Ged Carroll

Month: July 2006

  • Yahoo Found + more news

    Yahoo Found 

    Advertising Age has a case study of the Yahoo Found campaign that ran in London.The Yahoo Found campaign was interesting because it used the environment as an interaction with the poster executions to give it an experiential feel.

    The Yahoo Found campaign reasonated for a long time with consumers and we took found arrows on to the streets long after the poster campaign had finished to hijack the Dukes of Hazzard UK fillm premiere, SES London (with the help of Vegas showgirl outfits) and a Harry Potter book launch.

    Running a brand building campaign like Yahoo Found on a sustained basis takes a lot of cojones, especially in a corporate environment. Its a pity that Yahoo Found wasn’t exploited to its full potential.The problem that marketers now face is that brand activating tactics Google Adwords provide a safer option with PowerPoint friendly data that can be dropped into pivot tables and used like a crutch to support their decision-making in the face of a hostile management.

    What this doesn’t capture is brand equity through salience and mental availability which provides more diffuse benefits of preference over time.

    Influential analyst houses

    Interesting survey over at Duncan Chapple’s blog over which analyst houses have the most influence.Whilst the split may may change depending on what tech sector your client is in, its an interesting piece of research; particularly when you see the dominance of US focused players.

    And the fact that a good third of the most influential analysts are in the other category indicating a large amount of fragmented trusted expertise.

    EU roaming charges

    Meanwhile the GSM Association have a handy site that allows you to compare roaming charges when you visit different countries in Europe.

    I tried it using Orange post paid as my settings to have a look at different carriers. What I found interesting was that in the countries that I sampled (Germany, Ireland, Spain, France) there was not price differential between the carriers. Of course this was an unscientific test isn’t at all indicative of price fixing is it?

  • Sausage casing girls

    Sausage casing girls – A phrase that is insensitive yet garishly visual phrase used to describe young women and girls who are overweight and wear clothes that are far too small for them. The clothes emphasise giant love handles and letting it all hang out in an ‘unsightly’ manner. You may have heard the phrase ‘muffin tops’ used as well for the overhang of fat between a cropped top and the trouser waistline. 

    Both phrases are uncharitable in nature. However they are at the centre of a number of debates:

    • The debate rages on whether they are fashion victims needing to wear the latest slinky tops and hipsters. If so why aren’t clothes manufacturers providing them with clothes that actually fit? I think that there is a wider debate to be had about making fashion work for consumers rather than designers. Fashion assumes that the people who wear their clothes are tall and rake thin. So the fashion industry is partly responsible for the sausage casing girls fashionistas look down on
    • Are they in denial about their size or showing body pride?  Which brings back into focus how media, social media and advertising messages affect women’s self image and diet? 

    There is one great line from Letting it all hang out (July 5, 2006) by Robin Abcarian of the Los Angeles Times: “Fat or skinny, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “The guys in there will look at you if you’re wearing a little skirt and hoochie tank top.”

    I think this quote is interesting because it says a lot about prevailing beauty standards, where perceived sexual availability trumps the beauty conventions that the media and society dictate. We’ve known this for decades, film star Mae West was far from being a conventional beauty. Its also interesting that Unilever brand Dove has explored this territory for a number of years now.

    More jargon related terms here.