Playgroup | Creativity through play

Last week I attended a training event at the Social Media Academy called How to win new business with online PR & social media.

A lot of it was very PR focussed so lost me a little. But what I did find really interesting is how the lines between marketing, PR, digital and advertising agencies have blurred since we're all now using social media as a means to communicate with people - which is essentially all that these different types of agencies are trying to do anyway.

The first section of the presentation is particularly worth looking at, along with the case studies for ideas. There are some really good tips on how to make blogs work for you, and who to target your messages at in order to reach the most relevant audience. As with any social media strategy - relevance is the most important thing, not numbers!

PR should be intrinsic to any social media strategy as a way of reaching a larger audience and its something that I will be thinking about more for future campaigns. There is no reason why PR needs to be specialist in fact its more effective its linked into marketing activity.

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Last night myself and Linda were lucky enough to be invited to the Tate Modern to celebrate the success of the Unilever International Schools Art Project, the last event of this kind.

As part of their sponsorship of the Turbine Hall Exhibition at the Tate Modern (The Unilever Series), each year Unilever team up with Tate to give children from schools around the world the chance to interpret the theme of the latest Turbine Hall Exhibition. Those whose work is selected by a judging panel are invited to London to an exhibition of their work at the Tate Modern and  a tour of the city.

This year’s theme was Spaces and Places by Dominique Gonzalez Foerster which she interpreted in the TH2058 installation. 16 children from 15 countries were at the Tate Modern last night, along with their carers, to stand alongside their pieces of art and receive the commendations they deserved for their hard work. The pieces took a variety of forms including paintings, sculptures, montages, drawings and some video and the interpretations of the themes were diverse and a little disturbing in some cases.

There were some lovely stories to be heard from many of the attendee’s last night that demonstrated just how impactful the Unilever International Schools Art Project is to many communities around the world. There was one boy and his mother who had never left their village in Bolivia before that had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to come to London – an opportunity they would never have had  under normal circumstances.

On a more local level, there were a group of schools in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets (LBTH) who got together as a community and ran their own competition, producing their very own exhibition. They invested a great deal of time and money, resources not readily available in the LBTH area, into putting on an exhibition that they could all be proud of as demonstrated by the passion from one of the teachers I met. It didn’t even matter that they weren’t included in the selected works.

And the unfortunate story about a girl from Pakistan who was unable to come to London and see her work exhibited as she was not granted a Visa.

For me the true beauty was to see children from around the world, from various age groups, enjoying art together and getting a rare insight into their creative minds. If you thought the lives of the under 18’s were simple then you should really see some of things that are on their minds. Of course it was also nice to see our branding work for the event in action in the form of name badges and the programme/poster.

For the first, and last, time the artwork from the selected 15 country representatives will remain on display in the Clore Education Centre at Tate Modern until 2 May 2009. I suggest that everyone goes and has a look as it really does make an impactful exhibition and i’d love to know what you thought of it.

If you can’t make it but would like to see some of the work, we have created a poster with all the pieces on - let me know if you’d like a copy.

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For the last two and a half years I have been studying for my Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) Professional Certificate followed by the Professional Diploma. I passed - hurrah - but was it all worth it?

Studying whilst working full time is not something to undertake lightly. It's a BIG commitment. Finding an extra 12 hours a week (and more round exam times) around a 40 hour + working week, hobbies, family, social life and the necessary sleep is a scheduling nightmare in itself. But you can find spare hours that you never knew you had, and you do learn a very important lesson in time management so long as you're committed to it.

So why did i bother? I've asked myself this many times. It's not part of my appraisal, it doesn't give me a pay rise or promotion, in fact it had nothing to do with work (although they have been incredibly supportive throughout). 

Studying for me is a necessary escape from work. I don't start things unless i'm going to see them through and succeed, I hate failure and I certainly don't give up. So i'm committed to my end goal. And that commitment is a really good excuse to stop thinking about work all the time, think beyond my day-to-day activities and see more of the bigger picture. This in turn helps keep me engaged and interested in my work and stops me looking elsewhere for new challenges.

But even more important than having a distraction, its helping to quench my thirst for knowledge. In some ways studying has made it worse as I now have even more avenues to explore that were only just touched upon in my text books. But that's a good thing for me, Playgroup and my clients. It ensures that i keep up-to-date with new developments and can hopefully make alternative suggestions that my clients hadn't previously thought about.

And what's next for me? Well I had planned to continue with CIM and complete the Professional Post Grad Diploma and then embark on a Masters. I think I still will but not straight away. Studying while you work is only worth the hassle so long as you enjoy it. After two and a half years I need a break from exams so that i'm ready to throw myself into the higher levels. 

And in the mean time i'll keep up with the latest news in the marketing world and i've also started a Diploma in Horse Care. No exams. After all, there is more to life than just marketing!!!

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Flicking through Marketing this week I stopped to read the article ‘Snapple is an object lesson in equity’. The brand, and article, highlighted two very important points; ‘a strategy that works for one brand will never work for another’, and strategies based on genuine brand equity are the only way survive and prosper.

Snapple resulted from three entrepreneurs who spotted a gap in the natural products market in 1972, and without any real marketing know-how decided to fill that gap. The business grew organically until they recruited a professional marketer who decided to build the brand using a strategy that was based on research, tailored for the brand and true to the brand. The business was sold in 1994 for $1.7bn to Quaker Oats showing that building genuine brand equity pays.

Quaker Oats bought Snapple hoping to apply the same proven approach it had taken with another drinks brand Gatorade. The result: selling Snapple for $300m less that it paid for it 3 years earlier and demonstrating that ‘a strategy that works for one brand will never work for another’.

But it’s not all bad for Snapple, they were bought by Triarc in 1997 who rebuilt the brand and its equity by going back to its roots. Within 3 years they managed to undo all the damage from bad brand management and sell for $1.4bn to Cadbury Schweppes. According to Mark Ritson, Marketing, this shows that ‘great brands can never be killed off by bad brand management’. I’d say it’s another example of how building a brand strategy based on genuine brand equity is the only way to survive.

So other than hearing a nice little story about the life of a brand, what has all this got to do with Playgroup?  Well genuine brand equity is what we’re all about. We know that brands are unique and we tailor our strategies accordingly. We also believe that building genuine brand equity means staying true to your heritage and Snapple demonstrates how what we do works.

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Corporate Social Responsiblity (CSR) is big news, and big business, for organisations around the world.  With global warming issues on the rise and fuel supplies falling, companies are having to look closely at what they can do to offset the impact they are having on our planet.

But this concern is not just for huge organisations that need to meet the needs of their stakeholders, nor those that use their CSR policies and green credentials to sustain a competitive advantage, everyone needs to get involved in order to really make a diffrerence.

With this in mind, all employees of Playgroup were recently asked what they thought Playgroup's CSR Policies should include.  After a good deal of thought and ruling out the impossible, the irrelevant and the downright stupid my choice was to only print on environmentally friendly paper preferably using environmentally friendly printers and inks. 

This would lead us to have less choice of paper stocks, printers and inks and possibly increased costs (however environmentally printers are generally very price competitive as they have to be to remain in the market) but we would be doing our bit to reduce the impact we, and our clients, are having on the environment.

So would Playgroup going green be good or bad?

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