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SUMMER LOVING – MORRISONS CAMPAIGN SCOOPS EXPERIENTIAL & EVENTS CATEGORY AT MARKETING WEEK ENGAGE AWARDS

Posted by Aimee at 8:18 am

We were delighted to win the ‘Experiential & Events’ category at the Marketing Week Engage awards for our M Savers campaign with Morrisons. This was a wonderful team effort between Morrison’s in-house PR team, Closer and the 3 Monkeys Morrisons PR team.

The M Savers campaign was a truly integrated offering, led by insightful and timely research into families financial concerns for the summer of 2012. The team highlighted the plight that many families faced in the summer of 2012 – feeding and entertaining their children in the face of the worst UK recession since the 1930’s. Based on this insight, the experiential element brought the campaign to life, helping to position Morrisons as “Mums helper”. The team created 10 pop-up play parks positioned at key Morrisons target audience locations that offered free play and cooking advice for parents in need of help and guidance in the tricky summer months.

Aimee Okafor
Business Director
aimee_okafor@closerlive.co.uk

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Experiential²- Where experiential and digital channels converge.

Posted by Ben at 1:50 pm

The unprecedented growth of experiential marketing is largely due to the increasing demand from consumers. They love brand experiences. They like to voice their opinions and to feel valued. They crave brand moments that develop into two-way relationships.

It’s no coincidence, then, that digital and social media strategy integrate seamlessly with experiential planning, as this allows brands to do all of the above – for longer.

The main reason why experiential and digital media work so well together lies in the belief that traditional media just can’t offer consumers this level of engagement. To create a true brand experience, consumers need to understand and form an emotional connection with a brand. To facilitate this level of understanding and generate true behavioural disruption, brands need to harness the power of online and live experiences before, during and post-event.

Our ‘Experiential²‘ offering is rooted within experiential marketing and, through our dedicated in-house data, digital and innovation teams, allows us to bring channels together, earn social media and – via smart data capture – understand more about consumers and ROI than ever before.

Take a look at some of our recent work, which transcends standalone experiential activity by incorporating digital, social media, mobile and ambient channels.

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Closer launch ‘Pitch Forest’ initiative

Posted by Ben at 11:54 am

A lot of paper and printed material gets used each time we pitch for new work.

Therefore, we’re going to plant a tree every time we win a new business pitch and create a ‘Pitch Forest’.

We’re already planting trees this spring to celebrate our recent wins.

Watch this space to see how our forest grows.

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Ecover readies ‘feel good’ festival push

Posted by Ben at 3:58 pm

Ecover, the eco-friendly cleaning brand, is to embark on live marketing activity at UK festivals during the summer as part of its “feel good cleaning” marketing activity.

Closer is delighted to have created the experiential concept which will visit family-focused festivals including Cornbury in Oxfordshire, Latitude in Suffolk, and Camp Bestival in Dorset.

The activity will feed into Ecover’s £4m brand campaign launched earlier this month. The campaign includes the brand’s first ever TV ad and aims to communicate the brand’s core sustainable credentials while appealing to new customers.

Aimee Okafor, group account director here at Closer, said: “Ecover is a fantastic brand which is taking on the biggest giants in the sector with the new ‘feel good’ theme.

“Closer is delighted to be able to play a role in bringing Ecover to British families with festival activity reinforcing the fact that Ecover products are kind to the home, family and environment.”

www.facebook.com/EcoverUK

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M Kitchen lands in Leeds

Posted by Jo at 12:22 pm

Be sure to check out the hugely successful M Kitchen pop-up experience from Morrisons. We’ll be in Leeds, Birmingham and then Manchester over the next few weeks.

If you need help with pop-up retail activation then give us a call.

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Closer launch secret pop-up restaurant to launch Morrisons M Kitchen range

Posted by Aimee at 4:22 pm

Morrisons has unveiled a unique foodie partnership with five of the UK’s leading chefs. Bryn Williams, Nigel Haworth, Aldo Zilli, Atul Kochhar and Pierre Koffmann have worked with Morrisons on part of the rebrand of its meal solutions range, M Kitchen.

Working alongside Morrisons own culinary experts, the professional chefs each created an exclusive recipe for the M Kitchen range. To launch Closer created an unbranded pop-up bistro just off Regent Street, fronted by the five chefs, called The Kitchen.  Here, diners were served the dishes, unknown to them that it was straight from a packet.  At the end of the meal, once diners had given feedback, Morrisons revealed it was behind the venture, proving that it’s possible to produce restaurant-quality meals in an instant.  The pop-up will be open until 13th October 2011.

These dishes are a small part of the newly launched M Kitchen range which includes 300 restaurant quality meals to enjoy at home. As a nation, we eat £3.3 billion worth of ready meals every year, with 75% of consumers admitting that they see ready meals as the more affordable alternative to a takeaway or dining out

Neil Nugent, Executive Chef at Morrisons, commented:  “The Kitchen has been an incredible experiment with 81% of diners saying that would pay more than £30 for their food and 81% rating it as ‘excellent’. We’ve achieved our goal to demonstrate that you can have restaurant quality food to enjoy easily at home. The new M Kitchen range only uses the highest-quality ingredients, authentic cooking methods and gourmet recipes. With this philosophy in mind, we worked with Pierre, Bryn, Nigel, Aldo and Atul to add their own exquisite touches to five dishes.”

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Closer to Consumers

Posted by admin at 5:38 pm

As consumer’s lives have increasingly moved online so too has the world of market research as it seeks to use access consumers for ever faster and more cost effective data capture. Researching consumers via online panels clearly has its benefits however marketers also recognize the importance of gathering insights through real world techniques such as qualitative groups. That said, focus groups ar notoriously expensive and, frankly, recruitment standards at times somewhat dubious.

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Posted in Consumer behaviour, Experiential strategy, Measurement | Leave a comment

Perfectly poised for Live Media

Posted by Liz at 1:01 pm

As budgets are becoming increasingly tough to secure the trend of clients re-evaluating their marketing activity to identify which elements are making a genuine contribution to their business – and, if live media sends out the right messages, we should get a bigger share of marketing budgets.

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Posted in Consumer behaviour, Experiential strategy, Live Media | Tagged Live Media | Leave a comment

It’s A Wrap! – The Kylie Aphrodite Party

Posted by admin at 1:05 pm

Last night, we successfully produced the Official Kylie Aphrodite Wrap party at Proud2 in the O2 after Kylie’s final UK date.

We’re sure you’ll agree, Kylie and the Lexus CT 200h both looked amazing!

Well done to all those involved.

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Going Nuts for Live Media

Posted by Jo at 2:18 pm

Here at Closer, we are extremely passionate about the continued integration of offline experiences with online amplification channels.

In fact, we’ve just launched Kraft Mikado’s first Facebook application which coincides with the launch of their new product ‘Totally (hazel) Nuts’ sticks!

Fans are tempted to visit the Land of Temptation on the Mikado Facebook page and are encouraged to go on a Nut Hunt! The cheeky Mikado squirrel has buried nuts all over the Land of Temptation, those who have correctly guessed where the nuts are hidden are rewarded with free Hazelnut product. Check it out here:

http://www.facebook.com/Mikado

Posted in Consumer behaviour, Linking offline experiences online | Tagged Experiential, Facebook, Online | Leave a comment