Inspiring, creative and well worth watching.
Steven Johnson – Where Good Ideas Come From
Great ideas, innovation and connectivity
September 15th, 2011PDSA chooses McCann Bristol to provide strategic PR support
July 18th, 2011
This week we have even more good news to share – leading veterinary charity, PDSA, has appointed us to provide strategic planning support to its in-house team following a three-way pitch.
Working as an extension of PDSA’s in-house PR team we will be providing strategic input and campaign planning to support PDSA’s three key PR objectives – to raise awareness of the charity; increase engagement – with both existing supporters and new targeted audiences; and to contribute to the organisation’s income. Our senior PR consultants and planners will also be working alongside the team to provide creative insight and input to help shape PR campaigns.
Talking about his decision to appoint McCann Erickson, James Puxty, Head of Public Relations for PDSA, commented: “We were looking for external PR support from an agency which could assist us in developing campaigns to support the strategy and contribute towards its continued evolution.
“From the outset, McCann Erickson clearly demonstrated that they can help us look at things in different ways, challenge the team and really push the boundaries in our quest to be recognised as a leader in our sector, promoting pet health.
“We are aware that PR cannot work in isolation from other elements of marketing, and McCann Erickson illustrated that they were able to effectively position PDSA’s PR activity as part of an integrated marketing mix.”
“We are delighted to be working with PDSA – it’s a fantastic charity that provides an extremely valuable service.” said Fraser Bradshaw, Managing Director for McCann Erickson Bristol.
Fraser continued: “Following on from the success of the inaugural PAW Report earlier this year which revealed that the health and welfare of ten million pets in the UK are not being properly met, our team will kick off activity by providing strategic support to help PDSA execute the next phase of activity.”
New business portal for HiQ
July 12th, 2011
Working closely with the HiQ marketing team our talented digital and development teams have created a unique new business support portal online, developed especially for franchisees of HiQ, one of the UK’s leading tyre and fast fit specialists.
A first for the tyre industry, the new HiQ HUB is packed with a whole host of functionality and user benefits to simplify access to all the HiQ business support tools for over 150 HiQ franchisees based across the UK. It has been designed to improve communication between franchisees and HiQ by providing a one-stop-shop for users to access the latest information on business development, programme updates and key diary dates.
Offering real added value to HiQ franchisees, the portal provides immediate access to a vast array of business tools, including the HiQ Marketing portal, HiQ Online microsite manager and HiQ Customer Manager using just one single login and password per franchisee.
Geraldine Mc Govern, HiQ Create Demand Manager, commented: “Over the last 18-24 months, we have seen rapid and significant development of the HiQ Franchise Programme, and given particular focus on investing and developing a portfolio of unique business driving tools – many of them online.
“The development and completion of the HiQ HUB and toolbox marks a significant step forward in simplifying and reducing complexity and optimising access to key tools.”
Fraser Bradshaw, our MD added: “Having provided digital support and consultancy to HiQ for 5 years, we fully understand the daily demands and challenges franchisees face, and therefore worked closely with HiQ to develop a suitable solution to ensure individuals felt they were getting the support they needed.
“The portal has been carefully planned to provide users with the tools they need, also including information on HiQ Academy, Fast Fit, GRIPS and retail systems, health and safety and environment, a business operations centre plus much more*. Users can also tap into a calendar and diary dates, forums, galleries, social media feeds and a list of quick links to useful sites.”
The team is now working with HiQ to develop other benefits including access to the HiQ Pit, Mystery Shopping, logins for HiQ store sites, plus a new Dealer to Dealer platform.
Lyanna talks property win
June 24th, 2011June has been a busy month of pitches and I am delighted to announce that we have recently won a new account – Redrow, where will be providing PR support to one of its ten regional divisions – Redrow Homes South West.
With a raft of property and regeneration experience working on accounts such as GVA Grimley, Calthorpe Estates, English Partnerships and RegenCo I am very excited to be working in the sector again, particularly with one of the UK’s leading residential and mixed-use property developers.
In the coming months, we will be working to raise awareness of Redrow’s quality build and its ‘New Heritage Collection’ to prospective house buyer. Launched in 2010 to much critical acclaim the New Heritage Collection is a range of traditional looking ‘Arts & Crafts’ influenced family homes.
Barry Stiles, regional director at Redrow Homes South West, commented: “We were looking for a credible, regional-based agency with whom we could build a strong relationship with and leverage their knowledge of the area; we therefore chose to appoint McCann Erickson in Bristol. We are delighted to be working with the PR team at McCann Erickson, and have a wealth of new developments around the region which we will be working on together to promote to customers. ”
Our MD, Fraser Bradshaw, adds: “Redrow Homes is recognised throughout the UK for its focus on providing high quality family housing in prime locations, trading firmly on heritage and high quality interiors. Our PR team is looking forward to educating home buyers across the South West about the numerous benefits of buying a Redrow Homes property.”
Flying high with Cathay Pacific
May 20th, 2011
We are over the moon this week as we have just won a four-way pitch to handle the UK PR for Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd.
Having handled the Cathay Pacific branding and above the line activity for six years we are ecstatic to add PR to the mix . PR activity for the brand will include ongoing media relations support, campaign planning and execution, issues handling and crisis management and provision of social media strategy and online activity.
Creative campaigns will raise awareness of the airline’s high standard of customer service, passenger experience, in-flight and airport services, range of destinations and high class in-flight catering.
Roberto Abbondio, Head of Sales and Marketing, Cathay Pacific said: “We are delighted to be working with the PR team at McCann Erickson and are looking forward to the benefits of an integrated agency offering. We have a strong relationship with the team already and feel that the PR expertise we are now a part of will help to amplify the work that we are already doing to promote Cathay Pacific as a premium airline which offers service ‘straight from the heart.’”
Premium airline Cathay Pacific is the main carrier of Hong Kong and has strong routes in both China and the UK. It has a 122-strong aircraft fleet and flies to a range of destinations from London including Asia, China, Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.
Our MD Fraser Bradshaw said: “Winning Cathay Pacific is a great coup for us and we are delighted to be working with the team in the UK on a more integrated programme. Agencies that can offer true integration can only be a plus for companies like Cathay Pacific where strength of brand awareness and positive word of mouth are crucial.”
The team leading on this account are @Woody_Witters @Sylvie_Pender and @lyannatsakiris
LEGO Ninjas chop up the Nickelodeon site!
May 13th, 2011Today we would like to share some work that we produced recently.
As part of the UK launch of LEGO Ninjago we developed a pretty fantastic interactive site takeover (if we do say so ourselves) with production agency Aardman Digital (@aardmandigital).
Ninjago is an exciting new brand for LEGO featuring courageous and skilled ninjas who do battle against an evil army of skeleton warriors. To capture the action-packed adventures played out in the Ninjago products, the takeover asked Nickelodeon site visitors to use their mouse and wield a golden, flaming sword. The sword swung and chopped with the movement of their mouse, slicing chunks out of the live homepage!
To find out more about becoming a ninja and developing your own skeleton defence skills, visit the official site.
Nick Livingstone talks analytics
April 18th, 2011
In this blog post our technical director, Nick Livingstone, takes us on a tour of some of the highlights of Google Analytics, with a couple of examples to show how you can gain real insight from the raw data.
Google analytics, like all modern analytics packages, works by tracking an individual’s progress through a site page by page. A snippet of code is added to each page that “phones home” to Google servers, sending anonymous, but comprehensive information about each visit to that page. Here’s a short list of some of the things Google gets told about each visitor to a page:
• The browser they are using
• The screen resolution they have
• What site they came from originally (the referrer)
• If they came via a campaign: the name of the campaign, the source of the campaign and lots more
• If they came from a search engine, what keywords they used in a search engine to find the page
All this information, and more, is collated and analysed to deliver the following results in any time period you choose to define:
• The total number of visits
• The total number of visitors
• The average number of pages each visitor looked at
• The time they spent on the site
• The bounce rate: the percentage of visitors who looked at one page and then left
• All this, benchmarked against sites in the same sector and of a similar size
In addition, you can use GA’s ecommerce tracking facility to get an accurate view of the income your site is generating.
Ecommerce tracking
You don’t need to have an ecommerce site to get value out of Google’s ecommerce tracking tools. You can assign a value to any transaction or page on the site.
So for example, say that you know that 10% of people who download a brochure for a product are going to buy that product. The product is £100. You can therefore safely assign a value of £10 to every brochure download.
Now say you’re running a PPC campaign to encourage brochure downloads. You can easily measure the cost effectiveness of your campaign (and perhaps adjust your keyword bidding accordingly!)
Google Analytics will tell you the conversion rate of your campaign – basically the percentage of the number of people who visit your site via the campaign and go on to transact in the way you want them to; in this case, download a brochure.
In this way, you have a ready made and robust method to measure cost per acquisition for any online campaign.
Split tests
You’ve got Google Analytics up and running and you notice that a particular page is not performing the way it should. Perhaps it’s page of promotions of products, and half the products aren’t getting any click throughs.
With its built in web optimiser tool you can set up alternative versions of this page to test what works best. You can either do simple A/B testing (two versions) or multivariate testing where you set up as many variations as you need.
Google will automatically deliver the page variants to equal proportions of your visitors and, once a statistically significant sample has been achieved, generate a clear and straightforward performance report.
Tracking offline campaigns with URL shorteners
That’s all well and good: you can track online campaign performance form first click to conversion, but not all your campaigns start online. How do you track the performance of a physical mailing, a 6 sheet in supermarket, or an insert in a magazine?
To track a campaign online you create a long list of campaign parameters and attach them to your URL. For example, say I have a number of banners linking to my home page http://myhomepage.com.
To take full advantage of Google’s campaign tracking I need to identify individual clicks from each banner. The way I do that is to add one or more of the following parameters to the link in the banner:
- Campaign Source (utm_source)
Use utm_source to identify a search engine, newsletter name, or other source.
Example: utm_source=google
- Campaign Medium (utm_medium)
Use utm_medium to identify a medium such as email or cost-per- click.
Example: utm_medium=cpc
- Campaign Term (utm_term)
Used for paid search. Use utm_term to note the keywords for this ad.
Example: utm_term=running+shoes
- Campaign Content (utm_content)
Used for A/B testing and content-targeted ads. Use utm_content to differentiate ads or links that point to the same URL.
Examples: utm_content=logolink or utm_content=textlink
- Campaign Name (utm_campaign)
Used for keyword analysis. Use utm_campaign to identify a specific product promotion or strategic campaign.
Example: utm_campaign=spring_sale
If I do all that I’ll end up with a URL that looks like this:
http://www.myhomepage.com/?utm_campaign=name&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=list&utm_term=keyword+another+keyword
This is ok when it’s hidden behind a button in a banner, or a “click here” link in an email, but I can’t put that on poster or in a letter!
That’s where URL shortening comes. I can use a tool (Google has one here http://goo.gl/) that converts this into a URL that’s much easier to remember, for example:
http://goo.gl/psssst
That’s much better for a poster. Or twitter, for that matter.
Get more from Google Analytics with McCann Bristol
This is just a tiny fraction of the functionality built into Google Analytics. If you would like to talk to Nick or someone that knows just as much as he does get in touch with our Head of Client Conversation, George Martino who will put you in touch with the team on:
0117 921 8134
Helen Couzens blogs – Is it ‘Game On’ or ‘Game Over’ for in-game advertising?
April 15th, 2011According to IGA Worldwide, the leading dynamic in-game advertising network, the global in-game advertising market is expected to reach $2 billion in 2012. But will this cost the developers their integrity?
One of gaming’s biggest developers, Activision Blizzard (Call of Duty and World of Warcraft) are planning to limit the amount to advertisements featured in their games “out of respect for their audience”. CEO Bobby Kotick explains “There was a time where we thought advertising and sponsorship was a big opportunity, but what we realized is our customers are paying $60 for a game or paying a monthly subscription fee and they don’t really want to be barraged with sponsorship or advertising”. People use gaming as an escape from normality, a way to relax, and they begrudge people trying to sell to them in their “own space”.
However, the statistics would say otherwise…
With TV advertising on the decline as a result of people opting for an “on demand” online alternative, or fast forwarding through ad breaks thanks to Sky+ and Virgin+, brands are seeking new ways to get their messages across; and in game advertising seems to be the way forward. For one brand, unaided recall for an ad that appeared on the Xbox LIVE dashboard ad was 90%, whereas recall for the same TV ad was only 78%. Hall & Partners research across cross-media comparisons of in-game ads specifically, sees ad recall for in-game ads at 56%, versus TV at 32%, or online and print at 17% and 18% respectively.
With up to 12.5 hours a week being dedicated to gaming, there is a lot of potential for in-game advertising – more so than other traditional media platforms. I for one believe that there is a lot of opportunity and potential for in-game advertising; from Lara Croft driving around in a Jeep in Tomb Raider, to billboard advertising as featured in GRAW 2. The opportunities are there for the taking, and with the majority of gamers connecting to the internet via Xbox Live or the Playstation Network, there is also the means to be able update ads in real time – like you would any other campaign.
In 2008, Unilever brand Vaseline worked alongside Microsoft to target male gamers with the launch of their male skincare range Vaseline MEN. They ran the campaign across a range of Xbox games including Pro Evolution Soccer, Burnout Paradise, Guitar Hero and Rainbow Six Las Vegas, and 46% of male gamers could recall the campaign, with 13% of those being able to recall the campaign strap-line. Brand recommendation for Vaseline MEN increased by 17 percentage points amongst those recalling the ads. Deepa Balasubramanyan from Team Unilever, Mindshare commented that “The Massive Network provided a great platform to engage with men on skin health, and the results will help us consider more in-game campaigns in the future”.
I say “Game On”…but what do you think?
Our Head of Conversations, George Martino talks 8tracks
March 30th, 2011
I’m a 50-something year old with Peter Pan Syndrome (PPS). If you don’t know what PPS is, you ARE too young. I’ve learnt that one way to prolong aging is by stretching my musical tastes. That’s not easy to do here in the UK where – save for Zane Lowe, Huw Stephens and Jo Whiley – most DJs chatter on like speed-fuelled politicians. However, my musician son turned me on to a great option to conventional radio. It’s called 8tracks.com.
According to their own hype, 8tracks is a ‘handcrafted internet radio offering a simple way for people to share and discover music through an online mix of at least 8 tracks.’ On 8tracks, you can listen to, or create, mixes. Hey, really push out the boat and try both. Even I can do this, and I’m the type of oldster who goes in for more traditional entertainment…
8tracks offers 44 genres of music, from chill to punk rock, and everything in between. I usually opt for indie rock. That means enjoying bands like Arcade Fire or The Foals anytime I want. There’s even an area where you can critique the mixes, and give feedback.So, when you walk past my office, and catch me seemingly in the middle of a crazed fit, don’t call St. John’s Ambulance. It’s just me making my moves to 8tracks.com.