With Bewley’s being an iconic brand with a uniquely Irish DNA, the engagement opportunity was to deliver a robust, rewarding and interactive consumer experience that supports the Bewley’s brand values of daring innovation, excellence and warmth. So if you’ve got 5 minutes to spare, brew up a cuppa, put your feet up and have a browse.

www.bewleys.com

www.bewleys.com

The Dublin and Belfast based agency’s unique ‘Engagement Idea’ saw Newry boy John Fitzsimons placed in a very public BT-powered environment – a retail unit in a busy Belfast location – 24/7 with only social media to interact with the outside world garnered huge online and off-line buzz over  it’s month long duration, turning John into a local celebrity and elevating the quality of the BT consumer offer in the process.

Heather Kennedy, Deputy Managing Director of Bluecube explained: “We pulled inspiration from reality TV, harnessed the power of social buzz and delivered a real time experience.  All these aspects made The BT Experiment truly compelling to the audience. We recruited from their ranks. And this in turn grew a passionate daily audience, who interacted directly with John, whose antics, perspectives and content formed the central element of the campaign’s story. All this was powered by BT products and technology – a point not lost on the audience”.

David Beck, Head of Marketing Communications, BT said: It’s a healthy barometer of the state of marketing in Ireland and a welcome endorsement of BT’s marketing engagement strategy on the Island of Ireland .

The campaign was notable for it’s all-Ireland transmedia strategy, while anchored and experienced online, the idea went ‘analogue’ with national media coverage from RTE, The Irish Times and UTV. Said Kennedy of Bluecube “By mashing up traditional media tactics with the emerging power of social media we delivered long tail engagement strategy that went beyond the traditional-digital creative divide – the idea came to life via this engagement, not simply brand messaging.”

Read the case study

We pride ourselves on our big ideas, so it’s particularly satisfying that our social engagement experiment for BT (www.btexperiment.com) gained a nomination in the ‘Freshest Big Idea’ category.  The tangible success of this story, beyond social media engagement, was in delivering real sales traction with BT Broadband sales going up 30% on the previous quarter.  Our second nomination was for Meteor, in the ‘Freshest Collaboration Project’, with our fully integrated campaign achieving high engagement levels and exceeding our sales targets by 6%.

The award winners will be announced on 30th September in Manchester.

Fingers crossed!

The Brief

Bluecube was presented with a brief to develop an innovative promotion for one of the world’s most influential rock ‘n’ roll bands AC/DC, and to connect and engage with their notoriously hard to reach fan base in a progressive way. AC/DC are far from digital natives and have long resisted venturing into the digital landscape, until now.

Our goal was to create a promotion that was audacious enough to engage and connect die-hard AC/DC fans and yet still reflected the core ethos of the group.  From this the ‘AC/DC Rock ‘n’ Roll Train’ was born.

The Solution

AC/DC are infamous for their old-school Rock ‘n’ Roll philosophy and have defied conventional music industry wisdom by standing by their principles and simply refusing to sell their albums digitally.  Their listeners similarly stand by these old-school principals and our research showed that those who consider themselves to be true AC/DC fans wear a badge of pride and of defiance. Our digital strategy endeavored to engage with these fans in a way that was relevant and appealing and that simultaneously fit with the fun-loving play hard ethos of the group.

The concept was simple and the execution truly impactful. Friends, fans, music bloggers and radio DJ’s battled it out to create the longest virtual Rock ‘n’ Roll Train of Angus look-a-likes to be in with a chance of winning a signed Gibson SG Guitar and some of AC/DC’s most coveted back catalogues.

The underlying objective was not only to engage in a new way with these hard to reach fans but also to build an email database which would provide an invaluable targeting tool for any future promotions. The campaign was developed and deliberately launched around AC/DC’s live tour to drive awareness and generate buzz around the long awaited Black Ice Album and to simultaneously exploit the additional airtime and web noise that would prove crucial in promoting the microsite.

The site launched on the 25th of June and was picked up by the biggest radio stations in the country; it wasn’t long before influential DJ’s began mobilizing their listeners to battle for the ultimate AC/DC prize.

Music bloggers, influential online magazines, key message boards and social networks were the predominant online channels through which the campaign was seeded out. Rather than using paid media, Bluecube sent weekly email reminders to passengers encouraging them to share their link with friends, family, and fellow fans ensuring the campaign was self-perpetuating in nature.

What really brought this campaign to life was the accomplished flash design, stylized graphics and 3-D video animation that allowed the user to become the real star of the show. To enter the competition, fans simply submitted their email address and uploaded a picture of themselves onto Angus’s body. They could then watch themselves thunder through the digital landscape on the front of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Train in a customised music video which was aptly accompanied by the number one AC/DC track by the same name.

www.acdcrockandrolltrain.com

www.queensfilmtheatre.com

Focusing on car insurance brand engagement for the full island of Ireland, Antoinette McDonald, Head of AXA Marketing & Strategic Projects states; “this investment by AXA is recognition for the need to engage with Ireland’s ever increasing online community and we look forward to working with Bluecube as our online digital partner.”

Meteor has won the integrated marketing award for their recent Christmas campaign Reindeer at the 2009 AIM Awards held on May 14th. Reindeer is a perfect example of the kind of collaborative work possible when you bring good agencies together to produce a through the line campaign that engages, impacts and delivers bottom line results for clients.

Bluecube is delighted to be part of this excellent team and to see all of our hard work rewarded – congrats to all our partners in crime in Meteor and their associated communications agencies!

Flash Examples

www.clickci.co.uk

Our campaign for BT Black picked up another award at the Digital Media Awards last week. We beat off stiff competition to win the gong for ‘Best in Design’.

The judges’ highlighted how “the strategy, targeting, content and subtle brand association of the ambitious project really connected with the target market in a unique way”.

Congratulations to all involved.

In total we had five nominations with campaigns for BT, Meteor and Intertrade Ireland. The full list of nominations for all categories can be viewed at www.digitalmedia.ie

View the BT Black case study

Brief

The kooky ‘Magic Mobile Genie’ was the star of Meteor’s through the line campaign to encourage their prepay customers to avail of their new ‘Offer of a Lifetime’. Our task was to create an online presence and drive acquisitions to their online store.

The Solution

We gave users an opportunity to fully interact with the Meteor brand experience without heavily branding the elements themselves. We created an interactive suite of ‘fake’ ads offering surreal ‘Offers of a Lifetime’ linked to a microsite, which clicked through to the Meteor store. We also created social network profiles (with live management) for the Genie on Bebo, Facebook and MySpace and invited users to add the campaign widget to their profile.

The live management of the character’s Bebo profile, proved a key brand befriending tool. Marriage demands, requests for his ‘magical’ costume and declarations of love followed!

The added value with the digital strategy was that it communicated with the target audience on their channels and on their terms bringing the Magic Mobile Genie to life, achieving lasting impressions with Meteor’s Prepay audience.

www.meteor.ie/offerofalifetime

Visit the Genie’s bebo profile

* Best Search Marketing- Intertrade Ireland Seedcorn Competition
* Best Use of Social Media - Meteor ‘Offer of a Lifetime’
* Best in Design - ‘BT Black’
* Best Digital Film or Animation - BT ‘La Belle Electro’ and Meteor ‘The Reindeer Episodes’

The event takes place on Friday, 13th February in Santry, fingers crossed everyone!

The Brief

The Christmas campaign is a key time for Meteor and so we wanted to ensure that we spoke to the target audience in a way that was seasonal, fresh and engaging. The brief was to take the above the line campaign and develop it online continuing with Meteor’s warm, Irish, tongue in cheek humour.

The Solution

We took two talking Reindeer from the TV campaign and developed two distinct characters: Liam and Tim. Liam’s character (every young Irish male at heart with an inclination towards laziness and rebellion) was developed so that he would become our online advocate. He would direct users to buy online, so that he wouldn’t have to pull all the Meteor phones on the sleigh. He was savvy enough to align his work protestations behind the growing popularity of ‘Environmental’ and ‘Animal Rights’ issues, although his real motivations were always apparent. Like all the great comic teams Liam needed a straight laced sidekick, enter Tim, the rookie. Having never pulled a sleigh before ‘professionally’, Tim would be overly keen and enthusiastic; Tim would be used in our standard formats to showcase the phones.

We developed the brief online to showcase the two characters, this included live management of Liam and Tim’s Bebo profiles and unique ad formats. We created a mini series of 5 episodes called ‘The Reindeer Chronicles’ filmed in Prague. The campaign also included a Bebo homepage takeover and the Reindeer’s very own Xmas factor entry: the Reindeer Protest song.

Visit Tim the reindeer’s profile

Visit Liam the reindeer’s profile

View the Reindeer Chronicles on YouTube

The Brief

BT was struggling to communicate to the youth market. The ‘hard sell’ wasn’t working. We needed a voice and presence that spoke of modern youth culture, to give a flavour for what’s out there and to indirectly showcase the BT brand on a fresh platform. Interaction, innovation and engagement were the key drivers. We wanted the tempo of MTV, but with an edge of revolution and change. The objective was to showcase a number of trends which have grown online, focusing on the entertainment value of broadband and its influence on the younger audience.

The Solution

We developed a concept based around recent urban trends. Fresh, creative, upbeat and daring - these projects inspired the style and tone for BT Black. The content was on the pulse of today’s youth market. We developed sleek, clean designs and relevant content, housed within a uniquely interactive 3D portal that guaranteed engagement and user reward. Video content was rendered on revolving panes with fluid controls and a style that reinforced BT’s understanding of the web. Adhering to web 3.0 rules, where TV and web broadcasting are fully converged, the video content was produced in full HD with a viewing portal that was a high performance and stylised media control room.

This project was recently recognised and won ‘Freshest Brand Building Using Digital Channels’ at the UK and Ireland Fresh Digital Awards 2008.

www.bt.com/black

www.rumblers.ie

The Brief

This campaign was planned to coincide with additional functionality launching on the Ulster Bank and First Active markets that would allow users to apply for products online or by telephone, tying into the direct channels initiative. The core objective was a stand alone campaign to generate interest and ultimately click throughs.

The Solution

The various products have their own unique selling points, which were also important to communicate. However our strategy was to tie the promotion of all the products together with one common theme, convenience.

The role of search engine marketing is to be both informative and also to drive online acquisitions with highly targeted product based campaigns. Our online display campaign had a branding and awareness role to play; generating interest in the direct channel initiative; driving high quality, relevant traffic to the relevant websites; generating interest and providing an integrated link up with the Search and Partnership strategies provided. The strategy was to drive cost effective click through on the most suitable and relevant online platforms available.

Our creative strategy was to convey the speed and ease with which you can apply for the products. We used arrows, cursors, sandglasses and most importantly, motion to emphasis how the whole process, from start to finish, is now available online and the urgency and quickness is therefore implied. These messages were also carried across into our PPC creative. Here we used a broad keyword approach, targeting the widest possible range of keywords relating to specific products.

www.btyoungscientist.com