For most companies £1 million would be a dream marketing budget, so what would you do with £10 million at your disposal? Would you plump for all-out media saturation and leave no promotional stone unturned or would you blow it all on hiring Peter Jackson to direct one outrageously elaborate advert? The mind boggles. Here are just some of our ideas!
Hire the Big Kahunas
It’s amazing what a famous face can do for sales and with a budget of £10 million, you could afford to hire an entire ensemble. Back in 2006, Marks and Spencer’s went for a whole host of famous faces including the incredible vocal talents of Dame Shirley Bassey for their Christmas campaign. Lavish and sexy, the advert could have leaped right out of a James Bond film and cost as much (in the region of £2 million). Whether you go for an entire cast or one legendary figure, you better hope you hire appropriately. (Who ever thought beer and a prune-like Jean Claude Van Damme was a good match?...)
Play the long game
Alternatively, you may wish to hang fire and refrain from throwing all your marketing eggs into one basket by releasing a string of viral adverts over time. Cadbury did very well with this marketing ploy by releasing a series of small viral ads between 2007 and 2009 called Gorilla, Trucks and Eyebrows. Admittedly, Cadbury’s had a far bigger budget to play with but viral adverts work best with simple ideas that needn’t cost the earth. While the Cadbury’s ads featured very simple if slightly odd concepts, two of the three employed a certain amount of CGI which is why they may have stopped at three ads. But at a third of that price, you could release many viral ads over time, perhaps with a theme i.e. one each season or calendar event. So long as you stuck to one medium, you wouldn’t be forcing your message down people’s throats.
Annihilate the media
Then again, if you’d prefer to follow in the footsteps of some brands and reach every advertising nook and cranny then £10 million is the way to do it. Why buy one foghorn when you can buy a thousand? You may get on the wick of every potential customer but you can guarantee your business will get noticed! This appears to have worked for Aleksandr the meerkat and Co in the ever-present campaign for comparethemarket.com. The previous dreary format decided it needed a furry Russian reboot in the form of cute companion website comparethemeerkat.com to tie-in with the market/meerkat wordplay. With a string of adverts, spin-offs and meerkat merchandise - Aleksandr even has his own biography!) there’s no escaping the campaign which can only be a good thing (for business at least...)
Until you have the marketing budget of your dreams however, find out how you can make the most of your current one with our help. Opportunity Marketing offers a range of marketing strategy services to help you in promoting your business; while our marketing implementation services allow you to watch your ideas become a reality!
Author bio: Opportunity Marketing is a strategic marketing consultancy that offers marketing strategy development and implementation. Opportunity Marketing helps businesses to clearly define their offering, their target market and the key purchasing drivers for their products or services.
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