Pure Retrospective 2013

As we hurtle towards the end of an action-packed 2013, we thought it would be a good idea to draw breath and take a moment to think back over what has been a pretty interesting year. That perpetual  myth of ‘The Year of Mobile’ wasn’t realised (again!) but there does continue to be an ongoing shift in engaging consumers through multimedia campaigns and an added social media element. As our blog on the social media frenzy around Christmas campaigns showed, things are becoming ever more about engagement and less about just spot and space.

We decided to relive some of the highs (and lows) of the year which has seen some great ads and some really inventive placements. 

 

Definitely Love It

This is a classy and perfectly-pitched combination of placement, topic, creative....everything. The Guardian used a smart but sensitive ad to promote their review of Margaret Thatcher and her life. The clear divisions that Thatcherism stood for were supremely expressed in an understated and simple fashion. 

Love It...and Hate It

To keep on the Marmite theme, the controversial TV ad based on a faux-animal neglect team. This split opinions in the Pure office and led to some heated debate - which is exactly what the creative was designed to achieve. The tag line was 'Love It Hate It. Just Don't Forget It.' and the campaign ensured that this was precisely what happened.

Just HATE It

Santander's employment of Rory, Jenson and Jess (who we've nicknamed 'The Wooden Tops') creepily appearing in people's homes was one of the most appalling ads in recent memory. Three supremely wealthy sports stars selling their incredibly poor acting skills.


And one more thing - Jess' t-shirt is pink not red. Which MAKES NO SENSE! Aaaaaaand breathe....

Great Ikea

One of our favourites is the gnome campaign by Ikea - it used TV and print as the mass media platforms to generate interest and then successfully coupled this with social media for the conversation/story.

It also created a positive amount of PR by being controversial and showing “gnome slaughter” - there were over 50 complaints to the ASA (!)

 

Share a Coke:

Positives and negatives abound when looking at the Coke summer campaign. It was a fantastic and original idea, with lots of PR, #ShareaCoke social media presence and tactical print forays including Wills and Kate & Sir Alex Ferguson and David Moyes (pictured). 

 

There were supposedly 150 different named bottles, which increased our expectations when looking for ads - but it appears the reality of production costs got in the way as the lack of variety in the creative copy (e.g. only 3 names on the bus sides) left us feeling slightly like an old Coke - a bit flat. 

 

There was also 2 or 3 other campaigns running at the same time for Diet Coke and Coke Zero, resulting in mixed messages

Brian The Robot

Brian dominated our Summer - across radio, outdoor, TV, print, social media and anywhere else that he could try and "save us pounds". One of the truly multimedia campaigns of 2013, this was catchy (irritating) and ubiquitous - definitely at the forefront of the nation's consciousness! Although the controversial dogging ad (137 ASA complaints) left us all somewhat confused.com?!?!?




Big, Blue, Prickly Ad

More than just the memorable creative – a really interesting use of bus sides coupled with the strip ads which acted as high impact fractionals in press (although swiftly replaced with a more subtle creative we noted).

Should arid plants be used

for penetrative impact more often?!




BT's Struggle

Of course, how can we forget the seemingly never-ending Summer of Sports battle between BT Sport and Sky Sports.

Lesson learnt: no matter how much money you have for a campaign, no matter how high profile the celebs involved, if the relative interest isn't there the results will fall short of the ambition. Especially when trying to take on Sky!

Despite the 100's / 1'000's of ads BT Sport ran .... There was only ever going to be one winner.

 

Game changing? We think not.


Landmark lights

Quite simply a phenomenal use of the iconic London skyline to promote the launch of the Playstation4 to a mass audience and garner huge media attention - reworking the OXO Tower to feature the famous PS games console.

Christmas Ads 2013

Take a look back at the blog over recent weeks to see what we had to say about John Lewis, Sainsbury's and the likes ... Big budget, big Impact and divided opinions.

In the meantime - links below to some of the top 10 Christmas Ads featuring Aldi, Boots, John Lewis, Harvey Nichols, M&S and Waitrose.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/video/2013/nov/29/christmas-ads-2013-john-lewis-marks-spencer-Video


Have a fantastic Christmas and New Year from Pure Media

So there you have it! Our high- and low-lights of 2013!

We'll be back in 2014 with our eagle eyes peeled for all advertising things weird and wonderful, clever and lazy, silly and poignant.

In the meantime, Check out our little dance and  have a fantastic Christmas and New Year!


#PurePoint

Inside Out

Intel has spent a reported £15million on a four and a half year deal to sponsor the INSIDE of the Barcelona football kit! 

At first glance, you'd be forgiven for thinking that they've been hitting the mulled wine a bit too hard, but there is a really clever angle to this - promoting the 'Intel Inside' brand message through the propensity of Spanish footballers to put shirts over their heads when celebrating.

They are under no contractual obligation to lift their shirts or show the logo. This is Intel's first venture into football sponsorship and as part of the deal they will also provide technology to players and coaching staff.

We wait to see if it will be money well spent! #PurePoint
 

Meshy Impact

We are fans of the latest Sky Movies campaign currently running on Bus T sides ... The creative synergy of using Wreck-it Ralph bursting out of the modified 'SUPER' T is a simple yet effective way of grabbing the attention of an urban audience (much like the guy in the photo below who should probably be watching where he is going!)

The bespoke format covers up the bottom left window pane with a tightly-woven mesh enabling advertisers to utilise space without the loosing the benefits of a window - which has one slight drawback:

At night the back-lit mesh makes it hard to see the extra impact! Which could mean losing key messages. Especially with creative similar to the below where the message is written on the mesh.

All-in-all, the ad looks great from a distance and is an effective, creative solution for driving the message. 

#PurePoint

Enjoy the Festive Season!

Please click here to watch the full video

Have a fantastic Christmas from Pure Media :)

Is sharing really caring?

 #PureXmasAdWatch update


                      

This year, more than ever before, social media is at the vanguard of the Christmas ad battle, where people are sharing their thoughts and interacting as a result of exposure to the traditional advertising. It's not just a battle of the big TV ads, it's more a battle of the #hashtags and ongoing opt-in engagement levels.

There are plenty of numbers that advertisers will use to try and demonstrate their social superiority -from Twitter mentions, Facebook launch post interactions, #hashtags, YouTube views, Google+'s to number of  'Likes' to name but a few, so  we at Pure thought we'd take a look at how the campaigns that launched earlier this month are being run and indeed what results can show to date.

In our view, John Lewis has (again!) come out well on top. The crux of the argument behind this assertion is that as an advertiser we would rather have consumers consuming (i.e. watching) our ad rather than just talking about it.

Numbers such as Twitter mentions, #hashtag shares, Facebook interactions, etc. are useful data and indeed seem to suggest that there's quite a tight race going on with regards to interaction and engagement in this busy market. However, John Lewis launched their ad on YouTube 24 hours before it went 'live' on TV and it's on that platform that they have buried the others under an avalanche of views:

 YouTube views
(as at 20th Nov):

John Lewis - 7.8 million
M&S - 770k
Argos - 630k
Sainsbury's - 355k
Tesco - 320k







What's more, they have predominantly achieved their exposure through organic seeding, unlike M&S who appear to have been forced to try and combat JL's dominance by spending heavily on paid-for search. When looking at the John Lewis social campaign in its entirety, you can see that there is an excellent co-ordination of the composite parts - they all work individually but also support and enhance the others.

For example, the ad launch was coupled with a pre-emptive teaser Twitter #hashtag of #sleepingbear followed by #bearandhare as soon as it went live. On that first weekend, the John Lewis Twitter audience grew by 10% (4,000 new followers).

In contrast, Marks and Spencer have had approx. 4,000 mentions of #magicandsparkle and unforgivably, Tesco launched their ad on Twitter but failed to attach a specific hashtag, thereby surely losing both campaign theme and indeed trackability of popularity.

It's interesting to note that elsewhere, M&S has been quoted as having the most Twitter mentions (c.60million) with Tesco (49 million) and John Lewis lagging behind (45 million).

M&S have also been shown to have the edge on the competition when it comes to Facebook interactions, with 160,000 interactions to their launch post - Asda (87,000), John Lewis (71,000) and Tesco (9,000) are way behind.

Sharing is caring, but in our opinion active engagement and opt-in viewing is a far more effective result.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Pretty much all the (Christmas) cards are on the table, so over the next few weeks, we’ll be giving our comment and feedback on the efforts of some of the nation’s biggest retailers' Christmas advertising - remember it’s our thoughts that count ;)

#PureXmasAdWatch

So, let’s kick off with the big budget TV ad extravaganzas that have launched over the past week or so.

John Lewis’ bear is out of the cave to huge social and media acclaim. The #bearandhare ad has already amassed over 6.8 Million views on YouTube in just over 7 days.

M&S now stands for ‘Magic and Sparkle’ (apparently) and Sainsbury’s has wrapped Christmas Day up into a 3 and a half minute tearjerker.

Once we’ve digested these chunky ads, there’s Tesco, Boots, Morrisons, Debenham's, ASDA, Waitrose and plenty of others to get through….by which time we are well and truly stuffed like the proverbial turkey.

These big budget Xmas ads appear to have become the UK equivalent of the Superbowl advertising in America - and whilst incomparable in cost to the coveted Superbowl final ad break, one thing for certain is that the costs of the TV ads will be at an all-time high in the UK when considering the premium space. As announced recently, the X Factor final ad breaks will cost £200,000 per 30 seconds. This could net ITV somewhere in the region of £16 million. A nice present for their shareholders.

We will focus on the way advertisers are using press and the social media world in more depth in future blogs, but at this stage we are concentrating on TV, and rather than take the traditional powerhouse John Lewis as our primary candidate, we’re kicking off by taking a look at Sainsbury’s attempt at shaking things up slightly by promoting their TV ad as a film.

The ‘Taste the Difference’ brand waited until after the others had pulled their TV crackers and then started to promote the first airing of the ad in the press by directing newspaper readers to tune in and watch the ad.

The full film is reminiscent of Tinsel Town - 45 minutes long and due to have a premier as well as a release-date on YouTube. The campaign was launched in a 3 ½ minute trailer during Coronation Street. The length and exceptional nature of this media execution should ensure that it becomes a vanguard aspect of their campaign.

Repeating this ad length is clearly not sustainable or indeed possible to accommodate on Mainstream TV - so 40” and 60” spots based on different edits and themes will continue to run until 21^st December to follow on from the very strong groundwork already laid. 

M&S has a 150 second fantasy-story mash-up and the story-telling of John Lewis lasts a beefy 2 minutes but both pale in comparison to the size of this ad-break behemoth. Whether it proves a success is yet to be determined, as the multimedia element required for a successful Christmas campaign is becoming more important than ever before.

The Sainsbury’s ad delivers on  its highly successful pursuit of a ‘values-driven’ brand strategy, rather than focusing on product display, which is visible in the M&S effort and – more subtly – in the John Lewis version of Watership Down (I wonder how many alarm clocks they’ll sell this year..?).

It’s interesting how so many advertisers are choosing to focus on our emotions (trust, love, desire, greed, etc) as much as they are the cost or reliability in order to sell. ‘Value vs Values’ is a theme to keep an eye on as we head into the season of goodwill.

Jaw dropping, show stopping launch

We launched a DOOH campaign for Gossard this week on some high impact digital sites in key locations, and in order to amplify the launch and achieve further stand out and incremental value, we had the added benefit of their latest brand ambassador Sophie Anderton going the extra mile to demonstrate what the Glossies range being advertised looked like in the flesh.

 

This resulted in delivering massive impact and generating an enormous amount of PR across National, regional and trade media, both.on and offline.

 

 

 

 

#PureAdOfTheWeek

Smug UGG: These Boots are Made for Talking

We continue to monitor the negative effects of over-inked coverwraps and the effectiveness of well executed coverwraps ... and today is a perfect example of the latter.

The bin at the station - our reliable measuring stick - only had one cover in it this morning vs the usual overflow on an over inked day:

Well done to the UGG creative team for producing artwork fit for a newspaper cover and for ensuring the ad stayed intact and went some way to delivering the media value the client paid for.

#PurePoint

Negative Context

Not so clever contextual targeting on the Mailonline at the weekend for Kuoni, advertising 'Magical Kenya' given the ads were served against the headline story of the Kenyan Mall massacre in Nairobi.

It's important to consider the negative impact of contextual targeting as well as the smart targeting benefits.

#PurePoint

Cover Wraps ... An expensive load of rubbish?

Despite the creative impact that advertising coverwraps have when attached to the paper, more often than not the bins on mainline commuter stations are littered with them, detatched from the main paper due to 'over inking'.

Today was no exception, with the NatWest ad consigned to the bin (as per the image above on the right), and another for TLC a few weeks ago (as per image above on the left).

 

Taking in to account the fact this is a high ticket item when it comes to media costs - surely the creative team and media agency should be aware of the effect of adding too much solid colour and over inking the covers. It seems to be a very expensive and avoidable mistake.

 

The example above for TESCO is a good example of a cover that survived ultimate consignment to the bin, where as the ones below for Adidas and Nike didn't make it across the finishing line. 

 

  

 

#PurePoint

 

BT Sport: Positive start to the season

For almost 20 years Sky Sports has maintained the ownership of sport viewers, but could this be the season that the ownership is contested? BT Sport's first televised Premier League football match at the weekend, Liverpool versus Stoke City, attracted a peak audience of 764,000 viewers, beating ESPN's opening game last season.

Although the audience figure is far less than Sky Sports 3.1 million viewers, Sky Sports first game last season only raked in 843,000; BT Sport should be considered as serious competition!

In a recent press release BT Sport claims to have acquired 1 million subscribers due to the new sports package offering, indicating that 76% of all subscribers tuned into the game - pretty impressive! That being said, the cost per acquisition is still painful given the £100m+ marketing campaign.

We've been following the campaign since the first day it was executed, commenting on the different creatives, messaging and tactic's used by both brands and early signs appear to be positive for BT Sport. But, there's still a long way to go before seeing a positive ROI.

We have a feeling this will go the full 12 rounds!

#PurePoint

Round 6!

So, it’s time for it to end. Finally.

The posturing, the bad-natured bravado, the poorly disguised dislike and the testosterone-fuelled, territorial circling has swamped our daily lives for the past couple of months.

The ink used in the print ads would have filled the Great Lakes. They’ve had more TV time than Lord Sugar. They’ve even spent more than the entire Premier League combined (yes, including Manchester City)

The two behemoths of British sports broadcasting, Sky Sports and BT Sport, have been obsessed with the quest to become the one that has eaten a bigger slice of the Premiership Pie.

As we have documented, despite the initially considered nature of the rivalry, the contest has descended in to a bare-knuckle brawl. Targeted placements have given way to ubiquity and refreshing messaging has devolved into tale-telling and seemingly contradictory claims.

The season starts tomorrow.

In a final, desperate lunge that reeks of burnt rate cards and smashed sales targets, BT Sport have literally blanketed today's media, with Sky Sports remaining comparatively calm. We've included the examples at the end of the blog - you've no doubt seen them several hundred times in the last two months!

We shall have to see whether the Evening Standard is equally as battered by this crusade (campaign doesn’t seem to do it justice).

The biggest test will be the figures that are recorded over the next few weeks.

Let the chips fall as they may.

All we know is, we’re finally glad that there will be a little more content on the tellybox.

It’s time for it to end. Hopefully….

Let the games begin.

#PurePoint

Pure Quest ... Outdoor Art Bingo

 What do David Hockney, Lucian Freud, John Constable, LS Lowry, Tracey Emin, Sir Christopher Blake and many more artists have in common??

Their works are among over 50 pieces of British art selected by the general public to feature in the World's largest outdoor media 'Art everywhere' campaign that launches today.

The artwork will be shown on 22,000 digital outdoor poster sites across the UK - in a joint collaboration between the art world and the advertising and media industries....with sites donated by major outdoor contractors including CBS Outdoor, ClearChannel UK, JCDecaux, Ocean Outdoor & Primesight....no hidden agenda, just the opportunity to celebrate 'Art'.

 

At Pure we are always on the look out for interesting outdoor campaigns - as well as a challenge amongst the team, so we have taken it upon ourselves to try and spot all 50+ pieces of artwork in situ.

Our last quest was to capture the 150 names that Coke claimed to have used in personalised products and ads earlier this year, only to have seen very few of them in the outdoor ad campaign due to the fact the reality of the production budget clearly outweighed the creativity of the multi executional delivery.

Dabbers to the ready .... we're hoping the digital nature of this campaign and the promise of over 50 creative exections will enable us to get a collaborative 'full house' over the coming weeks.

 BINGO!!

#PurePoint #PureChallenge #PureAdOfTheWeek

Love it or Hate it??

We're 50:50 here in the office with regards to the latest Marmite 'neglect / rescue' TV ad ... and it seems we are not the only ones.

The commercial went on air c. 24 hours ago and the ASA has already received over 250 complaints.

The campaign uses the well-known Love/Hate strapline, urging users to "Love it. Hate it. Just don't Forget it."


One thing we can say is the ad is true to it's word, like Marmite, you really will either Love it or Hate it.

 

Contender for #PureAdOfTheWeek ... maybe, but not necessarily for all the right reasons?

BT Sport and SKY Sports: Round 4

The plot thickens; wires are crossed in the form of mixed messages, BT and SKY Sports competitors become allies and then competitors again in the same day. At the same time Virgin Media is dragged into the ongoing sports-package rivalry bout...WHAT IS GOING ON?!

Round 1: The battle for TV sports customers started on May 9th when BT Sport launched a £100m+ campaign, executing 1,132 press ads within 33 days.

Round 2: SKY Sports then hit back with a series of direct competition ads and big budgets to boot.

Round 3: David Beckham is brought in as the trump card to endorse SKY Sports.

Now, we're into round 4 and the ad battle has escalated to the point of confusion. SKY has fired a broadside across the BT's bows, by guaranteeing the best price for both packages, whereas BT has countered stating you can only get BT Sport through BT:

Who to believe?!

Furthermore, Virgin Media and ESPN have unwillingly been thrown into the ring too with another message contradictory to that of the previous SKY Sports ad:

Very confusing for potential customers and it seems the only beneficiaries are the media owners.

At least SKY and BT can't be criticised for rolling out the same creative throughout the whole campaign. 

Lets see what happens next!

#PurePoint

Be More Dog

This highly impactful 48-sheet from o2, executed by our sister agency VCCP has a simple message but hides a complex and engaging campaign running across multi media.

We are impressed by the depth of this fantastic engaging campaign, with the digital execution integrating some smart technology encouraging us all to "Be More Dog".


Once you log on the website http://bemoredog.o2.co.uk/ you are greeted with a short intro from the (wannabe dog) cat featuring throughout the campaign:

After you've been told you his bio, you are given a unique code to log onto the website on your mobile. This in turn loads up a mobile optimised frisbee for you to throw towards the cat/dog on the PC screen:

Amazing integration, slightly indulgent, and so much fun!

The campaign also involves a twitter hashtag; #BeMoreDog, which is causing a lot of online conversation:

And the TV campaign is also very loveable:

o2 said the campaign aims to "spread positivity, excitement and inquisitiveness ... to rid the UK of cynicism" by getting people to "embrace their inner dog".

We think this has been absolutely achieved that, and whether you're a cat or a dog lover, the campaign is extremely impressive!

#BeMoreDog

This weeks leading contender for  #PureAdOfTheWeek