Guardian.co.uk | 27.08.09

The Guardian has picked upo on the Bonkers About Biscuits campaign.

And again – this article has generated considerable  consumer comment …

United Biscuits | 26.08.09

How do you eat your biscuit?

Do you sink your teeth into the last Jaffa Cake or leave it for your boss?

Would you dip your chocolate digestive on a date?

When is the best time to take a biscuit break?

Research out today shows the UK is fiercely divided over the top time to eat a biscuit, with ‘Biscuit O’Clock’ falling between 3 and 4pm (for 19.6% of people polled) or 10 and 11am (19.5%).

But the real ‘crunch time’ was determined to be 3:10pm, with school ending and teachers, kids and even parents all
resorting to a quick and much needed pick-me-up.

According to the McVitie’s Bonkers About Biscuits report, our ‘Biscuit-iquette’ depends on whether we are eating them on our own or in public. Nearly half of us enjoy dunking biscuits in a hot drink in private (48.4%), or admit to scoffing them down fast and consuming most of the packet (15.9%).

In public however, many changed their approach, taking fewer and smaller bites when consuming their favourite biscuit and one-in-six people surveyed (15.5%) say they would never eat biscuits in business meetings.

When it comes to sharing, four-in-five Brits are willing to offer their last biscuit to others, however
nearly a quarter (24.6%) would kick themselves if someone actually accepted the offer!

Peter Kay (11.4%) was the favourite celebrity to share a packet of biscuits with, while Barack Obama came a close second at (10.5%). It also seems Brits are unable to keep their hands off biscuits in even the strangest places, including the bed (34%), the bath (17%) and even a swimming pool!

And finally, after a bad day at work or an emotional break up, it’s the good old-fashioned chocolate digestive that tops the list for comfort (42.8%), closely followed by a chocolate HobNob (23.7%) and Jaffa Cakes (23.5%), while chocolate chip cookies (21.9%) and shortbread (21.5%) complete the top five favourites.

Sarah Heynen, from McVitie’s who commissioned this survey said:

“It is clear that everyone has their own quirky habits when it comes to biscuits. Biscuits fill many roles from giving you a mid-afternoon boost to sharing with a friend over a nice cuppa.

“How we choose to enjoy our favourite varies vastly from area to area and between the different ages and sexes, but one thing is sure, people are not about to get tired of biscuits anytime soon.”

Chairman of the Biscuit Appreciation Society added:

“With a big passion for biscuits myself, McVitie’s Chocolate Digestives being my favourite, it has been really interesting to see what the McVitie’s Bonkers about Biscuits survey has uncovered and has proven that people out there are just as fanatical about biscuits as me.”

And the results in detail:

National

Favourite biscuit was chocolate digestive (21.9%)

Biscuit O’Clock is 3:17pm

66.1% would tell a colleague before a meeting if there were biscuit crumbs around their mouth

5.9% would take the final biscuit on a shared plate without hesitation

East

Favourite biscuit was chocolate digestive (22.0%)

Biscuit O’Clock is 2:45pm

63.8% would tell a colleague before a meeting if there were biscuit crumbs around their mouth

5.6% would take the final biscuit on a shared plate without hesitation

London

Favourite biscuit was chocolate digestive (22.8%)

Biscuit O’Clock is 3:45pm

69.6% would tell a colleague before a meeting if there were biscuit crumbs around their mouth

3.2% would take the final biscuit on a shared plate without hesitation

Midlands

Favourite biscuit was chocolate digestive (24.5%)

Biscuit O’Clock is 2:49pm

63.9% would tell a colleague before a meeting if there were biscuit crumbs around their mouth

7.9% would take the final biscuit on a shared plate without hesitation

North East

Favourite biscuit was chocolate digestive (25.5%)

Biscuit O’Clock is 1:45pm

63.6% would tell a colleague before a meeting if there were biscuit crumbs around their mouth

12.7% would take the final biscuit on a shared plate without hesitation

North West

Favourite biscuit was chocolate digestive (21.3%)

66.7% would tell a colleague before a meeting if there were biscuit crumbs around their mouth

5.5% would take the final biscuit on a shared plate without hesitation

Northern Ireland

Favourite biscuit was Jaffa Cake (18.8%) and shortbread (18.8%)

Biscuit O’Clock is 2:30pm

37.5% would tell a colleague before a meeting if there were biscuit crumbs around their mouth

18.8% would take the final biscuit on a shared plate without hesitation

Scotland

Favourite biscuit was chocolate digestive (17.1%)

Biscuit O’Clock is 3:57pm

61.3% would tell a colleague before a meeting if there were biscuit crumbs around their mouth

7.2% would take the final biscuit on a shared plate without hesitation

South East

Favourite biscuit was chocolate digestive (22.3%)

Biscuit O’Clock is 3:34pm

72.5% would tell a colleague before a meeting if there were biscuit crumbs around their mouth

3.3% would take the final biscuit on a shared plate without hesitation

South West

Favourite biscuit was chocolate digestive (19.1%)

Biscuit O’Clock is 2:33pm

67.1% would tell a colleague before a meeting if there were biscuit crumbs around their mouth

7.2% would take the final biscuit on a shared plate without hesitation

Wales

Favourite biscuit was chocolate digestive (23.9%)

Biscuit O’Clock is 2:45pm

67.2% would tell a colleague before a meeting if there were biscuit crumbs around their mouth

3.0% would take the final biscuit on a shared plate without hesitation

Yorkshire

Favourite biscuit was chocolate digestive (23.4%)

Biscuit O’Clock is 2:59pm

64.5% would tell a colleague before a meeting if there were biscuit crumbs around their mouth

5.6% would take the final biscuit on a shared plate without hesitation

Publicis | 25.08.09

The TV ad for the Wax ‘Bonkers About Biscuits’ campaign for McVitie’s, and produced by Publicis, are now being run.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

Rod Geoghegan | 21.08.09

Be careful what you tweet.

Well, if you want to be taken seriously that is.Research undertaken by Pear Analytics (Twitter Study, August 2009) has concluded that 41% of tweets are ‘pointless babble’.

That said, 1% of the (addicted) users create 35% of the content (Source: Quantcast.com)

So is there is a role for micro-blogging within the context of a social media plan? Well, yes, there is – though it is about creating relevant and engaging content (and interesting comments, opinions, tip-offs) that ensure you are on the TweetDeck

Be it a brand or an individual tweeting, do you want the tweet to be ‘ interesting’ and read or ‘pointless’ and ignored? And when you create pointless content, the second thing you do is damage the reputation of the sender.

Rod Geoghegan is Marketing Director at Wax Communications

Back from a little R&R in the last frontier of Alaska I’m all ready to be back in the swing of London life.

The only thing I’m not so excited about is spending countless lunch hours in front of my screen eating a bowl of curly kale while daydreaming about the glory days of kickstand beer bongs in my days at Uni.

Well thank goodness I’ve found something to do at lunch where I can finally re-live those moments of excess!

Minus the drinking, fancy dress and snogging.

UCL’s Lunch hour lectures which, are just around the corner from us, start again on October 13th and run ’till December 10th.

So make sure you put the dates in your calendar and learn about everything from: the power of Lagerlöf to how the recent new offence of possessing extreme pornography has breached the principle of the right to obscene thoughts – totally what I was thinking about!

Admission is free! With the lectures starting at 1:15 - 1:55 at the Darwin Lecture Theatre, UCL, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT.

If you miss one you really wanted to see and just can’t get out of the office you can always watch it

online from 7 days after the event.

So get out there and expand your mind

Peace Out!

Brydon G.

Netimperative | 19.08.09

The Bonkers About Biscuits campaign for McVitie’s is covered by Newimperative, saying “Wax spearheaded the creative concept” for the campaign.

Rod Geoghegan Marketing Director | Wax Communication | 19.08.09

A lot has been written about how social media is changing the way we communicate. From a world with television, radio and print to one where if Facebook was a country, it would be the 4th largest in the world.

Eric Qualman, author of ‘Socionomics’ writes about his  take on how this is impacting on brands and in his promotional video.

Howdy

A Qik’y this week (typo on purpose – you’ll see why later) due to the monster of pitches n stuff.

News

Facebook’s been shopping this week and splashed out on the social network aggregator FriendFeed.

What this basically does is take all the feeds from all your social stuff, Facebook, Twitter, RSS etc, and pull it all together in one lovely place.

So what?

Indeed, well a bit anyway – one thing it certainly does is give Facebook an opportunity to keep its ad revenue up – it can now argue ‘don’t use Twitter – place ads with us and we’ll put them on Friendfeed too and you’ll hit Twitter too’ kinda, as in effect this move puts Twitter into Facebook.

Clever stuff – it’s also good if you use RSS a fair bit (you should) as you can then just head to one place online rather than a few – if nothing else it keeps your browser window neater.

So all in a good move for Facebook – if people sign up, which I’m sure Facebook will now be encouraging.

Nice.

Top Tip

Like posting and sending round weblinks to friends and family?

But sometimes they don’t work as the link is so long it gets a bit broken?

Use bit.ly (that the web address btw) simply paste your weblink into the window and it makes it super short – excellent for Twitter or text when you don’t have the space.

For example:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Geek-Handbook-User-Guide-Documentation/dp/0743417763/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250609778&sr=8-6

Becomes

http://bit.ly/9OKA0

Genius.

iPhone Apps of the week

Sorry if your on an ‘old’ iPhone but my choices this week are 3GS only.

Qik – genius video app that enables you to shoot a video and immediately upload it to your qik account online for friends to view.

Great way to show your friends just how drunk someone is without them actually being there – on the App Store now and it’s FREE.

Cyclops – barcode scanner app that lets you take a pic of a product barcode then use that barcode to look the product up on the t’interweb to check prices – also enables you to buy it from within the app from Amazon, smashing.

FREE

Toot, toot.

Craig

The Drum | 18.08.09

The Bonkers About Biscuits campaign is covered by The Drum …

Field Marketing & Brand Experience Awards 2009 | 11.08.09

Wax Live, the experiential division of Wax Communications, has been nominated for an award at the FM&BE 2009 Awards for the Remington ‘Shine Therapy’ campaign.

The awards ceremony is on in London on 8th October.

The Remington Shine Therapy Tour was created to promote the new Remington New Shine Therapy Straightener which features innovative vitamin infused technology and Remington New Shine Therapy Dryer with vitamin boost technology.

Remington, with a heritage in electrical beauty, has a total haircare market value of £152m and is achieving a 4% year-on-year sales growth.

The brand sits at number 2 with a 16% share of the market behind Babyliss (2009 figures).

Research conducted proved women wanted fantastically shiny hair – but with no compromise to their style and look and without the everyday drudgery.

Remington developed a revolutionary range of styling tools ‘Shine Therapy’ that care for hair while styling. No other haircare brand has this unique offering.

The Wax Live campaign was to encourage trial of the new Shine Therapy products (to prove claims Remington make to intrigued consumers); Raise awareness of the two new Shine Therapy products (by educating and highlighting to consumers the innovative technology) and to ccontribute to category growth (sales and share in haircare).

We created an experiential campaign that toured the top tier shopping centres (including Westfield London on the launch day of the new centre) with a team of stylists giving demonstrations of the new products.

We worked with all the centres to ensure that our design would work within the 2m restrictions and adhere to all public and centre regulations.

The Remington Shine Therapy Roadshow was designed to be a fresh approach for an electrical beauty campaign.

We created an eye-catching Shine Therapy Carriage to convey aspirations of beauty and shine whilst also aiming to reflect the Shine Therapy products brand positioning against its competitors.

This fairytale carriage was designed with creative reflecting the new packaging, whilst retaining the modern day fairytale overtones we felt emanated the brand, appealing to our consumers and created competitive standout, whilst remaining within guidelines.

Shine Angel’s, our promotional staff, at the activity engaged intrigued consumers and invited them to partake in a complimentary Shine Therapy consultation.

They could do it then and there or the promotional team took a booking for their mini make-over later in the day.

The Shine Angel introduced the consumer to a Shine Therapy consultant and they received their 3-5 mini-make-over, with either the dryer or straightener.

Consultants showed them the ease of use and the fantastic results whilst educating them about the technology behind the products. Consumers not wishing to participate were handed a coupon and advised of product benefits and distributors.

Following the consultations consumers were offered the opportunity to enter the Shine Therapy ‘Great Britain Shines’ photo competition to find the Remington Shine Therapy ‘Shine Angel’.

The competition was hosted on Glamour.com. The event manager took a photo of consumers after their consultation and it was uploaded to the Glamour.com website.

Polaroids were also showcased on an actual ‘Great Britain Shines Wall’ at all the shopping centres.

Consumers then encouraged friends and family to vote for them to win a hair and colour make-over with Stephen Goldsworthy, plus Shine Therapy Kit.

Glamour.com readers also got the chance to vote for their favourite Sine Angel as well.

The team also handed out flyers promoting cross category selling and displaying price promotions at two key retailers – Boots and Argos.

Complete marketing spend was just under £2m including a TV ad, press ads and on-line activity

We eencouraged trial with c5,000 ‘Five minute’ makeovers given over 5 weeks over eleven live day. We raised awareness with c17,000 people visiting the stand and being educated about the new product with a further c900,000 females seeing the campaign. We contributed to category growth, sales and share in haircare with Remington is now the No. 1 Dryer with the Shine Therapy Dryer. It is the No. 1 selling product in haircare with phenomenal sales growth.