The Marketing Week
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
Coke ‘The Power of Optimism” social media sculpture
Video: Coke “The Power of Optimism” social media sculpture
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Coke has shaped real-time Twitter chatter around the brand into a sculpture to highlight the optimistic tone of its latest “Reasons to Believe” campaign. The drinks maker erected a one-day art installation on London’s Southbank earlier this week (30 January), made up of 10 cubes, five of which were linked to a real-time feed of tweets sent in the UK. The business is hoping the positivity totem encourages consumers to share their “Reasons to Believe” across Instagram, Facebook and Twitter at a time of the year that is normally blighted by the January blues.
Good Week
Iceland
Iceland managed to turn what could have been a PR disaster into a coup this week when the Crown Prosecution Service decided to drop a case against three men caught taking discarded food from bins outside one of its stores in London. The original decision by the CPS to charge the trio sparked widespread outcry, with several online petitions launched that called for the charges to be dropped.
The retailer took rapid steps to distance itself from the case, with chief executive Malcom Walker using his Twitter account to point out that neither Iceland nor its staff had called the police or requested a prosecution. It also used the case to highlight the work it does to reduce food waste through a deal with the Company Shop, which distributes leftover food to those in food poverty. With food waste already on the agenda after the British Retail Consortium announced this week that the big four supermarkets plus Marks & Spencer, Waitrose and the Co-op would be releasing regular updates on the amount of food wasted in their stores, this was a way for Iceland to show what it is doing to help.
Bad Week
The People
The site was funded solely by native advertising, meaning an article about fashion trends could be accompanied with products from New Look, for example. However, it appears the site did not attract a big enough audience to make the model profitable. It was hoped the site would have “millions of uniques” within months, but it didn’t live up to expectations. Despite a multi-million pound launch budget and brands including Monarch Airlines, New Look and House of Fraser signing up to advertise on the site, Trinity Mirror has decided to shut the People.co.uk website it relaunched less than three months ago. The site, positioned as a “Buzzfeed for grown-ups”, used a picture-heavy interface and repackaged the most popular stories from around the web into short form articles ranging in topic from celebrity to beauty and sport.
ONE TO WATCH
This week Facebook announced an international partnership with social TV analytics company SecondSync. The social network says the move will help marketers better understand how consumers are using Facebook to talk about TV.
The first output from the partnership will be a whitepaper entitled “Watching With Friends”, which will show how different types of people use Facebook to talk about UK, US and Australian TV shows. Facebook then hopes to offer TV chatter data on a wider scale to advertisers in the UK and US later this year
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
KFC Russia is turning its restaurants in Moscow and St Petersburg into dancehalls, inviting customers to step in front of the camera for their chance to star in its forthcoming TV ad.
The fast food chain is installing a “MovieMatic” machine allowing customers to light, shoot, direct, edit and then post their four-scene 45-second wonders straight to YouTube. Their friends can then vote on their videos for the chance for them to be shown on Russian TV.
Imagine the scenes were this to be repeated in the UK. The Fried Chicken Shop eat your heart out. http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-fried-chicken-shop
TWEETS
@BruceDaisley – Twitter UK managing director on the changing use cases for Twitter
Live court room reporting is one of the unsung revelations of Twitter. The live tweeting of Oscar Pistorius trial in March will be huge.
@LindseyClay – Thinkbox CEO tweeting at the Advertising Association’s Lead 2014 conference
#lead2014 SMEs is not a helpful term but somehow don’t think the “mittelstand” is going to take off as an alternative one. Suggestions?
@DaveTrott – chairman of ad agency The Gate on why it is pointless attempting to deal with a troll
“Arguing with a troll is like playing chess with a pigeon, it knocks the pieces over shits all over the board and struts around like it won”
@ShivSingh – Head of global brand and marketing transformation at Visa
I just want to create TV ads for the rest of my life. :30s and :60s. Do you secretly think that way?
DATES
3 February – All eyes will be on Ryanair on Monday morning to see if the recent changes to customer service and marketing strategy have boosted its Q3 results.
4 February – Ocado releases its full-year results, with the online grocery retailer expected to see significant growth as shoppers increasingly head to the internet.
4 February – Asda CEO Andy Clarke is the speaker at the annual Future Retail Leaders lecture from the British Retail Consortium.
5 February – Twitter will release its fourth quarter results. Analysts suggest Twitter’s ad revenue is set to jump 80 per cent year on year, boosted by the introduction of new targeting options.
7 February – The Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics opens. Sponsors will be hoping the civil rights issues and security threats that have dogged the games in recent months will give way to excitement around the event.