News and blog

Gamification is the application of gaming mechanics to non-gaming scenarios. It’s a fairly new term, but the concept definitely isn’t. After all, when you strip away the buzz words, you’re left with the practice of making something that isn’t usually fun feel pleasurable and rewarding.

Welcome to the new ‘timeline’ profile from Facebook.

A dodgy Coke habit…

As all enthusiastic consumers of caramel-flavoured carbonated vegetable soft drinks will be aware, singular purveyor Coca-Cola is in the habit of creating occasional new packaging designs; to mark the festive season, for example.

It comes as some surprise then, that this year’s “white can”, so-named for its predominant colourway, has met with a near-hysterical social media response from consumers.

The Wall Street Journal continues the story:

Coke said it became aware of consumer complaints through Internet postings and some telephone calls to the company. Many Internet comments have been critical of the white cans. “PEOPLE! Don’t be a victim,” wrote one consumer on Twitter, warning that mixing up Coke and Diet Coke is “a SHOCK to the palate!”

Another person accused Coke of “trickery,” and still another called the white cans “blasphemy,” among hundreds of tweets.

Mis-steps from this colossus of the branding world are not unheard of, and one cannot help but call to mind the New Coke fiasco. Looks like a classic case of bad planning.

Hat tip to Gawker.

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More enlightenment and opinion from Madhouse, Manchester’s leading integrated marketing communications agency

We were in Brussels yesterday visiting our valued clients – and good friends – at Toyota Europe. The city was looking as festive as you would expect, given that it gave its name to one of the key Christmas vegetables, and Toyota itself was channeling the spirit of the season with its traditional illuminated tree, and slightly less traditional illuminated car.

Say hello to your digital future…

Madhouse has just hosted the latest in our ongoing series of quarterly seminars.

This one was entitled “The Future of Digital” and once again a packed house full of the agency’s friends and clients came together  to find out where our industry is heading.  The key question at this session was “what we can expect from  the digital world over the next two, five and ten years?”

Joining us to gaze into the crystal ball was digital expert Andrew Gordon, who talked the audience through a range of topics, asking thought-provoking questions and helping everyone to focus on the bigger picture.

Digital media are completely reshaping the world in which we live and particularly the marketing industry within which we, here at Madhouse, work. We often get asked by clients what the differences are between this “new” digital realm and the traditional one that everyone knows and understands. In response, we thought we’d bring you a series of short blog posts about what digital means for the different areas of our business. To kick us off, planning director Clare Briscall talks about what digital means for planning.

As a high-flying advertising executive you naturally use LinkedIn, don’t you? Of course you do. But wouldn’t it be great if someone from LinkedIn could give you advice about how to get the best out of the site? They have!

A select team of Madhousers brave enough to be photographed in hard hats and safety shoes was recently dispatched to the Burnaston Toyota manufacturing plant to witness the genuinely fascinating spectacle of a car being built from (cough) scratch. We were present as machines as large as some city centre flats pounded (in the most precise sense of the word), rolled and trimmed vast coils of steel into instantly recognisable Toyota body panels. We oohed and aahed as Jurassic-like robots set about welding panels together to become cars. We were even let into the secret of how the Indiana Jones theme is helping Toyota build cars more efficiently.

Last week a UK telly bigwig had a go at advertisers in a high profile RTS convention speech (tis the season, after all) over the current perceived lack of creativity in broadcast commercials. It’s interesting, even shocking, that a media owner would take this stance publicly, presumably at the risk of alienating their own customers: the folk with the media budgets.

While perusing the Mashable website this morning, I stumbled on a very interesting article about how the iPhone is now for – how can I put it? – old fogies.