You see things and people that you wont see anywhere else; and working in Soho, this is even more the case!

What’s this got to do with marketing? Well, there exists a small coffee establishment by the name of Brewed Boy, run by a gentleman named Rob Lockyear – this coffee establishment isn’t a building, it’s a small van, tailor made to spread coffee love through Rupert St and beyond, run by someone who ‘stands in the cold for the love of making coffee’ – Eat your heart out Starbucks.

So what makes Rob and his Van different? Well, seeing as I pass it every day on the way to work – it looked interesting so I Googled ‘Brewed Boy’ and found that not only is there a presence online in the form of their blog, but they are also on Twitter!

I hit the ‘Follow’ button and discovered to my sheer delight that I was Brewed Boy’s 200th Follower. Fantastic! Informing Rob Lockyear via Twitter that I held this royal position lead to many surprises.

I headed down to Rupert St and formally introduced myself, recognizing me from Twitter, Rob proceeded to offer me a free double Espresso for my acomplishment at being his 200th follower and apologized for forgetting my special 200th Follower Cup.

What?!

This was incredible, not only was i being offered a free double Espresso, he had also made me a special 200th Follower cup to mark this special occasion.

This morning i got into work, and swiftly proceeded to head back down to Rupert St to collect my trophy, I think the picture speaks for itself.

What have we learned from this? This is a perfectly crafted example of how an online presence can benefit even the most offline of brands. Brewed Boy now has one more regular loyal customer purely due to the fact that they spent the time and effort to connect via Twitter and make me feel valued as a customer. And here I am on the internet writing about him, publishing his reach even further into the web.

Quality over Quantity people.

Mixing a beautiful combination of a family context, emotion, slow motion delivery and a provoking sound track, this awareness advert is awe inspiring in the way it leaves you feeling.

The driver in this advert is ultimately saved by his wife and child, who create his seatbelt with their interlocked arms, stopping their father & role model from flying off the chair and, well, heading to his death. It is designed to probe your ‘what if’ gland, you know as you watch this whether you wear your seat belt or not, and if you are one of those who don’t, you know that your wife and child will not be there to save you, should you crash.

Watch it for yourself.

What do you think about this advert? Let us know!

‘Blame Sue’ (http://www.blamesue.com) is a website fully integrated into social media, encouraging visitors to share what they ‘blame Sue’ for. If you’re not sure who ‘Sue’ is, she is the woman who Gordon Brown blamed for putting the ‘bigoted woman’ infront of him – and from this, has spiralled a massive social media following.

From a more serious view, this is media generated which is purely anti-labour, purely because of one mistake. This media will be more popular than any type of pro-labour social media campaigns due to its nature, which is detrimental to Labour’s efforts.

So far, Sue has been blamed for such things as global warming, 9/11, 7/7, cheating girlfriends, bad food, failed exams and more!

We love it, and I’m sure that the 80,000+ strong following do too – so, what do you blame Sue for?

Why not check it out yourself and share!

The advert flies the company’s current tagline ‘Never Knowingly Undersold’  - placing emphasis on the fact that this ethos runs true for a customers entire lifetime. John Lewis try to portray the important times in life that you cannot put a price on, however are worth a lot, and relate this to the value of an honest relationship with their customers.

The advert follows the growth of a little girl through the important milestones of her life, all the way through to old age and grandchildren. The whole beauty of the advert is captured in the sheer transparency and innocence of the contexts that this girl is placed in, and the ease to which we are able to relate to these and reflect on the times in life that make us who we are.

It’s thought provoking, encourages reflection and takes the viewer on a journey of their own – to us, this advert encapsulates creativity, sensitivity and empathy. An inspiring product of modern advertising.

What do you think of this advert? We’d love to know.

By utilising popular media channels such as Youtube, Greenpeace have made a thought provoking video with the intention to set it viral as a part of their ‘Give the Earth a Hand’ awareness campaign.

The video features images being made up of ‘reaching’ hands, showing the true things that we should be reaching for, instead of our consumer defaults, such as cars and money.

We believe that this video is a great testament to the potential power that viral videos can have in shifting a brands perception – Just look at Greenpeace, – this video was posted only 5 days ago, and has already racked up 399889 international views with literally thousands of awe inspired viewers.

Take a look yourself, let us know what you think of the video, whether it’s the design, creativity, message, delivery or anything else – we’d love to know!

I believe that this is has the potential to change with the growth of Foursquare – a brand new social networking platform that has GPS at it’s very core, providing unique services that have so far not been exploited.

By signing up to Foursquare, it is a requirement to download the Foursquare app to your mobile device, owning a Blackberry, this is what I did. Once you’ve downloaded the App, you simply log in with your newly made account and you’re presented with a few options.

The main option is to ‘Check In’ – this fires up your mobile devices GPS and hones in on your location, which then updates your current location to your Foursquare friends, so that they can see where you are. Upon ‘Checking In’ you also get presented with a list of nearby points of interest, whether that’s Cafe’s, Restaurants, news agents, retail stores, whatever. From this list, you can then click on one of these places to find out more information including a map, and if you actually end up using their service, you can ‘Check In’ to their Foursquare account, rewarding you with points.

There’s also a ‘Shout’ feature, much like tweeting on Twitter, allowing you to post real time updates about what you’re up to.

So what does this mean for mobile marketing? To me, this clearly is a powerful way to pull online and offline marketing strategies into one conversion process. From the online perspective, you’re able to log in and see where your friends are via your mobile device or through your computer, you can see where they’ve recently been and any tips that they may have left for that attraction.

This, coupled with rewards for visiting nearby locations in the form of points, allows you to compete with your friends to earn the most, and therefore explore your nearby area at the same time, simply by ‘Checking In’ via your mobile device.

What businesses are able to do in an offline manner is to provide rewards for visitors using Foursquare. For example, a Cafe could offer a free Coffee between 12pm and 2pm for all people who check in between those hours, showing the staff their mobile device. When these people check in, it will be published on their Foursquare live feed (and Twitter / Facebook if opted in) viewable by all friends.

The ‘Checking In’ feature also allows businesses to reward regular visitors with discounts through their Foursquare account, for the Forsquare user who has visited the most, they become the ‘Mayor’ of that venue, until someone else overtakes their visit number, providing businesses the ability to treat their most loyal visitor and allowing you to become an authority for that business, just for being loyal.

These are just a few self proclaimed opportunities that Foursquare can provide businesses, and I’m sure as it increases in popularity, people will become innovative in the way that they use the service.

What I’m more excited about is whether Foursquare will be able to harness the powerful location data that users will build up, and then use it to create a targeted advertising platform, providing businesses the option to target local ads at users regular to a particular area, at a certain time, to their mobile device, such as a voucher code.

What do you think? If you’ve not already, check out Foursquare here!

It’s not just the profit that has increased, there’s no smoke without fire, and with revenue up by 23% from last year, Q1 2010 has seen figures of $6.77bn (£4.39bn) which Google attributes to the improving economy encouraging big brands to spend on advertising again.

The UK accounts for 13% of Google’s overall business and generated revenue of £842m in Q1, up by 15% from Q1 2009.

The increase in growth has been explained by an increase in consumers clicking on Google’s sponsored adverts listed in the search results, namely increasing by 15% in Q1 2010 compared to Q1 2009. This combined with large advertisers returning to Adwords have been the central reasons for the company’s expansion.

According to Marketing Magazine, a fan page dedicated to the brand will be the hub of their social media activity, challenging users to take part in their ‘What’s the worst that could happen’ takeover, tasking fans to risk embarrassing themselves by putting their status in the hand of the brand.

The fan page will be the location of brand based content, news and competitions, including the status takeover. Fans will also be given the chance to receive free ringtones which could be classed as ‘good or embarrassing’ free with their 330ml and 500ml bottles, knitting together their offline and online marketing efforts.

The social media activity will also be supported through TV advertising, as Dr Pepper plan to rerun a couple of their most popular past advertising campaigns.

Cathryn Sleight, the marketing director at Coca Cola GB commented saying ‘The Dr Pepper, ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’ creative has a successful nine-year heritage for the brand, and continues to resonate strongly with our teen audience.

“In 2010, we’re looking to bring the message to life, giving consumers a personal experience in social environments and scenarios that are relevant to them, and appeal to their sense of humour.”

By introducing their tagline into social media, Dr Pepper are opening it up to interaction from fans, creating shareable content and viral potential – highly valuable within online marketing.

In January this year, Apple Inc. sold its two hundred and fifty millionth iPod – that’s 250,000,000 purchased since their introduction in 2001.

Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, subsequently stated in his Keynote speech in San Francisco this year, “iPods have changed the way we discover, purchase and enjoy music”. With more iPods sold than any other personal music player, and with the iTunes store being the most commonly used music download centre for said devices, Jobs is right – albeit rather smug. “We started Apple in 1976,” he continued, “34 years later we just ended our holiday quarter, our first fiscal quarter of 2010, with $15.6 billion of revenue.” The global annual sales for its fiscal year ending September 26, 2009 was US $42.91 billion.

Co-founded by Jobs and Steve Wozniak in Cupertino, California, Apple has grown into a global brand with 35,000 employees. Originally acclaimed for its Macintosh computers, and later the iPod, Apple intoduced a third paradigm-shifting device when it released the iPhone in 2007. 21,000,000 iPhones have now been sold. Furthermore, there are approximately 150,000 applications currently availaible for the iPhone in the App Store, of which there have been three billion downloads.

“Apple is a mobile devices company,” reiterated Jobs. “That’s what we do.” Apple’s three basic revenue channels are iPods, iPhones and Macs. These can all be categorised as mobile devices, including the Macs as the majority sold are laptops. Although Nokia and RIM (the makers of Blackberry) have sold more handsets globally, Apple now makes more money per quarter than any other mobile devices manufacturer. “By revenue,” Jobs continued, “Apple is the largest mobile devices company in the world” – greater even than Sony or Samsung.

There is room for a fourth kind of mobile device however, Jobs pointed out; a machine that falls somewhere between laptop and smartphone but that would be better at email, web browsing and video streaming. It would need to be lighter and more portable than a laptop, yet have a more substantial screen than a smartphone. (The netbook, he claimed with disdain, is “not better at anything”.) Cue the grand unveiling of the iPad to excited whoops and cheers from a delighted audience. Rumours had long been circulating the net but Apple’s notorious secrecy combined with feverish customer loyalty meant that speculation was rife.

According to surveys conducted by J.D. Power, Apple has the highest brand and repurchase loyalty of any computer manufacturer. Fortune magazine named Apple the most admired company in the world in 2008, 2009 and 2010. A clue that new device designs were potentially in the pipeline may have been in Apple’s announcement in 2006 that it was expanding its 850,000 square feet campus headquarters in Silicon Valley to a second campus of fifty acres.

The iPad will be similar in functionality to the iPhone, running on the same OS (version 3.2), but with a larger 9.7-inch LED backlit screen with a pixel resolution of 1024×768, multi-touch functionality and longer lithium-polymer battery life. There will be two versions, one with Wi-Fi only and one with combined Wi-Fi and 3G. Each will come with a choice of three different memory storage capacities: 16, 32 or 64 gigabytes; weighing between 1.5 and 1.6lbs.

The iPad is hoped to reinvigorate the publishing business, with many publishers already rushing to create apps for their content. Apple’s iBookstore (similar to iTunes) will be the one-stop online shop for all books and magazines available to download directly to the iPad. Penguin, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Time Magazine, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times will all disseminate content to the iPad via the iBookstore or in app form.

The publisher Hachette, for example, has announced plans for a digital version of David Baldacci’s novel Deliver Us From Evil, including audio, video, photographs, deleted passages and even a new ending – all will be touchscreen interactive. The Financial Times app will be a free download but will have the same subscription requirements as FT.com. The app will be sponsored at launch by Hublot, the watchmaker, subsidising a two-month free access period, thereby illustrating the considerable interest from advertisers that the iPad has already created.

The Wi-Fi only iPad will be released first in the US on April 3^rd at a cost of $499. The 3G version will follow later in the month. Both forms of iPad will become available in the UK simultaneously in late April. Steve Jobs said of the iPad: “This will be the most important thing I’ve ever done.”

Head of mobile at creative agency Ogilvy, Scott Seaborn commented saying that “Mobile apps are starting to infiltrate outdoor creative advertising… Orange’s SMS [customer loyalty] campaign, Orange Wednesdays, rarely featured in its above-the-line marketing until the launch of the Orange Wednesday’s iPhone app.”

Due to the success of the Orange Wednesday’s app, it was used as the focus of last month’s TV ad campaign. This is due to Orange, among other brands believing that mobile apps are key to engaging and retaining customers.

It’s not just the telephone network companies that are beginning to see the value of integrating their marketing efforts into marketing via mobile in order to retain customers. British Gas have recently begun to engage with their customers through an iPhone  app which allows users to calculate their gas bill. This has also been a centric focus in their outdoor advertising campaign too.

DirectGov have used their iPhone app on the Applestore to gain feedback about their approach to mobile which has helped to shape their overall marketing strategy.

What are your thoughts? We’d love to know – feel free to comment below.