Marketecture have once again proven their technical and creative ability to produce results, with a recent project for the largest provider of special gases in the UK – BOC. In a market not used to experimental advertising and marketing, Marketecture have captivated BOC’s audience with some inspiring character based campaigns.

BOC is the largest provider of industrial, medical and special gases in the UK and Ireland. In the UK and Ireland BOC has been producing atmospheric gases, including oxygen, nitrogen and argon for over 120 years. Its portfolio today includes thousands of different gases and mixtures, as well as related equipment and services. Internationally BOC is a member of The Linde Group, a world leading gases and engineering company with almost 50,000 employees working in around 100 countries worldwide.

The brief
Plant owners are under pressure to comply with the business, legal and environmental commitments of operating a refrigeration plant. BOC offers a range of unique services for the prevention, cure and emergency aspects of plant contamination, in order to keep plants running at the right temperature.

Following the ban on virgin R22 and other HCFC refrigerants in January 2010, BOC approached Marketecture to develop the next stage of a live campaign which was aiming to educate customers about a forthcoming significant change in refrigerant gas legislation. The purpose of the campaign was to provide valuable information to both contractors and plant owners regarding what they needed to do to comply with the law and the consequences of sitting back and doing nothing.

The response
In both cases, a strong creative concept was required to capture interest and generate a greater awareness of the impact of the ban and also BOC’s new compliant service offering. BOC was keen to reignite their presence in the refrigeration market and wanted a unique creative proposition to convey their expertise and to grab attention alongside other rather dry competitor communications.

MARKETECTURE PUT FORWARD TWO CONCEPTUAL PROPOSITIONS TO:

- Position BOC as the expert voice on the forthcoming virgin R22 and other HCFC refrigerants ban.

- Create fear, uncertainty and doubt for the audience, driving them to seek advice from BOC and take the necessary course of action – buy new legally compliant gas from BOC to replace existing gas in use or stocks.

- Communicate a new refrigeration service offer ‘The Zugibeast’ to help customers deal with emergency situations when dealing with faulty refrigeration plant and machinery.

INTRODUCING ‘ESCAPE THE HCFC HOT WATER’ AND THE ‘ZUGIBEAST’

The Marketecture creative team designed a campaign theme based around the proposition ‘Let us take the pressure’. A campaign-specific microsite and supporting point of sale giveaways and posters were designed to draw customer’s attention to the legislative implications during 2010. By creating a ‘traffic light based’ timeline of actions that customers should be taking during the year, the campaign helped to drive enquiries for more information and assistance to BOC.

The next challenge for Marketecture was to introduce the ‘Zugibeast’ and its capabilities to customers – selling the benefits of the machine in case of emergency sitautions arising. Named after its inventor, Kevin Zugibe the chairman of US engineering company, Hudson Technologies. The beast is available in the UK exclusively from BOC and is on a one machine mission to help plant owners and contractors keep refrigerant contaminations at bay. As the Zugibeast is a serious piece of technical kit, the Marketecture team decided to attempt to personalise it by introducing a literal interpretation ‘Zugibeast’ character. Playing on the message of prevention is better than cure, the aim of the campaign was to encourage plant owners to maintain regular servicing of their machinery in order that the Zugibeast never came knocking.

This was a risky move for BOC as this humorous furry character was a big step away from previous communications to the market. As a long standing operator in this sector, the concept needed to capture attention at the same time as being taken seriously. The concept was well received by the market, and feedback from clients stated that the beast concept was a refreshing twist on the usual collateral presented within the sector and was certainly a good talking point at exhibitions.

THE RESULTS

Since BOC launched the gas2010.com site in early October 2010, the campaign has seen increased traffic to the site with over 1000 unique visits to date, 78% of which were new visits and 11% of this traffic came direct from promotional activity. Of the 1,375 page views recorded during this period, they maintained a good bounce rate, with visits averaging 3 minutes 22 seconds.

BOC has managed to position itself as a market leader on the legislative change and has estimated a 700%+ increase in pre-campaign awareness.

“The Marketecture team has always impressed me with their flexibilty and reliability, but above all their creativity. They’ve often thrown me a ‘curve ball’ to challenge my thinking and approach. Their passion for B2B really shines through in everything they do.”

- Marketing Manager, BOC

It is not only great to see such creativity in a market not accustomed to it, but also to see such a positive response and acceptance from clients, customers and competitors.

Congratulations Marketecture for once again proving your technical and creative ability to provide results far beyond targets.

‘Agency of the week’ is a weekly award from Traffic LIVE to give praise to design agencies who really are – ‘Doing Different’.The award could celebrate the companies career or a specific project. This award is bound by new rules and is awarded to those companies who shine in their industry for their skill, hard work and spirit.
Think you got what it takes? Email awards@trafficlive.com

The concept of guerrilla marketing was invented as an unconventional system of promotions that relies on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget.

The objective of guerrilla marketing is to create a unique, engaging and thought-provoking concept to generate buzz about an idea, a product or service. Guerrilla marketing involves unusual approaches such as intercept encounters in public places, street giveaways, PR stunts, or any unconventional marketing intended to get maximum results from minimal resources.

Since the dawn of Guerrilla marketing, it has now been adopted by large corporations as an exciting and alternative method for promotion. Not restricted by budget, larger corporations have been able to pull off some highly original marketing stunts.

By being a little clever and unpredictable, you can engage with customers who respond to fun marketing techniques.

Enjoy!

Tom Kelly-Lord

BBDO set up a business called the Hidden Pizza restaurant, aptly named because it was hidden far away from everything else in the world, down an alleyway, through a roller door, down an elevator and in a basement.

BBDO then issued a challenge to the Australian community: anyone who found Hidden Pizza over a two-week span would be given a free pizza. The only clue people were given: Look it up the way you would any other business. The contact details were only put in the Yellow Pages and on the Yellow Pages website, to truly test the effectiveness of Yellow Pages.

Yellow Pages put it all the line, if no body came to hidden pizza, it would reveal Yellow Pages’ worst fears.

Hidden Pizza’s opening night eventually came and to even BBDO’s surprise, thousands of people found it (yes…thousands). In just two weeks 6,079 called through the Yellow Pages network, resulting in a very busy pizza place. This Melbourne based campaign truly showed potential advertisers how effective advertising in the Yellow Pages is.

In what amounted to be the most successful advertiser campaign in Yellow Pages history, this campaign proved that Yellow Pages can attract customers like no other outlet can.

BBDO – simply wow. Here at Traffic LIVE, we thrive on businesses who are truly doing different. BBDO went against traditional advertising methods with this highly experimental and risky campaign, and boy did it pay off for both BBDO and Yellow Pages. Congratulations for another inspiring campaign!

BBDO manage their creative studio using Sohnar Software.

Tom Kelly-Lord

Packaging has become such a big part of retail products and in a lot of cases, has become more important than the product itself. Strong brand identity, high on-shelf impact and instantly recognisable individual products is key to get products flying off the shelves.

If you’re looking for some inspiration to get you on your way, then you’ve struck a gold mine. This blog includes packaging from the food & beverage market. Profitable ideas and packaging innovations thrive in this active industry, which represents nearly 65% of all packaging purchased.

Enjoy!

Since Glenilen Farm‘s collaboration with design agency – The Brand Union, their product sales have gone through the roof. Glenilen Farm’s new brand identity and product packaging is picking up attention far beyond the Irish boarders, growing the business into new markets and winning many prestigious awards.

From small beginnings
Started by Val and Alan Kingston, Glenilen Farm is a small traditional dairy farm based in Drimoleague, West Cork, Ireland. In 1997 Val began making cheesecakes and yoghurts for the local market. Since then they have grown from strength to strength and now they convert all of their milk into delicious products using only the best quality ingredients, reflecting their steadfast belief in the goodness of wholesome, natural food.

Introducing Sally & Sue
The Brand Union’s challenge was to refresh the brand in a manner that attracted new consumers to Glenilen Farm products without disengaging the pre-existing consumer base. Also required was a tone-of-voice to allow the genuine, simple and honest nature of Glenilen Farm to be expressed on and off pack.

At a practical level, the brand needed to reproduce well across a wide variety of pack formats, substrates and printing techniques. The new Glenilen Farm logo, ‘Sally and Sue’, drew provenance from ‘Anniken and the Cows’, a painting by Canadian artist Robert Duncan (image below).

The painting, which hangs in the farmhouse of Glenilen Farm, is a simple and honest portrayal of farming life and so aptly represents the Glenilen Farm brand. Brand Union developed pack designs and tone-of-voice to reinforce the repositioning of Glenilen Farm as producers of authentic farmhouse products. The design differentiated itself through a strong typographic style, the use of simple language, packaging formats and the reinterpretation of traditional dairy colors (blue and white).

The crème de la crème
In 2009 Glenilen Farm scooped top prize in the Packaging category of the Institute of Designers in Ireland Awards.

In the face of extreme economic downturn, product sales rose considerably. Glenilen Farm increased their stockists throughout Ireland with the rebrand cited as a strong influencer in new stockists’ decision-making. The brand tested so well in Great Britain that Glenilen sought stockists there and is now sold in Selfridges (London) and Waitrose supermarkets. Public response to the rebrand was also strong, with customers referencing the new packaging in many comments left on Glenilen’s website (www.glenilen.com) and Facebook page.

In December 2011 the rebrand work for Glenilen Farm won the coveted Grand Prix and the Consumer Branding & Identity category at the Irish Design Effectiveness Awards.

Congratulations to The Brand Union for winning this week’s award!

From the Traffic LIVE team.

‘Agency of the week’ is a weekly award from Traffic LIVE to give praise to design agencies who really are – ‘Doing Different’.The award could celebrate the companies career or a specific project. This award is bound by new rules and is awarded to those companies who shine in their industry for their skill, hard work and spirit.
Think you got what it takes? Email awards@trafficlive.com

The number of companies who are choosing to manage their studios with Traffic LIVE each month is on the rise. This is true for both existing Traffic clients and new Sohnar clients. Our feedback mechanisms have shown satisfaction with both the product and the level of customer service received are extremely high.

One of the biggest benefits to our customers of using Traffic LIVE, is having it delivered as Software as a Service. We’ve had feedback that this has increased speed and reliability, reduced installation time and downtime during upgrades.

There are too many features to list within Traffic LIVE, but we’ve had some fantastic feedback on our Studio Scheduler and Timesheet modules. These are proving so popular that other tools such as Jira and Brand Ocean are interfacing with us, to use Traffic LIVE as the front end to their systems.

Our new support system with forums, a knowledge base and contextual help on each page has also improved the user experience for Traffic LIVE.

We look forward to another great year of Traffic LIVE and many more to come.

The Traffic LIVE Team

This post features iPad apps that designers, developers and creatives will find useful. You’ll find drawing, sketching and wireframing apps, note-taking apps, website editors, painting apps and publishing and analytics apps. I hope you enjoy this post!

Freeform

I’ll start with my new favourite app. Freeform is the ultimate vector drawing app for the iPad. If you’ve worked with Adobe Illustrator or even Adobe Fireworks’s vector tools you should feel right at home with Freeform. Now I can create corporate brands, icons and other graphics on the go, which i’ve been wanting to do for a long while now.

Adobe Ideas

Adobe Ideas is a digital sketchbook, letting you capture and explore ideas anywhere you go.

Adobe Ideas is an ideal companion for the design applications from Adobe that you love, including Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. Easily sketch using vectors, re-use specific colors using the Eyedropper tool, and save and use multiple color themes.

Adobe Ideas is so simple to use, it’s not even funny. But it’s not just super easy to use, it’s also pretty powerful. It’s a basic drawing app and the user interface is extremely well thought out (in my opinion – it sometimes reminds me of Adobe Kuler).

iMockups

iMockups is, as you might have guessed it, a wireframing app. With it you can quickly create website wireframes and layouts. The touch interface makes it feels natural I found it really fun to use too.

Mindnode

Mindnode is a great mind-mapping app. The user interface is extremely simple and this app is now the only mind-mapping app I use (I even dropped the desktop mind-mapping app I had in favor of Mindnode).

Dropbox

I use Dropbox nearly every day. It really is a time saver and the iPad app is a great companion to the desktop application.

Air Display

What if you could turn your iPad into an external monitor for your computer with the touch of a button? Well now you can thanks to Air Display! This app is not a ‘remote desktop’ app, it really is an additional monitor, and it works over wi-fi. I use this app a lot to free some space on my main monitor.

Ego App

This one is for all of you stats addicts out there. With Ego you can quickly and easily see your traffic (hits and page views), your Feedburner feed count, the number of followers on Twitter and you can also add Tumblr, Vimeo, Mint, Squarespace and Ember stats. Ego will also allow you to login to those sites and use them just like you would via a web browser.

Analytics HD

Analytics HD is a Google Analytics app with which you can view pretty much all the same data as you would via the real Google Analytics site.

Gusto

Gusto is a fully-featured website editing app. You can connect to your server and use Gusto as an FTP client as well as create and edit files. It’s a great ‘project workflow’ application.

Penultimate

Penultimate is a note-taking and sketching app. Think of it as a digital version of a Moleskine notebook – even better you can switch between graph, lined and plain paper.

I am still researching the many different ways my new iPad can benefit my work and home life. If you know of any more apps that could benefit the design community then feel free to comment and share.

Thanks!

Tom Kelly-Lord

Challenge: WQXR launched a festival celebrating Beethoven, classical music’s top crossover artist, with ‘Beethoven Awareness Month’, and needed a campaign that would create awareness of the brand while conveying the energy and accessibility of a genre too often deemed elitist or “not for me”.

Solution: With a limited budget and the cluttered landscape of NYC, the solution was designed to be visually and creatively disruptive. It was imperative that the work sparked conversation and interest. The goal was to have as many New Yorkers encounter classical music and WQXR in their own daily lives – and have some fun in the process.

‘OBEY-THOVEN’ was inspired by campaigns from artist Shepard Fairey – best known for his Obey Giant street art and Barack Obama “Hope” poster. With Fairey’s permission, his graphical style was adopted by Eyeball in the striking Obey-Thoven images which graced New York City subways and street corners.

Fairey loved the idea and said “of course I support classical music, and this homage to my work made me smile.”

The campaign included painted walls, wild postings, online ads, and a TV spot airing on WNET and NY1.

Results: The new coined “Obey-Thoven” spread like wild fire throughout social media sites and the hashtag #Obeythoven quickly caught on throughout the Twitter world. In just a little more than a week, New York Magazine’s Approval Matrix deemed Obey-Thoven to be at the intersection of highbrow and brilliant.

Hundreds of blogs and aggregators across the media spectrum continue to pick up the story.

WQXR held an event during the morning rush hour at Grand Central Station featuring a quartet performing live Beethoven pieces married to hip hop stylings of Dister, an NYC master of the dance music genre.

Eyeball created a simple, eye-catching campaign that caught the attention of many sub cultures and communities within New York and beyond, which has helped position WQXR to become one of the most listened to radio stations in New York.

Congratulations Eyeball for winning this week’s award.

From the Traffic LIVE team.

‘Agency of the week’ is a weekly award from Traffic LIVE to give praise to design agencies who really are – ‘Doing Different’.The award could celebrate the companies career or a specific project. This award is bound by new rules and is awarded to those companies who shine in their industry for their skill, hard work and spirit.
Think you got what it takes? Email awards@trafficlive.com