Online and Offline Advertising
In the last few months there there has been a shift in advertising strategy in a few of the uk's larger companies, particularly in television and radio advertising. That shift has been that the these companies, (as will be shown later) are pushing people towards their website (and sometimes other peoples websites), using search rather than saying 'visit us at www.mysite.com'.
Why this is happening, I'm not sure, maybe its to enable better tracking. Maybe its to see how well individual ad campaigns are working (in the case of Orange). Here we'll have a look at 3 major corporations and how they've implemented this strategy.
Firstly Orange.
I first saw their 'I am" campaign on a large advertising board in Gatwick. The current Orange typeface and pallete followed by "search online for 'I am'"
Now, my first thought when I saw this was that this campaign started a long time ago with a heavy search campaign prior launched. How is this acheived without revealing too much? How can you be sure you're going to be no 1 or no 2 on Google, Yahoo, Bing on such a generic (and not company name) related keyphrase? As far as I could tell, it wasn't backed up with an adwords or overture campaign, so any major change in search algorithm from the big three might render the campaign close to redundant. {...conspiracy theorists alert...) Maybe Orange had an assurance from Google prior to launch that no major changes would occur during the campaign's length. Or maybe, they've just paid a lot of money for some bloody good white hat SEO?
Dyson
Dyson have somehow made vaccuum cleaners really cool (we have one!). They are the Apple of the 'hoover' world. Being a manufacturer, and not a direct selling company, Dyson did something very, very simple on their latest 'Dyson Ball' ad campaign. Together with a tv ad aimed at the thickest people in the UK (look, it can turn!) they prompted viewers to search 'dyson ball' online. Now I wouldn't have thought Dyson would really want to come top here (they do, by the way). All they are looking to do is send viewers/potential purchasers to the retail sites selling the dyson ball. Dyson really don't care who's site the viewer buys from, so long as they buy a dyson ball.
Clever, and something I think we'll see a lot more of in the future. Manufacturers advertising on tv, with the 'search for' tag line. They are, after all, benefiting from their retail resellers seo efforts
Liv
Now, I must say upfront, I'm not sure about this one. Liv is the UK's first IPTV Channel, made by Living TV here in the UK. They have just launched a huge social media (twitter, facebook, youTube etc), tv and online advertising campaign (maybe print too, although I haven't seen any). Their tv advertising urges viewers to search online for 'Liv' and shows someone typing this into Google. It then shows them clicking on their adWords advert through to the living facebook page.
Now, my first comment would be that the prep seo hasn't been put in (unlike the orange 'I am' campaign), so surely this must be costing them a lot in adWords spend to be top on all mobile searches, especially when you're up against Amazon et al for that keyword. Secondly, they're sending people to their Facebook or YouTube page rather than the main site. Presumably, Living TV will be recouperating the money spent on this promotion through advertising on the their own site. So why send people to alternative sites if you want to recoup revenue? Send them to the main site, and link out to your social media satellites from their.
Knowing that they exist, I've searched for the Liv Channel on youTube and for the Facebook fan page and just can't find them. For me, Liv=fail