March 9, 2010 - by Gary Peace

Work with us

We’re always looking for great talent.

Our people at bellamyhayden works across all disciplines – not just the traditional ‘old-school’ channels. You will need to be competent in thinking about how brands can live across all communications channels – advertising, direct, digital, events, PR, word of mouth. You get the idea.

A solid understanding of how media works is essential, as well as a thirst for exploring new ways brands can connect with people.

If you think we might be suitable for each other, contact Gary to arrange an appointment.

Thanks for visiting our site.

This article is posted in AGENCY

Comments (0)

March 6, 2010 - by Stuart Carr

Connections planning under the lens

Here is an interesting presentation about connections planning (bellamyhayden’s core discipline) I recently came across.

I disagree that connections planning isn’t working. What the presenters describe as connections planning, is really just bad media planning.

Whatever you want to call it, the solution they propose is to focus on quality insight generation. I agree the insight is the most important output in the connections planning process – it is for all forms of strategic planning.

But the quality of insights comes down to the ability of the individual connections planner, rather than to connections planning as a discipline not allowing for meaningful insight generation.

Interested to know other points of view.

This article is posted in BRAND PLANNING

Comments (0)

February 22, 2010 - by Stuart Carr

Why should we support the enemy?

What I don’t like about this tagline is that the NAB is asking consumers to help solve a problem that they themselves should be fixing : a category-wide perception of banks’ untrustworthiness.

Signing up to fair banking rather than to fight unfair banking, might’ve been ok.

What’s worse, on initial glance the tagline suggests the copy will be about how the NAB is leading the charge against unfair banking; the copy has nothing to do with it. Instead, it’s full of self-serving product features. Click here to read the copy.

Not till the very end does it say, “Your signature is a vote for better banking” – in my opinion this should be the first sentence within the copy, preceding and not following all the product features. That way I would’ve had a better sense that they care about anything but themselves.

And then I might’ve cared too.

This article is posted in BRANDS / CASE STUDIES / EFFECTIVENESS

Comments (1)

February 18, 2010 - by Stuart Carr

The bellamyhayden Adventure Session

Every month at bellamyhayden, an individual member of staff is chosen to perform a randomly selected “Adventure Session”, taking the adventurer out of his or her comfort zone.

The premise of the Adventure Session is that exposure to a variety of new stimuli or new experiences, helps breed divergent thinking. This thought was inspired by Dr Amantha Imber, friend of bellamyhayden and Head Inventiologist from creative thinking and innovation consulting outfit, Inventium.

Last month, Hobbsie was tasked with using photography and the power of visual imagery to tell a story, which became “A weekend in the life of me”. Next month, Sungi gets to spend a day with a media owner.

But this month, I was forced to commit myself to taking a dancing lesson. Not my usual type of gig.

Of course, it is difficult for me to isolate how much more divergent my thinking became, though it certainly gave me a burst of positive energy – one of the ingredients to thinking more divergently – as can be seen from the video above, my presentation back to the agency.

This article is posted in AGENCY / CREATIVITY

Comments (0)

January 27, 2010 - by Stuart Carr

Managing expectations

This is what can happen when you try to make a crap product sound better than what it is :

This is what can happen when you put the same product on the market, but tell everyone how crap it is :

Second ad

Click here to view the entertaining product description and the numerous ‘questions and answers’ that ensued.

The considerably greater interest from prospective customers reading the second advertisement shows how powerful a simple management of expectations can be.

This article is posted in CASE STUDIES / EFFECTIVENESS

Comments (0)

December 23, 2009 - by Stuart Carr

Domino’s caters to daytime drunks

I must admit, I got excited when I heard about the new Domino’s oven baked sandwich range.

But after slamming down a few schooners one night, I was nothing short of disappointed when I discovered these grease infestations are available at lunchtime only.

Who would seriously consider eating one of these things, sober?

Note to Domino’s : isn’t an all-out assault on the late night kebab (and roving taco truck) market, a given? Especially during the silly season.

This article is posted in BRAND EXPERIENCE / BRANDS

Comments (0)

November 11, 2009 - by Mr Corbett

Hammertime in Sydney

As many of you may know Mr. MC Hammer is in da house here in Australia. Not in his role as voluminous panted mainstream rap star of the 80’s but as a modern day social media guru. Last night he was the guest speaker at the Social Media Club Sydney event at UTS in Sydney and he proved himself to be a highly intelligent and articulate champion of social. Hammer was originally being brought over by Xbox live to promote it’s new singing game Lips: Number One Hits which of course features Hammer’s chart topping hit ‘U Can’t Touch This’. However Iain McDonald co-founder of leading digital agency Amnesia Razorfish tweeted Hammer (who is the 14th most followed person on Twitter) and convinced him to appear at the social media shindig (Iain and Hammer have a history…but that’s another story…). But as for last night, Hammer proved himself to be an absolute star when chatting about topics such as the role for social media within society, how brands can and should behave in social, why being in social is imperative to successful brands and his personal guidelines for product endorsement. We here at bellamyhayden are huge advocates of social as a platform to build terrific brand experiences and here are a couple of gems from Hammer’s talk last night.

#1 for any progressive brand it is vital to be active within social so that you can always be at ‘the centre of the flow of information’. This enables you to act swiftly around any positive or negative buzz around your brand and either explode the positive or mitigate the negative before it becomes an issue to worry about. As a brand Hammer’s advice is simple – don’t let anyone else tell your story. Being at the centre of the flow of information means that you are perfectly positioned to tell your story…and interject when someone else starts to.

#2 face the facts. Whether we like it or not (and often we don’t) the consumer perception trumps our reality. As a brand we just have to get over that – and importantly don’t run from it but stand and get engaged and start dealing with it. We have to put behind us the belief that the ‘truth will come out’. More often than not it won’t so we need to get active. I couldn’t agree more with this! There was much more great stuff from Mr. Hammer but this post is already too long. But if you would like to know more about what he chatted about then please just email or call me and I’ll give you a fuller debrief on the words of the great man.

This article is posted in AGENCY

Comments (0)

September 7, 2009 - by Kathryn Smolen

Create a resonating message: is this the next “wicked sick” ad?

You may have heard of the “wicked sick BMX” bicycle story – two guys bought a standard BMX bike for $27.50 off eBay, and then turned around and sold it for $134.50 simply by writing a kick-ass description that catered to the BMX crowd.

This flat in Brisbane appears to have used a bit of the same concept by posting a “wicked sick” photo. Similar to the BMX bike, word of this flat has gone viral (Stu was kind enough to pass along word of this flat in all agency viral email… And he used to say house hunting was tedious.)

Interestingly the property has received 16,076 visits to-date on the website, in addition to all the extra exposure in the viral email. By comparison, similar properties in the area have generally received not more than 2,000 visits.

No rocket science here, but have an interesting or provocative message and you can increase your reach and possibly your sales via WOM. It will be interesting to see the final sell price if it’s reported.

Note, the picture above is no longer up, but there are some bedside photos to whet your curiosity.

This article is posted in AGENCY / DIGITAL

Comments (2)

August 14, 2009 - by Mr Corbett

An open letter to 'Cotton On Kids'

I find your range of t-shirts for babies that bear the slogan ‘They Shake Me’ insensitive, moronic and highly offensive.
You then make matters worse by issuing a cookie cutter corporate response to potential consumers that have taken the time to offer their thoughts and feelings on the (unsavoury) matter. Please allow me to offer a little free advice…
This issue will not just go away – if you are thinking you can ride it out then I am afraid you are sorely mistaken. Seven out of ten people use the internet as their primary channel for research pre-purchase – this stain on your brand is front and centre and impossible to miss for anyone even considering you in the future. Unfortunately you have already made a monumental error of judgment with this pathetic slogan that tries to make light of child abuse. This has damaged your brand and this damage will live on the web forever and a day. The only thing you can do to try and mitigate this is to very publicly apologise and get the product out of circulation. Then make a sizeable donation to childrens’ charities across the land.
To all of you at ‘Cotton On Kids’ you must remember this; you are only ‘in the right’ if your consumers say you are. You are never ‘in the right’ just because you think you are. Your brand is what we say it is, not what you say it is.
If I was you I would get cracking and try and salvage something resembling dignity out of this mess.

This article is posted in AGENCY

Comments (3)

August 13, 2009 - by Mr Corbett

Irony is alive and well…

…and living on a sticker in a public toilet in Sydney. Oh I know it’s childish to laugh at this…but the pleasure I get from this sticker is Max to the Power of 10! I just look at this sticker and in my mind I play out all the possible scenarios…They printed all the stickers THEN realised that they had the terrible spelling mistake? Or did they stick them all up and then, on the last one, see the glaring typo?What I know for sure is that they didn’t notice the error by people telling them on their website..because the URL is wrong as well!! Best sticker EVER.

To the stickerer…I say less outrage and paranoia and more spelling practice.

This article is posted in AGENCY

Comments (0)

March 9, 2010 - by Gary Peace

Work with us

This article is posted in AGENCY

March 6, 2010 - by Stuart Carr

Connections planning under the lens

This article is posted in BRAND PLANNING

February 22, 2010 - by Stuart Carr

Why should we support the enemy?

This article is posted in BRANDS / CASE STUDIES / EFFECTIVENESS

February 18, 2010 - by Stuart Carr

The bellamyhayden Adventure Session

This article is posted in AGENCY / CREATIVITY

January 27, 2010 - by Stuart Carr

Managing expectations

This article is posted in CASE STUDIES / EFFECTIVENESS

December 23, 2009 - by Stuart Carr

Domino’s caters to daytime drunks

This article is posted in BRAND EXPERIENCE / BRANDS

November 11, 2009 - by Mr Corbett

Hammertime in Sydney

This article is posted in AGENCY

September 7, 2009 - by Kathryn Smolen

Create a resonating message: is this the next “wicked sick” ad?

This article is posted in AGENCY / DIGITAL

August 14, 2009 - by Mr Corbett

An open letter to 'Cotton On Kids'

This article is posted in AGENCY

August 13, 2009 - by Mr Corbett

Irony is alive and well…

This article is posted in AGENCY

Categories

Archives

Our Library