I thought it might be interesting to take some snaps of different adverts as I travel around the world. you can follow my travels on www.noflouryspuds.com
Pepsi Advertisement.
Gillette Mac III
Nivia
Here’s a quick intro to me, James O’Sullivan
Online / digital marketing is very different than old school marketing. Traditional marketeers would run campaign after campaign with no true measure of how well it really performed. I gave away 1000 t-shirts! woohoo, OK that’s great, so how did that contribute to the bottom line? It’s building awareness stupid! ok so how much awareness? well uumm….
In today’s difficult economic climate we need to prioritise everything, that means setting targets and measuring against them. In my view, if I can’t measure the performance, then I shouldn’t do it or really question whether it’s worth while. EVERYTHING can be measured, let me say again, EVERYTHING can be measured. If I’m on a radio show I want to know how many listeners I was reaching and if I experienced a lift in my web traffic. There’s a pleathra of tools available today to measure the impact your marketing, PR and sales team have on your business. Here are just some.
Before you start a campaign it’s important that you outline what the objectives are and define the success metrics. You can then calcuate the ROI by reporting on the following.
Remember you don’t have to close a sale to have an ROI, it simply depends on what your objective and unit of success is.
I found the following post in my google notebook which I forgot to post last year!
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Being from Kerry I absolutely love GAA! The passion, rivalry, commitment and intensity, it makes my heart jump with joy. The GAA is the fabric which knits communities large and small, urban or rural together which makes up part of our unique culture in Ireland. GAA followers are simply fanatical, a lot of these fans are involved with GAA at every level and what makes them extraordinary is their commitment and wiliness to give up their own time for the love of their community, county and the game. This year the GAA have decided to reclaim their brand and rename both the Hurling and Football championships by allowing Multiple sponsors. The Bank of Ireland All-Ireland Football Championship is now the GAA Football All-Ireland Championship sponsored by Toyota, Ulster Bank and Vodafone. The Guinness All-Ireland Hurling Championship is now the GAA Hurling All-Ireland Championship sponsored by Etihad Airways, RTE Sport and Guinness.
Sponsorship investment: Vodafone have been a great sponsor for the GAA over the years since their involvement in 1997. Since then Vodafone have played a huge role in sponsoring both Hurling and Football All-Stars which is a major event in the GAA calendar. Fair play Vodafone. In the March 2008, Vodafone secured a 3 year deal to sponsor the GAA Football Championship at an estimated 12Million. Their 2008 campaign features Sean Boylan reciting a poem by Rudyard Kipling “IF” The ad attempts to capture the feeling of what the GAA stands for and the imagery used is but is a little too over the top. The use of Kipling’s poem in this ad has been met with some distain since Kipling has been known as an enthusiastic supporter of British imperialism.
Ulster Bank: Sponsorship: Ulster bank are no newcomers to sponsoring major sports. They have almost done very well in creating a lot of brand awarness with their sponsorship of Rugby and creating quirky advertisements. They are now taking the next step and dive into to the hearts and minds of the general Irish public. They have secured sponsorship of the football championship.
I’m particularly impressed by Toyota’s campaign called “Meet Mike” who created an very innovative an humour campaign to engage with their audience online. Well done Eighty:Twenty for creating a truely outstanding campaign for Toyota.
Valentine’s Day. That time of the year when people declare their love for someone special by writing poems, sending cards or buying iPods!
Every year apple run a Valentine’s Day email campaign offering advice to guys on what to buy their girlfriend or partner. I presume they have their list segmented so they’ve targeted males only. It would be interesting to see what they send their female list segment. OK, so the emails are a little cheesy and having an email pop-up on my screen with Love splashed all over it which could leave me open to some slagging if I’m in the office. However, Apple understand the importance of establishing an emotional connection with their brand and are simply masters at creating brand advocates. Also if you haven’t done so by now you should take some time to create a event calendar to capture important event dates which can be broken down by category. eg sporting events - Champion’s League Final, All-Ireland Final etc
Then get your thinking cap on and plan some marketing campaigns to coincide with these events.
Most businesses that are worth anything have competitors vying to take a schelp of your cake. If you’re the small guy looking to take some customers from the market leader then you might consider comparative advertising. This method can be very effective if used correctly, however it’s important to adhere to the appropriate legalities or you may find yourself in very hot water. so here are some guidelines you may find useful.
I received an email from Trip Wolf today which used a complelling subjectline “The French are rude and the Americans are fat”!
Every culture has a stereotype and Trip wolf are attempting to gather information from users on what each culture is really like. I’ve noticed one user has identified Ireland as having the most beautiful women! Of course I would have to agree 
Last month I wrote a post about the email marketing funnel and the steps you need to take the optimise each step of the way. I expect that this cheeky email subjectline will achieve high open rates for Trip Wolf.
SEO, (Search Engine Optimisation) is absolutely crucial to the success of your online business. There’s a whole host of companies offering their SEO services and charge an arm and a leg to give you advice on how your website should be optimised. My best advice in today’s ecomonic climate is to save yourself some money and do it yourself. SEO agencies position SEO as a complicated science which only they understand. That’s simply not the case. SEO companies come in, do a check of your keywords, optimise your content, give advise on website structure and code, and simply rattle off best practices that YOU need to follow. After all this advice the SEO company don’t really “Do” anything! They give you the advice but it’s you who needs to do the work to implement their recommendations! It’s you that has to build up the in-bound links, it’s you who needs to update your code with meta descriptions etc, it’s you who needs to code up the short URL’s and so on. In my opinion I think it’s daylight robbery.
If you want to optimise your website just read Google’s document on how to SEO your website.
and if that’s too much check out the really useful SEO cheat sheet.
Follow this and you’ve just saved your self a pile of cash to spend on Google ads or at your Christmas party 
If you’re lazy go ahead and waste your money on an SEO agency.
Just came across the following website by Mingle2 - Free Online Dating site developed in San Francisco.
I personally love the campaign, it’s funny and has a great viral aspect which will drive traffic to their website. I think this campaign could have targetted keywords relating to Movember (the month formerly known as November) is a moustache growing charity event held during November each year that raises funds and awareness for men’s health. Anywho, well done to Matthew Inman of Mingle2.
Congratulations to Barack Obama on becoming the 44th president of the United States of America. I’m not going to write about the election campaign since I’m not an expert in American politics and don’t pretend to be. However this has been an interesting election in terms of online campaigns. Obama ran an extremely smooth internet campaign which consumed almost every large internet communication channel. The Obama camp more or less owned youtube over the last few months especially in the last few weeks. Political experts are saying that the Millennials won the campaign for Obama and where better to target these users but online! The Obama camp ploughed millions into online advertising and profiles, everything from a twitter profile to a myspace account the Obama campaign was covered. This was a long running campaign and if you run a trend on Google for Obama V McCain Google trend actually predicts the result of the election!
The obama camp truly embraced online media, they connected with their target audience by creating content which entertained as well as getting their message across. I guess it’s alot easier to run massive online campaigns when you have the level of funding Obama had! Nevertheless, my hat’s off to the Obama team on a well run online campaign.
I'm James O’Sullivan
an Irish digital marketing Ninja who likes sport and beer..
