LSE SU AMP Advertising, Marketing and PR Society

Sagres Preta Chocolate from diografic on Vimeo.

Two things I love in life- chocolate, and beer. Combined, they make up the awesome digital campaign for a chocolate-flavoured beer by Portuguese beer giant Sagres.

Sagres developed a chocolate flavoured beer last year, yet lacked the funding for an epic TV campaign. Instead, their creative team came up with an online element to promote the beer in a new and exciting way. The solution? A website made of chocolate.

A chocolate sculptor was commissioned to sculpt the website in chocolate pieces, which were then photographed to become the website. To ensure the consumer really engaged with the beer, Sagres invited them to have a ‘bite’ of the chocolate website, and a free 6-pack of the beer.

Piece by piece, the website disintegrated as more ‘bites’ of chocolate are taken.

When interviewing at advertising agencies, it’s good to know your stuff. If you can quote Jeremy Bullmore word-for-word, you’re already doing well. You’re not as clued-up as you’d like to be? Have no fear, we’ve gathered some of the best resources out there for you, to help prepare for that ever-elusive interview!

General info

-Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA)

-Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)

-Advertising Association

-WikiJobs -this is a great place to find out information about specific agencies and their recruitment processes

-Mashable

 

Online magazines (of course, these are also available in print)

-AdWeek, and its accompanying blog, AdFreak

-Campaign 

-Brand Republic

-MarketingWeek

 

Blogs

Most agencies have their own blog too…

-Adverblog

-The Inspiriation Room

-Gradvertising

-GrAdland

-Ads of the World

Ladies and gentlemen, Super Bowl season is upon us. And Super Bowl season is undoubtedly my favourite season on the sports calendar.

Not because I actually enjoy American football — I like a lot of sports but the NFL is not one of them, unfortunately. But I love February because it’s pretty much fall sweeps for advertising. During those couple hours where people are insanely excited about grown men running around in tight spandex, we get the year’s best TV spots — spots we’ll be talking about for the rest of the year.

Lucky for us, Marketing Week has compiled some of the more exciting spots that have leaked so far here. Thirty seconds of David Beckham posing in nothing but boxers will be difficult to top — but I look forward to how the rest of the ads fare on Sunday. GAME ON.

(Did I use this blog as an opportunity to Google David Beckham? Yes. Yes I did.)

Check out my article in the Beaver this week!

http://thebeaveronline.co.uk/2012/02/01/do-we-feel-like-we-only-21-have-seconds-to-go/

You know that parlour game where you have to choose three people you want to meet, dead or alive?

Right now, in the marketing version of this game, I would undoubtedly choose Chris King (age 27 & 1/3).

I’m sure by now you’ve all heard about King’s letter, sent in response to a three-year-old girl’s query to Sainsbury’s about why Tiger bread is named Tiger Bread. Little Lily Robinson suggested that Giraffe bread would better describe Tiger bread and King sent a very cute reply back that went viral — and further cemented Sainsbury’s reputation for caring about its customers.

This week, it all came full circle when Sainsbury’s officially renamed the bread after Lily’s suggestion.

Sadly, it seems Chris King has left Sainsbury’s to become a teacher. Perhaps he should teach marketing?

And we mean pants the way the British mean it.

It seems that German underwear-maker Bruno Banani and marketing firm Makai Europe share a deep appreciation for Cool Runnings (one of the greatest films of all time, really) and decided to re-create the story again in the name of knickers.

Der Spiegel reports that Makai dreamt up an elaborate story about an up-and-coming young luger from the sunny isles of Tonga — who just happened to also be named Bruno Banani. The company, naturally, is sponsoring Bruno’s unlikely attempts to go from the tropics to the Winter Olympics.

But now that people seem to have uncovered the hoax, what will it mean for Bruno, the knicker-designer, and for Makai? Is it kind of funny or will people react badly to being lied to? Is this campaign brilliant or terribly thought out? What will happen to Bruno, the luger, now?

Read more on this story in The Guardian.

Don’t be evil….
Facebook, Myspace and Twitter are none too happy about Google’s changes to its search engine (which favours Google+ results). So they’ve started the “Don’t Be Evil” campaign to show users the truly diabolical nature of Google’s changes and heat up the social networking war. Read more…

Clever condoms
Durex, the condom brand owned by Reckitt Benckiser, has recently rolled out a new campaign to help couples get “in-sync” with with their new product Performax Intense. Despite sounding like some kind of intestinal trouble, Performax is touting its wares via an amusing tv advert and through a Facebook game designed to test how in-sync couples are. I’m a little nervous about seeing what that actually entails. Read more…

Even Jordan can’t make consumers Snicker
Ok that was a terrible pun. Sorry. But I had to do it. The interweb has been ablaze with the reaction to Snicker’s recent social media campaign involving in Jordan. Why the fury, you ask? What horrible thing did Jordan do with the Snickers bar? Well, surprisingly, the qualm is not with Jordan but with Snickers and marketing ploy that revealed just how stupid Snickers think its customers are. Read more…

What do you think of their chosen advertising strategy?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U

The John Lewis christmas advert is one of those cornerpieces of Christmas spirit in the UK, and every year it’s one of the best ads on TV.