Recently Chris wrote a small piece for the IPA Newsletter Adland on featuring animals in viral and traditional advertising, mostly so he could enjoy chuckling at them.
Serious win IPA Effectiveness Award
November 10th, 2009We were ecstatic last night receiving an IPA Effectiveness Award for our online marketing campaign using the perpetual marketing model we developed for London Business School. It was a great evening at the Hurlingham Club with everyone in high spirits for the awards, all the work on show was highly deserving with the entrants proving some of the most effective this year despite a tough climate. We were up against serious competition including JWT, TBWA, Grey London and Publicis with Serious being the only agency nominated outside of London and Manchester. Mediaedage: cia were the worthy winners of the coveted grand prix prize with their ‘Getting your hands dirty with Morrisons’ campaign.
Serious generated a return of £14 for every £1 spent.
To view the full award winning case study click here
Press release available here!
Our IPA Effectiveness Award 2009
Update: Now on video too!
Blood sweat and beers – The Great South Run
October 26th, 2009
We seem to be missing Scott, Anna and Chris here...
On Sunday we took part in the Great South Run for our chosen charity, The Royal Marsden Cancer Campaign – we’d all put in the training and we all made it, so it must have paid off.
10 miles is a pretty tough run but we all had a fantastic time and really enjoyed ourselves, perhaps foolishly we are now planning our next challenge!
We do have a group justgiving account so if anyone would like to donate to this very worthy charity and give us some more motivation to enter more events you can find us here: http://www.justgiving.com/seriousideas/
Microsoft Tag and more QR codes
October 21st, 2009I’ve been playing around with various 2D barcode formats over the last few days as something of an experiment.
QR code with logo
Microsoft Tag (custom)
While QR codes so far seem to be more established (at least in Japan) designing them to be visually interesting is a bit more of a challenge, while you can exploit the error correction to insert imagery into the code this isn’t the best way to do it, after all viewers may need the error correction in place when they scan it! All this said there are some great examples of well designed codes out there, Set Japan have created some very interesting adverts incorporating the code.
Next up is Microsoft’s Tag, another 2D code but this time developed and owned by Microsoft, there is certainly the infrastructure there to support this and although still in Beta it is shaping up as a contender. Tag uses colours along with geometric patters of various shapes which makes it visually customisable and interesting – I had a quick attempt at customising one.
The use of colour does mean that it will stand out and allows you to get away from a uniform looking pattern but it does make them less recognisable as a 2D barcode. This format is also up against an already established QR code in Japan and as a propriety design from Microsoft will it be as willingly adopted?
QR Codes – visual links to your content
October 16th, 2009QR codes (or Quick Response Codes) are making more of an appearance and appear to offer quite a few neat features to those who can read them (directing someone to a mobile or website, displaying a message, providing contact information or sending an SMS message).
Scan me!
With smart phone uptake predicted to climb during the next year along with barcode scanning applications becoming increasingly popular on the various mobile application stores, QR Codes are becoming more and more accessible.
The concept has proved very successful in Japan, with 90% of mobile users recognising these codes as something they scan with their mobile and over 50% of this making use of the feature, this has been helped by the adoption of QR readers into mobile handsets as pre-installed software. If the trend for mobile scanning in the UK is to increase then it may not be long before the majority of handsets support QR codes out of the box.
Combining codes into print work adds a level of user interaction to otherwise flat media and provides useful feedback for those managing the campaign, it is possible for instance to track your volume of viewers from location or from the media type you featured the code. Great news if you want to find out where your advertising is best suited, plus for us lot who are scanning we can quickly access or bookmark information to view on the move or when we get back to the office/home – much easier than trying to type a web address into your phone!
There are quite a few QR readers available and the number of mobiles supported is growing each day, a few examples of readers we tried are:
Figaro Digital features Perpetual Marketing Model
September 23rd, 2009Our marketing strategy the Perpetual Marketing Model has been featured in issue 2 of Figaro Digital magazine!
Serious featured in Figaro Digital Magazine
Perpetual Marketing for London Business School
Google Agency Day
September 7th, 2009Serious were pleased to be invited to Google’s Agency Day on Thursday at their London offices. With talks from their Industry Head of Local Markets and the New Business Development Team we had a tour of how we can better offer our services to improve our clients search and advertising campaigns.
Alongside this we now have access to a broad range of new tools and services Google offer to further strengthen our media planning and campaign preparation.
An interesting point we picked out from the talk was 10% of internet traffic is generated through Youtube, considering Youtube as a search engine the volume of searches would place it as the 2nd most popular just behind Google.
Advertising in a large content network like this can be daunting but with careful planning and management of your targeted ads you can make your budget work for you and reach a truly massive audience.
For a limited time too we can offer to double your daily spend on an ad campaign up to £1000*.
Unfortunately with everything going on I forgot to take some photos….next time!
*Until December 2009.
How to build great landing pages
August 20th, 2009We are constantly being asked by our clients “what makes a good landing page and why” – so much so that we thought it may be worth while sharing our thoughts on the subject with you. So here it is.
Firstly it is important to remember the process of how and where the visitors will be coming from and what prompted them to navigate to your page. Bearing this in mind you need to immediately deliver on the same message which prompted the click through – no time wasting, nothing getting in the way – just hit them with it. Essentially you have promised them something by dangling a carrot on the SERPs or via PPC etc and now you have to fulfil your promise. Get straight to the point and big up the benefits!
Secondly do not confuse the matter by giving them loads of choices or other things to look at. Yes, you should always provide access to auxiliary information but you don’t want to send the visitor off on a tangent and potentially lose the conversion. Give them a clear and strong call to action.
Along the same lines as before you need to reduce clutter so that the page is engaging and easy to follow. All you really need are benefits/features, call to action, links to supporting content if necessary and a lovely clear and stimulating design which promotes your brand identity & values. No waffle, no hardcore sales pushes, no gimmicks – just good clean content.
Now, we all know that most people have a natural resistance to being sold to and even if what you are offering is not necessarily being “sold” it is still worth bearing in mind the kind of objections or barriers people may have to conversion. Your landing page should do its upmost to calm and overcome these barriers; reducing anxiety and making your visitors feel safer. Such things could be logos of trade or industry affiliation/accreditation, money back guarantees or even certain insured payment methods like PayPal etc. Make sure your page addresses these issues.
Finally, it is always good to get some kind of gravitas for your product/service and increase the visitor’s affinity to your offering. The best way to do this is by showing accreditations, real-world usage examples, reviews, testimonials or even other places they may hear about you (i.e. “As seen on TV”). This instinctively builds trust levels in the visitor.
So there it is – 5 very simple ways of maximising the impact of your landing pages.
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