The pitches that come back from various agencies are like job interviews. Creating a brief will mean a company is able to ‘interview’ the shortlisted agencies , allowing them to consider a wide range of results; hopefully finding a potential campaign that can uphold their brand values to retain loyal consumers, and present them effectively to attract new customers. 

In order to make sure a campaign will convey the message that a brand is trying to represent, it is important for the agency to have a clear picture of the brand and its message, so there is no confusion about their role or what you want them to do for you. This is why writing a brief is so important. 

A brief should be clear, concise and well written. It does not necessarily have to be long, but should contain relevant background information about the brand; for example, what the brand currently represents, its competitors and the state of the market in which your product exists.

It is important to include information about your target market too, so an agency can tailor a campaign to the correct social group and the types of media outlets they use. It would be ineffective to send a press release about dentures to a teen magazine as it would not achieve the desired results; it is unlikely that this particular product suits this market!  

Your brief should discuss what you wish to achieve from a campaign. Do you want the image of the brand to change? Are you trying to make sure your brand’s image and values stay constant to retain loyal customers? Or are you looking to draw more attention to your product in the hope of an increase in sales? Once these objectives are clearly defined, it will be easier for an agency to create a solution that is effective in helping you achieve your objectives.

Details should also be given on how long you want a potential campaign to last and whether it should run alongside or avoid any similar campaigns. It is important to provide a budget to ensure that the agency can allocate the appropriate resources and develop a campaign that is affordable while delivering the desired results.  Companies may not provide agencies with a budget because they want to see what the agency “comes up with”.  While this freedom on budget may seem like a good idea, it leaves a great deal of room for disappointment. The agencies will have to draw their conclusions on what you might have to spend and base their creative development on parameters that may be totally wrong.  The company could receive highly creative and broad programmes which are above their budget, or conversely could receive proposals that are based on too small a budget and therefore the campaign is not as far-reaching as it might be.

A well written brief will benefit everyone, so it’s important to put time and effort into writing one. This will avoid mixed-message which can cause confusion and result in lots of questions coming back to you from the agency.  A clear brief will yield significantly better pitches and ultimately lead to a successful campaign.

Lindsay Coates-Ledden – Golley Slater PR Cambridge

Great promotions use all of these methods to reinforce the message your customer carries into store. So it’s vital that your above-the-line activity has the right backing in-store to succeed! Strategic use of barkers, floor stickers, FSDUs, in-store radio, retail events etc. will guarantee your launch or promotion generates maximum sales.

Issues with timing between your campaign going live and your product’s availability can see customers trying to buy a product they can’t find. Or worse still, your product hits stores but nobody knows due to a lag in your above-the-line campaign.

Timing is everything, and at Golley Slater we have the expertise to deliver outstanding results every time by coordinating in-store and above-the-line activity.

Our specialist retail team works together with brand owners, helping them connect with shoppers.  To see one of our campaigns for Lenor click here.

Emma Sutcliffe
Golley Slater Retail
Leeds

The most important factor about this trend is not the product – it is the occasion and its validity in our modern lifestyle. Despite this, retailers annually promote the ’spring clean’ event when very few of us will go anywhere near a feather duster.

Some of the best loved occasions have been engineered — from ‘Jif lemon day,’ to the more contrived ‘Doritos and a movie.’ But then there’s the inevitable jump onto the world cup bandwagon which often lacks a little imagination (Read about it in Marketing). Yes, the snacks and drinks market will see the undoubted benefits as it fits with the occasion of watching football, but how much more petrol will Esso sell offering free cardboard ‘medals’ with every £15 spend.

The occasion and product have to fit and create an emotional connection. By identifying the mood and matching it to both a suitable product and event, we have recipe for success. Retailers are constantly looking to create occasions, so what better way to support them, sell some products and raise your game.

Emma Sutcliffe
Golley Slater Retail
Leeds

David Carr of The New York Times wrote recently that Apple’s tablet would be nothing less than “the second coming of the iPhone, a so-called Jesus tablet that can do anything, including saving some embattled print providers from doom.”

The result, after the launch of this new piece of voodoo from the people at the forefront of technology has been a monumental disappointment. It seems to be no more than an electronic book, magazine or newspaper – with internet access and a few nice apps and a screen that will screw your eyes up in about 15 minutes!

What’s interesting is why some of us expected so much more from a new gadget. I suspect this is because for some people, technology has become a kind of religion. We may not believe in a God anymore, but just as 500 years ago the Spanish missionaries put shiny mirrors in churches to dazzle the Incas and draw them in – we still like to see shiny new things that fill us with awe.

We’re living in an age of change and upheaval – yet technology gives us the illusion of control, a sense of order. Pick up a smart phone or turn on your laptop and you have a reliable, dependable device that does whatever you tell it to do. And no wonder a lot of people in the media wanted to believe that a new device from Apple could stop the decline of our industry’s Newspapers and magazines. Both are struggling to adapt to the Internet, and no one has any idea what our business will look like when we get to the other side of this wrenching period. The iPad may very well be the answer …….. eventually. But not from day one – and not until you get one free when you sign up to a year’s subscription of …. whatever.

It says more about us and what we have come to expect from Apple than Apple itself. Yet Apple did not invent the MP3 player, and they where not the first to think of distributing music over the internet. What they did was make it ‘cool’. In a world where Apple only have a 5% share of the mobile market and about the same in home computing – I don’t think the iPad is the savior of the printed word. But its quite cool. Should have called it the iWant.

Brands have always been able to play quality as the differentiator over retailers own label, but the gap is closing and in some categories is now negligible in the minds of shoppers. Therefore quality must now encompass a wider range of factors including perception, taste, performance, usage, convenience or meaningful association.

The question remains ‘Will the activity win over price conscious customers?’ If the promotion builds additional recognition and value for some well loved brands then it has a good chance of success.

Click here for the full article.

Emma Sutcliffe
Golley Slater Retail
Leeds

Chris Lovell, Group CEO

The only sector of marketing in the UK that has not gone into reverse in terms of spend has been digital, all other sectors have suffered to one degree or more. It’s clear that marketer’s consider digital to be an essential part of the marketing spend. Numerous brands are now thinking more carefully about how they develop their creative assets to work best in alternative video platforms such as mobile, podcasts and YouTube and less likely to jump straight into TV production without these elements being considered up-front.

The big story this year is the up-coming general election and how each political party conducts itself with digital and social media. The digital marketers here have really been wowed by the Obama campaign’s use of digital and in particular social networking to connect with voters. Everyone seems to be watching how the main political parties will conduct themselves. We are seeing a serious take up of smart phones and clients are very interested in what can be done through apps. Clients are seeing the benefits of mobile; they still rightly want to make sure it’s having a positive impact on both brand measures and sales.

John Kinder, Digital Managing Director

We visit all the leading retailers on a weekly basis to identify new store and sales innovations. We carry out category audits and competitor analysis for the brand owners who we work with, to initiate creative campaigns that build brands and sales.

At a time when retailers are demanding ever more support from brand owners, by knowing about the most recent developments in each retailer you can ensure you stay ahead of the competition.

Then came the age of the slogan. The likes of Drinka Pinta Milka Day, Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet, Heineken refreshes the parts, Beanz Meanz Heinz, Go to work on a egg, This is the age of the train, The Wonders of Woolies etc.

Then came a kind of reformation or culture revolution. A new breed of ad agencies found everything about these campaigns irredeemably naff. They started to create campaigns for which PhD in post-modern deconstructionism was required to discover exactly what was being advertised.

The American journalist and wit, H L Mencken, famously observed that nobody ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the public. Today Messrs Murdoch, Desmond and others are proving him right. The Sun and News of the World are extremely popular whilst the Times and Sunday Times are not. The Daily Star is the only UK daily to be growing significantly. Jilly Cooper outsells Salman Rushdie in spades. Millions more people watch Big Brother than Simon Schama on TV. More people like a story with a beginning, middle and an end, than the puzzling mind games so beloved of the critics.

The new wave of ad agencies in contrast, intellectualizes the business, turning Mencken’s dictum on its head. Their watchwords might as well be legal, decent, honest and obscure. The beautifully crafted works of art which sometimes masquerade as advertising risk going so far over the heads of their audiences that they could come to the attention of the President’s Star Wars shield.

More than ever, social media sites have opened the door for the general public to become columnists in their own right.  The internet has given your target audience a much bigger platform from which they can voice their opinions, share information and experiences and post recommendations. 

The breadth of conversations taking place on the internet on any given subject is immense and yes, in case you’re wondering, your brand, business and service is a topic of conversation too. 

The fact is you can’t choose not to be involved in social media.  You may not have allocated any of your marketing spend to it, but internet users are having these conversations about you whether you like it or not.  

If you have been marketing your brand or service, especially using the discipline of PR, then it doesn’t have to be a daunting prospect.  It’s a case of adapting your skills and messages to suit the medium.  Like all PR it can’t be fully controlled but it can drive trust and credibility in your brand or service. 

According to a Nielson online survey, 78 per cent of people trust the recommendation of other consumers before any other form of marketing while 68 per cent trust opinions posted online.  These are persuasive statistics that re-enforce the need for a strategically robust PR and social media campaign to be part of your overall marketing plan. 

You need to engage your consumer, help shape the dialogue and be a part of the conversation.  After all, it is about you.

Claire Rushton, Head Of Office (Leeds & Newcastle)