Since the economy’s seemingly inevitable slide downhill reached the public consciousness about 7 or 8 months ago, Asda have been plugging their cheap, branded goods to exceptional effect. The supermarket’s ads have been all over the place, their bright green arrows declaring exactly how many of their products are cheaper than Tesco’s, Morrisons’ and Sainsburys’ based on an “independent” price comparison website. The ads’ content speaks of raw data, but the most important messages are far more embedded into the format of the ad as a whole, and resonate on a far deeper level than numbers alone –
The semiological language of the ad is intentionally thrifty – white, in British society, is a cultural byword for…
We wanted to write a post that discussed what was going to be big in 2009 in the world of Advertising and we came to realise that whatever we predicted would be something that’s already been said years past.
We could say, for example, that mobile’s going to be huge this year, and it probably is, but let’s face it that’s been said before. We could also say that social networking’s going to hit a new level and that newspapers are going to struggle to survive; been said hasn’t it?
So, we decided we’d go deeper and talk about where we’re at in terms of how we’re interacting with each other and what implications we think that this is going to have. (more…)
I don’t often go to Pret, so when I saw one of their bags lying around in the back office of my shop, I was pretty intrigued by what was on the side – a recipe for creating your very own Pret a Manger sandwich at home. Having always thought that Pret was pretty overpriced, especially compared to Boots (meal deal all the way), I thought it was an awesome, helpful idea, and definitely worth giving a go. Until I read the ingredient list that is…
These days social responsibility is of paramount importance for any organization; and let’s face it, it’s generally nothing more than a feeble attempt to charm us into having positive perceptions of dodgy corporations.
Whether it’s British Gas sending out free light bulbs to customers despite astronomical gas prices, or BP’s ironic ‘green’ branding, sometimes you get the feeling that these guys should just forget the front.
Awesome viral activity from Burger King, although it’s only available in America so far – the Whopper Sacrifice is a branded Facebook application that you install on your account, which asks you to sacrifice (i.e. delete) 10 friends from your friend list to the mighty burger in order to get sent a voucher for a free Whopper. Needless to say, when it arrives over here, you’re all getting chopped.
So, with the recession seemingly bearing down on every moment of daily life, ready to swallow up any British institution going, advertising and media budgets are in danger of being seriously scaled back for the foreseeable future. Already ad breaks on ITV are becoming visibly shorter, and magazines are becoming thinner by the month, which will naturally herald some hard months to come for agencies, but on the flip side, what should firms be doing to survive the next few months unscathed? Has the game changed? Is it all about product?
Times have been hard for Stringer since the pit became redundant (trying to avoid spoilers as much as possible, especially for Joel), the supply of muscle dwindled and… (more…)
We're Joel and Phil, two advertising types from London town. Joel is an Account Executive at 1000 Heads, whilst Phil spends his time as a Partnership Executive at Kameleon.
As ever, any and all views expressed here don't represent the views of our agencies.
If you've got comments/thoughts/ideas/questions, get in touch at vitalsignsblog@googlemail.com
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