mikejeffs

Swing and a miss – 4 seasons of marketing mistakes

BMW – Winter
The weathermen amongst us may or may not be familiar with the branded snowstorm which recently caught fire and burst BMW into PR flames. I am of course referring to last month’s story about BMW who sponsored a cold front so that it would be named after their latest model of Mini Cooper in Germany. Unfortunately for BMW, the stunt back fired when the cold front was responsible for a number of deaths resulting in some very negative press for them.

With this in mind let’s take a look at the other 3 seasons and remember some marketing mistakes and absolute howlers that somehow managed to get that all important sign off!

Walkers – Autumn
Sticking with the weather theme, lets digest Walkers’ 2010 attempt at generating some heat using people’s predictions of when it would rain in the UK. Sadly for Walkers the campaign went cold once people realised that the UK has a strong chance of rain a lot of the time meaning consumers had an 8/1 chance of guessing winning the £10 prize, as the Telegraph reported. According to some sources the crisp giant were effectively paying out a tenner for every £3 worth of crisps sold! The website mysteriously went offline before its closing date.

Hoover – Summer
Right up there with the greatest marketing fails of all time and probably one of the  most commented on promotions of all time, although not in the way intended.

In 1992, Hoover launched a campaign to sell a backlog of vacuum cleaners using an incentive of free flights to entice customers. You only needed to spend £100 on a hoover and in return they would give you two free flights - initially to Europe, predictably people began to play the system and demand for the flights soon spiralled out of control, with dire consequences for some Hoover employees. One customer in fact took a Hoover van hostage in protest of the way he was handled.

Kenneth Cole - Spring
Spring 2011 was a definite swing and a miss for fashion brand Kenneth Cole, or at least it was for whoever the agency behind their Twitter feed was. Now it doesn’t quite fall into the spring months but I think jumping in on the #Cairo to shamelessly promote its spring collection duly qualifies it for our final season marketing fail. It was a risky move and wasn’t received well. It’s a clear demonstration of how not to use social media.

If you’ve got anymore examples of marketing fails then please get in touch via the contact page.

Facebook Depression [infographic]

Something which has been in the public eye for the ast couple of months is mental health. I saw the following infographic on Mashable on Friday which was created by Help For Depression. The infographic shows how we use the social network to share our feelings and the reaction that these statuses receive.

 The survey found that positive updates receive more likes, while negative statuses get more comments. There are also some interesting findings regarding the words people use and how these change depending on your friend count.

Related articles

• Mental Health Awareness (everydayhealth.com)

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,300 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 22 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

WordPress Wishlist Survey 2011 [infographic]

via

Related articles

• What the WordPress community wants for 2012 (thenextweb.com)
• WordPress 2.0 for Android Gets Redesigned, New Action Bar Available (news.softpedia.com)
• Woo Themes Offers 3 Months Free Subscription on Standard or Developer Plans (theapptimes.com)

Why You Should have a Mobile Friendly Website [infographic]

We all know that mobile search is big and that having a mobile presence is vital, or at least you should know that! These stats from SKYRKT.com give an insight into why you need mobile friendly websites for your.

Related articles

• 7 Awesome New Mobile Marketing Infographics (hubspot.com)

Black Friday – who, where, why & what? [Infographic]

Ok, this may be turnng into an Infographic blog but in my defence Black Friday is a trending topic at the moment. So, exactly who’s buying what and for who? This visual from Mashwork gives you the lowdown for the US.

Related articles

• Who’s Tweeting About Black Friday? [INFOGRAPHIC] (bjconquest.com)
• Infographic: Black Friday As Seen Through Foursquare Check-Ins (searchengineland.com)

Top 3 Premium Music WordPress Themes

There are some really eye catching wordpress themes out there for pretty much any genre or niche. Here’s a little top 3  for band or music themes.

Faded Theme
The faded theme by Mint Themes looks great for rock bands and indie bands alike. The theme includes most things that a band would need with a cool rotating banner. $79 for this one.

Soundcheck Theme
Created  by Press 75 this theme is probably my favourite, the design is slick and has an almost social media feel to it, with tiles and widget boxes which reminds me a little of the Tumblr dashboard. Yours for $75.

Dark ‘n’ Gritty
You’ll gather I’m a fan of dark websites and so its no surprise that this one has made my top 3. This has a grungier feel to it and offer pretty much everything a musician or band could need from a site. This theme costs around $70 from Foxhound.

For more cool Wordpress music themes check out this selection from Premiumwp.com.

Tumblr Numbrs: The Rapid Rise of Social Blogging [infographic]

Here we have a fairly funky infographic based on the massive growth of social media blog platform Tumblr. I’m a fan of both Tumblr and WordPress for social blogging, both sites for me offer something slightly different:

Tumblr
I find Tumblr to be very creative and extremely popular with photographers and designers. Although I’ve not really used it for articles yet I do follow some blogs who publish articles regularly. I guess it depends what theme you use and your search and share style. You’ll notice my tumblr is a little random and includes lots of images without any real structure.

WordPress
WordPress for me is much more tailored to a journalistic magazine style approach. I find the platform easy for article based posts, although the CMS is perhaps not as user friendly as Tumblr. Again this depends on your theme and various add-ons and widgets.

The problem I have with Tumblr is that a lot of content is copied or reblogged. This may be the sites that I follow, but with WordPress sites I feel I gain a little more insight into topics but perhaps without the creative cool factor.

Anyway, here’s the infographic:

3 Cool Everyday Packaging Designs

Spending copious amounts of time of the internet, you come across some cool things and some awful things. I’m a huge fan of creative designs (as you’re probably aware from all the infographics I publish) – even if they’re not relevant to me. Here are a few awesome packaging designs I’ve found:

Twinfish display this one proudly on their site, a really unique take on the age old salt and pepper pots.

A really colourful collection of fire extinguishers here from Looks Like Good Design – not sure how practical they’d be. ~Damn cool though!

The King of Pop tribute can, a strange choice you may think but the sheer idea by the Dieline is brilliant here. Perhaps a bit risky for Pepsi to use?

How to use Linkedin [infographic]

I couldn’t agree more with Business Insider, Linkedin is certainly the ‘darkhorse’ of all the social media sites that I use. I tend to use Linkedin but without really ever engagaing in it. From the looks of this infographic from expert Lewis Howes I’ve a little way to go yet before I’ve completed ‘boot camp’.