The premise of the game is to identify partially revealed images of world famous brands, and some smaller American companies (which makes it quite a challenge), without making mistakes. The quicker you recognise the brand, the more points you get. The more you get right, the more levels you unlock, entering you into worlds of brands you’ve probably forgotten existed but look back on fondly once you work it out. Although some of the airline logos are proving more challenging than other sectors.

Amazingly, it is free to download which asks many questions about how the creators obtained the rights to working with around 700 different brands, and adapting their logo for the purpose of the game. From experience here at Eulogy! when working with third parties and brands, we can often find it pretty challenging getting various approvals on press materials when a client has worked with another company let alone changing up a logo and putting it alongside a variety of competitors. It must have been a challenging project and without any in-game advertising, you wonder how the developers are making any money.

So, why is Logos Quiz such a hit around the office? Of course there’s a competitive streak in our office. Whether it is trying to win coverage of the week, or complete the Euro 2012 Panini sticker album first, everyone here loves to win. But actually, Logos Quiz has become a more collaborative experience. We’re happy to share our answers with each other to help us move to the next round.

And as PR professionals we have an inherent interest in brands. We consume them every day of our lives in the work we do and they fascinate us. So having an iPhone game all about brands is likely to appeal to most of us.

So what is it about big name brands that draw our interest? Well, first and foremost we’re customers and therefore have affinities through positive experiences but, according to Jeff Mancini, the director of digital strategy for Interbrand, it is more than that. He recently said that we, as consumers, genuinely like brands and feel similarly for them as we do for our friends.

In the world of social, brands have to now tread more carefully with consumers than ever before. They have real power and strong brands work hard nowadays to deepen their relationship with us the customer. Social media helps to make this happen and refreshingly, Logos Quiz pits hundreds of brands alongside each other in a way that hasn’t been done before and all in an iPhone app. It has provided us with hours of fun and amusement so far and is even starting to double up as a new business tool for our eagerly ambitious business development and marketing team.

Trying to describe exactly what a Wonderbag is can be an interesting experience in itself, but to sum it up, it is an ‘alternative, electricity-free slow cooker’.

A Wonderbag is an insulated draw-string, fabric bag in which people can cook anything from hearty stews or spicy curries to delicious rice and soups.

Unlike conventional slow cookers which are often left plugged in for anything up to 8 hours, when using a Wonderbag you simply bring the food to the boil on the hob and then place the pot directly into the Wonderbag and leave to cook. For every Wonderbag sold, another will be given free to a South African family in need and each Wonderbag used can also save the planet a staggering half a ton of CO2 each year.

Launched in South Africa three years ago by the inestimable Sarah Collins, Wonderbags were initially designed to help those in developing countries spend less time cooking and in some cases, less time looking for wood. Cooking with a Wonderbag also allows many women to enjoy more flexibility and time for childcare. Perhaps the most important benefits however are the savings, improved health conditions and general safety due to the reduction in fire and smoke inhalation.

Wonderbag decided to launch directly to the UK consumer audience at Grand Designs as it proved the perfect setting to get across the brand’s key messages, both to thousands of inquisitive consumers as well as more high profile individuals, including Kevin McCloud, who had a good nosy around our stand before setting off with his own Wonderbag. Not long afterwards, his wife popped in to buy another!

Key to Eulogy!’s role was a press day where hundreds of journalists were invited to attend, sample products and take away fantastic story ideas. To stand out from the crowd, the Eulogy! team sent out pre-show, exclusive invitations which consisted of 100 wooden spoons beautifully engraved with the Wonderbag logo, and tied to the handle details on Wonderbag and the stand location.

Attracting the attention of the crowds wasn’t too tricky as not only did we have arguably the most beautiful stand in the entire show, but we also had the help of an extraordinary group of individuals. ‘One-pot’ cooking specialist Katie Bishop who, despite being 8 months pregnant, eagerly cooked and served thousands of hungry consumers with samples of Chinese Beef and Black Bean Stew, Mushroom Quinoa Risotto and my personal favourite – steaming hot Golden Syrup Sponge! Several of the South African team members also flew in especially for the show and it was fantastic to be able to meet them all face to face for the first time.

The week was particularly important to Eulogy! as it was a culmination of both our own efforts and another of Eulogy!’s clients, {united}, a beliefs driven marketing agency.{united} have played a key role in building the strategy to take the Wonderbag™ to market in the UK and ensuring that the Wonderbag launch at Grand Designs was such a success.

So, in the spirit of our week’s experience as sales representatives, why not step the Wonderbag Way and take a second look at a product we’re convinced will be the next global phenomenon – we guarantee you’ll be hooked.

You can follow Wonderbag on Twitter – @TheWonderbag

What I’m talking about is the marketing and creative community in general. It seems that the creatives are tired of having statisticians and focus groups putting limits on their thinking and art, man. As reliant as the marketing community is on the Milward Browns of the world for measurement, for spotting trends and niches to fill in the marketplace in the first place, for test-and-learn campaigns – market research is rapidly getting a bad rep. At the recent Economist Big Rethink Conference, the thread of ‘market research bad’ was underlying throughout many of the presentations. They were blamed for inaccuracies, for being out of date, for allowing single voices in focus groups to skew campaigns which may have been groundbreaking. I have to admit, having many years since been part of a focus group which was testing the creative for a major food brand, I recall holding forth at length within the discussion about how I felt the campaign in question was based on stereotypes and would do the brand harm. The company ran with it (in fact, still runs with it) anyway. I guess this is why usually focus groups screen out the PR community.

Fair enough, to the outsiders, market research feels stuck squarely in the last century. My mother in fact used to work as one of those women with clipboards who stop you in shopping centres or knock on your door to ask your opinion of several designs of wrapper for a non-brand specific chocolate bar. You still see them around (I was approached by a nonthreatening woman with a clipboard on a train recently to ask about my experiences of West London overground journeys). The biggest threat to market research has come from the behemoth of social. Thanks to Twitter, to Facebook, to Pinterest, brands now feel closer to their consumers than they have ever been. They can have a real two way dialogue. They can understand what consumers feel and think about things directly from their own mouths. They can see at a glance what other brands a consumer likes. Why would they need a middleman to amalgamate, to sample size, to extrapolate trends from this for them? They can just ask. Directly.

It’s fair to say that the role of market research is pretty hard to spot in recently successful ad campaigns such as the Cadbury’s Gorilla, the Bravia Balls, the Old Spice man. The spark of creative thinking shines pretty brightly from them – that’s part of the magic, the appeal. And yet the illusion of consumer closeness from social may be steering brands down a dangerous path. Who’s to say that what a consumer says online is what they really do, rather than what they want other people to think that they do? It’s the research experts, the companies who have long made a living from crunching the numbers and stacking the surveys to be able to spot the real insight who will be able to shed the most light onto real consumer activity. To pan for gold in the reams of data available – an increasingly difficult task. There’s got to be room for the bean counter alongside the muse-inspired artist, in fact one usually makes the work of the other shine more brightly.

Market research has a profile problem. It has to show it has moved with the times. Accountability – whether the creative community likes it or not – is a major factor in most marketing/ board room discussions at present, and when belts are tight spend has to be justified. Nothing rationalises the creative genius quite so well as tangible proof that its message is likely to get through and inspire action in an audience – especially to a risk averse client. I would go easy on the men with the focus groups and the pie charts, and the nonthreatening women with clipboards in shopping centres. There’s a reason why they exist, and it’s to maintain the balance and to provide the tools which allows the artist to create.

Fast forward a few years and my passion for print has been reinvigorated. I maybe slow on the uptake but my new love is 3D print. I can’t believe I only discovered it a few weeks ago – it’s AMAZING (someone has printed a bicycle!!!). I have uncovered a whole new world of makers, fabricators and technology that until now had totally passed me by. It was actually a-much-more-techie-than-me friend who was responsible for my enlightenment and given my totally bewildered/incredulous/agog-expression sent through the below email to try and explain it all to me – it’s all fascinating and I wholeheartedly recommend a browse.

How Four Makers Mastered Their Medium: Really interesting 2011 article which touches on new business models around this stuff – especially the model train guy who just sells designs.

Basically the technology to do stuff like this is coming down in price all the time – makerbot 3d printers are around $2k.

The internet has served to bring “maker” communities closer together from sites like Instructables even something like Ikea hacks all encouraging people to have a go. The nest thing at the moment are Arduino units which are helping people to build custom electronics (Microsoft have a rival called .NET gadgeteer)

In practice of course a lot of people won’t be willing to design stuff themselves, but this kind of tech gives a huge number of options and reduces storage costs. The Makerbot site sells the bits to add to the plastic to make, for example, walking robots.
Another example – the raspberry PI has just come out, but people have been designing cases, like this one, which is being sold through shapeways, so the designer makes money while outsourcing manufacture.

There is an open source movement as well – for example for something similar to Lego.

This article on replacement parts gives an idea of the future – printed on demand.

You can even make your own 3D printers: http://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap

The implications are extraordinary. In the future when we want a new car, we will merely buy the design/blueprint from the manufacturer and self print it at home – or even outsource the print to a fabricator? Surely the onus on IP will go through the roof. It truly is mind boggling. I love it.

What’s a Baby Guinness I hear you say? Well it consists of Kahlua and Baileys. Simple and easy, yet some of the Eulogy! team decided to create an instructional video in case you wanted to join us in a drink. Take a look at our video below and follow the simple steps so that you too can enjoy one this St. Patrick’s Day.

We would love to see pictures of you enjoying your Baby Guinness, so send them to us and we’ll put the best ones on our blog, facebook and twitter pages.

You can email me – Anthony@eulogy.co.uk
Or Tweet me – @eulogy_london or @onlinefire and use #eulogytipple

Have an awesome St. Patrick’s Day.

Sláinte,
Anthony and all the Eulogy! and Onlinefire team

Marketing services has a strong role to play in improving people’s lives and helping us to live them. Just a few weeks ago the senior vice-president of marketing at Unilever warned that the profession has become about “selling for selling’s sake” and that it needs to move beyond a pure commercial stance to promote products that “create progress and improve lives.” It was a bold argument which I wholeheartedly agree with. I question the marketing strategies of some of the most well known behemoths. Take Tesco. Or should I say ‘Detestco’. Tesco imposes itself on every one of our communities like a stranger that arrives uninvited. In return we receive a highly prized 2-4-1 offer! It has such a great strapline, ‘Every little helps’, however it doesn’t do anything in little proportions. Tesco marketing department should perhaps look more deeply into the meaning behind such a promise. Having been largely responsible for changing the look of retail, driving out independent stores by selling everything from clothes to irons, I’d like to see Tesco helping and educating customers to live a little better. Could it remove all plastic carrier bags from its stores perhaps? And the recent halving of Clubcard points awarded per pound of purchases was not such a good idea – it looks to many shoppers as if it is giving with one hand and taking with the other. It is its own fault for getting customers addicted to points in the first place.

However there are some brands out there that are taking steps to listen to consumers’ needs. The beautiful BBC for one. It was no surprise that the world’s best known broadcasting brand made it to 5th place in the recent Consumer Superbrands index. What I admire about it is how it increasingly engages with and responds to consumers’ desires. Choosing to listen to social media groundswell when supporters of BBC 6 Music tried to save it from closure really sticks in my mind as an example of healthy brand-to-consumer friendship.

I have until recently been rather sceptical about Starbucks in terms of its brand values (although I am admittedly swayed by a skinny Frapa-dappa-ccino, or whatever they’re called). Starbucks hasn’t always been friendly to its customers in giving them a little extra to make them want to return, especially with the likes of Cafe Nero providing a good loyalty card scheme. But Starbucks is now providing such a scheme and even better news came last week that it will be pouring an extra shot of coffee into our cups at no extra cost. Amazing! And it’s all down to customer taunts that its coffee isn’t as good as Costa and Cafe Nero. Improving a service directly in response to their customers should keep them sweet and tempt others into the Starbucks fold.

These are just two random examples showing that brands can be aware and attentive to the consumer. As we move deeper into 2012, and with a raft of highly lauded marketing opportunities afoot for brands to capture the public’s attention, it’s time for venerable marketing to be woven into the fabric of the profession.

The ‘goody two shoes’ brand, that honours the consumer, has never looked so appealing.

So, over to Erin…….

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting with Eulogy!, our sister agency in London. Fresh off our partnership announcement, it provided the perfect opportunity to learn firsthand about the company and discuss the innovative ways in which we plan to work together in the months ahead.

Upon reaching Eulogy!’s offices in West London, I was greeted by Mark Barber, Director of Business Development, with a giant hug and tons of enthusiasm. As he took me on a brief tour of E!’s offices, I was immediately struck by the similarities between our two offices. DGC and E! both have open-floor plans, complemented by a few cozy nooks and conference rooms designed for brainstorms and meetings. Along the way, Mark pointed out the heaps of press they have garnered for themselves and for their clients—I love how proud they are of their work.

Mark Barber, Business Development Director

The next stop on my tour was CEO Adrian Brady’s office. Adrian couldn’t have been nicer or more welcoming. We chatted about his days living in Chicago (like me), overlaps and opportunities to cross-pollinate our clients, and his excitement about our new partnership. Again, I was reminded of our similarities. An entrepreneur at heart, Adrian started Eulogy! in 1996, with Marketing Magazine recognizing it as one of the country’s fastest growing PR agencies in the late ‘90s. Industry awards success has included recognition from the prestigious PR Week, Business to Business Campaign of the Year and the International Public Relations Association Golden World accolade, as well as being voted one of the Top 40 independent PR agencies by PR Week.

Over the next few hours, Mark and I spent time brainstorming innovative ways to combine our business development efforts and–most importantly–learn from one another. E! has been around about twice as long as DGC, and has a very evolved consumer practice, something DGC is also making great inroads with.

One of the highlights of my day was lunch. Mark and Issie (Team MEC) were kind enough to pause their busy days and take me to lunch at Black and Blue–a real London power-lunch scene. In true European fashion, we toasted with a glass of wine and lingered over cappuccinos before heading back to the office. I hope to one day host the two of them in New York City.

The afternoon was a blur as Mark set up a work station for me and I touched base with DGC on a few client deliverables. I could get used to a cross-borders career! As the day wound down, the E! team gathered for their weekly staff meeting, which happens each Friday around 4:00 p.m. Similar to DGC’s Wino Friday tradition, we enjoyed snacks and cocktails while hearing agency updates, press hits of the week and even “grumbles.” I then took some quick snapshots of the team and the space, and was on my way.

Vicky Beaney leads the weekly agency meeting

E!'s team goofs around during the weekly meeting

Leaving E!’s office, I felt completely energized for the future. DGC and Eulogy! have the real makings of a global network–with much to offer our clients and employees. I’m thrilled to be part of it and can’t wait to see what’s in store.

The major point is that the costs to be placed on businesses in complying with this legislation may well cripple them. Take, for instance, the proposal to scrap the £10 administration charge to customers wanting to access their personal data. All very well, you might say, it’s their data. But that cost is not there to cover the cost of compiling and sending that data, it is there to dissuade requests that aren’t genuine or important. With no charge, data requests may radically increase, putting a large cost and time burden on the companies who hold that data, be it brands, agencies or data brokers. The Ministry of Justice estimated it cost UK business £50 million in 2009 to fulfil these access requests. Smaller businesses will feel the effect of this far greater as the recession has already made it harder to drive profit and break even. With the costs of data requests, something will have to give, and it is glaringly obvious where this will be – investment and jobs.

Another damaging proposal, for customers as well as companies, is the classification of IP addresses and cookies as personal data. We all like a personalised user experience online, much like when we go to the pub and the barman knows our favourite tipple. Websites would be banned from remembering your data from previous visits, and so every time you went to your favourite online store you would have to enter all your preference details again. This has the potential to have a negative impact on sales at a time when online shopping is growing strongly in popularity. What good will it do to stifle this development? And what about web analytics? Without access to IP addresses to study online consumer movement, that entire subset of the marketing industry will be effectively wiped out, along with the companies that provide those enhanced customer experiences.

On top of all this, the effects that it will have on the business world as a whole could be dramatic. If marketing departments and agencies can’t effectively target their customers due to a lack of quality data, sales will undoubtedly drop. This will affect all businesses, in every sector – not just marketing.

Now, amongst all this doom and gloom, there were a few positive elements that will continue to develop the public’s trust in the industry. Data breaches will have to be reported within 24 hours to effectively safeguard and combat data theft. The age of a child has officially been defined as 13 years old, and so safeguards on child marketing materials can be more effectively discussed and implemented.

However, the vast majority of the proposals outlined on the 25th January have the potential to stifle business growth and damage the marketing industry beyond recognition. Now is the time for the business world to have its voice fairly represented before any part of these proposed changes become enshrined in law.

Wednesday was a momentous day in the history of the Internet. It was a day that saw some of the biggest sites in the world effectively close down in protest at proposed US legislation known as SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) – a bill designed to fight online trafficking of copyrighted intellectual property such as music, films and video games. For 24 hours sites such as Wikipedia, Tumblr and WordPress (to name just a few) “blacked-out” their content in protest to what they feel are measures that go further than stopping online piracy, and instead, censor the internet.

Why is a free Internet so important, and how would a censored Internet affect the PR industry? By placing a bar on the freedom of information and investigation, working with journalists to build stories could become nearly unworkable. While we all know you can’t trust Wikipedia implicitly, for PRs and journos, it is a starting point. The fast-paced world of online journalism would be forever changed without it. It may seem to be a huge leap, but the consequences of there not being a “free internet”, would – in the grand scheme of things – mean that user-built sites whose lifeblood is content created by its users wouldn’t be possible and in turn the sharing of news and information that’s become part of our everyday lives.

You could argue the Internet is now ‘too big’ to be destroyed, however, if SOPA was in place in 11 years ago, sites like Wikipedia would in all likeliness not exist today. Incidentally, Wednesday, my first port of call to find out when Wikipedia launched was to check Wikipedia, which just goes to show how valuable a tool the site has become and how often we can take it for granted. And that was the point of yesterday’s black-out, these sites are as much part of our daily lives as BBC News or Coronation St. If they didn’t exist, our lives would be lesser for it.

Think of how many times a day you Wiki something or look up a video on YouTube. It could be for inspiration for a pitch or because you have to write a press release on the banana export legislation of Costa Rica. We get inspiration and information from the Internet. Hell, you could even think of a great campaign idea based on that video of Hello by Lionel Ritchie made up from film clips that seems to be going around. So what would really happen if SOPA went through?

In a nutshell, more trips to the library – and no wants that.

David Macnamara

But will this always be the case?

Even if one network is theoretically easier, the challenge has always been how you prevent your not-so-employment-friendly Facebook persona from becoming a scary CV (even though bits of it could actually represent a decent example of where you sit within your working network).

A recent NY Times piece (http://nyti.ms/yv3aqx) brought a few new social media tools to my attention that I think solve that common question: How can you bring LinkedIn’s ethos of professionalism and career focus to Facebook? Can there be a common ground (as the article suggests) between the overused sentiments that Facebook is for fun and LinkedIn is for professional purposes?

BranchOut and Be Known essentially do what LinkedIn do, but display what you want perspective employers to see and filtering your profile from what you do not. So how do they shape up?

BranchOut (http://branchout.com/)

BranchOut is a professional network itself. When you visit a BranchOut profile page, it immediately doesn’t look anything like a Facebook profile. The clean display and simple layout make it easy to navigate, and it’s easy to find people who you have professional relationships with. By importing your details, it gives the impression of an independent outlet, without you having to worry about keeping different profiles updated.

However, networking is slightly stymied by having to ask to make a connection with someone in order to see their network, taking the discretion away from the viewer, and so in a way, defeating the purpose. None the less, it is still a useful tool, and since it is retained within the Facebook platform, makes it easy to maintain.

Be Known (https://apps.facebook.com/beknown/)

Sitting within the regular Facebook template, this app immediately feels like it’s just a tab on your profile. It is as much part of Facebook as your photos and notes. While you are expected to input a certain level of background information, it doesn’t feel that much different from adjusting the privacy setting on your profile page. (Which does in itself raise a question: Couldn’t this whole debate be settled by adjusting those privacy settings, and using some of your better judgment and remove those tags of those infamous photos from Ibiza?)

And just in case it’s not you looking to network on Facebook, there are a few useful Facebook recruitment apps for your friends.

Hire My Friend (https://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=328891100642)

Promote your Friends who are job searching to your other Facebook Friends with the Hire My Friend Facebook App. You can include a brief description of their skills and a link to their LinkedIn Profile.

CareerFriend (https://apps.facebook.com/insidecareerinfo/)

CareerFriend uses your Facebook friends’ employment information to find potential job opportunities within your network. After connecting with your Facebook login information, CareerFriend creates a report that includes your friends’ employers, occupations, and reviews of related careers.

Of course it does raise the question, is the whole exercise even necessary? Maybe it’s better to keep your personal and your professional profiles separate? While the line between the two can often be blurred, how often do opportunities come up through a friend of a friend?

David Macnamara