The Marketing Week: our roundup of the week’s winners and losers

CAMPAIGN OF THE WEEK

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOdwlff_2Zs

Ebay is to launch its first global brand campaign. The aim is to put its brand top-of-mind in the run-up to Christmas and reassure customers that it offers a ‘trusted, modern marketplace’ following a cyber attack that affected 145 million of its customers earlier this year.

The campaign, entitled “Shop the World” will launch in the US on Monday (13 October) before rolling out to the UK a week later (20 October). Developed in partnership with Goodby Silverstein & Partners it aims to show how anything – from a music festival to a marathon to a film screening – can inspire consumers.

GOOD WEEK FOR…

Native advertising

Putting aside the debate on what native advertising actually is for a minute, what is not in dispute is that people are using it. The latest Internet Advertising Bureau UK Digital Ad Spend report found marketers spent a fifth (20 per cent) of their digital display budgets on native content in the first half of 2014. There is no period on period comparison available as the IAB and report cohorts PwC have never quantified spend on native before but 20% is a pretty impressive headline never the less.

BAD WEEK FOR…

Lego

Lego has ended its more than 50-year marketing relationship with Shell after coming under sustained pressure from Greenpeace. The environmental charity targeted Lego in protest against Shell’s decision to drill in the Arctic. It created a YouTube video entitled “Everything is not awesome” showing a Lego Arctic landscape being drowned in oil that has so far received more than 6.2 million views globally.

Greenpeace activists also targeted the Legoland theme park in Windsor by dressing up as Lego figures.

Lego initially resisted Greenpeace’s campaign, with chief executive Jorgen Vig Knudstorp saying the charity ought to be talking directly with Shell rather than “using the Lego brand”.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Red Bull gets its wings clipped If you can’t handle shocks you should probably sit down. Apparently Red Bull doesn’t actually give you wings. The energy drink company has agreed a $13m settlement in the US after a class action accused Red Bull of false advertising. In the suit, Red Bull drinker Benjamin Careathers alleged the company had misrepresented the drink’s ability to improve performance and increase reaction speed. Despite consuming the drink since 2002, he claims he has seen no boost to his athletic prowess.

Red Bull claims that its marketing has always been “entirely truthful and accurate”, but that hasn’t stopped it agreeing to the settlement. The decision means that, pending court approval of the deal, anyone who purchased a can of Red Bull between 1 January 2002 and 3 October 2013 in the US could receive either $10 in cash or $15 worth of Red Bull products.

Facebook opens its mobile app ad network to all

Be prepared to start seeing even more Facebook ads in apps from other publishers. The social network has rolled out its “Audience Network”, which serves ads on third-party mobile apps, to all mobile app developers and publishers.

Advertisers will be able to use Facebook data to target ads in the same way as they can on the social network. That, it claims, leads to better returns, with Walgreen seeing click-through rates increase by up to five times and reach increase 5 per cent after it trialled the service. The social network hopes this will give it the edge over Google’s AdMob and Yahoo’s Flurry as it looks to take a bigger cut of the mobile ad market.

ONE TO WATCH

Amazon gets physical Amazon was supposed to signal the end of bricks-and-more retails but now the online shopping giant appears set to make a foray into the world of physical retail with the opening of its first store in New York. According to the Wall Street Journal the shop will open in time for Christmas and would act as a warehouse and hub for same-day deliveries in the city, product exchanges and customers collecting online orders.

Perhaps most interestingly, Amazon is also looking to use it to showcase its tech, including Fire tablets, set-top boxes and smartphones and Kindle e-reader. Amazon wants to convince more people to buy its devices to lock them into the Amazon ecosystem. People that own one spend more on shopping on Amazon, as well as on its digital services such as video and music streaming.

While the New York store will be an experiment, if it proves successful as a marketing tool it is likely to be replicated. It marks a major shift for Amazon and an interesting move for the online giant. More and more pureplay digital players are heading into the physical world, with eBay launching click-and-collect points in Argos in the UK last year.

TWEETS

@JSP – VP of Digital Brand and Innovation at Nike on winning

Winning with family, that what it’s about. Not winning to defeat, but winning to achieve #digimob #familia #thatlifeshit

@AdlawUK – head of law at Wragge LG on Beats’ guerrilla marketing strategy

Incredible ‘ambush’ strategy from Beats – build your brand into athletes’ pre-performance rituals so they’ll resist rights-holder pressure

@m_bertozzi – ‎president of audience on Demand EMEA and North American Client Services at VivaKi on how hackers should channel their efforts

Dear incredibly clever hackers – can you pour your energy into dark web of paedophiles? Rather than corporations – just for a while maybe?

@nwalley – MD of Decipher on articles professing the future of TV:

Too much TV futurology is being written by people who can barely grasp the present let alone understand the future. #nowology

@Jamesaconnelly – CEO and founder of Fetch on the by-gone days of social media

Why do all tweets and fb status now have links and pictures to them. I miss the good old fashioned 140 characters of mindless mindfulness.