Greenpeace in war with Unilever

I’ve been coming across articles on Unilever using palm oil from Indonesian rainforests for a while now. Greenpeace started a war against that act as the biota of the ecological system is threatened. Along with the climate changes, what we don’t need is less green and extinction of animal species. Three companies are on Greenpeace’s side; Lexisw PR, JCPR and Ogilvy that will hopefully push Unilever to stop using palm oil. There is evidence indicating that the brand Dove of Unilever make extent use of it for its products causing damages to the rainforests of Indonesia. Lets hope Greenpeace meets its cause and Unilever is finally stopped.

 

‘Inspired Gift’ by Unicef

‘Inspired Gift’ is another program launched by Unicef, which allows people to buy presents such as food, medicine for HIV patients, maternal health equipment, and so on. Unicef asked three companies including the WWAV Rapp Collins to apply by the end of the month in order to be able to participate to this effort so that the spec will take place in May. The sponsor will run the campaign in a below the line level for the program’s promotion, which will also promote the philanthropic weddings list of the organization. We’ll get back to it in May to see how it went…

Interamerican’s new online campaign

OgilvyOne keeps expanding by being assigned to very important and creative moves. This time, it designed two lines of interactive video banners for the communication and promotion of Interamerican’s programmes on retirement pension and residence. I would be more than happy to show you the video banners I found, but unfortunately they are only available in greek, so there’s no point. The key message of the campaign is ‘when you have Interamerican looking after your pension and housing facilities, then you have less important things to worry about yourself’. The campaign is accompanied by an online competition and there will be a draw in which the winners will be offered 10 GPS Navigators Mio C 230. The online media planning and buying, as well as the promotion of this campaign in Search engines has been organised by OgilvyOne. I am not quite sure for this campaign’s success yet, time will tell…

Who’s interested? NIKE’s European Competition

Nike gives the opportunity to European artists to create a piece that will ‘decorate’ its special footwear edition ‘Nike Dunks’. Emerging artists, photographers and directors are all invited to upload their piece to a digital gallery and then they will be judged by experts. The winner will have the chance to exhibit at the Basel Art Fair and will actually design the limited edition of Nike Dunks. It’s a great opportunity for those who are interested as it’s easy to participate at the official site of 1/1, which is the name of the competition.

Direct e-Marketing as part of Webmarketing 2008

I recently read an article on an online source about a list that constructs webmarketing for 2008. I was very interested when I saw direct e-marketing in that list, defined as the method that uses all available media in the internet to get the message across to the customer via emailing, newsletter, and so on. It’s pretty well-known that during 2006 and 2007 the rage of customers was increased, mostly because of spammers and excessive advertising that can become disturbing. So for instance, when the popular French website www.rueducommerce.fr, which was very appealing in the begginning because of its low prices in electronics, computers, and so on, but after a while it was characterised as causing ethical disturbance to its customers as it kept sending about 15 adverts to each one of them on a daily basis. In my opinion, the ethical lesson from this could be that bad use of e-marketing is suicide for the user.

The new world of Social Media Release

We’ve been working in a group as a part of a module’s assessment (PR & New Media) on a presentation about Social Media News Releases and I thought I’d use that as an opportunity to share a few things we came across. But lets start from the beginning…what is SMNR and what’s its future?

That is a definition we found and I believe it’s best to use it as it is: ‘A new kind of press release aimed at both journalists and bloggers. It does not include the ’spin’ of the traditional press release, but provides multimedia content in an accessible format that can easily be repurposed and shared on blogs, websites and social networks’.

SMNRs were first launched by Todd Deffren, who also sent one to PR Newswire in order to launch it. That met great success as within a week more than 2500 templates have been downloaded.

The following video shows how Webitpr people see SMNRs, what they make of it, their expectations, and so on. Of course i need to mention to this point, like we did in the presentation, that this is not necessarily the global way to utilize SMNRs, but one single company’s opinion.

But why do we need SMNRs? Why is it advised for companies to adopt it? First of all, they work absolutely great in accordance to traditional press releases, without being binned by journalists. They are sent via email and even if you don’t use it, you can always get back to it anytime you want. Plus you have the choice to read or not to read the whole of it, to open more links that appear in the release if you are very interested in the story covered, and so on. It’s really useful as important news are spread around the world very fast, and also shared with people, whether journalists, bloggers or customers. Since it works as a catalyst for the socialization of news, conversations should be continuous and have updates to keep the people engaged. 

We also came up with some negatives, for instance how SMNRs can be ignored by search engines, such as Google, if they are not published through a social platform (e.g. WordPress, Blogger, etc.), or the fact that since it’s still a new tool, greater effort should be made in order to write interesting and newsworthy stories, so that their importance will be recognised and will finally be adopted by more companies. We shouldn’t forget that SMNRs are only 2 years old and lots of companies aren’t savvy enough to use them. It is estimated that in its 5th birthday it will be more widely used. 

An issue of great controversy appears to be the fact that sometimes news reach the journalists before becoming official. That’s considered as a positive feature of SMNR as who wouldn’t love to have the release beforehand? Still, we should consider the case in which the news never becomes official, something that could possibly cause problems and builds bad reputation because of the unreliability of the source.

An example of a successful social media news release follows in the link below in order to illustrate what it looks like and what it contains.

Speed of change – Marketing

The traditional model of marketing keeps changing due to technological evolution, whereas comsumers demand know all the information, marketers come face-to-face with the new methods and processes of customers’ engagement and the term ROI is always in their vocabulary. In this time of radical change, Communication changes as well as the character of Agency, which becomes more of a Marketing Services Provider. Brand Advertising and Direct Marketing merge to a new Agency format, which is Channel Agnostic as it is not included anywhere in the media that modulate the communication’s final shape.

Whether in online or offline environment, we always have a goal in our mind. For the consumer to be on an engagement mood, a mood built if we follow the steps below, which are fundamental for the success of online maketing:

1. Reach
2. Acquire
3. Convert
4. Retain

Living in a world of great developments of technological, economic and social character, I realised those steps have a great impact in communications and advertising. In these evolutionary years, creation explodes as in a little ‘box’ of 300×250 pixels you can combine image, sound, video, real time data, and so on. And as technology becomes more advanced, it gets cheaper and then it becomes even more familiar to everyone, whether consumers, advertisers, etc. The notion of Multinational Marketing gets stronger and stronger and the traditional models (tourism, education, consulting services, real estate) are reallocated in all levels. In addition to this, the evolution of the market and economy by establishing a digital personality, illustrates the new face of Agency, which is Digital at Heart!

Web2.0…are we all ready?

YouTube and MySpace, which are the most popular pieces of the new internet’s era, the so-called web2.0, have been redeemed for billion dollars and led marketeers, advertisers and the media to become delirious for the User Generated Content (UGC) explosion. But there are much more types of web2.0 such as Flickr, Bedo, Faceparty, and even before those, Habbo Hotel, as well as all those dense forums that are as old as the Internet (at least in USA) and comprise representative pieces of internet communities.

A useful video follows, which I believe clearly identifies web2.0 and helps for a better understanding of its tools and functions.

Everybody is trying to understand what exactly happened with the low budget companies such as Google and YouTube that have become number one in the world of commercial business? And why do people use Google instead for examle Yahoo or MSN, which merit great support?

I think the secret lies in the internet’s nature, which started as a free, non-commercial communication channel among communities and later among users. Apart from the advanced technology, the simplicity and the speed of user interface, the answer lies in the politics of Google’s services, which present objective search results.

Thus, in order to approach the web2.0 phenomenon as well as the future of the internet, regardless of its name or version, we should at last understand the nature of its medium an audience, contrary to the market communication that seems to have difficulties in acting, no matter the increasing budgets in the internet. Obviously web2.0 is not like television or brand site. The users  respond, sometimes harshly and always in public…Are we all ready for this?

Event Marketing, Arts & Blogs

I recently read an article on event marketing and I found really interesting the way it was connected to the arts. It is true that the world of events has many similarities to the world of arts and there are plenty of times it borrows elements in order to be successful. At the same time, Arts seem to borrow tools commonly used by events communication, for instance professionalism in organization, which has increased their sensation. Video art, multimedia installations, happenings and performances include similar elements in both worlds that are exchanged without any discernible limits. In my opinion, this exchange and experimentation are in favour of both sides. Blog generation is a reflective and challenging generation.  It easily distinguishes the setup from the impulsive, the affected from the authentic, and so on. That differentiation, that choice or rejection include for the new generation a type of ‘political piece’. So, event marketing’s professionals would better take into consideration that new cuture.