Coins

Percentages, like APRs, can often feel meaningless. I might know that 3.9% is greater than 3.8%, but it still has little meaning to me. So, we created an attractive little ad for Moneysupermarket.com that explicitly shows the money that could be earned on a typical savings account – turning the meaningless APR into real, hard cash.

Users are then enticed to visit Moneysupermarket.com to find out how much they could be earning on their savings.

On The Needle

Oxfam – The People’s Campaign

Many people feel helpless when faced with the issues in the world. The idea behind Oxfam’s strapline, ‘Be Humankind’, is to encourage everyone to work together to fight the suffering and injustice that is happening all around us.

This digital campaign idea for Oxfam puts the advertising campaign in the hands of the people. It encourages single donations (as opposed to monthly payments) to an Oxfam project of the donor’s choice. The campaign works as a cycle, illustrated here.

How the donor creates their ad

After the donor has entered their bank details and completed the donation form, they are shown a simple page where they can create their own ad.

The page asks the donor to:
• choose one of four colour themes for the ad (click here and scroll down to section 2 to see ‘The colour pairs’)
• choose one of four background textures
• select a message from a pre-determined selection
• preview, agree to the term and conditions and publish the ad.

The donor will receive a copy of their ad which they can email to their friends, post on their blogs, embed on websites or post to their Facebook, MySpace and Twitter profiles etc.

Using a cookie dropped onto their browser, the donor will always be displayed their own ad when they visit any site where the ads are served. They will also be displayed follow up news and information relating to their chosen project and a link to find out more.

How the ads work

The ads use a predetermined framework:

Frame 1 – Displays the donor’s name/nickname and location.

Frame 2 – Describes how the donor has helped the project. According to the Oxfam website, the size of your donation will determine what your donation is spent on. For example, if you donate to the ‘Improving education for everyone’ project in Zambia, £1 – £300 will help to educate an orphan in Zambia. £301 – £600 will help to train a teacher and donations of £601 or more will help to educate teachers and children about AIDS. See more here.

Frame 3 – Displays the donor’s chosen message

Frame 4 – Call to action.

The ads go live on the internet immediately and the campaign becomes self-generating.

UNICEF – Facts

We created this campaign to encourage donations to children’s charity UNICEF. The campaign uses cold, hard facts and emotive imagery to portray the urgency.

Email

Please click on the image below to enlarge.

Supporting ad

We created this ad to support the campaign.

Optical Express – Win Free Laser Eye Surgery

We created these ads to generate leads for Optical Express, Europe’s leading provider of laser eye surgery. Rollover the ads to interact or click on your browser’s refresh button to replay the ad.

Eye Test Concept
The visual of the Snellen chart is instantly recognisable, particularly to those with poor sight. Laser eye surgery can be a daunting prospect to many so it was important that the ad contained reassuring and positive messaging. We built an enquiry form into the ad (roll over) that encouraged users complete for a free consultation and a chance to win free laser eye surgery.

Safety in Numbers Concept
This concept reassures people that laser eye surgery is a common procedure and it is safe. We used lots of eyes to visually represent the procedures and encourage people to enter their details on a form.

Ladbrokes – Laddy’s Lucky Loft Email

Often in bingo, customers are left one number away from a win and all the excitement of nearly winning fast disappears into thoughts of ‘maybe next time’ or ‘I never seem to win this’. Laddies Lucky Loft is a new concept in online bingo that allows players who miss out by one to enter into a bonus round where they will receive a guaranteed win – anything from £1 to £250.

We created this email to raise awareness of this feature and to encourage people to sign up and deposit. Please click on the image below to enlarge.

Tough As Old Boots

My over-worn, hole-ridden Fat Face boots have finally resigned, after ten years as my boot of choice.

Despite the unsightly hole and their inability to keep my feet dry, these boots have always been there for me, through the good times and the bad, across fields, along pavements, through caves and around cities.

But, alas, the time has come (by order of my mum) to say goodbye to the old and hello to these new ‘Just Sheepskin’ boots.

New boots – Good luck.
Old boots – I’ll miss you. *salutes*

My First Website

This week I have been developing my very first website. My previous site had been designed by my talented friend and it looked stunning. The trouble was, whenever I wanted to make a change to the design or update the content, I had to find a willing designer to give me a hand. I wanted greater control and a site I could manage by myself, to be able to add and amend work, whenever I needed to.

I discovered WordPress.org, a publishing platform that’s completely customisable.

Creating my site was brought mixed emotions: confusion, excitement, frustration and a lot of despair. But I finally got the hang of it, chose a theme called “fjords01″ created by Peter Andre Jensen and played around with the different widgets to create the structure of the website. This is how it looks:

I learned about the useful WordPress plug-ins and activated the following:

• Category Visibility-iPeat by iPeat (Hides “uncategorised” from the category menu. I wrote an introductory post called “Recent Work” to introduce the work on the site but, because it couldn’t be filed under a client, the category automatically defaulted to “uncategorised”. I did not want uncategorised to appear in the client menu and this plug-in allowed me to hide it.)
• Custom Query String Reloaded by Moshu (Changes the number of posts displayed when viewing different pages. I wanted the home page to contain just very recent work so I set it to display only 5 posts. However, when someone selects a client, I want them to be able to view a lot of work, with minimal mouseclicking, so I set category pages to display 30 posts.)
• Kimili Flash Embed by Michael Bester (Embeds flash files into posts.)
• Wp-Sticky (Displays a post on the home page, regardless of the date it was published. I set the introductory post, Recent Work, as an announcement so it is displayed as the first post when you visit the site.)
• StatPress by Daniele Lippi (Displays real time site stats.)

It has been a lot of trial and error but I’m pleased with what I’ve achieved. There is still more to do – a personalised 404 error page and a new header image for starters – but I can continue to develop it over the coming few weeks.

UNICEF – Ideas to Give

Ideas to Give

We have recently been creating a campaign for UNICEF called Ideas to Give, to promote the charity’s Inspired Gift range. Inspired Gifts enable you to choose how UNICEF spends your donation, from buying baby blankets to building water pumps for communities.

We created a microsite to encourage people to share money-saving ideas and then use their savings to buy an Inspired Gift.

Site

Please click on the image below to visit the Ideas to Give website.

Ads

We created these ads to crudely demonstrate the parallel between our own comfortable lives and the lives of those children that UNICEF are trying to help.

Landing Page

Please click on the image below to view the supporting email for this campaign.

Email

Please click on the image below to view the supporting email for this campaign.

Cyberslotz – Jack and the Beanstalk

The Jack and the Beanstalk theme in this ad represents how just 1p could become a giant jackpot at Cyberslotz.