The Big Picture

PromoWatch Top 10 January 2012 - Morrisons Win Free Shopping this January tops the austerity driven chart

2012-02-08T16:01:39+00:00

The New Year has started with gusto at PromoWatch with visitor numbers going through the roof - on some days 5 times the average daily traffic in 2011. This is due in no small part to the engaging sales promotions that are out there at the moment. Here's our top ten by unique visitors for January 2012.

No.	Promotion	% of Views	Avg. Time on Page
1.	Morrisons - Win Free Shopping this Jan	24.42%	1m 48s
2.	Actimel - Free Helping Hand	13.58%	2m 26s
3.	Special K - Million X-Factor Lipsticks to be won	11.88%	1m 48s
4.	Beck's - Free Music Downloads	3.06%	3m 30s
5.	Wrigley's Extra - Win a Fiver	2.76%	2m 42s
6.	Ocean Spray - Bounce your Berry	1.83%	3m 46s
7.	Ski - Family Holiday Offer	1.56%	2m 16s
8.	KitKat - Choose Your Chunky Champion	1.54%	1m 2s
9.	Walkers Crisps - What's That Flavour	1.24%	1m 48s
10.	Crisp 'n Dry - Win Cash For Christmas	1.10%	3m 16s

Comment
The best things in life are free and that certainly seems to be the hook of choice for the promotions this month. We can also detect a New Year feel to the popular choices with squeezed budgets, domestic spring cleaning and feeling good about yourself taking the top 3 spots.

Latest #Bellwether Survey reports new low in confidence: Sales Promotion IS an effective, economical, measurable solution

2012-01-19T19:26:00+00:00

The latest Bellwether Report, 19th January 2012, reveals an 11 year low in confidence of
-44.9%, executives assessment of their own company's prospects had deteriorated for the first time since the beginning of 2009 and the recent trend of increasing marketing budgets is running out of steam, dropping from 3.4% to 0.6%. All pretty gloomy.

More worryingly, for our industry at least, is the fact that 'Below the Line' and Main Media spend were the only marketing sectors to see a reduction in spend losing out to Discounting and Online strategies, particular pay per click or 'search' marketing. To my mind the winners here strike me as either quick fixes or, in the case of discounting, a rocky road to fuelling consumer expectations for lower prices and long-term margin erosion.

Why is sales promotion missing out?
If we ignore for the moment the fact that discounting is a form of sales promotion, why is the more creative end of sales promotion faring less well? Compared with the other disciplines, Sales Promotion stands up well to the competition*:

Comparing Marketing Disciplines
Category	Easy to Set up	Economical	Quick to Launch	Reach a big Audience	Visible at Point of Purchase	Targeted	Measurable
Advertising				✔		✔
Direct Marketing		✔				✔	✔
Sales Promotion		✔		✔	✔	✔	✔
Search Marketing	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Social Media Marketing		✔		✔			✔

On this assessment sales promotion is second only to search marketing in terms of ticking all the boxes, but let's face facts: search marketing can only drive traffic to your site and not much else; it doesn't add value, develop your brand personality or capture consumer data; it's no real use for grocery and drinks brands which don't sell directly off their website and if competition for pay per click spaces gets too fierce you'll either end up paying over the odds or only seeing traffic for very narrow search terms.

We suspect, the reason that marketers are shirking sales promotion comes down to:

Perceived cost of setting up a promotion (it needn't be - see below)
Fear of failure. It's so much easier to run a discount promotion and see immediate results, but beware - it's a slippery slope. Or maybe you've had a bad experience before? If so, work with a reputable IPM Award Winner for complete peace of mind.
Lack of Knowledge. It's hard to feel comfortable working with something you don't fully understand. Sales promotion is not one of the dark arts and a good agency / supplier should be able to demystify anything that isn't obvious. Equally plenty of brands feel more comfortable with running Social Media Campaigns because we're all familiar with the platforms. However that doesn't make you an expert and it's very easy to get this very wrong. Familiarity does not always equate to understanding.

Cost effective sales promotion solutions
Okay if you're still reading you must be slightly tempted and you want to see what's possible for a modest budget before seeking out that reputable supplier? Well here's some for starters...

Work with a single complimentary brand partner offering an appealing discount offer or prize (Tip: maximise the relationship by providing samples of your brand in their outlets or co-branding menus, running a treasure hunt etc)
Run a tried and tested off-the-shelf discount programme as a gift with purchase
Liaise with a Movie / Music / Book publisher on a contra basis to promote a forthcoming release, offer exclusive prizes etc. (Tip: try and secure a discount off the wider release or catalogue stock as an everyone's a winner element)
Use Facebook / Twitter as a platform to run a simple member get member reward or loyalty scheme. Use a combination of discounts on your own product or service as entry level rewards and consider complimentary third parties, premiums or experience providers for higher tiers
Taste Guarantee - e.g. if you don't agree with the statement, write in with 15 words or more to say why and get your money back. Surprisingly economical and a very powerful tool for establishing brand quality in the eye of the consumer (Tip: more beneficial to newer brands or relaunches)

* We've taken a general view of typical activity in each case and, before any of you start, I'm sure there are exceptions to every rule and you could argue the relative merits of every discipline for each of the criteria. Arguing against our own gradings for sales promotion - it can be relatively easy to set up and quick to launch but we were basing our rating on the fact that most FMCG sales promotions often require sell-in and subsequent buy-in from the retailers that carry the promotion. This is rarely a quick process.

Writing Sales Promotion Terms and Conditions: should be template-driven, pre-approved by law and above all fair

2012-01-18T17:27:00+00:00

Compiling the reviews on our sister blog, PromoWatch, we read a LOT of terms and conditions. Geeky I know, but they are there for a reason. They lay out the terms of engagement, the rules of the game and SHOULD allow consumers to determine if a promotion lives up to its headline. Often terms and conditions are unwieldy, jargony, inconsistent and unfathomable. Indeed, most people don't bother reading them, until they have a problem by which time the damage has already been done.

When we reviewed sales promotion in Italy last summer the most striking element, apart from the beautiful people used in the packaging, was the consistent nature of the terms and conditions. They followed the same template and you knew exactly what was on offer with total transparency. Sadly the same cannot be said for UK Sales Promotions. Here are a few examples of promotional issues we come across - many of which we have seen in the first two weeks of this year alone:

No clear link to or non-existant terms and conditions on the website - illegal
Displaying out of date terms and conditions for a previous promotion - illegal
No explanation of how instant win prizes are allocated - should be illegal
No details of exactly what the prize includes - should be illegal
No way of determining whether discount offers are available nearby BEFORE participating in the promotion - again this surely should be illegal
No obvious channel for customer service queries - ideally a phone number but at worst an email
Changing the terms and conditions during the promotion - talk about moving the goalposts. Surely a full risk assessment / worst case scenario should be independently evaluated before a campaign runs

Ultimately the only people who lose out on the above failings is the consumer. Well, we know that it might be a bit like turkeys voting for Christmas but we're going to stick our head above the parapet and formally make our plea to the sales promotion authorities:

We want a universal template for terms and conditions with mandatory legal approval for ALL promotions

There really is no reason in this internet age why the whole process of terms and conditions shouldn't be process driven, strictly regulated with ALL promotions having to use the same master template, the final version of which MUST be pre-approved by a recognised body be it bodies like CAP, IPM, ASA or private companies like PromoVeritas and Enable before a campaign goes live. After all a checklist of the essential elements of sales promotion techniques is taught in the IPM diploma, so, why not take the logical step of creating a framework for terms and conditions which every promoter should adopt? No arguments, no ambiguity and no exceptions.

Template for Sales Promotion Terms and Conditions

Here's a general framework to be going on with:

1. Summary - particularly long terms and conditions

State type of promotion, e.g. Prize Draw, Instant Win
How to enter, e.g. unique codes, voucher on pack
What's on offer - headline and synopsis of runners up
Value of prizes
Chances of winning, e.g. 1 in 100K for top prize, 1 in 10 for runners up
Important dates, validity, redeem by etc

2. Who is eligible to participate, e.g. age, geographical, excluding employees of promoter and their agents
3. What's on offer - if necessary provide details later
4. How to enter / entry requirements
5. Restrictions on entry - no defaced entries, no bulk or automated entries etc
6. How are: winners determined / rewards attributed / winning entries assessed and by who, e.g. independent judges, computer etc
7. Dates for entry, claiming, redeeming, time to fulfil prizes etc to the consumer
8. What is the likelihood of winning the advertised reward
9. Winner notification / publicity
10. Winner details
11. Data protection policy / notification
12. Exact details of what's on offer
13. State whether a cash alternative is available
14. Promoter's name and address
15. Customer Service details if different to details in item 12.
16. Disclaimers - can't be held responsible for injury, loss, damage or negligence as a result of participating in the promotion etc.
17. No correspondence will be entered into and the promoter's decision is final on all matters
18. State who legally approved the terms and conditions and who was responsible for administering the promotion if different to the promoter.

Conclusion
We're sure that there'll be plenty of opposition to our campaign to legalise and formalise sales promotion Ts & Cs from people who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. But, ultimately, we're all supposed to be looking after the best interests of consumers first and foremost because, like it or not, successful engagement in sales promotion is built on trust. Terms and Conditions are the only mechanism we have for spelling out the parameters by which all parties participate in a promotion, so it is imperative that they are regulated within a framework which itself instils that trust.

Sales Promotion on the internet is becoming dull and formulaic - our hopes for 2012

2012-01-10T16:35:00+00:00

Not so very long ago there wasn't an internet. Back in the days when evening telly was good, Britons weren't obese and fuel was less than 50p a litre. Imagine that. What we did to fill the time was far less virtual and very much more real.

20 years or so later and the internet is so fundamental to our existence that it's a wonder we ever survived without it. It's brought amazing convenience, unbelievable information and an equal amount of disinformation, anytime, at the click of a mouse. Of course marketers have embraced the medium as much as anyone and it's hard to find any sales promotion which doesn't have a web element. But with so many sales promotions out there why do we mourn for the sales promotions of yesteryear when people used heat and reveal labels, inserted blue sachets containing fivers into packets of crisps and even a miniature plastic house inside your tin of beans to tell you, in no uncertain terms that you had won, a house? It might be the excitement, buzz and awe-inspiring creativity which seems so lacking in their internet descendents.

Looking at the 88 or so promotions which we featured on PromoWatch last year, 56% of them had exactly the same mechanic: "enter a unique code from promotional packs on the website to qualify". Assuming our blog is representative of the sales promotion industry as a whole, if more than half of all brands thought that running a competition with a unique code entry mechanic was the best way of establishing a point of difference with their competitors, they were sadly mistaken.

Why has the internet stifled creativity?
In the early days, putting up a microsite for an on-pack promotion was relatively pricey and they were primarily used by market leading brands to support the principle activity. But before too long the microsite has evolved to represent the promotion in its entirety encompassing the customer journey from start to finish. The reasons are obvious - money. Websites are now cheaper to create than ever before, while producing innovative promotional devices and customised product packaging has become, for the most part, more expensive or in some cases a logistical headache.

Now, in the same way that nearly all tv programmes seem to be about property or cooking, once a winning formula has been established promotions agencies realise they can re-package a successful concept and sell it in to clients again and again. Taking it to its logical conclusion, a general acquiescence in mediocrity increases the profusion of mediocrity to the point where it becomes the accepted norm. This all leads to one big yawn for the consumer - and the intrepid sales promotion commentator.

Injecting innovation into sales promotion
The Sales Promotion Industry's utilisation of the internet is a bit like most people's use of the processing power of their home computer - barely taxing its capabilities at all. The internet is far more than just an interpreter of unique codes or a means of plotting pretty dots on a map. So how else can we maximise the power of the web within our sales promotion activity?

If we assume that most brands need to prove that a purchase has been made, can we first look beyond the reliance on unique codes?

Small and discreet, QR codes or Snaptags could easily be incorporated into product packaging and, using a simple reader, would automatically take consumers to the promotional website right on their device (think webcam, tablet or smartphone). As they would have to be in possession of the product to access the on-pack graphic it is fair to assume that they've made a legitimate purchase and have qualified for entry. This would make the all important 'simplicity of entering your promotion' integral to the customer journey.

Can't fit a graphic on your pack - develop a barcode reader for your microsite. With such a heavy penetration of smartphones, tablets and webcams and even smart TVs now, most devices will have the necessary lens to view the barcode for your chosen platform. The CD and DVD purchasing website Music Magpie employs this to great effect.

Go a bit retro. Combine the online and offline worlds by cutting out a token / logo / masthead or whatever from the offline packaging and affix it to a downloaded voucher as the ultimate photocopy / scanner proof online coupon. NB only works for proper redbrick high street retailers*.

* Available while shops last

If you just can't get away from using a unique code why not try and wean yourself off the Instant Win habit? Here's a few ideas for using a unique code, some of which you may have seen in the wild already or covered in other posts:

in-game currency for a freemium or bespoke online / mobile game
proof of purchase token for a collector scheme
validation for submitting user content for an online competition
discount / promo code for a third party partner site
a security tag for a downloaded voucher - could be used in conjunction with the physical proof for offline venues
unlock treasure hunt clues - again possibly for the pursuit of an offline treasure

if you can't avoid 'instant win' why not make the act of telling people the win/lose verdict more interesting? In keeping with the theme of your brand / promotion it could be the turning wheel on the front of a safe or animated lottery balls which might match up with your unique reference. This simple animation would not be expensive but it would make the engagement and overall impression of the promotion, feel like it was given some modicum of thought rather than just being churned out on a conveyor belt.

The Good News...
The dominance of Twitbook provides a ready platform for smaller brands to promote themselves with very little capital outlay. We should be celebrating the fact that a lower cost of entry means that smaller brands can contemplate sales promotion at all.

Some brands are doing great promotions which really harness the power of social media, sharing user-generated content and integrating their activity across multiple channels. We featured one such promotion from Visit Britain today. So there are reasons to be optimistic. But, woe-betide the sales promotion industry if we have a similar proportion of 'instant win unique reference number monotony' in 2012. You've been warned!!!

P.S. If this blog existed 50 years ago (and I had been born) no doubt I'd have been writing a provocative article about how television had made promotions less personal or relevant. Blah, blah, blah, moan, moan...

Merry Christmas from everyone at Mosaic Marketing!

2011-12-21T09:20:57+00:00

We'll probably regret this, but here is a little bit of fun to wish you all a very Merry Christmas. See you in 2012 - have a good one...

Using Social Media to build long lasting relationships with your customers

2011-12-14T14:35:07+00:00

We write this post partly in response to an interesting article we read on PromoMarketing's website and partly to offer our thoughts on using promotions in Social Media.

We've mentioned before our rather scathing attitude towards the phenomenon of brands just trying to accumulate as many likes and follows as possible, which we regard as confusing faux popularity with brand engagement. However, there have been one or two promotional campaigns utilising Social Media, e.g. Ocean Spray's Bounce Your Berry, which have been exclusively Facebook-based and have proved extremely effective.

The main point of the Promotional Marketing article was the assertion that creative promotions stimulate engagement, which we heartily agree with. In social media terms they are fast to implement, relatively cost-effective and great for motivating individuals to do your marketing for you. They also cite 3 consumer types which you should consider: the self-explanatory 'spectators', 'joiners' and 'creators'.

Whilst they alude to it with the 'creators' category, we actually think that this sub-division is the most important target group and where the majority of effort should be focused. Malcolm Gladwell in his famous book, 'The Tipping Point', refers to the 'law of the few'. The basic theory is that 20% of the people do 80% of the work in making an idea go viral. They are categorised as Connectors, Mavens and Salespeople - people that draw people together, people that acquire deep knowledge on every subject and people that are naturally able to sell. Seth Godin takes the concept further in his book 'Unleashing the Ideavirus' which talks about harnessing the power of 'promiscuous sneezers' and 'powerful sneezers'.

Promiscuous sneezers people who can be bought by a variety of inducements and are not held in high esteem as opinion formers - but if they're promiscuous enough they can be a very useful ally. They'd even share their grandmother if it got them entry into a prize draw.

Powerful sneezers are extremely influential and held in high esteem and (in theory) can't be bought. If it was known that they were being bought they would lose their credibility and hence influence. (B-list celebs do it all the time).

Now if you embark on a Social Media campaign, we would confidently suggest that the majority of people that are proactively using these services are sneezers of one sort or another. Indeed the casually promiscuous sneezers fall into the category that we highlighted at the beginning of this article, namely people who are following and liking everything in their path if there is a prize draw or discount in it for their trouble.

So your social media campaign MUST bear both categories of sneezer in mind and treat them accordingly.

Here are some techniques which will help you harness the power of Social media sneezers:

1) Make it relevant

Think of your brand personality, your product, what people perceive you as. Whatever form your campaign takes, it must reflect your personality and enhance that perception with your target audience.

2) Encourage viral seeding

The cornerstone of spreading a virus is to make it easy, appealing and rewarding to do so. Your campaign treat, freebie or offer must be easily (and ideally engagingly) shareable. Think: apps that make an amusing video or image using your uploaded photo or a game that enhances your brand personality (see Doritos for examples). Reward the promiscuous with extra entries for the more people they refer, a bigger discount, an extra free gift. Always make it very easy to share your efforts. The promiscuous types are going to shout about any little extras they earn. They yearn for this validation / attention.

3) Get the Edge - don't let up after starting your Facebook campaign

It's tempting to think that creating a FB promo and setting up the prizes, or whatever, is the end of the story. To mis-quote the Jim'll Fix it Song - your effort was only the start of it. Promotional Marketing makes passing reference to Facebook's EdgeRank. EdgeRank determines what appears on your news feed when you sign in to Facebook. So, it's a very important part of getting your campaign message across and motivating sneezers.

An Edge, as far as Facebook is concerned, is every interaction you make whilst on Facebook - every like, every photo uploaded, every status update creates an edge. EdgeRank uses an algorithm to determine the order of news items on your Facebook feed based on Affinity (how friendly you are with the entity you interacted with), Edge Weight (some events like a photo, have more of an edge than just 'liking' something*) and Recency (or time decay - the older the less relevant without being ageist of course). We'll focus on EdgeRank in more detail below.

4) Don't lose momentum

It's easy to get complacent and stop when you've reached a target number of Likes etc. but your Social Media equity can soon plunge like a black day on the stock market. You wouldn't just stop talking to real friends just because you've got enough so why do it to your virtual friends?

Predictably there are plenty of services out there that will help you get your brand up the EdgeRank and make your marketing efforts work harder for you. EdgeRankChecker was the top result in Google last time we checked!

But, if you prefer a more hands-on approach, here are some Top Tips to make your Social Media activity create a buzz and give you the edge on EdgeRank.

Increase affinity with your fans before a campaign / launch to increase your presence on their news feed - create some teasers, start a debate, ask questions related to your brand etc - Where, When, Why and Would are a good place to start
Post Games, Apps and Trivia - these score highly on EdgeRank
Interact with fans - respond to them, start conversations
Upload relevant Photos, videos or use Wall Sapplets (polls, coupons, etc) all of which rank higher than regular posts
Time is of the essence - determine when most of your fans tend to login to their accounts and start interacting with you then time your posts accordingly to be top of their news feed (if your EdgeRank is healthy of course). Also, make your activity time-sensitive and make a big fuss of building up to the event as well as during and after!
Use Links in your posts - they may rank lower than photos or videos but links can still encourage engagement and do have an impact on objects overall EdgeRank
Spell it Out clearly - apart from in teaser campaigns where cryptic is the name of the game, if you want your fans to take a particular action, tell them what to do. Research by Buddy Media found that fans follow instructions well. The simpler the better.

Conclusion

Like most aspects of marketing, forewarned is forearmed. It's all very well doing a big, expensive, glitzy promotion, but it won't fulfil its potential if you don't pay attention to the details, the build up and keeping the dialogue ongoing, fresh and interesting. Every penny counts when you're putting together a social media campaign so you have to make sure every effort is as effective as possible. Go and start spreading those Sneezes!

* See! We told you gettings Likes on Facebook isn't all it's cracked up to be!

PromoWatch Top 10 November 2011 - Wrigleys Extra Tooth Fairy squeezes out Ocean Spray's Berries

2011-12-05T14:16:35+00:00

Here is a snap shot of the top 10 promotions featured on PromoWatch in November 2011 based on unique page views.

No.	Promotion	% of Views	Avg. Time on Page
1. (4)	Wrigleys Extra - Tooth Fairy	13.71%	1m 58s
2. (-)	New Covent Garden Soup - Win a Farm	8.36%	2m 5s
3. (6)	Becks - Free Music Downloads	7.49%	3m 26s
4. (2)	Crisp 'n Dry - Win cash for Christmas	7.16%	2m 10s
5. (3)	Kit-Kat - Win your perfect break	6.86%	1m 42s
6. (1)	Ocean Spray - Bounce your berry	5.62%	3m 2s
7. (-)	McDonald's - Best Ever Free Coca-Cola glass	5.54%	1m 43s
8. (7)	Discovery Food - Win family fun at home	2.06%	2m 43s
9. (-)	Laughing Cow - Win a 5-Star Farm Break	1.31%	1m 39s
10. (17)	Ski - Family Holiday Offer	1.22%	1m 25s

Comment
Ocean Spray's Bounce you Berry has been toppled from the no. 1 spot by Wrigleys Extra Tooth Fairy, although it's still hanging on to the top 10. Looking over the list freebies and prize draws dominate with a surprising trend towards Farm related prizes emerging - if you can call two promotions a trend or an emergence for that matter.

Creating and Building your brand Personality - Don't be Bland, be a standout Brand!

2011-11-16T14:41:17+00:00

Creating a point of difference, attracting like-minded customers and creating a cultural buzz around your brand are compelling reasons for developing a bit of personality. Well-defined character traits, style, attitude etc should underpin and define everything you do whether it's your communications, design, company ethics, promotional offering/mechanic and the brands, causes or celebrities you choose to associate with.

So, where do you get your personality from?

Nature: Where does anyone get their personality from? Part of it is driven by the very nature of your product or the reason behind a product's inception in the first place. Clearly if you have an established brand there will be certain characteristics inherent in your name already. If you like those characteristics then that is a ready platform to build on. If not, or the character has fallen behind the times it is still possible to re-brand or relaunch. (e.g. McDonald's dropping Ronald McDonald for the hipper "I'm Loving It" vibe)

Nurture: Part of the personality is driven by traits that would appeal to your target audience. For banking / Insurance you want security, dependability and trust but for a children's snack brand anarchy, irreverence and boldness will push the right buttons.

How can the personality manifest?

A Physical Character: literally embodying the brand or logo e.g. Peperami Animal, Churchill Dog, Andrex Puppies and the inevitable Meerkat.
Communications: from packaging and point of sale through to YouTube and even in-flight announcements.
Your ethos: practise what you preach. If you're positioning is all about health, fairness and sustainability this should be reflected in your supply chain, how you work with your suppliers.
Promotional mechanics: how a consumer participates in your promotion is enhanced if it plays on your brand's characteristics - say a heat and reveal on a hot beverage, using a bottle cap for a free swim - or Schwim Caps as they were known
Collaborations: you might consider a cheeky brand ambassador like Gary Lineker or a hot tie up with Spotify. You gain kudos, respect and appeal by association.
Causes: The most obvious example is McVities Penguin, who have made a long term commitment to P..P..Protect the Penguin. They've featured associations with WWF and offered Penguin Adoptions as an instant win.
Sponsorship: A handy option, but by no means exclusively, for those brands or services which are less glamourous, haven't got presence on supermarket shelves or other avenue for expressing themselves or they just plain ain't allowed to by law. We're talking financial services, furniture, mobile networks etc.
Social Networks: These many and varied channels can perform spectacularly if done properly and hey, they've got all the tools you need right there to get started straight away. Posting photos, videos, regular commentary, engaging with consumers, apps, games, promotions. It's all possible. BUT, and it's a big BUTT, your social media strategy shouldn't be planned lightly. If you start it, you need to apportion the resources to keep it going. Nothing looks worse than a Twitter feed or a Facebook page which hasn't been updated 2 months. Cheaply earned Likes and Follows count for nothing if you don't keep the consumer engaged.

Here are a few of our favourite brand personalities...

Innocent's humour, friendliness and enthusiasm is plain for everyone to see. Their stunningly simple promotion The Big Knit will have raised a total of over £1 million for Age by the end of this year's campaign. It engages consumers, creates stand-out on shelf and raises money for a great cause, all with personality and humour. And that just says it all about this amazing personality.

Kulula the South African no-frills airline could be seen as mildly reckless or cavalier injecting humour into passenger safety announcements, but it seems to work. Whether it's the amusing livery on their fleet of aircraft or the in-flight announcements, Kulula deliver bags of laughs as well as hopefully delivering your bags at your destination. Here are some real life examples of Kulula's announcements:

"Kulula Airlines is pleased to announce that we have some of the best flight attendants in the industry. Unfortunately, none of them are on this flight!”
“Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to smoke, the smoking section on this airplane is on the wing. If you can light ‘em, you can smoke ‘em.”
“Thank you for flying Kulula. We hope you enjoyed giving us the business as much as we enjoyed taking you for a ride.”

The Peperami Animal has been around since 1993 and the 'It's a bit of an animal' slogan has formed the backbone of their marketing ever since. Their 'Win a Fanimal' campaign was an inspired piece of subversive marketing to capitalise on the World Cup without being a sponsor. I'll let the Animal explain their ethos: "Throw me, hit me, squeeze me – I can take it, I’m a bit of an animal – and I’ll unleash the rants. Those lentil eating, veggie foreign teams won’t know what hit ‘em."

So, if you're considering a change of personality or giving birth to a new brand entity, whatever you do - be bold. Stick with what you believe in and, like the Peperami Animal, your brand personality will soon take on a life of it's own. Good Luck!

Daily Deals websites are great for the consumer but could be putting small businesses at risk

2011-11-04T07:53:25+00:00

I have to admit that when the concept of group-buying to achieve unbelievable discounts came to the UK, that I initially felt concern for our own USP - that of providing discount partners for sales promotion and loyalty. But, on closer scrutiny, I realised that the short term and ultra-localised nature of most of the offers would not represent any real threat to our business.

But you could perhaps forgive me for indulging in a certain amount of schadenfreude when the wider world, including the BBC no less, wake up to the fact that the business model employed by the likes of Groupon, KGB Deals etc is grossly unfair on the merchants providing the discounts.

Now it would be foolish to criticise the concept as a whole. I myself enjoyed an unbelievably cheap two course meal for four a few weeks ago in a venue (and a part of town for that matter) that I would have never ventured into unwittingly. And the chances are, I probably never will again. Not by any failing on the part of the restaurant but purely because there is always another deal to try. And therein lies the problem. If merchants are providing a higher than 50% discount this is an almighty loss-leader if they don't receive any (full-paying) repeat business or are unable to up-sell them on any additional services. In this scenario the promised deluge of new customers can soon turn from a dream into a costly nightmare.

This approach is completely against our principles at Mosaic effectively leaching the lifeblood of your own business. For Mosaic the welfare and success of our partner's business is paramount and fundamental to our mutual survival. We strive to protect the brand interest and objectives of our partners every bit as much as our clients. Mosaic is in it for the long haul in all our relationships. Without a willing, enthusiastic and trusting database of partners we wouldn't survive.

Our advice to anyone embarking on a Daily Deals campaign is be careful. As experts in third party marketing, here is our advice on how to protect your business:

Think long and hard about whether this option is right for you. If you're a new business it's tempting to get as many customers through the door as possible. But there are good customers and bad customers. Bargain-hunters who are out to just enjoy the deal and not buy any extras will cost you more than not having a client at all.
Don't be pressurised into offering more than you can reasonably afford - ideally structure the deal so that you at least break even
Remember to brief staff for the inevitable flood of bookings at all steps in the process. If you're a face to face service business ensure that everyone raises their game: friendly manner, product knowledge, attentitiveness
Up-sell sell sell - but don't be pushy. It's a fine line I know.
Consider talking to a third party promotions specialist like Mosaic. We can partner you with some of the UK's leading brands reaching customer bases of millions at no cost.

PromoWatch Top 10 - Ocean Spray Bouncing Berry still flying high

2011-11-01T09:58:32+00:00

Here is a snap shot of the top 10 promotions featured on PromoWatch in October 2011 based on unique page views.

No.	Promotion	% of Views	Avg. Time on Page
1. (1)	Ocean Spray - Bounce your berry	10.87%	3m 14s
2. (-)	Crisp 'n Dry - Win cash for Christmas	8.09%	2m 2s
3. (2)	Kit-Kat - Win your perfect break	7.21%	1m 34s
4. (-)	Wrigleys Extra - Tooth Fairy	7.73%	1m 55s
5. (6)	Actimel - Win 500 back packs	3.08%	1m 22s
6. (4)	Becks - Free Music Downloads	4.32%	4m 19s
7. (7)	Discovery Food - Win family fun at home	3.22%	2m 3s
8. (8)	Sainsbury's - Summer Savings	2.71%	3m 6s
9. (-)	Doritos/Pepsi Max - Vegas or Iceland	2.01%	1m 31s
10. (3)	Mars - Bag a million movies	1.83%	3m 9s

Comment
Bounce you Berry continues to bear fruit for Ocean Spray allbeit with half of the unique views from the previous month. We can't really fathom what's causing this cranberry clamour save for the fact that it is a Facebook based promotion, but you still have to enter a code from packs to win. Whatever it is, there's something viral going on which may counter what we thought from a social networking loyalty programme point of view. It all begs the question, when will Bounce Your Berry run out of juice?

Otherwise we have a mix of 3 new entries, 2 promotions which are repeating a previous concept, 2 non-movers of 5 which haven't moved much. Sainsbury's Summer Savings actually finished at the end of September. Some people obviously don't want summer to end...