Friday 25 September 2009

Our favourite ‘App for that’…


Which personal item would you never leave the house without? For most of us our Apple iPhone is the single most important ‘tool’ not to leave the house without.

“There’s an app for that” our TV tell us… and we definitely wouldn’t bet against it.

Almost every routine of our daily lives has support from an Apple App. There’s apps for; working out, around the house, going out, managing money, etc. In fact, can you think of something Apple hasn’t made an App for?

So, when one of the All about the Idea team members decided to take on the 2010 London Marathon challenge he went straight to Apple to see what support he could get from his dearly loved app store.

And what a find Runkeeper was. The best thing of all is that it was Free!

Our resident marathon runner just won’t put it down. We get daily updates on how far he has run, his average speed, pace and loads more. Therefore All about the Idea decided to do some internet digging on where the Runkeeper creators idea came from.

Runkeeper was started by Jason Jacobs, a runner who’s Big Idea came whilst training for the Chicago Marathon. After unsuccessfully tracking his run’s he realised that we had all the technology in place to track, locate and breakdown run information but no-one was utilising it in the current mobile phone market.

Another Big and clever idea Jacob’s had was to render each individual activity into Google map API’s, pinpointing your miles and break downs of pace within those miles, and making your analysis available online.

All about the Idea just cannot get over the simplicity of this product. It’s straight forward to use and absolutely essential for any kind of physical activity training.

Our Big Idea: whilst the prospect of Challenging Goliath may be scary, if you spot a niche, go for it! An idea that is usually the simplest is always the most successful.

Now we are just sitting tight and waiting for Runkeeper to make a debut appearance in the ‘Make Active Attractive’ campaign adverts which Mother London has just been appointed to tackle.


Tuesday 15 September 2009

Who finds media agency pitches painful?

At all about the Idea we spotted this headline feature on Brand Republic about how the economic crisis is affecting how clients manage media agencies pitches because they feel it is more important than ever to get the most out of their agencies.

According to a report published by Billets, more than three quarters of clients find managing media agency pitched ‘painful and time-consuming’. What a headline shocker.

Being on the agency side of the pitch ‘painful and time consuming’ is a cutting comment when you know the amount of time, energy and thought that is put into the pitch process. However, it is hard to see who to point the blame at for this emerging ‘long process’ trend. You could say clients are starting to take advantage of the current climate or you could say that perhaps agencies are just so eager to get the clients on board they may be bending over a bit too much.

Our Big Idea is to say that agencies should start to put their foot down. Stick to your guns and tell clients you get what you pay for. But this would only work if all agencies are seen to do the same.

And clients; why not choose an agency because they are reliable, efficient, and have the right ideas, not because you feel you can get them to do more for the same prices as the cheapest agency pitch.

All about the Idea came across this site which may help those who write regular pitches. It’s called ‘Your Pitch Sucks’. You send in your pitch and members of the online community read it, check it and give you their feedback. We haven’t yet tried it but would be interested to hear your feedback if you have.

http://www.yourpitchsucks.com/about.html

Related links:

http://www.brandrepublic.com/BrandRepublicNews/News/936924/Clients-find-managing-media-agency-pitches-painful/?DCMP=EMC-DailyNewsBulletin

http://www.billetts.com/prelogindec/services/marketing-sciences/

Tuesday 8 September 2009

What was once a Big Idea is now disappearing


Is the virtual world disappearing?
Has anyone else noticed that the ever so popular ‘virtual’ word seems to be disappearing? At one stage if you typed a word into to Google somehow adverts offering you the opportunity to work from home using a unique virtual office package would pop up, without it having any relevance to your search term. Google was saturated by them.
But now it seems this ‘work from home’ trend is starting to disappear with employers preferring to be in the heart of action. This of course, in our opinion, contributes to better productivity but also increased job satisfaction.

Tom Davenport wrote an interesting article on the Harvard Business Website, which stated ‘Many companies allow some work at home, but far fewer seem to support it for five days a week’. Maybe this depends on the company set up and specific roles within them. However, there does seem to be a change in attitude towards virtual worlds but maybe this constant shift in working patterns is what keeps companies looking forward.

Our Big Idea – keep the constant shifts going and give employees the option. Allow them to take control of their work ethic, and if results don’t reflect this quite simply bring them back to the office.

Wednesday 2 September 2009

Movie Marketing Meltdown


The much awaited 15 minute trailer for James Cameron’s new movie, Avatar, was finally released last week at all 3D cinemas across the globe; and having turned the movie marketing model upside down by holding back much, if any, communication about the movie’s story line the Avatar ‘hype bubble’ had reached its maximum and was ready to burst. The Big Idea – to seduce their fans into believing this was the only film worth knowing without knowing anything about it.

Avatar has been referred to as the next film that will change the entire film industry (big statement to live up to) and its taken 10 years for anybody to see a snippet of the film or hear anything about the story line. It’s been a tense rollercoaster ride for film fanatics and at stages of the ride the rollercoaster pretty much stopped.

Due to the fact that the film was 3D using all the above the line marketing channels, such as television or standard theatres, just wasn’t good enough for the film makers as the channels didn’t show the true brilliance of the film. So instead they screened the film at select 3D theatres. Of course, this only involves a handful of the population and therefore you would think pushing the word of mouth online would be crucial and only fair.

The trailer was uploaded on to Apple’s trailer hosting site which was the only place you could view it so all online media portals linked straight to it. This then caused the site to crash many, many, many times to everyone’s frustration. But the big shock came when all the sites received letters accusing them of posting content that ‘infringes Fox’s intellectual property rights’ and straight away the links were removed.

So, having waited a ridiculous amount of time for just the trailer launch and then sat back to observed the films marketing tactics fans and reviewers have come away feeling confused, bemused and pretty much unwanted.

Being that the film has been dubbed as Cameron’s big masterpiece the film ‘will go on…’ (Titanic theme tune) and will be a huge success. But, as for their Big Idea tactics implemented, marketers should keep things traditional and simple. Why try and complicate something that was already a winner!