HD Camera Trick from Samsung
To help build a buzz for the latest HD camera phone from Samsung, this viral video was created. In the video the owner of the phone films his apartment, takes the phone up to the mirror and makes it disappear. The disclaimer at the start states that no edits were made and challenges Youtube to work out how it was done. With 1,416,513 views and 2,298 comments it obviously got people talking. Around a month later they uploaded the making of video that revealed how the trick was done. You can view that here.

Old Spice
Unless you have been living under a rock or do not have access to the internet, then you do not have an excuse for not knowing what the Old Spice videos are. Here is the original that started the whole thing off. Look on YouTube for some of the hilarious replies they created the internet comments. The original video has so far had 32, 183, 386 views and 38,049 comments.

Cravendale cats with thumbs
A more recent entry in our list, the British Milk Company has created a TV commercial that answers that question we have all asked ourselves, What would it be like if Cats had thumbs? The video is approaching nearly 3 million views and has 1,890 comments.

Cadburys gorilla
Originally airing in 2007, Cadburys launched this genius advert on TV that got the whole country buzzing. A gorilla drumming to Phil Collin’s classic hit “In the air tonight”.
I’m not sure if the original has been taken down from the official Cadbury YouTube channel but this version posted by macegrove in August 2007 has had 5,343,357 views and 7763 comments.
The most recent ad from Cadbury sees giant items of clothing dancing to the song “clothes off”

The Force Volkswagen
Originally this aired in the US in the famous Superbowl ad break where all the top companies pay a lot of money to show off their latest clever ads, knowing that they will have a guaranteed massive audience. It has now started to appear on UK television and has had a massive 38,231,624 views and 27,711 comments so far. As you can tell by our previous numbers, this has to be one of the most watched viral ads of all time. Especially as it has surpassed the numbers of the Old Spice video and has only been online since Feb 2011.

Warner bros have launched an new innovative marketing campaign to mark the release of the latest edition in the award-winning Mortal Kombat series on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. The marketing campaign will begin on the 17^th April at the Gadget Show Live at the NEC in Birmingham and aims to bring the action of the game off screen and into the real world. This unique campaign is to feature the UK’s very first ‘sign-spinning’, where a sign bearing the logo or artwork of a company is spun around by somebody holding it, the US phenomenon which is one of the fastest growing form of outdoor advertising.

Sign-spinning traces its roots back to Ocean Beach, California in 2002 and has gone on to be hugely popular thanks to the work of Max Durovic, who went on to found Arrow which employs 750 sign-spinners and has trained thousands more.

The arrow spinners are set to hit the UK for the very first time with a dazzling display at the Gadget Show Live exhibition and then move on to delight shoppers around certain London retailers during launch week. They will use specially created Mortal Kombat signs in their performances as well as some of the famous moves from the game.

A special Mortal Kombat tournament is also set to take place at the Gadget Show Live while the game itself is set to be released on 21^st April.

This could start a whole new craze for UK advertising agencies as they look to create ever newer and eye catching campaigns. So the next time you walk down the street you could well be confronted with the amazing sign-spinners who are part advertisers and part street performers.

Split

One of the most important factors for any advertiser is to ensure that your advertisements are as efficient they can be. All too often advertisers will launch a Facebook campaign and see that for the £50 they just spent they got a poor return on results and generalise that this must be the case for all campaigns on Facebook. The reality is that your campaign probably wasn’t performing well because your advert was poorly targeted. The best advertisers know that performance comes from testing things out. With this in mind you should test numerous variations. Switch one component of your advertisement at a time and then compare it to another and see which works better.

Create a Click Through Rate Threshold

While some adverts will perform better than others, the last thing you want to do is throw money away at poorly performing advertisements. Because of this you should develop a click through rate threshold that is workable for your campaign.  If your running a campaign and you set a threshold of £0.25 per fan, but your advert only achieves and effective cost per fan of £0.65 then its time to kill the advert for underperformance.  The main lesson here is to figure out what sort of click through rate is acceptable to you, some UK Advertising Agencies even suggest immediately killing those adverts which aren’t performing up to your standards.

Monitor Your Campaigns Closely

One thing that you’ll notice when you begin running advertising campaigns on Facebook is that the performance of your adverts will worsen over time. This is because the cost of reaching each subsequent user on Facebook increases exponentially. Generally the first people who click on an advert tend to be the most responsive to advertisements. Once your adverts have worked through this first group of people, the task of reaching the next group will be more difficult. This means that you need to monitor your daily CTR. Watch how your click through rate performs over time and when you start seeing a decline, you may want to consider either targeting a different target group or switching your advert.

Test Performance at Different Times

Quite often you’ll find that an advertisement will perform better at different times of day. While Facebook doesn’t let advertisers automatically select which time of day their adverts appear, you can turn your adverts on and off manually and experiment to see which times perform the best. This, however, requires extremely close monitoring. While Facebook may eventually add this type of fine control in the future, no advertiser has control of this at the moment.

The Royal Wedding will not only mark the union of two people madly in love but it will also mark a big boost for the UK economy.

Leading experts expect the UK economy to see an upturn in April thanks to the Royal Wedding, with the big day and extra bank holiday leading to a shopping spree plus a general feel good mood across the country.

With a million or more people expected to watch the Royal procession from Westminster to Buckingham Palace travel firms and London business can also expect to see a big upturn in sales.

Its not just business such as hotels and shops that will see an increase in customers though, UK advertising agencies too are expecting a good start to the second quarter as companies are looking to cash in on this upturn by increasing their advertising spend.

One area of advertising that is expected to do very well is TV. Industry experts are predicting that April will see an 18% increase thanks to the Easter Holidays and Royal Wedding.

The wedding itself will offer a prime spot for companies to advertise on as well as other inevitable royal themed shows that will be broadcast in the build up to the big event. The broadcast of the wedding is likely to attract one of the biggest ever TV audiences with millions of people across the country tuning in to see the future King and Queen marry.

The popular site, which is used by 175 million users, has three main methods of advertising, Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts and Promoted Trends.

• Promotion Tweets allow you to post tweets that can be seen by people who don’t follow you.

• Promoted Accounts will show up in a user’s “Who to Follow” section on their Twitter homepage.

• Promoted Trends allows a company to place their product on top of the Twitter Trending List

Facebook, which has 550 million users, offers two methods of advertising, Facebook adverts and Facebook ‘like’ adverts.

• Facebook adverts appear on the right hand side of the screen using text and pictures, they link to a client’s website.

• Facebook ‘like’ adverts encourage users to like a company’s page in order to receive information, updates and promotion offers from that company.

While Twitter has been trying hard with their new promotional opportunities Facebook still remains the best opportunity for advertisers.  Facebook not only reaches many more people than Twitter but it remains the most cost effective choice thanks to its PPC style advertising.

An accident at work claim is an excellent idea if you have been injured in a work place accident that wasn’t your fault. Not only will it provide you with any accident compensation you are due so that you can meet any additional costs your injury has incurred and to ensure that you are not left out of pocket because of an accident that was not your fault.

In addition to this, accident at work claims are also an excellent motivator to ensure that employers provide a safe working environment for their employees and look out for their safety. Knowing that they risk getting wound up in a costly legal battle if one of their employees in injured provides an excellent incentive to make sure employees aren’t injured.

It can also drive employers to spend money on safety measures that they otherwise wouldn’t have done. With the possibility that they may be on the receiving end of an accident claim, employers are won over by the argument that they can spend the money now and prevent accidents, or spend much more money later dealing with an accident claim and then have to spend money putting the safety measure in place anyway.

For employers who still don’t meet the regulations put in place by the Health and Safety Executive, an accident claim is an excellent way to make sure the injured employee doesn’t have their life ruined by the negligence of the employer and forces them to make necessary changes so that the same accident doesn’t happen to somebody else.

The Advertising Association in the UK has revised their marketing spend forecast for 2010 upwards. Previously they had predicted an advertising spend growth of 5.4 per cent in September which has now been revised to a massive 6.6 per cent.

If these levels are met it will mean the biggest year growth in advertising since 2004, which is welcome news for UK Advertising Agencies who were hit hard by the economic slowdown of recent years.

The Advertising Association has had to revise their forecasts after a stronger than expected third quarter which saw an increase of 7.3 per cent. It had been predicted that the third quarter would grow by just 4.8 per cent.

Amongst the best performers of the third quarter were TV, out of home and Internet advertising which saw respective increases of 15.8 per cent, 12.4 per cent and 11 per cent. During the same quarter direct mail saw its first growth since quarter one way back in 2006.

Tim Lefroy, chief executive of the Advertising Association stated, “It’s encouraging to see such growth during tighter economic times and the figures illustrate the continued importance of advertising to the UK economy.”

The recent increase in TV ad spend has been helped by a number of big television events. This summer was the world cup hit our screens once again. While England failed to perform in South Africa viewers loved the near 4 weeks of non-stop football with massive ratings for the best games. Then this autumn saw the return of the biggest show on TV, the X Factor. The current series proved to be the most popular yet and brought in record ratings and record advertising spend.

It is hoped that 2011 will be able to continue the strong growth seen throughout 2010.

This all changes, of course, if you happen to work outside. Ice and snow can become a real problem at some work places, and the shorter daylight hours might mean you find yourself working in the dark. The colder, more miserable weather can definitely have an effect as well. It all adds up to a place that’s ripe for accidents to occur.

Your employer should be taking the proper precautions to make sure your workplace is clear of ice and snow, and ensuring that there’s enough light for you to work safely. They should also be providing warm, winter gear so that you don’t suffer from the cold. Frostbite or hypothermia aren’t the only concerns; even cold fingers can be dangerous if you find it harder to move them and operate equipment properly.

If your employer doesn’t take these necessary precautions to look after your safety and you do end up having an accident then you should get in touch with some specialist accident solicitors about the possibility of making accident claims.

Pursuing an accident claim against an employer who doesn’t take proper care of their employees is an excellent way to ensure they do so in future. If it is for cost-cutting reasons, they could very well find out that it has cost them much more to cut corners than it would have to act responsibly.

For those of you who saw last nights Apprentice (Wednesday 10^th November) you will know just how wrong an advertising campaign can go, thus proving that advertising is not as easy as it always appears.

I’m sure we have all sat at home watching a TV advert or have driven past a billboard poster and thought ‘that was rubbish, I could do better than that!’ yet when it comes down to it creating any advertising and marketing campaign is a minefield which needs to be tread carefully.

In the recent Apprentice advertising challenge the remaining 10 finalists were tasked with coming up with an advertising campaign for a new cleaning product. Despite the two teams having 10 of the best young business brains in Britain between them both failed spectacularly by creating ads that were old fashioned and completely missing there target market.

This is why using a UK Advertising Agency is always the best way to go when marketing a product or service. Even though the apprentices thought they had a brilliant original ideas that couldn’t fail it took the experienced minds of professional marketers to point out all the many ways in which they had gone wrong. While using these professionals may be more expensive than going it alone a failed advertising campaign is a waste of money and could do more harm to a business than good. So if possible always seek out UK Advertising Agencies who can help you avoid the pitfalls that many of the apprentices fell into.