A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting a brilliant South African entrepreneur called Paul Raphaely. Paul is the man behind NoMu, a company started by wife Tracy Foulkes and himself in 2000. They are essentially a South African food and lifestyle brand, and are beginning to take the world by storm. One thing that all small brands have to deal with is the lack of marketing budget, luckily Paul is an ex Mad Man ad man and stumbled upon a stunningly simple idea that has been working a charm.  One of the main places where all discerning Capetonians stop at some stage during their week is the Engen/Woolworths 24 hour petrol station and food shop in Cape Town. It’s a busy place at all times and Paul managed to get access to an unused billboard space for his fun marketing idea. The campaign basically works by getting local celeb bloggers to appear on the poster and then get passers by to pose with the photo and email them in. The best picture wins a range of donated prizes each month from NoMu & brands associated with the bloggers. So far the posters have included prints from 2OceansVibe, Cape Town Girl, Richard Hardiman and more (See some examples of entries at the bottom of this post). The only things that cost anything for this whole campaign is the printing of the poster and a bit of design which costs next to nothing. Photography and styling are free and all the prizes are donated. Paul Raphaely said the following on the campaign: “Ultimately, the real benefit is the online exposure as all the associated bloggers do their bit to drive their own hype which means NoMU gets to be guaranteed of quite solid exposure to a potentially different audience every single month. Taken individually this doesn’t seem like much but if added up across several months, the real impact is significant.” The entries keep getting higher as word of the mechanic of entry gets more regularly spread around and people begin to treat it as a ‘thing-to-do’ each month that involves little to no real effort and could win massive prizes. The campaign has been doing so well that it has even attracted the attention of District 9 Actress Vanessa Haywood as a future NoMu poster lady! All in all great work, if you want to be kept up to date on all things NoMu check out their great blog here.  

Some interesting stats and a great short case study video on Wieden + Kennedy’s incredible Old Spice campaign. Have broken it down below just in case the video takes time to load for you. Key Stats:

• During the first 3 months of 2010, the campaign generated 75% of online conversations in the relevant category
• Over half the online conversations were from women
• 186 personalised videos were filmed over 2 and a half days
• The personal reply clips have been viewed over 40 million times (combined)
• Old Spice Facebook fan interaction up 800%
• Old Spice YouTube page is the number 1 most viewed branded channel
• The campaign generated over 1.4 billion impressions for the brand in the 6 months since start (i.e. brand mentions)
• Old Spice sales up 107%

Stunning work Wieden + Kennedy and Old Spice, congratulations.

     Last week I got chatting to a fantastic chap called Aiden from Lexus Helderberg about cars and online marketing. The two go together very well but most car companies still shy away from it. Aiden however, been a more forward thinking legendary kind of chap (and former head of Lexus marketing in Ireland), decided we could have a go, so we created the Lexus A-List. Lexus in South Africa at the moment is seen by some as a brand most suited for the older generation and has been confused with being “just an expensive Toyota”. The reality is far from the truth as we see with the Lexus brand image in the USA and UK etc. Our aim was to get a select group of peers from the online media / marketing word and get them into the driving seat of some of the new Lexus range of cars. In exchange Lexus Helderberg provided the candidates with everything they needed to write a little something about their driving experience. The cars we picked for the day were the IS 250 Cabriolet, GS 450h (Hybrid) , RX 450h (Hybrid),  and an IS-F (as a prize drive). The group met up at Lexus Helderberg and we then had a brief about Lexus and what sets them apart from the other car brands (on a side note their service bays look just like Aston Martins !) . One thing I didn’t realise is that when you get a Lexus pretty much everything is standard, think iPod docks, Bluetooth, heated/cooled electric seats, touch screen sat nav, parking sensors etc etc. Next we drove out to the luxury Arabella Western Cape Hotel on one of Cape Towns most incredible coastal roads (click here to see the Map). Once there we had tea and two lucky people got to drive the IS-F on the return trip. Along the way we swapped cars to get a good feel of the range and then headed out to the fabulous 96 winery road restaurant for a wonderful late lunch, followed by a short drive back to the dealership, where we each received a surprise coffee table book, a great baseball cap, and then had to get used to the shameful reality of driving our own cars back to Cape Town. Most readers will know I’m a bit of a die hard Audi fan but even I was blown away by the cars. My brief view of the models we tested are as follows (click here to see Henk Kleynhans thoughts) : IS 250 Cabriolet: Incredible cabin, and very smooth ride without being too soft, Great with the top down and fantastic standard features (iPod dock, 7”touch screen sat nav, reverse camera, electric heated seats etc), overall a great car to cruise in.   GS 450h (Hybrid): At first I thought it was going to be a bit boring but then I touched the accelerator ! 0 to 100 km/h in 5.9 seconds and it keeps going to over 240Km/h. The cockpit panel needs a bit of aesthetic work but then this is due for an upgrade soon I hear (no one else said anything negative about it though so maybe it is just me). A great performance hybrid with a ton of standard features (Bluetooth, 7” touch screen etc). Basically a wolf in sheep’s clothing. RX 450h (Hybrid): My favourite car of the day, I have driven the equivalent Audi, Merc and BMW, and I promise you non of them are as good as this. The acceleration is great (0-100 km/h in 7.8 seconds), it truly corners like a car (the handling was epic), If you’re a bit of a geek the cockpit is like the inside of the enterprise (great looking, not complicated), best of all it has similar fuel consumption to a 1.6 litre hatchback. Have a look at the pictures to get an idea of the day at large. Huge thanks to Lexus Helderberg and Aiden, if you’re keen to try Lexus out give them a call on 021 841 8500, trust me you won’t be disappointed. P.S. If you would like to be considered for the Lexus A-List day drop me a mail at chris@huddlemind.com and will see what I can do or follow them on twitter at @LexusAList     

James Ready Beer and Leo Burnett Toronto teamed up for this stunning billboard campaign. So simple yet so effective, they essentially combined coupons with billboards to create billboard coupons. All people had to do was take a picture of the billboard and then show the picture at the relevant store. The discount amounts helped consumers save money, meaning more money for James Ready Beer. would work well for direct product discounts or special offers e.g. take a pic of the billboard and get a free T-Shirt when buying a case of X brand beer/wine etc etc

Loved this short case study look at Crispin Porter + Bogusky’s new campaign for Domino’s Pizza called“"Pizza Holdouts." CP+B and Domino’s set out to find people that didn’t eat Domino’s pizza and harass them (in a fun way) till they made the call and tried their new pizza’s. To accomplish this they set about subjecting the candidates to a variety of marketing tactics such as poster ads, billboards, radio ads, and even airplane banners !. Check out the video above to see how they got along, or visit the micro site at www.pizzaholdouts.com. In other news Domino’s recently reported doubling its profits last quarter to $23.6 million !

Heineken Italy and JWT have just releases a great case study showing how they managed to convince 1136 Italian soccer fans to miss the largest football match day in Italy (AC Milan vs Real Madrid), and instead show up to a classical music and poetry recital. The fans were then rewarded for their loyalty with a great surprise, watch the video clip above for the details.
Facts and outcomes

• 200 accomplices were involved
• 1136 Italian students, boyfriends and even journalists were pranked
• Event was broadcast live on Sky sports to 1.5 million people
• 10 million viewers heard about the event the next day on local news channels and MTV news
• The campaign had over 5 million unique page views across blogs, forums, and social networks

Ad agency Mother, London has just launched its first large campaign for UK’s Match.com. The ad is part of a new £7m through the line campaign, and features a couple finding love in a music shop. The stunning lady in the clip is called Amber Anderson and is set to star later in the year in a new film called “Your Highness” alongside Natalie Portman. I wish her all the best, she had me at “I laugh in my Sleep”.

They have also launched twitter profiles for the characters named ‘jackmatch’ and ‘jillmatch’, 5 people out of the first 100 followers will win a years free membership to Match.com. If facebook is your thing you can also check out the Facebook page, and if you like the song they were even kind enough to make a full length version (click here to listen to “That’s Just Me”)

P.S: If any girls are wondering, the chap is called James Connelly

The above campaign was one of the most successful online virals from last year for Radiotjänst (Sweden’s TV licensing body). Personally I was sent it about 25 times from various friends from around the globe. The campaign attracted over 14 million unique visits within 8 weeks. The above clip shows a nice brief of what, and how they pulled it off. The basic idea was to encourage more people to pay their TV licence fee in Sweden. To do this they created a video clip where you the viewer could be a world hero and star of the clip. They did this by embedding a photo of you and your name in the film at different scenes. At the end of the clip you could register to pay your licence, and personalise your own clip to send to a friend. The dedicated website was marketed on TV, cinemas and print. To try out the campaign for yourself go to http://en.tackfilm.se/ Great work and congrats to Draft FCB, Stockholm for coming up with the campaign.