UXIdeas blog

I went to the Engage for Branding half day conference with the IAB yesterday. It was basically all about how the Internet and mobile can be used to build brands – not just for direct response and transactions. All presentations will be uploaded here in the next couple of days: http://www.iabuk.net/en/1/eventsarch.html

It started off with a study completed by aevolve research and the IAB on the success of OLA for retail brands. Slightly depressing facts like only 5% of the perception we have of retail brands comes from marketing communications. Good news for digital though – as 40% of this 5% comes from online advertising, but OLA only constitutes 2.5% of the marcoms spend of retail brands on average. Websites and ecommerce were also huge factors in building perceptions. I am going to get the woman from aevolve in as they have an interesting tracking methodology that involves qual to define metrics, then quant, then modelling that takes into account channel effects and weights each metric. Please let me know if you would be interested.

Next up were AOL who talked about their “Brand New World” research on how brands are built online. Find it here online: http://www.digitaltrainingacademy.com/research/AOL_Brand_New_World.pdf

The a guy from Worth who has been looking into the use of online video and pre-rolls on video sites. Nothing groundbreaking, just a case study from McCain who put their TV ad online. He did borrow heavily from the following EIAA Media Consumption report however, which is interesting. Key highlights available online: http://www.eiaa.net/Ftp/casestudiesppt/EIAA%5FMediascope%5FEurope%5F2007%5FPan%5FEuropean%5FExecutive%5FSummary%2Epdf

Next was the founder of Pigsback who banged on about how great his portal was as a place where people want to actively engage with brands. Pigsback supposedly has over 400,000 active members. He did have an interesting case study from Baileys however which you can look at once his presentation is uploaded. What I found interesting was the fact that they could trace redeemed coupons back to individuals so they could then survey them on their experience of the product. They can also survey people who printed the coupon but never redeemed and found many still bought the product anyway – interesting for Burger King!

Next a boring case study about Lucazade Sport. He did reference a good speech from Jim Stengel (Some big wig at P&G) at the AAAR last year which asserts that marketing should now be about understanding NOT controlling behaviour. See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7MzPJJDPmc

He also referenced the MEthod brand of cleaning products in the US, who have used digital well and made cleaning high interest and “sexy”. I have saved a Datamonitor case study here: S:\Digital Planning Resources\Research New\Industries\FMCG\Method Cleaning Products Case Study 2008 Datamonitor.pdf

Finally there was a talk from the Digital Strategy Director of Lowe on their creation of the newish Stella Artois site which has won countless awards. His basic idea was to make navigation into a dramatic narrative experience NOT just a flat way to display information. Take a look for yourself: http://www.stellaartois.com/agecheck.php?from=http%3A%2F/www.stellaartois.com/ Beautiful use of interactive video and another great example that it is a little traditional story telling that can make brands interesting.

He also mentioned a word of mouth marketing company who seeded the site to bloggers. They provided them with special silk screen posters and coasters. Nice bit of blogger relations. The company was called 1,000 Heads – check them out: http://www.brandvocal.com/1000heads/