The Sun, The Star, Scotland on Sunday, The Daily Record and The Daily Express all picked up on the Ads That Never Ran section of the IRN-BRU site over the last few days. This led to a record day on Monday in terms of unique visits, time on site (over 5 minutes) and page views for the Ads That Never Ran section.
Hats off to Burt Greener for the coverage.
I beg your pardon?
These are the names of a few of the IRN-BRU ads that can be found in the Favourite Ads section of the new IRN-BRU website.
To say that IRN-BRU is a content rich brand via its advertising heritage is a bit of an understatement. But as if a mini-archive of ads that did run wasn’t enough, we’ve also included a section of ads that didn’t.
This section is the subject of a separate post, but suffice to say here that it has enabled to tap into an even richer seam of content, based on the fact that the ads that did run are just the tip of a creative iceberg going back over more than a decade.
Here’s a more comprehensive list of ads from the two sections…
Bitches, Suck, Dick, Laid, Ass, Snog, Mad Ferret, Hard Core Prawn, Nookie .
I challenge you not to…
A couple of hours getting very dusty in a spooky storage facility in Granton turned out to be time extremely well spent. We were raiding the archives for IRN-BRU poster concepts that, for one reason or another, failed to see the light of day. This is going back to 1994, so there was potentially a lot of stuff.
Some of the old files were missing or in the wrong place, but we came back with nearly 70 pieces of paper ranging from hand-rendered scamps to fully worked up presentation visuals.
Some of the concepts are recognisable as coming from the same stable as ads that have graced the bill boards of Scotland over the last decade or so. But some are the basis of entirely original campaigns that have never been in he public domain before. Until now that is.
The new IRN-BRU website features an Ads That Never Ran section, and we’ve launched with a selection of 12 concepts. More will be rolled out over time. Here are a couple of examples to whet the appetite.
We’ve just launched the all new IRN-BRU brand website. The launch coincides with that of the new “IF” TV commercial, which, not surprisingly, features prominently on the site.
But there’s a lot more to it than that.
There is other advertising based content, housed in two sections named Favourite Ads (ads that did run) and Ads That Never Ran (ads that didn’t - in case that isn’t clear from the title). These sections will be the subject of separate posts.
From a digital strategy point of view the most interesting section is one that we’ve called the Community Centre. The idea behind this is to give a platform to the healthy number of consumer fan clubs and IRN-BRU communities that exist in social media. They are doing a good job of spreading the word about the brand. Now, via the Community Centre, the brand can return the favour by spreading the word about them.
Fan club and brand group administrators can upload details of what they stand for, a link to their site or page and a representative visual. The result is the digital equivalent of a customer ad display in a newsagent window.
We’ve also provided access to a range of visual assets that can be downloaded and used on these sites.
So, rather than jumping in feet first and setting up official brand spaces on the likes of Bebo, Facebook and Myspace, we’re hoping to help grow the membership of unofficial communities. These have more credibility and tend to express their pro-brand views in forthright ways that would make even a brand like IRN-BRU blush.
As well as there being a lot of active IRN-BRU communities out there, there is plenty of IRN-BRU news and chat, not to mention a good smattering of colourful interesting blog posts. Via a Google News feed we’re pulling this news into the site. It’s a good way to introduce dynamic content on a daily basis, and it confirms the impression of IRN-BRU as a talked about, happening brand. The vast majority of comment is positive.
Watch this space for news on results.
I spent two days at Turnberry last week for the annual A G Barr management conference. This covered a review of the past twelve months and plans for the year ahead. It’s a good opportunity to catch up with what’s happening on brands other than IRN-BRU and Strathmore and to mingle with Barr people from beyond the marketing department.
This year the conference also included interesting presentations from Sir Matthew Pinsent on winning (something he’s done a lot of in his time) and The Prince’s Trust as well as after dinner entertainment by The Proclaimers - un-be-liev-able.
New content on IRN-BRU’s SFL sponsorship site.
A discussion forum with three sections. The first is an open forum wherein the fans can set the agenda. The second features an enigmatic character called The Gaffer. He’s a professional writer with the inside track on the live SFL issues of the day. He’s our official “firestarter” and, by protecting his identity, we’re looking to generate some Top Gear, Stig style mystery around him.
Finally we have a section of match reports. The reports are written by amateur writers who are dedicated home and away fans of SFL clubs. We’re looking to have a reporter for each club so that we can spark some comment and debate based on two alternative views of each game. The forum only went live a couple of days ago and we have high hopes.
An interesting point of view from our friends at Face Group the other week. How likely is it, they ask, that someone who knows enough to inform opinions about the latest mobile phones will also be out there informing opinions about mortgage interest rates or hand cream? Answer - not very. There is a definite tendency to talk about opinion formers as a single, amorphous, universally targetable group, regardless of product category. It doesn’t make sense when you think about it.
Face is a youth marketing agency that believes in “audience first, discipline second”. They specialise insight, co-creation and advocacy. Through their Headbox online community, we’ve also had some interesting conversations with them about campaign amplification and seeding.
We recently launched a nice campaign site for Strathmore Spring water. It’s based on the last TV campaign that I worked on at Leith. The TV work is so strong that the idea for the site was not to put anything in the way of it. That said there are a couple of interesting back stories to the work - most notably the music by the late Martyn Bennett, and the Belgian double-dutch skipping crew DDF.
An ad in the Society section of yesterday’s Guardian included a link to this MI6 site.
If you dig deeper, they really are advertising for Spooks, otherwise known as Case Officers.
The ad says that you mustn’t tell anyone if you decide to apply…
The clean, modern city that was my Facebook profile is now dominated by a shanty town of unwanted but persistent applications. As a result I feel less comfortable on the streets of said once clean and modern city. I suspect I’m not alone.