000 year old Uffington White Horse to getting Arsenal’s Nicolas Bendtner to wear and display Paddy Power pants at Euro 2012. They even have a dedicated team coming up with these headed by “head of mischief”.

On the night of June 7^th Paddy Power tweeted a picture of an aerial view of the Amazon rainforest with what seemed to say “C’MON ENGLAND - PP” carved out of the rainforest in enormous lettering. Within minutes this image had been spread around the world leading to worldwide condemnation for them seemingly chopping down trees to deliver an ad campaign.

Within 24 hours 160,000 people had visited their blog, stoked by comments from Paddy Power on its twitter account such as “we haven’t cut down that much” and “don’t get your hemp knickers in a twist”.  Then on Sunday evening they released the pinnacle of the campaign, another computer generated image of the same area, this time with the words “WE DIDN’T GIVE THE AMAZON A BRAZILIAN”. This was alongside a message on how they were trying to raise awareness of deforestation in the Amazon, starting even more media coverage and one very happy department of mischief at Paddy Power.

If the thousands of people who tweeted abuse to Paddy Power had bothered to take even 10 seconds to Google the company they would have seen its history of stunts. Instead they fell hook, line and copy of the Racing Post for another one of its clever marketing stunts. Would it work for every brand? Absolutely not. Will they do it again and even better, look at the money cannot buy coverage they gained and what do you think? If any marketing students of any age are reading this I urge you to look more closely at this and see a master class case study of modern disruptive marketing.

Tim Youngman is director of marketing for Archant  

Packaging - art and science and branding combined.

One of the things I love about marketing is that there are elements of it which to the outside world are an afterthought, but are actually a science and art form in their own right. Take packaging for example. You create a product and to keep it safe for transport you put it in a box and that’s it done, but actually that’s just the beginning.

The average supermarket has 25,000 products on its shelves so standing out from the others becomes paramount. Recent research also showed that 64% of shoppers have tried something new because the packaging caught their eye and 41% have made a repeat purchase because of packaging.

Basically we are all creatures of habit and so distinctive packaging helps us quickly identify our favourite brands among a sea of others. Whether it is colour, shape, fonts, logos, images or a complete design, we hunt out those that are familiar and will be drawn to those that stand out. Walk into any Aldi store and you will see that not only are the products inside the packaging very similar to their branded counterparts but the packaging and especially the logos, colours and imagery are extremely close too.

Unilver, whose brands range from Domestos to Marmite to Impulse, actually have a vice president of design who has a wonderful line about how design should be about creating an addiction. A packages ability to attract must not be done at the expense of the reason it exists in the first place however. Various packaging studies have shown that protecting the product and easy access are still the two most important factors for packaging. No matter how beautiful the box if, when opened, the product is damaged or you cannot open it easily, it puts you off the brand. I’m sure you can all think of examples of when that has happened to you and the effect it had on your desire for repeat purchase.

Packaging needs to do more than look good. It has to be able to transport, store, open and be easy to dispose. Next time you walk down a supermarket aisle though, think about the hours spent on the packaging of every single product you walk past.

Tim Youngman is director of marketing for Archant  

Paper and paste has come a long long way

Once upon a time outdoor advertising was known as the “paper and paste” industry. It was just that, paper posters of different sizes pasted to walls and boards, mainly on roadsides. Like many others it was disrupted heavily by the rise of digital. Although digital has given it a new lease of life in some ways, good old fashioned creative thought has also shown how effective it can be if used well.

In the case of digital the move from static paper and paste board to digital displays has happened quickly and is now not an uncommon sight. Tube stations now have electronic display boards, you see them in toilets, on bus stops - even the good old fashioned advertising hoardings at football grounds are slowly but surely being replaced with digital boards.

What people do with this technology has also changed. Video ads and moving images are no longer clever enough to attract the ad sodden consumers eyes. They need to be themed and stand out. Giant billboards such as the 5 platform length board at Waterloo Station will always scream a message at the 300,000 people a day who see it. Brands have now started to think about how to utilise the technology better with smaller boards.

A great example of this is a recent campaign by Tate Britain in the London Underground on its digital boards. They ran a campaign where underground commuters were updated on the weather through different artworks. On any particular day the weather summary for London was shown and also a related piece of artwork. So when it was cold and snowy the boards showed The Pond by L.S. Lowry.  

This clever thinking has been extended to non-digital outdoor media. Ikea recently branded hundreds of student’s cars in Newcastle and Durham for the same price as placing it in two or three bus stops. Google image “clever outdoor advertising” and you can see great examples from across the world, including my favourite from the Hot Wheels toy car brand who put a branded fake loop the loop on a motorway flyover.

As with all advertising, stand out design, great copy, image quality and understanding ROI are always utmost. However creative thinking and doing something different, as you can see, can truly allow a brand to stand out from the crowd.

Happy Brands - are you happy enough?

I read of lot of marketing research and papers on brand and branding as part of my job which are often very dull. However this week I read a recent survey from ad agency Isobel which ranked UK brands based on a number of “happy” criteria. That might seem the agency equivalent of one of those bizarre academic studies such as Why does a cookie crumble (that’s a real study by the academics at Loughborough Uni btw and it's because humidity disrupts the biscuit's internal forces which cause it to self destruct!). However the point is an interesting one, if a brand is perceived as being happy does that make you more likely to purchase or interact with it, and what makes a “happy” brand anyway?

The agency identified five core characteristics that identify a “happy” brand, those being playful, happy, trustworthy, generous and optimistic. They shortlisted 100 UK brands and then asked 1250 people to rank them against those criteria. The final list makes interesting reading. Top of the list was Cadbury followed by Andrex at number 2 and Google at number 3. The full top ten is packed with FMCG brands Fairy (4), Nivea (5), Youtube (6), amazon (7), Mars (8), Walkers (9) and Heinz (10).

It’s not that surprising that the three service brands in the top ten - Google, YouTube and Amazon - are all digital and entertainment based. The rest fulfil the rules of brand that it should facilitate short term gratification and long term identify, you buy them because you are consciously or unconsciously choosing them over another similar offering because you identify with that brand and what it says about you and your views of the world.

What these brands have in common is a consistency of approach and messaging and a human tone of voice in that messaging. Most of the brands in the top ten have a clear brand promise that they deliver to consumers and stick to. What this survey also highlights is that emotional attributes are as important to consumers as rational reasons to buy as consumers are human after all, a fact that businesses often forget.

Tim Youngman is Director of Marketing for Archant

Never too old to be a gamer - just look at the stats

I have recently suffered a great loss as my beloved trusty Xbox 360 games console died. Now you might think that at 42 I am too old to play video games but the stats would disagree. Today games players cannot be defined by a particular age, sex or social group.

The Internet Advertising Bureau has estimated that there are 33 million regular gamers in the UK alone and worldwide that equates to more that 1.2 billion. That’s a lot of people spending a lot of money. In fact a recent report from PWC estimates that by 2017 the worldwide market will be worth $89.7 billion up from $63.4 billion in 2012.

That vast audience has not escaped the attention of major brands. The last few years has seen a rise in brands trying to use “gamification” to various success. Some have even created games as a brand marketing exercise, most notably the successful Barclays waterslide app for the iPad. Other brands have embraced placing ads in actual games and not who you would expect.

It’s not the “yoof” brands that are pushing the boundaries of this type of advertising. Insurer Swiftcover, part of AXA Insurance, has placed ads in games including Pro Evolution Soccer, Guitar Hero and Tiger Woods PGA tour. They have now taken this learning to another level creating mini games inside Facebook apps.

Another long standing in-game advertiser is GCHQ. The spy agency has for over 7 years used in-game advertising for its recruitment ads. They now use streaming video banners on the Xbox Live online gaming platform to try to recruit new spooks. The ads change as the player gets deeper and further into a game and so gives a guide to the spy chiefs to the skills and suitability of a player.

For every successful campaign though there have been many examples of failure. To make it work, the lessons from those that have benefited is that the experience cannot take away from the game and whatever it is; it must be as creative as the game they are trying to enjoy.

Tim Youngman is director of marketing for Archant 

The winter olympics and the delicate issue of sponsorship

Many of you reading this will have enjoyed the last few weeks watching people throw themselves off mountains on sticks or around slopes of sheet ice on tea trays. You may have even religiously tuned into watch people clean the ice in front of a casserole dish. I will admit that the recent winter games passed me by, apart from the furore around Russia’s anti-gay laws.

Sponsorship of any Olympic event is big money and comes with heavy policing. It is a high cost, high stakes business, undertaken by only the biggest global brands with the deepest pockets. They often have the most to loose and so the delicate issue of equality is a headache those brands do not need.

In response to the media and social backlash, IOC sponsors like Visa, Procter & Gamble, Samsung, Coca Cola and McDonalds released nice statements about the inclusiveness of the games without directly condemning the Russian stance.

Other brands that had no link to the games however went to town. We had Google’s logo changing on the opening day to include images of the games with the rainbow flag. Channel 4’s “Gay Mountain” ad and Chevrolet’s first same sex couple ad were other examples of brands wanting to demonstrate their own values.  

You have to feel sorry for the sponsor brands as they sponsor the games, not the host nation’s political or social beliefs. But that does not stop the pressure. Closer to home, we have seen examples of brands prepared to take a strong stand over things that they truly believe in. Zoopla’s dropping its sponsorship of West Brom over the Anelka quenelle issue for example. To me that demonstrates a business that truly stands by its values and fair play to them.

There are no winners or losers here. The lesson may be simply that all brands need to be satisfied that they are prepared to stand by their own values. Especially if their activities in some way mean they could be accused of being compromised. Or at least make sure you have a plan of how to approach any backlash. Planning will prevent pain in the long run. 

Personalised marketing - clever or creepy?

I have been working in marketing long enough to remember the first time I got a bulk email drop in my in-box with my actual name on it rather than “Dear customer”. Over the years personalisation in marketing has become something that is deemed standard. In fact, if you receive any form of marketing communication that is not highly personalised they are the ones that are binned electronically or physically first.

Product personalisation is the next evolution of this trend. Coca Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign is the best known example of this. It was actually dreamed up by Coca Cola’s Australian marketing team in 2011 thinking about ways to re-connect with its customers. Although they couldn’t personalise each individual Coke bottle, they realised they could replace the Coke logo on it with a range of common Christian names. This drove a 4% sales uplift and the campaign has been rolling out worldwide ever since with the labels printed with the 150 most popular Christian names in each territory. It was launched in the UK this summer to great success both in sales and brand engagement.

Another great example of a brand being creative with personalisation comes from the household favourite Heinz. In America they have a website myheinz.com where anyone in the US (they don’t do this internationally unfortunately) can order personalised bottles of tomato ketchup or mustard with your own words and even photos, delivered to your door.

The UK division took this concept and created a social campaign where Facebook fans could send personalised “Get Well Soon” cans of Heinz Chicken or Tomato soup in a gift box for the princely sum of just £1.99. In the first phase of launch they sent out 4,000 cans and have since made it a regular winter social media promotion.

Consumers love personalisation, anything from having your name written on your Starbucks coffee cup to bigger concepts like the Heinz or Coke campaigns. Although you think it might be impossible for your own company, it might just take some creative thought to come up with an idea that will really help you engage with your customers.  

Brand Loyalty, Brand Lunacy

The recent loss of a charger for my iPhone made me think about those brands whose loyal customers take brand loyalty to extreme. As I stood in the Apple store I marvelled at the glossy eyed stare of my fellow shoppers. Price sensitivity was not an issue here; desire for the brand and its products over ruled that. Apple, through its product ethos and marketing, has created in its hardcore customer base a personal investment in the brand. This is why people queue overnight when they release a new phone that looks exactly like the one in their pocket and the two other doppelgangers gathering dust in a drawer at home.

Apple is not alone in its ability to generate brand hysteria. Sony and Microsoft have done a similar job not with a DVD player and Excel but with the battle between the Playstation and Xbox games consoles. There is arguably very little technically different between the two but don’t put that on a web forum unless you want to be bombarded. The platforms and the games on them engender fanatical loyalty.

This is not a new phenomenon. Pepsi drinkers have been arguing with Coca Cola drinkers since forever. Brands that become a lifestyle also generate the same level of love. From Harley Davidson to sports brands such as Adidas, each one manages, through very careful and clever brand management, to find a way into the hearts and lifestyles of their chosen target markets.

The best example I can give of what happens if you get it right is Sriracha sauce. It has a simple website, no Facebook or Twitter profiles and does not do any advertising at all in the US where it’s based. Yet 20 million bottles of the hot sauce were sold in the US in 2012 alone. It, like Spanx, Rolls Royce and Krispy Crème doughnuts spend nothing on advertising and just concentrate on the product and the retail experience and let the brand advocates do to talking and buying. That’s careful brand management, a science and an art form.

Tim Youngman is director of marketing for Archant 

Its all gone 1984 again - the ad that launched Apple and changed an industry

Last week saw the 30^th anniversary of a television advertisement that changed a company and an industry. It’s not often you can say that about a 30 second television ad but in the case of Apple’s “1984” ad aired during the 1984 Super Bowl it’s true.

The ad is a take off of the classic movie of the same name and was even directed by Ridley Scott. If you watch the ad today (I recommend you find it on YouTube), you may think it was very much an ad of its time. It was however the first major cinematic minimalist television campaign. Its tagline “Why 1984 Won't Be Like 1984", positioned Apple as a true alternative in the personal computer market. Within 3 months of the Super Bowl ad airing, $155 million worth of Macintoshes had been sold.

The ad is rated as one of the greatest of all time by industry types however it was almost never shown. When the ad was sent to a research company for testing it was panned by all the panellists who saw it. However in an extremely brave move, the exec at the agency that came up with the ad chose not to share those results with his bosses at the agency or Apple. That’s either ballsy or career suicide depending on the outcome.

When the ad was shown to Apple, Steve Jobs loved it and the rest of the Apple Board hated it but Jobs had his way and the ad aired. The rest as they say is history. The ad not only changed a company’s fortunes but also the advertising industry itself. It made the advertisement almost as compulsive viewing as the programme it disrupted. It was also one of the first ads to go viral being played on news shows across the globe gaining further publicity and airtime. It could have all been so different if that account manager had not had belief in his creative. He however went on to become CEO of the agency and then launch his own. Sometimes you have to just have the courage of your own convictions.

Tim Youngman is director of marketing for Archant.

John Lewis, a bear, a hare and a lesson in advertising

Well that is Christmas done for another year and decorations are being taken down across the land. Although retailers are already at the tail end of the January sales the inquisition into Christmas performances has already started.

In some cases it is not good news. Debenhams has issued a profit warning stating same store sales for the 17 weeks to 28 December increased 0.1%, below expectations. Although you could blame part of this on a forgettable Christmas marketing campaign, the real blame lies with the increased pressure on early discounting.

Way before the usual Boxing Day sales started, many big name high street brands slashed prices and introduced flash sales in an attempt to gain footfall and sales. French Connection, New Look, M&S, House of Fraser and Boots all used discounting, offering up to 50 per cent cuts to entice shoppers. Unfortunately when one does, the rest are often forced to follow.

Both John Lewis and House of Fraser though have posted strong results. John Lewis enjoyed a 6.9% increase in sales with sales from its website accounting for almost a third of its total income over the festive period.

John Lewis credited the bear and hare television campaign as a key driver of this growth. The £7m campaign (£1m on the production of the ad alone) was launched like a movie premiere and garnered press coverage like it was. It was watched 11.5m times on YouTube alone. However as well as the ad itself you could also buy toys of the characters, a book telling the story (which became its best selling children’s title over Christmas), chocolate, slippers and of course the alarm clock itself. The soundtrack even went to number 1 in the charts.

Not everyone has £7m to spend on a campaign but it helped deliver sales of £734m over 5 weeks. John Lewis managed that rare trick of creating a multi-channel event from a simple creative idea. Rather than just creating a TV campaign they created a whole world for people to be part of, share and purchase. I suspect next year we will see similar from the other high street retailers still left.

Tim Youngman is director of marketing for Archant

Tesco, Amscreen and a Selfie at the pumps

In August I wrote a column about facial recognition in advertising. It was in response to the announcement from one of Sir Alan Sugar’s companies, Amscreen, that it was fitting facial recognition cameras to billboards to allow them to show more targeted advertising to individuals. The cameras could tell whether someone was male or female and approximate age and deliver ads appropriately.

Fast forward just three months and now Tesco has announced that it is planning to install Amscreen technology in all of its 450 petrol stations in a five year deal. The announcement means that very soon Tesco petrol purchasers, when standing at the till to pay, will have their face scanned. Adverts will then appear on a screen in front of your face targeted at whether you are male or female and approximate age, all while you are struggling to remember your pin and what pump you filled up at.

Although Amscreen and Tesco clearly stated that no images are stored and no data is collected, the announcement was met with the usual cries of despair from those concerned about data protection and privacy and intrusion. The reality is that the cameras are able to detect if they are seeing a face, its gender and approximate age and how much attention it pays to the screen. They claim a 90% accuracy rate at being able to detect male or female and unsurprisingly this accuracy rate goes down if the person is wearing a hat or covering their face in some way.

In August I finished my column by questioning whether the advancement of advertising technology and its ability to engage may actually turn people off through a sense of invasion. That question now seems much more real. With the screens expected to reach five million customers in the UK we may soon know the answer. Personally however I truly am looking forward to the first time I am standing waiting to pay and the camera gets the gender of the person in front of me wrong. I suspect my follicly challenged nature will mean this will not be an issue for me!

Tim Youngman is director of marketing for Archant  

Brand Experience - Focus on the real meaning

The term “brand experience” is often misused and miss quoted. Academically speaking it’s the experience your brand gives a consumer and so how they emotionally react or connect with it. This is based on whether it fulfils and is responsive to their needs, and very simply how it makes them feel.  Retailers spend millions trying to get that bit right when you walk into a store. Unfortunately it has now also become a catch all phrase that encompasses a whole new area of marketing.  

Many brands are now creating activities and events that allow consumers to experience a brand. This used to be the lady in the supermarket handing out the latest spread on a crumb of a cracker or the thimble of a new drink to try. Today this has evolved to a whole new level.

The best example of this comes from brand giants Procter & Gamble who in 2006 launched Charmin Restrooms at New York’s Times Square. These promised the best bathroom experience in the entire city. Over 400,000 consumers visited the restrooms in the first year of opening and US sales increased by 14%.

If you have ever been to Dublin you have probably visited the Guinness Storehouse. This is one big brand experience, not a tourist attraction as it’s often mistaken and presumed as. Land Rover has a global brand experience director. They plan to get 2m customers taking part in branded experience events by 2020 offering a range of experiences including Land Rover Adventure Holidays in 42 global experience centres.

Clearly only big brands have brand experience directors. However every company should be thinking about the academic definition as what is really important. What impression does your brand give to your target audience at every touch point they have with it from when people call you, go on your website or even pick up a leaflet or see an ad? Does it fulfil your customers needs better than the competition and are you responsive to that? Spend time thinking on those and you will be further ahead than your competitors.

Tim Youngman is Director of Marketing for Archant 

Marketing People vs the World (again)

A piece of research I read this week once again did what it was supposed to and challenged my thinking about how much I really know about our customers.

The research was a survey of 1,000 consumers and 350 marketers. It looked at what marketers think consumers do and think and then the reality of their actual behaviour.

For example when asked for what was the preferred channel of communication for customer service was, the sample of marketers thought that 8% of people would want to use Facebook and 7% Twitter. When they asked the consumer sample, the reality was only 2% would use Facebook and a mere 1% Twitter. The traditional channel of email was vastly under rated by marketers with 17% thinking people would want to use it versus 32% of actual consumers who said they preferred it.

A similar disconnect was highlighted when both sets were asked about which devices were used to access the internet. The marketers thought that 18% of consumers would use a tablet and 23% a mobile. Again the reality of consumers was of the 1,000 only 6% used a tablet and 9% a mobile.

To be honest I was not really surprised by the results because as a profession we are regularly at fault of jumping on whatever the current bandwagon is. In our defence this is normally driven by the continuing pressure to innovate and be thought leaders. Likewise, if you walk round a marketing conference delegates are usually dripping in new shiny tech toys compared with the people they then go to try to market to.

Most of us who work in a business that sells products or services will know our own products exceptionally well. We know our own industries well and our competitors and their products. However when it comes to our own customers there can be a difference between what we think their behaviour, views and needs are and what the reality actually is.

So all this just highlights a very simple reminder. Understanding your customers, their wants and needs and how you can help them achieve them will help differentiate you from your competitors. Research, in what ever form you choose to use, from studies to simple chats over cups of tea, is always worth the investment.

Tim Youngman is Director of Marketing for Archant

The beauty of basic business principles

This week I had the pleasure of hosting the Norfolk Chamber of Commerce “be better online” conference. Around 100 delegates from businesses across Norfolk and from numerous market segments descended to the Forum. All with the aim of learning some new tips and techniques that would help them improve what they were doing online and give them what all businesses want: an edge over their competitors.

As well as being an honour to host these events, I too sat with the rest of the delegates writing notes and picking up ideas that I could bring back to Archant towers and implement. I was not unduly surprised that from the varied speakers talking about such subjects as content marketing, search, social and email marketing there emerged some common but essential principles.

Too often companies undertake activities, especially online, without any goals or KPIs to check against. “We do social because we ought to” is not a reason. Have a proper plan with targets and goals and measure yourself against them and don’t be afraid to change if you don’t hit them.

Make sure you understand what your customers are doing on your own sites. For example it could be that your audience arrive on your site not on the homepage but a different landing page but unless you check your analytics data you cannot use that knowledge to your advantage. While you are doing that you should also make a point of understanding what your competitors are doing and see if you can do it better or differently!

Use content in its different forms to show people how great you are, don’t tell them. Use your own product and market experience to set yourself apart from your competitors. Finally a theme across all the day was my old favourite that applies to everything: test, learn and refine.

These simple rules may seem like common sense but are often forgotten by businesses. The value of a conference is not always in what is said but the chance to remove you from the rush of modern working and remind yourself that basic principles apply just as much to the digital world as to the offline world and arguably more so.

Tim Youngman is director of marketing for Archant

Microsoft and Nokia - a new dawn or an inevitable sunset?

The recent announcement of Microsoft acquiring Nokia’s devices business for £3.12bn did not generate anyway near the level of hype and coverage if it had happened 10 years ago.

Why? Well four years ago Nokia’s smartphone market share was 30%, now it’s 8%. Right now 90% of all mobiles work on Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS platforms, Microsoft’s windows share is 4%.

Although Microsoft also bought the right to licence Nokia patents and the Lumina phone brand. Nokia will continue to operate as a network and tech company and still owns the Nokia brand.

It’s that brand point which is the most interesting thing to me. From nowhere Apple launched a mobile phone and within a few years dominated the market. It was quickly joined by other manufacturers using Google’s Andriod system such as HTC and most notably Samsung.

These handsets sold not just because of the technology, as much as how they were marketed. Apple made the iPhone aspirational, desirable, you had to have one. Samsung has taken that mantle over, especially to the under 25 market who now view the iPhone as the phone owned by the older generation and so not cool. Even Blackberry had some status driven by its BBM messaging system and its use by celebrities. Nokia phones were just functional and that positioning does not sell in the millions.

Technologists would have you believe that you need the next phone because of all the cool things it will do. The reality is that phones became an accessory like a handbag or a watch. When they did, they moved from selling based on functionality to selling based on desire. Those companies with marketers who know how to create that emotion through marketing and brand messaging won. Those with no track record lost.

If you want proof that marketing is something all companies should take seriously it was noted that Samsung and Apple were estimated to have made £3.2bn profit on their mobile sales in the second quarter of this year alone. That just short of the total paid for Nokia, that’s a lesson in itself.

Tim Youngman is Director of Marketing for Archant 

Marmite and Advertising - you either love it or hate it

Advertising, you either love it or hate it, well that’s the idea anyway. Advertising is supposed to create some sort of emotional reaction. The Christmas John Lewis ads are great examples of this. Whatever it does, it is supposed to do something, especially sell you the thing the ad is about.

Occasionally ads provoke such a strong response that people feel that they need to complain. The all time favourite case studies of this are the Benetton campaigns of the 90s. However right now a new campaign from Unilever for Marmite is doing exactly what the team there and at its ad agency hoped.

If you have not seen the TV ad or posters, the current Marmite “cruelty” ad spoofs the work of animal rescue workers. In the TV ad Marmite rescue workers go into houses and rescue unloved jars of Marmite left at the back of cupboards and take them to a Marmite rescue centre to be re-housed.

However not everyone understands the definition of irony, and the ad has received hundred of complaints that it “trivialises” the work of animal charities. This though has had the opposite effect to what the complainers wanted and exactly what the Unilever brand team dreamt of. Lots of industry praise and more importantly a “significant” uplift in the YouGov Brand Index recall survey.

Now let me tell you I unashamedly both love this campaign for its sheer amusing genius almost as much as I love eating Marmite on toast. The creative concept is brilliantly clever and funny. It’s like no other campaign right now and continues the “love it or hate it” theme of recent campaigns. It’s a brand statement that no-one else is prepared to try, helped by the nature of the product. They are even so strong in keeping on message that the final image is of a small boy eating marmite with a face that shows he clearly is a marmite hater. Can you imagine a chocolate ad where the person spits out the chocolate in disgust at the end?  Neither can I this campaign is aimed straight at its loyal target market who love the brand and what it stands for and that’s why it’s a “love it” from me.

Tim Youngman is director of marketing for Archant 

Facial Recognition Advertising - a privacy step too far?

A couple of columns ago I wrote about temperature controlled ad boards that displayed advertisements depending on what the ambient temperature is. That is a clever use of technology but what happens when the lines between technology, advertising and privacy are blurred?

Most people are now all too familiar with online behavioural advertising where you visit a site and miraculously ads from that site seem to follow you around the web. It is of course impossible to drop a little piece of computer code onto a human being to get the same effect. However now thanks to Sir Alan and one of his subsidiary companies, Amscreen, we are getting close to that.

Amscreen has 5,000 digital advertising boards across Europe and they are now fitting facial recognition cameras to billboards. This will show whether the people looking at the billboard are male or female and potentially even approximate age allowing the boards to deliver more targeted advertising.

It does not stop there. Students at the European Institute of Technology are currently exploring the ability to link Facebook accounts to the computer chips in store loyalty cards. These would then link to in-store ad boards that would flash up ads based on a person’s Facebook likes.

At this point you then get into the big question of privacy. In America the upscale retailer Nordstrom ran a trial of a system that tracked individuals’ movements through their smart phones’ in-store Wi-Fi connections. Sensors within the store collected information from customer smartphones as they attempt to connect to Wi-Fi service. The sensors monitored which departments were visited and how much time was spent in them. When this was released in the media the consumer backlash about privacy quickly ended the trial.

The reality is as technology gets smarter, so will advertising and its ability to engage but potentially also annoy and invade. A marketer’s dream, but how much consumers will be prepared to put up with remains to be seen.

Tim Youngman is Director of Marketing for Archant

The Colgate Brushswap Saga - marketing lessons from Colgate and Philips

It’s a sad but true fact that one of the best way to learn in business if from others mistakes and I would like to share an absolute classic from Colgate. Colgate’s brand has grown from toothpaste to toothbrushes and now electric toothbrushes.

The latter is a very competitive market with brands such as Philips and Braun’s Oral B spending vast sums on TV advertising. So you can sympathise with the marketing team at Colgate when thinking how they could make some noise about the launch of its new electric toothbrush.

What they came up with was BrushSwap. Create a viral noise by having a stand at Waterloo station for a week followed by another at London Victoria station for a week. At the stand commuters could swap their old electric toothbrushes for a brand new Colgate ProClinical toothbrush billed as being worth £170. A great idea you might think, or was it?

The problem with giving away free stuff and announcing it on social media is that it tends to get shared, a lot. On the first day people starting queuing at the stand at 5am, it wasn’t planned to open until 7am. By 9am they were forced to shut the stand after being swamped by people and having run out of brushes. Cue lots of annoyed people who had travelled to London to get this seemingly great offer taking to social media to vent their anger and Colgate trying to respond and explain the situation via twitter.

To be fair to Colgate on paper it was a good idea using a tried and trusted technique. The reality was different.  Colgate has now learnt not to underestimate the reach of social media to spread both a good message and a bad one when things go wrong. It has also moved the initiative online to an open to all draw for one of 7,000 brushes they are giving away. Network Rail is also reviewing what promotional opportunities it allows after numerous complaints from angry commuters caught in the chaos.   

Maybe the real lesson comes from Philips who placed a press ad appearing in national newspapers reading, "The best things in life aren’t free." The ad had an image of the Philips Sonicare electric toothbrush and the strapline, "The UK’s No1 sonic toothbrush. And worth every penny." Now that’s marketing.

Tim Youngman is director of marketing for Archant 

Temperature controlled outdoor advertising – as hot as the weather

The world of advertising likes to paint a picture perfect world of British summertime for particular products. For example, you never see cider ads with people sitting in a pub garden huddling under umbrellas hiding from the rain while wearing jumpers.

It’s often forgotten that bad summer weather causes problems for brands as well as tennis players and farmers. Brands can spend hours and weeks carefully crafting a campaign for their product based on the good feelings generated by good weather, only for it to be completely ruined by it showing during a period of inclement rain and cold. Despite this every summer we are faced with ads filled with images of picture perfect summers days, even when they are the exception and not the norm.

However for every problem there is someone somewhere coming up with a solution and in this case it is, and I am not joking here, temperature controlled ad panels.

Stella Artois is now running ad slots across outdoor advertising company Posterscope digital poster boards for its Cidre brand. When the temperature rises two degrees or more above the average in the specific location using real time data an ad appears for the cider brand.

Costa Coffee has run a two month campaign on the London Underground working with CBS Outdoor who manage the ad slots there and who were pioneers of digital outdoor advertising. They promoted Costas Ice Cold Costa range on the underground network when the temperature went above 22 degrees Celsius. The ads were location specific so when the temperature went up, a digital panel at a station exit not only delivered a promotional message but also direct underground users to the nearest Costa outlet that they could buy an Ice Cold shake.

Not only is this enormously clever but it will also reduce a lot of wasted spend and effort. Ad slots based on increased pollen counts are now also being introduced and this no doubt is just the start of a whole new advertising concept with winter brands already being lined up for temperature based campaigns. So weather sensor based advertising is here and will grow, all we need now is some hot weather!

Tim Youngman is Director of Marketing for Archant www.about.me/timyoungman

Little Chef – the product life cycle and the death of a brand

A few readers may be familiar with the product life cycle concept. This describes the stages a product goes through from when it was first thought of, to launch, growth, maturity, decline and in some instances death. Death of a product is normally caused by such causes as technological obsolescence, massive public distrust or reaction caused by a scandal and in some instances they have just had their time. One such brand which is facing such a fate and which holds deep memories for many, including myself, is Little Chef.

Little Chef was founded by a gentleman called Sam Alper who actually ran a caravn making business in East London. He launched it after trips to America, enjoying its roadside diners which gave a much different experience to the road side cafés in the UK. From his first restaurant in Reading in 1958 grew a British institution that created such entries into the British psyche as the Olympic Breakfast and Jubilee Pancakes.

The iconic Fat Charlie sign dominated the roadsides of Britain for 50 years but from its heyday in the 1980’s consumer habits changed. Roads became better, as did cars and long journeys therefore became less arduous and stops became more infrequent and shorter. Petrol stations offered coffee and decent sandwiches, well they offered sandwiches. Fast food outlets opened on the roadside offering a modern quick option for the weary driver. The words “lets stop for a happy meal” started to have an impact on families tired of bickering children in the back of the car.

Since 2000 the Little Chef business has been bought and sold a number of times and also been in administration. Each time outlets were closed and its grip on the roadside catering industry loosened. It tried different strategies such as in 2004 hiring a brand agency who thought the problem was Fat Charlie and re-drew him as a thinner version promoting 15,000 complaints. Some success came in 2009 when Heston Blumenthal updated the menus complete with Channel 4 documentary but this was a drop against a tide. 

Now the business is once again up for sale but today it only has 78 outlets from its heyday of over 400 in the Eighties with 67 outlets closing last year alone. Bids have been received from McDonalds, Starbucks, Costa and Kentucky Fried Chicken any of whom, if successful, are expected to close and rebrand to their own brands.

So let’s return to the product life cycle. Numerous books have been written on the subject with many more on how products and brands can avoid the latter terminal stage. Many brands have managed to avoid death through revitalising strategies anything from brand extentions, re-positioning and even simply changing your packaging. One of the best often quoted examples is Oil of Olay once a mothers day gift favourite and now a multi-million, multi-brand extension cosmetic powerhouse. 

Sometimes though even if you change the packaging and adjust what’s underneath, if its not what the consumer wants then the inevitable will happen. So it looks certain that in a very short time the iconic roadside image of Little Chef will be consigned to brand history. Without the occasional death there would be no new life. So next time you stop at the services please raise your Costa or Starbucks as you eat your M&S or Waitrose sandwich in memory.

Tim Youngman is director of marketing for Archant www.about.me/timyoungman