The City of London is usually a relatively peaceful place on a Monday as people catch up on emails and knuckle down to work after the weekend. This morning it was even more quiet than usual because the weather was so horrible and everyone was staying inside, but at about 11:30 loud music and shouting interrupted meetings and broke concentration. Martin Wiggins, director of FWD Marketing was hosting a client meeting in our boardroom and despite the rain and the cold was about to head out to investigate the commotion. On spotting me it was requested that I carry out the investigation in his place due to the meeting currently in progress, while very helpfully calling the lift for me.
Without time to grab a jacket or umbrella I rushed out into the elements armed only with my iPhone only to hear the music disappearing round the corner of Leadenhall Street and Gracechurch Street heading South. A quick cut through Leadenhall Market and I caught the noise up at the traffic lights. Now I’m sure you’re on the edge of your seat waiting to know what the cause of all of this commotion was…well it was an open top double decker bus full of people dressed as cows!
Despite some very loud speakers playing at the front of the bus, large green banners draped down the side and shouting cow people waving flags and attracting attention from all angles it took me a while to work out what they were promoting. It was enough though to make me want to find out and on closer inspection it turns out that they were from Friends of the Earth and raising awareness that on 12 November MPs will be voting on a new law to break the hidden link between animal feed in factory farms and wildlife and rainforest destruction in South America.
Conclusions
This form of flash mob/gorilla marketing is nothing new, but what I did find interesting is their use of a URL. The banners and flags direct you to www.jointhemoovement.com which is not a website, or even a microsite. It simply re-directs you to a page on the Friends of the Earth website. This will have kept the costs down, meant no new content is required, pushed traffic to the main site to boost SEO, and ensured the route to information is a neat and tidy one.
Written by Craig Freeman, Digital Consultant, FWD Digital
Unless you have been trapped on a desert island or you are under 5 years old you must know that today sees the launch of the iPad in the UK. Over 1 million have been sold during the first month of release in the US and I am sure that after all the hype and coverage that a similar number will be sold here.
Ignoring the buzz around the iPad our focus as a Financial Services digital agency, is the relevance to this industry.
The FT launches an iPad app
Along with the FT, Stephen Fry, BMW and the Ministry of Sound have already released apps for the iPad. When you look at the motivation behind these campaigns it is either to appeal to a younger audience, to be seen as an early adopter or to bring in advertising revenue.
Those three points immediately surface doubts over the importance of the iPad for Financial Services. Targeting younger users and adopting new technology are not high up the priority list of Financial Service marketers and rightly so. This industry has only recently started to adopt social media and blogging and many of the websites are out of touch with B2C brands and service providers. Getting caught up in the iPad buzz would distract from understanding and implementing how Web 2.0 can make a real difference.
It is very easy as a marketer to get caught up in new techniques and technology. The iPad is the second most discussed topic on Twitter today and there are clearly those that are really excited and those that don’t understand the hype.
Protecting your brand and prioritising your digital marketing spend
Financial service marketers are well placed to learn from others mistakes. This has been the case with social media as banks and insurers have watched B2C brands trip up on sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Now that is is clearer how consumers interact with brands on these sites financial services brands are launching SEO and social media campaigns, while some are even launching iPhone apps.
We feel that it is still these areas that should be the focus of marketing activity for financial services as the potential to generate leads, build brand awareness and stand out as industry thought leaders are far from being exhausted. There is one aspect of iPad marketing that financial services do need to look at though, and that is the compatibility of their website. Consumers can and so view websites on the move now so websites need to be built with iPhones, iPads, Netbooks and other mobile devices in mind.
Much search engine optimisation activity is concerned with link building – adding text links (such as SEO and Web Design Agency) to other websites. This has two purposes. Firstly it increases the “page rank” values on your site through the mere fact that you have links (of whatever relevance and value) pointing to your site, which helps to push you up search engines. Secondly, it’s a way to increase traffic to your site – people on the sites that are linking to yours, may well come to your site via your text link.
“Contextual” link building takes this one stage further. This focuses on building links from sites that are relevant to your business and/or have higher page rank values. If you supply office stationary, for example, a link from a site that helps people set up a small business should be relevant and is more likely to drive people interested in office stationary to your site. Google may spot that the key words used in your link text also appear on the page where it sits, which is a further plus from a link value perspective.
Many people don’t think of it in these terms but creative online advertising – using banners, MPUs, buttons and the like – are also simply links. Their primary purpose – like contextual links – is to drive more, relevant, traffic to a website. They are, however, only temporary links and will be broken when the advertisement is taken down. Because of this, when negotiating rates with the website you are advertising on, it’s a good idea to ask for a permanent text link or at least one that will site on their site for a period of time after the creative has been removed.
Unless you have been trapped on a desert island or you are under 5 years old you must know that today sees the launch of the iPad in the UK. Over 1 million have been sold during the first month of release in the US and I am sure that after all the hype and coverage that a similar number will be sold here.
