NABS/LGN | 13.08.09

A date for your diary …  Wax along with sister agencies CMW and TwentySix will be

supporting the NABS/LGN 5k race in Regents Park on Thursday September 10th 2009 at 6pm.

LGN have put together a three point philosophy for running – which may help! The event is set to challenge  the fitness of 800 other like minded advertising and marketing industry runners and will have be individual, team and fancy dress prizes on offer with music, entertainment and a team competition providing a unique wellbeing event in the industry calendar.

DDB UK will be defending champions, with the NABS President, Stephen Woodford at the helm.

Sales Promotion | June 2009

Rod Geoghegan, Marketing Director at Wax Communications, was invited by the Institute of Sales Promotion to attend a round table to discuss consumer attitudes to price led promotions during a downturn.

You can read the atricle here:

McCoy’s consumers have a daily chance to get their hands on the hottest gadgets, from game consoles and mp3 players to touch-screen phones. There are thousands of gadgets up for grabs in a new ‘instant win’ on-pack promotion created by Wax Communications.

Launched on May 13th 2009, the promotion will help drive traffic to the newly launched brand website at mccoys.co.uk.

To enter, consumers simply need to enter their on-pack code by text or visit mccoys.co.uk to be immediately told whether they are a winner or not.

The campaign runs from 13th May to 30th September and is featured across all handypacks, multipacks and McCoy’s Tortilla sharing bags in the UK and Republic of Ireland.

Dave Littlewood, McCoy’s account manager at Wax Communications, comments:

“The main consumer of McCoy’s is young men, who isn’t necessarily the person doing the weekly supermarket shop. So our main challenge was to offer prizes that appealed to both of these key audiences. We’re confident the promotion offers the right mix of prizes to activate people – for shoppers to make a purchase and for consumers to participate.”

The McCoy’s Brand Manager comments:

“The daily aspect of the promotion will keep it fresh and should keep consumers coming back for more.”

Sales Promotion 02.02.09

Sales Promotion magazine have picked up on the opportunity to win a weeks work experience at Wax Communications in aid of NABS.

Congratulations!

Well done to our three students of the ISP – Kate Loosemore, Marc Johnson and Jessica Durham.

They will be shortly collecting their diploma from the ISP at the House of Commons.

Over the last seven years, Wax Communications (the result of the merger of Dynamo Marketing and Catalyst) have put 26 colleagues at the agency through the ISP Diploma – putting us into a group of the top six agencies to do so.

Wax Comminucations will be continuing to support this as part of our ongoing investment in training at the agency.

 Promotions & Incentive, James Quilter, September 2008

The word ‘integrated’ has become something of a cliché in marketing, and its definition can vary from practitioner to practitioner.

However, one thing is certain: multi-channel campaigns are held in high regard by clients.

Media fragmentation, coupled with a desire by clients to create campaigns across a variety of disciplines, has given rise to integrated agencies and encouraged specialist consultancies to offer services beyond their traditional field.

But there are signs of a backlash against this industry development. For instance, Sainsbury’s agency, Wax Communications, which until recently described itself as integrated, has repositioned itself as a sales promotion specialist.  Managing director Matt Tabb says that despite the agency being able to offer a variety of disciplines, he wants it to focus on a single practice.

Industry insiders say the strategy could help Wax to bring in new business. Tony Spong, head of DM and sales promotion at the AAR, says agencies can alienate themselves from big clients by flying the integrated banner.

“It’s driven by the client’s size,” he explains. “If a client has several departments, it will ask for individual agencies to work for each of them. The more specialised the client’s departments, the more specialised the agencies they want.”

Tony Walford, senior consultant at Results International, suggests that while it is natural for groups such as WPP to present themselves as integrated, it is more difficult for smaller agencies to do so. He says that many clients are seeking specialist skills and require able to implement campaigns across a number of channels, it should not obsessively position itself as integrated, because doing so can obscure its area of expertise.

Of course, there are plenty of agencies that would passionately argue the case for being integrated (see table). Inferno founder Tim Doust says integrated agencies have some big advantages over specialists.

“Being an integrated agency enables us to do the right thing for our clients,” he says. “If you go to a big ad agency, it is likely to sell you TV work; a DM agency will offer you direct activity. As a through-the-line agency, we offer what’s best for the client, not what’s best for us.”

Doust adds that it is cheaper for a client to use a single integrated agency than a roster of specialist ones. However, Spong argues that clients do not prioritise low fees when seeking an agency, and that prices are negotiated later in the appointment process. Having said that, he does see future success for integrated agencies if they evolve their business model.

There is also an argument that sales promo-tion has itself become an integrated discipline.

What was previously typified by an on-pack promotion can now be carried out online or via mobile phones – all of which is within Wax’s offering. Andrew Edwards, chief executive of Arc, says:

“Wax is integrated, it has just decided that the best way to get business is through a sales promotion message.”

So, the integrated model looks set to have a strong future, although there could be disagreement over which agencies are integrated, and which are specialist. 

Experiential marketing earned its stripes from edgy, young brands wanting to be seen as ‘different and unique’.

But over the last decade or so experiential has become mainstream, and is leading from the front in many campaigns.

Increased spend

Some 75% of marketers recently surveyed by Jack Morton Worldwide in the UK, Europe, the US, China and Australia  say they will increase spending on experiential marketing in 2008.

And as more brands demand it, of course, the more it is supplied – agencies are fast jumping on this ‘brand- wagon’ and developing an experiential offer to add to their list of services, with which to challenge the specialists.

But are they really equipped to do so? By definition, offering experiential as an ‘add on’ is to show true ignorance of its very nature. To tack it on as an after-thought, either to an agency’s offering or to a campaign, is to miss the point.

Experiential marketing earned its stripes from edgy, young brands wanting to be seen as ‘different and unique’.

Mainstream

But experiential has become mainstream, and is leading from the front in many campaigns.

Its power to drive other awareness channels, for instance, needs to be planned in right from the beginning as an integral part of a campaign or it could be lost.

Carlsberg Experiential Marketing Campaign

Carlsberg demonstrated how well experiential can kick start other channels with its ‘money drop’ campaign last year.

The socially responsible guerrilla  ‘we don’t do litter’ campaign saw £5000 worth of £20 and £10 notes, each bearing stickers with the  campaign message, dropped randomly on to London pedestrians who literally clamoured to get involved.

It spawned a dynamite PR campaign that exploded across the world setting traditional and non-traditional media alight with talk of it. For £5000, it had ‘probably the best ROI in the world!’ – who says experiential is hard to measure?

Dorito’s Experiential Marketing Campaign

Doritos’ recent ‘You make it, we play it’ competition, which invited consumers to generate their own digital adverts for the chance to win £20,000, has enjoyed similar success.

Which goes to show: in experiential, budget size is not important – it’s how well you use it that matters.

If the creative and strategy is right, smaller brands can make as big a splash on a budget using experiential methods as those event sponsoring giants such as Virgin, Tennants and O2.

It’s almost made for helping niche brands grow awareness.

Superdrug’s Experiential Marketing Campaign

A campaign Wax Live did for Superdrug sun cream last year used four gorgeous ‘firemen’ to rub said cream on sun-soaked festival goers at T4 on The Beach, T in the Park and the 02 Wireless events.

The campaign allowed Superdrug to literally touch end users in a way that above the line advertising can only dream of.

It delivered added value, fun, and allowed the topless ‘brand ambassadors’ to interact with consumers on a one-to-one basis to talk about the product.

For many, those festivals will always smell of Superdrug sun cream and remind them of half naked ‘firemen’ – a powerful ‘feel-good’ association!

So clearly, experiential now consists of a lot more than just handing out samples from a pretty stand. When done well it can engage consumers and enhance brand equity in a way that no other medium can match.

But doing it well is no walk in the park.

Creating these live campaigns that work in the field presents a logistical minefield and depends on deep knowledge, hard-earned experience and well-trained staff to make them work in practice.

Staff must learn how to ‘live the brand’, locations must be just right, health and safety risks have to be covered … for when experiential goes wrong, it can create a nasty  mess and ultimately do more damage than good to a brand.

Snapple

Snapple learned this the hard way. Their 25ft tall frozen treat melted and flooded Union Square, New York on the first day of summer, and left them fielding a barrage of complaints.

Remember, when you run an experiential campaign you are ultimately inviting customers to talk about the brand; the real job is making sure you create a positive buzz.

Which is why experiential must surely be the preserve of specialists. It’s worth noting experiential agencies tend to stick to their specialism; it requires real understanding, focus and the resource to deliver it.

Only those who know it inside and out, and who can make it work effectively in the field as an integral part of a campaign, can truly deliver a brand enhancing experience.

Anything less than a whole-hearted, integrated approach and experiential risks becoming a meaningless aside, token add-on, or worse, a potentially brand damaging event that people will talk about for a long time.

See our work at www.experientailessays.com

It is easy to measure how a promotional activity has performed, according to this Marketing Week article 22.05.08.

. The nature of the discipline, particularly in the retail sector, means that a quick look at the sales activity during the promotional period or counting the numbers of coupons redeemed is a fairly accurate indicator of consumer response.

But brands want more than just a sales spike from their promotions. All promotions and incentives must now prove that they can be part of the brand engagement process.

But how can this be proved?Planning director at Wax Communications Craig Buchanan-Smith says promotional activity has to be measured as part of an over-arching campaign rather than a separate activity.

“If promotions are used to help build brands, they need to be treated as part of the overall marketing campaign and should be measured against the overall needs of the brand.”

Voucher collection

He refers to the work done with Sainsbury’s Active Kids.

“At its heart is a simple idea around the collection of vouchers, but you can’t measure the effect of the activity for Sainsbury’s just on redemption – it has also done a great deal of good for the overall brand.”

Marketers and brand owners are starting to see promotional activity in a broader context as the short-term impact of sales promotions begins to wear thin. Director at Differentiate Chris Radford says: “Repeat studies have shown that below-the-line promotional activity such as price cuts and incentives can stimulate a short-term sales life, but sales will return to their previous levels once the offer ends.”

Radford cites two examples of promotions that lift sales but don’t ultimately sustain growth. “Mobile phone companies are all so busy trying to ‘out promote’ each other that customer turnover remains high and so they are continually having to refill a leaky bucket.

“Packaged goods businesses can get sucked into a vicious circle of buy one, get one free promotions or big discounts. This produces short-term sales lifts, but they encourage customers to wait for the next offer, rather than truly convincing them to buy into the branding on an ongoing level,” he says.

Such short-termism has prompted a drive to ensure that promotional campaigns do more than temporarily lift sales. The traditional belief of the linear link between cause and effect for promotional communication has had to make way for something more sophisticated.

“Current promotional marketing best practice dictates that promotions should drive response and reinforce desired brand perceptions,” says 23red planning director Carol Stickler.

She says that broader promotional objectives necessitate broader measurement. “It is relatively easy to measure narrowly. But if the objective is to build the brand, you need to also track other brand measures.”

Integrated campaigns

But Stickler acknowledges that “as ever with integrated campaigns, isolating the effect is the tricky part”. She says time-series or regional analysis would need to be carried out to see what happens at the times or in regions where you give your brand no promotional support.

“The key is to clarify objectives and means of measurement up front as well as isolate the role of promotional marketing within the wider communications mix. Then you need to identify the primary target for the promotion as well as secondary targets, such as the impact of acquisition campaign on customer loyalty,” she adds.

Victoria White, head of activation at activationtmw – the sales promotion arm of Tullo Marshall Warren – says: “Alongside measuring how a promotion has worked, brands should take into account ’soft’ achievements which can result from activity as opposed to driving sales. For example, the introduction of brands to a new target audience, or providing support for retailers.

Long-term growth

“All of these measures can be important for a brand’s long-term growth and should be considered alongside a return on investment.” However, Stickler acknowledges the difficulty of isolating the impact a promotion has, apart from a temporary sales lift.

Founding partner at Mesh Marketing Toby Moore comments: “To understand promotional impact on sales requires the unravelling of the consumer brand experience and the customer ‘promotional’ price support. If we could better understand this relationship then brands would have firmer foundations to allocate and measure their marketing spends.”

The greatest challenge facing promotions, it seems, is not that it should be accountable or measurable, but that it is able to tread the line between creating new customers and getting existing ones to spend more money and at the same time staying deftly in tune with whatever lofty brand proposition is being pumped out.