New Outdoor Advertising Company Launched

http://www.adworld.ie/news/?guid=29e224ed-61c8-41d0-bc38-10a3573ce9f9

Competition in the outdoor advertising market in Ireland is to get a much welcome boost in the form of Fourth Edition, a new company which has been formed to make a significant foray into the €125m market.

Headed up by the highly regarded industy veteran Martin Barry, the company has also boasts a number of high profile and heavyweight shareholders and investors. They include Anne Riordan, the company’s chairman. Riordan is a former head of Microsoft’s Irish operations. Also on board is entrepreneur and investor Eddie Kerr one ofthe founders of companies like Sharptext and Conduit. Other directors include David Coleman, Richard Hall and the CEO of OHM Group, Declan McCourt.

Previously known as Kerbside Media, Fourth Edition was only recently rebranded and restructured with a view to making a full frontal assault on the lucrative outdoor advertising market.

The company already has a number of deals in place with the a large number of astro pitches around the country as well as the National Hockey Stadium in UCD

New business venture for Tom Reddy - PR

Reddy Communications Ltd is a new public relations company offering a wide range of services. Established by Tom Reddy, a former journalist with the Irish Independent and former head of the Fianna Fáil press and research office, Tom’s most recent role was as Executive Director at O’Herlihy Communications. Services offered by Reddy Communications include political communications, crisis management and crisis communications, internal communications, VIP care, media training and public information/consultation campaigns. For full details, contact (01) 475 9066 or call Tom directly on (087) 222 4213.

Special Report ROI: The quest for an ROI formula

http://www.eventmagazine.co.uk/news

Ever since its conference at the NEC in September, the Association of Exhibition Organisers’ (AEO) has been promising to deliver a formula that will help exhibiting companies to work out the return on investment (ROI) of their firm’s presence.

ROI is currently the hottest topic in live events and was one of the main points of discussion at the AEO conference.

As a result, trade bodies that make up the Events Industry Alliance have spent the past few months developing a model that can eventually be used to measure the ROI value of exhibiting.

We are confident that the model will enable media buyers, marketing budget controllers and agencies to conclude that exhibitions are the most cost-effective form of media in the UK.

Exhibiting is a very difficult marketing medium to measure, because it offers an extremely diverse number of objectives that are both quantitative and qualitative in nature.

So the development of a measurement system for both tangible and intangible objectives can prove a somewhat complex challenge. Also, the reasons exhibitors attend shows vary significantly between companies.

The basis of the rationale used to develop an ROI model focuses on two major aspects to an exhibitor’s performance at a show. First there’s the ’outcome-based’ dimension. This includes sales-related activities and all activities that relate to on-site sales as well as sales immediately after a trade show.

Second is the ’behaviour-based dimension’. This includes a number of activities that can be broken into four major types:

Information-gathering activities, including the collection of information about competitors, customers, industry trends and new products at the show

Image-building activities, relating to building corporate image and reputation at the show

Motivation activities, which involves maintaining and enhancing the motivation of company employees and customers

Relationship-building activities, which includes all activities related to maintaining and developing relationships with both established and new customers.

Building on these criteria the purpose of the ROI study is to:

Measure income ROI exhibitors receive from exhibitions

Calculate the total exhibitor expenditure with a breakdown of items

Provide ROI figures for the exhibition industry, against those of other media

Calculate visitor expenditure.

To be specific, “return” is defined as financial and soft. In other words, the value of the “live” media, time and customer analysis, number of sales leads, number of contacts made, market testing, relationship building, brand building, the development of new markets, recruited support for a product and the amount of media attention attracted.

Exhibitor objectives are then divided into five main categories:

Sales

Information-gathering

Brand marketing

Product/service marketing

Relationship-building.

Within these categories are 17 further specific actions and aims such as generating sales at the show; generating sales leads; conducting research in the target market; generating face-to-face brand experience; launching a product/service and building relationships with sales channels/partners.

The current process includes assigning values to all of these in order to be able to produce a final financial figure.

The associations are working with leading academic institutions to fully test the hypotheses and formula before the planned launch of an ROI mechanism by the end of the year.

John Sanders is deputy director of the Association of Exhibition Contractors.

Advertising - It’s a Funny Old Business

http://www.adworld.ie/features/?guid=cb3e52d0-6f6d-4f80-b77c-d8cde4a1bc3c

In a world of homogeneous brand messages, humour can often help to cut through. Yet advertisers don’t go for comedians as often as you’d think. Paul Golden reports.

In a world of brand strategies and tightly defined product messages, humour is the great variable. Even for companies targeting the youth market that is the major consumer of comedy, the profile of the performer is usually of less significance than the script’s ability to press the right buttons.

Although Ireland is renowned around the world for the wit of its literary figures, economic and social factors prevented stand-up comedy from taking off in the way it did in the UK and US during the 1970s and 1980s in particular. However, this began to change in 1987 with the establishment of the Comedy Cellar in Dublin by Barry Murphy, Ardal O’Hanlon and Kevin Gildea, the first of whom has since become a regular on the voiceover circuit.

Fast forward a few years and comedy had become the new rock ’n’ roll. The UK comedy scene had never disappeared, but in the early nineties it enjoyed a renaissance with the emergence of talents like Eddie Izzard and Bill Bailey.

Meanwhile, the more relaxed political situation in Northern Ireland had a dramatic effect on nightlife in Belfast and stand-up comedy was much in demand in venues like The Empire.

As the vast majority of the audiences were in the 18-35 age group, marketers targeting this demographic began to wake up to the possibility of using comedians in their ads. Leading British comedians were recruited to promote a variety of products from video recorders to chocolate bars and some became synonymous with the brand, for example Harry Enfield with the Dime bar commercials.

The overall quality of ads featuring comedians over the last 20 years is a bit patchy – neither John Cleese or Billy Connolly will look back on their efforts with any great affection – but others worked very well. Indeed, the Philips ad featuring Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones where the former is a customer looking to buy a video recorder was voted the best radio commercial of all time by the UK Radio Advertising Bureau.

Many of the current examples of humour in Irish advertising are to be found in beer commercials, explained Dara O’Connell of Brown Bag. “Promoting the product as a bit of craic alongside the message about enjoying the product sensibly is quite effective. It creates a better feeling towards the product rather than getting any particular message across.”

Ironically, despite the fact that humour is finding its way into ads for cars and even previously terribly serious subjects such as banking, O’Connell reckons most clients purposely avoid using comedians. “They don’t want to make the humour appear forced – punters respond better to ’real people’ and also react well if they think the dialogue is not too scripted. It is very hard to make an ad sound spontaneous.”

One of the difficulties for any celebrity who agrees to promote a product or service is the impact it might have on their public image. An interviewer once rather snootily asked Jane Horrocks (who made her name in the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous) why she continued to appear alongside Prunella Scales in what ended up as a long running Tesco ad campaign when she was so well regarded as a performer. Her reply was simple- it allowed her to pay off her mortgage!

Of course, very few funny people are given the opportunity to secure their financial future simply by playing the put-upon daughter of a fussy senior citizen for 30 seconds, but it is not hard to see why those who are asked to perform in this environment reserve the right to lend their image and/or persona.

Comedian and actor Paddy Courtney says he would not be worried about damaging his artistic integrity (”I wasn’t sure I had any in the first place!”) and as a comedian who is a trained actor, would not have a problem appearing in an advertisement. “However, I do reserve the right to pick and choose the castings I would put myself up for. If I used a product or service in my everyday life, I would see no problem in advertising it.”

Tara Flynn, best known to ad watchers as one half of the couple in the IFSRA “People don’t talk like this” commercial, is also careful about what she would lend her face or voice to. “I don’t do voiceovers for political parties I wouldn’t vote for and I once turned a company down because I was concerned about their operation overseas.”

But she also admits that – to paraphrase Helen Mirren on nudity- it is never really about the script, it is about the money. “Most Irish performers can’t afford to turn down work; that is why you will have seen me in a dressing gown for the IFSRA. That was a very funny script and I got to work with a wolfhound, but the great Bill Hicks would definitely see such wantonness as an example of “sucking satan’s c**k”.

Given that any performer will be more comfortable with a script that they have contributed to and that most comedians write a high percentage of their own material, allowing them some creative input might sound like a sensible strategy.

At first glance it appears illogical to employ someone known for the quality of their material as nothing more than a conduit for someone else’s words, but according to Al Byrnes of production company Caboom this is how it has to be if the agency and client are to control how their product or service is portrayed.

“The copywriter has responsibility for the brand and it is up to the copywriter to ensure that the script gets the message across,” he said. “It is usually pretty much set in stone before the performer gets their hands on it.”

“With any other acting job, I would offer script suggestions to the director, but more often than not the advert is fine tuned by a copywriter and the client in order to have it right before casting or shooting,” said Paddy Courtney, while Tara Flynn revealed that there are times when her tongue is well and truly bitten.

“Most copywriters encourage a bit of ad-libbing to make the delivery more natural, but clients can be a different matter! When you write your own gags or are an improviser, it is very difficult not to make a suggestion. You have spent years thinking about what is funny and why and you just want to help. You are trying to do your job and make it as good as it can be, but sometimes it is not as a client heard it in their head and at that stage you just have to deliver it as they wish and put your instincts to one side.”

She acknowledges that a much worse situation arises when the client’s input extends to advice on delivery: “If a client demonstrates a delivery style and encourages you to parrot it back, you may as well not be there and the finished product always sounds affected.”

Most comedians believe their effectiveness as a marketing tool is down more to their delivery than public profile or script. “I know of some comics who have appeared in adverts because of their acting ability and more specifically their timing, so skill rather than celebrity is clearly the important factor,” said Paddy Courtney.

There are relatively few genuine Irish celebrities anyway and most Irish comics are well known on the circuit but not on TV, added Tara Flynn. “But that doesn’t mean they could not do an ad as an ’unknown’ in an acting capacity and do a great job. Getting a laugh is a great way to get a product to stick in a listener or viewer’s mind. If an ad is believable (and most good comedians tend to be good actors) it gives the product credibility.”

John Holohan, IAPI information manager and director of the Shark Awards festival says clients have to be careful that the humour doesn’t overwhelm the brand. “However, humour can create a goodwill factor and get around some of the limitations on what you can say about a brand.”

He referred to a number of well known campaigns for beers and tobacco products as examples. “Hamlet built a brand on using humour in its advertising because it could not actually talk about the product. Such limitations force you to be more creative in your thinking. Humour can also be used to make a serious point through the use of sarcasm or irony.”

Exhibiting: After-show reflection

http://www.eventmagazine.co.uk/news

The show is over. Your space for next year’s is pencilled in and you are now wondering how well it worked for you.

There are a number of factors to consider when evaluating your success. Most of these should relate to your original objectives for attending.

A look back

Establish how many new clients you made contact with. How many did you have and how much business was done on the day? What about your leads? Were they the right sort and value, or from the target market? Have any of them converted already? Will they be easily?

Did you have enough space for all your staff and products? Were you swamped or could you manage with fewer stand personnel and were they the right mix of people? What did your stand look like - are you happy to revisit your photographs in the cold light of day?

Did you generate much press and media attention - if so where could you make improvements? Which parts of your pre-show promotion worked well and what was less successful? Can you maintain the PR momentum by reporting show successes or newsworthy items or use web-based marketing methods to capitalise and enhance your physical presence at the show?

The staff perspective

It is well worth asking your staff how they viewed the event. What did they make of their input? What suggestions for improvements would they offer? It’s worth remembering they are likely to have seen competitors in action.

Ask what they think you could do next year to ensure an even better time? Were there gimmicks or crowd-stoppers that made an impression on them? Also, be ruthless about how they performed on the days of the event - did they work the stand properly or were they glued to their mobiles? Could they have done better or would they improve with some simple training? Could you do something more creative and different for the next event?

How well did your graphics convey your message? Did you have enough stock, materials, brochures and promotional giveaways? It is also worth contacting the organiser and finding out whether the numbers were up or down on forecast. Was there an explanation for this and what will the prediction be for next year?

They are well poised to provide you with pre- and post-show statistics that can make evaluation easier. By asking questions such as these you can ensure you continue getting the right return on your investment.

UK Advertising Rises 2.6% in 2005

http://www.adworld.ie/news/?guid=f97220b1-fa4b-4c9d-97ca-adec83101790

Advertising expenditure in the UK rose by 2.6% to around Stg£19 billion in 2005 according to figures published by the UK’s Advertising Association. This compares with just under Stg£18.5bn in 2004.

Researched and compiled by the World Advertising Research Center, the data indicates a rise in expenditure equivalent to an inflation-adjusted 0.6% increase in real terms.

It represents the fourth consecutive year of positive growth since the advertising recession of 2001. The figure includes production costs as well as media spend.

The press sector accounted for by far the largest share of total advertising expenditure with 45.3% of national spend; television took second place (25.4%), followed by direct mail (12.5%), internet (7.2%), outdoor (5.5%), radio (3.1%) and cinema (1.0%).

Looking solely at display advertising, TV was the largest medium accounting for a 35.2% share of such expenditure, with the press taking second place (31.8%), followed by direct mail (17.3%), outdoor (7.6%), radio (4.2%), internet (2.5%) and cinema (1.4%).

Advertising expenditure in the press sector as a whole declined by 1.8% in 2005 when measured at current prices (or by 3.7% in real terms), with national newspapers, regional newspapers and business magazines all suffering from decreased levels of spend following strong growth in 2004.

Advertising expenditure in directories, however, rose by 5.3% last year amounting to £1,131m when measured at current prices and consumer magazines were also up on this measure, rising by 1.0% to reach £827m.

Advertising expenditure in the television sector increased by 3.6% in 2005 amounting to £4,820m when measured at current prices - a rise of 1.5% in real terms - whilst spend in the outdoor and transport category increased by 5.8% (3.7% in real terms) to reach £1,043m. These two sectors both achieved double-digit growth in the first quarter of 2005.

The internet recorded by far the largest gain in percentage terms in 2005, rising by 65.6% when measured at current prices (62.3% in real terms) to reach £1,366m, up from a revised figure for 2004 of £825m.

Following growth in 2004, advertising expenditure in the cinema and radio sectors fell by 2.1% and 4.5% respectively in 2005 when measured at current prices (or in real terms 4.1% and 6.4%).

Expenditure on direct mail also declined, falling by 3.9% over the course of 2005 as a whole, although positive growth was seen in this sector during the final quarter of last year.