Pedigree Chunks!

John V Willshire on February 14, 2009

Welcome to Pedigree Chunks! The Friday afternoon update feeding you with fresh meaty morsels from the world of media, created and collated by the litter of new grads here at PHD. Every Friday we will be bringing you innovative, entertaining and pioneering creative work we have encountered during the week.

The Grads! X

St Bernard dogs delivers FTs to City and media workers

In a brilliant example of bringing outdoor media to life, the FT showed great reactivity to the recent inclement weather by taking their creative from the 48 sheets and onto the white streets of London. As reported in this week’s Marketing, FT distributors were found walking their iconic St Bernard’s, handing out glasses of brandy to passers by….<Tom Dyson>

Perkonomics

Perks and Upgrades are a traditional concepts of rewarding loyalty and interest amongst customers. Recently this appraoch has been evolving to capture, not just the pockets, but the imaginations of an audience. Offering sufficient perks often requires the ability to partner with other products or services which strengthen the bonds between company and consumer. As a result the brands with the best partnering skills, and therefore access to the best exclusive offers, will win. The major benefits of ‘Perkonomics’is the ability to attract first-time customers as well as deepen established customer loyalty.

Examples include Hotel Perks for Mercedes Drivers, where in the U.S drivers of Mercedes cars are entitled to exclusive benefits at partner hotels through Mercedes’ Destinations program. The location of these partner Hotels is integrated into the built in Sat Nav systems inside the cars.

The best way to approach Perkonomics is to dream up genuinely interesting and unexpected benefits and privileges that will delight your clientele. Loyalty strategies today have no chance of long term success unless they respect the customer’s increasing desire for autonomy and are premised on trust. The only way you attain those qualities in a relationship is to base it on transparency and cede a degree of ownership and control of the brand to the customer….<Tom Parry>