Industry News July 2008
Posted in News on June 30th, 2008MELB BRAVES THE COLD FOR IGLOO ZOO LAUNCH
How do you launch a frozen yoghurt bar just as winter is beginning to bite? Wrights PR made cold cool this month, transforming Australia’s first Igloo Zoo bar – in Malvern, Melbourne – into an arctic wonderland, complete with inflatable igloo, faux snow, Eskimos and a snow dog named Mr Stix, writes Felicity Kitson.
“We used the Igloo Zoo store and the surrounding footpath for the event space. The inflatable Igloo was set up on one side of the footpath, in which there was a second bar, seating and tables for guests to relax and enjoy the super-chilled yoghurt,” explains Karla Dawes, Account Executive at Wrights PR.
Door girls in Eskimo hats and the regal white husky, Mr Stix, greeted close to 100 guests, who then trickled between the store and the 4×5m Office In A Bag igloo. Lit in the colours of the Igloo Zoo logo – light pink, grey and green – the inflatable could fit 8 to 10 people at a time and was weighed down with sandbags for extra stability in the blustery Melbourne weather. Fake snowflakes supplied by Snowmasters added to the magical Narnia effect.
More ‘Eskimos’ or Igloo Zoo wait staff circulated with canapés and cocktails carefully matched to the showcased frozen yoghurt flavours. To complement the Green Tea fro-yo, guests drank Asian Moscow Mules and nibbled on Peking duck roulade and Panko and nori rolled tuna carpaccio. The pomegranate flavour was served with Beneath the Tuscan sun cocktails and canapés of lamb kibbeh with traditional babaganoush and sweet potato with maple dressing. The original flavour was accompanied by a rocking Tom Collins, a three cheese crepe parcel and cucumber and coriander gazpacho oyster shooters.
As the canapés rolled out, Igloo Zoo’s celebrity ambassadors – DJ Grant Smillie, Temptation model and Fox 8’s Blood, Sweat and Gears host Scott McGregor and two of Melbourne’s hottest models, Kasia Z and Chelsea Butler – unveiled their own signature dishes.
“Being Australia’s newest culture bar, we asked some of the country’s coolest and most cultured celebrities to become ambassadors for this exciting brand,” adds Dawes.
In addition to the publicized celebrity factor, Wrights PR got Melbourne talking about Igloo Zoo’s frozen fun with a pre-party campaign of street stunts and a Facebook page.
Their stunt at Southern Cross Station, one of Melbourne’s busiest railway stations, involved more than 50 people scattered throughout the station freezing on cue for exactly five minutes. Puzzled passers captured the startling event on cameras and phones and security were sent into a tailspin. Wrights PR had a professional film crew capture the ‘big freeze’, which featured on Melbourne’s evening news and then on You Tube, generating a huge buzz for the new Igloo Zoo brand.
Wrights PR proved that with a creative event and some clever guerrilla marketing, you can make winter fun and frozen yoghurt red-hot.
To view the big freeze stunt at Southern Cross Station, go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70HHPUIU720
DIGITAL – SHAPING UP FOR SUCCESS
Everyone seems to be saying that digital is the way to go. Alongside all the hype about emerging digital technologies and gizmos, marketers have had to rapidly expand their communications voice, adapting to the ever growing and expanding number of digital communications platforms, writes Jeremy Glass.
Statistics are constantly quoted about the strong growth in online advertising, broadband usage and digital’s share of marketing budgets. The big agencies seem to be building sizable in-house digital practices or swallowing smaller specialist digital agencies faster than they can win digital business.
But, with all the energy, excitement and investment around digital, why do we often find that going digital can be effective with one campaign, then seemingly disappoint the next time around? Is it the channel? Is it the message? Is it our clients? How do we successfully adapt our marketing for the digital age?
Experience has shown that the key driver of success is to intertwine digital strategies with marketing fundamentals. Rather than focusing on understanding and implementing new technologies and platforms, we need to keep a focus on the customer and responding to their needs.
Recently cornered by a client who asked me to guarantee that shifting her marketing budget to digital would deliver a better return, I counselled her that if we covered off the following points I felt sure we would be on the right track:
The digital and non-digital channel mix
What response channels do you need to provide for your customers? Are they all online or is there a mix with traditional media? Remember that consumers are fickle and they may oscillate between online and offline channels. In my experience providing a breadth of channels works best.
Provide choice for your customer
What communications do they want to receive? How do they want to receive them? You need to continuously go back to your customers and reaffirm how much digital communication they wish to receive. How you mould your digital relationship with customers will impact the success of your digital campaigns.
Test the theory
How responsive is SMS compared to web or email? Will your search strategy generate quality responses? Does a direct advertising campaign translate into leads? The beauty of digital is you can test without a significant financial outlay. And there is an almost instantaneous response, minimising wasted resources.
Get runs on the board across specific digital channels
Email? SMS? Web? Viral? You don’t need to start with a fully integrated cross channel campaign. Start small and then bring a few digital channels together across the business.
Be realistic about budget
Identify how many of your customers are online and want to communicate with you using digital channels. This will help define the share of your budget to focus on digital. Also, realise that you may need to invest more to increase your online audience before you can get good economies of scale.
Don’t try to fool consumers into thinking it’s a true one2one personal relationship
Consumers know that a customised piece of email is a lead generating tool just like a traditional offline direct mail. They know that by clicking through they are ’buying in’ to your message. The best we can do is to build on what we know about the customer throughout this process. If they complete an online response form they should not need to re-state this information when they make contact by phone, as it should be already in the system.
Digital measurement
One of the strengths of digital is that it is immediate and measurable. Accessing the data to review and refine digital activities is critical to developing viable, sustainable future campaigns, with a measurable return on investment.
Digital is not the Holy Grail
We would be kidding ourselves if we thought digital can operate in isolation from traditional marketing channels. The answer lies in striking a balance between traditional and online communications.
Given the ever-expanding list of communications platforms, the same rules will always apply. Start from the point of building stronger customer relationships, and leverage online and offline channels to realise these objectives. This will deliver a much stronger result than beginning with the ever-growing list of technology options and communications platforms.
NSW and the Red Centre wins over corporate Asian buyers
Tourism Australia in partnership with Sydney Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Northern Territory Convention Bureau recently hosted the ‘Discover Australia’ Asia Corporate familiarisation.
Nineteen qualified Asian buyers and three business events media from China, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and India attended the seven-day program which showcased NSW and the Red Centre’s business events capabilities.
The qualified international buyers included HSBC India, Vodafone India, Korea Life Insurance, China’s Dongfeng Nissan Passenger Vehicle Co. and Great Eastern Malaysia.
Participants provided positive feedback on their visit:
“My visit to Sydney and Northern Territory was an eye opener in terms of what these two territories can offer to any traveller who would like to visit on a holiday or on an incentive / convention travel.” Nitin Chengappa, Mumbai, India
"Appreciate the respect for nature, culture and preservation of the natural icons. Also very impressed by the professionalism of staff and their working attitude. Also the quality of food; one does not expect to experience fresh tasty seafood in the middle of the desert. Voyages excelled in anticipating the international expectations of the group." David Peng, Senior Vice President, AIG General Insurance Company China Limited
MEA & BEA LAUNCH MENTOR PROGRAM
MEA CEO Linda Gaunt has announced the launch of the MEA/Business Events Australia Mentor Program. The program will address the current skills shortage in the business events sector by up-skilling industry professionals and improve the industry’s overall competitiveness on a domestic and international stage.
One of the major challenges currently facing the meetings and events industry on a global scale is the difficulty in attracting, recruiting and retaining skilled professionals to work in the sector. We see mentoring as an effective method for the transferring and sharing of knowledge in management and leadership experiences.
Tourism Australia’s Managing Director, Geoff Buckley says: “Tourism Australia is pleased to support MEA in its work to promote skills development and mentoring in the business events sector and I commend MEA on this initiative.”
Head of Tourism Australia’s dedicated business events unit, Joyce DiMascio added: “MEA is the natural partner for an initiative which revolves around educating the sector, particularly in view of their Registered Training Organisation (RTO) status.”
MEA’s Mentor Program, initially focused on New South Wales, will provide an opportunity for members to build their skills toward future goals. Our long-term vision is to have structured mentor programs in place in all MEA state and territory branches for the benefit of the whole membership. As part of our overall professional development framework, MEA sees that a Mentor Program will be of enormous benefit to our members.
