We are currently in the throes of kneading and crafting a
new website for Masters Allen.
It's been in development, then on the back-burner, then back
in development
again for some time now, while we have juggled
client work and other commitments. The good news is that we
can see a glimmer of light, with a tentative launch early in the
new year.
You may not have heard of cinemagraphs before. That would make sense as they have not been well publicised. They are appearing subtly in advertising and marketing campaign across a wide range of sectors and are being used in some clever ways to gain attention. One such example is the recent campaign for the Citroen DS5.
They are also the first of their kind produced by an automotive manufacturer. In line with the fact that the new model looks like nothing else on the road, Citroën UK wanted to convey DS5’s personality and presence with a fresh application of digital technology.
Photo: Citroën’s ‘créative technologie cinemagraphs’
Made popular by New York-based photographer Jamie Beck and motion graphics artist Kevin Burg, cinemagraphs use the animated gif file format to combine the composition of still photography with the movement of film. A captured moment in time; at first glance the image appears as still-life, then the movement reveals itself, injecting a whisper of dynamism into each shot.
Masters Allen has created an iPhone app for LED lighting company QE Global, aimed specifically at business. The app is a useful sales aid and allows the user to instantly calculate the benefits of LED lighting.
The Agency, which is responsible for all QE Global marketing was commissioned to create a sales aid and information piece that could illustrate the credentials of LED lighting to an industry which currently uses a variety of lighting solutions.
Masters Allen Production Director Aidan Rooney says, ‘The fact that QE Global can now use a sales tool which provides instant results is great, but the icing-on-the-cake is that this information is now available globally. By using an app, we have increased our client’s brand awareness and enabled users to instantly see the benefits of LED lighting on their pocket and the environment.’
The QE Global energy saving calculator allows users to enter details of their existing light fittings, for example; hours of operation and cost of fittings, and then compare against a series of QE Global LED products. The results illustrate cost, energy and maintenance savings against existing products. An additional element to the brief was to allow users to compare non-QE Global products too, to provide both transparency and awareness of general LED products.
QE Global Managing Director Carl Haffner added, ‘Whilst this was an exercise to promote the benefits of QE Global products, we were also keen to open this up to a wider audience so they could see for themselves the benefits of LED lighting, not only with our products but any LED lighting products.’
The ‘QE Global energy saving calculator’ app is available as a free download from the Apple App Store. Plans to roll out the app on a number of different devices are already in progress.
It’s interesting to see how government analysts and the general public are using social media to keep up to speed with, converse about and analyse the recent budget.
Check out this video from the BBC. Interesting stuff:
If you are keen to drive more traffic to your website and want to increase your search engine ranking, then blogging might be for you.
We would describe a blog as – “an online journal that is regularly updated with content and built on a platform with automated syndication”. In simple terms, consider a blog to be the equivalent of an online diary or bulletin board that is very easy for web users to access.
Blogs can be hosted with blog software or can be hosted by a blog host company. The downside of a blog host company is that you will not get the benefit of SEO (search engine optimisation) for your website.
Blogs and search engine marketing marry extremely well. Search engines have historically looked for content rich websites that are updated frequently, blogs provide the perfect solution for this, provided they are updated regularly. Search engines like keyword links, which blogs can provide. Assuming of course that they are written with keywords in mind. Search engines also like unique and popular content, so it is fairly safe to assume that if your blog is topical then visitors will want to read it!
In a nutshell, active blogs can rank well in search engines, provide quality links back to your main domain, and expand your traffic and presence on the web. So the question is, what are you waiting for?
Here’s a useful tool for any business owner or Marketing Manager who wishes to understand the meanings of terms such as, ‘Audience segmentation’ in advertising, or ‘Macromarketing’ in marketing. These practices are employed when developing a strong brand, and used to target the right audience for maximum impact.
US brand and marketing agency Kolbrener, have come up with this novel way of displaying these ‘elements’ in a scientific periodic table. They have created it to communicate these terms clearly to their clients, and have used it cleverly as an educational tool.
We just wish we had thought of it first!
Click on the image below, then rollover each of the elements to learn more.
What makes viral marketing work. Well a great way is to come up with something fascinating, that will make people surprised, scratch their heads, laugh or perhaps cry… or maybe a combination of all of the above. We came across this bit of viral marketing that certainly made us chuckle and it found itself on our website.
We’re sure you will have heard about, or seen, the new Hovis TV ad. It has received a great deal of media attention. The epic 122-second TV commercial is part of a new £15million campaign. The length of the cinema-style advert represents the age of the original Hovis small brown loaf, 122 years. The loaf itself is being re-introduced into stores. Incidentally, the Hovis brand is valued at a reported £380million.
Not to be outdone, Warburtons have started a new ad campaign, said to be costing in the region of £22million. Together with TV ads, press ads will roll out in Women’s press and Sunday supplements with the emphasis on ‘fibre’. A microsite has also been created with a fibre calculator amongst other things. Below is the latest TV commercial entitled, ‘welcome to the family’.
Hopefully you will have noticed a section on our homepage called, “stuff we like…” One of the links in this section is www.simpsonizeme.com
We thought it was only fair to show you how good this site actually is, so we decided to Simponsize ourselves. You can see the results below.
At the very least it’s a good giggle. We found ourselves repeating the process several times. So why not have a go yourself and if you feel like sending us a link we’ll be happy to give you our opinion. We showed you ours…
