2011 Best brand building campaign
Client Virgin Media
What is wonderful about this work? Whether you have 10Mb or 50Mb, fast broadband is just fast broadband until you demonstrate the tangible benefits. Speedy Gonzalez garnered three times as many customers for our top level XXL Broadband and Sales of Virgin Broadband increased 14% year on year.
2011 Best launch campaign
Client Virgin Media
What is wonderful about this work? A simple dramatisation of the benefits of TiVo, through DM, print, outdoor, TV, online and PR. In four weeks we increased average monthly sales by 119%, drove 15% of retail footfall and 377,178 website visits, with 89% ‘thumbs-ups’.
8 December 2011
DMA Gold and Silver wins Virgin Media campaigns
DDB UK has revealed a new Christmas video for Harvey Nichols, it drops audiences into the embarrassing reality of the morning after the office Christmas party… the dreaded Walk of Shame.
The creative plays on the theme of ‘the morning after the night before’. A big Christmas party perhaps, followed by an early morning journey home, complete with the tell-tale symptoms: the slight limp from the killer heels (which seemed a good idea at the time), accompanied by under-eye bags that would rival even Victoria Beckham’s largest tote and bed hair. Party-goers making their way home, eyes down, cheeks ablaze, trying to ignore disapproving stares of the 8am commuters; and the wolf-whistles from the builders perched on scaffolding above.
The film culminates with our ‘hero’ girl walking back to her flat doing what looks more like a ‘stride of pride’. She clearly never made it home, but something sets her apart from the others. Her Harvey Nichols outfit still looks fantastic and she walks with her head held high. The line reads: “Avoid the Walk of Shame this Season. Harvey Nichols Womenswear.” The ad ends with a call to action to: Share your #walkofshame on Twitter.
The Christmas video aims to promote the luxury fashion retailers selection of eveningwear, alongside international fashion designers and those beauty essentials to help you look and feel fabulous throughout the party season.
The video was written by Mike Crowe and Rob Messeter and directed by James Rouse through Outsider.
7 December 2011
Harvey Nichols Walk of shame coverage
Volkswagen is the latest company to commit to using semantic search tools that help deliver better search results on its website and better search engine optimisation.
The automaker worked with digital agency Tribal DDB to launch an intelligent search functionality that makes information easier to find, increases the relevance of search results and ensures that the content is easier to reuse. This replaces the established keyword search functionality used by most search engines.
This was achieved thanks to a tagging structure that creates relationships between information and puts contextual tags around data. This helps make search results more reliable because they are delivered according to relevancy and direct relation to comparable data instead of popularity.
The new search also allows new search terms to be easily added without having to manually retag content. It also allows content to be repurposed across the site in different contexts, meaning that a developer no longer needs to write new publishing code every time Volkswagen wants to share information with a third party.
In order to create the new search functionality, Tribal DDB had to create a detailed list of search tags, known as ontologies, to describe cars online. These were devised with semantic search expert Professor Martin Hepp, who has previously worked with Google. VW is making the ontological system they devised available for other automotive manufacturers to adopt and adapt for their own sites.
The technology -- provided by GoodRelations -- not only improves the search on the site, but also makes the site's content much more readable by search engines. Google, Yahoo and Bing all support Good Relations, meaning that sites that structure their databases using their linked ontologies will rank higher than they would have done before.
US retailer Best Buy implemented a similar strategy two years ago and found that the ranking of pages that incorporated GoodRelations rose in Google. The retailer also saw a 30 percent increase in traffic to the pages.
Semantic search has a big seal of approval from Tim Berners-Lee who recommends that the UK government uses it for the data.gov.uk website. The US government has also fully adopted its use on its data portal.
John Streit, head of technology at Tribal DDB, commented: "These ontologies allow search engines to understand the relationships between terms rather than relying on antiquated 'key word' searches. We've effectively built a spider's web of references to relevant content which delivers an intelligent search. Contextual search gives Volkswagen a standardised interface of data and content: it separates the information and application, making it easy for our services and third parties to use Volkswagen data to provide relevant information to our customers."
There are two key advantages to using semantic search technology. The first is that it gives you a single place to access data. Streit explains: "Applications often need to retrieve data from multiple sources which adds complexity and development time. By using this technology we can get everything we need from a single place which drastically lowers development time and running costs." Furthermore the exposure of data improves search and means that it can be repurposed in new and imaginative ways.
You can read up on Volkswagen's ontologies here.
7 December 2011
Volkswagen's semantic search tools Wired
The Eurozone is in crisis and the Italian and Greek prime ministers have both resigned in disgrace, but the Financial Times has not lost its sense of humor.
Its latest ad, created by DDBUK, shows the 12 stars of the European Union flag replaced by little yellow ducks. With most of the continent in deep crisis, the ad portrays the member nations as sitting ducks in a fairground shooting game, waiting to be shot down one at a time.
The print and online ad, which says "Europe's economy in the firing line. Authoritative coverage and analysis," will appear in the Financial Times and on FT.com.
Jeremy Craigen, executive creative director of DDB UK, said, "This is a typical Financial Times execution that captures the crisis in an intelligent, informative and witty way."
DDB UK has established a tradition of subtly provocative advertising for the FT, using the campaign strapline, "We live in Financial Times."
A recent print ad showed a St. Bernard dog at the top of a mountain during a snowstorm. Instead of the traditional brandy barrel around his neck, the rescue dog sports a rolled up copy of the FT.
22 November 2011
Financial Times Ad Ad Age Golbal
Volkswagen (VW) is rolling out its biggest UK social-media campaign to date to promote the 35th anniversary of its ‘hothatch’ Golf GTI.
The online experiential activity, created by DDB UK, will centre on a series of viral videos to be hosted on VW UK’s Facebook page.
In the films, the Golf GTI acts as a ‘time machine’, seen throughout the past 35 years at events such as the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977 and the solar eclipse in 1999. The activity, which breaks this week, will roll out over the next four weeks, each clip focusing on a different occasion since the GTI’s 1967 launch.
VW launched the campaign last month with a live event staged at Truman Brewery in East London. At the blogger event, hosted by racing driver and motoring journalist Amanda Stretton, spectators saw two engineers enter the GTI ‘time machine’ and travel back to VW’s German headquarters in Wolfsburg in 1976.
Nigel Brotherton, national communications manager at VW, said the aim was to capitalise on the long –term awareness of the Model. ‘GTI, and Golf in general, is different to competitors [that have launched newly titled models], in that it has evolved,’ he said ‘this makes it so easy to trace the heritage.’
According to Brotherton the lack of above-the-line promotion is an experiment. The brand is keen to see what value the strategy will provide compared with traditional media.
‘This is a leap into the unknown for us’ he admitted. ‘What is the targeting like? How many visitors will be from the UK? The original brief was to “Make GTI famous”, and we’ve taken a calculated risk to see whether we can get that engagement and dwell time.’
VW’s last two ad campaigns have promoted its Gold Cabriolet model, and its BlueMotion energy-efficiency programme. The former sought to evoke childhood memories of open-top toy cars, with the soundtrack Days by The Kinks.
Bestselling new cars, year to date
|
Rank |
Model |
Number Sold |
|
1 |
Ford Fiesta |
77,198 |
|
2 |
Ford Focus |
67,672 |
|
3 |
Vauxhall Corsa |
60,959 |
|
4 |
Volkswagen Golf |
50,013 |
|
5 |
Vauxhall Astra |
49,042 |
Source: SMMT
8 November 2011
Golf GTI 35th anniversary viral work Marketing Magazine
On a hot day, nothing’s better than an ice-cold beer. But wouldn’t it be amazing if as the temperature went up the price of beer came down? We thought so too…
So this year we made this fantasy a reality, with the Budweiser Ice Cold Index: the hotter the day, the less you pay, all summer long.
All you needed to join in was a little bit of sunshine and our clever mobile app.
The free app showed your local temperature and how much you’d save that day. It even directed you to one of 2500 participating pubs and let you claim your pint for a reduced price, or, if it was really hot, for free.
To promote the Index, we created a weatherman, but not your average weatherman, a Budweiser weatherman. ‘Scott Campbell’ promoted the Index across all media from TV to twitter and kept people up to date with all the campaign’s fun stuff.
Budweiser Ice Cold Index came first in the September 2011 contest.
31 October 2011
Bud Ice Cold Index iab first place creative showcase
At DDB UK we are excited about our brand new reception area and first floor after renovations
to represent the original character of the building.
As you can see, it was worth all the banging and drilling... we love it and hope you will too!
12 October 2011
DDB UK new reception and first floor Now open
The reason I got into advertising was... because I really didn’t want to work in the city.
The campaign I’m most proud of working on is... it’s a toss-up between the “we live in Financial Times” campaign for the FT and the Marmite work (everything since circa 1996)
And the campaign I pretend I wasn’t responsible for is... I thought I’d blocked this out, but apparently not: the “angry boy” campaign for Asserta.com.
My favourite campaign created by someone else is... there’s too many to mention – but if you put a gun to my head, I’d probably have to say The Economist.
The best moment of my career so far was... probably the evening that DDB won the IPA Effectiveness Agency of the Year for the third time in a row since I’d been head of planning.
While the most embarrassing moment was... I spill everything - although I’m now so used to being clumsy that I don’t tend to get embarrassed any more.
The best celebrity I’ve worked for on a campaign is... hmmm. Let’s just say there’s someone we hope to use in the very near future.
The person I’d most like to work within the industry is... anyone who will triple my salary and let me bring my daughter to work.
The person who’s had the biggest influence on my career is... it’s a dead heat between Bob Scarpelli and James Best.
The best piece of advice I’ve received during my career is... “focus on the important, not the urgent”, courtesy of Mr Paul Feldwick.
If i wasn’t working in advertising, I’d be... an architect.
In ten years’ time, I’ll be... probably still in Paddington.
7 October 2011
My Life in Advertising... Lucy Jameson , Executive Strategy Director, DDB UK
DDB Health UK has been renamed DDB Remedy. The primary reason for the change is global alignment and it is our ultimate aim that all worldwide offices from San Francisco to Sydney will share a common name. However, the change is not only about presenting a consistent brand; it also exemplifies the connectivity that exists between DDB agencies that specialise in healthcare communications.
Some things that won’t be changing are the DDB principles that place creativity at the heart of our business. We will continue to seek out innovative ways to make the most of the new opportunities for companies engaged in today’s healthcare market. And we will be using our connection with the worldwide DDB family to drive our expertise in digital media and consumer understanding even further.
Visit us at www.ddbremedy.co.uk
6 September 2011
DDB Health is now DDB Remedy We’ve changed our name – but not our principles
Introducing DDB UK's latest tech-led innovation business; Tribal SPARK. Tribal SPARK will fuse the creative brilliance of DDB with the pioneering ingenuity of Tribal, leveraging new and emerging technologies to create exciting and inventive business opportunities for their clients.
The entrepreneurial business will be led by Tom Roberts, Managing Director of Tribal DDB UK and Drew Burdon, Head of Strategy for Tribal DDB UK, who said: 'Changing consumer behaviour has meant that clients have needed their agencies to demonstrate a high level of specialism, diversity and integration. SPARK has been designed to allow clients and agency specialists to work collaboratively and iteratively to create innovative opportunities for their brands, products and business.'
Tribal SPARK's first product is a new Car Configurator iPhone App for Volkswagen. Available to download for free on iTunes, the App is the first in its sector to cover all models, options and accessories across a manufacturer's entire range. From paint colours and alloy wheels through to spoilers and bike racks, users will be able to design their dream car from a selection of over 90 million different combinations, in the palm of their hand. Volkswagen is considering expanding the App to other mobile platforms, as well as the iPad, in the near future.
17 July 2011
Tribal SPARK Innovation
DDB Worldwide was ranked No. 3 most awarded network with 211 Shortlists and 63 Lions at this years’ Cannes Lions Festival.
DDB Singapore, DDB Paris & Mudra Communications from India led the way with 8 Lions each while DDB Stockholm won 6 Lions and DDB’s first Titanium Lion. Here in the UK we came home with 5 Lions in the following categories, a great achievement in what was a particularly quiet year for the UK.
- Cyber Silver for Volkswagen True Life Costs campaign
- Bronze in the Film Craft category for the Volkswagen Polo ad Last Tango in Compton
- Silver in the PR Category for the Philips Parallel Lines campaign
- Gold in the Press Category for the Harvey Nichols Summer Sale print work Bingo/Ducks/Grabber
- Bronze in the Promo & Activation Category for the Budweiser Bud Ice Cold Index app and campaign
1 July 2011
DDB at The Cannes Lions 2011 DDB UK Celebrate Five Lions
DDB UK are celebrating 20 years since Felix first appeared on our TV screens.
It was 1991 when DDB (BMP DDB) re-launched an unadvertised brand of cat food called Felix on our TV screens. With competition outspending them by 1000% it was obvious that a strong identity, combined with a distinctive media and creative solution would be essential.
Consumer research quickly showed that owners felt their pets were real characters, with their own mischievous personalities. The opportunity was there to capture the real owner/cat relationship showing a genuine understanding of what cats were really like. And so Felix was born. A black and white, animated bundle of scruff, fun and mischief.
There are few success stories in FMCG marketing where a campaign propelled a brand from almost total obscurity to market dominance. By 1992, Felix was the second fastest-growing brand in any grocery category and the second biggest brand in the market. By 1994, Felix was market leader.
One of the toughest decisions facing a marketing team is when to drop a long running campaign. Sticking with a campaign often takes far more courage than obeying the siren call of change. It’s estimated that in the UK, only 10 campaigns have been running for more than 15 years. For Nestle Purina, resisting the temptation to change but to evolve has reaped big rewards.
8 June 2011