In your face..!

After a fairly tumultuous 2014 for cabbies with the now ubiquitous Uber coming to town and shaking up a hornet’s nest of competition, they could be forgiven for quietly hoping that 2015 might offer a bit of a new start and perhaps a return to ‘normalcy’.

Far from this being the case, Goldline Cars, title sponsor and official partner of Leyton Orient FC (of course) is running a fairly punchy and combative advertising campaign – which might not be seen as ‘fair play’.

The self-proclaimed ‘premier Private Hire service in London’ has shoved some bus mega-rears in the faces of the black cab drivers, cleverly using the public transport vehicles to advertise their private transport business where their competitors – and their competitors’ passengers – are very much aware of it..!

Big, Bold Search Tactics

A couple of Summers ago, we posted a blog piece based around a huge, blue, phallic object that was flying around London on the side of buses. We saw it emerging from clusters of trees, hurtling round corners and generally tainting innocent streets with its long, un-ignorable and somewhat intimidating presence:

Call it Déjà vu, but a similar creative tactic has been used by Ch4 this month with a large format outdoor campaign to promote its set of three new series running across their portfolio of channels, that launched last night:

But wait…there’s more:

There appears to be no pre-requisite for knowledge or understanding of these ads – they are purposefully sensational, high impact, phallic food objects promoting the latest C4 programmes.

We believe there is a smart and clear approach here is to drive interest, frequency of messaging and – ultimately – engagement through Search activity. They have done this by only giving a minimal amount of information.

There are TV and press ads running as well, which help identify these as two interlinked, cross-channel series (Banana and Cucumber) that focus on LGBT characters, alongside the 4oD offering of Tofu, an online documentary which looks at modern sex in all its forms.

Not suggesting that the proposed search activity would have determined the names of the respective series, but by restricting the likely (and indeed possible) search terms, Channel 4 would be able to run an extremely focused – and most likely cost-effective – set of keywords.

This is an excellent example of how the medium of outdoor - used to help create a broad reach campaign - can use a lack of information to effectively drive a digital response.

Whatever you think, it’s certainly been eye-catching!

#PurePoint.

Calvin Klein’s UnBeliebable Ad Campaign

International pop star and supreme narcissist, Justin Bieber, was recently announced as the new face of Calvin Klein, with the release of their latest advertising campaign which co-stars Dutch supermodel Lara Stone (otherwise known as Mrs David Walliams).

Bieber had previously uploaded a picture of himself to Instagram wearing a pair of #mycalvins, with the huge response to the Canadian star’s selfie being enough to convince Calvin Klein of the merits to put him front and centre of their latest campaign.

Within a week of Bieber tweeting a picture from the new campaign, there were already 97,000,000 search results for "Justin Bieber Calvin Klein" on Google, as Beliebers rapidly shared images and video (LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0t-aBAYym8) across the social space.

Of course, with Bieber – and his proclivity for controversy – as the focal point, a twist in proceedings was nigh on inevitable. Soon enough, apparently 'untouched' images appeared, claiming Calvin Klein had enhanced Justin’s body parts to create a more – ahem – a more appealing package.

The supposed 'untouched' images were uploaded by BreatheHeavy, who accused the singer (and CK) of faking it with heavily Photoshop’ed images. Team Bieber promptly responded with a cease and desist letter to the website. Breathe Heavy withdrew the image and wrote an apology (in the 3rd person) to the Eenie Meenie singer.

Gareth Williams, a professional retoucher demonstrates how the fake ‘untouched’ image of Bieber was produced. Although he doesn’t deny that the real image was enhanced… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgP-A7CqdkQ

Melisa Goldie, the chief marketing officer of Calvin Klein states the brand is “incredibly proud of the final images and how they portray Justin and Lara”.

The images that were considered to join the legendary archives of Calvin Klein history, reminiscing the iconic campaigns starring Freddie Ljungberg and the 1992 images of 'Marky Mark' Wahlberg and Kate Moss, will certainly not be forgotten.

 

Whether or not Calvin Klein had intended such controversial coverage, it certainly got a few knickers in a twist, causing an abundance of earned media to bulge across the internet. 

The Mirror for example, posted an article claiming the photos 'WERE retouched tomake his penis look bigger’, yet the day after they posted another article saying the photos ‘WEREN’T retouched to make his penis look bigger’. 

This just goes to show the incomprehensible power of social media in accelerating small acorns to Amazonian forests. The brand ambassador’s gigantic fan base (reaching a total of 77,361,789 on Facebook and a mere 59.4 million followers on Twitter) have no doubt enhanced this snow'ball' effect of media.

…and to think this all started with a #hashtag... good job Calvin Klein is due to release its latest fragrance, ‘Reveal Men’, with the hashtag #revealmore 

*face palm* 

2014 might have been the year of the selfie, let’s hope 2015 isn’t the year of the crown jewels.

#PurePoint

New Year, New Partnership

We are well and truly back in the swing of things here at Pure Towers, Christmas jumpers packed away for another year, talk of ‘gym more and drinking less’ already a distant memory, basically it’s just like we never had a glorious almost two weeks off…oh hang on…that said on closer inspection it appears we may have expanded over the Christmas Break... 

We now have a few more fine sporty looking friendly type people in our office – which can only mean - that the Teamspirit Partnership team have come to join us!

  

Teamspirit Partnerships primarily works with brands to develop affinity and sponsorship strategy and activation, as well as advising on rights management and supporting integration into broader brand communications plans.

Maximising media value and understanding how sponsorship activities and activations can work to best effect is where Pure and Partnerships can offer a point of difference and tangible added value. 

Whether in the sporting arena or indeed the cultural sphere, there is always a perfect partnership potential in the pipeline!  A few success stories from 2014 were the Tennis Sponsorship with Aegon, The Yorkshire Building Society TDF Grand Depart activation or indeed the Friends Life Tour of Britain.  

And we are jolly pleased to welcome them to the third floor. This year, as with every year, offers plenty of exciting opportunities on and off the sporting field for brands to work with and we look forward to collaborating on a few exciting projects in 2015.

Welcome TS Partnerships, now first things first, may we point you in the direction of the kettle.

#PureBlog