Favourite Festive Tunes and 2014 in a Nutshell - Happy Christmas From Pure

At Pure HQ we’ve been having that classic agency conversation; pulling together a list of the ultimate top-5 Christmas songs among our reflections of a rollercoaster 2014. The song list is still work-in-progress and is somewhat debateable, but the rollercoaster was awesome - fact! One of those built for speed where your face keeps whacking against the sides of those safety bar things, but at the same time you’ve got a massive smile on your face and really dry teeth…

Anyway, our mash-up of favourite festive tunes and reflection of a fantastic year transcribes to something like this:

5 – East 17 – Stay Another Day. Those jackets, legendary!

The rebrand; our old logo wasn’t to stay in 2014. Don’t know if you had noticed but we kicked the “safe grey” and co-boring-balt blue and decided to funk things up:

Old Pure Logo                                                                     New Pure Logo

Much better.

The rebrand went beyond just logo colours, though. A full-rebranding-shebanging (new website coming soon). Business cards, presentation deck templates – you name it!

Because we love media, and we want you all to know that.

                4 – Mariah Carey – All I want for Christmas. Don’t know how this made it into the top 5? Suppose you have to keep some people in the office happy.

Pure has expanded (again) in 2014. Both in size and stature and as a result so has the workforce. More desks, more bodies, more brains, the family grows. So, welcome aboard to our new recruits! 

And they all fit in so well.

Apart from Brett. Genuinely, none of us can work him out.

…and Johnny. Why is he always smiling? Weird…

 And then there’s Paul. Well, “you know”.

3 – Slade – It’s Christmas. That famous note makes it…IT’S CHRIIIIISTMAAAASS!

This reflection is a weird one. A look back followed by a projection. One that makes your eyes narrow with thought and then widen with excitement.

The key principals of planning and buying media remain the same. Always have done, always will do. But we’re caught up in this huge tipping point of programmatic and digital and algorithms and optimisation which makes everything freaking exciting. Programmatic digital spend went from 25% to 56% within a few months. How can we look back at the year without thinking forward?

There are massive industry changes afoot, and we love being a part of that, and the concept of getting truly stuck in going forward. Watch this space, because it’s watching you (in a dynamic, behavioural and contextual sense).

2 – Wizzard – I Wish it Could Be Christmas Everyday. Beards in the snow, the perfect combo.

Teamspirit (our sister agency) and Pure constructed and introduced core business values this year. They go like this:

Social / Curious / Open / Responsible / Expert / Entrepreneurial

They completely sum us lot up. To have them all written down in mantra format has given us all a fantastically unified identity to be proud of. Plus, really cool posters.

1 – The Pogues – Fairytale of New York. Everybody’s favourite.

Exciting new clients on the roster; client retention along with new businesses, you could say, the *snowball effect?

Anyway, new clients means new audiences means new media techniques. No two media schedules are the same. Like…*snowflakes? This excites us and this year we’ve had the chance to work with some absolute multi-media, multi-dimensional and even thermochromic (?) clangers.

 As we continue to proudly achieve fantastic results across the board, Pure along with our happy-smiley-clienty faces can’t wait to see what 2015 brings. Especially in such a dynamic and ever-changing industry.

*never apologise for a Christmas pun.

-

There you have it guys! The rollercoaster in a nutshell.

Here’s to a bright 2015 for all and no doubt we’ll catch up in the new year.

Lots of love.

Pure Media.

P.S.

 Always here and never forgotten. To Uncle Luc!

Christmas is here again

After surviving both Black Friday and the office party with most of our limbs and some of our reputations intact, we at Pure Towers feel that Christmas has officially arrived.

We always hear how "Christmas is getting earlier every year", but does it just feel that way, or is it actually true?

If we initially ignore Selfridges' shamelessly opening their Christmas store 142 days in advance of the big day in August and instead use the barrage of TV Ads as the key indicator, Christmas in 2014 started on about the 6^th November.

In previous years and using the John Lewis ad as the selected example, we find that 2013 offering ‘The Bear and the Hare’ was released on the 7^th November, while in 2012 ‘Snowman’ was first aired on the 8^th November, as was 2011’s ‘The Long Wait’.

So it would appear that advertisers have traditionally decreed a week into November as the day we should have a collective turn to the mistletoe (and madness).

Thankfully for us, we’ve found a bright, young spark at the Royal Statistical Society who has done a bit of analysis on Google, examining the volume of Christmas-related searches over recent years to give an indication of when the ‘real’ people (‘consumers’ they’re called) outside of Ad Land think that Christmas starts...

...with some SHOCKING results.

In 2007, this was on 11^th November, so pretty much in line with the ads.

Over the years, this has altered dramatically:
2008: 12^th October
2010: 3^rd October
2011: 11^th September
2013 19^th August
2014 25^th August…!

Who would have thought Selfridges were right all along!? You could argue that the event drove the search activity and thus it’s somewhat of a false positive but either way, it's clear there's a market in Summer for some Christmas advertising..!

In the meantime, we’re working on a range of Christmas Jumpers that can be worn in 28 degrees.

#PurePoint

Conversation Starter

Tinder has been a "dating" revelation with staggering growth and popularity.

In February, Tinder were recording 750 million swipes per day (which was a 15,000% increase on December 2013!) and now they are seeing more than a billion swipes - resulting in approximately 12 million 'matches' - every single day.

With owner IAC taking a seemingly natural next step and deciding to monetise the app, a whole new channel for advertisers has been opened up.

Probably the most poignant campaign we've seen is from the Immigration Council of Ireland. They have engaged Dublin-based ad agency Eighty Twenty to create a truly hard-hitting set of ads aimed at reaching the youthful male population in Ireland.

The user will see an image of an attractive young woman. As they then swipe,a series of shocking images follow, which demonstrate the kind of physical abuse trafficking victims are often on the receiving end of. The hope is that reaching this demographic will help crack down on the illegal industry.

This is definitely an important message delivered in an innovative way on a carefully selected medium.

Definitely a #PureAdOfTheWeek

Just the ticket!

The Manchester Derby took place yesterday. This is one of the major showdowns in the Premier League calendar.

Fans from near (and more often than not, far) were glued to screens all over the world to see a tightly fought match which was ultimately decided by a single goal.

The major flashpoint of the game was the first half dismissal of United's Chris Smalling for two bookable offences. His departure, followed by an injury to Marcos Rojo, led to a highly inexperienced back four being breached.

As you would imagine, Smalling has taken a LOT of stick for this, with his own manager calling him stupid. The football community has taken to Twitter to offer their thoughts, with Virgin Trains providing one of the sharpest zingers.

We love not only the messaging, but the sweet tactical timing....

Well played Virgin, well played..!

#PurePoint

Nightmare on Cowcross Street

Things took a turn for the spooky last night as a terrifying troop took over Pure Towers and headed out to sup on the souls of Farringdon locals….otherwise known as the annual TeamSpirit Group Halloween Pub Crawl.

The Marshmallow Man led the charge (after finishing off a bit of admin) in what has been recognised internationally* as probably the scariest Halloween fancy dress event in the Northern Hemisphere – the #NightmareOnCowcrossStreet was a huge success.

Have a Horrifyingly Happy Halloween everyone!

*by us…in this blog…just now.

Timely Advertising

Tick-tock, tick-tock! Turn back your clock!

Yes indeed, daylight saving’s time is up for another year. At 2am on Sunday 26^th October, the UK’s time zone will drop back an hour, giving us seemingly longer darker evenings and earlier brighter mornings.

To capitalise on the annual time change, it looks like a fair few clever brands have been working around the clock to prepare for this moment, having been targeted with a flurry of timely ads on the way to work this morning.  

The first was a tactical and highly impactful set of fractional ads running across a DPS in the Metro for B+Q lighting.

Just Eat also used Metro to capitalise on the moment, taking a break from their normal ‘Don’t Cook’ advertising to target a slightly different family demographic.

But our favourite so far is from the stop smoking supporters at Quit.org, who took this timely opportunity to target a new campaign running in the ‘EXTRA TIME’ section of Sport magazine this week. The Clock ad features cigarette hands and the backwards copy line –

“SUNDAY YOU GET ONE HOUR BACK. QUIT AND YOU’LL GET YEARS BACK.” with the end line “SEE HOW  MUCH TIME BACK YOU COULD GET AT QUIT.ORG.UK.”

They are also running an interactive version of the ad online with the hands winding backwards and the opportunity to find out how much #TIMEBACK people can get if they quit.

Our only disappointment was that they didn’t link in to the NHS’s #Stoptober effort – as we feel some cross-promotional advertising could have been really effective here!

Ah well – there’s always time next year...

#PurePoint 

The Whisky Welcome

Global drinks powerhouse Diageo has just launched the first ad campaign for its whisky brand, Haig Club. The 90-second short, titled Welcome, is directed by none other than Guy Ritchie, and stars David Beckham amongst others. It revolves around a series of separate journeys, following a group of friends as they travel by various means through the Scottish Highlands, finally meeting at an old castle to suit up, drink up and take some photos.

Lots of people have been confused by Beckham as the personality of choice for this campaign – after all, what does Becks know about whisky, and how does his association with the brand resonate? It’s important however to recognise what the advertisers are trying to achieve here – and in our opinion, this campaign is all about style, distinction, and looking good.

It’s shot by a director renowned for producing great-looking movies. It features sweeping, airborne vistas of some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. And it shines the spotlight on Becks, who the Mail Online claims is still one of the world’s most handsome men. Admittedly, he does scrub up pretty well here.

Upon seeing this campaign, we couldn’t help but recall another glamorous whisky ad we’d seen recently - Johnnie Walker Blue Label’s short film The Gentleman’s Wager, featuring Jude Law and Giancarlo Giannini. In fact, we wrote an article about it just a couple of months ago...

Johnnie Walker, interestingly, is also owned by Diageo. Seems the global brand likes the strategy of coupling their whiskies with famously good-looking faces. As an expensive luxury alcohol, advertising that highlights the associated glamour lifestyle of the product certainly makes good sense; however, are these ads competing with each other a little too directly? Will Law and Becks trip each other up on the way to the club, or will they pull a group together for whiskies all round? Only time will tell if this tactic pours success for Haig Club. 

If you want to watch the full video, click here

#PurePoint