A nice mix of disciplines today, with Sport being the overarching theme. As Recruitment Advertising broadens its approach to reach a more passive audience, planners look for companies that have an actively engaged user base whose principles (or demographics ) tie in with the campaign objectives. Sport is an obvious choice. Active, passionate and engaged audiences, with sites offering a host of content that guarantees regular return visits (ask our resident Gunner fans). Ad space tends to be priced at a premium, but its often worth it: for those more interested in this area, Octagon has done some in-depth research into the psychology of fans from different types of sports.

Enjoy

Martston’s Cricket Club (http://www.marstonscricketclub.co.uk/marstonsHome.php)
As the popularity of bitter wanes, Marston’s looked to reinvigorate its brand through an association with the English Cricket Team. Whilst the site may not be excellent in a purist digital sense, the campaign makes great use of cross-media, with sponsorship of Stick Cricket (Advergaming), Partnership Networks with the ECB, Events and Competitions. Mind you, a more weathered and long standing example has to be the NatWest Cricket Series.

Interactive as its meant to be (http://www.lacoste-future.com/en/)
To celebrate their 75th anniversary, Lacoste has created a microsite that shows what life will be like in the future. It’s a nice amalgam of embedded videos and interactive elements (try the Your Vision section). What interests me is the cross-fertilisation that’s going on here: we see PR and Events merged with Marketing and Interactive Media. (What would be really nice would be for the ‘Share Your Vision’ board to be displayed openly at a public place (like Picadilly) – like a real life twittervision.)

Barclays Streaker (http://www.bannerblog.com.au/2007/05/barclays_streaker.php)
I’ve mentioned BannerBlog before as a source of interesting ad ideas. We found this one quite amusing – simply, inoffensive, requires some user interaction (your mouse controls the streaker) and on brand (just). Nice.

Norwich Union Athletics – walk before you can run? (http://www.ukathletics.net/) vs (http://www.norwichunion.com/sponsorship/gb-updates.htm) vs (http://www.joinourteam.com/)
Norwich Union invests a huge amount in grassroots athletics and with the Olympics coming up, you would expect to see them leverage their sponsorship to get a huge amount of exposure (when I last spoke to their Marketing Director, he pointed out the return they got was not as high as you would expect). However, their exposure on UK Athletics is disappointing and subsequently they are reliant on a ream of microsites to get something out of their investment. There is some nice functionality, but I can’t help be disappointed that a brand with the gravitas of Aviva isn’t getting the most out of what is a great initiative…