Blackmores brings the community together

As I'm doing the #bsrf10 half again this year I always like to track how the event is doing. Looking back at the last two events, the online campaign is growing in participation, much of the tone is around support and below is a snapshot from last year's event.

- Training product recommendations
- An online product sales component with a free training singlet
- Registration that assists the user to chose their appropriate event in the SRF
- An online fitness training calendar (tailored to the user's chosen event in the SRF)that delivered a training calendar (provided by the event Personal Trainer)
- 'Ask a Trainer' facility
- Dynamic content (feeding from the BSRF09 Twitter account)
- Course maps and videos

The campaign for Blackmores Sydney Running Festival 2009 was the most successful to date in terms of online engagement, as shown in the comparative data between 2008 and 2009.(Google Analytics)


• Visits increased from 46,626 to 89,433
We did not see an increase in new visitors to the site from the previous year, but we did see double the amount of visits. This demonstrates that we achieved our goal of improving the level of engagement race participants experienced on the site. Much of this can be attributed to the training programs offered – 10,000 people signed up for personalised training programs. This figure represents nearly 1/3 of all race entrants.
• Page views increased from 211,727 to 243,934 (+15.21%)
• A recommended new URL strategy for this years’ site. This helped push a 1046% increase in search referrals from the previous year. (20,661 referrals > up from 1,802 referrals in 2008).

New tools and resources were added to the site to help attract more visitors to the site and engage them more effectively. We also used social media tools to create Blackmores Sydney Running Festival communities.

• Embedded video allowed runners to view live footage of themselves crossing the finish line. The videos were watched a total of 127,957 times. This clearly demonstrates the viral power of online video, as a total of 32,007 people actually ran the race, but they used the Blackmores training site videos to relive their race day glory with friends and family an average four times each!



I think this year will again see a good result or as runners say: a PB

Happy running and good health

157 Mobile App Stats You Should Know About

Check out this SlideShare Presentation: Finally someone who knows what they are talking about regarding mobile apps with some great stats

157 Mobile App Stats You Should Know About

View more presentations from stuartdredge.

Let's analyse this a bit closer, how about sod off!

I saw this and laughed out loud and then thought about it for a split second as I really didn't want to over analyse it too much as I could have fallen into the same trap but it's so true in advertising land we have all these people who some how complicate and look into every tiny detail - humour sells stuff make me laugh.

Social Media is the business

Love this

I saw this and I thought it was wonderful called "Digital Orca" a sculpture in Vancouver by Douglas Coupland. To the viewer simple yet playful and all things combined that I love; art, digital, and killer whales

End of the road for digital

I read this last week and I found it fascinating and have replayed this question many times on my long runs home and it's a question that Martin Bailie head of planning at glue Isobar put in a intro to a whitepaper he has written he states: 'we wondered what would happen if we banned people from talking about "digital", "social", "viral", "mobile", "ATL", "BTL" and "TTL". As an exercise, it's revealing. What do you sell to clients? What do they buy? What do you "make"? What do planners talk about all day? Well I know, lots of people would be scratching their heads from agency folk to marketing departments on how to communicate to people in the real world.Like the picture I reckon they would turn green and turn all spooky. Many seem to forget that these channels are just that, channels or platforms to reach people. they are not the execution and I agree with much of what Martin said. A thought; next time you pitch an idea - decide on the channel once you get the idea. Ooooh! I'm turning green, I feel dizzy.
The full article is here

Curse them all- especially the ref

Something the boy's did at Bullseye after Australia was knocked out off the World Cup - we thought 'curse them all 'was very apt, as football fans we can all feel the pain when our beloved side gets beaten, the English are going through it right now, poor bastards (I think even some of the Aussies felt for me on that one or was that a wry smile from Rod in the corner?)

This type of work is a great tester for the creative department in that you have to work very quickly and the creative still has to be sharp, and from the digital side the collaboration between the creative and development is paramount.

Well done Rod (Liverpool) Brian (ManU) and Steve (West Ham) for their work and effort, shame England didn't deliver the same commitment.