The event, created by the UK’s largest independent marketing communications agency BD Network, brought the 208’s ‘Let Your Body Drive’ ethos to life with a projection mapping video show controlled by the human body movements of a performer; literally letting his body ‘drive’ a live virtual projection of the Peugeot 208.

Using the latest motion capture technology, akin to the Microsoft Xbox Kinect system, the show pushed the boundaries of existing large-format building projections to deliver a captivating live theatrical show for audiences, supported by timed tactile physical interactions such as water spraying the crowd, real lights shining out, and more.

From concept to finished show, the seven-week project was BD Network’s ambitious response to Peugeot’s brief to create a live event that would generate international engagement and awareness as well as produce a piece of world-class viral content to support Peugeot’s increased focus on digital marketing.

A two-minute film of the spectacular show is now hosted on YouTube; and this post-event online video activity allows global audiences to engage with this unique experience that embodies Peugeot’s ‘Motion and Emotion’ brand positioning.

Jim Carless, Head of Experiential, BD Network, commented: “Peugeot tasked us with creating a campaign that would bring the 208’s ‘Let Your Body Drive’ proposition to life in grand style and produce a stunning piece of viral video content to drive their digital strategy. This exciting world-first introduces the Peugeot 208 to the world stage in an entertaining and visually stunning way, providing a great opportunity for true brand-consumer interaction.”

Xavier Peugeot, Marketing and Communications Director, Automobiles Peugeot, added: “The 208 is a new illustration of the Marque project launched two years ago and establishes itself as a new stage in Peugeot’s desire to drive itself towards ever greater modernity. BD Network has responded ambitiously to this project by creating a cutting-edge experiential concept that will introduce the 208 to the world. After seeing this event live in Rio, I am excited about sharing this world-first event and its stunning film content with the world, attracting new consumers to Peugeot whilst encouraging fans to engage further with the brand.”

Now it’s hard not to have a small agency ‘chip’ here. Having worked for a mix of networks and large independent agencies, my new role is within a small yet beautifully formed agency. And, I love it.

Yes the budgets are tighter, the risks greater and we may not always be able to stay at the Carlton in Cannes, but being small is exhilarating. Being independent and small is even better. It naturally makes you an underdog, a ‘working class’ agency if you like and something I generally feel more comfortable with. It’s far more fun to steer a pirate ship than a Cruise-liner.

As a small agency or start-up you have a lot to prove, so rather than investing time in small man syndrome, proof can only come though a great body of work. Ultimately great work comes through graft and all truly great ideas come at a price or a struggle… Look at the best campaigns in Australia today and you can tell they took effort, belief, pain, perseverance, persuasion and balls.

Ambitious small agencies seek rites of passage. Create a body of work that is effective, creative and recognised and the industry accepts you…But the hardest of all is to be patient – enjoy being small, agile, nimble while you can. Sometime we all feel the small agency chip, but it’s that chip that keeps you hungry to achieve more.

After some unsure defending from Iris thanks to some constant closing we began to carve out some openings. It was only a matter of time before we made the breakthrough and it was Tim Dalton who passed one into the net to make it 1-0.. Having taken the opener, the chances continued to pile up though Iris were finding joy on the flanks and on the counter-attack, but were snuffed out by a stubborn BD defence. Dalton again struck with a great effort that curled into the top corner and left the keeper with no chance. Buoyed by a 2 goal lead, BD continued to press – Josh Norris was taken out in the box but the ref played a great advantage and the ball fell to Dalton who completed his hat-trick inside 30 mins.

With the half-time score at 3-0, it would’ve been easy for Iris to have thrown in the towel, but to their credit, back from the dead they came and pegged one back. At this point the tide had turned and Iris began to stamp their authority on the game, however, we kept our composure and kept battling away. A brilliant team move laid the ball on a plate for Matt M’Boge to put the seal on the game with a neat finish.

Three goal margin restored but back Iris came yet again, knowing that their pride was at stake and after we failed to clear the ball they punished us with a decent finish. Too little too late though and with the final result at 4-2 the celebrations broke out, having beaten Iris yet again to add even more misery on a team that clearly weren’t expecting to be beaten so comfortably. In truth, with all the work we’ve put in and determination we had in us, they didn’t stand a chance.

Final Score:-
BD Brasil 4 Iris 2

The line-up:-

Dermot Dever, Samuel Odoro-Ayim, Dan Gerrard, Dan Shone, Matt Duffey (c), Sam Steele, James Perry, Sean Cullen, Martyn Richardson, Tim Dalton, Matt M’Boge. Subs:- Telmo Alves, Aldo Brenna, Colin Knowx, Sam Prior, Josh Norris.

Our challenge was to create an emotional attachment to an already established product. All users had to do was tell us what BEANZ MEANZ to them; whether it was a quick and delicious snack or sitting round a campfire when they were kids; for a chance to win a share of $100,000.

We did this by creating a microsite where users can enter their can with a supporting Facebook and Twitter page as well as online media driving traffic. However, the most fun we had was playing with the iconic BEAN! The entire digital team sat and drew their own character bean, which then led to the creation of Facebeanz where users can create their own and share it with their friends.

The idea is simple, but it was a project that the team was easily excited about as we could all relate to it, whether it was a ‘beans make you fart’ joke, or creating the first transgender bean (not that there are any transgender members of the team) we had worked together to make it success.

The Carling Perfect Pint Experience is the biggest promotional activity carried out by Carling for 5 years in terms of reach and spend, with £6 million investment from the brand to see this go off seamlessly. Nurturing a close relationship with Carling’s ATL agency BMB, digital agency Fastweb, plus their packaging, media and PR agencies, BD Network has created the BTL support for the Carling Perfect Pint Experience, giving over 132 million (yep, that’s a small country) opportunities for Carling drinkers to win their own Perfect Pint Experience worth up to £15,000 for them and their mates.

Now… this Experience  – it could be anything from playing 5 a side football in Rio with the locals, to lounging on a yacht in Monaco watching the Grand Prix….the more original the idea, the better the chance of winning. (My request for a day of David Beckham as a personal butler was a LITTLE too far, but you get the idea).

As well as the chance to win the Perfect Pint Experience, there are 12 million other Perfect Pint prizes up for grabs, the majority of which I secretly covet myself… do we think if I go by a pseudonym I could fool the system? A 1 in 10 chance to win is our attention-grabbing headline and prizes on offer are everything from Limited Edition Carling Pint Gasses, Carling Earphones and T-shirts to Carling Cup Final tickets, VIP Isle of Wight tickets, NME Award experiences and £200 Ticketmaster vouchers… all-in-all, up to £22 million worth of prizes available to be won (yep, that’s the funding for that small country…).

So now it is live and Carling perfect Pint Experience is out there for all to enjoy, the only question left is what do I do now I am about to depart from the Perfect Pint World? I guess I’m off to the pub…

http://www.beanzmeanz.com.au/

More to follow…

The core objective of the WHISKAS Pledge campaign was to reinstate WHISKAS as the choice of Australia’s cats. We established that cats have always been the poor relation to dogs, and that their owners did not share the same social traits as dog owners did (i.e. walking). They were largely anonymous, but hugely active online.

Our campaign idea was simple. Allow owners to ‘Pledge’ their love for WHISKAS on their cat’s behalf. Cat owners were incentivised to join the WHISKAS Pledge website with 2 free ‘Oh So’ pouches and the opportunity for cat fame. If cat owners shared ‘how you know your cat loves WHISKAS’ they had the chance to win $10,000 and get their cat featured on pack.

We created and delivered all aspects of the campaign: TV, radio, press, outdoor, experiential, CRM, website IA/ redesign, online advertising, social media and retail activation.

This isn’t the only example of our award winning work this year. Our ‘Gimme Credit – Every Pack Gets 50p’ campaign won the Global Mobile Marketing ‘Best Use of Mobile Marketing in a promotion Europe, Middle East and Africa’ accolade as well as three ISP awards.

Heinz, has appointed BD Network as the below the line agency for its beans, sauces and soup brands.
BD Network will work closely with Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO and Vizeum to develop integrated marketing campaigns.

Otherwise agencies would substitute creative departments for cubicles. Brainstorms would be held in huge communal showers. War rooms – wet rooms and board rooms huge Roman spas. Planners would be allowed in the showers but only at briefing stage and account handlers would launder the towels and replenish the toiletries. Emerging agencies would hot-shower. Green agencies would use solar to heat their showers. Think Tank’s would record the showers to see what the optimum temperature and force of flow would be to achieve the best ideas. Sharing the brief would involve sharing the Imperial Leather. Digital agencies would spend hours trying to simulate the shower experience using augmented reality. The Networks would fragment their agencies into different offerings under sub – brands like ‘Deep Cleanse’, ‘Scrub’ and ‘Invigorate’. New Advertising agencies would try and reinvent the whole showering process and integrated agencies would connect the pipes from all the showers and believe that using the same water in every department will give their ideas a magical joined up feeling…

In our hunt for a new agency building, one of the nice to haves on the list is a shower.

Read more here…

• • • 
• Note: This article appeared on B&T online edition yesterday. It’s a great reminder of how immensely lucky we all are in Australia to have Steely among us. Like the famous end line of Honda’s ‘Impossible Dream’ classic TVC: “I couldn’t have put it better myself”.
• 
  
• Why do dogs lick their balls? Because they can.

• I’ve always liked that joke. And I like it even more now I have discovered its relevance to the future of advertising.
• 
  
• In 1963, J Walter Thompson’s James Webb Young wrote, “The true advertising man… is he who has the knowledge, skills, experience and insights to advise advertisers how best to use advertising to accomplish their objectives.”
• 
  
• If we can interpret ‘advertising’ to include all the forms of marketing communication now available to us, this definition of a job well done seems to remain pertinent, almost 50 years on. Good agencies have always worked closely with clients to set the right objectives, and have taken responsibility for navigating the best route to achieving them. This should be blindingly obvious. But having spent a day last month judging the finalists’ presentations in this year’s Australian APG Awards, I find myself wondering whether many of us have lost sight of some of our industry’s basic principles.
• 
  
• The first problem is that too often the objectives that are being pursued are the wrong ones. With the accountability mindset that inevitably accompanies any economic downturn, too many senior clients and agencies seem to be more concerned with survival than achievement, and decisions tend to be made in the pursuit of efficiency rather than effectiveness.
• 
  
• I recently heard a senior British police officer defending the reduced numbers of officers on the streets in the UK, on the basis that in the days when there were more officers on the street, there were fewer arrests. Against an objective of making more arrests, the statistics proved that his officers today were doing a very fine job. But with more officers on the street in the past, there were fewer arrests because they acted as a deterrent to crime. Which is the better objective? I’d say less crime, but it’s harder to measure crimes that might have been committed than it is to measure arrests.
• 
  
• Last week, far too many of the APG papers set up objectives that had less to do with clients’ business objectives than they did with their ability to measure something. Hits, views and visits are all very fine, but only as a means to an end, not as ends in themselves.
• 
  
• The second problem is that, regardless of the validity of the objectives, agencies today seem obsessed with recommending the newest, coolest, forms of communication, no matter how useful they might be in building a client’s business. If it’s digital, if it gives us presence on Facebook, if there’s an iPhone App and user-generated content, we recommend it.
• 
  
• Hands up if you thought Tourism Queensland’s ‘Best Job in the World’ was a great campaign. Sure, it got a lot of hits, views and visits. A lot of job applications too. But I have yet to see any evidence that it did anything for Queensland tourism, especially after the poor bugger who won got stung and nearly killed by an Irukandji jellyfish.
• 
  
• My old friend Ivan Pollard, a partner with Naked Communications, wrote recently in a UK industry publication, “I suspect that the past ten years of brilliantly seductive possibilities in the digital, data-driven, device-happy world have conspired to make us a little less focused on the science than we should be. We are quick to sell the fantastic possibility rather than research the rational suitability of our ideas.”
• 
  
• For while the means of engaging with people might have changed, their basic instincts have not. As Bill Bernbach once said, “It took millions of years for man’s instincts to develop, and it will take millions more for them to even vary.” It’s still our job to start conversations, to involve people in our communication, and to influence their attitudes and behaviour in a way that benefits our clients’ business.
• 
  
• Howard Gossage had an agency in San Francisco that pre-dated even television advertising, but he understood interactive advertising and brand advocacy decades before they became fashionable. “Nobody reads ads,” he said. “They read what interests them. And sometimes it’s an ad.”
• 
  
• Some would say that Bernbach, Gossage and their contemporaries are irrelevant today. But at a time when marketers and consumers alike are faced with an increasingly complex array of choices, the ability of men like these to simplify, to personalise, to humanise a brand relationship is arguably more necessary than ever.

• Many of the old rules still apply. And even in this world of fantastic possibilities, it might be new, it might be cool, it might be more measurable than other techniques, but just because you can, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you should.
• 
  
• John Steel. Planning God. (I added that myself).

The old saying goes ‘if you want to get ahead and get noticed, then get a hat’.

Sounds absurd, but the hat is one of the greatest marketing inventions of all time. The hat has always been a statement of personality, status and individuality. Is it mere coincidence that the tallest of hats are worn by very different people than the smallest of hats? My favourite, the flat cap is surely the most unassuming and apologetic hat of all.

Hats give us that ‘added extra’.

That’s why actors love them. Would Day-Lewis look as menacing without the stovepipe? Pacino as spaced-out without the Beanie in Serpico or indeed Clouseau as foolish without the trilby. In fact the hat can only be topped for opulence by one other garment, the cape. More on the cape coming soon.

In fact some hats go beyond branding. The semiotics behind the pirate hat, the witch or the crown could probably be understood in most countries around the world. Sometime hats are terrifying. Hugo Boss designed one of the most stylish uniforms/hats of all time for the SS. James Brown the editor of GQ (not the Godfather of Soul) lost his job over it, by putting Rommel into the top 200 stylish people of all time. Not the most intelligent of actions but the hat without the horrific connotations is pretty stylish, especially the lofty heights of the erect peak.

Hats are cult too, Doyles Deerstalker, the Easy Rider crash helmet, Alex’s Bowler from A Clockwork Orange, Cat in the Hat, all of YMCA, Odd Job and Ned Kelly…

America loves hats. They created a nation of the faceless with the baseball cap. First introduced in 1860 by the Brooklyn Excelsiors, it now remains a convenient place to hide behind or simply a substitute for hair. In fact the baseball hat that became the truckers hat (mini billboard on foam) is the slut of all hats and can be pimped by any brand, logo or emblem. The NYC baseballs hat has to be one the most recognized brands in the world today. Up there with the usual suspects, fast food brands, Coca-Cola, Ferrari and the Swoosh.

The hipsters and dandies are keeping the creativity of the hat alive today. The straw Panama, the Trilby, the Pork Pie placed on the back of the head, Flat Caps, and the Bowler are still seen sported with needle partings, oversized glasses and mo combos. A hat in this instance is pure flamboyance. Just as the Topper in its day and surely the Porsche/codpiece of all hats, the Stetson.

I love hats, but it’s no secret that some people are ‘hat people’. Usually, beautiful people. Gangsters looked great in hats. It made them bigger and more peacock-like. Like the forces, hats implied status and showed progression. A commis chef hats mirrors that of the army cadet. A General the pomp of the Head Chef. Have you noticed that the only people who wear beanies are good looking? Depp, Brand, Cobain… Surely the best thing finally about hats is that they are occasional by nature. We can blame wearing them on the sun, the rain, the snow, fashion, festivals, Halloween, parties, weddings, the races, Xmas or the odd mid life crisis… And when we don’t quite pull them off we can do precisely that. Back into the dressing up box until we find a new reason, new season, new set of friends or newfound confidence to don it once again.

The ‘Every Pack Gets 50p Mobile Credit’ campaign was the first of its kind, bringing all major GB network operators together, providing a compelling offer for teens in Great Britain whilst understanding the commercial contexts for operators.

Aimed at the core 16 plus teen market in Great Britain, the campaign ran for three months in 2009 in which time consumers received 50p credit on every 330ml can and 500ml bottle of Fanta, Sprite and Dr Pepper. Each can and bottle had a unique code which could be redeemed online at gimmecredit.co.uk. All subsequent codes could be redeemed by returning to the website or via SMS to 85888, with credit being added to the consumers account with 48 hours. The offer could be redeemed against all major GB network providers on PAYG and contract phones, with each consumer eligible for a maximum of eight credits.

To create standout, disruptive graphics were used on-pack and on nationwide POS in on-the-go retail channels. To achieve maximum reach, the campaign was supported through the line with a peer to peer word-of-mouth campaign, promotional activity taking place within cinemas and ATL in teen-centric environments.

This promotion achieved and exceeded all objectives set, receiving the highest redemption rate of all on-pack promotions run by Coca-Cola in 2009. Additionally, the innovative nature of the reward and mobile technology generated significant interest from Coca-Cola Global and as such the activity was rolled out again in 2010 within Great Britain and several European markets ran promotions offering mobile rewards.

A great example of users getting something back for their efforts, and one has been doing the rounds on the blogosphere is the UNIQLO UK website campaign -

“The idea is simple; whilst the Uniqlo site is down, site visitors see a holding page where they can set the price for 10 Uniqlo items that will go on sale on the new website. Users get to set the price by simply tweeting their favorite item – the more people who tweet, the lower the price (more than halving the initial price).” 1

An added layer of smart thinking to this idea is that it relies on the participation of multiple users, allowing individuals to be part of a like minded group via the perfect setting of social media, and benefiting those participating with kudos, peer group approval & real world value. This social form of e-commerce is the model of Groupon – where group activity results in discount offers.

More exciting for users is when ‘Likes’ and “Tweets’ become a form of social currency exchangeable for real world items. This is important as liking a brand on Facebook provides that brand -

“… with demographic information about the individual, it also provides them with access to that individual’s social graph, including the ability to present ads that may include a reference that the friend who clicked “Like” endorses the product.”2

Users are providing brands with a valuable commodity in the form of useful data. As such they are in the position to demand more from brands before showering them with Tweets and Likes.

A good example of real world value is that of Burger King Norway, which turned Facebook approval into credit redeemable instore.

“… inviting burger lovers to pay for its new Hot Salsa burger the old-fashioned way (18 Kroner, or about $2.94) or with the new currency of the Digital Age: 10 Facebook “likes.” ” 3

These examples demonstrate that creative ideas can make the big brand quest for garnering ‘likes’ & ‘Tweets’, a reactive proposition rather than the passive act of simply bagging more brand ‘followers’ and feeding them a few news or video snippets. This mass approval can instead be used to drive a distinct & interesting campaign thought.

However promotions aren’t the only valuable currency, content is still king, if that content is of a quality that users will actively seek to repost. A recent report indicated that by using the Facebook ‘Like’ API within blogs, referral Traffic back to these same Blogs was up by 50% 4

To give an example of a poor exchange it’s worth looking at the Red Bull Facebook page.

Red Bull is a successful brand and as such has its own social gravitas, maybe a reason in itself for users to interact … however the current ‘like’ promotion though employing playful visuals with a clear directive … is not obvious in terms of what the user may get in exchange, i.e. why should I click “like”?

As far as I can tell upon clicking ‘like’ there is no obvious change in the content provided within the Red Bull Facebook channel.

In summary the impetus to advocate a brand must be generated with not only clear visual messaging but also with a real value exchange in the form of promotions or top class content. To simply ask a user to like or tweet for a brand for its own sake, is biased in favour of the brand and a poor deal for the user, which at the end of the day isn’t what social media is about.

1  http://socialcommercetoday.com/uniqlos-under-construction-social-commerce-campaignscreenshots/
2 http://www.rockcheetah.com/blog/polls/facebook-like-button-click-website-access-evil/
3 http://www.burgerbusiness.com/?p=4739 VIA http://makethelogobigger.blogspot.com/2010/05/burger-kings-facebook-now-takes-cash.html
4 http://mashable.com/2010/06/13/facebook-like-increases-blog-referral-traffic/

The ‘Whiskas Pledge’ campaign centred around a core message affirming ‘Given the Choice cat’s Prefer Whiskas’ which was executed by cat owners pledging their love for Whiskas on their cats behalf on a dedicated website www.whiskas.com.au. Cat owners were rewarded for their pledge with two ‘Oh So….’ pouches and could create a profile for their cat to share why their cat loved Whiskas for a chance of Cat Fame and a lifetime supply of Whiskas. BD Network created and delivered all aspects of this integrated campaign including: TV, radio, press, outdoor, sampling, CRM, DM communications, digital, design, advertising and retail activation. This campaign has received over 330,000 pledges, 50,000 cat profiles have been created and the average site visit time is 5 minutes 35s. To date, this campaign has recorded the highest level of traffic to any Mars website.

As the night built, seating positions were chosen at the edges in the hope of collecting a silver or even a gold. Bronze winners were told that there would be no walk of fame to the stage and trophies would be collected from ‘The Bronze Room’. Visions of a massive queue and a random coat-checker sifting through millions of bronze trophies filled our heads, as we imagined the cream of Direct Marketing floating by on a cloud of silver and gold.

With one nomination in one category, we picked up a Gold and the added surprise of a Pinnacle (Lester Wunderman for Effectiveness). Crystal Carrington this time.

Thank you ADMA. We’ll be there next year preparing for bronze.

Perhaps the best indication that the marketing business has finally embraced the spirit of the digital age is that it’s doing a lot of work that’s not so… “Digital.” Now I know that this sounds like a bizarre statement, but I will explain.

Agencies and brands are now harnessing the digital mind-set. They’ve taken the shareable, ongoing, interactive, participatory nature of digital and created brand experiences that matter to people in their real, everyday lives.

This is not to suggest that digital doesn’t matter anymore, quite the opposite. Understanding digital strategy, design and technology are not steps that can ever be skipped. The point is that digital underlies everything we do now.

Just look at some of the most compelling brand ideas of the last decade. These have had a digital heart but have manifested themselves in meaningful ways in people’s lives—see Nike+

and Fiat Eco Drive.

Those seeking further reassurance we are in the post-digital era need look no further than arguably two of the best digital campaigns (check the awards) of late: Nike Chalkbot,

and VW Fun Theory.

Both shining examples of digital thinking brought to life in the real world.

Whichever way you look at it, it seems the idea that digital has transcended something experienced from beginning to end via a keyboard and on a screen has finally gripped the mainstream brand world. And I for one am extremely excited about the possibilities this brings to the table.

I’ve been looking into ‘social shopping’ sites recently, as these open up all sorts of new opportunities. Social shopping focuses around your actual purchases, mixes it up with social and throws in some data mining. It should be of huge interest to brands.  The big two startups in this arena are Blippy and Swipely.

Blippy connects with your purchase history from a range of sources. The website scans your credit card history, your email, iTunes account, eBay etc to track everything you’re buying. You can then share these purchases with your friends and see what they’re buying too. It’s an ambitious idea that will raise privacy issues with a lot of people, especially as they mistakingly published 4 people’s credit cards on the web earlier in the year… they do have the coolest 404 page though (click on the unicorn).

Swipely concentrates solely on your credit card information, but is much more sophisticated. It has gaming elements, like Foursquare, in that you can earn ‘badges’ for being a customer, plus you can become a ‘VIP’ of a business by shopping there regularly, opening the way for promotional activity. Plus it’s mining the information they’re gathering, firstly by providing US fuel price comparisons. They also have a great job application form.

So what do think? Could you see yourself Blipping or Swiping?

Going back to shopping, just one stroll down your local high street and a quick look around will demonstrate that retail is suffering, of course it is. Big names such as Woolworths are no more and increasingly stores across a wide variety of industries are finding it difficult to keep afloat.

Why is this? Well you can’t get away from the rise and diversification of the supermarket, both off and online, however a key player in this new retail playing field is the online store. In a tougher economic climate you can see the appeal: lower overheads; easy to set up; streamlined staffing and support. What retailer wouldn’t want to be online? Well the answer is not many, however out of the digital wild west that is e-commerce, two interesting types of online shopping have emerged and taken prominence:

Transactional e-commerce
Experience e-commerce

To provide an example of both and explain the differences, I provide exhibit A, Domino’s Pizza.

Transaction at its purist – get them in and get them out. Clear product shots, prices prominent and simple add to basket. It’s the Ronseal approach to e-commerce and it works perfectly for a product such as Pizza. Compare that with exhibit B, Gucci.

And hello Mr Experience… as you would expect from a luxury brand, the premium experience you go through from the moment you hit the page and start to navigate the site lets you know what you’re in for. Its NVC is essentially saying “Browse me, enjoy me, I know you want to buy me”. It’s a wicked temptress seducing you as much as you’re shopping with it. But compare it to the transactional heavy site of Domino’s: there are no clear prices on items and it’s full of big, stunning product imagery. This is a site that knows what it’s trying to achieve, albeit a little too old skool in terms of some extreme Flash usage which is not quite in line with the new HTML5 iPad generation.

So we have the two extremes: transactional and experience… what is transactional content? Well the above sites both do a specific job, however in the grand scheme of things and especially in the online grocery market place dominated by Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Ocado, the big, big opportunity (£4.4 billion 2009 online spend) is dominating the middle ground and appealing to both the transactional and the experience shoppers. If we can achieve this and play to the attributes of our online audience then we will hit the holy grail of engaging content which directly drives rate of sale.

The thought behind transactional content is it allows both a quick and easy transactional purchase whilst providing the ability for a richer, more intuitive, shopping experience and greater emotional connection. It’s essentially dual purpose content that ‘Tells and Sells’.

Online retailers and brands alike are starting to move towards the transactional content model. Wine is a product that is perfect for transactional content. With the connoisseurship that has been placed into the category, the ability to educate, inform and sell is a devastating triple that when done right can drive that habitual and even addictive online shopping process. See exhibit C, Laithwaites

Laithwaites, a leading online wine store, is making in-roads into the transactional content philosophy, just by adding the mixture of educational content – such as provenance info for the wines – and then easily being able to purchase wines from that stated region. it shows how the link to content and purchase can easily be broken down and then maximise sales potential across the category. It’s a powerful and very clever approach and when done well it adds that subtle suggestive sell which seems so simple but yet can deliver big results.

So when you’re next thinking online shopper marketing, if you spare a thought for the transactional side of your content you could be laughing all the way to the bottom line.