We’ve been working extensively in the field of social media in the last few months, across a number of verticals.

Without exception, we’ve been able to build large audiences of engaged friends and followers through consistent strategies of regular communications combining information and entertainment.

Unfortunately that’s not enough. While we can conduct surveys that measure changing perceptions towards a brand or service, the bottom line is … well … the bottom line. If we can’t persuade these people to buy anything, then it’s difficult to justify the activity – particularly when you consider how time consuming executing an effective social media strategy can be.

We’ve been experimenting with a number of different routes to conversion – offers and promotions, unique customer status etc. – and the one that seems to work best is an event.

Plotting an on or off line event gives us something tangible to work towards. You know when and where the event is happening, which allows us to plot communications and drivers of peer-to-peer activity, and insert specific targets for the campaign along the way.

Of course, we still continue with our regular mix of entertaining and informative updates. We need a solid base behind us if we are to generate sufficient momentum for the event. We also need to establish credibility with what will continue to be our hard core fan base.

But providing something that gets people genuinely excited and allows us to either get customers to try the product or service, or at the very least move them to a direct response arena, is the missing link in our social media strategies.

The difference between US and UK bingo is both cultural and physical.

In the US, online bingo is seen as an underground experience, where word of mouth the key driver to trial, and personal experience underpins loyalty.

 However, in the UK, perceived value is king. This has led to an environment of fiercely competitive advertising and offer upon similar offer, until we end upon a point where free bingo is the only effective call to action for new players, and 300% deposit bonuses are standard.

 But what does this mean for customer loyalty? Nothing. A customer bribed will have their loyalty bought by the next new offer.

 For bingo, read any new business. Earlier this year, Moonfruit (makers of website creation software) gave away 10 MacBook Pro to people using #moonfruit in their Twitter posts. The response was enormous, with over 39,000 people following Moonfruit’s Twitter posts. In terms of PR, it was incredibly effective. But in terms of data collection or potential customers? I would be incredibly surprised if even one of the signups had any interest in Moonfruit or their offer.

 By concentrating on getting customers to your site by any means possible, you lose sight of what made your business different in the first place. You concentrate on fighting on price at the expense of customer experience and the value of your brand. As you can see from the UK bingo market, this results in a generic offering where it’s impossible to tell one network from another.

 Our role as experts is to move beyond the great idea and ask ‘why are we doing this’, ‘what do we hope to achieve’ and ‘how will we measure success’. Even what seem like the greatest ideas must be challenged. If they are right, then the answers are clear and simple. But if they only appear to be good ideas, then justification is much harder.

 It’s all very well bringing in new customers and prospects with unsustainable offers. But what’s you next step? Without a strategy for customer retention, you might as well just be throwing money into the wind.

Given the challenging business climate we find ourselves in, it’s understandable that companies are looking to do whatever they can in house.

Simultaneously, marketers are also tasked with generating as much return as possible from their existing spend.

Given these contradictory demands, it’s obvious that cuts have to be made. But where?

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how everyone thinks that ideas and response are easy. I think I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of web projects where the client hasn’t wanted to flex their creative muscles to the detriment of the project.

Advertising is even worse – despite never having made an ad, some clients think they know more than the people that have been doing it for years.

But perhaps the most obviously effected area is DM and email marketing. With so many great fulfilment tools out there, it seems the obvious thing to take in house. But have you noticed how much more untargeted mail you receive from companies you are interested in these days?

Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. If you aren’t learning something specific and useful from each mailing, then you aren’t doing it right.

And, in the current climate, can you really afford to leave the campaigns that drive sales in the hands of gifted amateurs?

As a testament to our self-proclaimed fully integrated title we thought we would boast about a couple of our recent offline achievements…

Firstly; the CBS Bus-Side awards. At the beginning of the year we designed two adverts to go on bus-sides for two of our clients; ‘GameOn Bingo’ and ‘Travel Alberta’.

Our ‘Travel Alberta’ advert featuring ‘Joe the Alien’ (a character we created to promote Alberta as a tourist destination) made it to the final of the competition after an online public vote. So Rich, Natalie and Toby braved the unpredictable rain showers on Friday 24th and headed to Battersea Park to enjoy CBS’ hospitality and find out the results.

Congratulations to the CHI team who took home the award for first place (an excellent piece of creative work for their client Anchor).

You can see all the top bus-side finalists (including ours) here:

http://upeveryonesstreet.co.uk/?page_num=2

Secondly; we recently delivered an excellent piece of DM for the Latitude Group (an SEO, analytics and affiliate marketing agency) which is currently getting them an excellent response. Cowan Group helped with the concept and designed the direct mailout which encourages the recipient to go online and to our client’s website.

Cowan Group are always happy to work with any marketing medium and we know that although a lot of our client work is online, we still love offline campaigns as well!

We’ve had a lot of success with the CPA campaign, and it’s great for getting under the skin of the client and breaking down the traditional barriers of mis-trust and doubt. 

However, some prospects have said that they are concerned that, because we’re so focussed on success and ‘the numbers’, we won’t have that traditional energetic and entrertaining relationship that clients like to have with their agencies.

I don’t believe this is true for a second – it’s just that we think that fun stems from success rather than as a default setting. And the credit crunch is bringing people round to our way of thinking.

We’ve had some great celebratory days and nights recently – our annual review of Ocean Florida was a great drunken day based on the fact that we’ve bucked the industry trend and continue to deliver exceptional sales growth.

For Travel Alberta we’ve delivered over 4,000,000 views for their brand awareness campaign.

Now these are achievements worth celebrating!

One unforeseen consequence of the restaurant industries current reliance on discount vouchers for its marketing activity is an apparent loss in thought and attention across other aspects of their communications.

This week is a case in point. With our history and client base, it’s obvious that we are going to have a keen and enthusiastic interest in restaurant marketing, and as such I receive numerous marketing emails, and, as with any industry, they vary hugely in quality.

But two this week really pushed the boundaries of what is acceptable. I’ve been following Gourmet Burger Kitchen’s efforts to build up an online members club over the last few months since its launch, as it struck me as a communications platform with the potential to escape the downward spiral of discount vouchers. I love the idea of making your customers feel part of the brand, and that you are treating them as members of your team, but their approach is both too hurried and scatter gun.

For father’s day, they sent out an email offering vouchers for families – appropriate and valuable (if they’ve got the targeting right) – but the effectiveness of the offer was reduced by packing the messages full of jokey references to kiwis. Maybe I am in a small minority of customers that didn’t know that GBK was owned by New Zealanders, but I can’t believe that I’m the only one that doesn’t care. It’s great that they are trying to get away from the business/client relationship – but it has to be done on a step-by-step basis, and you can’t make leaps using elements that are not important or interesting to me.

Meanwhile, the people at Bay Restaurants appear to have gone temporarily mad. This week’s La Tasca mailing promoted a special discount offer. What’s so strange about that, you ask? Well, the discount isn’t for La Tasca – it’s for another chain of bars that Bay owns – Slug and Lettuce.  It began with this confusing and inappropriate line:

‘We know how much you love our tasty tapas and Spanish cuisine, but also realise that you may sometimes fancy something a little different!’      

Next, it  drove me to their fantastic new site that wasn’t finished yet. I don’t believe I ever gave permission for alternative brand messages to be sent to me, but even if I had I’d like to think that the messages would have stronger connections than ‘the people who own this brand also own another one’.

Come on guys – just because sending an email is simple, it doesn’t mean that effective email communications are easy. You have to think these things through and question why you are doing something, and whether it’s appropriate. At best you are leaving people confused – at worst, completely alienated.

A change of pace this week – Annie was here on work experience this week, and these are her thoughts. Over to you Annie!

Work Experience at Cowan Group

Prior to starting I was unsure what quite to expect from work experience at Cowan Group. I tried to gain some insight into the sort of work produced by the agency, but had little idea of how an agency is run, and was excited at the prospect of discovering how the work comes together and who are the key forces bringing the work together.

My first day in the office was a whirlwind. I was placed in the throne of Jen (Client Relationship Director), who was on holiday for the week, and sorely missed by her dependent colleagues.
After being introduced to the team – comprising of the ‘Suits’, the ‘Creatives’ and the ‘Geeks’ – I was immediately set to work. First task: building a list of fashion brands that ‘lack presence in the UK’. Second task: A detailed review about different agencies. The fact that these two tasks were given simultaneously, although daunting at first, kept me on my toes for the next few days.

The first task was extremely interesting. Not only because it allowed me to flex my passion for fashion, but also because it gave me valuable insight into the research required in order to select which clients are lacking in efficient direct marketing strategies, and thus which clients are in ‘desperate need’ of Cowan Group’s rescue remedy!

My research skills were further developed when constructing the agency review. It enabled me to gain an insight into how companies use different platforms to elevate themselves, one of these platforms being their competitors. It taught me that people can learn from one another, and that it’s not illegal to learn valuable tactical ideas from industry rivals!

I almost immediately learned Cowan Group were using social media extensively. I think one of the first questions I was asked amidst settling in was what my Twitter username was. After discovering that I had never actually heard of the site, it took a few minutes of recovery before the team began revealing its precious and revolutionary use (or multiple uses, I should say).
Partly out of embarrassment at thinking Facebook was the only popular social media platform that existed, and also after my failed attempt at trying to justify this – claiming that Twitter was obviously a business/post-grad fad – I set up my own Twitter account.

A few ‘tweets’ later, and although fully occupied with my tasks, I could not resist peering over – with the occasional eavesdrop – at the work-in-progress of the creative team. As a student hoping to one day break into the creative industry, I found it extremely useful to witness the process involved in creating the work required by clients. Whether this be to completely re-brand a company, or just to improve their direct marketing.

It’s now coming to the end of a great week, and one thing I still find baffling is the unremitting line of volunteers to do the coffee run. It seems caffeine plays a vital role in the workforce at Cowan Group. I would have thought that the ongoing happenings here on Great Portland Street would have been enough to keep even a sedated person awake: the never-ending amusement provided by the verging-on-bullying banter between colleagues; the assortment of approximately three songs, appearing to have been put on ‘repeat’, on the condemned radio station; and not to forget, the hysteria on Wednesday afternoon when we were imprisoned by a drunken homeless person and a fresh puddle of vomit on the doorstep.

Work experience at Cowan Group – full service, fully integrated and creative!

While talking to a number of our clients and agencies partners, it’s clear that many of them are viewing the ‘credit crunch’ not as a threat, but as an opportunity to carve out market share. 

But how should they approach this? The obvious answer is to offer a service or product that is so valuable and compelling that customers feel they can’t afford to be without it. But in the current climate, that has to be at the right price.

That got me thinking. For years, creative agencies across all disciplines have been united by the common complaint that clients think they know best about how to get the most out of the agency’s specific area of expertise. There are real dangers to this perceived meddling for everyone involved – the agency team become disillusioned, the project is riddled with compromises, tensions increase within the agency/client relationship, and the final project doesn’t achieve its objectives. This then culminates in finger pointing, mutual antagonism and the likely demise of a potentially beautiful and profitable relationship.

The reason that this story will resonate with people on both sides of the client/agency relationship is because of the inherent lack of facts involved. There are not enough facts involved in the process – we have poorly defined objectives at the start of the project, followed by woolly thinking in the strategy and no single decision maker with a clear vision of what must happen.

“How is this an opportunity?” I hear you ask. This is the perfect time for agencies to prove their expertise and value once and for all. In the current economic climate, clients are desperate to generate measurable response and quantifiable ROI and are only investing in projects that will deliver it.

They also have lower budgets to spend on achieving these objectives and want to reduce the initial risk in committing significant elements of their budget to unproven concepts.

So what can we do to help? Well, because each penny spent needs to be accounted for, clients have a much more focussed idea on what they want to achieve. And because budgets are so much tighter, agencies have the opportunity to take control: “If you want to achieve these results, you need to do these things at this time.” The only thing that’s missing is a compelling reason for the client to trust its agency.

That’s where the idea for our CPA deal came from. We’ve proved time and time again that we can deliver results for our clients, provided we are working towards a common goal in a relationship of mutual respect. By putting our budgets on the line, we’re showing our clients how confident we are that we’ll deliver on our promises. and by lowering initial costs we’re able to lower the risk to clients and give them the confidence that they will be able to do more with their budget – not less.

To find out more about our current CPA offer, give me a call on 020 7631 3278.

Working for a London-based agency, there is a real danger of falling into the trap of thinking that everyone is like you. For many of our clients in the restaurant industry, particularly those in cities, vouchers are purely about the number of covers and how many people you get through the door. 

But this doesn’t apply to all sectors of the market, or to all geographical areas. For many people, vouchers aren’t just a way of deciding where they’ll eat for lunch. Instead, they offer an opportunity to access an alternative lifestyle through a higher class of dining experience than they would otherwise consider.

If restaurant chains can achieve this, then they may be able to change eating habits – demonstrating why the dining experience they offer is both better and more valuable than the consumer’s current choices.

The key phrase to consider is ‘brand integrity’. As I discussed last week in ‘Vouchers: Short-term fix or long-term strategy‘, saturating the market with vouchers damages a brand’s reputation within its target markets and lowers your standing with your regular customers.

However, offering discounts to people that wouldn’t normally choose your restaurants can achieve the same objectives in number of covers without damaging the brand in the long-term. In fact, if you can get the targeting right, the campaign may actually strengthen the brand.

This route doesn’t just apply to mainstream restaurant chains. If restaurant groups have a high-end or exclusive brand amongst their portfolio, competitions to win dining opportunities at the marquee brand, which can only be won by eating at other properties, provide an opportunity to drive traffic that not only maintains the brand’s integrity, it enhances it.

The fundamental difference between this type of new customer and somebody driven into a restaurant purely on price is the length of time they take to make a decision. When somebody is making a decision purely on price, then brands are being associated with discounts. If you can use vouchers as a device to make customers consider the lifestyle they’d like to have, then you have an opportunity to present much more complex messages, and have a longer lasting and more positive impact on your brand.

It’s easy to see vouchers as a weapon in an ongoing war for customers and revenue. But if you look at the bigger picture, you have the opportunity to engage a new customer base, maintain brand integrity and increase your profits.

A recent report by the NCVO indicated that 41% of charities expected to increase their level of fundraising in the next few month. The key question is whether this activity is expected to increase income, or merely an attempt to maintain market share in a diminishing fundraising pool.

As pressure on our fundraising teams increase, and we look to be more and more sophisticated in our attempts to win new donors; it’s easy to overlook what works well – no matter what the channel –the power of good news.

I was reminded of this fact when one of my earliest charity projects the RSPB’s Save the Albatross campaign was back in the news last week. When we conceived the site back in back in 2006, we had very little concept of how to build an online campaign, and we saw the site as a central base to support PR activity and interest generated through the Volvo Ocean Race.

The site was launched on the back of a PR campaign that stressed how dire the situation was, and how close the albatross was to extinction. This caused a flurry of initial activity, but as we hadn’t recommended a great emphasis on data collection, momentum soon dwindled.

However, last week stories of the campaign’s success hit the news wires and generated a flurry of interest. Having not even thought about the charity for a couple of years, the news brought the campaign flooding back and I instantly reconnected with its aims and themes.

In our constant quest to find new ways to connect with our audience, we often spend too much time focussing on how we’re going to reach the audience, rather than what we are going to tell them. As Julie Andrews so memorably sang “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine goes down,” and some targeted good news can certainly bring new life to an existing database.

As donors become more careful with their available income, it’s the charities that offer the most value that will do best.  One of the key elements of this is going to be communicate your successes in a meaningful way – small steps forward make progress real, and show that money isn’t just disappearing into a black hole.