Cleaner, greener boat engines

Brazil secured some more excellent primetime TV coverage for Honda again last week – talking cleaner, greener boat engines on GMTV! The story ran six times during the morning, resulting in more than four minutes national TV coverage for the client.

Iggy Pop-ular

Iggy Pop is to be named a ‘Living Legend’ later this year by the Marshall Classic Rock Roll of Honour. News of the honour mentioned his punk rock roots, hits such as Lust For Life and The Passenger, and of course his role this year in adverts for car insurer swiftcover.com, and in particularly the kerfuffle over the fact that swiftcover.com did not insure musicians when the ads first aired – they do now, by the way.

Being at the sharp-end of swiftcover.com’s PR this year, Brazil has seen first hand the response to Iggy’s advert, some of which has been ‘mixed’, to put it politely. Some fans are outraged, suggesting that Pop has sold-out, whilst others actually get the irony of the proto-punk rocker selling car insurance.

Some woefully uneducated people don’t know who the man is and don’t like the fact that Iggy’s naked torso is invading their prime time TV. It is unclear whether they are jealous of the 62 year old former hell raiser’s muscled physique, or just desperate to get on with the next episode of Midsomer Murders.

The controversy has been the subject of much media comment and opinion on artists selling-out and the art of selling, citing everything from ex-Sex Pistol John Lydon’s butter advert to American comedian Bill Hick’s oft-quoted: "If you do an advert then you are off the artistic register forever."

Recently comedian Sean Hughes included a rant in his stand-up show about Iggy selling-out by selling car insurance, although Hughes was even more unhappy about Stephen Fry doing the voice-over for the red telephone in another insurance ad. This was all included in a newspaper story about Hughes’ string of London dates, presumably to drum up ticket sales?

Being slagged off by a comedian must rank as some achievement in seeping into the public conscious, so as far as swiftcover.com advertising is concerned, that’s job done. Sales for swiftcover.com have increased substantially this year, partly as a result of the adverts, and many of those who have moaned about the ads have been prompted to check out swiftcover.com and have been swayed by the low cost insurance on offer.

Iggy himself isn’t really bothered, telling French news that he enjoyed the ads and didn’t give a sh*it about the controversy, whilst his latest album Preliminaires has sold better than any Iggy Pop album of recent times.

And now, even better than being named a Living Legend, Iggy as been immortalised as a Lego Rock God in the new Rock Band video game.

So, with all this activity and coverage, Iggy Pop must be inline for some kind of award as man of the year, and the inside word is that the man himself is the happiest he has been for years. Anybody that has a problem with this should take Iggy’s advice in the swiftcover.com ad, and ‘Get a Life’!

Introducing Alfie

For a preview of the new 118 118 advert click here

Honda UK and Brazil Partner With Traackr To Launch The Honda Insight

What does a major car company do when launching a brand new model at a time when car sales are at an all time low and communications budgets are slashed?Honda UK decided to use this very gloomy environment to take its first steps into Social Media.

The result?

The best yield possible on their communication dollars.

Traackr Builds Honda's Top Influencer List
Honda UK and their forward-looking PR agency, Brazil, understood that the first step in any successful Social Media campaign is finding the right people to engage. Traackr's proprietary influencer search and qualification technology was used to uncover a targeted list of Top Influencers driving conversations around hybrid vehicles, alternative energy, the environment, and green technology.

Traackr not only uncovered unconventional and valuable influencers, but also gave Honda UK a clearer understanding of what types of conversations would impact their launch as well as where those conversations were taking place.

Traackr's technology also demonstrated that many clean energy online opinion leaders were actually based outside the UK, which led Honda and Brazil to develop a coordinated international PR effort to engage these individuals.

Honda UK, Brazil and Traackr Collaborate To Build Honda's Influencer Engagement Strategy
As part of its influencer report, Traackr tagged influencers by location and topics of interest, as well provided detailed information on what conversations each influencer was most interested in.

While Brazil led the development of a highly customized communication plan catering to specific influencers, Honda UK coordinated across countries, and continents, to make sure internationally-based influencers would be reached.

Data Backed Engagement Proved Highly Effective
As Brazil and Honda UK launched into the execution of their influencer engagement plan, Traackr provided weekly performance reports, allowing Brazil to instantly see the successes or failures of their approach.

Based on these reports, the engagement strategies were adjusted, re-executed, and re-measured on a regular basis.

Traackr's reports showed that mentions of the Honda Insight among the top influencers increased by 300% during the engagement campaign and estimated online coverage increased by 675%!

Insight Launches And Overtakes Prius As #1 Hybrid Car In The UK
The ultimate results of this campaign were wildly positive. Even with very little mass-market spending, the Insight launched as the top selling hybrid in the UK.

For more on the campaign results and find out what influencers said about Honda, read the full story here.

Dance like a rockstar

Air guitars at the ready, as a new viral campaign created by Brazil for swiftcover.com hits the web.

Fancy seeing yourself dancing like a rockstar? Try the new viral here.

Love your ISA

Brazil client Principality Building Society has just launched a new regular saver ISA. Its impressive 5 per cent interest rate helped score some great coverage on Love Money’s Love it or Loath it programme which you can see here

Building Bridges

Brazil scored its first coverage in China for client Pinsent Masons, the international law firm. Brazil led the PR for the announcement of the new Hong Kong Zhuhai-Macau Bridge - a 29km (18 mile) bridge which is expected to cost $5.47 billion. Construction of what will be the world's second largest bridge will commence at the end of this year and is expected to be completed in 2016. The announcement included the appointment of Pinsent Masons to lead a consortium of law firms to provide legal services for the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge project.

Brazil was responsible for gaining international media coverage, with a specific brief to generate articles in the international press and Asian and European construction journals. If you can read Mandarin please see the article on the bottom left of the page above.