Starbucks make a stand against racism

This week saw Starbucks go viral for all the wrong reasons, where the arrest of two black men waiting for their friend in the coffee chain sparked fury across the world.

Credit: Today.com

The incident caused a media frenzy creating bad press for the coffee chain, however, the multi-national brand responded quickly and responsibly by shutting all US stores on 29^th May for ‘racial-bias education’. Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson also spoke with the two men involved to personally apologise for the incident.

Rather than let the story spiral, Starbucks took control of the story and their message featured in the press. This is effective PR as it relays the brand values of the company to ensure the actions of one store doesn’t reflect the brand as a whole, while also highlighting they are an inclusive brand who are committed to resolving racial issues.

International Hipster Index

Veganism, tattoos and coffee shops are all things synonymous with the hipster trend, and International relocation company Movehub has created the International Hipster Index to find the most hipster locations in the world.

Movehub gathered data for 446 cities across 20 countries (excluding cities with populations below 150,000) – taking into account the number of vegan eateries, coffee shops, tattoo studios, vintage boutiques and record stores per 100,000 city residents.

Credit: Movehub

As Movehub consider hipsters the demographic which is most likely to relocate, this is a clever campaign as it taps into a conversation which is certain to attract their target audience. It’s a simple concept, that has had a big impact.

Tip Advisor

The notion of tipping can be a delicate issue depending on where you are in the world, so thankfully GoCompare have created an interactive map that tells you how much people are expected to tip in different countries around the world.

The insurance specialists scoured the web to collect data from 49 countries on how much you should tip your waiter, taxi driver, or hotel staff. The interactive map also adds a nice touch by telling the user how to say thank you in each of the 49 countries included.

Credit: GoCompare

We like this campaign as it has a natural human interest which makes it automatically appealing to journalists, as well as being actually helpful to people when travelling.

Gregg’s most popular hotspots

The bacon sandwich is as much of a British staple as the Queen or a Sunday roast, and Greggs have set out to discover the cities that love them the most.

Analysing their own company data, Greggs have revealed Newcastle as the city which loves the creators of the iconic Steak Bake the most. The data also revealed that Brits prefer ketchup over brown sauce, and that we prefer a coffee over tea to get us going in the morning, contrary to popular belief.

We managed to pull ourselves away from the sun (and the beer garden at Duke Studios) to enjoy talks on AI, link building, PPC automation, analytics and more. Our speakers from Home Agency, Epiphany and Branded3 provided the audience with lots of actionable advice and plenty of helpful take-aways.

We would like to say a huge thanks to our wonderful speakers and Shelley Walsh from ShellShock UK who delivered brilliant talks and fielded questions in the crazy heat. Below is an overview of where to find the slides from the talks and you can also watch the conference in full here.

Leeds Loves Search talks:

Talk #1:

Arianne Donoghue – Paid Development Manager, Epiphany

Title:

The PPC robots are coming for your job

Huge thanks to everyone who came to #LeedsLovesSearch earlier today. You can find my slides here: https://t.co/V8a8KuLo53

And for anyone who is interested on my presentation in getting started with audiences in PPC, you can find it here: https://t.co/pGT8aX6EL4#LeedsDigi18 pic.twitter.com/7jJubEVoGT

— Arianne Donoghue (@ArianneDonoghue) April 19, 2018

Talk #2:

Neill Horie – Head of Artificial Intelligence Optimisation, Home Agency

Title:

Do you know if Alexa is lying to you?

Thanks! If you missed it, my talk on “Is Alexa lying to you?” is available at. This version even has annotations, so you don’t get overwhelmed by large images of English monarchs. #LeedsDigi18 #LeedsLovesSearch https://t.co/qNhxKknzlk https://t.co/yWYS0BatMP

— Neill Horie (@NeillHorie) April 19, 2018

Talk #3:

Emma Barnes – Senior Insight & Analytics Analyst, Branded3

Title:

Stop reporting on rubbish! 10 ways to fix your Analytics data

Super useful tips from our analytics genius @ejbarnes89 at #leedslovessearch @Branded_3 pic.twitter.com/IRpGbrWWjt

— Tim Grice (@Tim_Grice) April 19, 2018

Talk #4:

Stephen Kenwright – Strategy Director, Branded3

Title:

Redefining relevance: links in 2018

And our last speaker is Strategy Director @stekenwright discussing SEO ranking factors #Leedsdigi18 #LeedsLovesSearch pic.twitter.com/zu9qKLvrS3

— Branded3 (@Branded_3) April 19, 2018

Thanks to all of those who took the afternoon to come along to the event. If you’re looking for more events of this kind in Leeds you should check out our annual Search marketing conference, SearchLeeds. SearchLeeds is only two months away, taking place on June 14^th at the first direct arena. With space for over 2,000 delegates, 36 international speakers, 3 stages, varied tracks and networking opportunities at our parties, the conference is one not to be missed.

And did we mention that it’s free? Yep – all that, for free!

“SEO is dead!” – the rallying cry of literally tens of people who know what good linkbait looks like.

The word “SEO” is being dropped by more and more agencies and tool providers, but search engine optimisation isn’t dropping from their attitudes.

We work in an industry where the KPIs of content marketing and PR are links and rankings. Social media should drive conversions and creative should be measurable. Thankfully we’re all SEOs and this is the kind of thing we do in our sleep.

We are creative

In another time, and another life, links cost $15 each – plus another Fiverr to pay the copywriter you were using. And the exchange rate used to be excellent. Being “good at outreach” meant convincing the site owner to field the PayPal fees.

Now if you want to build links your “link building team” has to be capable of PR, copywriting, designing and often developing. Or you have to pay an agency to do that and somebody is going to have to see an invoice. Now it matters if nobody sees your links because an arbitrary output of “search visibility” doesn’t impress the C-Suite.

As a result SEO agencies are delivering creative campaigns that many media agencies would be proud of. As an industry we’re capitalising on the fact that people have to see our output faster than the creative industries are learning how to do the things that we’ve known for years: who holds the keys to the internet, and how do we measure success once the door is open? It’s like Bill Bernbach said (not about SEO), “if nobody notices your advertising everything else is academic.”

The output of SEO is visibility. Good job really.

We are channel hoppers

Despite the fact that we’ve been basically ignoring Bing and Yahoo! for years we’ve suddenly become extremely proficient at channel hopping (2018 note: stop ignoring Bing). We drove the social revolution; now we’re driving the demand for content marketing as brand marketers are realising that link building is dead (link building – not building links).

Any SEO worth his salt is fluent in Google Analytics, and as a consequence we find it laughable how difficult traditional agencies find it to track the ROI of content and social. To us it’s available in a few clicks, and it comes in the form of traffic and transactions – not abstract concepts like “brand awareness” (we drive that too).

We’re the ones driving mobile (because we know it’s good for SEO), and we learned a long time ago that “because Google likes it” isn’t a good enough business case, so we developed robust ways to project traffic (without even a single drop of keyword data), suggest how it might impact conversion rate, and how quickly we can pay off the investment. We can do this because we know where customers come from.

We understand that Facebook runs on an algorithm, and therefore what makes it into people’s feeds must be chosen based on some sort of signal. We can work with that. Marketing on Facebook and Twitter is impossible without great content…but Matt Cutts taught us that years ago.

We’re adaptable

If you’ve been doing SEO for a year or two you’ll no doubt have realised that our livelihoods are mostly reliant on a single website we have absolutely no control over. If Google shut down tomorrow (not likely) – or went completely paid like Facebook is probably about to (more likely) – the SEO industry would survive. Every single day, when we come to work, something has changed and we have to do things slightly differently.

We survived Penguin, Panda, manual actions. The guy who lost eBay $200million got another job just fine. Google has been conditioning us to keep up with the digital revolution for the best part of a decade.

Rankings don’t come from being good at SEO. They come from knowing how to leverage PR, platform, content, creative, data, development teams, social, paying Google lots of money…we have the broadest skill set of any marketers. Google could go down at any second and we’d know roughly what we could do with our lives – 17 (now 21) years of SEO and nobody outside of the industry has much clue how Google works.

PR died so search could live

As the 00s progressed PR agencies frequently failed to retain their creative talent and – understanding that this wasn’t strictly required to deliver coverage for their clients – increasingly hired people who could “smile and dial”, according to Applied Futurist Tom Cheesewright.

“This is why SEO agencies turned up in the late noughties and kicked their asses” he says. Now link building has become PR the race is on between PR agencies who want to convince brands that they’re good at SEO, and SEO agencies who want to convince brands that they’re good at PR. But the infrastructure required to deliver a great search campaign has changed substantially. PR agencies are building better links than we were a decade ago, but are they doing better SEO than we are now?

“SEO is dead” is dead

Articles declaring that SEO is no more seem to be getting less and less frequent, and more and more pretentious. Now “search is just a layer of social media” – or “traditional SEO is dead” and there’s a new way of doing it.

Search isn’t dead. Google is a shopping channel and we help you sell more stuff. Google is also an information centre, and we help convince your customers that they need to buy your stuff. Search has become marketing, and marketing has become something much less useful as the numbers of listicles and syndicated press releases explodes (2018 note: same, but “with AI”).

The SEO industry stopped syndicating press releases years ago. The internet complains that we ruined it for everyone, along with directories and blog comments. They questioned how we could sleep at night, knowing that we just weren’t adding value to people’s lives.

In reality we knew exactly what value we were adding. And we knew that it was often more than they were. The company’s SEO guy knew that X goes in and Y comes out – and that there was nobody else in the company that could prove, without ambiguity, what value they were adding.

When a person searches Google for something they’ve shown intent that they want to see something come out. SEO is the purest form of permission marketing. We’re giving the people what they want. In our decade of spamming the internet we provided more value – and inconvenienced fewer people – than 100 brands with flash mobs.

Marketers of all disciplines have done plenty of crap stuff over the years. The only difference is that our crap stuff worked.

The good old days never ended

Far from yearning for the “good old days”, the SEO industry has just found new ways to add value. For us, X will always go in and Y will always come out – the difference is that X looks a lot nicer than it used to. It’s probably interactive, it’s probably multi-channel, it’s probably disruptive – it’s probably a lot easier to get buy in from the key stakeholders so that we can do it in the first place.

…and instead of SEO budgets going to Content Marketing agencies, SEO budgets are going to SEO agencies who know Content Marketing. That might have shrunk, but brands have become convinced that they need a Content Marketing budget as well – and that goes to the SEO agencies that know Content Marketing too. As an industry we’re taking up more and more PR budgets. SEO budgets haven’t shrunk at all. The SEO team/agency (delete as appropriate) feeds into everything, and brands with sense are letting us get at the other pots.

The world needs SEO to drive marketing forwards. We come from a mindset where we optimise everything. We have never just provided rankings – we provide introductions between businesses and customers. The big budgets are still in TV but the scattergun approach is becoming less and less effective.

There’s a myth that Google hates SEO, but in reality the search engine knows we’re making life easier for millions of people (and Google employees). The sad fact of the matter is that the only people who really write “SEO is dead” articles are people who work in SEO, desperate either for clicks, or to set themselves apart from other consultants, agencies and professionals who have taken the churn and burn approach in the past. It’s a safe bet that they don’t believe a word they’re writing, and that regardless of whether they sign off their article with “Content Marketing Guru” or “Inbound Marketing Manager” (or worse – “Social Media Strategist”), what they’re really doing – day in, day out – is search engine optimisation.

There’s only one thing that has really changed. It’s harder. It’s a damn good job we’re good.

New audience targeting and smarter bidding

Key highlights for me is, yet again, we can see more product launches that centre around audiences, how to use them with more intelligence, and automation through smarter bidding and AI (artificial intelligence).

There have also been several improvements made to DoubleClick’s bid and budget management tool, to be able to use a combination of budget and ROI (return on investment) targets. This will enable advertisers to manage their budget spend and maximise a specific outcome to business targets.

For those advertisers utilising YouTube products, we have seen launches in TrueView for reach, new formats like vertical video ads, outstream videos, video mastheads, video ad sequencing, and target frequency options. All of which are helping advertisers reach those potential customers in more enticing ways.

One of my favourite areas Google has clearly spent a lot of time developing is audience targeting. A few new features have come out this quarter, such as, detailed demographics, new ways to reach people based on their interests through new affinities, new life events, new in-market segments, and custom intent, to name a few.

A couple of our other highlights

• Custom intent audiences in the Google Display Network

This AdWords feature has come out of beta this quarter and we are using on a few clients with good success. Used at the moment just on the Google Display Network (GDN), we are now able to target really specific audience segments as well as specific URLs that people may have visited, all to understand deeper intent and interest.

We currently use it to target competitor URLs and to change the way we bid and how we talk to people through our creative.

• Store visits using Smart Bidding in Search and Target ROAS

Alongside being able to now add store visits as part of a conversion column, we can now apply Target ROAS (return on ad spend) and use store visits metrics as part of Smart Bidding.

This is particularly useful if advertisers have multiple stores and potentially a lot of footfall traffic that would normally be hard to attribute back to paid search. If there is the ability to, advertisers can now track email addresses or collect them at point of sale and then track those in-store visitors back to a paid search keyword and spend.

• Seasonality controls for Smart Bidding

This allows us to pre-plan and block out periods of the year where we may see performance anomalies that would affect historical data being pulled through Smart Bidding or ECPCs (enhanced cost-per-click). This then allows the account to work from the most consistent data to make more reliable decisions about how to push bids and keywords for performance.

This will be valuable for retail advertisers who may have sale periods, like Black Friday or Boxing Day sales, and don’t want these numbers to impact normal optimization.

Overall a busy quarter for the dev team at Google – and keep the updates coming! Excited to see what happens Q2.

Seems unfair, doesn’t it?

I don’t know if this is a bug in GTM or if it will become “fixed,” but hopefully this post might give you some guidance about what to do.

Example – Fjellsport

This example comes from Christian at Fjellsport (the largest outdoor online store in Norway) which came about after trying to implement internal site search tracking.

Christian wanted to implement a tag for instances in which someone searched on Fjellesport, but their query returned no hits. He created a Google Analytics Event Tracking tag that fired on DOM Ready and returned either “hits” or “no hits”, depending on the search query result.

When he searched for a rubbish search query and ran GTM previewer, it showed that the tag had fired with the event category “no hits”, which was as expected.

However, looking at Google Analytics, this search string (and other garbage strings) was pulling in as “hits”.

Returning to the GTM Previewer, you can see on the left-hand side we are observing the “Summary” of the tags that have fired.

The left-hand display shows everything that has happened on-site (with regards to GTM) since the pageview began, with the most recent action at the top. You can see that it goes:

1. Page View
2. Message
3. DOM Loaded
4. Window Loaded
5. click

In the case of this tag, it was supposed to load on “DOM Loaded” so I clicked “DOM Loaded” on the left-hand side to see what actually happened when the DOM loaded.

You can see that on “DOM Ready” the Action type is indeed “hits”, which is why Google Analytics is pulling this in.

I explored the next step after “DOM Loaded” which is “Window Loaded”, and if you switch to “Variables” and look at the variable called “EMMA – HitsNoHitsConfig” (which is the variable that we were using to create the Event Action), it says “No Hits”.

Now we have discovered what needs to be amended – the variable works, but it’s the trigger that’s incorrect.

Solution: Change the trigger from “DOM Ready” to “Window Loaded”

What if this happens to me?

Every case is different, but here are some things you can check:

• Is your container published?
• Is the tag paused?
• Are the firing conditions correct?
• If using GA, do you have a filter that may overwrite the data coming in?
• Is there another tag that may interfere with this tag (for example, due to firing order)?
• Is Google Tag Manager installed correctly?

If none of these things help solve your mystery, please feel free to get in touch.

“In a world of social media, J D Wetherspoon has decided to close down all Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social accounts for individual pubs and head office”

Source @JDwtweet (RIP)

J D Wetherspoon has ceased posting on social media and closed all social accounts with immediate effect. This follows the pub chain’s decision to delete its entire customer email database and stop sending newsletters in July last year.

The reasons behind this decision are still surfacing but it’s difficult to understand why the move has been made. Wetherspoon stated that it will “continue to release news stories and information about forthcoming events on [its] website (jdwetherspoon.com) and in [its] printed magazine – Wetherspoon News.”

…the company made the announcement on its social channels.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter if the company uses its social media channels or not since people will continue to mention its pubs – only now it can’t respond.

Using Crimson Hexagon’s social listening capabilities I researched what’s been said about Wetherspoon on social media for the past 12 months. On Twitter alone 223,742 people posted about the brand – and failed to tag it in the post.

Of these posts 17% were negative and possibly put off new potential customers from visiting their local pub.

Social isn’t just a tool for marketing, it’s also a chance to tell your side of the story and engage with customers on a human level. Wetherspoon now have to work out how best to manage any customer service or negative posts on social, but no matter how they choose to tackle this, no one will be able to see them do it!

If we take our analysis one step further and look towards Google Trends, we can see that the search volume around ‘Wetherspoons’ has been on a steady increase since 2004:

This shows that people are clearly searching for the brand, but with a lack of social presence they will now have less resources online to answer their queries.

My guess is that this move will last no longer than 12 months. Customers do not only engage via social but crave it. A recent study by Statista showed that we spend up to 135 minutes per day on social:

The brand will continue to grow with or without social as it continues to open new pubs and restaurants – and be a staple on the British high street. However, the growth potential could be exponentially higher if they’d continued to remind the public about what they offer through their social media communications.

Everything you need to know about Leeds Loves Search

• What is it?

Leeds Loves Search brings together leading marketers from Leeds for afternoon of insight into PR and fake news, artificial intelligence, paid media, and technical SEO, looking at how all of this will impact Search in 2018.

• Where is it?

The event will be taking place at Duke Street Studios from 14:00-17:00.

• Who will be there?

There will be an audience of more than 100 marketers and speakers from Epiphany, Home Agency, Hermes, and, of course, Branded3.

• Why does Branded3 run it?

We think it’s important to celebrate the thriving digital sector we have here in Leeds, and initiatives such as the Digital Festival provide a unique opportunity for marketers in the North to get together outside of London.

It’s the main reason why we enjoy running events such as Leeds Loves Search so much and why we decided to host our conference, SearchLeeds, here in the city.

• Can I still get tickets?

Leeds Loves Search has sold out, but fear not – you can still get your hands on tickets for SearchLeeds. As with the Digital Festival, SearchLeeds is the largest event of its kind in the North and is a great chance for the digital sector meet, share, and learn in Leeds.

Leeds Loves Search agenda

14.00 – 14.25 – Arianne Donoghue – Paid Development Manager – Epiphany
Talk: The PPC robots are coming for your job
What it’s about: As we head from the Information Age into the Automation Age, the spectre of AI and robots taking our jobs is high in people’s minds.

In this talk, you’ll find out why and where you should be embracing automation and what sorts of things you should be doing to add value where the robots can’t.

14.25 – 14.50 – Neill Horie – Head of Artificial Intelligence Optimisation – Home Agency
Talk: Do you know if Alexa is lying to you?
What it’s about: Neill and his team have spent the past year delving deeper into the intricacies of where AI assistants pull their information from and the impact and opportunities this brings for brands.

In this talk, Neill will discuss their findings – most specifically some of the eccentricities demonstrated by different AI Assistants, the accuracy problems they face, and how marketers can compensate.

14.50 – 15.05 – Break

15.05 – 15.30 – Emma Barnes – Senior Insights Analyst – Branded3

Talk Title: ‘Stop Making Crap* Decisions: 10** Ways to Fix your Analytics Data’.

What’s it about: Emma’s talk will be about Bad Data = Bad Decisions and include actionable advice for anyone who reports from GA (Sorry Adobe users) to make sure what they’re reporting on and making their actions based on is not complete rubbish.

15.30 – 15.55 – Stephen Kenwright – Strategy Director – Branded3
Talk: Redefining relevance
What it’s about: How important are links for SEO performance in 2018? What are the most important factors we need to consider when we’re building links? Steve will talk through two large-scale recent studies undertaken by Branded3, looking at ranking factors and link metrics – and how we can use these to drive better results.

15.55 – 16.20 – Panel questions 

Featuring our speakers and Guest Panellist – Shelley Walsh – Director – ShellShock UK

Shelley Walsh is the founder of ShellShock, a creative content strategy & production agency. She has over twenty years of professional experience in the creative, digital and marketing industry with business experience in greetings cards publishing and online dropshipping.

Shelley also loves to write about creativity, productivity and motivation at Creativity101.com where she publishes the Creativity 101 Digest – a reading list for creative minds

16.20 – 17.00 – Networking drinks 

We’re excited to attend some of the wonderful events that are happening over the next two weeks and see what this year’s digital festival will bring. If you’re attending Leeds Loves Search, we’ll see you on Thursday at Duke Studios!

We’ve taken a look at some of the brands that have managed to make headlines and gain coverage this week alongside huge stories like the royal wedding.

Shoebox Britain: Are Britain’s homes getting smaller?

Britain’s housing crisis is a much-covered topic across national media, with the focus usually on the struggles of first time buyers and unattainable London property prices. However, building control and warranty provider LABC Warranty has brought a new angle to the debate.

It has analysed blueprint data that goes as far back as the 1930s and found that the average home has decreased in size. This information has been displayed creatively as housing floor plans, which journalists can include in their coverage, alongside charts and graphs for more analytical readers.

Straying away from predictable topics that have saturated the newspapers, this campaign provides a fresh angle that has cut through journalists’ inboxes.

Don’t wonder if Britain’s houses are really getting smaller, find out once and for all in our latest study! #ukhousing #newbuild #homes #ThursdayThoughtshttps://t.co/bBA1cZSVoq pic.twitter.com/P5hqSP2bJ4

— LABC Warranty (@LABC_Warranty) April 5, 2018

Re:scam: The time wasting tech

Netsafe and DDB New Zealand have teamed up in a battle against online scammers. Netsafe is an independent, non-profit organisation that tackles online safety. In a forward-thinking move, it has created an AI email assistant that responds to scammers, turning the tables on them and wasting their time until they give up.

Users no longer need to spend time dealing with scams – they can simply forward the message to Re:scam and let AI do its thing! The interactive tool is a really clever and creative way to raise awareness for the campaign and help deal with online scammers in an unexpected way.

The Royal Wedding – Choosing the public over politicians

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding has consistently made the headlines since their engagement was announced back in November. They’ve let go of some long standing royal wedding traditions, which has been widely covered by the media, and their latest decision has created some really positive PR for the couple.

Instead of inviting politicians and diplomats, the young couple have sent invites to 1,200 members of the public. Each person who has been invited has been chosen because of their contributions to their communities and their inspiring stories.

The couple has asked that 1,200 people, from all corners of the UK be selected by Lord Lieutenants, include young people who have shown strong leadership and those who have served their communities. pic.twitter.com/aIraJiXg6B

— Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) March 2, 2018

Favourite songs – Reimagined as novels

We’ve heard hundreds of cover versions of classic songs through the years but The Online Pen Company has put a twist on this by reimagining popular songs in the form of actual book covers.

This visual campaign aims to highlight the power of words and how song lyrics can meaningfully tell a story if you stop to listen carefully enough. The brand has focused on hits like Michael Jackson’s’ Thriller’, showing how the Halloween classic tells a spooky tale, whereas the beat and dance moves associated with the song have made it into a party anthem.

You can view all six covers on their site.

Online Pen Company re-imagines some of the most popular songs as novel covers https://t.co/SxYQwvb3Go pic.twitter.com/kWEClVDRSZ

— PRexamples.com (@PRexamples) April 6, 2018

March for our lives – “Shot with AR-15”

One final campaign we wanted to mention this week is a powerful awareness piece by Visual Arts students Ji Kim and Andy Koo. In support of the March for Our Lives event, the pair created images resembling the Apple ‘Shot on iPhone’ campaign and positioned them around New York City.

Instead of stunning views though, the images displayed tragic scenes of gun violence from around the USA, with the caption ‘Shot with AR-15’.

The artists told AdAge: “We thought about what would be the most powerful way to raise awareness about this issue, and Apple’s iconic ‘Shot on iPhone’ came up in my head, because the word ‘shot’ has two different meanings.

“We thought it was ridiculous that AR-15 was used in most of the recent mass shootings in the United States. And AR-15 was initially developed as a weapon of war, not for home or personal protection.”

@morgan_sung AR-15 was the weapon of choice in the recent mass shootings. To help raise awareness about the deadly power of this weapon of war, we hijacked the iconic “Shot on iPhone” campaign and turned it into “Shot with AR-15”. Then we pasted them on the streets of New York. pic.twitter.com/X6PAqfzRk4

— Ji Kim (@ihavehairyknees) April 12, 2018

What have we missed? Share your favourite PR campaigns from the past week with us on Facebook and Twitter.

With April Fool’s Day falling on Easter weekend this year, we were spared from the horrendous joke campaigns that always crop up (well almost, there is one in there…). Plenty of creative ideas cropped up throughout the week, from literal maps to touchy topics about pastry. Check them out!

The ‘Land of the Angles’ and ‘Frizzy Haired Men’

This year I’ll be travelling to the ‘Place of Refuge’ for a friend’s wedding, and last year I was lucky enough to spend a week on the beautiful ‘Island of Copper’. I promise, I’ve not gone mad. But have you ever thought about what the names of places actually mean?

Australian comparison site credit card compare has created this beautiful piece of creative content looking at the literal translations of country names across the globe.

“Learning the etymology – the origin of words – of countries around the world offers us fascinating insight into the origins of some of our favourite travel destinations and the people who first lived there,” credit card compare explains.

The designs that run alongside the piece are really great too (although I’d have loved to be able to interact with an actual globe and zoom in and out on certain locations). This is a really nicely executed piece and has been covered by some great publications, including Forbes and Lonely Planet. Check out some of the names and meanings for yourself here.

Source: Credit Card Compare

“Hey Google, Where’s Waldo?”

When I spotted this on my Google Maps over the weekend, my first reaction was “huh?” followed closely by “well, there goes my afternoon.”

Source: Google

This week saw the legend that is Where’s Wally and his trusty companions, (of whom I remembered none of other than Wenda, purely from Uni fancy dress days) Woof, Wizard, Whitebread, and Odlaw, hiding in Google Maps.

You can play simply by clicking on the waving Waldo when he appears on your screen or ask Google Assistant on your phone or home device “Hey Google, Where’s Waldo?” (not quite sure if it localises Waldo to Wally for us Brits!).

Google released a post on their blog and the news spread like wildfire across sites such as Lad Bible, the Express, and the Daily Mail. Just genius!

“Back in our day…”

Last week, TalkTalk TV took parents on a trip down memory lane and baffled their kids in the process. According to a study by the TV provider, 1/3 of us think that kid’s TV was better when we were little, despite the enhanced graphics and endless choice available now.

To test this theory, Talk Talk TV enlisted the help of some mini critics in a Gogglebox-style experiment and sat them down to watch some of the retro classics including Mr Benn, Bananas in Pyjamas, and The Magic Roundabout.

The kids’ reactions are adorable and include a lot of confusion as to why Scooby Doo looks so old and whether Magic Roundabout “is made of playdough”.

The great pie debate… Chips or mash?

A few weeks back, Brits celebrated one of our favourite dishes with a whole week dedicated to the pie!

I assume this is one of (if not the) most important week in the marketing calendar for a brand such as Pukka Pies. As their head of marketing Lindsay Filmer explains: “It’s a competitive space. We needed a campaign that gave us stand out above the rest, ensuring that everyone up and down the country thought ‘Pukka’ when they thought ‘Pies’.”

Source: Campaign Live

Pukka set out to settle one of the biggest questions of all time: mash or chips?

Launching a nationwide poll with pie-week.com, they invited millions to join the debate and rolled it out across all channels, including outdoor advertising, radio, social media, and PR.

Along with the help of avid pie fan Freddie Flintoff, and comedian Paddy McGuiness even joining in on Twitter, the poll received over 10k votes, 5m impressions on social, and 15k likes, comments, and shares.

But who won?

Chips just edged the bets, with 56% of the votes. Us Northerners obviously didn’t do enough voting!

So that’s all for this week folks! Tweet us and let us know how many hours you wasted wondering where Wally was, which part of the Land of the Rabbits you might be visiting this year (that’s Spain to you and me), and whether like us you’re outraged at the whole pie-and-chips-gate (I think they must have invested more in paid media in the South!).

Have a great weekend everyone.

Almost all good brands know that a product description is essential. When time’s not on your side, though, uploading the manufacturer’s stock description can seem like an easier alternative to writing one from scratch. There are multiple issues with this:

• Other websites will have done the same thing, so now you have the same copy.
• It can make your company look like it doesn’t know the product inside and out.
• The manufacturer copy won’t match your tone of voice.

Neglecting product copy isn’t doing you any favours.

Customers want to know how the product is going to work when it becomes part of their lives, and a picture can’t always tell them that. Product copy is like a virtual shop assistant. It’s the online alternative to having a person helping you in store, so it needs to be highly persuasive.

What material is that chest of drawers made of? Why is your camera better than others? These are questions a picture can’t answer. Offer inspiring advice through your copy and you’ll leave customers thinking, ‘That was useful.’ This could make all the difference to them heading to your checkout rather than someone else’s.

You’ve probably got the gist: product descriptions are crucial. Not only for SEO purposes, but for setting you apart from the crowd.

We’ve looked at three brands who have perfected their craft in writing compelling content that converts. Here’s what you can learn from them.

Don’t just describe your products, sell your products

Secret Escapes is a pro at selling an experience. The site doesn’t just describe a holiday, it sells a holiday. How? By using sensory language. Look at this example, from a description of a holiday in Jamaica:

Secret Escapes use sensory words to help stir the imagination.

This description of a Jamaican treehouse resort is packed with adjectives that stir the senses. Words like ‘warm waters’, ‘lush tropical greenery’, and ‘icing-sugar sands’ are powerful because they allow the brain to conjure sights, sounds, and feelings. We can almost feel the warm waters and envision the lush tropical greenery.

It can be hard to imagine something that’s not right in front of you, especially a destination you’ve never visited. Sensory words help paint a clear picture of what an experience might be like.

There’s another key learning from Secret Escapes on this sample. Notice the ‘we like’ bullet points on the right-hand side? It pulls out key benefits, so they’re not lost by readers who are scanning the content quickly. Simple but effective.

Features and benefits explained

You can talk for England about how great your products are. But does that get the customer excited? Well, not necessarily. Not unless you talk about them in a way that’s meaningful.

For example, why might a customer enjoy a phone with an eight-megapixel camera? What’s in it for them? Technical specifications are just cryptic words and numbers if they’re not backed up with information that means something to the person reading it.

There are countless reasons why Apple has continued success in the smartphone market, and just one of them is that the marketing team at Apple are gurus at honing their product benefits into succinct sentences that make a lot of sense. They speak to non-techy people in the way they can understand, and we can all learn an awful lot.

Apple summarises the product benefits in a few simple sentences.

The above iPhone X copy is inspirational. Rather than just stating that both rear cameras have “optical image stabilisation” and “fast lenses” (which could go straight over someone’s head), they explain why that’s a good thing – all in one sentence. We learn these features allow for outstanding photos and videos, even in low light, and follow it with an image example, just to make sure you can fully understand the benefit. ‘OK, now I get it.’

Apple crafts product descriptions that satisfy the question: why? Better still, it does this using the fewest words possible. Formatting content in this way is all part of the ‘Apple experience’; it’s a lifestyle not just a brand.

Tailor your product description to the individual

Website templates aren’t exciting to everyone, but Squarespace makes them sound like they are. It’s tailored each of its product descriptions to who it thinks each template suits best. Take a look:

Squarespace knows its customers inside out.

Straight away you can see why the Montauk might be a useful template to someone who owns an independent business – it’s easy to set up and customise.

If we were to pull this product description apart, we’d quickly uncover Squarespace’s train of thought. It has identified which audience the Montauk template best suits: independent businesses.

What might independent businesses struggle with when it comes to web templates? Perhaps they’re good at what they’re doing or selling but they’re not tech-savvy, so they’ll need one that’s simple to set up. Easy, right? Analyse your customers in depth and you’ll find out how the benefits of your products fit their needs.

How do you do this? Simply get down a description of what your target customer looks like. What are they wearing? What kind of print or digital media do they read? How will your product make them feel happier or make their life easier? Understand your buyers and you’ll answer problems even they didn’t realise they had.

See, writing great product descriptions is worth the effort. Do it and show those competitors what you’re made of.

Contact us @Branded_3 on Twitter to let us know your writing tips, or get in touch with Branded3 to have us write your product descriptions for you.

The National Gallery of Prague’s “Touching Masterpieces”

Usually, when you go to the museum, you’re not allowed to touch anything – I bet we all know someone that stepped too close to a work of art and unintentionally set off the short alarm at some point.

In an attempt to give blind and visually impaired people access to the art pieces they exhibit, The National Art Gallery of Prague has teamed up with Geometry Prague, Neurodigital and the Leontinka Foundation to develop haptic Avatar VR gloves. The gloves allow people to virtually “touch” famous sculptures like Michelangelo’s David – an incredible way to make art accessible for everyone.

Photo: Source

Julia Dovlatova, creative director at Geometry Prague said:

“Through curiosity, pursuit of innovation and a passion for creativity, we realized that specially-adapted haptic technology could open doors to a unique art experience for the blind. “Our collaboration with NeuroDigital helped us fine tune haptic gloves to ‘see’ art through virtual reality touch.”

You can find more information here.

CALM’s #Project84 draws attention to male suicide

Every week, 84 men in the UK take their life – that’s 84 men per week. To shine a light on those tragic statistics and to promote a public discussion on male suicide, the charity CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) started the campaign Project 84.

Picture: Source

Each single statue represents a man who decided to end his own life. Friends and family members worked together with American artist, Mark Jenkins to model these after the men in their lives they have lost.

The campaign runs alongside a petition to improve suicide prevention and bereavement support, which you can find here.

Björk and Jesse Kanda to star in WeTransfer’s first episode of their documentary series “Work in Progress”

Parting from the insight that most WeTransfer users work in the creative industry, the service provider has launched a series of documentaries about creative collaborations.

The artists to star in the first episode are none others than Björk and Jesse Kanda, who have worked together on the video for “Arisen My Senses” from the musician’s latest album “Utopia”.

On their website, WeTransfer states the following:

“Our Work In Progress series looks at how collaboration really works. We want to go beyond behind-the-scenes, and tap into what creativity looks like, sounds like and feels like. We don’t claim to explain it; this is not a practical, how-to guide. But by showing how creative minds see the worlds around them, and understand each other, we’ll window onto some of the magic and the mystery.”

The film explores the hybrid collaboration between the two artists and gives an interesting insight into their friendship and work ethos.

Pornhub gifts free premium membership to residents of cities with rude names

Ever heard of cities like Bitsch, in France, or Dildo in Newfoundland? No?

Well, Pornhub decided to shine a light on these “Premium Places” and gift residents of those cities with a lifetime premium membership – right in time for Easter.

Photo 1: source Photo 2: source

Pornhub VP Corey Price said:

“With the proliferation of online adult entertainment, many people have become very well-versed in its vernacular and sexual sayings. Unfortunately, this has made towns with sexually suggestive names the butt of many more jokes. Here at Pornhub, we think a name is worth celebrating, rather than subjecting to incessant ridicule.”

That rounds up our favourite campaigns of the week! For further PR inspiration check out last week’s post  which featured avocado Easter Eggs from Waitrose, free breakfast at Carluccio’s and much more.

Happy Easter everyone!

Estate Agent Today has tipped Purplebricks to be the biggest estate agent by 2019. With the sharp drop in share prices of Countrywide and Foxtons, it’s easy to think this is just the start of the decline in traditional agents. What is interesting, though, is that Purplebricks don’t appear when searching locally for ‘houses for sale in Leeds’, or when searching for houses in the other top 10 places to live in the UK.  The Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) are dominated by property portals such as Rightmove and Zoopla,  with other property portals e.g. OnTheMarket.com also featuring on the first page. That’s the first hole in Purplebricks’ armour.

Figure 1. Traffic share for non-brand keywords for property searches in the top 10 locations in the UK

So, how have traditional agents allowed a new company to rise to such heights in a time where the stock of homes in the UK is at its lowest for 40 years? The answer is simple: by being traditional. Lord Sugar once famously said that estate agents are “a necessary evil” – they were tarred with the same brush as politicians, solicitors and recruiters. It wasn’t until recently that a new agent (Purplebricks), tried to change the perception of the industry. Purplebricks is built by former traditional estate agents who listened to their customers and tackled some of the biggest estate agency complaints;  fees, service and communication.

Figure 2. Interest growth from 2004 to present. (Red = Rightmove, Purple = Zoopla, Blue = Purplebricks, Yellow = Barratt Developments, Green = Foxtons)

It’s not just Purplebricks that are succeeding online, Rightmove have reported that the online estate agent market share has more than doubled in two years (see figure 2). The reality is, only 0.2% of Purplebricks’ customer complaints were about fees. If you’re an estate agent, take an honest look at your complaints and tell me if that figure is less for you? In short, online agents are much more tuned into their customers’ needs.

Halo slip? No not really.

Traditional estate agents in general need to learn the difference between a feature and a benefit and tailor it to their customer, especially a customer who has never sold a house before. Don’t just mention the feature in isolation – you have 50 years’ experience… so what?

Instead, explain why the feature is beneficial to the individual: “I’ve been doing this a long time and I’ve got a lot of experience dealing with people who haven’t sold a house before.” As an ex estate agent, I helped clients by listening and asking questions until I got to the root of their worries. I know many traditional agents who only talk about features and are not worth their salt. The ones that focus on benefits do well and that’s hardwired into all Purplebricks staff.

Figure 3. Search metrics graph measuring the visibility of traditional estate agents against each other

Figure 4. Search metrics graph measuring the visibility of traditional estate agents against each Online Agents

Search Metrics don’t lie and as figure 4 shows, Purplebricks’ search visibility soared above its competitors in the new year.

Who cares about estate agents? As long as it’s on Rightmove

Anyone asking this raises a very good point. Rightmove dominates the search space in all things property. Rightmove did this by building a business on SEO and then reinvesting money into traditional TV advertising etc. This led to a profit margin of over 75% in 2016, so clearly, they’re doing something right.

Figure 5 Search metrics graph measuring the visibility of traditional estate agents against Rightmove

So, what have traditional estate agents forgotten?

1. To evolve and move with the times, there is a reason the UK now spends more on digital media than it does on TV advertising.
2. To put their own targets to one side and ask their customers, “what is it you actually want?”
3. Don’t tell people how bad someone else is, get people to talk about how good you are and give them proof by selling houses.

You beat Purplebricks by beating Rightmove at property search!

OnTheMarket.com are following closely behind Rightmove and are making serious ground (See figure 1). A few traditional agents have now started playing catch up, but how do they make up lost ground?

1. Build your business on SEO. You’ve seen it work for Rightmove – now it’s time to step in front. OntheMarket.com is pushing forward (See figure 1) by putting in their terms of business that properties must be listed for 24 hours on their site before it can go live on yours or another property portal. So, if you’re not using OnTheMarket.com, then why don’t you do the same? Doing so means Google credits you with the property and not Rightmove. Just make sure you manage your vendors’ expectations. Also ensure your site is optimised and up to date with Google’s latest algorithm updates so that Google can find you.
2. Optimise your site so that it dominates the local estate agent search. This is by far the easiest thing to do on my list. When you focus on these local markets, the competition gets thinner. For instance, when a buyer searches in Leeds, they will be very specific about the town, village, borough etc. that they want to live in. Most traditional agents want to brand themselves for the city, when in fact, they should be going after theses micro markets. I mentioned earlier, Purplebricks aren’t doing this and so there is certainly a gap for this.
3. Be a strong link builder. Google uses links in a similar way that word of mouth can build an estate agency up through recommendations. The more trusted people are talking about you, the more people will use you. Google uses links in the same way: the more trusted the site that links to you, the higher you rank. The easiest way to build these links is to make strong connections with influential journalists and create interesting headlines that get picked up by them.
4. Write unique content. Not many people are fond of estate agents and think fees are too high – why not write content to help people better understand what it is you do for your money? Better still, use a social listening tool to see what your target audience is talking about and write content about that. This will also help you build links. What do you need to offer on your site that Rightmove can’t? Local content!
5. Rightmove is the big dog on every level when it comes to estate agency content. They have articles on design, architecture all the way down to Christmas songs. That’s all well and good, but what you can beat them on is local content. Focus on a local level for every town and village you want your expertise showcased on. While Rightmove have the public information available on how much a property is worth on your street, there’s no information on the schools on your street outside of an Ofsted report, they don’t have community activities, local running routes, best type of house to live in in which village etc. Offering this information is your secret weapon and will help you earn your badge as local expert. Try and make this something people can’t get anywhere else. The best way forward is blogging, vlogging and YouTube. Google loves it when you use their tools! The more Google tools you use, the more Google’s bots will love you, and the longer the user will stay on your site. Remember, your audience can get a free valuation anywhere on the Internet, so offering it on your site isn’t of any significant value. Local news and content is where you will win.
6. Use long-tail keywords. If a consumer was searching the phrase “Victorian Mansions in Oakwood” you’d have a fighting chance of being ranked as the search phrase is much more specific, and more importantly, it’ll convert better. You can get even more specific and use a phrase like “Cheapest bungalow in Meanwood”. Yes, fewer people are searching these phrases, but that also means there is less competition and more serious home buyers specifically looking for a certain type of property.
7. Have a strong paid advertisement game. Make sure you’re writing interesting and eye-catching adverts and then bid on terms that convert the best for you. As you can imagine, lots of other estate agents will be bidding on similar terms like “How much is my home worth”, “Valuations”, “Estate agent in Leeds” and “Best estate agent in the city”, so make sure your bidding is optimised, or you could end up losing money.
8. You need, a Facebook business page, Twitter and Google My Business for every area you want to rank in. If you only do one thing after reading this, make sure you fill in Google My Business. That’s right. For every area! These social links then must appear on your site (they make your page legitimate).
9. Finally, make sure you’re managing the entire process. Whoever is doing your marketing needs to make sure the technical SEO, link building, content and PPC are all joined up. By optimising your site, you add more value to your PPC as your price per click will drop. In short, SEO and PPC feed each other – if you’re not joined up, opportunities will be missed and that could cost you in the long run.