The wins for Wax Communications for The Big Bok Bank, the CSR campaign for Waterstone’s has been picked up by Creative Match.

Branded-goods manufacturers spent £25.6 Billion in the 2007/8 financial year on sales promotion activity within retailers, according to figures just released by the Institute of Sales Promotion.

That compares with a total above-the-line advertising spend of £18.6bn in 2008, according to the Advertising Association.

The research is the first project overseen by highly-respected retail industry researcher Colin Harper, who was recently named as the ISP’s first-ever head of insight.

Harper says:

“People only tend to notice the obvious marketing spend, on above-the-line advertising or obvious Point of Sale (POS) activity, for example. But sales promotion is a bit like an iceberg — there is far more going on below the surface than immediately meets the eye.”

Putting a figure on sales promotion investment by branded goods manufacturers has involved far more than just tracking advertising spend, Harper adds, as SP activity is not solely under the control of the marketing department but can be initiated by the sales, commercial or trading teams.

It is further complicated by the fact that some companies may not even realise that what they are doing could be classified as sales promotion.

Harper, who, as well as working with the ISP, continues to run his own consultancy, Storecheck, will now be looking at sales promotion spend by companies and public sector bodies in channels other than retail, including cars, technology, services providers and business-to-business, with a view to compiling a figure for the total UK annual spend on all sales promotion activity.

Budget cutting is continuing to slow, according to the latest IPA/BDO Bellwether survey – and, with the exception of online media, sales promotion appears to be recovering fastest from the recession.

The Bellwether found that budgets were only growing for online advertising, including internet search.

Budgets are still falling for all the other media the survey tracks. However, sales promotion has the lowest rate of fall in budgets, at -4.7. That compares with direct marketing on -5.5, media advertising on -10.4 and ‘all others’ (including sponsorship and PR) on -24.4.

The -4.7 for sales promotion is also a major improvement on the second quarter, when the index was -8.8, which in turn was much better than the first quarter’s -13.7.

The index is calculated by comparing the percentage of marketers who said they had increased their budgets in the various areas with the percentage who said they had cut spend.

The IPA says that although marketing spend fell for the eighth quarter running in Q3, the reduction in budgets was the smallest in over a year, and was linked to a strong rebound in business confidence – 47% of companies surveyed are seeing improved prospects, consistent with the economy returning to growth.

Jim Houghton, head of marketing services at BDO says:

“It will come as a great relief to the industry that the economic pressures seem to be easing. Evidently this relief won’t be uniform, with online and sales-focused marketing disciplines the strongest.”

The Bellwether is compiled for the IPA and BDO by research company Markit.

Sales Promotion accounts for at least 13 per cent of UK marketing budgets, according to research published by the Chartered Institute of Marketing – and the figure could be much higher.

According to the CIM’s Spring 2009 Marketing Trends Survey, when asked what proportion of their total marketing spend went on different areas, Sales Promotion came second, on 13.0 per cent, just after Public Relations on 13.2 per cent.

Third was Field Marketing, on 12.9 per cent, then CRM on 12.7 per cent, Advertising (excluding online) on 12.4 per cent and Direct Mail on 11.8 per cent.

Annie Swift, chief executive of the ISP, points out:

“It comes as no surprise that Sales Promotion gets so much of the UK marketing budget, particularly in the current economic situation. Sales Promotion is all about ‘do’ advertising, not ‘do nothing’ advertising – it is marketing content designed to change behaviour and, as such, can be delivered through almost any media channel.”

So although Sales Promotion alone accounts for 13 per cent of UK marketers’ spend, many of the other categories listed also include significant sales promotion elements, she states.

Swift says:

“Our members do not just do Sales Promotion: they are also active in Online, Field Marketing, CRM, Advertising, Direct Mail and Internal Marketing, to name just a few of the categories in the CIM survey.”

The survey of more than 1,000 marketers was carried out for CIM by Ipsos Mori

Village People finger puppets star in Hula Hoops TV campaign.

LONDON – People get distracted from everyday life as they make Village People Hula Hoops finger puppets to the soundtrack of ‘YMCA’ in the Publicis-created TV ad for the snack brand, which is part of a integrated campaign.

I love a good strong brand positioning as much as the next man. We all know the classics – ‘Reassuringly expensive’; ‘The best a man can get’.

They’ve got skin and bone, flesh and blood, they feel real and you can see where they’ve come from and where they are going.

Consumers get them and shoppers respond to them because they’re a creative goldmine – the ideas coming flooding out of them. (Does gold flood? I don’t know but it had better do for the purposes of that analogy).

7-Up, one of those brands that is making no fuss about the fact that it is steadily growing its share and doing rather nicely thank you very much, has another strong positioning which is arguably more important in the carbonated drinks sector than anywhere else.

Some of us are ‘living on the Coke side of life’ after all.

‘Refreshingly Clear’ feels like one of these strong brand positioning statements that is ripe for creative exploitation above the line, below the line and everywhere else in between.

That’s where digital lives, right?

Sadly, this promotion has nothing to do with the ‘Refreshingly Clear’ proposition or if it does I couldn’t find the connection. And believe me I looked.

7-Up is offering shoppers the chance to get up to £100 Free Holiday Vouchers from Thomas Cook when they enter a code from the promotional packs on the website. ‘£10 off your holiday with this bottle’ cries the pack flash.

Each purchase can get you a £10 voucher to a redeemable maximum of £100 (off a £1200 holiday).

Visiting the website as the pack suggests we are welcomed not by a free holiday vouchers promotion but a whole host of other things designed to, you suspect, ‘facilitate our engagement with the brand’.

Exploring the website a little further and there is loads of stuff going on – opportunities to explore 7-Up World; your own 7-Up-Scope courtesy of Fido Dido; downloadable Fido Dido news and videos.

There’s also a promotion to win BigNightsIn in Ibiza – where did that come from?

The question remains – why??

Clicking the holiday voucher promotion we discover that it’s called ‘Natural Wonders’ in reference to the 100% natural flavours in 7-Up.

Where other parts of the site have high production values and are engaging and fun, this promotional page is functional and dull.

All in all it feels like something that might have been put together without a huge amount of thought for brand insights, shopper insights or much else.

How this promotion has slipped through the brand marketing team is anybody’s guess.

I can’t help but feel that this is not only potentially damaging to the brand but a big wasted opportunity.

Further establishing 7-Up’s ‘Refreshingly Clear’ credentials in the consumer consciousness would only ever help those improving share figures by differentiating the brand in a cluttered market.

This promotion will achieve anything but that.

Agency: Euro RSCG KLP

Promo Score: 2/10

Attending the event was the mysterious racing driver known only as ‘The Stig’.

The question is however, how did Wax manage to get the newly exposed Michael Schumacher to attend?

Fetaured in the marketing press today (Marketing Week)  is a letter from Justine Clement, Managing Director of incentives agency Unmissable talking about how Hula Hoops have got this on-pack promotion right.