… and how it could have been done better

January is a busy time in the office – the last of the Christmas season campaigns have completed and, in all but a very small proportion of cases, all the follow up activity and debriefing has taken place too. 2007 is now truly out of the way…however, there’s also 2008 to deal with.

This, of course, means a whole new round of pitching, client meetings, year planning. Here at Hotcow we’ve been doing just that with much activity being planned for our existing clients and a whole host of new brands coming on board. These include representatives of the fashion, TV and drinks industries and the year is already shaping up to be exciting.

We’ve already been working on the Bee Movie DVD release and as the Spiderwick Chronicles this year as well as negotiating partnership deals elsewhere – so we’re off to a good start so far.

On a cautionary note, this year looks set to be at least partially defined by brands attempting to scale their budgets in the face of the worldwide economic uncertainty (yes, it does affect practically everything!). Of course, we’ll be there to help with our research helping clients to align their budgets and projected outcomes.

On another front we’ve noticed that Unilever UK is launching a brand new health drink in the shape of Slim.Fast Hunger Shot. Backed by a £3 million marketing campaign it seems to have the potential to do well…and if Unilever approached us we have a few ideas of our own as to how some of that money should be spent.

For starters, we’d create a spoof campaign based around a podcast based on the McFest programme – dieting shouldn’t be a tiresome, difficult affair. It should be portrayed as fun and healthy…hence the use of humour. Elsewhere we’d run a campaign based within shopping centres (after all, it’s likely to be women that are the main purchasers of these drinks and women shop considerably more often than men – whether from necessity or desire) using dwarf actors to portray the new smaller size packets and bikini-clad girls with the slogan “Slim Fast Like Me” emblazoned on their costumes offering samples to the general public – whilst a clued up ground team would be offering advice and encouragement, again, a mixture of the aspirational and amusing. A combination we tend to like here at Hotcow. Anyway, that’s just for starters…£3 million buys a lot of ideas.

We’ll be keeping you up to date with the comings and goings at Hotcow HQ on a weekly basis, so check back soon for the next update.