inferno won a place on the Keep Britain Tidy advertising roster as their lead creative agency in October last year and we were immediately energised by the great creative opportunity, fantastic clients and important cause! KBT briefed us in February on their main campaign for 2010: fighting the war on litter nationally.

The tongue in cheek ‘Bend over and think of England’ campaign – was intended for a larger, more holistic activation platform utilising PR, WOM, Ambient, Merchandising and a variety of ATL, however as the government changed over earlier on this year, so too did the rules and regulations (and budgets!) regarding government-funded communications.

To this particular campaign’s credit, it had already caught the interest of enough Local Authorities that they stood firm with their support of the campaign and generously allocated what they could of their own council budgets to fund the distribution of the creative throughout a range of local media including Bus Backs, 48-sheet sites, 6 sheet sites, postcards, T-shirts, bags, badges and A3 Posters, with a number of them also opting to have their own bespoke titles created including ‘Get Behind Essex’ and ‘Get Behind Northumberland’.

The Chip Shop Awards were held in London last week. The awards pride themselves on ‘creativity with no limits’ and this certainly rang true again this year.

From a light-hearted event set up as a humorous alternative to D&AD, the Chips have become an international event with entrants from around the world. There were Chip finalists from Australia, Germany, South Africa, Thailand, Kuwait, Amsterdam, and Poland.

The event was live online (I didn’t see it as I was watching A Single Man on DVD, definitely not as much fun.) Not only that, while Colin Firth was failing to get an Oscar, we picked up a ‘finalist nomination’ for our ‘Squeeze Bus’ ad. We did it as a piece of intro/spec work for Macari’s Musical Instruments in London.

Creative by John Peacock and Alastair Scully

You can see the rest  of the entries here. Well worth a look!

John.

Having endured a world war and nearly a century  of rapidly changing lifestyles, the Stork brand turns 90 this year. Last weekend Inferno launched an in-store campaign to celebrate this milestone and remind people of the pleasures of home-baking.  With the brand harbouring so much nostalgia -everybody  knows a parent, aunty or grandparent who uses stork- it seemed only right to take visual inspiration from their charming advertising of the 20s, 30s and 40s.

We were very pleased with the look, which we think leverages the brand history and gives great standout. As part of the in-store campaign we gave away a cake recipe from an original 1950s Stork recipe book, some traditional fairy cakes and the chance to win pastry baking lessons together with a very fancy (and expensive) food mixer.

With facebook having recently changed its fan pages to ‘like’ pages - part of an ongoing process to make interactions across the network consistent but also part of their strategy to extend social connections across the www - the more cynical of us (not me guv), might also wonder about another underlying motivation.

Most brands don’t have that many fans and the fans they have are often hard won, acquired through in-site advertising. Not many brands are loved, that’s not to do them a disservice, because you don’t need to love all things, but you equally need many things as part of daily life.

Facebook exists to make money, they’re a business with a dominance gameplan, but they also want to increase their worth as an advertising platform. As such it’s much more likely for a customer to say they like a product, service or thing than to say they are a fan. That helps the bottom-line for a brand wishing to invest campaign money there. Like is a broader, more inclusive, but also a more superficial, ephemeral expression of sentinment. Clicking ‘like’ might just mean your customers are never going to look at your brand’s page ever again.

I still think being a ‘fan’ of something has value. It’s not right for everything, but it suggests deeper engagement with a product, a cause or a topic. As such, ‘like’ just feels like a flattening of positive customer response to the lowest common denominator.

I’ve been reading loads of blogs about the election, all scrutinizing the marketing campaigns of the leading parties (most of which has been pretty unoriginal and unexciting I hasten to add). The big debate so far: is this a new media or old media election? See here for a recent example.

After the 2008 U.S. election people predicted that this one would be led from the bottom up, online and over social networks. But then when they announced that we would be getting the leaders debates on TV, the emphasis shifted to the power of television and how historically this has been an indication of the winning party.

The truth is this is the same old hackneyed debate that has been going on for some years but applied in new context. To discuss which is the most effective is entirely missing the point. Where people attribute the rise of the Lib Dems in the opinion polls to the TV debate, they are blinded by the fact that this was a TV first and missing what was going on online at the same time. Let’s not forget that this was also a first for Twitter which recorded a record number of tweets.

Moreover, people weren’t just tweeting from their phone or PC away from the television, they were watching the debate at the same time. Following the excitement of the event and over the course of the next couple of days, thousands of people joined the group “We got Rage Against the Machine to #1, we can get the Lib Dems into office!” on Facebook, fuelling the poll rise even further. It seems completely clear to me that the two are not working in parallel universes of old and new media. Where TV works to raise the profile and awareness of a cause, online is effective at generating discussion, intensifying buzz and cementing opinions.

But in this case Jim is you; the consumer, the user, the ideas person. Brands want our help to do better things, as evidenced by a number of high profile campaigns around the world. The list is extensive, with big-players like Nokia and their annual “Calling All Innovators”, Pepsi “Refresh Everything”, Aviva’s “Community Fund”, Starbucks and Cadbury, participating in the “Fair Trade Swap”, Timberland “Earthkeepers” and Marks & Spencer’s “Your Green Idea”…phew!

Is this type of ‘causal’ movement here to stay? Could it be just another notch in marketing’s constant state of reinvention? Or could it instead mean a longer-term change in behaviour due to social and macroeconomic drivers? To begin to answer these questions we need to think a bit about where the essential idea might have come from…

The big things first. The global economy is trying to extricate itself from the worst recession in living memory. During the downturn, global warming and sustainability might have taken a backseat, but remain omnipresent concerns. Customers are more demanding and more likely to take action about matters that are important to them.

With social media, customers have found their voice; the growing power of that voice means increasingly pervasive interaction with brands. Initially, marketing co-creation, popularised by campaigns including Dorito’s “You Make It, We Play It”, meant a winning idea got its 15 minutes of fame. Tapping into ‘Potentialism’, meaning certain people’s desire to step off the mass-market gravy-train and do more wholesome stuff, saw campaigns like “Rockcorps” from Orange, where people doing the most good got to see famous bands. As the recession bit deeper, ‘altruistic marketing’ saw brands reaching out to cash-strapped customers by offering free services and guarantees to foster loyalty.

Finally we have a chaotic proliferation of consumer technologies, platforms and apps so that it’s much harder for brands to hook into genuine customer needs and develop products or propositions that answer them in the long-term.

Taking all of these perspectives into account it’s easier to see why there has been such a flurry of activity – brands acting as ‘venture capitalists’ for new ideas that will help communities, the environment or drive new innovation. Only time will tell whether this manifests into stronger brand equity or genuine competitive advantage, but it doesn’t seem like a flash in the pan…

Rory Sutherland claims that a change in perceived value can be just as satisfying as what we consider “real” value.

Tesco.com have released the grocery API (Application Programming Interface)! This has really got people talking here at Inferno.  In basic terms the grocery API makes developing online / mobile applications that link to Tesco.com products very easy. I know it all sounds a bit nerdy, but developments like these (e.g. Amazon) open multiple new avenues of consumer purchasing behavior to marketers.

When was the last time you paid attention to a display ad? Today? Last week? Last month? Don’t remember? Stats suggest it’s probably one of the latter, with average click through rates (ctr) in low single percentage figures at best.

The concept of ‘banner blindness’ seems to be very much alive. The constant presence of advertising in standard page locations coupled with short attention spans has led to the significant reduction in likelihood of engaging people through display ads.

Depsite this the online display ad market is already up 21% in the first four months of 2009, with the majority of spend coming from the retail and financial services sectors.

So how do you ensure clicks are valuable?

Firstly be relevant, e.g. after Mike changed my relationship status on facebook to ‘engaged’ (congrats by the way mate), banners about wedding photographers started appearing. Cloud computing will also help targeting take hold. Gmail for example scans your emails and serves ads based on the content.

Be more engaging, less ‘in your face’ about selling, by providing experiences that are rewarding or enjoyable; create conversation topics. Rich media banners are good way forward with interactive expandable banners, especially – exploiting the available technology and beginning to understand the mindset of the web user.

Take this very clever 3D “Spot the Bull” ad for Orange. It’s interactive, engaging and raises a smile: the selling message isn’t blatant – but it’s got a curiosity to it and packs a promotional mechanic into engaging content.

‘Playable’ banners like this show what you can do if you understand the medium and the user better and use the technology to engage with them in a more interesting way.

(Thanks to Georgia B for this post)

Here’s a one from over the pond which caught our attention. Google have now launch Google TV ads in the States, which allows users to book advertising space and submit a live ad to national television in seconds.

You simply hit ‘new TV campaign’, select your desired network and/or audience by searching for relevant keywords, upload or CREATE! your own ad, select the number of impressions you would like to pay for, and the click ’save campaign’. 

You can’t quite imagine media agencies shaking in their boots quite yet, but watch this space….

An iPhone application developed for 7-Eleven Sweden combines a store locator with coupons for a free coffee and biscotti. After downloading the app, users plug in their phone number and receive a unique coupon code on their iPhone. To claim their coffee, they just show the code to a 7-Eleven clerk; no purchase necessary. The coupon is only valid once, and free coffee in April will be followed by free ice cream in May.

The application, developed by Stockholm-based digital agency Lonely Duck, was downloaded 2,500 times in the week it launched—a considerable number given the size of the Swedish iPhone community, and enough to place it in the top 10 of free app downloads.

7-Eleven hasn’t launched the app in other markets yet, but it’s a smart example for other iPhone-loving retailers to follow: don’t just help (a relatively affluent group of) consumers find your store, but give them a good reason to visit and spend money while they take you up on your generous offer.

Website: www.7-eleven.se
Contact: www.7-eleven.se/kontakt.html

from :http://springwise.com/weekly/2009-04-29.htm#iphone7eleven