How hilarious! such a good example of IMC stategy

Nutricia Belgium has launched a product promotion advertising and marketing campaign through its new video commercial “The Instant Pregnancy" and iPhone app “Baby Connection”.

Created and developed by creative agency Duval Guillaume Antwerp, Nutricia, one of the well known brand and specialist of baby food and clinical nutrition products, has offered Belgian fathers to have a chance to experience the pregnancy with a high tech empathy suit.

Aimed to introduce the fathers-to-be about what thier wives and girlfriends go through, the empathy suit mimics the sensation of pregnancy. As demonstrations, Nutricia has been taking the empathy suit to shopping malls to let people try it. As a result, the guys who try it on seem to come away with a new respect for their better half.

As a part of the integrated communication strategies, Nutricia also created an awesome iPhone app “Baby Connection” designed for both pregnant women and their husbands, allowing both to record aspects of the pregnancy in a timeline that can be shared via social media.

The Baby Connection apps share everything that they plan, learn, feel, see and hear during these special pregnancy months. The iPhone app also automatically allows two phones held together to form one giant screen.

I think this is such a great case of an IMC strategy that contatins advertising, promotion, viral marketing and social media for communicating with their core target. Their method to approach the target is so remarkable because they considered not only the current target who is pregnant and husband but also the prospective target who is going to be the pregnant and husband in the near future.  

What a bold PR event for Heineken Italy!

Champions League Match vs Classical Concert

(Real Madrid, AC Milan) 

A really successful PR event for Heineken Italy. The audience will never forget it.

This is a pretty brave guerrilla marketing event by Heineken on the eve of one of the biggest matches, Real Madrid vs AC Milan. You might think of the event to take advantage of all the soccer fans, but you’d be wrong.

Heineken decided to stage a fake classic concert in an Italian theater event at the same time the game was to be played. To make this happen, they recruited about 200 people to get 1000+ males into this event, sacrificing the biggest game of the season! 

Heineken even had the event broadcast live on SkySport for the Authenticity. As the event got underway and the males in the audience got increasingly bored, the stage slowly released clues to involve them as the big reveal came! A live projection of the entire game for all 1000+ people in the audience, with Heineken the absolute heroes!

Very cool on a massive scale.  

I really love the way they’ve done a bit more with their sponsorship than just logo slapping. And the mixture of sheer joy and relief coming from the audience is palpable – genuinely delightful.

Do you want to be Remarkable? - Purple Cow Marketing

Are you happy being average? Or would you prefer to stand out from the herd?

That was the challenge posed by digital marketing guru Seth Godin in his popular book ‘Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable'.

What is a Purple Cow?
Seth’s definition of being a Purple Cow is that ‘products, services and techniques so useful, interesting, outrageous, and noteworthy that the market will want to listen to what you have to say’.

Being a Purple Cow is not about being loud or quirky, but about being more outstanding and remarkable than your black and white spotted competitors.

What’s Purple Cow marketing?

Purple Cow marketing is that products and services are so amazing that people can’t stop talking about them.

A key theme in Seth’s ‘Purple Cow’ is that marketing needs to be remarkable because the effectiveness of traditional methods to launch a new product is questionable: people have been through so much mass targeted advertising that TV and print ads are failing to get noticed.

How can I become a Purple Cow?
If you want your marketing to be remarkable, and stand out from the rest, then you need to think about how you can make your message more unique and special to your customers.

This marketing example shows that even a toilet can be a purple cow. This ad is by a Swedish toilet company that showcases a feature of their toilet that makes it a purple cow.  As of writing, this video is the first result on YouTube when you search for "toilet", and has over 1.9 million views.  How cool is that?

So what’s your remarkable story?

If you want to become a purple cow then start thinking about what’s unique, special or exceptional about you. What’s your background story? How can you make your product sound more noteworthy than the rest?

Once you’ve developed your remarkable story, start thinking about how your marketing can be remarkable too. How can you tell people an engaging story which will capture their interests, connect with them on an emotional level and be a story they’ll eagerly share with others?

What the hell is MPR?

When IMC(Integrated Marketing Communication) uses public relations to promote a brand, it’s known as MPR (Marketing Public Relations). MPR uses nonpaid media vehicles to inform the public about a product, service, or corporation.

MPR deals with the “selling” of a corporate or brand image to a specifically defined target audience, which is different from traditional corporate public relations that deals with many different publics and has been relegated to a support role, responding more to what the client wanted than what the advertising message required. In MPR all communication efforts are controlled. They have access to the press, an ability to reach the target, and credible reputations.

Reinforcement

PR comes into the IMC process with experience in creating opportunities for two-way communication between the company and the target - making it a vital player in determining and managing the relationship between them. Because of this, PR is excellent at initiating communication efforts through interactive exchanges between the public. This dissemination of information gives symmetrical information to all interested parties, bridging the gap between word-of-mouth gossip and fact.

Defensive MPR

Ideally, PR practitioners will find themselves in an offensive position when introducing or maintaining image; but if any kind of negative publicity does arise, they will need to take a defensive position. A company’s reputation directly affects the ability to create or maintain the brand equity and brand loyalty. In a crisis or negative situation, the way in which the corporation’s view or position is handled can eliminate any lingering negative effects concerning the corporation, product, or service.

Rebuilding

If the public is not given the satisfaction from the corporation or organization, word of mouth takes over and affects thier equity and loyalty. When corporate ethics result in a scandal, it can be very expensive to win back confidence and brand-loyal consumers. Continual informative messages are critical to the continued success. Initiating or beefing up an old-fashioned “open door” policy is a key first step to reenter the marketplace and to win back public acceptance.

“Cynical consumers, zapping commercials and ignoring print ads, are more receptive to the editorial message. The third party endorsement allows advertisers to sell a now product while enveloping the commercial message in a creative environment.” That is the essence of MPR.

Social Media Damage Control ㅡ Preventing the viral crisis

   Social media is a fabulous tool to broadcast the positive, but when others start repeating, re-tweeting, and adding to a negative message, the problem can become a crisis. The crisis can quickly spiral out of control leaving a company's reputation damaged and public opinion sinking.

  Many organizations have jumped on the Social Media bandwagon, but woefully unprepared when something goes wrong.

5 main strategies that companies can use to become prepared and prevent a major social media crisis

1. Anticipate

By announcing and addressing a problem beforehand, you appear more honest, pro-active and customer-focused.

2. Ignore

It's one of common methods. Why pour fuel on the fire?

3. Engage

You seek to open a dialog with the troublemaker and the wider social media community. Without the authority to solve the situation, you may be able to demonstrate reasonableness, compassion and understanding. You'll not only diffuse the situation, but also learn something important that can be fed back into your products development or service delivery process.

4. Fight

This strategy is aggressive engagement but should only be used once the troublemaker crossed a line, or other crisis techniques have proven unsatisfactory.

5. Solicit Support

The goal with this is to ask you engaged community to advocate on your behalf such as Twitter or contact directly by picking up the phone or writing on email. Reach out or your supporters!

Ten Reasons To Do PR

1. You’re a little fish in a big pond

Beating someone else’s ad campaign with your own paid advertising can be difficult if your competitor can afford to it. In advertising, money buys you more media space and airtime. In PR, on the other hand, creative thinking wins you media space and airtime.

2. Your product or service is the best – and nobody knows about it

Have to tell your story in more engaging manner because the media isn’t interested in advertising your product for free for you. Plus, consumers know that an ad is an ad – they’re skeptical. They have tendency to believe PR more than advertising, because it is compelling and trustworthy to them, which is encouraged by the media.

3. Your product or service isn’t better than anyone else’s

“It’s more important to be a good marketer of what you do than a good doer of what you do.” by Winston March, an Australian business consultant.

The more PR you do, the more you, rather than your competitors, become established as the leader in your field.

4. Management cuts your marketing communications budget

Marketing costs such as ad space, graphic design studios go up every year, which marketing budgets often stay flat. PR is the most cost-effective marketing on the planet. It can achieve better results than paid ad. When you can’t run as many ad as you used to do because ad budget is slashed, step up your public relations efforts. PR can help your presence continue in those media but you can no longer exposure it as frequently as in the past.

5. Management demands tangible results from marketing expenditures

“What results are we getting from our marketing dollars?” management demands. “Show me the numbers”

6. Traditional marketing isn’t working as well as it used to

Current tactics decline in effectiveness over time. When it comes to DM(Direct Mail), the response rates have declined in recent years, while postage and printing costs have been rising, which is more difficult for DM to generate a profit.

7. Your competitors get all the good press

With diligent, vigilant PR, you can increase the likelihood that editors will think of you when they’re writing about you.

“The way to be there when people are looking for you is to be there all the time.” Rob Gilbert.

8. You need venture capital

PR can make an impression on venture capitalists that you’re carefully conceived projections do not.

9. You are media-genic

If you have a product or service with an inherent element of fun in it, don’t be shy. You’re likely to gain a great amount of media exposure, which you may take advantage of. Show the public your colorful or flamboyant characters that have the edge. Use your natural charisma to your advantage in charming the public and the press.

10. You really enjoy working with the media

Never engage in PR for PR’s sake : getting your name in the paper just to see your name in the paper. When you consider your time valuable, it must be supposed to help you achieve a specific business goal. Just put your natural enthusiasm to work such as a PR campaign that generates results for you. The more you enjoy your things, the better results you get.

What is the difference between advertising and public relations?

Public relations is a business tool that often gets confused with marketing and advertising; they are related but are very distinct activities!

5 key differences

between advertising and PR

Price

The difference in cost is fundamental. Advertising is paid; PR is free. In advertising, money buys you more media space and airtime. In PR, creative thinking wins you media space and airtime. When your press release prompts a newspaper to write an article about your company, you don’t pay for that coverage. Compared to the expensive ad campaigns, PR is quite a bargain.

Repetition

The same advertisement can be repeated as many times as you want in a given publication; you can see it night after night. With PR, a media source runs a given press release or covers a publicity event only once. You have to provide a new story or different angle for the media in order to get covered again.

Control

When you advertise, you have almost total control over the layout, timing, content of your message and your material appears exactly as you created it. When it comes to PR, on the other hand, you have almost no control over them as it appears in the media. Your material may appear verbatim in one magazine but may be rewritten almost beyond recognition in another. That is, a journal may write a cover story based on your material; another may not publish it at all.

Credibility 

Many consumers are skeptical of advertising and know that an ad is an ad. Whereas, they believe that if the newspaper printed it, it must be true. They don’t identify it as promotion and are, therefore, not skeptical of it; indeed, they’re more inclined to believe it. That’s because it is in a way, “endorsed” by the media.

Attractiveness

An ad tends to appeal to only one audience: the sales prospects. As a result, they don’t care of interest of the media because they run it in exchange for a given amount of money by contract. Publicity, however, has an angle that is a hook or theme that grabs an editor’s attention in order to be chosen. Therefore, it must appeal to editors as well as the consumers, which sets it apart from advertising.