Guess the cartoon character with Lego

These print ads for Lego are by German ad agency Jung von Matt.

They've created a series of ads called 'Imagine' that feature minimalist interpretations of some of the best known cartoon characters.

See if you can work out which is which:

Some hints for you:

Revolutionary Gaul
Underground Martial Arts
On the Street
A Nuclear Family
Not North of the Playground

IronmongeryDirect shortlisted in ECMOD Direct Commerce Awards

Our client IronmongeryDirect has been short listed in the ECMOD Direct Commerce Awards this year.

According to ECMOD (Every Channel Mastered Optimised Delivered), 'The Awards have spearheaded the recognition of business excellence for organisations engaged in direct-to-customer retailing across traditional and newly emerging channels. With categories designed for those targeting sales to businesses as well as for those selling to consumers, these unique awards also seek to celebrate the achievements of businesses of all scales and at all stages of development.'

Well done and good luck in the awards on 27th March.

New insight into the best online advertising formats

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) has recently completed an international piece of research into online advertising which highlighted that brands are benefiting from bigger online display formats.

The 'Size Matters' study was carried out in the UK, the US, Europe, Australia and South America over a period of almost two years and collected data from 770 campaigns.

The results showed that billboard formats outperformed other online advertising including more recent display formats such as wallpaper and half page, as well as the more traditional ones, such as MPU, banner and skyscraper. Formats were analysed according to five criteria: aided brand awareness, online ad awareness, message association, brand favourability and purchase intent.

The Billboard format performed significantly better across some criteria, scoring three times better in terms of ad awareness and twice as better for brand favourability than wallpaper, the second best format of those measured.

The Wallpaper format offered the highest brand awareness against all other formats and was five times better than the average in terms of message association.

However, not to be left out, the Skyscraper format was the most successful in the purchase intent metric.

Tim Elkington, IAB director of research and strategy, commented, 'The industry can only benefit from the new large display formats, as both brands and consumers seem to be excited by them. The findings from the Size Matters study highlight the advantages of formats like billboard and wallpaper.'

To find out more about online advertising you can find interesting insight on the IAB's website however some of it is only available in full to members.

Stunning staircase at School of Arts

This beautiful staircase was designed by Tétrarc Architects for the School of Arts in Saint Herblain, France. They link two floors within the School of Arts - the 'red conch music and dance theater' on the first floor and an exhibition space located on the second floor.

The project was finished in 2010, however we felt that this stunning design was worth a mention.

Photography by Stéphane Chalmeau 

The secrets behind email marketing revealed

B2B Marketing, the online community for B2B marketing experts, has unveiled its latest Benchmarking Report on email marketing.

The report, which is produced in association with Circle Research, provides a comprehensive insight into the trends, attitudes, metrics and investment in email marketing by B2B brands in the UK.

The research polled 250 client-side marketers on methods of email marketing that provided the best results to boost the performance and success of emails.

Joel Harrison, editor of B2B Marketing, said, “Despite the growth of social media and concerns over inbox overload, our latest benchmarking report has found that email still continues to be a critical weapon in the armoury of B2B marketers.”

Results found that the three key factors that influenced success were Subject, Subject Line and Data.

The research looked at various areas including usage and frequency of email marketing, email marketing budgets and allocation, database relevance and accuracy, ROI and measurement as well as use and performance of email marketing.

You can download a report summary by clicking on the link below or click here to go to B2B Marketing to puchase the full report at a cost of £150 - it looks like invaluable reading!

B2BM Email Marketing Benchmark Summary.pdf (1461 kb)