IS THIS THE BEST STREAMING SERVICE!

March 31, 2020 Team Soho Advertising, Creative

Depending on your entertainment preference, age, tech device owned and other factors, that is most likely to be your statement. With the Corona pandemic shutting down the whole world near enough, once the wellbeing of your loved ones is sorted, the essentials for surviving this is food and toilet paper (see last post). Also high up on the survival list is going to be good entertainment for all the first world countries to see through any boredom. With that in mind, which streaming service is the best? May the battle for the remote commence.

There are too many providers to do a real deep-dive, choice is at a high with still more broadcasters and independent companies looking to launch a video-on-demand subscription service. With brands recognising that the advertising opportunities lay more here than in terrestrial TV, it makes too much sense and just as desirable for them also.

It all comes down to content though, and who has the best. This could be subject to the rose tinted lenses the viewer may be wearing, but once you get past whose licensed content from the TV networks and movie studios you prefer, it then comes down to who has the best original content. That is the game changer.

This brings us to the big four, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and Apple TV+. Arguably, Disney+ has the richest franchises with them owning Marvel Studios, Pixar, all their original Disney cartoons and movies as well as the Star Wars franchise. Certainly gives the original content on Netflix a run for its money, though Netflix’s new Party feature which allows you to link up with friends and host long distance movie nights and TV watch parties should help fend off their rivals. But with both Amazon and Apple pumping millions in to their original content, the streaming wars are set to get interesting, with all looking for your subscription money and bingeable consumption.

It’s a shame all production is at a halt right now, but for understandable reasons. I guess we’ll have to wait till things return to some sort of normality to see who has the best streaming service over the next few years and who will be king by the end of this decade. This is going to be great for consumers, and brands.

CREATING THROUGH CORONA

March 16, 2020 Team Soho Advertising, Creative

What in hell is going on in the world right now?The Coronavirus has reaped havoc on a world scale that hasn’t been seen in a very long time, if ever.

The markets have crashed, companies have had millions, if not hundreds of millions wiped off their value, and there has been multiple sporting events cancelled due to the pandemic. One of these has been the English Premier league, who on Friday gone cancelled all games until the 4th April after Arsenal’s head coach was diagnosed with the virus. This follows a shutdown from near enough all of the European leagues as well as the leagues in Asia, America and a few in South America. Not only football, other sports have suspended games and events until further notice. Absolutely crazy.

What we have been told is to wash our hands amongst other bits from Boris Johnson and the World Health Organisation, and those effected should place themselves in a 2 week in-house quarantine, isolating themselves from family and friends. This is all well and good but what about work?

The creative industry has been deeply affected. Record labels have seen their artists live shows cancelled for the forthcoming months as festivals and organisers take precautions. TV and film have been disrupted just as much, as many productions have shut down temporarily as companies safeguard those employed on projects. A lot of these however are self-employed contractors. Even advertising and online content creators have been hit hard, with a number of them reporting jobs with big brands have been cancelled or postponed for weeks.

How will the creative industry create its way through this turmoil? Well, social media and group chats are certainly giving it a go with many memes and informative jokes reporting on the state of society as we navigate through this. Only time will tell how the production companies, advertising agencies and content creators get back on their feet. In the meantime we urge all to be safe, responsible, please wash your hands, and ask yourself, how much loo roll do you seriously need?

CORONAVIRUS: WHEN A DISEASE SOUNDS LIKE YOUR BRAND NAME

February 3, 2020 Team Soho Advertising, Creative

Imagine setting out your strategies for the third and fourth quarter of the financial year and feeling very optimistic, then from nowhere a viral epidemic of global proportions breaks, and it sounds like the name of your brand. What do you do?

Sounds like the plot from a Netflix Original right? Wrong, as this is the scenario that Corona beer has faced since the start of 2020. Well the first thing is to get your PR team off their well paid derrière and start earning that retainer they’re on.

As the internet starts to hear more about the Coronavirus sweeping China and now spilling on to the rest of the world, Google analytics have shown that searches from around the world seem to be mistaking the virus with the popular Mexican beer. Ouch!

This has definitely got to be one of the worse things that can happen to a global brand as the financial and brand damage can be huge. So what now? Well, once the press release was sent out letting worried consumers know that the virus has nothing to do with drinking their product, Grupo Modelo, the owners of the beer, decided to have some fun with the branding. They definitely win banter of the year as they look to change the packaging from Corona Extra to Ebola Extra, a play on the 2014 virus that swept West Africa. Rumour also has it that they’re gearing up for a multimedia campaign too with the cheeky slogan, “I’m doing great. I’ve got Ebola.” LOL, you’ve got to love it.

HOP OUT THE FYRE AND IN TO THE WATER

January 23, 2020 Team Soho Advertising, Creative

As the New Year resolutions begin to fade out, and the motivation to make this year ‘the best year ever’ personally and professionally for most, we in the office got to talking about if when people say all of this, they really mean for themselves, or the company they work for?

Well one man that was willing to do anything to ‘succeed’ for the company he once worked for is Andy King. Remember him? The guy that was literally willing to ‘suck the seed’ out of a customs official in order to get drinking water for the failed Fyre Fest? Well, Andy didn’t have to in the end, they released the water but the Festival had bigger problems as we’ve come to now know.

Well it’s all water under the bridge, but for Andy, water continues to be part of his life as Evian have partnered up with him. As it is the one year anniversary of the Netflix Fyre Fest doc that Andy featured in, the water company has released a special water bottle in honour of the ‘team player’ which is superbly branded with the slogan, “So good you’d do anything for it.” Absolute liberty, but funny at the same time.

Could the idea behind this collaboration set the precedence for 2020 and this decade where we’ll see other big brands using viral moments or the personalities in them as content or marketing angles to get their products and services out there? Should we expect those who had 15 minutes of fame to be back for 15 days more?

Soho Pixels is going to go out on a limb here and predict that this decade is going to be the most creative to date for advertising, content and marketing, and we are so looking forward to it!

TOP BOY TO TOP BRANDS

September 30, 2019 Team Soho Advertising, Creative

It has been a little over 3 weeks since season 3 of ‘Top Boy’ has been released, and what an impact it has made culturally and socially. Ask most people if they know who Dushane and Sully are, and we’re confident they’ll say they’re characters from ‘Top Boy,’ as everyone and their aunt seemingly has watched it. The gritty urban drama has certainly ventured out further than just to a predominantly black audience this time around, and for good reason.

More than just gangs, guns and drugs, the well thought out script and narrative focuses on the human element of impoverished London, touching on the socioeconomics and family, or lack of, as to why kids get drawn in to this murky world. Being released 6 years after season 2, season 3 has fully been embraced by social media with memes and captions of clips and dialogue regularly being seen in tweets and posts on the time line; with “Daily offender, crazy Eastender,” being one of the prominent ones, as said by Modie (played by newly crowned Mercury Award winner Dave) during his jail break scene.

Having waited 6 years, it seems like everyone is already craving Season 4, so did Netflix miss a trick here by releasing all 10 episodes in one go? Yes we realise this is their business model, but had they released an episode every week, it would have been a brilliant 10 weeks of ratings for Netflix as each episode left you on a cliff hanger. This leads to our train of thought at Soho Pixels on brand partnerships with this drama franchise, or at least the huge potential of it.

So with the anticipation of Season 4 already on everyone’s lips, will it equate to big brand synergies for this urban drama, or will the violence and reference to drugs and gangs scare them off? My question is, what’s the difference in the violence to say a ‘Game of Thrones’ episode? What is the difference to gang and drug reference that a number of the ‘James Bond’ movies had? Oh wait, let me guess, they’re fictitious characters right? Well, one show centered around true life events featuring gangs, drugs and violence was the BBC’s critically acclaimed series ‘Peaky Blinders,’ yet this hasn’t stopped brand endorsements and even a festival put on just recently in the shows honour.

All it takes is for one big brand to be brave and attach themselves to what is shaping up to being an iconic TV show. Cool adverts or clever content pieces for product placements could be very lucrative for both the show and any brand. Maybe the real problem is the brand execs are scared about ROI and paying Sugar his money if the show flops. Tell them don’t worry, it won’t, and he’s dead!

WILL HIDING THE LIKES HURT YOUR BRAND?

July 10, 2019 Team Soho Advertising

You hear the stories constantly of online bullying amongst the teens, with it sometimes creeping in to adult interaction. So this new user option is a design by the tech giants to help curb issues that may lead to mental health and possible social-media addiction.

Although it is only being tested at this stage in certain countries (New Zealand, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Canada, Australia and Ireland), what could the long term ramifications be for so-called ‘Insta-bloggers’ and self-made ‘influencers’ who always use the lines, “make sure you subscribe and like…” when introducing or exiting their content pieces? It is being engrained in to society that we must ‘like’ posts that we watch.

A lot of these self-made influencers rose to prominent exposure due to views and likes as their clips went viral. Now although views are not part of the testing, it can be argued that it goes hand-in-hand with the likes, no? Most users are more likely to re-post or even view content by firstly looking at how many likes it has, or possibly the views. How then will we get the next great Insta sensation if we don’t see how many ‘likes’ their post gets? Some sceptics reckon this is a subtle way of curbing the mass production of trash content so that only those with real ability and talent will get seen. Somehow I don’t believe Instagram care or are that calculated.

Although we understand that this new proposed feature will not affect brands and is more designed for the everyday consumer, what if Instagram decided to roll this out across the whole platform, how do you think your brand will cope without the world seeing how many likes your post received? Yes you have the metrics on the backend for your marketing analysis and what not, but to the average consumer, as mentioned, they may only be looking at engaging because they have seen or heard how many likes your content piece received, which can sometimes be a talking point in itself when being discussed and reviewed on media outlets.

So far, early indication suggests it is having a positive effect on test users in Canada. It will be interesting to see if they roll it out to the UK for testing, and if it gets the full green light across the platform as a whole. For now though, the brands and influencers that we like, we can still see that we do.

IS URBAN THE CURRENCY?

July 1, 2019 Team Soho Advertising, Creative

With Stormzy recently headlining Glastonbury over the weekend, and a host of other urban acts performing at what is known as a predominantly ‘guitar/rock band’ festival, is urban culture the preferred go to in our society?

Music, film, sports, fashion, no matter where you look in popular culture, you can’t help but notice major influences that can be traced back to urban culture. Even in ad land when marketing to consumers, brands have certainly leaned towards an urban makeup within their content. With Nike releasing their iconic ‘Nothing Beats A Londoner’ advert last year, featuring the crème de la crème of the urban music and social influencer scene mixed in with notable Nike ambassadors, it seems their closest rivals Adidas have pulled from the same creative pool with the launch of their new kit deal with Arsenal Football Club.

The £300 million kit deal was launched today with a clever ad paying homage to when Arsenal used to wear an Adidas kit in the 90’s during a more successful period for the club, whilst mixing conversation back and forth with the current players and a few legends like Tony Adams and Ian Wright. What was striking though, was that the voices of the current players that featured in the promo were substituted largely for ones with more urban slang and expressions, making the ad on trend, and had it stand out like Nike’s ‘Nothing Beats A Londoner.’ Being a London team in the heart of Islington Borough, It wouldn’t sound foreign to hear local youth talking with the dialects and slang used in the ad. Check it out for yourself https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VLZeTOID0jU .

Where Adidas were spot on, other brands have certainly failed in trying to incorporate urban culture, whether it be the language, fashion or even mannerisms. This can make or break hitting your intended target as authenticity is very important when using and targeting an urban audience.

We predict we will see many more urban driven campaigns from major brands over the next five years as pop culture continues to gravitate towards all things urban, as the key purchasing demographic continue to be influenced by the urban culture.

FOOD AND PORN, NOT A BAD IDEA

May 7, 2019 Team Soho Advertising

Knowing your market is always key to a business. In the case of this sandwich shop, food and sex may well be on the mind of their customers, so why not combine the two to come up with this memorable name. The branding may face a few copyright issues but great idea nonetheless.

Depending on the nature of your business, your name can be the first point of advertising. When our creatives get to planning a production we always look at the option of basing any content around the name of our client’s business to coincide with the reason they chose that name. This can be a compelling strategic story, which at times can play in to a great connection between their brand and their audience, which can be represented beautifully with visual content, and therefore a long lasting marketing strategy.

RAYS OF SUNSHINE CHARITY x TOMMY MALLET FOOTWEAR

May 1, 2019 Team Soho Advertising, Creative, Video

It was an absolute pleasure working with Tommy Mallet and Fredi Hilton on the Rays Of Sunshine Charity & Tommy Mallet Footwear Collaboration to produce this promo content.

Check out a snippet of it here: https://www.instagram.com/p/BwtlimoHPcX/?utm_source=ig_web_button_native_share

For similar or any other visual content surrounding your brand, advertising and marketing needs, please get in contact with us.

#SPContentRULE4

April 23, 2019 Team Soho Advertising

Listen, it never hurts to check in with your inner-creativity just to make sure you’re still on track with your goals every now and then. Just make sure it’s an ‘inner’ conversation and you’re not muttering it out loud on public transport on the way in to the office like me today. 🤦‍♂️ Lol.

Oh, and make sure you leave a voice note for every idea you come up with, no matter how small! #SPContentRULE4

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