Search results matching tag 'Clients'

Eat your chips, or you’ll never get big and fat when you grow up!

822535 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:49:00 GMT

Unlike the UK, which has pretty strict guidelines on advertising junk food to kids, If you ever wondered why so many young Americans are spotty, overweight, and just generally a pain in the arse... Listen up... We are to blame. And no, I'm not talking about us as parents (well, maybe to a certain extent) I'm talking about the "Us" in the ad biz. Did you know that here in the US, food companies spent nearly two billion dollars to market products to children and teens in 2007. Of which nearly half was targeted to children under 12.

Makers of fizzy drinks spent the most on marketing to children and teenagers, followed by fast-food restaurants and producers of breakfast cereals. And the major advertising platform was television. Tons of television, particularly in the cartoon shows aimed at the really young.

McDonalds gives high schools report card holders that offer free burgers and chips to kids who get good grades. And the corridors of virtually every high school are lined with vending machines for everything from Coke to pork rinds.

As I write in the chapter devoted to advertising to kids in my last book, The Ubiquitous Persuaders, two years ago, the junk food makers agreed to regulate themselves, which is like putting the fox in charge of the hen house.

Since it was was formed in 2006 to fend off government regulation, the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative run by the Council of Better Business Bureaus, has done virtually bugger all, in spite of its pledge either to stop aiming ads at children or to promote only what the council calls “better-for-you products” in ads directed at children.

Still, what can you expect from a country that once claimed (when Reagan was President) that ketchup was one of the essential foods groups necessary in a school lunch, and where in some states nearly half the population is obese… Not overweight… Obese. Although I hear it’s happening over there as well. Bloody advertising!

Wow… How the mighty have fallen, only to get up, then fall again.

822535 — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:27:00 GMT

When I first worked on the Dell account, back in San Francisco, in the early eighties, they were severely kicking everyone else's arse. Not only did they offer a superior product for a superior price… They overlaid this great sales model with the kind of service which guaranteed, not just that the average punter would keep sniffing around and buying because they were so happy with both the product and the service, but also, Corporate America, which was constantly worried about both the bottom line and the continuity of service and reduced costs, would keep coming back for more.

At the same time Ross Perot was launching an effort to win the Presidency. And he could have won it too, with a combination of his home spun philosophy, and his perceived honesty. Anyway, it didn’t work out for several weird reasons that would take too long to go into.

So, to read today that Dell is buying Perot systems for a mere $3.9 billion, leaves me wondering what the hell is going on? Is this an indication of the final transmogrification of the increasingly failing current American business model? Who the hell knows, everyone from IBM, to Microsoft, to Oracle is convinced that selling services is the future, rather than selling products. I don’t know. At the end of the day, I have this nagging feeling that if you don’t actually make something… You have *** all to sell. But, then again, what the hell do I know?

Scouse army holds Denmark to ransom!

822535 — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 01:57:00 GMT

The amounts of money paid in the US for sports sponsorship, is pretty crazy. Until you look at the money being splashed around in the UK for the privilege of putting your logo on a football teams strip. The news that Liverpool want Carlsberg to cough up the same amount of money – Eighty million quid – That Aon squeezed Manchester United for in a four year deal, smacks of extortion to me.

Not that I blame the teams for trying it on… If big dumb companies believe that having a three inch tall version of their logo on a players jersey is worth twenty million pounds a year, then they deserve to get ripped off. Still, I suppose it’s no worse than the British taxpayer being stuck with the billions destined to be shoveled down the black hole of the 2012 Olympics.

I did enjoy reading though, that Liverpool fans have forced Carlsberg to abandon ads and promotions in the Wizened of Oz’s Sun rag, ‘cos Liverpool fans refuse to read it. Plus they are currently demanding an advertiser boycott of the Dirty Digger’s Fox Soccer Channel. What with the current implosion of MySpace, he must be wondering where his next billion is coming from.

Three golden rules to achieve integration between your campaigns and your website

1713999 — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:46:00 GMT

As this is a media blog, I have written a lot about different media types - search, affiliate, display, etc... all trying to win the attention of customers and entice them towards their website.

But is the message that leads the user to a website the same message they receive when they land? A good customer experience should take the visitor from their off-site touch-point straight to a page that will meet their expectations. Unfortunately we often see clients who come to us with campaigns where there is little relationship between the two, leaving the visitor to work harder to find what they are looking for. That's if they don't just leave the site out of frustration.

Why does this happen? From what I have seen, it comes down to a division between the "website team" and "marketing team" in many organisations, especially those where the website is not seen as core to the business. Ultimately, both teams may want to drive success on the website, whether it is sales, enquiry or interaction with some fancy new widget, but these teams have their own performance goals to work towards. Marketing want to see that their campaigns generate site visits and have onsite acquisitions attributed to their own campaign. Meanwhile the website teams are moving around content and considering the online experience in order to maximise conversions, not just those from a particular media campaign but from the many, often simultaneous, traffic sources for the site. Both causes are noble, but shouldn't everyone be pulling in the same direction?

So, what options are there to align the online and marketing experiences? Essentially, the landing page (and subsequent navigation through the site) needs to meet visitor expectation. It is no use landing on a site homepage with zero identifiable relevance to the media campaign when they could have landed deeper in the site or be a creative landing page that matches the campaign message.

I've blogged previously about the benefits of diversity and full service offering in a digital agency - being part of a full service agency we know that the first step to bridge the media/online divide is ultimately to get the teams talking!

So here are my three golden rules:

1) Talking - share plans, strategy and results between the online team and the marketing team. Replace the silos with an end-to-end view of the customer experience.

2) Testing - perform landing page AB or multi-variant testing to gather insight into what onsite content works best for different campaign plans. When everyone if fighting for a piece of webpage real estate ensure you base decisions on data instead of who has the loudest voice.

3) Targeting - it isn't possible to cater to everyone all the time, so target landing page content to the specific visitor. One option is to create a campaign specific landing page or microsite. Another is to serve targeted content. There are many tools that will segment site visitors and allow you to serve relevant content to them. For example, display relevant content to someone arriving by paid search, as opposed to a particular email campaign or those have arrived on the site organically. Just as I have blogged about customer targeting from a media point of view it can also be powerful to target a visitor onsite.

Different strokes for different folks

1713999 — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:22:00 GMT

Afternoon all, do you ever have days when you buzz off what you do ? I am having one !

We lost a pitch, so why am I happy you ask .... to be honest I don't think we'd want to work with the client. The team did a fantastic job however the client didn't buy our approach to digital, they bought a 2% commission, we should do it cos we do the telly, approach. Now, its not an invalid argument however when the review is called because they were not getting a strategic perspective or quality of service and in his words had a "bunch of 21 year olds with calculators" on the account it doesn't make a lot of sense to re purchase the same thing ( it stayed with the incumbent ) at an even lower price point invalidating the agencies' ability to do a better job as the margin is squeezed further. I actually feel a bit sorry for them !

I am proud of the fact that we delivered a comprehensive, intelligent approach to digital - Each client values different things from an agency and there is no one size fits all solution so today I am happy because we stood tall behind our beliefs and I am glad we have a point of differentiation that polarises clients.

Wouldn't life be very dull if we were all the same ?

Michelle Pfeiffer, Ivan Pollard, Nat and Lolly...

1725283 — Sat, 09 May 2009 05:46:00 GMT

We have just about accepted that we are not going to get on the Innocent pitch list.

We unchain ourselves from the railings outside Innocent's headquarters, and return home for a nice hot bath. Bloodied but unbowed.

We will continue to buy Innocent's products even if they will not buy ours! We still love Innocent.

Robert is concerned because we because we can't upload pictures onto our blog. Technical problems. We discuss this with our new found blogging friends, Nat and Lolly.

Nat and Lolly also like to put pictures on their blog. We decide to start a campaign to get Rory to put pictures on his blog. For the benefit of those of us who don't have a degree in philosophy.

http://community.brandrepublic.com/blogs/younglionsfromcannes/default.aspx

Ivan Pollard has made an interesting post on his blog about 'old' being the new target to market. http://community.brandrepublic.com/blogs/ivanpollard/default.aspx This is not lost on us. One of the projects we are continuing to pursue is creating a 'Sexy Saga.'

To be clear this does not mean we are creating an advertising agency that targets old people. We are creating a 'product' for the upmarket 50+ demographic. Or 'fiftyjusts' as we like to call them. Like Michelle Pfeiffer http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7890160.stm

One of the best things about not having any clients is you have time to hang out with friends. We go to visit Sue Unerman and Jane Ratcliffe at Mediacom. It's pretty clear as soon as you walk through the door of Mediacom why it was voted UK media agency of the year. It's feels vibrant, modern and powerful.

Sue, Jane Garry and Robert discuss many things, including what a great idea the t mobile flash mob was in Trafalgar Square last week. A fabulous piece of media thinking. We wonder who came up with it. The 'media' agency, or the 'creative' agency?

Innocent until proven innocent

1725283 — Fri, 01 May 2009 11:32:00 GMT

Today is May 1st. The day that people dance around the maypole. Sometimes naked. And to celebrate we've decided to officially launch Campbell Lace (Beta.)

We start the day with a big meeting with a big potential client. It's a fascinating project, and not the sort of thing a traditional agency would get asked to do. The meeting is over by 10am. We really really hope we get this. It would get us off to a brilliant start. Fingers crossed.

Next we go back to the office to submit an RFI (request for information) for a pitch. We've been working on the RFI all week. We've put a fabulous team together. Experts from all sorts of disciplines. Our solution is anything but conventional. We stick the RFI on a bike and wave it goodbye. Toes crossed.

Now onto the next RFI. It also has to be sent off today. But Garry has other ideas. He has become obsessed with getting on the Innocent pitch. Even though the list has been compiled and is now shut. Garry is like a Pit Bull with lockjaw. He can not and will not let go.

Robert is delighted. Innocent are one of the best brands on the planet. We are unconcerned by Innocent's reputation for being difficult to work with.

When Virgin came to RKCR in 1993 they had a reputation for being the client from hell. They turned out to be the client from heaven.

Perhaps the difficulty is that Innocent have not yet found the agency that is right for them.

Ad agencies often have problems working with clients who have already had a powerful idea for themselves. Like Innocent and Virgin. They just can't accept that clients can be creative too.

Garry's Blackberry is smoking. Please Innocent. Put us on the list. Before Garry spontaneously combusts.

Two weeks down. Ten thousand to go...

1725283 — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 06:17:00 GMT

It's Thursday Morning.

Garry and Robert sit in the Electric on the Portobello reading Campaign. The Electric is our unofficial office. We think Nick Jones should give us shares.

It's two weeks since Campaign fired the starting gun. We are very much still in Beta. What have we achieved so far?

Lots that we can't talk about . And a little that we can.

We've done the 'legals' and the 'financials.' We're delighted to say that Lewis Silkin will be our laywers and Kingston Smith or Accountants. This might sound dull to some, but it isn't. These two companies have nurtured many of the great start ups. They know how to do it.

We've looked at a few buildings. Rents are fantasticaly low at the moment. We love recessions! But we're not sure. We've had several offers of 'camping' at friends companies and this is what we'll probably do for a month or two.

We're genuinely humbled at the industry response to Campbell Lace (Beta)

Most people seem to be pleased to see us back, and there's a genuine interest to see how (Beta) tackle the issues that currently face the industry.

We've been overwhelmed with offers of help from individuals and companies. Which is brilliant, because we're hoping to take up on most of them. One of our core principles is putting collaboration, not competition at the heart of our organisation.

We believe collaboration is the way to solve most of this industry's ills.

Perhaps this is the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius for Adland.

We've begun the process of finding our partners. We will have news on this front soon.

We're establishing the network of companies we're going to collaborate with. It's not complete yet. But these companies cross all media and all disciplines, in the UK and across the world.

And we've started talking to clients.

Have we got a client yet? No. But there are definitely some clients circling. And they are of the innovative and courageous variety. What more could you want from a client?

Both of us feel it is really good to be back. We're loving it.

We leave the Electric to discover Garry's been clamped.

He refuses to have his picture taken standing next to the offending object.

Age of Aquarius? Will someone please tell the traffic wardens.

Talent, collaborators, and frustrated traffic wardens, e mail hello@campbelllacebeta.com

AND PLEASE DON'T FORGET TO LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS BELOW. .

Valencia. The new Cannes?

1725283 — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 17:31:00 GMT

This weekend Robert's judging at the Valencia Media festival. It is amazing how this festival has arrived out of nowhere, and now how big it is. The world's media buyers, planners, media owners, and some pretty major clients have gathered to discuss the present, and to carve up the future. Robert's in good company. Chuck Porter's come to speak. But apart from that no one else from above the line ad land. Pity. Lord Puttnam gives a truly scary speech at dinner about sustainability and adland's responsibility to embrace the cause. Otherwise we'll all be making like dinosaurs.

Garry and Robert take their hats off to Richard Huntingdon, Adliterate blog guru and head of planning at Saatchi. We've just heard Richard has landed the job of co-hosting the new tv ad show, The Gruen Transfer with Paris Hilton. Sorry. Not Paris Hilton, James Hilton from AKQA. Whatever, Richard is one of the best and most amusing presenters in adland. Can't wait to see the show.

Garry and Robert would like to point out that they are also available for tv appearances etc. With or without Paris Hilton. hello@campbelllacebeta.com

And speaking of tv, here's some ads we did earlier THE HISTORY OF CAMPBELL LACE (BETA)

THE HISTORY OF CAMPBELL LACE (BETA)

1725283 — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 10:40:00 GMT

Garry and Robert met in 1992 on an IPA Stage 2 training course. Garry was a delegate. Robert was a judge. We've always had an intention to work together. It's just taken a while. Here's a little of the work we've been involved in along the way.

This Ian Dury ad for the Sunday Times is one of Robert's favourites. Filmed shortly before Dury died. He was a beautiful man.

Garry led the Playstation account when he was CEO of TBWA. Ed Morris wrote Double Life. Garry made it happen.

Virgin Atlanic were one of Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe's first clients. Robert made four ads with Terence Stamp. (Terence was also filming Prescilla Queen of the Desert at the time!)

Helen Mirren was the second Virgin Atlantic celebrity. She was at the height of her 'Prime Suspect' fame. Robert must have shot ten ads with her. Here's one of them.

A child psychologist friend of Robert's told him that uniting families around the dinner table is the most successful therapy. This simple insight was the inspiration behind Ahhhh Night - the Bisto Family Pledge.

If American Airlines can please the toughest of New Yorkers, (in this case James Gandolfini aka Tony Soprano) they can please anyone. A big idea that can run and run.

Robert made Cages Save Lives in 1989 when he was a copy writer at AMV. The ad was made for about fifty quid out of stock foootage. Posters ran at the same time. It's amazing how many people still remember it.

Under the Skin of Sport. Posters. Press. TV. The Sunday Times were a fabulous founding client for RKCR. The excitement, speed and dynamism that surrounds newspapers was in Rainey Kelly's DNA. Robert worked with them for ten years.

'When your life flashes before your eyes, make sure you've got plenty to watch.' Maybe we should make it Campbell Lace Beta's company philosophy.

The Launch of VH1. This 'Soundtrack of your life' idea informed all the new channel's communications. Idents, programming, playlists. Vic and Bob and a host of other celebrities starred in the ads.

Chocolate Heaven. These charming ads for Thornton's sold a lot of chocolate.

Miller Time. A breakthrough idea of Robert's at RKCR. The ads were three minutes long. Each week we ran a different one. We shot three a night in front of a live audience. Alice Cooper. Patsy Kensit. James Belushi. Elle McPherson. James Wood. Jonathan Ross. The shows were promoted with 10 second ads on ITV. We doubled the ratings on Channel Four.

At RKCR Robert pitched for and won Landrover and Jaguar globally. Here's two of the ads that ran Worldwide as a result. We love global. One of Campbell Lace's missions is to simplify and reduce the cost of advertising globally.

Robert coined the term, 'The New Jag Generation' for the global launch of the X type. A radical departure from Jaguar's normally staid advertising.

Iggy. Virgin Atlantic, Upper Class. Well, wouldn't you want to sit next to him?

Robert used to get fan mail for these Lil Lets ads. They revolutionised the style and tone of San Pro advertising. From absurd and brash to sensitive and discreet.

Virgin Atlantic, Upper Class. One of the most talented pigs Robert has ever worked with.

Who says Eddie Izzard doesn't do ads?

And last but not least the launch of Virgin Cola. "Unreal." The most extraordinary shoot Robert has ever been on. "When the director arrived on set wearing a dress and set himself on fire, I knew we were in trouble."