lorcom-blog

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http://www.collegehumor.com/article/6928411/7-costumes-to-really-scare-twenty-somethings

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Hello there, this is a marketing blog for the Digital & Social Media Marketing and Sales module of the Digital Skills Academy and DIT's  Webactivate programme. 

I can also be found here: 

Lorcomedy.com

Lorcranium: My Tumblr

My Twitter

Facebook

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SEO graphic for marketing assignment 

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Role in developing the Digital Marketing Strategy for this product

Introduction

As part of the digital marketing strategy I took on the role of coming up with guerilla marketing strategies. Guerilla marketing involves attempting to attract people's attention  in new, interesting, and occasionally odd ways with the intent of getting them to engage with a product. The advantages of guerilla marketing are that it utilizes low cost unconventional means and that it relies on ingenuity, engagement and interest rather than Large marketed budget. For this reason it is suitably  geared for SMEs and lean Start-ups.

Concepts:

QR Codes on Complimentary Apples: At opening events for Greenes Grocers free apples to be given out with QR codes leading users to the Greenes Grocers Facebook, Twitter, and Website pages. 

'The Five-a-Day Parade'

Guerilla marketing concept where people are encouraged  to dress up as various fruit and vegatables for an event to promote healthy eating hosted by the SME. Attendees also encouraged to make their own costumes and share these on the Greenes Grocers Facebook page with store vouchers as prizes. 

This will build on similar events in Monaghan such as Castleblaney breaking the world 'Smurf' record.

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Role in your group’s product design and mock-up

Introduction:

For the SME in this assessment, our group (Monaghan Group 2/G2 Web Design) envisioned a small family-owned green grocery outlet with a butchery and bakery department that wants to create a web presence that will tap into current interest in organic, eco-friendly gourmet food.   The project will involve rebranding the shop into an artisan food purveyor with potential for online sales and off-site catering.  There would also be scope for small cafe onsite. 

Scenario: 

This business, “Greene's Grocers” is own by the Greene family (Mr. Patrick and Mrs. Maura Greene, son Padraig and daughters Mary and Joanne). There is also  Maura's brother, Brendan, who is the master butcher.  Son Padraig's wife Gemma is the bookkeeper.  Daughter Mary is the deli-counter manager, but  daughter Joanne is a nurse with a non-executive role in the company.

 The business has two full-times employees (Butcher assistant Paul and floor staff Kerri-Ann) and two part-time employees (Fergal in the Deli and Kathleen on the till)  

 Mary, the project sponsor, feels that expansion is necessary and that food is a good value-added product, and the market is there and needs fulfilling.  She has been home for five years, after working in New York for ten years in food sector.  Brendan has a keen interest but low influence on the increase of web presence, but, in contrast, son Patrick has high influence and is apprehensive of increasing web presence and suspicious of his returning sister's increasing influence in the company. 

I created logos for the group and Greenes Grocers

And the cover image for the Facebook page

As a group we developed the Facebook business page text:

 Welcome to Greene's Grocers, we are a small family-owned green grocery outlet with a butchery and bakery department based in Monaghan.

 On our Facebook page we will tap into current interest in organic, eco-friendly gourmet food with tips, recipes and news. 

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Least Favourite Online Campaign: Meteor

Last year's Meteor ad which depicted mobile users going to various lengths to get free broadband was a good example of a large company making light of a minority identity in society and not dealing with negative online reaction to their adverts promptly or sufficiently. In the same year Meteor was the biggest winner in the Marketing Institute's All Ireland Marketing Awards  they continued to make light of the issues thrown up by the advert, in fact it is still up on their official Youtube with the very image that caused most offence prominently displayed:

The basic premise of the advert is the desperate measures people would go to get free internet, the implication is that the male character would never go to this bar and is only there out of desperation. The bar is created to look seedy, we assume it is some sort of transgender bar. Yet the dictates of a short advert mean that it cannot be populated by genuine transgender people who 'pass' as their identified gender but obviously male characters dressed as women. Their is an added implication that the transgender characters are predatory when the cyclist turns up at the end. 

The overall impression is that this is played for laughs or shock, which has been a factor of representing transgender people on screen where someone who changes sex or gender is used as a twist ending in thrillers and horror films (Psycho, Homicidal, Sleepaway Camp) and as a punchline in comedies.

  via amydentata.com

Reaction: 

A campaign with the hash tag #MeteorShame was started and many bloggers and writers discussed the issue. Throughout all this Meteor seemed to ignore the issue entirely. One tweet was issued but only after direct questioning: 

This scant explanation showed little understanding or sexual identity or the concerns of the people offended, for example an Open Letter by Eva Lacey: 

I guess what I'm hoping, is that you'll read this and feel a little bad for making that advertisement, I'm hoping you'll read this and think about how you and people like you have made me feel like a freak, yet again.

I'm hoping that you'll stop portraying transwomen, cross dressers, drag queens and gay men as the lowest form of partner choice, or clown-like easy entertainment. While you may find it funny, there are plenty of people's lives suffering at the hands of negative, disgusted attitudes towards us. Please do not continue to make our lives more difficult than they already are by encouraging people to laugh at us as an advertising tool. If the person the guy on the internet was dancing with was a black man or woman and portrayed in the same manner, this would not be funny, this would be considered to be racially negative and banned; why then is it ok to do that to us?

The Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland (ASAI) eventually upheld complaints against the advert. under the relevant codes (2.16, 2.17, 2.8)

And it was only through the ASAI's report did any reaction or explanation of Meteor's thinking come through: Meteor's Reaction to the Ruling 

Their strategy was to concentrate on claiming the people were depicted were drag queens and that this exaggerated and grotesque versions of a transgendered persons were acceptable because it happens in things like Mrs. Brown's Boys which totally ignores the context to which the complaints were directed (and any knowledge of the context of drag performance and comedy). These characters were not performing drag onstage. If the bar was explicitly depicted as a gay bar there would have been more uproar. For me this was a very calculated depiction, the ad required an alternative gender identity to denote difference to make the 'joke; so they chose to imply a lesser known identity and attempted to pass it off as light-hearted, discounting the genuine concerns of transgender people. 

The ASAI ruled that "The advertisement should not appear in its current format again." (a ruling that the Meteor YouTube page has ignored), but this was the wreckless cycling depicted at the start of the advert rather than any depictions of gender identity 

Further Reading: 

Guardian: TV ads offended transgender community, rules Irish watchdog

TENI Press Release: Meteor's Transphobic Ad and #MeteorShame

An Open Letter to Meteor About Transphobic Advertising

Meteoric mistake

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Favourite Online Campaign: Alan Partridge Alpha Papa

The multimedia online campaign for Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa combined the inclusive humour and knowledge of the character for existing fans while also engaging with people were new to the character.  It also combined traditional trailers and billboards with fan-created artwork and events. 

Trailers With a cinematic version of the North Norfolk Digital logo, The first teaser trailer for the film was a meta-reality joke where Partridge (Steve Coogan), his sidekick 'Sidekick Simon' (comedian and poet Tim Key) and a marketing person consider names for the film. These parody action and superhero film titles,( 'Hectic Danger Day', 'The Norfolk Fracture' 'Chap of Steel') but with a more colloqial spin. This reflects the tone of the film which takes a hostage situation (which would have been shown in a Die Hard style action way in Hollywood Films)  and transplants it to rural Norfolk.   

Viewers were then encouraged to create Photoshop mockups of these film titles in various ways, for example the following competition in Empire Magazine 

"Aha!  Forget Man Of Steel because 2013 is all about Norfolk’s very own superman, CHAP OF STEEL Alan Partridge, star of ALAN PARTRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA. We've joined up with StudioCanal to put together a freshly upholstered, chamois-leather Alan Partridge competition to celebrate. Back of the net!  So, what to do? Well, we need another ace poster design from you. As the movie's teaser trailer revealed earlier this year showed, a few titles were toyed with before Alpha Papa was decided upon. Just pick one of the following and turn it into an unofficial ALAN PARTRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA poster:  Chap Of Steel  The Norfolk Fracture  Hectic Danger Day  Gun Bird  Colossal Velocity  Use Man Of Steel or your favourite action film as inspiration for your design, or be see the teaser trailer and official teaser poster below.  Winners will get a framed copy of their artwork, exclusive Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa merchandise and a Kindle Fire.  The deadline for entrants is June 21 and a winner will be announced soon after. So get busy designin' and post your artwork in the forum below to enter.  ALAN PARTRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA is in cinemas August 7" 

Official Trailer

Website

The website to promote the film was a spoof, deliberately antiquated site for North Norfolk Digital. Tying in with the storyline of the film, where this regional radio station is being rebranded as 'Shape' FM, the site allows the user to chose an original or rebranded versions. This look gave the user of coming across something obscure, funny, and interesting rather than being railroaded by a visually dynamic and loud cutting-edge site. 

The site also had interactive features such as a quiz, a gallery where users could submit mock up posters and a competition where people could apply for the "job" of becoming Alan Partridge's assistant  which allowed for humorous user-generated content in the form of YouTube audition videos. 

Premiere

The marketing team behind the film where very quick to respond to a twitter campaign to have the premiere of the film in Anglia Square, Norwich. This is a rather run down 1960s shopping centre in Norwich and a lot of humour was generated from Steve Coogan's appearances in character as Partridge. 

This also created news items that went viral such as Sky News Interviewing Partridge about the royal baby:

And Partridge addressing his comments on Ireland for the Irish premiere:

Further Reading 

Esquire Magazine: Five Brilliant Ways Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa was sold to us. 

The Wall: Back of the net! The story of Alpha Papa’s abso-ruddy-fantastic marketing drive by Alex King 

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Inspiration Corner Gold: Revels and Milton Jones

"When the boys at school found out I had a potentially fatal peanut allergy, they used to hold me up against a wall and play Russian Roulette with a bag of Revels !"

Milton Jones

Revels 'Russian Routlette Advert, full version'

Do

Do Great Minds Think Alike?- The Guardian

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Inspiration Corner Gold: Playstation and Big Train

As a comedian and fan of lesser-seen comedy, I am always surprised at how advertisers occasionally take a concept, visual style, or joke  from sometimes very well-known sources and incorporate them wholesale into their campaigns.  In the manner of Stewart Lee's 'Plagiarist's Corner' (oh the irony) I want to document the various 'inspirations' and 'homages' television and print advertising regularly 'creates'.  Perhaps the most shameless case is Playstation's unofficial remake of a classic 'Big Train' sketch, 'Jockey's in the Wild':

Playstation's 'Life on the Playstation' campaign

Best Playstation ads: "This genius ad, where golfers are hunted by pornstars on the plains of Africa, was one of a series and was actually inspired by various sketches that appeared in British comedy show, Big Train. When we say ‘inspired’, the creators of Big Train actually considered suing over the ads. They didn’t but if you were to see the original sketches, you’d know why."

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Inspiration Corner: Somersby Cider and The One Ronnie

Somersby Cider's 2013 ad humorously spoofs technical language by applying them to original offline meanings.

a concept very reminiscent of My Blackberry Is Not Working!, a 2010 sketch by The Dawson Brothers for the The One Ronnie BBC special.

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A Field in England multiplatform release results Film 4: "A Field In England represented 30% of Film4oD’s entire weekend sales. - See more at: http://blog.film4.com/a-field-in-england-multiplatform-release-the-results/#sthash.I716LfW6.dpuf"

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Sky Deutschland to broadcast adverts directly into train passengers' heads

Via The Telegraph:

Passengers leaning their head against the window will "hear" adverts "coming from inside the user's head", urging them to download the Sky Go app.

The proposal involves using bone conduction technology, which is used in hearing aids, headphones and Google's Glass headset, to pass sound to the inner ear via vibrations through the skull.

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While researching for our Professional Skills group presentation (I am doing the section on Guerilla Marketing), I came across a description of this film where a group of stealth marketers pose as a 'perfect' American family to promote desirable products. Wikipedia entry: 

Imdb page: 

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A Field in England's unprecedented cross platform media strategy

A Field in England will be released in a cross-platform delivery method on July 5, Director Ben Wheatley discusses the unique marketing aspects in the Independent 

“The model is using technology to make stuff that doesn’t cost loads of money, which means you can explore niches you could never have got to before,” he said. “This film has already been successful. They have got an hour and a half on the channel for £300 grand and drama costs £650 grand an hour. Anything else is all gravy on top of that.”

He compared the multi-platform release on Friday 5 July to Radiohead’s free release of the In Rainbows album and said the television broadcast was a unique marketing opportunity. “If 1 million people see it on Friday on telly that’s as good word of mouth as you are ever going to get,” he said. “People say you are putting it out for free but we will have a general audience of people who otherwise wouldn’t have seen it at all.”

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So Club Orange is just for Loaded readers then (if there are any Loaded readers left)

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Infographic on what it takes to build a successful minimum viable product by Anna Vital