Alex designed some trolls!
It’s been a ‘trolly’ good week this week, as Alex (our Graphic Designer) has drawn and illustrated an amazing troll for one of our clients! You can’t say you’re not impressed!
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Waiting for our first class!
Josh took a visit to King’s School in Winchester to deliver a series of marketing presentations to 240 students!
#MarketingTitbits – Edible Adverts, Queen Flakes, Design Mistakes
1. Nakd erects an edible advert to get customers trying its goodies
This ‘delightfully different’ snack brand created by Natural Balance Foods, set up shop outside London’s Shepherd’s Bush Westfield shopping centre this week with an edible billboard made up of their fruit and nut bars – what a tasty idea!
The main objective for the campaign was to showcase Nakd’s wide range of products available, but to also promote how healthy and convenient they are. The range of snack bars formed the words “Find Your Fave” – encouraging consumers to find and taste their favourite flavour.
Click here to read more about their ‘nutty’ campaign.
2. Queen Flakes, gingerbread loyalty and more as brands celebrate Queen Elizabeth
Queen Elizabeth II became Britain’s longest-reigning monarch last week, surpassing the previous 63 years and 7 months record held by Queen Victoria. Her Majesty spent the day in Scotland away from the limelight; however that didn’t stop brands from getting involved.
Kellogg’s caught our attention last week with the creation of special ‘Queen Flakes’, which went on sale at Manchester’s Black Milk Cereal Café. Meanwhile, Billingtons have been baking gingerbread men, supposedly the Queen’s favourite biscuit.
To see how more brands have been celebrating, click here.
3. 7 email newsletter design mistakes to avoid
Sublime-looking emails can be easily created with the help of popular email marketing services; however, even small design errors can have a massive impact on the success of the marketing campaign.
Marketing on mobile devices has been proven to be very successful; however, it can also be very tricky to get right. Email marketing templates are now accessible for brands to use for their campaigns, ensuring that the email looks great on small devices, regardless of the dimensions.
Click here to discover 7 email design mistakes.
#MarketingTitbits – Rugby World Cup, Snapchat Campaigns, Logo Colour Swap
1. A marketer’s essential guide to the Rugby World Cup
The Rugby World Cup, taking place in England and Wales this year, is regarded as one of the biggest sporting spectacles on the planet. This year, the tournament is predicted to have 20,000 hours of broadcast coverage, making it potentially the most commercially lucrative to date.
So what does this mean for marketers? Newspaper group Trinity Mirror believes the Rugby World Cup presents vast opportunities for advertisers to reach the UK population. Research shows that 66% of us plan to follow the tournament this year, providing a massive opportunity for marketers to showcase their brand!
The tournament is fast approaching, so click here to find out more about making the most of the marketing opportunities it will generate.
2. Five seriously creative Snapchat campaigns and their results
Social media has proven to be an effective marketing platform; however many marketers still aren’t using it to its full potential. Snapchat may not seem like an obvious choice for some marketers, but some of the most successful brands are using the platform to run intriguing and effective campaigns.
Brands such as McDonald’s and Calvin Klein have excelled with their targeted campaigns, all with the help of Snapchat. Calvin Klein developed a campaign whereby celebrities were asked to produce selfies and share on Snapchat. The impact was considerable, with Calvin Klein experiencing 140,000 content views and a 15% increase in Snapchat engagement.
Click here to find out more about 5 effective Snapchat campaigns.
3. Here’s what 22 famous logos would look like if they swapped colours
We already know that simplicity is often key to a successful logo. Likewise, if you’ve spent hours agonising over colour combinations, you’ll appreciate the importance of getting the balance right? A Brazilian graphic designer, Paúla Rupolo, recently experimented with swapping brand logo colours with one of their competitors, and the results have been brought to us by AdWeek.
Click here to see what the impact is of switching the brand colours of Sprite and 7UP, Real Madrid and Barcelona, UPS and Fedex, Amazon and Ebay and more.
#MarketingTitbits – Photoshop, WordPress, Facebook
1. The 12 best free Photoshop plugins for designers
Photoshop is one of the most popular pieces of software for editing images out there. Used by both designers and photo enthusiasts, the software doesn’t come cheap but once you have it the possibilities are endless.
Despite this, many plugins have been created that extend its already huge capabilities. Using plugins can help to perform tedious or complex tasks much easier. This week we found a great article from Mashable that highlights the 12 best free plugins for Photoshop. From Social Kit to CSS3Ps have a look at them here.
2. A blogger’s guide to setting up a WordPress site
If your business isn’t already updating your site with regular content, then you should be. Not only is this great for SEO but it’s a way to get your audience engaged and remind them that you’re experts in your field.
One really easy way to get this content out there is to set up a blog. Today, more than 6.7million people worldwide are blogging about everything from fashion to new technology and everything in between. Despite this, starting a blog can be daunting and seem like a task too big for some, this is why we want to share with you a blogger’s guide to setting up a WordPress site.
To have a look at all the hints and tips, click here.
3. 7 things you didn’t know you could do on Facebook that make it better
Facebook now has 1,310,000,000 active users monthly. This figure ensures that it is the number one social networking site in the world. As much as some of us love Facebook, they have created some hidden features that can enhance the user’s experience.
From making your Facebook pirate language to changing all baby pictures on your newsfeed to pictures of kittens, if you love Facebook then click here.
#MarketingTitbits – Tesco, Steve Jobs and Twitter
1. Tesco buys into big data to make marketing more personalised
In a bid to make their marketing more personalised and improve Clubcard loyalty programmes, Tesco’s subsidiary Dunnhumby, have purchased big data technology firm Sociomantic. The combined data of the two will mean that Tesco have access to an “unprecedented” database of more than a billion people.
The CEO of Dunnhumby says this “will allow Tesco to improve its online marketing to provide a better experience for consumers and advertisers.” Tesco is hoping to improve its Clubcard scheme by going digital, this will eventually mean away with plastic cards and paper vouchers and will allow customers to collect points via their mobile.
To read more, click here.
2. Steve Jobs’ 13 most inspiring quotes
“Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me… Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.”
Just two inspiring quotes from Steve Jobs, to read more, click here.
3. Twitter’s redesign: is it turning into Facebook?
You may have noticed the changes Twitter have made in the last week. They have totally redesigned the profile pages making them look and feel much more like Facebook’s profile pages.
Some of the specific changes include:
- Larger profile photos and banner images that stretch across the whole page
- Popular tweets will be larger and easier for users to find – these are tweets that have had a high engagement rate
- A new feature that allows users to pin their favourite tweets to the top of their profile
- Users now have the ability to filter the tweets of the individuals they follow
To read more, click here.
#MarketingTitbits – Instagram marketing, brand taglines, Google+ changes
1. What brands need to know about Instagram marketing
By 2017, Instagram’s mobile ad revenue is due to quadruple to reach $2.81bn, making its mobile display ad business bigger than both Twitter and Google in the US. There are already more than 500 brand campaigns and Instagram continues to add new features to make the service more appealing to advertisers.
As Tom Richards points out from We Are Social,Instagram already has a parent company in Facebook that has already built up and multi-billion dollar social ad business and can use its learnings to help Instagram grow even faster. Marketers have used the site to sell an image of their brands, in particular fashion and travel sectors.
For more on Instagram’s expansion, click here.
2. Lost in translation: when brand taglines don’t travel
Brand taglines such as KFC and Mcdonald’s are the most recognised in Britain today, but when they cross oceans they can mean something entirely different. We searched the depths of the internet to find the best, or worst.
KFC’s ‘finger licking good’ slogan is known all over the world. But when the fast-food giant hit China, the translation of their tasty slogan wasn’t so appetising. Pepsi experienced a similar problem in China where their slogan ‘come alive you’re with Pepsi’ translated into something completely different. Due to this, sales have dropped significantly since the launch of the campaign.
Click here to find out more.
3. What the Google+ changes mean for marketers
Since its launch in 2011, Google+ has been an integral part of the Google experience, as the search giant used it to unify its disparate services. Google has made it clear that it knows it is never going to compete directly with Facebook for social networking supremacy. However, as Bradley Horowitz explains, Google’s VP of streams and sharing, a Google account will be all you’ll need to share content.
For marketers, the diverging fortunes are a reminder that the most meaningful platforms of tomorrow are equally likely to come from companies nobody has heard of. Either way, marketers still using or interested in Google+ can now treat it as something other than a poor Facebook competitor.
Take a look at more Google+ changes by clicking here.
#MarketingTitbits – Videos on Instgram, Kanye’s Marketing Lessons and free fonts
Instagram gets videos
For those of you that use Instagram, you’ll be interested to know that the photo sharing platform launched its new video feature on Friday. Surely prompted by the recent success of Vine, users now have the ability to create a video of 3-15 seconds in length and upload it to their Instagram page. Predictably, the majority have taken to uploading the usual videos of themselves and their surroundings; however, some brands have uploaded videos that reveal just how intuitive and beautiful the new video feature can be. Here are our favourites:
Kanye West – a 21st century marketing guru?
We laughed when we saw this last week. Fresh from achieving his first no.1 album in the UK since 2007 and becoming a father, Kanye West still had time to pass on some key marketing and business advice to anyone that was listening. The US rapper has never been short on confidence and his interview with the New York Times did nothing to suggest fatherhood has humbled him. Take his statement: “I think what Kanye West is going to mean is something similar to what Steve Jobs means.” Whilst he might have some way to go before his impact on society reaches the global levels Jobs’ has, there were a number of marketing and business lessons that Kanye passed on that SMEs could take on board:
- Authenticity and consistency
- Emulate titans, but don’t compare yourself to them
- Are you the top performer in your field? The rules might be different
To read the full article click here.
Free Fonts
For the design-minded of you out there, do you ever get board of the same old fonts? If, like us, you are always on the lookout for some interesting new fonts to liven up your marketing communications, you might be interested in the following sites, where you can download fonts for free. Here are 4 to check out:
- Font Squirrel
- Dafont
- Fontstruct – even create your own
- Acid Font
We look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with.
#MarketingTitbits – Tiffany & Co.’s social media, buying a promoted tweet to complain and big brand logo transformations
1. How Tiffany & Co. use social media
Tiffany & Co. was founded in 1837 by Charles Lewis Tiffany and has become one of the most renowned jewellery brands in the whole world. They are a great example of how a business can harness the power of social media!
Last week, Tiffany & Co. managed to achieve the highest engagement score on Facebook of the top retailers in the US. On average, it gets almost 30,000 interactions per post, with some in excess of 50,000 – especially for product photos. They have over 4million Facebook fans and post content nearly every day, including images of celebrities wearing their jewellery, product videos and photos. Not only do Tiffany & Co. display a mastery of Facebook but they also employ Twitter, Pinterest and Google+ more effectively than many rival brands.
To have a look at how they do this, read the full article from Econsultancy here.
2. A new way to complain – buy a promoted tweet!
Every year 26million luggage bags go missing. If you’ve ever been one of the unlucky ones, you’ll know how frustrating it is and perhaps even sympathise with this man whose father’s luggage was lost. Hasan Syed was so infuriated that his father’s luggage was lost by British Airways that he decided the only way to make sure his complaint was heard was to buy a promoted tweet. The tweet simply said “Don’t fly @British_Airways. Their customer service is horrendous.” He then followed this with a series of angry tweets directed at British Airways, one of them said “@British_Airways how does a billion dollar corp only have 9-5 social media support for a business that operates 24/7? DM me yourselves.” Syed’s innovative move sparked interest among many people on Twitter and he even got an interview with CNN. It remains to be seen whether Mr Syed’s father ever got his bags back!
3. Logo transformations from big brands
A company’s logo is extremely important, as it is the symbol that your customers identify with and encounter the most. A good logo can do wonders for your brand and a bad one can do the opposite. However, every brand has got to start somewhere and logos change regularly. This week we found a great article from Entrepreneur, showing 10 logo transformations from 10 big brands that we see every day. Including the likes of Starbucks to Apple, have a look and let us know what you think. Click here.
October’s Top Marketing Tips
- Sometimes it’s not easy reading through books looking for the perfect answer to your design query. If you struggle to find inspiration; here is a great book to add to your wishlist. The Non-Designers Design Book is a great tool for helping you create flyers, business cards and teach you all about type. This book lets you in on all the tips and secrets that professional designers use on a daily basis.
- This October’s top tip maybe not help you with your marketing but it’s some great advice none the less. Some things are too good to lose, especially if you’re a small business.TagBak UK, the innovative UK lost and found solution, will move heaven and earth to get your lost possession back to you in less than 24 hours of finding it. Protect your possessions with TagBak UK.
- Get a clear overview of your Twitter stats using Twitter Count. Track statistics of more than 100 million Twitter users, using this free and easy tool.