Dove Pro-Age Campaign

 

A recent research study demonstrated that adverts featuring celebs such as Angelina Jolie who has been the face of fashion label St John are less effective than those showing ordinary people. Do you remember the Campaign for Real Beauty video that came out last year?

 

Ladies and Gentleman, I am pleased to announce that Dove are back with their new controversial Dove Pro-Age video. Apparently this commercial was banned in the
US.  

 

I love the way Dove have managed to differentiate themselves with the branding of their new Pro-Age range as opposed to anti-ageing. ‘Anti-ageing’ sounds like it’s a crime to age!

 

Dove delivered their brand promise with the Campaign for Real Beauty and they continue to deliver with the Pro-Age campaign.

More Dove magic over at Chris Brown’s blog

That sweet enemy (je t’aime, moi non plus)

It’s a well known fact that the Brits despise the ‘frogs’, while the French despise ‘les roast beefs’.  

 Napoleon once likened the English Channel to a mere “ditch that will be crossed when someone has the boldness to try it.” In 1994, it was permanently breached by the Channel Tunnel — a monument to Anglo-French collaboration that brought London and Paris into day-trip proximity by train. One wonders what Napoleon would have made of that.  

French advertising is all about language, culture and themes, right? I found this little gem in the Gare du Nord during my Parisian trip a couple of weeks ago.

The Battle of Austerlitz was a French victory (victoire) but a British defeat (défaite) and the Battle of Waterloo was a British victory but a French defeat.  

Being open to the world is about understanding cultural differences and diffent point of views.

Question time!

Is Austerlitz station in London or Paris? What about Waterloo station?

Location, Location, Location!

Thought of the day: Marketing is about understanding customers’ needs and wants 

As a researcher, I spend an awful lot of time in venues that are too small, not comfortable enough, or in the middle of nowhere. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?  

Are you looking for an innovative and energising space to foster creative thinking? Are you tired of smelly and cramped research studios? Look no further!

The Creative Venue was created for marketers by a marketing professional who understands your needs and wants!  

Click the image below for more details and don’t forget to spread the word!

 

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings (Salvador Dali)

gumtree.com

If you ask a Londoner where you can find a flat, a clubbing mate or a travel partner, they’ll probably tell you to check out www.gumtree.com.

Gumtree is a network of free online classifieds and community web sites in the UK, Ireland, Poland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, similar to Craigslist, which is mainly focused on the US. The main categories are flat / house share and for rent, goods for sale, community, friends and partners, jobs and business services.

Gumtree is part of the Ebay Group which also owns PayPal and Skype.

Ebay were pretty clever when they allowed Gumtree users to let people contact them via Skype by adding a Skype ‘call me’ option. I find the Gumtree is generally a lot easier and clearer to use  than Craiglist UK.

I was browsing the classifieds when I came across a guy who hyperlinked his myspace address in the ad. Excellent way of connecting 2 totally different online communities together and showing the end-user who you really are. Saying that, I am not quite sure whether ebay will like this too much…  

Going Underground… in Paris!

I spent the last few days in Paris on business and found the French ad, ’la musique vous parle’ (music talks to you)  for the Nokia music phone - I blogged about the UK ad last month.

Although there are lots of advertisements on the Parisian Metro, it’s easy to ignore this tsunami of information. The Metro, unlike the Tube is reliable so you don’t have to spend ages staring at the walls waiting for the Metro to turn up

On a more serious note, the achitecture of the metro makes it harder to place eye-catching ads, and the ads are sometimes far too large to take a closer look; I had to stand back to look at them, which can be life threatening I almost fell under a train!

The smaller clustered ads are in my opinion a waste of paper, as there are simply too many marketing messages to decipher at the same time.

And if you want to see what it is like to go underground in London, click here.

Going Underground

The caricature of a typical London commuter is the aspiring but cynical male. He is a middle class, middle aged, suburban, lemming like creature, walking the same path, standing at the same spot, at the same time, with the same newspaper, on the same station each morning, catching the same train, bus or tube, noticing very little between house and workplace. Pretty accurate, isn’t it?

An average Londoner sees roughly 350 ads everyday! While in theory, commuters are a captive audience, they are also creatures of habit and the ads they see on their way to and from work run the risk of becoming a nondescript part of the urban landscape.

Love them or hate them, advertisements are an integral part of the London Underground and unless you go around with your eyes shut (not advised!) you will definitely be exposed to some major ads on your journey. And the advertising people know that they have to show a lot of them to grab your attention. 

The marketing manager of a company responsible for selling all of the advertising sites on the London Underground - Viacom Outdoor, observed: “The commuter has become much more sophisticated in distilling the information he takes in on his way to work and so the advertiser has had to become more ingenious at targeting him. Ads targeting the commuter need to be either extremely repetitive (continually punctuating his journey) or be extremely creative in order to catch his attention”. That’s why you see so many of the same ads taking up the whole of escalator sites!  

Armed with my digital camera, I decided to go underground… Enjoy!  

PS: I hope the theme tune will not offend anyone! I just felt this hilarious song would make you smile    

The London Underground Song - Dr Suman Biswas & Dr Adam Kay

 

Highly recommended reading: The London Underground Tube Blog

In my shoes…

Click Image to enlarge 

Well, well, well… it’s been a mad week I have to say, and I haven’t had much time to look after Blog till you Drop! Work is a bit mad at the moment…  I am a Qualitative Researcher (also known as Quallies in the industry).

What do ‘Quallies’ do? I spend most of my time listening and attempting to understand what motivates consumers. I then advise manufacturers on what they should do or shouldn’t do.  

So what have I been up to this week?

Monday 29th January 

9.30 – thank goodness, my Italians colleagues sent the report structure I should have received last Friday. I now have 2 days to write the ‘Naturalness Report’ instead of three… 

11.00 – still haven’t started report… the phone has been ringing off the hook and I still have 20 emails to deal with from American colleagues.  13.30 – telephone briefing with Indian colleagues  

14.30 – 19.30 – still working on report 

Tuesday 30^th January

8.30 – I received 30 emails overnight…  

10.45 – Time to get started on Naturalness report again   14.00 – Meeting with director to check report  

18.00 – Have managed to write a report in just under 2 days! Woo hoo! Italian colleagues will be pleased 

Wednesday 31^st January

10.00 – client debrief. Am very nervous as 15 clients are attending debrief. Clients throwing complicated questions at me, but I still (just about) manage to provide them with reasonably insightful answers  

12.00 – Post-debrief brainstorm; client worried that they have a number of problems in terms of the product’s positioning, you’ve helped us understand why we’re only number 2 on the market, now we need to do something about it, here’s our action plan, what do you think? blah blah…  

14.00 – I made it to the airport! Need to catch flight to
Paris as I am facilitating a creative clinic in the evening 

18.00 – Just about made it to the viewing facility in one piece as it took ages (typical French) to make it through the customs! Client complains there’s no veggie food; do I really look like a chef? Do I? Do I? grrrrr  

21.00 – back at the hotel, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz 

Thursday 1^st February

10.00 – Flight to Milan   Thursday PM off – time to do a bit of shopping and catch up with Italian friend I haven’t seen in ages 

17.00 – Obnoxious client arrives at viewing facility and enquires about simultaneous translation. I frantically call our London office to find out what’s going on. There’s been a problem and it seems that we have no simultaneous translator for tonight. OH MY GOD, OBNOXIOUS CLIENT IS GOING TO KILL ME!  

17.30 – client has great idea. Why don’t I do the translation for him (well I am supposed to be facilitating not translating d’uh!) and why don’t we call our Italian office and find out whether an Italian exec can facilitate instead. By the way, I haven’t done any interpreting in years!  

18.00 – Italian colleague agrees to facilitate but it’s going to cost XYZ therefore affecting our profit margin  

20.30 – Client is pleased, thank you (at last) for your hard work blah blah 

Friday 2^nd January - Back in London, thank god, it’s the week-end….   

Further reading: What do I do for a living  -Demystifying Qual Research! by Reshma Anand