Merry Christmas
A very Merry Christmas to all our clients, colleagues and friends! Following on the back of last year’s festive silliness, our Christmas thing this year can be found at http://www.alsgranny.co.uk
Follow us to Foyleside
We’re delighted that our work with Spirit Marketing has helped them retain their Foyleside Shopping Centre account this month, in an open pitch process.
Kia Motors UK Picanto launch
The all-new Kia Picanto was launched recently. We produced a shed load of materials for this.
It’s a small world
We’ve been doing a lot of work recently with Spirit Marketing, the international marketing group headquartered in Belfast.
How is it the middle of August already?
We’ve been so busy this year that we’ve completely neglected to tell anyone what we’ve been up to….
More David Scott Tiles awards
David Scott Tiles just can’t seem to stop winning awards…
Kia Red Nose Day
ThinkRLA Belfast’s work for Kia’s Red Nose Day campaign launched last week with a suite of point-of-sale materials in car showrooms across Britain and a new 30 second radio commercial featuring the talents of comedian Hugh Dennis.
think|rla writing in Ulster Business
Ulster Business, one of Northern Ireland’s main business press titles, has published an article in its March 2011 issue by think|rla’s Russell Moore about the impact of digital marketing on the changes of roles of the traditional advertising agency!
IEF campaign live
Our new campaign for the Integrated Education Fund kicked off last week….
Sometimes a wall isn’t just a wall
We’ve recently installed some interesting artwork at Ravenhill rugby ground…
New client: Integrated Education Fund
think|rla is pleased to announce that we have been successful in winning the contract to produce a new advertising campaign for the Integrated Education Fund.
Christmas cookery tips
Christmas is almost upon us, and as the economy is still in the doldrums, I thought it would be nice to share a festive energy saving tip.
Does advertising have a value?
While government and business have always attributed some kind of positive value to advertising, it is hard for the industry to accurately measure the direct effect from ad exposure through to sales. Modern technologies are making this tracking and measurement more accurate although, while companies like Tesco and Amazon can directly demonstrate the various benefits to their customers from deep analysis of customer trends, there remains a very real foolishness as many organisations try to connect all marketing effectiveness with the customer’s ‘last click’!
Fluffy advertising!
My daughter’s favourite TV ad at the moment is the current IKEA campaign with one hundred house cats let loose in their Wembley UK store. Then she goes and looks at the same ad on YouTube. It seems that video advertising no longer has to be the thing that breaks up your favourite programme to tell you things that you’re not bothered about - it could in fact be something to look forward to, if it’s done right!
So you got an email…?
One of the things about this website is that we obviously have to tell you, the audience, what we do. But another thing - possibly even more important - is to show you how we do things and the sort of quality that we would bring to the job if we were providing these services for you or for someone that you might recommend to us.
and now for something completely different…
http://www.despair.com/deviall1.html
Jen passed this gem on to me 6 months ago, and I was so amused I actually bought the t-shirt – something I never do.
What to give to the website that has everything?
As digital marketing is maturing it is increasingly clear that the unique ‘killer app’ of the thing is that the availability of inexpensive, easy to use, always connected, fast broadband internet is providing like-minded to band together online to form communities to share ideas about issues of common interest which, in turn, influence the behaviour of the members of the community. What does all that look like then…?
The Marketing 2.0 Agency
Digital marketing has been widely described as either marketing via an evolving collection of electronic, interactive personal media channels and/or as a methodology to bring marketing communications to the users of those channels that taps into the way those channels are used. In truth, the use of these electronic channels is now so ubiquitous that they are no longer ‘new’ or niche but are now very much part of the everyday lives of all audiences.
It’s not the size, it’s the quality!
Robin Dunbar, a British anthropologist, has proposed that the maximum number of people with which a single person can have a stable, meaningful inter-personal relationship is 150. Basically it means that you don’t need to worry about having thousands of Twitter followers or Facebook friends and fans, you only need to build a smaller network of deeper, closer relationships…and that’s good news!
Bringing order to social marketing chaos.
Adopting social marketing has the potential to bring huge amounts of chaos to an organisation as well as the obvious benefits and as marketers we need to find a way to ride the whirlwind and bring about genuine business benefits to our customers.
10 Commandments of Modern Marketing
Everything you need to know about relationship marketing and CRM theory in a pithy little blog post. Brilliant.
Twitter is like a little blue trumpet!
For the first time in the history of the human race, individuals without any real power or title or wealth or special privilege can make their voices heard and their opinions known and, increasingly, those opinions are going to count as they help inform the tribes – influencing behaviour, determining choices, making a difference to what we all do, or are aware of, or prefer, or buy, or consume. That’s the power of the network, the wisdom of the crowd.
Play the Game
Video games have begun to appear more and more as part of the marketing communications mix – a new media that customers actually want to receive, to interact with, to learn from and (heaven help us all) actually share with their peers. You know, that bit about loyal customers becoming advocates and resellers? Wow, what if that could really happen?
The Chow Mein Theory of Marketing
How do you know what to do when you’re scared of making a mistake? Do you pick from one of the many options available or just keep going with the thing you’ve always done, because it’s safe…? Why do you keep ordering Chow Mein?
Apparently social marketing doesn’t work!
An old (ex) colleague of mine said to me recently that his clients had tried some social marketing techniques but they weren’t working. Apparently they’d put up a forum board and had written a few posts over a couple of weeks but, since nobody was joining in, they’d kinda stopped doing it! Oh dear…
On Digital Relationship Marketing…
‘Digital marketing’ can be variously defined as either new technology-based channels or media by which to deliver marketing messages, or as a collection of new marketing strategies and behaviour made possible by the audience’s use of these technologies.
I find that clients and colleagues don’t always recognise the 2 strands or understand how they combine so I thought I’d write this by way of explanation. Although relatively recent, the rate of change in audience behaviour and therefore in marketing tactics due to these technologies is astounding and ongoing. The largest change however is in the way that the publics consider mass communication methods to be a ‘dialogue’, that is, a conversation between connected and mutually dependant groups instead of mass messaging in a single direction between an organisation or brand and its markets…