It's Christmas, Jim, but not as we know it...

Embracing the Christmas spirit, numerous administrative and retail bodies have come together to treat the people of Hull to a magical cavalcade of Yuletide activity!

Brought to you by Hull BID and with sleigh-loads of support from Hull City Council, eskimosoup have created a one-stop resource for all things festive in the City Centre: ChristmasInHull.co.uk

Participating venues include Hull City Hall, Holy Trinity Church, Hull Museums, Hull Truck Theatre, Hull New Theatre, Hull Arena, Bonus Arena, Hull University and the three shopping centres, St Stephen's, Princes Quay and the Prospect Centre. And the events are even more varied, from an abseiling Santa to real-life reindeer, Dickensian street characters to traditional fair rides, all surrounded by the warm glow of festive illuminations and the alluring aroma of roast chestnuts and mulled wine. 

This is the first time that so many individual departments and firms in Hull have pooled their resources to create a one-stop online diary of events, news and essential Christmastime information, so make sure to keep checking the website and follow the Facebook and Twitter accounts to keep up-to-date with this Advent calendar of excitement!

Oh, and don't forget that the City Centre Lights Switch-on is this Thursday, the 24th November!

Good Healthy Marketing

When it comes to websites, blogs, brochures and things like this, it’s quite easy to talk-the-talk, though often this doesn’t provide the reader with any real substance. With this in mind, I thought it would be better to show you how when it comes to working with the NHS we walk the walk through an overview of eskimosoup’s recent experience and examples of creative solutions to some pretty tough challenges!

If you’d like to be sent our portfolio of work with the NHS, including profiles on 20 projects and campaigns we’ve delivered, please email john@eskimosoup.co.uk or call 01482 223866

In the meantime and for quick reference; here are 10 recent achievements to give you a flavour of our work:

1. Midwife Hull
We worked with NHS Hull to develop "Midwife Hull" the first interactive Facebook profile from the NHS. As well as achieving healthy lifestyle behavioural change amongst young pregnant women, the campaign achieved significant TV and press coverage. We even took a call from Facebook’s marketing team who wanted to use it in their PR!

2. No Smoking Day
We developed a programme of activities for No Smoking Day in Hull by setting members of our company an Apprentice-style challenge to come up with innovative and engaging ways of spreading important messages. We generated events with Hull City football club, Hull FC rugby club, a shopping centre, a brass band and even a group of student zombies out promoting health messages – crucially, the activity contributed to a 21% increase in stop smoking services accessed that month.

3. How's Your Business Feeling?
Along with NHS Stoke and partners we developed "How's Your Business Feeling?"; an interactive self-assessment and training resource helps managers and organisations to create a mentally healthy workplace that is inclusive and supportive of people with experience of mental health problems.

4. 365 (Annual Report)
Working with NHS Hull’s communications team we developed 365; a way of breathing new life into the Trust’s annual report through an attractive magazine-style design. The report received the Award of Excellence at the Association of Communicators in Business Awards in 2010.

5. Health Central
eskimosoup were appointed as marketing lead for the launch of Health Central; the UK’s first integrated healthy lifestyles centre on the High Street. The diverse launch programme of events was hailed a success and achieved the target of services being accessed within the first 12 months.

6. Throat Cancer Campaign
Humber and Yorkshire Coast Cancer Network commissioned eskimosoup to run a 3 month marketing campaign to raise the awareness of symptoms of laryngeal cancer and lead to behaviour change amongst men aged 45+ in wards of Hull and Grimsby. Still in progress at the time of writing this – the campaign has seen a healthy direct response through high impact communications at events, in press, radio and TV.

7. Blokes Jokes
eskimosoup partnered with NHS Hull to use Hull Comedy Festival as a vehicle to connect with men in Hull living in areas of deprivation on issues surrounding physical health. Working with local comedians and bars, we developed the innovative "Bloke Jokes" programme which independent researchers reported scored very highly in terms of recall and attitude change. This was followed by a second phase "For Better, For Worse" which is still in development.

8. Working for Mental Health
eskimosoup developed "Working for Mental Health" which is our first project used centrally by the Department of Health.

9. Peter’s Story (Suicide Prevention)
We were appointed by NHS Hull to roll-out a key aspect of their suicide prevention strategy. This involved targeted distribution of a DVD resource called "Peter’s Story" along with an events and PR programme which included TV, radio and press features. Due to the great work by NHS Hull, Peter’s Story is cited as a best practice case in the national suicide prevention strategy.

10. Path to Success
Working on behalf of Earning & Learning at the NHS we developed a programme called the "Path to Success" which was rolled out across all secondary schools in Hull and was facilitated by Britain’s Got Talent Finalists and martial arts duo, Strike. The programme received 100% positive feedback from all participating schools.

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We recently began working on some interesting projects for the teams at NHS Nottinghamshire and NHS Leeds, so hope to be able to report on more great results in 2012!

Remember, remember... What's the number one brand on Guy Fawkes Night?

Celebrations and festivities are big business. Christmas is obviously a time of increased commerce, but Easter, Mother's Day and Halloween are also times to cash in, as people pay out to make the special day even more special.

Companies look to make the most of these days, often launching specific campaigns aimed at the market, maybe giving adverts a spooky theme in the run up to All Hallows Eve or have them show Dad enjoying his new power drill, in the weeks before Father's Day.

Brands may even try to forge an association between the Holiday and what they sell, with the Holy Grail being them becoming synonymous with one another to the audience.

A famous example is Coca Cola at Christmas time. It's something of an urban legend that Coke actually invented Santa Clause, or at least the modern red and white version. In fact, this was already a standard look for the jovial gift giver before Coke adopted him into their advertising in the 1930's. But their campaign did get the word out and consolidated this image, along with the association with the soft drink, in the minds of millions.

And it still does. Every year, Santa is still central to Coke's advertising. They even use their original 1930's design by illustrator Haddon Sundblom, where Santa's enjoying a sip, and they always see a boost in their already massive sales.

To read more, there's an interesting article over at snopes.com.

So what about the fifth of November? What about Guy Fawkes Night?

What associated brand makes the most?

The photo above might give the game away, but I'll carry on regardless.

Fireworks sales are obviously up, but mainly in England. They celebrate in a few other places, but it's not an international holiday. Wood sales might be up. Perhaps toffee apples. Booze and party food too. Maybe scarves.

But all just in England and nothing particularly surprising or worthy of an article on the topic.

What about a film brand?

Like an advertising campaign, films can also be tailored to the time of year

There's been countless Christmas, Easter, Independence Day, Father's Day, Mother's Day, Halloween themed movies. If they're liked, they pack them in at the time and continue to sell on a yearly basis, through DVD's, Blu Rays, downloads and TV.

Even without a direct relevance, Star Wars made a mint at Christmas time, when their toys often dominated and made George Lucas a billionaire.

But there really aren't that many films associated with the fifth of November.

Again, it's an English celebration, on a single day, where most people are more likely to be outside enjoying a firework display than going to the cinema. There isn't a worldwide market, so Hollywood would never, ever make a film about the subject. Even Mel Gibson hasn't.

But Hollywood did make a film about a different 5th of November, inspired by the original, where a masked vigilante/anarchist/freedom fighter/terrorist succeeds where Guido Fawkes failed, and blows up the Houses of Parliament.

Released five years ago, V for Vendetta didn't do particularly well at the box office. It doubled it's production costs, but didn't set the world alight. It's perhaps a cult hit at most now.

But it's merchandise is a different story. It's merchandise has taken on a life of it's own, perhaps making sure the 5th of November will never be forgot. More next week...

Square versus Oblong! Which is best for profile images on facebook?

In last week's article I looked at a brilliant marketing campaign in Canada, where they'd taken the boring old square shreddie, tilted it to the side, and invented the wondrous new diamond shreddie.

Very much tongue in cheek, but very effective, with the humour really connecting with the audience and hence, significantly increasing sales of the breakfast cereal.

After giving squares such a kicking, I felt a little guilty, so this week I'll look at where they're top of the pile... at least in my opinion. It's an opinion that a lot of 'experts' would disagree with, but I'll give the arguments and you can make up your own mind.

Like many specialists, Marketers will give you opinion and advice and this may sometimes differ from what you'd get from others in the industry. If it's based on theory or personal experience, there's not always going to be a right and a wrong or it might be a new approach or a unique solution specific to the client.

Either way the client has to either simply trust the Marketer or examine their reasoning and past experience, then decide for themselves on the best course of action.

So, as the headline pretty much gives away, the contentious opinion I'm offering today is that a square profile picture on facebook is best, better than the long, oblong image recommended by the majority of Social Media Gurus and experts.

I've written for eskimosoup before on this subject and regularly recommend to clients that they don't use long profile images. However, as facebook and other Social Media platforms regularly update and change their layout and functionality, it's always worth reassessing practice.

One objection I used to hold on long profile images was how they appeared in thumbnails.

Unless a user is actually on a page, they will only see the thumbnail of a profile image. In searches at the top of the facebook page and in the newsfeed, it's the thumbnail that people see. As this is how the majority of people interact with a page, it's hugely important that the image displayed well.

Thumbnails for long profile images used to display a square from the center of the image. Though some savvy design, placing the logo or an appropriate image within this space, could solve the problem, many businesses didn't do this.

Because either they or their Marketing agency had no awareness of the importance of the center of the image, they'd have the vital information elsewhere. The company's name or logo might not display in the thumbnail or be cropped, leaving somewhat abstract thumbnails, looking unprofessional and meaningless.

At this point, we recommended a square image, with a 'bleed' of blank space around what was to be displayed in the thumbnail. It worked and meant that the facebook pages for our clients often had the edge on their competition.

Facebook then introduced the functionality whereby a page could define which portion of their profile image would appear in the thumbnail.

This certainly helped the problem, but around the same time, facebook also removed the horizontal navigation for a page. This meant that if a user wanted to visit the 'photos', notes', or anywhere else on a page, they needed to use the links beneath the profile image.

Unfortunately, the long profile image then pushed this navigation 'below the fold'.

If you're not familiar with this term, it harks back to good old fashioned paper marketing, when a letter would be folded into three before being placed in an envelope. The most important information should be placed in the first section, 'above the fold', as there would be a 'drop off' of people who wouldn't continue reading further.

This same idea applies to the internet, where 'below the fold' is when a user has to scroll down to see more. A large screen may increase the initial visual area, but not everybody has that, and you can actually presume that many may have a lot less, as the small screens of mobile devices become an ever more popular method by which to connect with the internet.

This to me, is currently the main reason for not choosing the long images. As I've said above, that attitude isn't set in stone and may change as functionality and layout changes.

But for the time being though, and especially while facebook and google, the unarguable kings of the internet, themselves choose the square, I'm very confident in recommending the same to our clients.

Are you made of The White Stuff?

Throwing convention to the wind, this Brand Spotlight doesn’t actually focus on a brand. Instead it looks at a generic product that’s available worldwide from various suppliers and features on the majority of shopping lists. No, not jelly beans; good old-fashioned milk.

It’s interesting how many celebrities have endorsed this dairy product, from Nena von Schlebrügge (Uma Thurman’s mum) accompanying the slogan ‘Drinka pinta milka day’ in the 1950s, to the present ‘make mine Milk’ campaign, which has seen Gordon Ramsey, Pixie Lott, Ryan Reynolds, Rupert Grint and ambassadors for the 2012 Olympics all sporting ‘milktaches’. But then the majority of people enjoy milk in some form on a daily basis and it has definite health benefits, so maybe it’s not surprising how much effort goes into its promotion (£7.5 million for the latest campaign, which resulted in a 1.8% increase in sales over the first year).

 

As for milk TV adverts, oh there have been some beauties! Who could forget Paul Whitehouse from The Fast Show declaring “Int milk brilliant?” in the mid nineties, and the rehash of the Squeeze track ‘Cool for Cats’ a few years earlier? Not to mention the happy milkman and his dancing milk bottles! And then of course there’s the unforgettable classic from the eighties: “Accrington Stanley, who are they?”

 

 

So the next time you pour yourself a glass of white gold, something that you buy without question or qualm, rest assured that it will never go out of fashion. After all, with the likes of the new A-Team cast demanding that you drink milk, we’ll be enjoying its wholesome goodness till the cows come home.

 

eskimosoup is:

A Hull Marketing Agency

A Hull Web Design Agency

A Hull Graphic Design Agency

Have you tried 'Diamond Shreddies'? Don't think outside the box. Tilt it.

In the 60's, the term 'square' became synonymous with being boring and the association endures to this day. A square is uniform, predictable and undoubtedly the least sexy of all the shapes. A marketer can only work with what they have and if what they have is a square, they'll really need to go some to give it the required va-va-voom.

A few years ago, Shreddies sales in Canada where slumping. The breakfast cereal is undeniably square and it's marketing did little to contradict the traditional association. It's image was dry and the audience were uninterested. A boring product.

For a marketing agency lacking creativity, this is a nightmare. They (hopefully) put the product in nicely produced materials on and offline, but have nothing more to offer in engaging an audience. Essentially, it's left to the poor, boring product to sell itself.

For a creative marketing agency however, a boring product is a gift, as it gives the maximum scope to really do something different.

If a product is amazing, it sells itself. A Farrari doesn't need any special effects. People will pay attention. It's eye catching in nature and even dressing one in a sack won't diminish it's appeal.

But a boring product, that's going to take something special.

So how can you make a product which is quite literally square more appealing?

Marketing agency Olgilvy came up with the answer. Rather than think outside the box, they decided to turn it over or rather, rotate it by 90 degrees.

Take a shreddie and tilt it to one side.

Make the square a diamond.

There's nothing more glamorous than a diamond. Since time began they've been a symbol of success, wealth and beauty (let's forget any negative aspects for now, such as their often unethical sourcing). Beautiful men and women drip in them. They have the 'Wow' factor.

Diamonds are eternally cool and at the very opposite end of the "Oh Joy! Look what we've got to push now!" scale from squares for Marketers.

Now of course, this is all very 'emperor's new clothes'. It's still the same old shreddie and nothing has actually changed with the product. It hasn't become sexier or a new emblem for success. It tastes the same as it always has and no one will be wearing them in their jewellery any time soon. Not even Hippies.

But that's the point. We, the audience, get that. We're in on the joke.

In a hyper aware environment, where people know the language of marketing and are better equipped to filter out the BS than ever, congratulating them on that fact and all having a laugh about it together, is a good way to get an audience on side.

Everyone already knows what a shreddie tastes like. There's little to really sell. It's square and 100% whole wheat. That's it.

But if the consumer likes the shreddie seller. If the seller makes them laugh, feel clever and hence, a little better about themselves, then they might give the plain old shreddie another go at breakfast time.

It certainly worked in Canada. Shreddie sales increased by 18% and the campaign itself won the Best of the Best Award at the 38th annual Canadian Marketing Association (CMA) Awards.

In the current financial situation, it's getting harder and harder to part consumers with their money. For a campaign to have the edge and catch the audiences attention, it needs to stand out.

Just going through the motions of your benefits and features may not be enough.

A little creativity is needed. Marketing is supposed to be a creative industry, so make sure your agency has that spark of invention, to give your promotion the edge it needs.

Getting up to Funny Business

Members of the business community are swapping the meetings for the microphone at the first ever Comedy Souper Bowl.

Part of Hull Comedy Festival, brave individuals will each have a five-minute set in which to make their peers laugh, guffaw and chuckle. Funds raised will go to the Smile Foundation, supporting the Hull Memory Clinic, Hornsea Inshore Rescue and Sunshine House in 2011.

The full line-up includes some of Hull and East Yorkshire’s well-known business figures:

• Graham Jenkinson, Managing Director of Jenko Designs
• Graham Boanas, Managing Director of West 1
• Sam Whitaker, General Manager of Hull Esteem Consortium
• Gary Major, New Media Manager at H&H Agency
• Paul Hazel, Director of the Hypnotherapy Clinic
• Rob Penrose, Managing Partner of Andrew Jackson
• Steve Marsden, Managing Director of the Gargleblasters
• Rich Quelch, Marketing Manager of eskimosoup
• Colin Hart, Financial Controller of KMS Facilities Group

Rob Penrose, managing partner at Hull law firm Andrew Jackson, said:

"I am very keen to help the Smile Foundation in its work in supporting local Hull and East Riding charities. I am absolutely hopeless at telling jokes,and always forget the punch line. Doing something like this is completely outside my comfort zone, but it gives me a great opportunity to share my hopeless joke-telling abilities with many others. Why should I suffer in silence?"

Organiser John Gilbert, Marketing Director of eskimosoup, added:

“I think that the frightening reality is starting to set in now for some of the contestants. The thing is that they can only succeed; we are all going to raise money for a great cause and everyone wants to see these guys do well. Hopefully this will become an annual event and maybe next year we’ll get some ladies entering!”

The live final takes place from 7.30pm until 11pm on Friday 11^th November at Brantingham Park, Elloughton. Anyone is welcome to attend and show their support. Entry is free, though the Smile Foundation will be collecting donations on the night.