Gekko are delighted to reveal our new brand identity and website, that gives a fresh look to the UK’s number one tech-focused Field Marketing agency.
Daniel Todaro, MD, Gekko said “Complementing the recent brand refresh, Gekko continue creating rewarding connections with our new website. Over the past 13 years, Gekko has maintained its ability to adapt in retail, the most dynamic of industries, to bring your brand to the right people and the right people to your brand. Gekko Field Marketing helps complete your customer journey and brand experience with measurable ROI and insight complementing your brand’s ATL.”
The Fifa World Cup has begun. Brands around the globe are in guerrilla marketing mode. Here are more highlights of the best unofficial campaigns from this year’s World Cup – with one exception perhaps.
Beats: #TheGameBeforeTheGame
‘The Game Before The Game’ is a beautifully executed campaign starring Luis Suarez, Robin Van Persie and an impressive roll call of other international footballers. Each of the athletes is shown during their pre-game rituals, with music revealed as a common theme. The viral advert has clearly touched a chord with a younger demographic who are responding positively on social media. Having hit the right tone for its target audience, this campaign will go a long way to reigniting the desire for Beats products that has perhaps waned in recent months. We can expect to see a global spike in sales for Beats in the coming weeks, just what the brand needs under new ownership.
Nike: ‘Winner Stays – Risk Everything’
Nike’s unofficial World Cup advert has had more than 70 million views on YouTube and includes cameos from a whole host of prominent footballers including Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar Jr, Wayne Rooney and Thiago Silva. The campaign coincides with the release of the brand’s latest football boot which features prominently throughout the advert. The activity cleverly combines a human touch of ‘backyard’ football with high-profile global superstars, without ever explicitly mentioning the World Cup. The campaign is proving to be significantly more prominent than ‘The Dream: all in or nothing’ advert from Adidas, an official sponsor of the World Cup. This effectively confirms Nike’s position as king of guerrilla ATL and the brand has once again scored big with high profile sportspeople and impressive levels of public engagement.
Carlsberg: ‘Fan Squad’
Another unofficial advert stealing the spotlight this year is Carlsberg’s ‘Fan Squad’ campaign. The spot portrays the perfect World Cup viewing conditions based on market research which asked fans what could ruin their experience while watching football at their local pub (e.g. size of the screen, queuing for drinks). Starring high-profile figures including Ian Wright, Paddy McGuinness and Jeff Stelling, the campaign focuses on their personalities and charisma rather than their star power. And by putting the match in the background and focusing on the collective experience in the pub, Carlsberg has successfully tapped into the shared experience quality of the World Cup. The advert is designed to position Carlsberg as the ‘beer of choice’ for England fans during the World Cup in a clear attempt to undercut Budweiser as the official beer of the tournament.
Visa: ‘Jamaica to Brazil: from athlete to footballer’
However, not all of this year’s official sponsors are being overlooked by their unofficial counterparts. Visa’s ‘Jamaica to Brazil from athlete to footballer’ campaign featuring global sprint legend Usain Bolt is possibly the most memorable piece of activity overall. The entertaining advert shows Bolt making his way from a Jamaican athletic track to the Maracana stadium in Brazil where he sneaks onto the pitch at the start of a match. Along the way the icon becomes immersed in Brazilian football, transforming from an athlete to a footballer with every online, contactless, and mobile purchase. The campaign is simple, clever, effective and memorable with huge brand recall; absolutely pitch perfect from the official World Cup sponsor.
Guerrilla marketing is becoming more and more sophisticated across all media, but now those official brands that have paid handsomely to be at the forefront of people’s minds will get four weeks of uninterrupted promotion. Their logos and messaging will be displayed across the electronic hoardings and on our screens during every match broadcast to a global audience of millions. That exposure, reinforced by any supporting ATL activity, will achieve the high brand recall desired by the sponsors; converting this into sales is the tricky part that brands must get right at the point of purchase to avoid guerrilla brands stealing too much of the market share.
Rajar has today announced 90% of the adult (15+) UK population – 47.7 million people – tuned in to their selected radio stations in the third quarter of 2013. This is up by approximately 1 million adults on the same quarter of the previous year.
Highlights this quarter include a major decline for Nick Grimshaw’s BBC Radio 1 breakfast show – recording the lowest listening figures in 20 years. However, better news for Kiss FM, which saw a 16.5% quarterly and yearly increase – taking its weekly reach to more than 5 million.
Here, Newsline presents industry reaction on the latest results, with opinion from Dan Todaro of Gekko:
‘What stands out for me is the extent to which our lives are so increasingly dominated by smartphones. Convergence is an oft-used term, but radio consumption in particular provides a stark illustration at the speed in which this is happening. Consider that back in Q1 of 2011 and the iPhone 4 was still very much a novelty for most consumers and less than three years later consumption in the 25+ category has almost doubled, whilst the age group fuelling this shift – the 16-24s has jumped from 28.6% to well over 40%.
With digital listening increasing across DAB, Digital TV and online through PCs and laptops, it too paints a portrait of how our lifestyles are being fundamentally altered by the technology around us. Everything is so easily accessible and radio is no longer restricted to specialist devices.
Far from being a platform in decline, I think the possibilities for brands to engage is ever-increasing as the way in which we engage and interact with radio changes. Particularly as our current 16-24’s grow older and give way to a new generation of even more highly connected, digitally savvy youths, we’ll soon know of radio only as a medium.’
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