Harry Should Be Thankful

Letting people know about a new product or service can take the form of a number of different strategies, many of these have been discussed in prior postings, for example there are traditional forms of communication like TV, radio, billboards which continue to work very effectively for some companies and there are more contemporary forms of communication like the use of iAds in the previous blog post, youtube advertorials, and of course social media platforms like facebook, twitter and blogs. If done correctly, all of these methods will assist in your brands success but often there are large costs to contemplate.

The following is a breakdown of how Cindy Gordon and a counterpart developed a strategy on a low marketing budget to promote the “The Wizarding World of Harry Potter” theme park before it’s opening.

The strategy was reliant on word-of-mouse to spread the story
The news of the new theme park was going to be told to a select bunch of rabid HP fans (Mugglenet).
Warner Bros, JK Rowling and Gordon hand selected 7 people who are behind the biggest fan sites in the world to attend a private webcast event at the HP studios.
The private meeting was conducted to bombarde the 7 fans with information about the new theme park.
The 7 fans then went and blogged about the theme park and it’s micro webpage continually over the months leading up to 2010, allowing bloggers to go to town.
These 7 fans got a combined +350 million hits. Not bad for a small budget and simple strategy.
Gordon reckons it would have been an insult and a cause of backlash to let traditional form’s of communications like the NY times introduce the new attraction, rather then an insider fan site.  

Utlising the iPad

The iPad certainly is the topic of the moment. Due to the non-flash compatability some of our clients have chosen to update their sites so there is an alternative to the flash that shows when viewing on an iPad/iPhone and this has worked well. But how else can you appeal to iPad users through your marketing strategies. Here are a couple of ways you may like to consider...

Branded applications
There is no doubt about the popularity of branded apps on the iPhone, I have many as do most users, and everyday there are more and more available. The iPad is no different and the application choice will continue to grow rapidly.

Games are one way to appeal to iPhone and iPad users, but some brands have appealed to mobile users through more useful and practical apps like banking, news, radio and even barcode scanning to produce content. The key is to make it appealing and useful to users. A branded game may appeal to more users but it will not necessarily deliver the engagement and frequency of use of an app that is more useful.

 
Email marketing
Like the iPhone, users can access their emails quickly and easily once they have set their accounts up on the device. Email is easy to view and read on the iPad’s interface, so it offers an excellent experience for the user, who is likely to spend more time reading emails as a result. Email marketers need to think about how they will tailor emails for iPad users. Since it is a touch screen device, placement and size of links and call to action buttons need to be large enough for users to select. The lack of Flash on the iPad means that marketers will need to ensure that any landing pages are free from Flash and optimised for the device. 

Display advertising
Whether delivered via the internet, or through apps, the iPad is well suited to display advertising. This may be the biggest opportunity for marketers targeting the iPad, as advertisers can create attractive and compelling ads, while the device allows users to quickly interact with ads. Add to this that Apple debuted its iAd mobile advertising network on 1 July. 

iAds combine the emotion of TV advertising with the interactivity of Internet advertising, giving advertisers a dynamic and powerful new way to bring motion and emotion to mobile users.

Here is an example of a magazine on an iPad as well. Magazines and thus their advertising will become more interactive and engaging...

These are just a few and there are many other options you can consdier to add to your marketing mix. One thing for sure is you need to look to these devices and the necessary changes required to your current marketing to ensure you are capturing your audience.....as they are, or will be very soon, using them!iAds combine the emotion of TV advertising with the interactivity of Internet advertising, giving advertisers a dynamic and powerful new way to bring motion and emotion to mobile users. 

Advanced Viral + Inception

In the months leading up to the Inception release, the film’s marketing and PR team have put into place an ongoing viral campaign to captivate audiences, create buzz, promote new trailers, win over important industry people and to introduce multiple touch points for the movie. The latest part of the campaign involves posters being placed all over major cities with pasted Quick Response (QR) codes, after being decoded the information leads users to a selection of websites, including ‘what is dream share?’, ‘Mind Crime’, and ‘pasivdevice’. Each website reveals brief information of the inner workings of Inception. Also, a tin with a USB containing the movies third official trailer and a model spinning top from the movie have been sent to various journalists and industry insiders. I think this campaign will have definitely added to the movies hype. It’s looking like this movie will be one of the biggest of the year. In similar news, Tusk have also recently been busy developing a viral campaign for one of our clients which is going to be a big success. If you have any questions regarding viral campaign’s for your business, contact us today. 

Your're No Good Without It

If you put into place proper research, planning and strategy, a marketing plan can be quite easy to achieve. Yet a marketing plan will not be effective unless (1) the entire company front and back of house, understands and is passionately implementing the strategy and (2) there is a person/team monitoring and constantly improving the plan.

Imagine if you were the Marketing Manager for a large hotel and you have designed and implemented a marketing plan which will if followed, bring much success for the establishment. However, if the porters act rudely to guests as they arrive, if the barman don’t properly market alliance products, or if restaurant staff don’t up sell products for example, the marketing strategy will not bring successful results.

Marketing does not consist of one or two topics, moreover it is a multi-faceted area of business consisting of product, price, place and promotional decisions, along with branding, market research, Corporate Social Responsibility, social marketing strategy and much more.

Thats where Tusk Agency come in. We offer complete marketing consultancy packages for any business large or small who are in need of marketing assistance for their business. We are currently contracting a marketing consultant to the World Travel Professionals (WTP), to assist in increasing the brands corporate and social identity. For more information on what we can do for you, contact us today.  

Catch of the Day



This is really clever.

Bringing attention to ocean pollution, Surfrider Foundation teamed up with Satchi & Satchi LA to create “Catch of the Day.” Simply and brilliantly, they collected actual rubbish from beaches around the U.S., packaged it like food, and left it on display at farmer’s markets. It’s site-specific, appropriate, impacting, meaningful, shocking, and an actual consumer insight into the very act they’re in the middle of. Someone about to buy fish from the same ocean as the trash in their hands can’t help but be at least a little more enlightened as to how pollution isn’t someone else’s problem.

A Weak Attempt - Jim Breuer & Pizza Hut

Jim Breuer or more to the point, Pizza Hut have missed the mark with their latest viral marketing attempt. The scenario places Jim Breuer in front of a rolling camera as he shoots a new Pizza Hut "TV Commercial." I have gathered that the general premise of the not so funny or compelling clip is that Jim is angered when a production hand does not allow him to eat the pizza he is promoting. He is seen to "blow a fuse" and in apparent anger, "push the assistant in the pool."

In this case the actor isn't exactly convincing, however much of the blame must rest on the script writters and the people behind the concept. It would seem that the people at Pizza Hut were simply trying too hard, with lines such as: dude, don't roll up on me manand dude, why you even followin' me?I am interested to see if others think this is legit or not, view the botched clip below and leave your comments:

 

Advertising has Changed

Forrester Research interviewed marketers about their plans for the future and based on the response have made some projections. Here is a summary of the marketing forecast:

  • Marketers have learned that interactive marketing is more effective, and advertising less effective, per dollar spent. While budgets for online have decreased in this economic market, they decreased less than other budgets.
  • Digital marketing is no longer experimental. More than half of the marketers surveyed said that effectiveness of direct mail, television, magazines, outdoor, newspapers, and radio would stay the same or decrease within three years. In contrast, well over 70% expected the effectiveness of channels like created social media, online video, and mobile marketing to increase.
  • The result is that digital, which will be about 12% of overall advertising spend in 2009, is likely to grow to about 21% in five years.
  • It means we are all digital marketers now, since digital is at the center of many campaigns anyway. It means media is in trouble, or at least in the middle of a transformation.
  • And it means that social "media", which will account for $716 million this year between social network campaigns and agency fees, will generate $3 billion in five years. And this doesn't even count displays ads on social networks (which are in the display ads category.) Of all the parts of digital marketing, social network marketing one is poised for the most explosive growth.

For the full article please see Josh Bernoffs blog entry

What the Internet will never be!

I came across an article today that was written for Newsweek in February 1995...interesting to read his lack of foresight.

The Internet? Bah! (computers cannot replace books, teachers or newspapers)

Ive posted a few comments here but you can read the full article here:

Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.”

“Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure.”

“We’re told that multimedia will make schoolwork easy and fun. Students will happily learn from animated characters while taught by expertly tailored software… These expensive toys are difficult to use in classrooms and require extensive teacher training.”

“Then there’s cyber business. We’re promised instant catalog shopping–just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obsolete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet–which there isn’t–the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.”

I am sure he is wishing these words never left his thoughts!

Influencing purchase...

I came across some very research regarding which media influences greater purchases. Although its US based statistics I thought it would be interesting particularly to some of our clients that are pushing to increase social marketing in place of other activities. The obvious reason being that it is cheaper in most cases, however consideration must be given to whether its effective in actually producing sales...the ultimate goal!

An outline of the research by Harris Interactive that surveyed 2.355 American adults:

Consumer purchase decisions are informed by a mix of "old" and "new" media, but more traditional forms of communication appear to exert a greater influence than social networking websites.

The most common way shoppers mentioned that they collected information prior to buying a particular product was:

  • 36% via a company website.
  • 22% via "Face-to-face" interaction with a "salesperson or other company representative".
  • 21% spoke to someone "not associated with the company".
  • 19% found out about a brand from print advertising.
  • 15% via broadcast ads,
  • 14% made judgments "based only on my past experience."

In terms of online behaviour:

  • 19% used independent websites featuring product reviews – like Amazon.
  • 11% accessed internet message boards.
  • 4% turned to social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace, with a similar number visiting "private social networking sites" and “customer communities".

Results varied slightly by age group:

  • 16% of 18–24 year olds employed social media to conduct product research. Although this result was higher the figure was still 5% lower than for ads on TV and radio, and 6% below that for print media among this demographic, and some 24% smaller than the number visiting company websites.
  • Ads on broadcast media were most widely-used among 25–29 year olds, at 22%.
  • Print ads were most popular among 50–64 year old shoppers, on 27%.

Over all demographics:

  • 57% communicated about their positive product/service experience to others after making a purchase.
  • 41% "recommended" what they had bought to others.
  • 11% of this group did so with regard to a negative experience, and only 6% "recommended against" purchasing an item.
  • 63% expressed their positive or negative experience when talking to "a family member, business colleague or a friend.", 30% used email, 12% used a company website, 9% employed social networks, 8% opted for online message boards, and 7% added their comments to independent review websites.

Database Marketing: A 24 Point Checklist

Arthur M. Hughes of KnowledgeBase Marketing has offered a list of the 24 database marketing techniques essential for "anyone who works in marketing..." Take a look at the article its an interesting read.



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