Tuesday 3 December 2013

So, what do you do? I work in marketing....

By Sophia Thomas, Account Manager


When I tell people I work at marketing agency the common belief is that I spend my day scheming about how to get people to buy more of our clients’ products and at the end of the day we only care about driving consumerism. While of course there is an element of truth to that, the reality is we don’t just use creativity to increase sales and fill your homes with endless ‘stuff’; we also use our skills to highlight health and social issues.

What we do isn’t just about creating something visually stunning, exciting or different, it is about shedding light on insights and existing human behaviours and then figuring out what we need to do to challenge held  and create beliefs and incite action.

One of my favourite examples of a campaign that highlights a fantastic cause is last month’s UN for women campaign which demonstrated how something as so seemingly simplictic as, Google,  can become a rather effective tool in revealing some startling insights. The campaign was based on actual Google search results which revealed the widespread prevalence of sexism and discrimination and downright opposition to women’s rights.



Not only does this campaign demonstrates how we combine creativity with insight to catch people’s attention, but it also shows that we aren’t just in the business of communicating products and services to consumers; instead we are in the business of starting conversations.  Sometimes that conversation is about your choice of toothpaste, but other times it is about a women’s right to be equal.

So next time I tell someone I work in marketing, before they let their imagination runaway with thoughts of evil plots, I’ll make sure to remind them that we aren’t villains we just simply want to chat.

Want to get further involved in the UN for Women campaign?  Join the conversation on Twitter by using #womenshould

Are you set up to deliver reactive brand experience?

By Nadia Mkinsi, Planning Executive, RPM


This month saw the release of the latest instalment of Honda’s Start Something Special campaign, which seeks to inspire consumers vicariously with big, heart-warming experiences. The latest video depicted a soon-to-be-married couple of die-hard Honda drivers who had asked their local dealer to lend them three black CR-Vs for the bridal party. On their wedding day, eight CR-Vs delivered a series of thoughtful surprises: the band the couple heard on their first date, a troupe of Irish step dancers, and unexpected relatives flown in from Ireland.



The video itself is a saccharine and fairly generic piece of digital content designed to “go viral” and be circulated across social media platforms (it has racked up just shy of a million views); it is the highlight of the hondastories.com which collects consumer-submitted anecdotes. But it also serves to illustrate a rare case of ‘reactive’ brand experience.

Rapid response marketing has become increasingly popular in the past year or so. When something begins to trend online, brands have a narrow window to ride the trend and be relevant; prime examples of this are Lynx’s Prince Harry ad after his Vegas Scandal, and Oreo’s program of daily newsjacking. However, we rarely see this strategy employed in brand experience.

We can only speculate as to the actual process behind the Honda video – but it’s apparent that a local dealership spotted an opportunity in the couple’s (fairly mundane) request and forwarded it to the brand team, who then collaborated with agency RPA to create the experience as part of the brand’s wider campaign. What’s commendable, though, is that the internal culture at Honda actively encourages these initiatives, and that their people are ‘switched on’ enough to identify new and interesting opportunities, even outside of the usual channels and structures.

Although the process is bound to be more complex than, say – writing a clever tweet, or designing, approving, and buying last-minute media space for a press ad – the impact is also bound to be larger. Fostering a culture of collective commitment and optimising communication channels can help to create an environment that is conducive to delivering reactive brand experience, and reaping the rewards of ideas with real sociability.