Giorgio Armani & Reebok have teamed up to create a combined clothing collection which was unveiled last weekend at the Milan Fashion Week. Armani’s EA7 sports range and Emporio label have used Reebok’s sports heritage to create the ‘activewear.’

The co-branded clothing items will include footwear and clothing, aimed at both men and women and will be on sale to the public from July 2010 through Emporio Armani boutiques, selected Reebok concept stores and other retailers, which are yet to be announced.

Giorgio Armani said: “Today sportswear and active wear have become really important parts of our wardrobes. I wanted to offer my customers the possibility of wearing sports clothes that were stylish and comfortable. My new alliance with Reebok is a natural consequence of this philosophy.”

BMC – I am sure the celebs of this world will manage to look stylish while pumping iron and/or pounding the treadmill, but, as I am about to head out for my run in my tracksuit bottom, sweaty top, old wind breaker and tea cozy hat, I am not sure spending vasts amounts of money gear to look good will make any difference to looking dreadful at the end of a workout!!!

I get a lot of questions from clients asking me exactly what terms like CPC, SEO, SEM, title tag and in bound links actually mean.

So…..I have put together a list defining and explaining all these. For example, cost per click (CPC): Also called Pay per Click (PPC). This is a performance-based advertising model where the advertiser pays a set fee for every click on an advert. An advertiser can set a budget and bid on selective search terms. The majority of text ads sold by search engines such as Google and Yahoo are billed under the CPC model.

If you would like to receive this list please email me at paul@bathmarketingconsultancy.co.uk and I will send it over free of charge. Alternatively if you would like me to do an audit of your marketing activity, please fill out the contact form on my website.

Although this not a marketing related article, I do think it is very newsworthy.

After the devastating earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale struck in Haiti last week, Simon Cowell has announced that he is to release a charity single to help raise money for the victims. The earthquake killed an estimated 200,000 people and left a further two million homeless.

Speaking at the National Television Awards, the music producer and TV executive revealed that he has received an approach from the (BMC – hopefully soon to be ex!) Prime Minister Gordon Brown and The Sun newspaper to help raise funds for the stricken country, and is aiming to put together a Band Aid-style single, imminently.

Rumours are already circulating about the people appearing on the record, but sources say that Leona Lewis and Susan Boyle, as well as Cowell’s ‘X Factor’ co-star, Cheryl Cole will contribute.

It has also been suggested that Gordon Brown has agreed to waive the VAT on all sales of the single, in an effort to maximise the money raised.

As part of the group’s £30m investment plan which will also see it refurbish all it clubs by 2012, LA fitness, the gym chain, is launching a £1m marketing campaign this week, featuring Strictly Come Dancing judge and pop star(?!) Alesha Dixon.

Dixon, the former Mis-Teeq singer turned solo artist who was recently named the gym’s brand ambassador, will front the campaign, which spans local and national newspaper advertising, leaflets, posters and online activity, as the company looks to boost membership numbers.

A promotion with Capital Radio has also been created where listeners will have the chance to take part in a workout with Alesha at an LA fitness club in London.

LA Fitness said the marketing spend represents a 20% year on year increase in investment due to “the intense competition between private chains to lure new members and retain existing ones”.

Here we see another brand signing a celebrity to be its ambassador in the hope that the association will pay dividends (see my article on Tuesday). As I am not a fan of ‘Strictly’ it is difficult to comment, but am not sure a former pop star and dance judge working. Cracking launch timing though…

To coincide with the brand’s 75th anniversary, Calor Gas, the bottled gas brand, is rolling out its first TV advertising for a decade. Calor is looking to target an estimated two million UK households which do not have access to mains gas.

I was watching the new series of ‘Build a New Life in the Country’ on Five last week, (BMC – what an amazing house they created!) and noticed the sponsorship. I am not sure the Q&A type approach really worked, but Calor will also launch a series of programme idents, as well as a digital marketing campaign to back it up.

In addition, the brand is launching a microsite to support the sponsorship, while ads will appear across Five’s website. (BMC – I wonder what they are spending and why Calor chose Channel 5?).
Jon Tanner, sales and marketing director at Calor, said the new sponsorship was vital in raising awareness of the brand on its 75th anniversary.

There seems to be a lot of debate in the marketing industry about ‘adwatch recall.’ By this I mean what advertisment or campaign consumers remember seeing on a weekly and monthly basis. These are researched, recorded and published. In addition, there are also advertisements that fall into the memorable, but annoying catergory (see Wednesday’s Blog).

What may surprise you is that the winner in 2009 was a certain insurance comparison site. What might surprise you even more that it didnt contain a meercat and wasn’t incredibly annoying. Yes, it was some, might consider a very basic, testimonial type advert demonstrating how new improvements to the site makes it even easier to use. I raise my hat to Confused.com

The advert is useful. The casting of the genral public type of actor is credible and broad enough to feel relevant to us the general public and the demonstration of the site navigation is simple and clear. Importantly, the ad feels like the product claim – utterly straightforward and empathetic. In hard times, people are more wary of being ripped off and Confused.com comes across as a powerful ally.

To quote Leon Jaume of Marketing Magazine – ‘It isn’t going to hit the jackpot on YouTube or at Cannes. We are right to celebrate the good things that do, but it is also right to remember that, if a product has something very clear to say, we can do worse than say it very, very clearly.’

Bath Marketing Consultancy totally agree with Leon as the testimonial approach is one that really gets the message across. Do you include testimonials in your marketing i.e. on your website?

…..Go Compare.com! Not really a surprise is it?!

They may grab our attention and then get inside our heads, but some adverts are memorable for all the wrong reasons and Gocompare.com tops the list for the most annoying ad of 2009! Having said that, according to Go ­Com­pare’s own consumer research, there has been a 200% increase in awareness.

s of the brand since the activ­ity started in August. (BMC – awareness vs increase in sales?)

Andy Nairn, executive planning direct­or of ad agency MCBD, sums it up beautifully – ‘Most peop­le have an awareness of Josef Fritzl, but it doesn’t mean they want to spend time with him.’

You can probably predict the rest of the top 20 – Swiftcover, Gillette, Greggs, McDonald’s, Webuyanycar.com etc – but the sacking of that useless limelight seeking, ‘celebrity’ Kerry Katona did remove Iceland from the list this year!!

The word on the street is that Halifax’s radio station is already topping the list for 2010!

Lipton Ice Tea (Pepsi Lipton International is a joint venture between PepsiCo and Unilever), will launch a global marketing campaign in March featuring new ambassador and Hollywood A-lister Hugh Jackman, the Wolverine, X-Men and Australia star.

As part of the UK campaign, the drinks brand is attempting to change the negative perception of cold tea made by UK drinkers who traditionally prefer hot tea beverages. Lipton said 53% of UK consumers claimed they did not like the taste of the drink, without evening trying it.

The global TV campaign launching in March features Jackman and the strap line ‘Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it’ and will be supported through other marketing channels including possibly outdoor advertising.

BMC – I am not sure Jackman is the right choice to front a cold, tea drink or that trying to change perception will be successful. I would have thought that DDB Paris would have selected a female ambassador and looked at high profile product placement as a possible initiative (Eastenders, as they are always drinking tea!?). We’ll see what happens.

Any comments?

Short for Web log, a blog is a Web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual. Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author.

Think about a “normal Web site.” It usually has a home page, with links to lots of sub-pages that have more detail. A small business site follows the same format — it might have a home pag­e and five or 10 sub-pages. Most traditional Web sites follow this format. If the site is small, it is sort of like an online brochure. If it is large, it is like an electronic encyclopedia.

­A blog is much simpler:

A typical blog has a main page and nothing else. On the main page, there is a set of entries. Each entry is a little text blurb that may contain embedded links out to other sites, news stories, etc. When the author adds a new entry, it goes at the top, pushing all the older entries down which are then ‘archived’ according to the settings made at set up stage.

Basically, a blog is a lot like an online journal or diary. The author can talk about anything and everything. Many blogs are full of interesting links that the author has found. Blogs often contain stories or little snippets of information that are interesting to the author and can generate debate through ‘comments’ made by other people.
Many blogs have a focus. For example, if a blogger is interested in marketing, the blogger might go to the main publisher marketing sites and then show and post entries of the things of interest he/she sees there. If a blogger is interested in a certain disease, he/she might post every news article and every piece of research he/she finds on the disease. If a blogger is interested in economic issues, he/she might post links to articles that discuss the economy and then offer commentary on them.

There are people who use their blogs simply as a scrapbook — a form of online memory. Whenever the author finds a link or a snippet of information that he/she wants to remember, it gets posted in the blog. Even if no one else ever looks at it, it is still useful to the author because the blog is a searchable electronic medium that the author can access with a Web browser anywhere in the world.

In other words, a blog can be anything the author wants it to be! In marketing terms, I see them as an add-on to your website that can replace the need for CMS functionality on a website, act as a link building tool, demonstrate credibility in your chosen sector AND they can be linked to aid social media. So……if you don’t have a Blog, get in touch with Bath Marketing Consultancy asap.

I was reviewing sponsorship as a marketing initiative earlier as
Bath Marketing Consultancy is in talks with Cancer Research UK and I remembered that MasterCard is a major sponsor of a number of high profile events such as UEFA Champions League and the Brit Awards.

It also agreed a deal to become the Official Worldwide Partner and official payment system of the 2011 Rugby World Cup back in February 2009 as the last RWC, which saw South Africa crowned world champions for the second time, hosted by France two years ago, attracted a cumulative global audience of more than 4.3bn viewers.

What do you think of corporate sponsorship? Is this an initiative that has yielded the required objectives such as brand recognition?

Drop me an email or leave me a comment.