apt blog

Mike Procter - A question of sport

World cricket legend and former Gloucestershire great, Mike Procter will be hosting a Question of Sport evening in aid of the Cedars Amethyst Trust.

Mike Procter is a former South African cricket player who also played 13 years of county cricket for the Gloucestershire team. Fans jokingly renamed the team 'Proctershire' after his fast bowling and hard-hitting batting led the team repeatedly to victory.

The event will be held at Cheltenham Town Football Club on Friday 24th June at 7.30pm. Limited tickets are available, priced at £55 each. The evening will include sporting entertainment, drinks reception, 3 course dinner and an afterparty. Dress code is Black Tie. For tickets, please RSVP to Emma Logan: emma@aptmarketing.co.uk or call 01242 250692.

We look forward to seeing you there!

 

TV Adverts - why annoying jingles work!

In recent years, we've seen some fantastic adverts which are clever, intelligent and witty capturing the imaginations of the audience and cementing certain brands as key players! Compare the Meerkat, Old Spice and Lynx 'angels will fall' are all recent examples.

Despite this and the range of platforms available, it seems that a lot of companies are still going for the catchy jingles! You know the ones we mean - Go Compare is one example and as you may have seen they've had to add the main words to their advert due to the number of people that mute them; Halifax is another one and the latest company to add this to their list? -The Trainline.

They've released an advert to promote their search facility and discounts, which uses an array of strangely dressed people (watch out for the overweight man in the gold leotard) who do the 'conga' and use a revised version of the conga tune. Although somewhat amusing, the advert is highly catchy and it's certainly been in our heads for two days now!

Why do they work? The answer is simple, by using a repetitive, catchy tune, these brands ensure that your brain remembers them (we love patterns) and you end up associating it with the brand! This means whenever you hear the tune, or you're looking for the service in question, you'll remember them! - Or that's the theory anyway!

For those of you that would like to subject yourself to the latest catchy advert, The Trainline advert is available to watch below! Don't say we didn't warn you when you are humming it in a meeting later!

 

Augmented reality - Topshop trys it on for size!

Last month, you may have seen us raving about the use of augmented reality by Lynx in their 'angels will fall' campaign! This time, it's Topshop that has caught our imagination!

They've combined the latest XBOX Kinect software with an augmented reality 'fitting room' to let their customers try on clothes without actually getting changed or having to queue. Simply stand in front, hold up the clothes and it'll show you how they look!

Love the innovative use of the technology, but not sure if it'll really let you see how it will fit! Plus let's hope it doesn't work like a circus mirror and make your bum look big in this! Watch the video below to show how it works!

The importance of choosing your Twitter Avatar...

Twitter is one of the fastest growing social media platforms in the world, with over 10million users and millions of tweets each day. This week, Twitter broke it's own record, following the news of the death of Osama Bin Laden; the site experienced a maximum 5106 tweets per second and an average of 3440 tweets per second from 10.45 to 12.30pm. (Stat thanks to The Wall and full article available here...) 

With statistics that high and the potential to interact with that many people, it is no surprise that more and more users are joining! An account is easy to set up and enables the user to include a description of who they are and what they do, additional links (e.g. blog, facebook, website), as well as an 'avatar' with a picture of the person, company etc. For personal use, the avatar is arguably not that important, because your followers are likely to know you by sight and/or be interested in what you have to say. The same is true of celebrities, as their twitter handles, updates and image will all be instantly recognisible to the audience.

As a business however, you have to work hard to stand out in a crowd, developing relationships by offering intelligent insights, following the right people and offering value to those you follow and who follow you. It's amazing however just how many business users fail to get the basics right at the beginning...

A sweeping statement maybe, but from our own experience, one of THE most important things that a Twitter user can do is to pick the right avatar! Twitter forces users to pick a square image, which will be resized to 128px square. This isn't much space and it gets even smaller once you're viewing the stream - just 48px square:

It really isn't that big and a space this small makes it difficult to read text or identify what's in an unclear picture. At the moment, apt currently follow just under 1000 users, which can get confusing when we're trying to keep up with the stream! We don't want to reduce the number we follow as each user has something unique to offer, but we do want to make sure we can identify each one separately. As such, we've produced our top tips for picking an Avatar that makes a statement:

1. Choose your own picture - there's nothing worse than the default twitter 'egg'; this makes you seem like a spambot and you'll have to work harder to develop the relationships. 
2. Keep it simple - don't pick a complex pattern, a grainy or dark picture or something completely unrelated to you!
3. Don't include lot's of words - Whilst a typographic logo will work, a strapline will be too small to read and uses up valuable space. Don't bother!
4. Make sure it fits - A lot of logo's are rectangular, however the Avatar is not. Try to make sure your logo fits within the space available, even if you have to design a special twitter graphic, otherwise it looks messy!

Bonus Tip:

• Test it out - Don't rely on assuming it'll look ok, post a tweet then check how it looks in the stream - does it fit, can you read it, is it clear?

Out of our 1000 followers, here are some (but not all) of the examples that catch our eye... 

@BtoBSocialMedia
 

@visitEngland
  

@MumsnetTowers 
 

@wwtconservation 

@goodandbadpr
 

There are plenty of other examples out there and these are not all of those which catch our eye, but they are good business based avatars and they work for us!