We all know that having a brand representative barge into a bar to put on a show could be perceived as tacky, especially in the UK. But having recently worked on the Captain Morgans relaunch, I’ve experienced something totally different and really quite impactful.

RPM’s job has been to reposition ‘The Captain’ in the UK as the face of the brand. He’s always been there yet consumers have never experienced him directly. So the best way for them to associate The Captain with a captivating drinking experience was through captivating on-trade activations. It was important for us to recruit a Captain who encapsulated the spirit of the brand, which has up until now been led by the Global Brand Ambassador.

We needed to find 6-8 Captains to run the campaign across the whole of the UK and have written his character type, the script, and looked at the promotional campaign that then tours with them. We created a new look and feel, supported by POS and helped re-launch of Captain Morgans spiced in the UK.

In Europe Diageo have had massive success by caricaturing The Captain as a party leader who then infiltrates bars for half an hour, hitting them all with samples and leaving them with that party spirit still riding high.

The J&B Mirror Man is another example of an effective on trade activation. An arguably challenging idea at first, yet once you see and experience him in a bar environment- when the music blares out and he starts dancing-the bar totally transforms. Suddenly everyone is drinking your product, taking photos and dancing on tables. He has a 30 minute impact, and leaves drinkers with a wave of energy.
It cleverly utilises high impact, within a short time frame and has a lasting impact on consumers who begin associating your brand with an exciting, unique drinking experience.

RPM won a Blades Award for our work on the Sky Backstage Bar and Sky Gallery, in the 'Design for Interior category'. Really thrilled!!

Marketing courses at Universities are somewhat limited. I say this because I have been in touch with a number of lecturers who are all still using curriculums written 5 years ago and are desperate for current industry insight. Many of them have also been removed from the industry for just as long, so how are students supposed to see what’s really out there?

As a result of these restrictive and outmoded courses, students are emerging out of university without a real grasp of below the line advertising and equipped with a very limited impression of the marketing landscape. I’ll often see portfolios which include one piece of advertising, a piece of ambient media and an app, and this is all they’ve been taught.

From my research, I don’t believe there is a significant below the line marketing course out there and universities are not taking into account the rapidly changing industry landscape, in which agencies are becoming more and more integrated. Most courses will try and dip their toes into the water of ‘integrated’ but no one is actually doing it.

At RPM we execute in a significant number of channels, and the challenge with this is to recruit talent into the industry that can work across multiple disciplines. In order to save agencies with training time and costs, I believe that university courses should do a lot more to inform and educate students which should also include a year out in the industry.

When it comes to marketing strategies, brands are ultimately looking for value for money, control and consistency across all channels. Previously, brands would utilise a significant number of agencies for one campaign, with each executing their own thinking over different channels. The trend now though is towards cutting down agencies, and using just a few to build a central brand strategy consistent across all channels with the aim to establish a concept that brands operating globally can take all over the world.

Let’s look at Smirnoff’s ‘Be There’ experience for example. Diageo want Smirnoff to represent nightlife, and they needed one idea to make sure this was executed all over the world. This resulted in the Smirnoff Nightlife Exchange Project concept whereby 14 countries swapped nightlife with each other. This made sure that if a young person travelled to London, America and Latin America, there would be continuity in brand message and ‘Be There’ would be everywhere. Brands are beginning to channel their creative thinking into less agencies to create value for money, but also to establish a single minded, single focused approach.

Check out my recent interview posted on Creative Boom.