Big achievers from 2011
Robbie Clarkeis an associate director at Red C

Robbie Clarke on a Trendsetters survey which looked at what was hot in marketing last year

Before we dive into 2012 with a renewed sense of vigour and enthusiasm after the Christmas and New Year break and in the spirit of the awards season, which is about to kick off in Tinseltown, we asked our Trendsetters panel about their favourite campaigns from 2011. year.

Favourite TV Ad

There are several themes emerging from a review of last year’s favourite ads. From our previous research on Irishness we know that a key facet of our make-up is our sense of humour and wit. These elements featured strongly in favourite ads of the past year. In particular, the nononsense.ie, Fosters and Aldi adverts give us a little chuckle, are well liked and somewhat true to life. The Lynx ‘Angels Will Fall’ ad was commended for its clever twist on the expected norm and the stylish nature of the production. Coco Chanel, starring Keira Knightly, gave another stylish escape from reality. The topicality and campaign-ability of the Heineken rugby ads also proved to be a firm favourite among our interviewees.

Favourite sponsorship

Two main winners emerge in this section, Heineken and O2. Both brands are commended for their rugby campaigns – Heineken’s sponsorship of the Heineken Cup and O2’s sponsorship of the Irish rugby team. As well as their activity throughout the year, their World Cup campaigns achieved real impact. The multiple touch points across both campaigns such as the ‘name on the jersey’ and ‘play them anywhere’ enhanced the brands’ Irish appeal.

PINT SCORING Heineken continued its TV campaign for its support of rugby. New ads by Rothco use humourous pub scenes to push the brand’s club and international associations.

Some smaller scale sponsorships also attracted attention with mentions for campaigns which generated a sense of gratitude towards the brand. These would be sponsorships without which many feel the event itself might not have happened, such as the Absolut sponsorship of the Galway Arts Festival, Guinness sponsorship of the Cork Jazz Festival and Jameson’s support for the Dublin Film Festival. “I admire Jameson sponsoring as in these times, it’s hard to justify sponsoring but arts events would not happen without big sponsors” was one comment.

Unilever and its Flora sponsorship of the Women’s Mini-Marathon was also cited for praise for the many information points used. “They made it easy to participate in the event… made me feel well educated about the charities involved, my own health, the social aspects of the campaign….they inspired me!” was how one person put it, before adding: “I feel much more personally attached to the company and have developed a huge respect for Flora.”

Favourite websites

For these Trendsetters, their favourite websites span three distinct areas – up-to-date news (breakingnews.ie, thejournal.ie), social interaction (Facebook and YouTube) and retail/discount shopping (eBay, Groupon). Trendsetters like the ease with which they can quickly glance to see what’s happening, with news delivered in an engaging online format not an online version of a newspaper. Twitter is lauded not only as an information tool but also as a way of interacting with friends. YouTube, while allowing the user to listen to music and view videos, also allows them to interact and express views with other users.

Interaction is a key component of website usage: the ability to interact, share opinions and join in on conversations is seen as being important. A good example is on menupages.ie. By giving ‘menupoints’ for customer reviews they are engendering chat and conversation on their site while giving people what they want – a forum to interact and express themselves.

Favourite promotion

Promotions have become the expected rather than the unusual and value is key. Supermarkets are under pressure to have offers on almost all products and customers have come to expect them. With this in mind, any type of money-off offer is well received by customers. But we wanted to dig a little deeper than this, so we asked our Trendsetters about promotions which they felt went further than they expected and which changed their perception of the brand.

One campaign to be highly commended is the Renault extended scrappage scheme, which brought both advertising and promotional campaigns together to great effect. The success of the promotion, which was an industry first, earned Renault’s marketing director Julien Lelorrian a nomination as one of last year’s finalists in the Marketer of the Year competition. Highly commended also is the Cityjet promotion. It targets leisure travellers and not just business customers, which challenged the common perception of the brand, making people think differently about Cityjet. The idea of challenging the customer was borne out well by the Garnier Ultralift campaign, fronted by Davina McCall, where customers were challenged to use the product for a number of weeks and see the results for themselves. The Smirnoff Nightlife Exchange idea, which focused more on a cultural exchange, was seen to be a new and exciting way for alcohol brands to promote themselves among the target market.

robbie.clarke@redcresearch.ie