Right Royal Branding

It wouldn’t be right without dedicating a blog post to the subject of the season, the 'RW', aka the Royal Wedding. The much talked about event has taken not only London by storm but every brand, as they each plan on launching limited editions and royal wedding specials of a huge variety of products. Whether in the form of a product or experience, the nation is united under Union Jacks and street parties, praying that the sun shines (surely in quintessentially British style there must be at least a drop of rain!).

So far, we have been treated to the Union Jack bread by Hovis, Royal Blend tea by Twinings, the wedding camp on Clapham Common, and the Kate doll. Here's the pick of the 'better' wedding one-offs:

The KK Outlet's crockery, with a side of cynicism: 'Thanks for the free day off.'

The royal wedding sick bag, for the 'throne up' moment.

The royal couple Oyster card - what every Londoner needs.

Post-it's new tagline saying, 'May you stick together forever' with the stickiest sticky notes in town.

Wallpaper of Facebook Friends

In an ever-increasing virtual world, we look to social networking sites to connect us with our friends. But how many of us would be able to draw every single one of our Facebook Friends? Well, that is exactly what illustrator Kyle Wilson has done. Allowing himself 30-60 seconds to draw each person, he has created his own wallpaper of friends.

http://kylethewilson.wordpress.com/2011/04/23/facebook-friends/

YouTube Becomes Interactive

YouTube is becoming increasingly more interactive, allowing users to further connect with the site’s interface in creative, unexpected ways. The Desperados campaign is a classic example of the new territory YouTube is entering and shows just how effective this can be.

As the video begins, you’re whisked into a house party and asked to click if you want to party with men or women. As you mill around among your chosen fellow friends, the room begins to shake, and as panic begins to grow from the revellers, you’re asked to turn down the volume using the YouTube volume control button. As you do so, a crack in the wall appears to reveal a larger, cooler Desperados party. The only way to gain access to this is to slide the slide bar along numerous times to break the wall. As you do, the entire YouTube interface begins to crack, and eventually the whole YouTube site breaks up to expose the huge Desperados party.

Throughout the clip you’re asked if you want to publish your journey to Facebook and Twitter, and if you don’t carry out the commands you’re told to, a member of the party reaches out from the screen and does it themselves.

Another example of clever YouTube interaction is the Tippex Bear campaign. Here, we see a hunter who gets approached by a grizzly bear, and as he grabs his gun to shoot it, we’re asked to complete the ending to the story with the opportunity to either 'shoot' or 'not shoot' a bear. After we click to decide, we’re asked to type in exactly what we’d like the hunter to do with the bear.

To most users’ delight, Tippex has put together a different scene for practically every written option, so after typing in ‘hug’, ‘drink with’, ‘dance with’ and ‘sing with’, each has its own unique scene played out between the two characters. This is cunning as it presents the user with the unexpected, and most of us remained on the site for about ten minutes trying to think of all the different scenes they might have made, so there is potential for deep engagement here.

Dave Squires on Engaged Communities

There are various techniques to get consumers more engaged in your campaign. If you’re planning an experiential roadshow that’s going around the country, for example, you might ask your community where they would like it to go. Instead of just stating, ‘we are going to ten cities’, you could say, ‘we’re going to 9 cities and we want you guys to vote on where we go next’. It’s all about making the consumer’s opinion count, and everyone has a view on something.

The Smirnoff Nightlife Exchange Project worked like this. Once it was agreed that London was exchanging nightlife with Miami, the Nightlife tour went all over the UK, but it was down to the communities to tell the brand where they wanted them to visit. So it’s really nice engagement from a user’s perspective, and it shows that the brand is listening. It’s clear from this campaign that the brand wants to touch consumers in the real world as well as in the virtual world, so it’s nicely joined up.

Community is everything. Where RPM really scores is that one of the key drivers for keeping any community engaged is through the provision of great content. This content could be created through films, webisodes, games, maps, ads, or banners, and we’ve got a very strong visual content photographic team here who produce high-quality stills and moving images all generated from events we’ve run. RPM has created the events, covered the events, created content for the events, and then atomises that content in other digital and social worlds to further amplify them.

D&AD White Pencil Launch

Throughout this week, D&AD are hosting guided tours of the D&AD Awards Judging, taking place at Olympia. Our designer Lucy Heale headed down there on Tuesday night to have a look. Here’s what she saw:

"Olympia’s vast, iron structure felt miles long when you looked upon the endless rows of different work from loads of different design companies around London. The entries ranged from product, to art direction, to advertising - all sorts - and it’s the best of its kind. There was really amazing work there, and lots of industry folk attended, mostly consisting of Creative Directors of the top agencies.

The event also helped launch and introduce D&AD’s new White Pencil award, which will be awarded to a creative idea that changes the world for the better. D&AD has united with Peace One Day, the organisation led by filmmaker Jeremy Gilley that looks to establish September 21st as an annual Peace Day.

I love the idea behind the White Pencil - using advertising for good - and a lot of the agency directors said they were going to brief their whole agency about it. They had the International Creative Director at BBH there who was an amazing speaker and tried to encourage more people to get behind the idea."

Liberty and Nike Collaboration

The latest Liberty and Nike event held at the Liberty store in Regent Street was the third time the luxury retailer has collaborated with the popular sports brand. The event was an exclusive sale of limited edition Nike shoes, designed using Liberty's geometric floral fabrics.

It's unsurprising this collaboration works well. Nike is clearly inspired by the rich variations of Liberty's fabrics as well as their well-established heritage, and Liberty want to tap into and appeal to Nike's cool, young, urban consumer. The poster campaign that supported the event was brilliantly crafted to look like those for an old-school boxing match, on which the designers placed Nike 'versus' Liberty as competitors. At the event itself, all the artists and illustrators of the fabrics attended as well as the shoe designers, and the posters continued to set each one up against each other: artist 'v' shoe.

This event is a classic example of how PR can effectively lead to product, which then leads to marketing, and I'm sure they will take this collaboration further to create a more rounded campaign. It makes sense for two very separate brands to unite; Nike becomes credible using the heritage of Liberty's content, and Liberty becomes cool with its brand image delivered to a wholly separate market.

Tropicana Brightens up Monday Mornings

Tamsin, one of our Account Executives, opened her front door to find a little present from Tropicana. Lying on the doormat were two small bottles of fresh orange juice, with a tagline saying, 'Monday gets a bad rep, but what other day offers you the same brand new start?'. Genius.

Horses Help Heroes

Horses Help Heroes is a modest charity appealing for a very worthy cause: to raise £1 million for wounded ex-servicemen and women in order to help them live more active lifestyles. Horses Help Heroes hopes to raise this funding through driving a horse-drawn replica WW1 ambulance 1,000 miles from Land’s End to John O’Groats, travelling non-stop, 24 hours a day.

The charity needs help with publicity and fundraising, so a team of us at RPM are doing all we can to help them out. Our Digital team, headed up by Dave Squires, has assisted them in streamlining and managing their website, Facebook page and other online touch points. The Digital team's aim is to build a Facebook community, optimise existing channels, create a Twitter page and obviously encourage users to make donations.

Our Photography and Film team is also offering a helping hand, covering all of the charity's promotional events, as well as the ten-day journey itself. RPM is helping to source and record all visual content for the charity and use this online to encourage donations and raise awareness.

The team also hopes to capture the ex-servicemen and women in a portraiture series, which can then be used for fundraising collateral; Adam De Silva, our lovely photographer, will be joining the teams on their WW1 ambulance as it travels from John O’Groats to Land's End.

The Effects of Psychology on Brand Engagement

I read a really interesting article this morning on the influence psychology has on our relationship with brands. The writer Max Spiegelberg, Brand Director at Bloom, taps into the fundamentals of human friendships and applies these to the relationship between the brand and the consumer. It makes sense, really. The more 'human' a brand becomes, the more we are able to identify with them and they become our acquaintance - someone we can depend upon and someone we share common ground with.

This is so important for brands when it comes to real engagement. The ability to offer consumers some kind of value exchange from a shared understanding, which then leads on to a solution, is the winning formula for any successful brand experience.

Captain Morgan Ahoy!

We've just had a visit from the Global Captain Morgan and his 'Morganettes' offering cupcakes...and yoga lessons?! Why? Well, Morgan’s Spiced is relaunching as Captain Morgan’s Spiced, and as part of the full campaign we’re developing and implementing, the Global Captain will be training a UK Captain for the launch.

We’re currently working with Smirnoff on its pre-mix sampling campaign. The brief is to build a sampling stand that replicates the comfort of the home environment, with the intention to draw shoppers toward it, showing them that Smirnoff Premix can be consumed in the home as commonly as wine or beer is.

The appeal of a homely environment has always attracted consumers and is something marketers should bear in mind when creating an engaging brand experience. I can count copious times, for example, when I’ve chosen a restaurant specifically because the chairs and tables reminded me of the wooden decor we have at home, or because their low lighting and cushioned sofas were cosy and living room-like.

This isn’t the only evidence of course! In July last year, Jacques Cider created the Jacques Cider Townhouse in which visitors could enter and experience a quintessential English tea party with an added Jacques twist. Queues formed outside the (front) door, and the campaign was extremely successful. It would be interesting to know whether the campaign would have had the same results had it been hosted within a snazzy London bar.

Hollister, the clothing brand, has also used ‘the home’ to appeal to consumers. Its stores are built within a house-like structure, and inside they’re decorated to match pleasant interiors, with rich fabrics and sofas to rest your feet. Direct marketing to the home can also work well. Last year, we created a campaign for popular board game Cranium to broaden the appeal to families in the run-up to Christmas. We targeted families by sending the game directly to their homes, asking players to upload their ‘dream team’ for a chance to win a Cranium Party Night gift pack.

Players were then also encouraged to upload the best images of their party night to win a holiday to a destination of their choice. This campaign was successful because consumers are at their most comfortable when in the home environment and are therefore more likely to be receptive to marketing when they don’t feel ‘forced’ into participating. This is definitely something to consider when we think about Engagement.