DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT

We’ve been really busy for the last month or so working to deliver the first campaign for the new Arriva owned Northern franchise.  Entitled do something different the campaign challenges the audience to consider doing something different this summer.  A series of eye-catching posters and digital ads draw the customer in to a landing page which has over 50 interesting and different things to do by train.

 

We had great fun researching and checking out quirky and unusual things to do across the north. Some of our favourites include:
Husky trekking in north Yorkshire, a bar that masquerades as a pawn shop in Manchester, the eponymous hidden gem tea shop in Sheffield and a circus skills academy in Newcastle.

 
Guerilla creative devised the campaign, sourced the content and produced all of the collateral in a relatively short time for what is effectively a new brand. The campaign also utilised e-mail, GDN, search, digital conventional outdoor poster sites.

If you want to Do Something Different with your next campaign drop us a note or pick up the phone – we would love to have a chat.

team@guerilla-creative.co.uk

01628-819-007

guerilla-creative.co.uk

 

Guerilla serving up great content

As Andy Murray waits for the rain to stop in France so he can play his French open quarterfinal and Wimbledon is so close you can almost hear Sir Cliff singing I thought that this was sufficient a tenuous link to reflect on the content creation service (get it?) that we offer our clients.

Combining journalistic skills with great ideas we provide content for a diverse range of Clients and target audiences including Cook Italian, Thameslink, Ecowater, Northern and Glenryck.

For our transport clients it’s all about journey stimulation with ideas on where to go and what to do and see when you get there. We actually have great fun doing this and often combine desk research with site visits. A great excuse to get out from behind the desk and think laterally about a Clients objective, rubbing shoulders with the target audience experiencing the service for ourselves.

Among other gems we have tried out our circus skills in Shoreditch and found a speak easy hidden behind a launderette in Manchester’s northern quarter. It’s a hard job but someone has to do it.

But it’s not just travel related content, equally fun is dreaming up content for Cook Italian’s authentic range of pasta and tomatoes. Or brain teasers for Glenryck pilchards.

Increasingly integrating content provision with campaign creative is a trend that we see as key to creating appealing interactive campaigns. It also delivers to our core proposition:

To generate great creative ideas tailored to the Clients objectives and audience and have fun doing it.

If you are look for cost effective ways to get more from your next campaign, then give us a call on 01628 819007

 

 

Guerilla launch AEG water softeners

We have been busy boys and girls over the last few months launching a new range of water softeners into the UK. If you live anywhere north of Leicester you will think that us southerners are soft enough already. But actually we are hard, well our water is at least. Guerilla have created a web site, a trade launch, trade advertising and PR for the campaign which demonstrates the advantages to the average family of installing a water softener.  We really immersed ourselves in this project involving creating a positioning for AEG water softeners and a short film to dramatise the benefits of soft water.

If you feel like putting soft water at the heart of your home – check out their web site aeg-watertreatment.co.uk

If you want a chat with the softies at Guerilla-Creative who created this campaign check out our web site or be even braver and give us a call on 01628-819007

 

 

 

DON’T LOOK NOW – IT’S A SAFETY TRAINING BRIEF!

Who ever said Health and Safety was a boring area?

Well, just about everyone to be honest – but not the good creative folk at camp Guerilla! When First Bus approached us with a brief to communicate the importance of Smith System training principles in their network of UK depots, we buried our cynicism under the patio and got to work. A brainstorm in the darker recesses of the Guerilla underground cellar system gave life to a 1950’s Horror film inspired creative route guaranteed to get some attention among the familiar dull clutter of the typical Depot noticeboard.

Working with the Group Communications and Training teams we used short video sequences and interviews with drivers to highlight specific case studies and linked this via QR codes on the posters to YouTube shorts. Needless to say it’s been a box office hit and the talk of the canteen!

If you would like to add a dash of Guerilla Creative yo your next internal comms project – give is a call on 01628 819 007.

 

A UK first for Guerilla

That’s January’s sorted. One twelfth of the year down and Guerilla is off to a flying start.

We decided we’d tell you about the great stuff we’ve been doing most recently, work we are proud of which met the following criteria :
1. Visually different
2. Successful for our clients
3. Value for money
4. Innovative
But we had to too much to choose from, so we thought we’d share this UK “first” with you all.
We have just launched UK Rails first “smart wall” – for our friends at Northern Rail.

http://www.northernrail.org/news/7845

We provided all the content for the wall including designing Customer Information screens, adapting adverts for the digital format and developed a fab new animation style to introduce the smart wall to customers.

Meet the Northern ticket pal

He’ll help you buy a ticket, plan your route, check out the latest news and weather. Sadly he can’t make you a coffee, but he will tell you if you have time for one before your next train!

Could we help you develop your next creative campaign?
Go on, give the team at Guerilla a call on 01628 819007.
We are hoping it will be a world first so we can top this blog!

WOW what a year 2015 was

Whew, what a year 2015 was for Guerilla! We’ve been so busy that we’ve neglected to blog. Take a look at some of the things that kept us busy…

If you have a project that could benefit from a fresh creative approach, fear not, we are ready and waiting to make your brief one of the highlights of 2016. Give us a call on 01628 819 007 and lets get busy.

Working our socks off

Our friends at First Group UK needed our help to promote bus travel for 16-18 year olds in the Greater Manchester zone with their mobile ticket app. So, as well as using colourful socks as characters, we enlisted the help of internet celebrity and Vine Star Tish Simmonds to help us make the film more entertaining to teenagers, and to spread it across the internet to her millions of followers. Broom, broom!

Time to play as well

Summer seems so long ago! We’ve been working with Northern Rail to promote days out and activities in the North by train via digital media and outdoor advertising. Our year-long campaign has resulted in millions of impressions and record online sales.

Dodging around

Meet Derek. He’s a bit of a nasty character; he hogs seats on the train, leaves litter, and pushes through barriers without paying. Derek was created as part of a series of animated shorts for the UK’s biggest rail operator to show people the effects of fare evasion. Derek is currently sauntering his way through Facebook and Youtube and is nominated for several transport awards.

Dinner time

Ciao! In Italy, food is meant to be celebrated with friends and family. This year, we’ve helped bring people together over authentic Italian cooking and ingredients for our amici over at Cook Italian by building a skyrocketing online Facebook community and getting people social over pasta and pizza. We created fresh (and delicious!) content for our Facebook foodies, including recipe swaps, cooking tips, surveys, and monthly competitions with fantastic prizes, making Cook Italian the fastest growing Italian grocery brand in the UK. With over 45,000 likes we must be doing something pretty fantistico!

Shower time

 

We love getting immersed in our clients products, we recently dipped our toes into the world of water softeners producing a short promotional film for a well-known European water softener brand in the UK. Watch this space for the consumer roll out.

Guerilla commentary on a football tournament

Ok it starts today a football tournament in Brazil.
But for the sponsors who invest so much in the beautiful game is it the end of a long road? There is a lot going wrong with FIFA The World Cup, particularly compared to the Olympics, the Rugby World Cup and other high profile sporting events.
Firstly there is Sepp Blatter FIFA head honcho being battered in the press stridently resisting calls to resign/not stand again and apparently attempting to deflect suggestions of corruption in the bidding process that resulted in a country with no football history, no league system, no stadia and no chance of hosting in the usual summer months winning the bid. A decision so outrageous that the award of the games to homophobic, misogynist, racist Russia has gone uncommented on!

Then there is the hostility to the games in Brazil the football loving host nation another major own goal, alongside unfinished infrastructure projects and stadia..
But the main reason for sponsors to be somewhat jaded is not the politics or the quality of the event it’s the ambush taking place across the UK of the event by others. Compare the iron fisted policing of Olympic rights to the way it is easy to circumvent the World Cup Rights.
Check out Currys and PC Worlds advert – even heralded in the marketing press as a World Cup advert, are they sponsors – are they hell? Have they broken the law? Definitely not a great advert taking advantage of the event. Why can they do this? Because it is an ad about football not the world cup. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD35neLs1lg
One of our clients, Cook Italian is running a Facebook competition to take advantage if the England Italy clash and offering an official Adidas World Cup as a prize. All legal, no problem, just taking advantage of the event for a very low cost investment. And my hairdresser was creating a world cup window this morning. Whilst “Mankind” hairdressers and a Cook Italian competition may not on their own bother the sponsors I might suggest that the weight of this ambush will have an effect.
The problem for football is it is ubiquitous; you cannot copy right football or even a football tournament. Whereas the Olympics – well it is almost bomb proof.
And the moral of this blog is – be creative where there is a will there is a way. Unless of course you are a world cup sponsor in which case it is never trust Sepp Blatter.

Is digital mobile marketing the new junk mail?

Junk mail, large volume direct mail that no one wants is synonymous with the pre-digital age (although on returning from holiday I did find over 50 pieces of unwanted mail on my mat, and over 500 emails also awaiting me!) Digital mobile advertising is in danger of going the same way. Or at least that is the popular myth. However junk mail thrived and survives to today because it works, it is a numbers game. Get your message to enough people and some will buy, get it to enough of the right type of people and more will buy. Is mobile digital marketing not the same? No it definitely is not.

The best advertising across any medium is entertaining and delivers to a need. This is particularly true in the digital environment. If you are going to grab my attention while I am playing solitaire or candy crush you sure as hell better have a good reason, make me laugh, tell me something useful or save me some money.

Great content, into the hands of a receptive audience, it’s as true today as it was in the pre-digital era, the principles have not changed but the medium sure has.

Thinking about good ideas.

At Guerilla we make a science out of ideas. Below are a few of the best ways to get more out of an idea generating session, blue-skies, planning, brainstorms, team conflab, call it what you will.

Some are simple truths: Morning meetings work best; 4 – 10 participants should take part; and chocolates always spur creativity. Some, like those outlined below, are a bit more refined.

1. BAG

Big hairy audacious goals, the bigger the challenge the better the thinking. There is a real difference between – increasing awareness and becoming the UK’s favourite, selling more and doubling sales.

2. Suspend belief

No preordained barriers or hang ups to enter the room. Much bigger than the usual no negatives rule, anything is possible is the key attitude.

3. Write everything up

Flip pad, white board or high tech gizmo makes no difference, we all like to see our ideas on the list.

4. Build and jump

Start slowly allow time to think, a good leader will have a range of prompts and thoughts to throw in to get the room thinking creatively, but will step away and let the ideas flow once the room warms up, then jump in again and re-focus as the ideas slow down.

5. Take the notes with you

Good facilitators should also write ideas down on an accessible surface. But whatever you do make sure that the team know you value their idea and want to keep them. Take the notes with you.

6. Warm up well

Brainstorming should be a sprint a burst of creative energy focused on a goal. But training helps – send notes to participants in advance, gather competitor evidence, look at previous work, look for examples from other sectors where quantum leaps have been made. A really successful warm up might be to go out and try the product or service.

7. Environmental

At Guerilla we have a think zone, with comfy sofas, a table-football game, room to stand and throw ideas around – and easy access to the kettle. It simply does not cut it in a meeting room with everyone around a table. Try standing up, pacing around, whatever works for you, it won’t be what you do the rest of the time, to think differently, you need to feel different.

8. Play away

One of the best ideas sessions we ever had was held in a zoo. Get out of the office, think bigger make sure you have the physical space to let your ideas grow.

9 Short and sweet

Do not have a preagreed meeting length, when the ideas dry up wrap up. If you have not got enough ideas, staying for another hour staring at each other will not help. Try a different day, time of day, location or mix of people.

10 Call in Guerilla

We love brainstorming, lets chat and see if some Guerilla thinking can help achieve that BAG. It is amazing the difference an external body can make.

Look after your ideas machine

Our brains are amazingly complex idea machines, allowing us to think the impossible, to imagine the unimaginable. However all too often in our day-to-day business life we allow ourselves to be boxed in by preset rules. All to often  we cannot do that or we tried that is, the bulk of the brief to your creative team.
So how can you make sure your brain is open to new ideas and receptive to innovation, from your own ideas machine OR someone else.

Here are five Guerilla tips to keeping your ideas machine at the top of its game

1. Bugger off.
Take your holidays regularly make sure you never go more than six weeks without at least a half day doing something different. A refreshed brain is a powerful tool.

2. Pray to a new god.
Well actually you do not have to pray, just looking at the way religions work and structure beliefs can help you think about how you might be able to persuade someone to change those beliefs. Isn’t that a fundamental of most advertising, changing the way someone thinks about your brand.

3. Bring a child to work.
Its preferable if it is your own. Children, the younger the better have direct simple and refreshingly honest views on life.

4. Wander lonely as a cloud.
Metaphorically at least, reading and writing poetry is illogical, training your brain to forget its dominant logical side, or at least put it aside, will help idea generation.

5. Graffiti.
Writing or drawing an idea on a wall will help you to literally step back and examine it. It’s often a good idea to scribble it on a wall and see if anyone else comments on it. At Guerilla we have a massive white wall for this but a good old flip chart works just as well. (No put the spray paints down)

And if all that fails and you are still staring at a blank sheet of paper – call the ideas guys at Guerilla Creative.  www.guerilla-creative.co.uk