X Factor idents // TalkTalk gets consumers involved.

As advertisers and marketers, we're always looking for new ways to stand out and to engage with our consumers. One way of achieving this is to allow our consumers to be front and centre, to indulge their need to be the centre of attention.

Self-curation has been a growing theme recently as both production and media planning processes become more streamlined. We're opening up new realms of possibilities; consumers now more than ever are quite literally at the centre of our comms. 

There is also an interconnectivity of media that is becoming more prevalent as the underpinning of large campaigns, where you can track the communication journey quite clearly from online to broadcast media and often, back into online.

TalkTalk is one brand that has taken this approach, creating a series of templates on which consumers can drop their own images/video and broadcasting these as idents around X Factor programming.

Here's just one example of an ident submitted by a viewer and broadcast during the programme:

According to Creative Review, TalkTalk has seen a 40% ROI increase year on year since they began their sponsorship of X Factor. Not a bad result.

Southern Comfort // Whatever's Comfortable.

Every now and then I'll see an ad which is such a simple demonstration of truth and taps into a human aspiration so cleanly that my reaction is found in just one word, "brilliant".

There's something about this ad that you just can't help but love. And what I love about it is the way that it helps marketers understand what us advertising agency folk are always trying to say. Create a brilliant, engaging and insightful idea and let consumers decipher and allocate this within their own lives.

The aspect of this character that we aspire to isn't his big beer belly or his tiny swimmers, it's the strut in his walk that says "yup, here I am". All of a sudden the feeling of confidence and self ease that we desire is within reach, just a grog shop away in fact.

Watch it and enjoy it. A great effort by 

New York