experience more

we can still smell the rubber!

Last week all at iblink were extremely busy down at Bluewater shopping centre in Kent. Not spending our time shopping as you might have initially thought, but working together on a fantastic event with Jenson Button at Virgin Media's Speedweek 50; a week celebrating the fastest 50Mb fibre optic broadband in the land. 

We devised and delivered the week-long event in partnership with Bray Leino PR. Speedweek50 culminated with world champion Jenson Button's triumphant homecoming at an event created attended by both the world's media and thousands of fans.

After a photocall with the super-charged Virgin Media Mercedes AMG, Button diligently stuck to our packed press schedule, and participated in a number of interviews with a long list of our national media including The Times Magazine, Top Gear, and the BBC.  He then met with several lucky competition winners who from our media partnerships with Metro, Absolute Radio and Heart Kent had won a trip of a lifetime - 8 high speed laps with Jenson on the roads circuiting Bluewater, which we specially adapted for the event. Several brave cameramen, journalists and celebs also joined Jenson for a drive. 

Footage of these thrilling rides is all over YouTube and also featured on ITN's News at Ten as newsreader Mark Austin was raced around our circuit at top speed, so fast that we can still smell the rubber! 

 

Later on in the afternoon, Button took part in a live Q&A session hosted by the BBC's David Croft, answering some fans questions:  the most gruelling was from Charlotte, aged 6 being, "Do you like chocolate Buttons?"… he hadn't eaten them for a while if you were wondering...

We have had a fantastic response from the press, radio, TV news programs and the internet - not to mention some fantastic user generated content on the web. 

Thanks to our team, we produced an event which was great fun for everyone who came along. 

Watch this space for some video content coming soon!

 

Lynx Bullet

pocket pulling power

At the beginning of May iblink ran a campaign to support the launch of Lynx Bullet in Superdrug stores, integrating bluetooth technology with experiential activity. The challenge we faced was driving target audience (dashing young men) into Superdrug which is predominantly a female environment.

The first part of the activity was pre-awareness of the experiential activity. We advertised using bluetooth units in-store, with huge A frames inviting consumers to 'Turn on your bluetooth' to have a chance of winning £100 cash.

On Saturday 2nd May our gorgeous Lynx girls appeared in participating stores, and Lynx hitsquads equiped with hotpants were deployed to increase targeted footfall into the activity stores. The odds for winning £100 quid were pretty high, with one winner per store.

For the remaining 4 weeks we ran a second piece of bluecasting content advertising the mobile pulling tool on www.lynxeffect.com - 'SAY CHEESE'

Overall this was an interesting campaign and we received over 10,000 downloads in 5 locations, which was hugely successful.

Gillette - live like a champion video montage

Have a look at the video of the Gillette - live like a champion campaign we ran a while back. The video features stats, and a general overview of the activity, and of course, it features the awesome Lamborghini!

Perfect 10

 

Tomorrow we are running a campaign for Perfect10 - a new hair colourant which works in just 10 minutes. This activity focuses on the entire range of hair colourants, and encourages consumers to dye their hair at home using this product.

The activity will run in 25 Superdrug stores with 1 BA and 1 professional hair expert per store with additional street teams to drive traffic into store.

The hair expert will demonstrate the products, showing consumers exactly how to use the hair colour to achieve a professional look at home and give advice about which hair colour would suit you best. There will also be money off coupons handed out, entitling each Superdrug customer to £1 off any hair colourant in the range up until 31st May.

So, if you are feeling like a new look that takes just 10 minutes – get into the participating Superdrug stores tomorrow!

Gillette - Live like a champion

Yesterday we launched one of our most integrated campaigns yet. Gillette contracted us to roll out a campaign to promote its new skincare range.

We developed a month-long campaign to drive mass footfall into Superdrug stores via an innovative competition mechanic called ‘Live Like a Champion – Experience the Best’.

Digital 6 sheets across 10 major London stations advertised the ‘Live Like a Champion’ campaign and encouraged consumers to text 83332 to find their nearest Superdrug store.

Mobile street teams equipped with Bluetooth devices roamed London high footfall hotspots emitting digital content to 924 models of mobile handsets situated in close proximity to them. They also distributed informative leaflets and sachet samples.

Brand ambassadors, placed in 50 of London’s busiest stores handed out sachet samples and educated consumers on the product range via leaflets and POS collateral.

Digital POS was running in 10 of these stores. Store ‘ownership’ of the campaign was encouraged by way of the ‘prize winner per store’ mechanic.

The prizes included a supercar for the weekend, tickets to the O2 arriving by speedboat and a Saville Row tailor made suit.

All activity was devised planned and executed by us and was achieved within 6 weeks.

We had a small budget and a tough brief (to drive males into a typically female retail environment), so we needed to create a campaign that was:

• High impact, resonating with males. Gillette’s target audience is 18-55 but we viewed this as too broad so focused instead on a core 18-35 male audience.

• Communicated with a secondary female target audience aged 16-35 who typically buy shaving products for their partners or sons.

From what we have heard so far, the integrated launch has been extremely successful with high levels of awareness across London and product sales reaching desired target levels.

Pantene Blow Dry Bar

One of the first campaigns we are running this year is for Pantene’s new Volume and Body Collection which is fronted by Mylene Klass. There will be a premium blow dry bar unit in selected Superdrug stores, whereby shoppers are invited to receive a free blow dry from professional hair stylists who will demonstrate the V&B products. The Pantene range is on offer – 2 for £4.00 on all 400ml Pantene products.

It is running on every Saturday in the next month... So if you’re going out on Saturday night and fancy getting a pro to style your locks for free then get yourself down to participating stores tomorrow from 10am – 6pm!

Read all about it...

This week, Marketing Week featured an article mentioning us here at iblink and some of the great work we have done. The article, ‘When progress meets tradition’ talks of how integrating traditional media with new media, done properly, can result in great things – as we have experienced.

‘Traditional media can offer known, pre-measurable and sometimes more widely spread OTS’. However, new media offers a “wow factor” which harnesses the power of word of mouth. Alex Johns, our MD said, "even before the consumer gets to grips with the creative, new media channels are saying 'you really must check this out'. Consequently it offers greater cut-through. Combining the two maximises the values of both."

This was demonstrated in a campaign we created for Gillette Razor Amnesty campaign and also Sure Girl fashion Idol campaign.

Check out the article:
http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=64050&u=pg_dtl_art_news&m=pg_hdr_art

happy new year!

the iblink team are all very happy to be back in our offices after our generously long Christmas break. So far our first week back has been quite exciting what with lots of meetings about fantastic projects we will be working on in 2009, a new phone system which very cleverly links us up with our home boys down in the iblink Woking office (and are apparantly like the phones used by Jack Bower in 24), and today iblink will lunch like kings in Borough Market, we have all missed it so, especially the chorizo sarnies!

So here's to a great 2009 from all at iblink.

106th digital six sheet in operation

Working exclusively with Titan Outdoor, we’ve conceived, designed and delivered the world's first true digital 6 sheet and now have 106 in operation across London!
 
iblink's D6 network covers all the major railway termini across London, delivering every facet of the digital rollout from product design and engineering to 3g network architecture & installation.

iblink continue to support Titan with the management of content and reporting across the network and the creation of HD digital advertisments. Each D6 is independently networked and managed, allowing the remote upload of content schedules and diagnostics ensuring that screen health and playback can be checked 24/7 with the click of a button.

You can also check out the work we do with Titan on our website here.

merry christmas from all at iblink

2008 has been a great year for iblink. We've worked with great brands on some fantastic campaigns, won gold at the ISP awards and silver at the FMBE awards, expanded our digital and experiential teams with some talented new faces and have a brand new website. We won't dwell on this expansive list, but will finish 2008 by saying have a merry christmas and a very happy new year!