The Marketing Week – 3/5/2013

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

CornettoCupidity-Campaign-2013_304

Cornetto Cupidty

Cornetto became the latest brand to jump on the content marketing craze when it unveiled four short online videos earlier this week. The films, inspired by insights from teenagers about love, are a first from the brand as it steps up efforts to ensure its new “Enjoy the ride, Love the ending” positioning resonates with teenagers.

The idea originates from the brand’s China division, which previously ran a set of romantic short films set inside a fictional university campus. Unilever is hoping the films help give its Cornetto range a more consistent brand positioning across all markets after admitting its core theme of “young love” was not as strong as it could be in markets such as the UK.

argos

A GOOD WEEK FOR…

 

Argos reported its first like for like sales growth for five years this week – something new managing director John Walden will be happy to hear. His five year transformation plan to focus the business on its digital platforms and become a “digital retail leader” seems to be off to a good start. Multi-channel sales now represent £2bn, or 51 per cent of total sales, up from 47 per cent a year earlier. Mobile accounted for 10 per cent of sales in the year.

pepsico

A BAD WEEK FOR…

 

PepsiCo found itself in hot water this week after an online ad for its Mountain Dew brand managed to offend and infuriate people around the globe. The ad, dreamt up by controversial rapper Tyler the Creator has been slammed for being racist and making light of violence towards women. Not what any brand wants to be associated with. The ad showed a waitress on crutches identifying her attacker from a lineup of several black men and a goat. PepsiCo quickly pulled the ad, took responsibility for the “mistake” and apologised for its #fail. #Fail indeed.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Japan and South Korea are highly lauded as digital world leaders but the majority of luxury brands there are underinvesting in digital marketing, according to L2’s Digital IQ Index for 2013. The report makes the claim based on an evaluation of the digital activity of five local luxury brands in those markets compared to those of 95 global luxury brands. The report says that while 60 per cent of global prestige brands host localised sites in South Korea, only 16 per cent of them are transactional with an additional 8 per cent linking to online retailers. Meanwhile, in Japan less that 20 per cent of luxury consumers are “less interested” in spending online, according to the report.

Bacardi USA has consolidated its media-planning and buying activity to Mindshare following a competitive pitchwith the account estimated to be worth $130m a year.
The shift in Barcardi’s agency roster comes as its new management team continues to stamp its mark on the business. An initiative that has taken place since CEO Ed Shirley took over the company last year.

One to watch: The next Big Thing

Publicis outfit Digitas this week unveiled its “Emerging Talent Tracker”, helping brands to place an early bet on who the “YouTube Stars” of tomorrow will be. The agency uses Outrigger’s algorithms to track a content library of over 50,000 YouTube channels consisting of over 25 million videos and then ranks acts based on user engagement.

 

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

8 May– Professional Publishers Association Publishing conference takes place in London with speakers and special guests talking about the key trends influencing the magazine publishing industry.

8 May – Brands, suppliers, analysts will gather at Zenith International’s annual UK Soft Drinks Industry Conference at London’s Congress Centre. ‘New ideas and new thinking’ will be the theme of the event with brands including Asda, Innocent and Tesco discussing the latest innovations from the industry.

10 May – The newspaper ABCs for are released.

10 May – The Euroleague steps up efforts to broaden the sport’s appeal by hosting a fan zone at Trafalgar Square. Fans can play 3 vs 3 against one another while also interacting with some of he league’s top sponsors.

 

 

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