We had a look at some of the last year’s successes in digital marketing. What did they do to stand out and engage the audience? And how was social media used successfully?

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Mobious, The Carling Weekly Email

Digital marketing agency Mobious was awarded for their campaign for Carling at the Northern Marketing Awards 2009.

Competing in the category of Best Digital Marketing Campaign, Mobious was challenged by McCann Yorkshire, Better Brand Agency, Never Odd or Even LLP, National Express East Coast.

Iain Gibbons, Managing Director of Mobious, described the straightforward approach that was chosen for the campaign. The aim was to create a consistent communication tool to engage the consumers.

He said: “Rather than using email to simply promote brand offers, we created a ‘magazine’ style format that has elements that serve no other purpose that to give the recipient 60 seconds of enjoyable engagement!

“It’s not just about the Carling brand, it’s about delivering engaging content to the Carling consumer.”

According to Iain, the response from the recipients has been very positive but it’s really the results that speak for themselves.

“Number of clicks from email campaigns are up by 135% year on year. Visits to the members section of Carling.com, which the email links to, are up by 180% and competition entries up by 1,166% year on year.”

Proving that it doesn’t always take complex technologies to run a successful campaign, Mobious took the prize home with delight.

Mr Gibbons praised the standard of the digital category.

He said: “To win when amongst such great company was especially pleasing. The award is vindication of the strategy and hard work put into the Carling program and is testament to the skills of all the team at Mobious.”

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Never Odd or Even LLP, Ask the Hoff

Social media played a key role when Newcastle-based digital agency Never Odd or Even LLP launched its viral ‘Ask the Hoff’ iPhone application.

Reaching hundreds of thousands of people with minimal advertising budget earned the company a nomination at the Northern Marketing Awards 2009 in the category of Best Digital Marketing Campaign.

Paul Smith from Never Odd or Even LLP described the use of social media as an excellent way to gain word-of-mouth as quickly as possible.

He said: “Plenty of marketeers still approach Twitter and Facebook with caution, possibly because many have experimented with it for the sake of it, rather than for the right reasons.

“We co-ordinated a series of tweets and Facebook updates between ourselves and David Hasselhoff’s fans and personal profiles, each cross-referencing the product and one another. It was a simple exercise but one that quickly promoted our app to a quarter of a million potential customers for free.”

Paul told the idea for the app itself came last year when the App Store began.

He said: “There were no celebrity endorsed apps at that time, so it seemed a worthwhile project.”

The company partnered with David Hasselhoff to create a viral app that provides users with “Hoffalicious advice whenever they need it”. This is done simply by turning up the volume in the iPhone, asking a question and shaking the handset – the answer will then be given by the Hoff.

Both the application and the effectiveness of the marketing campaign have been a success.

Paul said: “Even five weeks since launch, our Ask The Hoff app has received significant coverage in the broadsheets and on national radio. You can’t really ask for more than that.”

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Better Brand Agency

To help them establish awareness for their new business and get a foothold in the North, a North Yorkshire-based brand agency launched a social media campaign that turned out to be a success.

Declan Metcalfe, Marketing Director of Better Brand Agency said the idea was to utilise the active participation in social media already taking place among the Better Brand people.

Being truly part of the social network as opposed to just using it for marketing purposes,  has proved succesful for Better Brand. Using common, approachable language is something that Mr Metcalfe described as one of the innovations of the campaign.

He said: “We talk like we normally talk and love to showcase our clients and talk about their businesses and the people in them. We’ve been told many times that our newsletter is a favorite amongst our audience and that they feel like they just having a chat with us, rather than being pitched at. ”

Results have also been tangible. In addition to connecting with hundreds of industry people across social media channels, the campaign has also optimised the company’s website.

Declan said: “We’re number 2. on a world wide search of ‘Brand Agency’ which makes us visible internationally and has put us on the radar of a number of national and international brands who have invited us to pitch.”

Substantial presence in social media has established Better Brand with good reputation as well as build valuable contacts.

“We work with partners we would not have found had we not developed our social media channels. We learn from them and we share our experience and knowledge with them. We use it as an ‘always on’ research tool, but more important than all of that is we’re an active part of a community of like-minded people and businesses.”

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Keep it simple

Head of the judging panel at the awards, Ian Scott Bell, said all the campaigns that made the shortlist were able to fulfill the crucial requirement of demonstrating results that hadn’t been achievable without the use of digital media.

The winner Mobious, with its Carling Weekly Email, stood out especially by the quality of the targeting in the campaign as well as its consistency. The simplicity of the idea might be a reflection of where digital marketing is headed.

Mr Bell, the Marketing Director of Nigel Wright, said: “This year, we weren’t blown away by new innovations, nothing thoroughly breakthrough. The best ones were those who went with the absolute basics.

“This is only my view, but what I think is happening is that digital is trying to be less quirky, and becoming more substantial.”

Thus Ian’s advice to marketers is to not make things over-complicated. A campaign can go a long way if it’s simple and well-targeted.

He also notes that embracing various media is becoming more and more essential in marketing strategies.

He said: “Most consumers are consuming all types of media. That is why marketing campaigns have to be well integrated.”