Tuesday, May 19, 2015

advertising to youth audience, Audi #womendrivers & the referenda campaign




Advertise to youth audience via online video
At a recent IAB (online advertising) event, Nielsen, the market research people, expressed surprise at the extent of change in viewing online video in the last six months. 67% of those aged 16+ watch video on demand for 1 hour or more daily (+5%) while 91% of those aged 16-24 do (+12%). This article tells us that advertising on online video allows brands to connect with audiences that other media, particularly TV, can’t reach.  Viewers see this advertising as a way to get free content.  But, it says, TV still rules the roost as it’s still the mass medium and with TV stations all having digital platforms, it’s all about “following the content.”

Audi targeting women
I’m not sure how I feel about this campaign – “Audi for #womendrivers# - it’s very well intended I’m sure, and it's well produced – but would it make me more disposed to buying an Audi?   Tweets feature #womendrivers so people might expect to find stories depicting women as bad drivers but when they click on the link, they’re directed to “stories about female drivers of innovation and employment, in an attempt to subvert people’s perceptions of women drivers.”  Audi say they are changing negative perceptions to positive ones and the sponsored page on irishtimes.com features a number of articles including 44 female Nobel winners, women driving SMEs to succeed, women in sport, women in technology and also some female champions in local Audi dealers.  The fact that previous editorial articles written in the Irish Times about different women appear on the right side of the page helps blur the distinction between sponsored content and editorial content.  Audi must be happy about that. People who work in marketing, advertising and PR are well aware of the difference – but I think the general public sometimes don’t notice.

The campaign around the Marriage Equality referendum    
Well only a few days to go and it will be really interesting to see how Ireland votes on Friday – will it be a runaway Yes vote – or are the No’s hiding in the tall grass?   Let’s hope the voters turn out, for starters, so it is reflective of the country’s opinion.  No surprise that it’s been dirty – I really object to the way the No campaign are muddying the waters by bringing adoption and surrogacy into it – even though Friday’s decision won’t affect either of these issues. The Church’s involvement will sway a certain segment – but will probably drive others to the Yes side.  And while I’m voting Yes - I’m pretty fed up at this stage of being ordered to do so – whether it’s by celebrities, friends on Facebook (gay and straight) or by multinationals – I fail to see why the latter got involved?  Sure, it’s about human rights – but they didn’t voice an opinion – as far as I’m aware – on the abortion referendum – another issue that features both human rights and people’s own sense of morality? Oh yes, there’s another issue we’re being asked to vote on - reducing the age to 21 that someone can be a candidate for President of Ireland – can’t comment on that campaign as there hasn’t been one!




Tuesday, May 12, 2015

55 ideas for your blog. Sponsorship - local, national & international...





55 ideas for your next blog!
If you’ve put off starting a blog because you worry you can’t sustain it i.e. worry that you won’t be able to think of things to write about on an ongoing basis – this is for you!  I put off writing a blog for that reason for years!  I then decided I’d focus on marketing and PR campaigns and ideas that I thought would appeal to SMEs either as something they could consider for their own business or just because they’d find it inspiring or helpful.  And I haven’t looked back!  This infographic from PR Daily lists 55 suggestions which are grouped under the following headings: Be useful; Be human; Be generous; Be promotional; Be controversial; Be entertaining; Be timely and Be engaging – choose the ones that feel best reflect your voice and get writing!

Sponsorship - nice local example
This is a really lovely and innovative local sponsorship from coach company, Matthews – every six months they’re promoting a local arts person from Louth, Monagahan or East Meath.  That person is featured on a large ad on the back of some of their coaches. The first recipient is a singer songwriter called Sinead McNally and Matthews also co-produced a CD with her.  Everyone wins!

Sponsorship – national/international
I heard an interview on Newstalk’s Moncrieff show with Mel Evans, author of “Artwash – Big Oil and the Arts” and it whetted my interest in reading this book.  According to Amazon, the book “describes how corporate sponsorship of the arts erases unsightly environmental destruction and obscures the strategies of oil company PR executives who rely on cultural philanthropy.”  Rather a large claim – I’m sure this sponsorship strategy certainly distracts attention away from environmental impact – but ‘erases’, I don’t think so.  But I haven’t read the book yet so I’ll reserve judgement and see how the argument is made. I looked on newstalk.com for the podcast of the interview but couldn’t find it – so here’s how Amazon describe the book:





Thursday, May 7, 2015

Facebook's 'Restricted' option, an Imaginative Spin & JNLRs.....





Putting an Imaginative ‘Spin’ on it!
I like this initiative from Imagine Marketing.  Their challenge was to let media buyers in ad agencies (i.e. the guys n’ gals who decide which media are best suited to clients’ target audiences) know that the listeners of Spin 1038 radio station have ‘matured’ with the station over the past 10 years. Spin traditionally has been known as a youth station. So, instead of hosting the usual party night, they devised an adventure challenge, ‘Sandstorm’ for listeners and media buyers.  This was a 5k adventure race on Dollymount Strand – the first adventure challenge held on sand in Ireland.  They also ran bootcamp training sessions in the weeks running up to the challenge. The average age of those who signed up was 29 and 70% of the entrants were 18-35.

Facebook’s ‘Restricted’ Option
If you have ‘friends’ on Facebook whose invitation you felt you had to accept but didn’t really want to – this is probably one of the most useful articles you will ever read.  Like the author, Karlin Lillington, I usually reserve Facebook for personal use but every so often, people I know through work send me a ‘friend’ request which I feel duty bound to accept.  But if they’re prepared to sift through my posts which are mostly about animals or hill-walking, fair play to them!  I did file some of them as ‘acquaintances’ but the ‘restricted’ feature is completely knew to me. Very useful! I did know about the ‘lists’ on Twitter as a way of organising tweets but it’s something I badly need to update. Have a read…..

Who’s listening to what on Irish radio?
The JNLRs track radio listening figures for both national and local radio stations in Ireland and the latest ones came out last week. Irish people love radio and RTE still holds many of the slots in the top 20 (see table when you click on the link.)  You can see how Anton Savage (who replaced Ray D’Arcy on Today FM) and others are doing on the national airwaves.  With local radio, there used to be a trend that the further away from Dublin, the higher the listenership for local radio – there is still some truth in that.