Gravy834 - Online Marketing, Advertising, & SEO Mumbo-Jumbo

So here’s a great ad from a great brand;

But are these latest adverts good enough to put Cadbury’s up there with the truly iconic brands, like Nike, Levi’s, Guinness and Sony Playstation?

Each have had amazing TV ads that get talked about and help increase brand awareness, but each ad was somehow related to the actual product. In the case of Cadbury’s, the link is to “a Glass and a Half Full of Joy”, which obviously comes from the production process of the chocolate, but I don’t think it’s enough to really improve the brand status.

There’s a lot of ‘what the f***’ comments out there. Don’t get me wrong, I love the ad, it’s very entertaining and I’ve sent it on to friends and family but it really needs to be more related to the product in order to make Cadbury’s ‘cool’ as there’s no sense of “if I eat Dairy Milk I’ll be able to body-pop my eyebrows”. This is where Levi’s shone with their naked guy in the laundrette ads and set the standard for a new generation of great ads.

Random ads, are they simply too random, so much so that they actually harm the brand? Just take a look at the previous 2 Cadbury’s ads (Gorilla and Airport Trucks), have they swayed your views of the brand?

P.S. The music from the Cadbury’s Eyebrows advert is “Don’t stop the rock” by Freestyle

gravy834 Branding advert, Branding, cadburys, eyebrows, tv

Most people are now aware that here in the UK the VAT rates were reduced in December from 17.5% to 15% in 2008 to help consumers combat the credit crunch. However as a retailer you could be losing out on thousands of pounds in lost revenue this year if you’ve incorrectly set-up the reduction on your e-commerce site. Let me explain:

Some retailers are simply applying the reduced rate to the shopping basket by applying a 2.5% discount to the total value.  It seems right to do this, but many fail to realise that this is actually a reduction on the original VAT rate as well as the product value.

Wrong:
I go to buy an Apple iPod Touch (32GB) which retails at £269.98.  At the basket the 2.5% discount is applied and I only pay £263.23. I save £6.95, wahoo!

This is great for the consumer but bad for the retailer;

Right:
The same iPod Touch is worth £229.78 to the retailer + 15% VAT which means the actual RRP is £264.25.

Now that’s a difference of £1.02 in lost revenue! It may not seem like much but this VAT reduction is in place for the whole of 2009, so that lost revenue will quickly add up.

Times are hard enough as they are, don’t make it even harder than it needs to be!

gravy834 Ecommerce, Online Retail Online Retail, reduction, shopping, vat