The Marketing Week – 19/4/2013
Welcome to The Marketing Week, your guide to the good, the bad and the ugly in the marketing industry over the last seven days.
CAMPAIGN OF THE WEEK
Dove
Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty made a return this week with its latest efforts to improve women’s perceptions of beauty and rail against persistent negative body images that pervade the media.
This time an FBI criminal sketch artist was tasked with drawing women based first on their own description of themselves and then from a description given by a stranger, without ever seeing the women in the flesh.
Inevitably the resulting sketches show a far more beautiful representation of each woman from the description a stranger provided showing what we all already know – that women are their own harshest critics.
A clever social experiment and great creative at the same time. It’s both touching and hard hitting.
A GOOD WEEK FOR…
Twitter has had an extremely busy week. It kicked things off with a bang by launching keyword targeting for ad campaigns, allowing marketers to reach users based on the content of their tweets. On Thursday (18 April) Twitter UK held its annual Twitter4Brands conference in London’s Tate Modern, showcasing its latest ad products, brand case studies and, er, Gary Lineker. While the social media bods in London were munching on their canapés, Twitter US took to Good Morning America to launch its #Music service.
A BAD WEEK FOR…
Silk Cut and Benson & Hedges owner JTI had yet another of its press ad campaigns rallying against plans for plain cigarette packaging banned by the Advertising Standards Authority. JTI slammed the decision as going against “common sense and sound evidence”.
INTERNATIONAL
Fair-trade officials in Taiwan are reportedly investigating allegations that Samsung paid people to criticise rival, and Taiwanese native, HTC on influential online forums. If found guilty, Samsung’s Taiwanese subsidiary could face a fine of over £500,000 and posted a note on its Facebook page claiming it had “ceased all marketing activity involving anonymous comments.”
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg reportedly backed the US anti-gun lobby to the tune of $12m winning popular applause but not enough US Congress votes to implement tighter firearms restrictions across the nation.
Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns organisation ran a TV ad campaign featuring testimonies from gunshot victims to win enough popular support for US representatives to support the bipartisan for changes in US gun laws.
However, the campaign which criticised high-profile, pro-gun politicians but ultimately proved unsuccessful as the proposed changes fell short of the necessary 60 US Senate votes to pass into law earlier this week.
One to watch – LinkedIn mobile refresh
Social network for professionals LinkedIn overhauled its mobile app this week to reach ‘mainstream users’. The business is hoping the update for Android and iOS devices highlights the social aspects of its business-focused service, not just users landing their dream jobs.
As part of the update, the social network is planning to serve ads within the apps as part of wider efforts to monetise its user base.
It is the latest step from the business to encourage users to stay on the site for longer after revamping its home page and user profile pages in 2012. LinkedIn becomes the latest social network, following announcements from Facebook and Twitter this year, to attempt to build a stronger mobile footprint around its users and advertisers.
Tweets of the week
Nick Hewat, group sales director at Telegraph Media Group
Adam Bain, director of revenue at Twitter
Joey Barton, footballer for Marseille and amateur philosopher
Jonathan Mildenhall – VP of Global Advertising Strategy and Creative Excellence at Coca-Cola
DATES FOR YOUR DIARY
Wednesday 24th – Thursday 25thAdobe holds its annual Summit in London’s ExCel Centre. The two day digital marketing conference will feature top speakers from Adobe itself, Twitter, Coca-Cola, Viacom and space jumper Felix Baumgartner, among others.
Wednesday 24thMarketing Week and SAS host webinar to delve into the results of the annual Marketing Perspectives study at 3:30pm – register here:
Thursday 25thUnilever to report its first quarter results. Expect more details on its sustainability schemes.