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Marketing Titbits – MarketingWeekLive, When Advertising Goes Wrong and PageSpeed Insights

1. MarketingWeekLive – get your ticketsThe UK’s largest marketing event takes place between the 26 – 27th June 2013 at London conference venue, Olympia.

With over 450 exhibitors addressing all things marketing, a plethora of free ‘conference’ sessions from some of the world’s largest brands, networking opportunities and learning seminars, MarketingWeekLive is a great event to attend if you have an interest in marketing.

To find out more information about the exhibitors, insight seminars, speakers and to book your tickets, click here.

2. When Advertising Goes Wrong

We found this great blog last week showing 23 unfortunate advert placements. If you fancy a laugh take a look. It just goes to show that you can design and proof adverts all you like but there are some things outside your control, like where and how the adverts are placed. Our particular favourite is the billboard promoting heart disease awareness, placed alongside a Burger King ad promoting 2 ‘Croissanwiches’ for $3!

To see all the images, click here. Let us know which is your favourite.

3. Page Load Speed Insights – Improve your Website’s SEO

When attempting to improve your website’s SEO credentials it is easy to overlook an increasingly important factor – PageLoad speed.

A webpage that loads quickly offers an improved user experience. Faster page loads are shown to decrease bounce rates and improve conversion rates. As such, they are also thought to be a factor the search engines use when assessing your website and then positioning it in search results.

To find out how you can improve the page load speeds on your website, the nice people at Google have provided a free tool, PageSpeed Insights, to assess the pages on your site and suggest ways of improving the page speed.

Take a look to see how your site performs and how you can improve it.

 

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#MarketingTitbits – Hootsuite, shopping and Science World

1. Hootsuite – for begginers
If you haven’t heard of Hootsuite already then it is about time that you did. The social media management site now has 7 million users in over 175 countries around the world. It is basically a website that allows users to integrate all their social media channels and control posts across them; particularly handy for businesses.

This week, we’ve found a great article on Mashable entitled ‘A beginner’s guide to Hootsuite’. If you don’t already have Hootsuite or a struggling with it then we suggest you check it out. To read the article click here.

2. How is shopping changing in the future?

The way that we do our shopping is changing rapidly. More people shop online now than they ever have before, especially the generation of 14-19 year olds. This week we came across a very interesting article in Marketing Week that explores how the face of shopping is changing and how brands can and need to keep up with it. To have a look at the article click here.

3. Wonderfully creative adverts from Science World Vancouver

The Science World Museum in Vancouver is notorious for its slightly controversial exhibits –Body Worlds and The Science of Sexuality exhibitions being just two examples that courted controversy. This risqué and alternative attitude extends into their marketing. They are now known across Vancouver for their innovative and attention grabbing campaigns. They have amassed a vast array of eye-catching and intelligent adverts that have been used around the city to raise awareness. We think they are brilliant, so thought we’d share some with you. To have a look at some of them and get inspired click here.

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#MarketingTitbits – marketing, ASDA, Google

asda-google-marketing-smaller21. What can we expect from the next decade of marketing?Marketing in some form, impacts upon virtually every individual and business on the planet. That’s why we think it’s really important for you to have a look at this article from Forbes. Not only do they outline what we can expect from the next ten years in terms of marketing, they illustrate how marketing has developed over the last 50 years. Everything mentioned can easily be applied to your business – not matter how big or small. To read more, click here.

2. ASDA lets shoppers create models of themselves using 3D printing

Have you ever wanted a model of yourself? No – us neither, but for those that that have, ASDA is the place for you right now. Just in time for Christmas, ASDA is launching its newest product. Using 3D printing, customers can now buy models of anything they like. You, your pet or even your car, the list is endless. Shoppers can even chose the finish of their model – coloured, white or bronze. You can scale the model to any size. Prices start at £40 and go up to £250. To read the full article, click here.

3. Google says users are clicking on more ads

As you know, Google is world’s biggest search engine, handling over an estimated 100 billion searches every month. On a daily basis, 500 million of those searches have never been seen by Google before. As users searching habits change, Google has to respond. One trend Google has also observed this year is that the total amount of paid clicks has gone up by 26% – this is thought to be caused by users accessing Google via mobile devices. To read more,click here.

 

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#MarketingTitbits – John Lewis, squats, Google

JL-Squats-Google-smaller1. John Lewis’ Christmas advert set to break its own records!

John Lewis have been gracing our screens with captivating Christmas adverts since 2007. The first one, in 2007, “Shadows”, showed a range of different Christmas gifts set up so that when a light was shined on them they created a shadow shaped like a woman with her dog. However, it wasn’t until 2011 that John Lewis made history.“The Long Wait” showed a little boy impatiently waiting for Christmas day and when it finally came he ran straight past the presents piled up at the end of his bed to give his mum and dad a present, the caption was “For gifts you can’t wait to give”.

The following year we saw “The Journey”, which illustrated a snowman travelling far, through woods and over rivers and mountains to get his Snowlady a scarf, hat and gloves, the caption was “Give a little more love this Christmas”.

And so to 2013 and “The Bear and the Hare” – a story about a hare whose best friend, the bear, hibernates every Christmas. After much deliberation the hare comes up with the perfect gift for his friend, an alarm clock to wake him up on Christmas day. The caption this year reads “Give someone a Christmas they’ll never forget”.

Despite huge popularity around John Lewis’ Christmas adverts over the past 3 years, this year’s ad is set to break its own records – in social media terms anyway. Within the first 24 hours after it was launched “The Bear and the Hare” was mentioned in 49,152 tweets which is more than double the 21,027 it got last year.

To read the full article, click here.

2. 30 squats = 1 train ticket (if you live in Moscow)

The price of train tickets have been rising for many years and are now at an all-time high. Unless you live in Moscow…

Forget the ruble, a Russian train station in Moscow now accepts 30 squats as payment for a train ticket. The exercise is a gimmick to promote the Sochi Winter Olympics, which are coming up in 2014. We think this is a great idea to promote exercise and at the same time getting a free train ticket!

3. The hidden features of Google

Roald Dahl once said “And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.” And here is one of those unlikely places. They may not be the best kept secrets but Google have created some secret features that we’d like to share with you. To have a look at the hidden features of Google, click here.

 

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#MarketingTitbits – Viral ads, Scroogled and Coca-Cola

Viral-Google-coke-smaller1. 2013’s top viral advertsEvery month, more than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube. Those users watch over 6 billion hours of footage each month, which works out at almost half an hour per person on the earth today. Every minute 100 hours of footage are uploaded onto YouTube. If you’re not currently using YouTube to engage with your customers then you should be thinking about it because your competitors are likely to be.

This year’s top 20 viral video ads have been chosen by you and anyone else who watched them. Coming in top with over 4.2 million shares online is Dove’s ‘Real Beauty Sketches’. In second place is Geico’s ‘Hump Day’ which has had 4 million views and in third place Evian’s ‘Baby and Me’. To have a look at the top 20 viral adverts of 2013 click here.

2. Scroogled clothing line from Microsoft

Last year, Microsoft launched their ‘Scroogled’ campaign. The campaign intended to shine a bright light on Google’s perceived unethical practices and the way that they use their users’ private data. This month they took their campaign to a whole new level. Microsoft launched a clothing and merchandise line including mugs and hoodies, each with a ‘Don’t get Scroogled’ slogan on it. To read the full article from Marketing Week, click here.

3. Lessons on content marketing and creativity from Coca-Cola

In 2004, Coca-Cola’s chief executive said that they were ‘creatively bankrupt’, he couldn’t have been more wrong. Over the years we have seen some beautifully creative marketing from Coca-Cola. Their ‘Share a Coke’ campaign, which launched in 2011 elicited an amazing response – and all from such a simple idea, proveing that people like things to be personal. Other prominent Coca-Cola campaigns in recent years include: ‘The Happiness Machine’, ‘Tweet Your Christmas Wish’ and ‘The Friendship Experiment’. This year Coke Zero launched the ugly Christmas sweater competition, inviting people to design the ugliest sweater they can just in time for Christmas, not only are they on trend but they are also taking advantage of the Christmas spirit.

To read more about Coca-Cola’s brilliant marketing and to get some ideas for yourself, click here.

 

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