When Tangerine Confectionery asked us to support their new TV ad campaign for Butterkist using our PR expertise, we simply couldn’t resist!

The ad, which features the catchy ‘I Can’t Resist Butterkist’ theme tune, showcases the daily situations in which we find ourselves eating popcorn, such as when we watch films, travel on the bus, or even when we’re relaxing in the bath!

The running theme was that ’Butterkist is irresistible’, so to give the campaign a human angle, we surveyed 4,000 Brits to reveal what they find irresistible about each other. This gave our media relations activity a fun news hook which was strongly aligned with the campaign’s focus.

Surprisingly (or perhaps not), we found a definite gender divide. It seems that women go for a dashing smile and a good sense of humour, whereas men find a good body and great ‘assets’ irresistible.

The story captured the imagination of the national media as we secured fantastic coverage in the Daily Express and Metro Online, as well as getting Eamon Holmes and Ruth Langsford chatting about it on ITV1’s This Morning (Fri 5^th Feb). Hoorah!

To keep the momentum going, Butterkist is offering its web visitors the chance to win a whole bathtub of ‘the nation’s number one popcorn’ in exchange for posts about what they find irresistible. So, if you fancy adding to our campaign’s success and sharing what makes you weak at the knees, then by all means join the conversation. Come on, we know you won’t be able to resist!

Posted by Gemma W

A return by popular demand is always a good one to get the word of mouth going and Cadbury did just that with the return of Wispa in 2007. Now with a Wispa website revamp for 2010, the focus is to give Wispa fans a sense of ownership of the site, as it was them afterall who brought the product back from the sweet shop grave yard.

They’ve put interaction with the brand at the heart of the site. Focusing on people’s love for the chocolate bar, you can make little tunes about how much you love Wispa and upload your snaps of you and your Wispa, as well as putting your own name on the wrapper instead of Cadbury (or Kraft if you’re reading this in a few months!)

It’s a bit of shame though about the Wispa Twitter feed – one lonely tweet to start the New Year. Better make a belated New Year resolution Cadbury if you’re wanting to keep up your consumer interaction and keep the Wispa love flowing.

Posted by Sally Barr

I read a really interesting post last week in SmartBlog on Lego’s transformation from a company to consumer centric culture.

Lego now embraces its adult enthusiasts.  Pic courtesy of MasterChief1.

It makes a great case study for a number of reasons:

1.  It demonstrates that shifting the way you view your products can positively affect sales

2. It shows that truly understanding your customers can open up new possibilities for business growth

3. It acknowledges that embracing social media in an organisation can often take time and patience

Jake McKee,  Global Community Relations Specialist at the Lego Group explains the steps they had to take:

• There was not much boardroom activity.
• The company Jake and his team learned slowly, achieving “success by 1000 papercuts.” They did the smallest things they could get away with, then turned those results into a case study, and those case studies grew over time.
• Tenacity was essential.

Which goes to show even an organisation as celebrated in social media circles as Lego had to take it’s time.  I constantly see companies being criticised for not ‘doing’ social media right and there seems to be nothing more the Twitterati and social media experts (there are over 15,000 on Twitter) love to do than hunt down social media ‘FAILS’.  All well and good but sometimes I get a sense that there is little appreciation for how large organisations operate.  The fact is embracing social media doesn’t (and shouldn’t) happen overnight.  Everything has to be tested and clearly thought through, business cases have to be developed and compliance has to be considered.  Social media is a journey, not a race.  Like Lego, take your time to get it right.

Posted by Deborah Copeland.

@DeborahCopeland

We were going to use what will probably be our last blog post before Christmas to look at the best social media activity of 2009, but it seems that we’ve been beaten to it (more time freed up for eating Christmas chocs then).

Campaign magazine’s roundup of the top 10 virals of 2009 is here
and
Nick Burcher’s mashup of his most noteworthy social campaigns of 2009 is here

It’s also worth a look at Econsultancy’s Innovation Awards 2009 winners (including OnVisible’s work championing transparency for First Direct )

At OnVisible, our favourites in 2009 were Compare the Meerkat and Tourism Queensland’s Best Job in the World.  What were yours?

posted by gemmaT

We’ve been working with Visit York to promote an exciting annual event – Illuminating York. This is our fourth consecutive year working with Visit York on this project, which is great, because we love it.

It’s a digital art festival which runs each October for ten days and lights up some of the city’s oldest buildings with projections, with the help of a number of international artists.

The media relations campaign was launched last Friday (23 October) and we’ve generated some fantastic coverage so far including regional press, blogs, BBC News (Look North) and The Guardian Guide.

Plus, today Illuminating York has been featured as this weekend’s ‘Culture Minute’ on the Telegraph’s website.

So, if you’re a culture vulture, make sure you head to York over the weekend for your last chance to experience the sights and sounds of York after dark.

Illuminating York runs until Sunday, 1 November www.illuminatingyork.org.

Posted by Sally

Just read a really interesting post on the Swamp blog about the recent BMW augmented reality
campaign for the new Z4.   Apart from being a really clever way to get people to interact with the car I was really impressed with BMW for pushing the boundaries yet again.

Obviously technology and design will appeal to BMWs target market and by using an emerging technology like AR, it has helped to extend the buzz beyond the motor press and into the technology, design and creative clusters.  The web is buzzing about the campaign, across everything from news to blogs and video.  This campaign is a classic example that demonstrates how the means of communication can say as much about a brand or product as what you’re saying.

By creating an impressive application of AR they’ve position the brand and the car as innovative, technologically advanced, stylish, aspirational and fun as well as given people plenty to talk about.  BMW is particularly good at innovating in its marketing, one of my favourite campaigns was the short film series it did, especially this from 2002 - ‘Beat the Devil’…Brilliant!

Posted by Deborah Copeland