The Gruffalo Continues to Crumble

You might have seen our post back in April, remarking the 81 day old ad as ‘past its sell by date’. Well 232 days later, it’s still there, hanging on by its turned out toes, like a wart stuck on the rear of the London bus.

The Gruffalo is promoted as being ‘Live in the West End’ at the Lyric Theatre until 12th Jan.

It’s about time little mouse piped up and inhaled this crumbling OOH ad.

Simply a Skinful Effort

Well-known skincare brand Simple recently launched its ‘Kind to City Skin’ campaign, with the aim of educating consumers about the detrimental effects urban living can have on our skin.

It’s an interesting push for the brand, eschewing the usual skin-type-based advertising in favour of products tailored to lifestyle. Based on the amount of on- and off-line discussion generated, the campaign has so far been performing well.

Simple has set up an ‘Advisory Board’ on their website, consisting of dermatologists, nutritionists and psychiatrists, and is shedding articles providing skin-care advice. This is combined with considerable paid-for media presence on TV and in print, as well as various outdoor formats, with ads and content videos also running on social media.

The campaign has been targeted geographically, with a presence at core high footfall commuter hot-spots, running in free-sheets and across multi-format key placement outdoor sites. It highlights the skin detriments which can result from daily commuting – or, as Simple call it, ‘commuter skin’. With an estimated cool £7m laid down for this campaign, this appears to be a well-rounded strategy, thoroughly considered from all angles. 

Which makes it simply confusing to see that, having chosen to take over the huge 40x3m digital motion site at Waterloo Station, Simple have then decided to run with 4 consecutive copies of the same ad.

Given the size and advertising power of this giant digital surface – and the 17-minute average dwell time of its captive audiences – it seems a real waste to feature 4 repeated consecutive creatives. There is so much that can be done here!

http://www.jcdecaux.co.uk/rail/rail-digital/motionwaterloo

This is even more a pity given generic content of these particular ads in the first place. The irony of using a highly-polished digital surface to advertise a ‘city skin’ campaign could have been used to great effect here, but it appears lost to the advertisers. Lazy, Simple, lazy!

Or was it, perhaps, a touch… over-Simplified?

#PurePoint

A Special Thanks!

…From Pure Media to everybody who joined us last night for our first annual #PureRoofParty.

It was great to see you all for a catch-up, laughs, booze, and (attempts at) dancing.

Same again next year!

#PureRoofParty

Adidas goes 'all in'

A fully liveried bus ad is an impressive piece of outdoor marketing that will usually receive a fair amount of attention due to the sheer impact of the format. The reach opportunities are increased by the obvious mobility and also the ability to access retail areas where there are little or no other OOH formats available.

As with most media, it is especially effective when tied into events, such as the recent ‘All in or Nothing’ message from adidas which was timed to maximise their presence along the routes of the no.38 and no.8 buses during the World Cup.

These fully wrapped buses are high cost in terms of production which encourages longer campaigns to maximise value for money and lower media costs pro rata. There is the risk, however, that the message soon becomes stale and the impact diminished.

The latest Adidas activity is for their new Predator boots, timed perfectly to coincide with the start of the upcoming season. It’s both refreshing and intriguing to see a brand follow up on successful bus branding rather than using it as a ‘one-off’ impact piece. This willingness to spend big on the on further production augments the Adidas brand stature, especially given the assumed association with the cutting-edge Routemaster buses.

It’s good to see the use of the large format hashtag. It’s being used to pinpoint a particular product (and potentially help measure response) rather than being used for the sake of it.

Adidas has definitely kicked on and let their #predatorinstinct take over, giving them familiarity in the space and the potential to score a victory over rivals in owning the medium within London.

#PurePoint

A short of Johnnie Walker Blue Label hits the spot

The iconic scotch producer has charmed us with a stylish, sophisticated and extremely cool short film directed by Jake Scott and starring Jude Law and Giancarlo Giannini.

The Gentleman's Wager ft. Jude Law and Giancarlo Giannini

The suave 6 ½ minute short depicts two evidently wealthy gentlemen in a wager for something money can’t buy. The 30 second teaser has helped to drive more than 3 million views of the full version in just over a week.

With product placement as effortless as the sheer style of the actors, we are truly immersed in the Johnnie Walker lifestyle – prompting frivolous, sun-kissed daydreams of winning a boat in exchange for a dance...

The marketing spiel is that the ad reflects the progressive and developmental nature of the Johnnie Walker brand.

Some have suggested that it’s impressive as a brand piece, but that the lack of ‘depth’ to the story and the frankly rudimentary dance that Law ends up performing (especially when compared to this mesmeric Christopher Walken effort) means the inevitably huge price-tag attached is brought into focus...which in turn might lead to weighing up the cost of a branding piece like this against its true value. 

Undoubtedly, however, their luxury marketing strategy definitely engages gentlemen aspiring to be Jude and the many thousands of women who wish they were dating Mr Law, while also leaving the scenario open to the possibility of a sequel.

Either way, we’ll happily raise a hump day glass to this most enjoyable and classy effort.

#PureAdOfTheWeek

Great Western Super Bear...

Great Western has had a bit of a nightmare...

The presence of Hiscox has "insured" that the Great Western outdoor campaign, featuring stunning imagery and located perfectly outside Paddington station, is somewhat...well...stuffed! 

In what can only be described as a bit of an oversight, GW has failed to secure 100% share of voice and dominate the entire row of 48 sheet poster sites, with the Hiscox ad proving more disruptive than leaves on the line.

Another question: why would you not make sure that you took all the available sites? There's one 48 sheet sitting totally free at the end of the row, looking fairly unloved - like Paddington Bear..!

What could have been a contender for the coveted #PureAdOfTheWeek has become a disappointing example of an 'almost' campaign. #PurePoint

Pure Host Chime YouthLab “Intro to Media” Event.

This week, Pure Towers played host to a group of eager beavers all looking for an insight into life at a media agency as part of the Chime Group YouthLabs initiative.

Wednesday’s session kicked off with a quick intro to Pure Media. This included our role within Chime Comms and how we contribute to the marketing mix; which gave them a much clearer perspective on the role of paid-for media and inter-agency collaboration.

We then split the group up into three teams, each given a different campaign brief (H&M, Mercedes or Adidas) and helped to guide them through specific packs of data and charts (including media consumption and propensity of various target audiences) with the ultimate aim of the teams planning a 3-month multi-media, multi-format campaign for their respective brand. Each group then presented their ideas.

We had a great response, with some really creative ideas and a genuine understanding of the need for synergising the selected media, such as incorporating dual-screen habits between TV and Social Media. It was another example of how the consumers form the media landscape and that the trends of this generation will impact our world.

We then moved on to “the fun bit”; concentrating on outdoor media, we offered a wide selection of outdoor media sites for the teams to consider. Each ad space came with its own price-tag, share of voice, tenancy duration and “bio”.

The teams were given a budget and the task of purchasing the media for their campaigns. Obviously, they had to stick to the Pure doctrine; everything’s negotiable, treat every penny as if it were their own and always seek best value (not just rate).

Well, we had a mixed bag of results to say the least! However, there were some creative negotiations, and a huge improvement in bargaining strategy - more importantly – an insight into how media is traded and extra value elicit bought.

A brilliant morning with an engaged group of up-and-comers!

#PurePoint # PureLearning

Setting the benchmark

These branded park benches were a part of the Nike's 2012 #makeitcount ethos. 

Though a couple of years old, this is a still a GREAT piece of advertising - definitely setting the benchmark.

Simple. 

Effective. 

#PureAdOfTheWeek

Morrisons' Pun-tastic New Outdoor Cre-eat-tive

The Morrisons (more reasons) pun team have been at it again, this time setting the bar even higher by using iconic pictogram puns as the premise of their latest geo-targeted outdoor campaign ‘Up Your Street’:

…a feast for any pun-lover!

The cre-eat-ive can be spotted on multi OOH ad-formats across London, promoting Morrisons’  dot com su-pun-market delivery service which is now available to customers across London.

Designed by DLKW Lowe, the campaign launched this week and will be out on the streets throughout July/August 2014.

Because we love puns so much, the campaign has been awarded our humble #PureAdOfTheWeek award.

#PureAdOfTheWeek.

Host Heartbreak and Deutsch Domination Storms Twitter

Predictably, last night’s World Cup match is storming the press.

Germany’s  7-1 steam-rolling of Brazil caught more than a few people off-guard – and by ‘caught off-guard’, we mean with roughly the same effect that a frying-pan across the face would. What’s just as interesting is the way people flooded into cyberspace to comment on the action.

Twitter in particular has been inundated with commentators. TwitterAdsUK reported 36.5m tweets for #BRAvGER during the match; this equates to roughly 5,400 tweets for every second of playtime. The peak minute was during Germany’s 5^th goal in the 29^th minute, when more than 580,000 tweets were reported. The match will go down in history as the most-discussed single sports event ever to have graced Twitter… to date.

Poor old Brazil.

 Not only did their players get booed off the field after the match; not only have they ended a 39-year winning-streak on Brazilian soil; not only have they just set the record for the biggest World Cup loss of all time by the hosting nation – they also broke into Twitter trends last night with such glorious tags as #letitstop, #implosion and #saygoodbyeforbrazil. Well, they say there’s no such thing as bad publicity…

#PurePoint

Plane and simple

We've noticed some really nice outdoor ads on our respective commutes to Pure Towers recently(which will obviously please the advertisers!) but it's not just pretty pictures that have caught our eyes...

Emirates recently launched a series of ads which tap in superbly to the aspirational, flighty (pun intended) side of people's daily lives - they are telling us that it's not as far as we think to our dream holidays as we wait to embark on our not so dreamy daily commutes.

The clever bit from our perspective is how they have tied in targeted personalisation/ geo-targeting using station names in the Headline. Not least because the sites are all good old fashioned paper posters as opposed digital sites that offer so much more targeting and creative flexibility these days.

Although the 'personalisation' is important and very effective, there is something to be said for keeping it simple - the clear messaging ensures that the brand campaign is easily absorbed cross platform....unlike the effort below from Mitsubishi.

Whilst the creative idea is a good one in terms of salience of commuter messaging and location, the somewhat clunky copy and text-heavy ad makes for difficult reading...which in turn means the clever location targeting gets a tad lost and in turn loses impact.

#PurePoint

Own goal...

So, surprise surprise, all we've been left with is the bitter taste of disappointment and frustration.

Not the failure of the England football team after Costa Rica's scalp of Italy, but the seeming insistence of advertisers to mistime their media placements.

This time it's Head & Shoulders, who have followed up their somewhat tenuous advertising link with Joe Hart by taking a pretty headless fractional ad in the sport section of this morning's Metro. 

It's definitely too little (you can barely see the hashtag it's so small), too late (for Joe to 'make it count')

We also doubt too many readers will use Blippar to 'play with Joe Hart'... Sad times all round.

#PurePoint

Happy Fathers Day

Fitting Tribute to David Abbott in Campaign Magazine this week. A re-crafted version of the beautifully written Chivas Regal Fathers Day Ad .... the words say it all.

#PurePoint #PureAdOfTheWeek

John McEnroe knows his score - PT 2

Pure Media Execute the Second Phase of Aegon’s Social Media Initiative Endorsed by John McEnroe

Following the success of the first phase (23.5K video plays in 3 weeks) Pure Media continue to work with Aegon’s Social Media team, driving awareness of their Retiready offering in-line with the launch of the Aegon Tennis Championships yesterday (9^th June). 

This phase promotes the second in a series of viral videos (hosted on YouTube) endorsed by John McEnroe across Facebook and Twitter:

With selected audience targeting based on both psycho and demographics alongside carefully constructed content, the campaign has already achieved over 2,000 “engagements” after only four full days of activity.

The second phase of the campaign is due to finish on 20^th June.

About Retiready: Retiready is a new digital service from Aegon that will help you take control of your retirement planning. If you're new to Retiready, a great place to start is to get your score.

#PureCampaign

#Retiready

Cabbies lose their way

If you were in and around London yesterday, you probably noticed a heavy increase in road traffic as almost 12,000 cabbies took part in a ‘go-slow’ protest. The cause of their action was Uber, an app-based taxi-service, which traditional London black cabs claim is operating on their exclusive turf.

While one could wonder about the effectiveness of a transport group protesting against a taxi-service in this way, Uber capitalized on the situation beautifully with full-page ads in yesterday’s Metro and Evening Standard.

As commuters flocked to the trains and tubes due to the action, it seemed inevitable that thousands of new (and frustrated) eyes would feast upon Uber’s sleek creative...

...and so it proved. 

With the ad in question sporting a £20 discount code, it proved highly effective. Uber had its most successful day of downloads since they launched two years ago: up by an incredible 850% in comparison to the previous Wednesday.

This represents a supremely timed media buy by the challenger brand; the cabbies may well need a sat-nav to find their way back from this one!

#PurePoint 

McEnroe knows his score, do you know yours?

In the run up to the summer of grass court tennis and the Aegon Tennis Championships at The Queen's Club next month, Pure Media's client Aegon continue to maximise their association with the sport and leverage their sponsorship by signing up big hitter and tennis legend John McEnroe,

Promoting Aegon's Retiready offering, he features in a series of videos showing him "moonlighting" as a luckless door-to-door salesman and features some classic McEnroe catchphrases:

The film is designed to be a tongue-in-cheek prompt for those approaching the retirement stage of their career to think about how financially prepared they are for retirement.

#PureClient

The Big-Top Bungle

We have pointed out a few unfortunate online, outdoor and print ad placements in the past, where context and content have been uneasy and inappropriate bedfellows.

This has predominantly been as a result of advertisers booking ads that have fallen foul of being placed in contextual environments online that happen to have a negative context. They are therefore being caught out by algorithmic oversight as opposed to natural human instinct to place ads correctly, with positive synergy.

Or print ads running as per the guaranteed position booked ie. colour fractional right hand outside edge - omitting to consider the consequences of the editorial proximity ie. facing inappropriate current affairs and news stories in print - example below:

However, this week in the Metro, there was an internal editorial conflict between the image and cover headline of the ‘Life and Style’ section and a sad topical news story that ran earlier in the paper.

Surely there was an editorial flat plan assessment ahead of sending the paper to print?

Whilst ad misplacements are an oversight that can occur due to fulfilling guaranteed positions or trusting the

technological systems that associate ad context and placements - this editorial faux pas seems far less

understandable as there should be much greater flexibility to move things around from an editorial perspective and avoid such overt negativities.

#PurePoint

Down the Tube

On 29th April 2014, a 48-hour tube strike started after talks broke down between London Underground and the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT). It was predicted by BusinessZone that the strike had cost businesses "£600m in lost working hours, business and productivity" alone; without even considering the cost of wasted advertising spend.

Underground advertising is typically bought in 2-week cycles, and it doesn't come cheap. Meaning, 2 of the 14 days of ad space occupancy were totally useless during the strike, because nobody could see them! 14.5% of wasted advertising spend throughout the underground.

Another point to consider is the huge decrease in freesheet newspaper circulation / readership:

In retrospect, the prediction of £600m is a lot lower than the true impact and wastage caused.

Those losing out include names big and small:

Especially Virgin Trains - an outside back cover never to be seen

And as reported by CityAM last week - Gatwick certainly didn't Bank on the major Tube strike either - The

airport had staged a week-long advertising takeover in both Bank and Westminster Tube stations but with the Tube strike, which spanned much of two days, it’s likely to have had far less of an impact than they’d hoped.

#PurePoint

Prostate Cancer UK probes Moyes sack story

We at Pure Media are always on the look-out for perfect placements; ones where you almost chuckle with delight at the near symbiosis of location, message and timing.

Well, in The Times earlier this week, there was more than just a smirk of pleasure, as Prostate Cancer UK took advantage of David Moyes' misfortune (or lack of ability depending upon your footballing opinion) to nab the page facing the outside back page of Sport with the following ad.

The sporty messaging resonates suitably with the editorial and the message is clear and direct. We wonder how long they've been waiting for Moyes to go so they could get this into the public domain. Companies can make unintentional contextual mistakes with their placement and timing which gives rise to the possibility of negative impact, however, this one is just deliciously perfect, despite the very real and serious nature of the message.

Whether the prostate or the sack, it's definitely an important pair of messages.

#PurePoint