news and comments

Our client Savills is a regular advertiser in Country Life magazine. With the Royal Wedding collectors' issue in May, we knew we had to do something a little special. We wanted to join in the celebrations around the wedding itself yet still display a selection of premium properties and promote Savills as an intelligent, modern, finger-on-the-pulse brand.

Using a six-page gatefold within the magazine, we developed a creative route called ‘The 2nd best invite’. This played off the idea that the reader’s invitation to Westminster Abbey had been lost in the post. Instead, we invited them to view some other impressive addresses from across the country. The fold-out pages created intrigue, making the reader investigate further. Upon opening they were then shown a selection of premium properties, with an ‘RSVP’ call to action to arrange viewings of them with Savills.

So after 35 years in this amazing, exciting, draining, maddening but wonderful industry it's finally time to bow out. I’m taking a few months off and will then decide what’s next. Two of the biggest realisations I will take with me both have the potential to sound like clichés but I believe them to be true nonetheless:

It's all about the people…my fondest memories and the times when the agency was at its best were when relationships were strong, people were decent and we all worked towards the same goals. We played to our strengths and accepted each other’s weaknesses both in terms of colleagues and clients.

… And the work – great work, whatever the medium, has the ability to engage customers, motivate a client's staff and the agency team too. It positively impacts on the business performance of both parties and can ensure a great message is heard. If it were not for this then why would agencies exist?

I suppose I could mention the importance of being a 'good corporate citizen' too but that's another story, albeit an important one, that may just be part of my new life!

With love and thanks to all who have made the last three and a half decades so memorable, enjoyable and rewarding.

Some people have all the luck and here at balloon dog it seems to be the Disney On Ice team. Why? Well aside from getting to work on such a fantastically fun account promoting spectaculars such as 'Disney Live! Mickey’s Music Festival', they now get to go to Paris to watch them! Under the guise of 'media planning' our leading Disney duo, Anna and Natalie, jetted off for a preview showing and by the looks of things a fine time was had by all…here is some coverage of the show:

Much breath has been expended in recent months over speculation as to whether we're in the midst of a re-run of web 2000. Goldman Sachs' valuation of Facebook at $50bn, Groupon at $25bn, LinkedIn at $8.5bn and Microsoft's recent purchase of Skype for $8.5bn have done much to fuel this conjecture. But are we really witnessing the inflation of another dot com bubble, or are we finally appreciating the value of digital potential?

As one who lived, loved and lost in the dot com boom I can say that the current situation certainly feels different. Back in the day high profile site launches were an everyday occurrence, venture capitalists courted dot com entrepreneurs like they were new season debs and our only headaches were due to excesses of lunchtime champagne and working out which was the coolest venue for our site refresh party. Toward the end of the year we sensed a chilly change; B2C was old-hat, B2B was the belle of the ball and before we knew it high profile sites were tumbling in value – lastminute.com – or disappearing completely – clickmango, boo and flooz.com. And the rest as they say is history…

But aside from the lack of obvious excess and excessive eagerness for easy earnings, this time seems different as we're in a different world. Digital natives are increasingly dominating demographics and even those of us born pre-1975 are finding the web a happy place to inhabit. Add to that the wealth of insight, tools and the web's sheer ubiquity and it starts to look like these recent valuations might actually have something to them. Of course, the digital world is a capricious place and even the likes of Google and Microsoft have had to fight to stay on top, but stay on top they have and with revenues that justify their stock prices.

So there's nothing to worry about and all the flowers in the digital garden are coming up roses, right? Well…no. Folly and finance still go hand in hand despite recent events, and money for apparently nothing ($41m for the Color app) continues to haunt the dot com sector. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating, but for someone who's been there, done that and has still got most of the t-shirts this feels to me like the wind of change.

balloon dog's data planning and relationship teams, working closely with their client, have designed and populated Feld UK's first integrated marketing database, using the Salesforce contact management tool to host the data. The team merged and cleaned over 200 separate input files, comprising 2.8 million customer records, to create a database containing mailing and responder history from over 10 years of activity.

The new marketing database will be managed and maintained by balloon dog on an ongoing basis, and will drive not only the major recruitment campaigns associated with Feld's Disney Live, Disney on Ice and other shows, but also ongoing CRM activity both off- and online.

balloon dog's senior data planner, Keith Carlton, says, “Historically, we have never had more than a mailing-by-mailing view of Feld's customers and prospects. With this new marketing database we can refine our segmentation and targeting for customer acquisition, as well as using ongoing CRM to deliver additional sales, enhanced customer engagement, and increased ROI for Feld UK.”