Our training is fuelled by best practice. To support Digital Training Academy courses we draw on examples of best practice digital marketing and publishing from many industry sectors, and in many countries. On this page you’ll find many of the case studies accepted by the Academy and we hope you enjoy learning from them. They represent aspects of best practice we’ve found useful when teaching digital marketing, and if you’re joining us before a Digital training Academy then ask about case studies in your sector. Only a small selection are available on this page.
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Worth harnessed the burgeoning power of social media to improve the UK public’s support and awareness for Armed Forces Day and encourage a celebration of the forces, veterans and wider forces family, to honour the work they do. Worth's use of digital to create highly engaging content and development of spaces where communities could grow and flourish has allowed them to mature into meaningful places of support and an overall increase in positive participation.
Macmillan Cancer Support is a national cancer charity which provides practical, medical, emotional and financial support to people whose lives are affected by cancer. It also campaigns for better cancer care. The challenge they faced was that there was increasing traffic to their website and it was critical that users could find the information they needed quickly and easily. Webcredible suggested a new homepage displaying information on different cancer types, a redesigned contact us page, new information architecture for the online shop and brand centre, and a restructure of content within the site to better suit user needs.
Plumbworld is the UK's largest independent online retailer of bathroom, plumbing and heating products, with annual sales approaching £12 million. Plumbworld was in the process of applying some updates to its website but was ultimately looking for a total redesign of the site. Webcredible carried out a comprehensive user-centered design project to ensure a redesigned site that was focused around the needs of the user.
uSwitch.com is a free, impartial online and phone based comparison and switching service that helps customers compare prices on a range of services including gas, electricity, home phone, broadband providers and personal finance products. Webcredible were commissioned to work on ensuring the best possible user experience for the new site developments.
European cancer research is of a very high quality but is fragmented, un-coordinated and slow in translating benefits to patients. If state of the art treatment was available to all cancer patients, the World Health Organisation has estimated that over 20,000 lives would be saved annually. Targeted at oncology professionals, ecancermedicalscience actively encourages the communities of sub-specialised scientists and cancer carers to exchange ideas and research, speeding up the time it takes from discovery, to patient benefit. The peer-reviewed, online journal hired Brandcast Media to revamp its site. The site now includes social media with blogs, forums and a Twitter feed, as well as podcasts and an ecancer.tv video section.
Creative Lynx were commissioned by Janssen-Cilag to create a pilot eDetail Aid for their ADHD treatment Concerta XL. The Concerta XL eDetail was developed as the centrepiece of the brand revitalisation campaign carried out by Creative Lynx.The market was becoming increasingly competitive and Janssen-Cilag needed something to give their sales force an edge over the competition. The eDetail aid delivers a unique user experience, whilst engaging interactive exercises provide audience profiling and segmentation. Complex medical data is delivered in a clear format whilst rich media content of videos, algorithms and animations encourage interaction and aid message retention. This valuable clinician insight allows the distribution of targeted promotional direct mails and ensures that follow-up presentations address specific barriers to prescribing. The rep feedback for the Concerta XL eDetail was extremely positive and the results were excellent, with a 20% increase in prescribing patterns and a significant boost to year on year sale figures. Such was the success that the project was extended to develop e-Detail aids across a range of Janssen-Cilag brands. Creative Lynx has progressed to become the lead creative agency for Concerta XL in the UK.
About 6,000 people are affected with haemophilia in the UK. A preventative treatment (known as prophylaxis) allows those affected to lead virtually normal lives, with sport and exercise playing a vital role lessening the risk of bleeds. Bayer HealthCare hired Oi Media and Langland to create FactorFitness, a website giving haemophiliacs tips on how to get the most out of sport, while educating others on special requirements needed, such as the dedicated ‘Teachers Zone’. By far the most popular area of the site, the ‘Ask and expert’ feature lets people submit questions to resident physio and occupational therapists- providing a valuable resource. The site has a number of interactive features such as games and user generated photo galleries, while patients on Bayer get access to a special members area.
This e-tutorial is helping to educate nurses at a time when NICE guidelines require more nurses to deliver eczema care. Developed for Schering-Plough in association with a panel of specialist dermatology nurses, eczpert.co.uk makes learning easy, accessible and fun. It puts the busy nurse in control of their own education, and allows them to dip in and out of the programme and learn at their own pace. Each of the twelve tutorials contain reflective practice exercises, downloadable workbooks, certificates and practical tools and is accredited by the Royal College of Nurses - that's 12 hours of CPD. This campaign is bang on trend. With recent NICE guidelines aiming to improve eczema management across England, and an increasing number of nurses having to deliver holistic care and patient education with little or no training, eczpert.co.uk is helping to bridge the gap. 
Creating engagement and relevancy is tough for a chocolate bar. Lacta’s approach was to create the type of video content their target consumers might want to watch and play around with during a coffee break at work. It’s a video love story with genuine interaction. The linear video kicks off (probably after a link is forwarded to you by a friend). You then decide during the video which route the characters follow next. It’s a classic guy meets girl story, and creators OgilvyOne have managed to create an interesting interaction that lets you play with the characters and the situation. For us what made this work as a marketing tactic was a combination of how the story unfolded, the high quality production values and the tone of voice which was spot on for their Greek target audience. There’s around 20 segments to the video and the simple embedding of choices inside the streaming video is both compelling and seamless. Fortunately the two year journey only takes a few minutes to watch through, but it’s one of the neatest examples of non-linear storytelling we’ve seen in video based branded content. The product placement is clear but appropriate and by using the product to help tell the story it fits with the brand and creates some genuine interest from consumers. Our Digital Training Academy team in London certainly went off looking for Lacta bars straight afterwards! These guys scooped the Branded Content category at the MIXX Awards.
For its tenth birthday, web hosting company Moonfruit, gave away a Macbook Pro laptop every day for ten days. To win one, users had to tweet using the hashtag #moonfruit. The result? A 350% increase in product trials, a 600% increase in traffic… and Twitter forcibly removing it from the top trending topics.
There’s an interesting technique for engagement here. The square advert on the right hand side opens up and gives the viewer a pen. A brand character then runs along the line that’s automatically drawn. It’s an engaging way of drawing the viewer in and delivering a clear payback. The ‘Impossible is nothing’ message resonates and has more compulsion given that the viewer is bound to be sitting at a PC screen.
VW capture the moment by aligning their brands with the Twitter messaging tool. Using Twitter in the advert creates interest and helps VW stand out from other motor manufacturers. By typing in your Twitter name it then looks for your tweets and claims to be finding the right car for you based on your content. Behind the scenes it seems to pull language from your Twitter feed and display this within the advert. It’s a neat way of dipping into Twitter, but the real benefit here is threefold: engagement with the customer, creating the spark of talkability about the brand, and VW’s alignment with the funky microblogging platform tech trendsetters have gravitated towards.
A neat way of bringing mapping and personalisation into an advertising space. David Carr, Head of Interactive at Chemistry UK Says:
For the launch of the new Tomb Raider game, this high impact take-over on a key website delivers both audience reach (within the right target) and detailed brand message. This is a great example of a take-over because the media owner has worked hard to give the brand a great deal of value. The integration with the content might seem shocking, but for the IGN gaming website it’s a perfect match for their target viewers. 
A good example of creativity within the advertising space. This simple advert for a Zoo in San Diego achieves interaction and creates a short entertainment experience. The player can create a mythical animal but connecting different parts of a zoo animal’s body together. The send-to-a-friend feature is a real neat way to let kids share the content, and the payback of saying that whatever the animal, you’ll find it at the zoo clearly fits with the attraction’s position in the market. The forwarding tool is a simple example of how to tap into social networks and the interaction a good way to make otherwise flat advertising something people want to engage with.
A neat use of video story-telling. The Nivea-for-men brand plays on the wider marketing proposition of personal grooming products for young male audiences and gives the viewer an option of a couple of different videos. The storyline of the actor when he has the women’s product is to transfer him to a shoe shop where he is amusingly out of place, while the right (male) lotion clearly does the trick and has his girlfriend march straight into the storyline. A simple way to build engagement and interactive humour into otherwise static, linear advertising.
This example of data capture inside an advertising space is a good way of showing how brands can build lists and email addresses of prospects without needing them to visit the website. In this particular example, the confectionery brand Snickers uses mobile marketing as a way of sending messages between friends that are from their brand spokesperson – Mr T. The messaging is customised by name and gives the person who triggers the message a range of options. A neat way of reaching into social networks and getting people with mobiles to forward the brand message to their friends.
These kids became iconic through television and online advertising. They’re instantly recognisable and their leaping eyebrows swept through the web as fast as people could forward to their friends. It’s a good example of integration between media channels because the images and music were identical across both. The images are high impact on screen and they work well on the web because of the lack of clutter within the advertising space. It becomes one of the dominant elements on the page and because of this achieves both impact, brand recognition and message association. For fast moving consumer packaged goods brands like Cadbury’s, they’re not trying to sell off the page, their goal is to build brand image, discussion and front of mind awareness. That’s exactly what this creative achieves so brilliantly – even without a click-through to their website.
Achieving dwell time in media is a massive challenge. The click happy generation rarely spend seconds with commercial messages and have become adept at filtering out what doesn’t interest them. However this campaign from L’Oréal achieved 2-3 minutes of dwell time, here’s why… 
Using the idea of reality TV shows and voting for eviction, this campaign is about the idea of evicting one of the varieties of sweets. It’s a neat way of riding a current social trend with creating simple interaction within an advertising format. For fast moving consumer packaged goods brands like Revel’s, they’re not trying to sell off the page, their goal is to build brand image, discussion and front of mind awareness. That’s exactly what this creative achieves – even without deep interaction on the website. 
The goals for Pepsi were to bring awareness to their updated brand and logo, re-establish Pepsi’s position as a youthful challenger brand and tap into the iconic “change” social/political movement of the Obama election. They also wanted to foster brand community through 2-way communication with customers and chose the web and a social marketing model as the way to achieve this. Their ‘Refresh Everything’ message was a natural fit with Obama’s drive for change in politics and social values, and the campaign harnessed video content, social media and digital marketing in innovative ways to reach the millennial generation. The model centered around an open letter to Barack Obama and saw consumers recording their webcam messages directly from a video banner. This got them not only interacting with the banner, but actually creating content and pushing it back to the brand.
This expandable banner was both a game and achieved data capture for the Mars brand. Targeted at 18-34 year olds and running on high impact spaces such across the MSN portal, Hotmail and MSN Messenger, it’s a good example of how heavyweight partnerships with a single media owner can build massive campaign reach and achieve the type of audiences that traditionally only television could deliver.
Kellogg's wanted to lift their marketing message into the lifestyle space and align themselves deeply with the values and experiences of their target consumers. They stepped above simple advertising campaigns to create a fitness platform they could own and a marketing initiative that would be integrated across many channels
Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) is the international marketing agency responsible for marketing the country as a holiday/travel destination to audiences outside New Zealand. An intergrated online campaign was understaken in 2007
A challenge Levi's have is that they compete not only intensively in store for market share amoung their target consumers, but also for the time and attention their consumers have when they are exposed to media. The brand needed to find a way to engage the would achieve cut through.
Coca-Cola needed to find a way of levering a celebrity endorsement to gain cut-through in a tough market. The brand was looking for a technique of messaging that would gain real attention, connecting to the right people and in the right way. The peer referral power of viral marketing offers this promise, but in most cases proves elusive for fast moving consumer goods firms. However, this short video staring English football star Wayne Rooney - proved compelling enough for millions of people to want to send this on. It’s the kind of connection all viral marketing sets out to make but rarely delivers.
In the crowded drinks sector Carling wanted to find a strategic way to achieve cut-through. They developed an award-winning strategy of sponsorship that were amplified on the web through sophisticated search engine marketing that gave the campaign a permanent place online. Carling realised that just as brands compete for a share of sales, they also compete for audience attention online so an alternative to simple advertising was needed.
This was the pioneering landmark study into optimising the media mis and the level of weight internet banners should be given. The award-winning research formed a roadmap for media-neutral planning and quantified how each marketing channel influences the consumer. It revealed how some channels are used to saturation point; while others are barely explired. Minor reductions in frequency or reach of campaign in one media free up budgets that work harder online: same budget, better results.
The Nokia N95 broke new ground in smartphone technology. To create advocates for the new device, Nokia turned to Microsoft to reach techsavvy target groups. Cross-media research was conducted by MetrixLab to measure how the different combinations of media affected brand metrics such as awareness, recall, imagery, message association, and purchase intent. Around 3,400 people took part in the research.
For mobile operators, business and enterprise users are vital customers. But they are difficult to reach—particularly the decision makers. When KDD I brand Business au! launched the E03CA mobile phone, a rugged, secure handset that meets the needs of a business lifestyle, it had to find a way to get the message to the people that mattered—high-level executives. Microsoft Advertising had the answer.
Thailand-based telecommunications company Advanced Info Service PLC (AIS) is a market leader. With traditional ad channels having less impact among tech-savvy professionals, it was time for a new approach. AIS believed that many tech-savvy Thais went online for the best deals on new mobiles. So the company wanted to try online for its latest phone and airtime package. The problem was finding a media owner with high reach who could deliver measurable results.
Johnson & Johnson Consumer B.V. (JJCBV) wanted to boost awareness of its o.b. tampon brand among young women in the Netherlands. Because the vast majority of Dutch women aged between 14 and 18 use Windows Live Messenger, the company worked with Microsoft Advertising to create a Personal Expression; a collection of interactive content used in the application. The hugely successful campaign increased brand usage by six percent among the target audience.
Kleenex created a new brand story called Let It Out, which focused on breaking free from inhibitions and letting out tears, laughter, joy, frustration, and all the other things we hold back. The objective was to create an emotional connection between consumers and Kleenex and a key part of this was to encourage participation in ‘letting it out’.
The Government of India Ministry of Tourism wanted to promote India as the destination of choice among international travellers from the United States, Europe, and Asia Pacific. The marketing strategy, which went beyond the traditional media mix, integrated online marketing so the Ministry could reach the increasing number of people who research their holiday destinations online. The Ministry understood the need for an interactive and engaging campaign to ensure message retention, as tourists choose international holiday decisions months ahead of actual travel dates.
The Habitat furniture store is among many brands to have misunderstood Twitter, blundering in to a private social space with typically offline approach. Their clumsy attempt to use Twitter’s # tags was an ill thought through way to get their messaging seen by larger numbers of people. The feed from HabitatUK effectively spammed thousands of people by trying to hijack key trending topics. Hash tags help people track conversations in Twitter, and the retailer decided in June to align itself to topics such as Apple’s iphone and the Iranian elections. It suggests three sequential failures in the marketing strategy: failing to read the landscape and the way people use the tools, failing to create a digitally native strategy and failing to have management checks and controls in place to identify poor practice. Coaching the marcomms team in digital marketing would have prevented this and a clear social media policy would ensure it never happens again.
Nokia is about connecting people. The pioneers of mobile phones created the handsets a generation grew up with, and the handsets a generation learned to ‘talk’ with. So how smart and how fitting that Nokia is the brand behind an initiative for writing the rules for mobile and SMS conversations. Getting the most from a new technology isn’t about understanding the functions it’s about understanding how to behave with it. We master the functions quickly, but the behaviour takes longer and as people try out new technologies (from texting to tweeting), there’s a new type of behaviour we have to discover. So when Nokia started thinking about how people connect, it seemed only natural to let their customers do the talking. And that’s what you have right here. A great example of a wider social message, linked to a brand truth, delivered through a sponsorship, inside a community space, using social content - and along the way some great marketing. Like the strapline says, Nokia really are about ‘connecting people’.
Food manufacturing giant Nestle has come up with an innovative use for Twitter that combines together a mix of digital channels. Their latest advertising campaign for JuicyJuice includes a Twitter feed within the advertising creative. This social media campaign lets people post their own tweets within the advertising that appears online. At the time of writing, the brand is testing it on US sites 
Mobile enhances passenger experience for BA
Mobile generates 59% of donations from press campaign
Mobile encourages 5x more voucher redemption
Mobile enhances passenger experience for BA
Mobile helps to reduce cab-related attacks by 46%
This is a simple example of integrated mobile marketing. UK agency g8wave worked with Blink TV (the leading supplier of video screens and equipment to the music industry) to target Girls Aloud fans by offering the chance to meet their band. The mobile marketing promotion for Girls Aloud was based around the band’s Out of Control tour, which opened in Manchester. Blink were behind the stunning mix of visuals on the tour and as part of the pre-show build-up, fans saw a short film inviting them to text in their details to win a VIP trip to Wembley Stadium to meet the girls when they support Coldplay in September.
A solid application of smart search marketing principles deep in the long tail of search engine queries. The Radisson campaign succeeded in delivering multimillion pound returns at massive scale. Their processes used extensive and deep optimisation techniques to deliver outstanding ROI - showing just how powerful search engine marketing can be.
As a leading women’s lifestyle portal, handbag.com reaches over 1.5 million readers every month, delivering fresh editorial content on fashion, beauty, celebrity gossip, and much more. The brand has gone from strength to strength since it was set up in 1999 and continues to lead the market. handbag is an expanding online business with ambitious growth plans and had worked with Greenlight for over a year to develop a clear and focused paid search strategy aimed at increasing page impressions and reaching new audiences cost effectively.
When Monarch Airlines approached Greenlight in 2004, their organic search presence was limited, leaving their competitors to capture the lion’s share of search traffic for low-cost air travel. Today Monarch Airlines occupies positions one to three in Google’s organic results for all of their main flight destinations and they are consistently ranked in the top 3 spots for highly sought after travel search terms including ‘Cheap Flights.’
Autobytel.co.uk is a leading internet car retailer that combines extensive motor industry expertise and cutting-edge technology, to offer a convenient online car buying process. By working with Greenlight's in house ad feed tool, Adapt, Autobytel.co.uk has seen their Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns become more meaningful and relevant to search activity, which has driven better qualified traffic to the site and resulted in an explosion of enquiries and sales.
The UK’s largest classified jobs website, fish4jobs understood effective search marketing was key to realising their full potential. That’s why the recruitment site chose Greenlight to research, formulate and implement a strategy capable of clearing a vital pathway between fish4jobs and its customers in the period from January 2007 to March 2008.
A great example of creative that combines relevancy with active engagement. Coca-cola maintains consistently world class digital marketing and these campaigns are looking to drive registration for their seasonal promotions. By tracking dwell time they can track the increase in the intensity of engagement with the consumer.
The migration from advertising to utility is a shift in thinking for marketers, but one consumers have been asking for. This health website from Special K is a good example of ways that even consumer packaged goods brands can market effectively online – the group that historically are among the hardest to build strong digital strategies for. The website is a dieting and healthy eating tool that helps consumers work through a weight control programme.
World class strategic thinking, aligned with excellent creative. This is a ground-breaking campaign that sets the standard for what mobile marketing can achieve. Mobile was at the heart of a massive integrated campaign combining advertising, social media and experiential channels, creating discussion and building engagement. Astonishingly, the campaign was all put together in just 8 days.
After realising that its paid search results had plateaued, online audiobook retailer Audible.co.uk, appointed Greenlight to revive disappointing sales figures through a dynamic paid search strategy. Greenlight’s Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns successfully targeted the niche search volume that Audible’s market offered and maximised return. Greenlight’s approach proved far more efficient than the existing strategy and resulted in extremely impressive levels of return for Audible.
A brilliant example of taking a big idea and applying it online. Using the web as a platform for engagement, Talk Talk aligned with the Treehouse autism charity to create The Forever Story, persuading thousands of consumers to take part and collaborate in what became a Guinness world record for the largest multi-author story ever: 8000 entries, 20 hours of content, podcasts, Facebook apps - and of course, the story continues, online.
Social marketing has found its new home on the web. The scope for innovation in this sector’s communications is massive, and this campaign caught the mood of the nation and accelerated both cultural and political change. Friends of the Earth found a way anyone could take part in registering their concerns about climate change and their protest over political inactivity. The approach widened participation and created a model now extended across Europe, mobilising people in the way that fits with today’s culture. A brilliant idea executed in a way that is digitally native.
Coca-Cola Zero offers Coca-Cola taste with zero calories. Brazil has become one of its most important markets, and Coke Zero was looking for ways to reinforce its position as a leading low-calorie soft drink. To extend its relationship with young audiences it launched Coca-Cola Zero Studio, a project that fuses different types of music together. Two Brazilian artists recorded a show mixing their musical styles in association with a major music broadcaster, so Coca-Cola was seeking a way to share this content with consumers, and raise awareness of the recently launched Coca-Cola Zero brand.
Matt Harding is back, and Striding with friends. The cult following of Matt got a boost when chewing gum brand Stride sponsored his next round-the-world adventure. With a few million views online, Matt had a couple of friends who wanted to take part as well. From Quebec to Los Angeles, Paris to Sao Paulo, Mumbai to Madrid , they showed up and in his words, 'danced badly' with him.
The multi award-winning BMW Films project was one of those rare moments when an advertising campaign is so powerful it succeeds in changing the medium it works within. High budget, all-action and with blockbusting stars like Madonna under the stewardship of A-list directors like Ang Lee, the movies were an instant cult success. They showcased the best in movie-making, and delivered it in the context of a message of brand association BMW had carefully crafted. By creating compelling media they generated their own self-selecting audiences without the need of heavyweight media spend.
A mint, a fizzy drink and a schoolboy prank taken to extremes. We must have watched this 50 times and still it gets a smile. These videos with quality production values and good direction tell a story that’s right in tone, length and format for the web today. Thanks to YouTube they’ll be around 10 years from now and still reinforcing the brand. But as a creative concept this wasn’t created by the brands; it grew from the street and wasn’t easy for the brands to accommodate at first. What many marketers forget is that for every firm there are brand adorers and brand vandals and there needs to be a strategy for dealing with both. Over the next 10 years the centre of gravity of the web will shift to social media and firms need to have these strategies in place before their brands and content start being used. Marketing in social media demands creating material people want to share. The principles of getting this right grew from the early days of viral marketing in the mid 90s and are closely related to PR. ‘Enjoy the film.
How do you make kitchen electricals sexy? Take some heavyweight appliances, a heap of schoolboy mischief, a chef in a white coat, a sprinkle of viral marketing and a splash of social media; then pour the contents into a blender and watch the ingredients bond together to create the perfect recipe for viral marketing. WillItBlend has become legendary in less than six months. It’s made Tom a superstar, transformed a parochial firm into a global brand and boosted sales of $800 smoothie makers. Few firms have the nerve, vision, guts or raw creativity to try this; but when you get the formula right, the results taste awesome.
A rock magazine for 15-24 year-olds has a naturally good fit with the profile of early adopting techno-heads. But that doesn’t mean their management team would know how to engage in the digital space or have the innovative spirit to try things out. But they do, they did, and here’s the result. It’s a great example of low cost digital publishing with the content driving brand adorers to build buzz about their passions and discussion about the brand.
This pioneering use of blogging by the STA travel business found a way of engaging hundreds of thousands of customers. Rather than creating a corporate blog, STA worked with the technology team at Off Exploring to build a powerful platform their customers could use. They gave the customers of their travel services a blog and by doing this connected together an online community of like-minded individuals. Customers were encouraged to tell the story of their travels, building content and emailing their friends. Instantly the technology was a success, with backpackers writing their letters home to friends and family in the form of web pages that could instantly be linked to from Facebook and other social media. It's a rare example of pioneering social media because it went against the conventions at the time it was created. The technologists at Off Exploring created the framework for this social media platform and then continued to add more tools to it. As consumers are more exposed to different forms of advertising (and in ever-increasing amounts), brands need to listen carefully to what they want: providing the right tools and utility assures cut-through in an increasingly cluttered market. 
Skittles wanted to introduce and raise brand awareness for its new Carnival Gum confectionery product to teenagers and young adults on Facebook.
When 
Viral can deliver exceptional impact on brand image and consumer engagement, but as a marketing tool it remains unpredictable and highly challenging to get right. Viral is an effect rather than a media channel. Brands don't create virals - they simple create the content. What happens next is up to consumers. While one in a thousand campaigns may gain real traction, the majority of web marketing is either not arresting enough or motivating enough to earn a viral effect. However, for the brands that get it right, viral can deliver complex brand messages and generate fast distribution among both the mass market and niche audiences. Against a landscape of media saturation they can achieve cut-through because they arrive with consumers through the endorsement of their friends. Planners can use the viral effect particularly well to pass messages through communities that otherwise are hard to pin down. If those audiences don't naturally come together around online media content then there may be no way of reaching them through conventional web advertising approaches. The viral effect inside a community can ensure the message finds the people who are most receptive.
This television style commercial uses the classic tease and reveal model. It builds a story which is entertaining and engaging. By releasing it on line the web Coke build discussion among key target audiences. The fact the origins of the idea are in an online game gives a synergy with the target audience and the viewing environment. The creative is really a classic television commercial that simply takes an icon of the digital gaming world – Grand Theft Auto – and builds a story around it. The way it was deployed then created a greater effect...
The marketing model behind this campaign involves using video as a way to deliver a powerful message that's in tune with the beliefs of the target consumer. The brand is creating powerful content that it releases online in a way intended to be stumbled upon by consumers and shared between their friends. By releasing it to open platforms such as YouTube, they're implicitly inviting discussion. There can be paid-for placement in key media to extend the reach and start the process, but ideally the campaign works by the word of mouth effect. To gain accountability the brand team can track play rates to measure the number of exposures, and use qualitative and social network analysis to gain feedback about the brand sentiment.
When the UK government’s Central Office of Information commissioned the online elements of their health education campaigns to teach children about the dangers of drugs, they used a sophisticated mix of web formats to encourage interaction and solicit greater involvement. The ‘Talk to Frank’ campaign integrates the web, television, leaflets and face-to-face marketing activities to provide young people with access to detailed information about the specific risks of different drugs. This multi award-winning campaign included placements of banners and skyscrapers that encouraged viewers to take icons from one to the other in order to trigger an action: they could take the image of a drug from the banner to the brand character in the skyscraper and then see how it affected him. The activity delivered the message of the campaign without demanding a click through and as well as the visible skyscraper and banner formats included a rich media layer over the page.
Internet marketing has the scope to be more powerful, vibrant, engaging and impactful than any other media. In Digital's case study library we've collected just a few of the thousands of great campaigns that really impressed us, but it's worth remembering that somewhere out there, in the depths of an un-targeted run-of-site campaign, the bottom-dwellers of the direct marketing industry are still subjecting internet users to ads like this one.
There was a time when the web was still a minor ‘add-on’ to a car launch campaign, but with most new cars being researched online before a decision is made about the brand (let alone the purchase), every motor manufacturer has had to refocus their efforts to the web. Five years ago BMWFilms.com set a new standard in web content, fusing together the genres of entertainment films, product placement and video demonstrations. They raised the bar so high that few motoring brands have come close since. However, this month’s launch of the Fiat 500 from digital specialists AKQA is a worthy contender. They’ve built 21 short movies with a personality that’s on brand and production quality that would stand up in cinema.
Search marketing works for every type of firm and every size of business. We’ve worked with the team at Google to select these case studies to help marketers see just a few of the ways that pay-per-click search engine advertising can drive traffic to your site. 
Classified advertising firm gave its disruptive technology a boost today with a new generation release that promises a whole new way to shop classifieds. With a new suite of tools and a complete site redesign, Oodle radically improves the way consumers use classifieds, but it does this by delivering a very different model to the conventional print titles. Oodle positions itself as a whole new way to shop classifieds, bringing together more than 30 million listings from over 80,000 classified sites. Oodle sets out to improve the way people buy and sell locally by offering a more comprehensive search, supported by convenient email alerts and relevant information that gives consumers the bigger picture, helping them to make better buying decisions.
When the Army planned their assault on the West Ridge of Everest in 2006, there was an opportunity to engage young potential recruits by letting that story be told. Climbed only once in 30 years, only one group had ever made it to the top. PCIFitch were supplying the raw materials from the field back into the mainstream media as well as the web. The intention was to touch audiences through streams on the web, podcast downloads, iTunes and the broadest range of touchpoints. Over a million viewers enjoyed streamed content, blogs were posted to the site from the mountain and to feed into the recruitment processes, schools were targeted with lesson plans created for teachers and games for their students. Integration included downloadable posters and images, text alerts and more than a dozen different channels. The campaign went on to win the “Best digital campaign of 2006” at the Campaign awards. When we interviewed Peter Cowie, Managing partner at FitchLive who were behind the work, said “great work comes from the chemistry of the teams working together. The effect of the campaign included attracting 1m people, 30,000 of whom claimed they were ‘interested’ in joining the army. 3,500 are likely to be recruited as a direct result of the campaign”. For Peter it’s clear that “the future of advertising is about using all of these new channels together”.
The digital networked society is a great leveller. The relationship between brands and consumers has shifted. The structure of communications has undergone this massive leap. While the smart thinking in marketing is leaping to embrace a whole new way of doing things, much of the practice in marketing still clings to the past. That's why it wasn't just gutsy, but a strategically brilliant move for Microsoft to use a television-style commercial to make the point for them.
This iconic, multi-award-winning campaign includes powerful online elements that build discussion and engagement among target consumers. Since 2000, the Dove brand has been one of the online marketing pioneers in consumer package goods. Their work with the IAB and MSN in North America created landmark research in cross media campaign budget optimisation. This more recent video is a great example of how the web can be used by a consumer brand to build community, debate and discussion. The video is part of a multi channel campaign that talks about beauty and creates genuine discussion with and among consumers. The approach of delivering messaging directly to consumers also creates challenges for regulators who are considering how the control of online advertising can work.
Campaigns - Lebron 23:23 for Sprite
Cross-Media Case study: Dear Visa
New campaign: Palm Treo 680 Launch
The "State of Mind" campaign for army recruitment in the UK is an excellent example of the impact video advertising can have. Developed by creative agency glue London, this campaign ran at the end of 2007 to promote recruitment into the Royal Marines. Strong production values, clever placement, and a simple idea proved that video formats can work well within banner spaces and not simply the 16:9 or 4:3 formats most directors gravitate to. The development of the campaign included shooting video especially for the web and allowing the online environment to dictate production needs and values.
Through the BA.com website customers could enter their mobile numbers to receive up-to-the minute flight and contact information. During disruption caused by terrorist activity in August 2006 over 20,000 SMS messages were sent to BA passengers and cabin crew in 87 countries over a four-day period, which was 18 times more traffic than the previous highest. This campaign combined direct response mechanics of search with the awareness building properties of graphical formats. 
McDonald’s added interactive advertising to the media mix, which also included radio, print, and TV. By increasing online advertising's reach by 60%, McDonald's boosted product awareness by 8.3% among the 18-49 media target. This lift resulted in 6m more consumers becoming aware of the product. Online makes a real contribution to multichannel campaigns by reaching the same consumers in another complementary environment. It also reaches people other media can't. Among McDonald's target market, the 20% who are not heavy television users are reachable online. 
Online advertising campaign for Kimberly-Clark complemented offline marketing and delivered the 42% of the audience that was only lightly reached or not reached at all by television. The synergy of magazine and online advertising was the most effective combination for reaching this audience and boosting major key metrics including aided brand awareness, brand image, bundled trail intent and purchase intent.
Dove’s interactive advertising campaign contributed significantly to brand impact. By increasing the online spend within the same total ad budget from 2% to 15%, Unilever produced an 8% increase in overall branding metrics and a 14% increase in purchase intent.
Colgate ran their advertising campaign in print, television and online. The results showed that it cost 23% more to encourage consumer purchase using TV alone compared to using TV in combination with online. For their multichannel campaign, reallocating marketing dollars to online advertising was significantly more cost-effective at driving purchase intent and enhancing key branding metrics. Simply by allocating 7% of media dollars to online, purchase intent increased 3.8%.
The campaign ran in several business and technology magazines, including Forbes, CIO, Computer World and Network Computing, as well as targeting a B2B technology audience via online sites. The magazine ran one-page and two-page ads of striking black-and-white photos of large building projects, emphasising by analogy the reliability of VeriSign's infrastructure. Online, the ads were graphically similar but simpler, presented in leaderboard, large rectangle and skyscraper formats, with the copy emphasising security services. When readers saw both the magazine and online ads, their awareness, association and purchase intent for the security and directory services raised slightly (3-4 points), as did their impression of the brand as innovative (4 points). As for the white paper downloads, which was half of the measure of the online ads' success, the interactive ads were highly effective in doing so, generating more than 2,000 downloads, which exceeded the campaign's goal, compared to only 16 downloads attributable to the magazine ads.
The vast majority of Universal Studios advertising budget is spent on TV. Around 6% of the budget was spent on banner ads and less than 1% on rich media ads which floated animations on top of web pages. The results of the online advertising proved to be significantly better than the TV commercials. The most successful format was rich media. 
The objective of the XMOS study is to help marketers and their agencies answer the question: what is the optimal mix of advertising vehicles across different media, in terms of frequency, reach and budget allocation, for given campaign to achieve its marketing goals? This particular campaign for ING ran for six months and included advertising on television, magazines and online. The budgetary proportions of the campaign were 68% for television, 17% for magazines and 15% for the internet. The media mix proved to be more effective than advertising would have been in any single medium. The 15% share of budget that ING assigned to interactive demonstrated itself to be ideal in this campaign.
This online campaign featured broad-reach page takeovers on high traffic areas of major portals, including the home pages and email sections. The online ads had a significant lift on sales. In total, 6% of the sales of the vehicle could be directly attributed to the online advertising (without click through) during the period studied. Click-through tracked sales were responsible for a significant number of additional sales beyond the 6%.
Ford has launched a cross media advertising campaign both on English and Spanish TV, radio, print, outdoor and via direct mail and online. The online ads that ran on auto-related pages proved to be the most cost effective at raising purchase intention: the portal roadblock ads and magazine ads were more expensive at raising purchase intention than in-market interactive ads, but they were both a great value in terms of cost-per-impact compared to television.
The TV Licensing website was a crucial channel for its customer communication. RedEye was hired to tell how many, when and why customers visit the website, and also how many hits a website receives and when. It can also track the journey customers take through the webpages. RedEye data can also tell how many new customers are coming to the site, allowing understanding of growth and also how many are making a repeat visit. This information will feed back into improvements in customer retention.
Shell Optimax was the first performance unleaded fuel to market in the UK. It quickly developed an enthusiastic following amongst “petrol-heads” who were generating online buzz on forums, chatrooms and blogs. Taglab developed a fully featured forum, complying with Shell’s corporate web templates, within a one month project turnaround. The site promoted Shell Optimax performance fuel, capitalising on grassroots support for the product by providing a forum for enthusiasts to post their views, plus a competition and Grand Prix news. Within one week of launch, hundreds of users had registered on the site.
Schroders has historically focussed on direct marketing and trade press advertising in order to promote their funds to institutional investors. In order to test the effectiveness of online advertising, Taglab was briefed to adapt a series of fund campaigns into online treatments. They built a series of campaigns to promote fund launches and high performing funds to independent financial advisors. Whilst Schroders traditionally focusses on promoting funds to institutional investors, online advertising provides a cost effective means of reaching a wider IFA and retail audience.
Interactive Flash presentation aids used by financial planners at Norwich & Peterborough Financial Advice Service to inform and educate customers on a variety of topics including attitude to risk, the cost of delay in starting a pension and how the stock market works. In order to provide high quality, impartial advise to an audience who tend to be financially unsophisticated, N&P’s advisors require presentation aids that help them to discuss complex financial concepts such as attitude to risk in a clear and accessible manner. Taglab developed a range of interactive Flash presentation tools that could be integrated into N&P’s electronic financial advise system.
Lycos has evolved from an early leader in search to the content portal that it is today. With a large registered user-base for services such as Lycos Mail, Lycos aims to monetise its audience by extending into new content areas, such as XY. XY is a new channel on Lycos, targeting a similar audience to magazines such as Zoo and Nuts. Taglab was developed PR-able content and Viral game featuring user generated content to promote the launch of Lycos UK’s new “XY” men’s channel. The campaign features a Flash photofit style application enabling users to combine the features of celebrity females to design the perfect woman. The images can then be sent to friends or published in an online gallery.