The Dubs is proud of its association with The X Factor and has recently rolled out the 2012 website for FremantleMedia, working closely also with ITV.
For the last 9 years, The Dubs’ proprietary CMS has underpinned the digital experience and provided The X Factor’s production team with a simple and fast, multi-platform, content-publishing solution – able to withstand the stampede of millions of concurrent site visitors!
Good luck to our client and here’s to another great year.
The Dubs was recently commissioned by Splice to re-architect and re-design their company website, creating a more streamlined, functional and boldly-simple entity.
The new site runs on The Dubs’ proprietary CMS and allows Splice to better showcase their premium, post-production capabilities across TV, Film and Commercials.
The new Homepage layout:
The new Portfolio page layout:
The new Portfolio ‘in detail’ layout:
The Dubs is busy preparing for #MWLive2012 and looking forward to meeting some new faces at the event on June 27th and 28th.
As an official event partner, The Dubs has been helping the Marketing Week Live team plan their Social Media and blogging activity over the last few months – and knowing what we know – we can’t wait to see the buzz the show will generate!
We’re also taking part in the event’s reward scheme and planning a ‘reward’ which involves a spot of clay pigeon shooting (a Dubs tradition – whatever the weather!), bacon butties and a Social Media health check.
More on that soon…
So, if you fancy a chat about any of The Dubs services, which include:
- Strategy and Planning
- Web and Mobile Development
- Pure-play Digital Marketing
- CMS (our proprietary CMS powers The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent among other brands)
- Content Production and Creative Services
We’re sending our finest double-act: UK General Manager, Barnaby Hobbs and UK Creative Director, Siobhan Mulholland.
You can catch Barnaby and Siobhan on stand A828, that’s bang in the middle of Social Media and CMS land (and just across from Taste Italia!) – we couldn’t have hoped for a better spot!
MARKETERS expect digital ad agencies to jump through hoops on nothing more than an elusive chance that they might land their account, according to some agencies attempting to change the pitching process.
They say some marketers offer a limited explanation of their business needs in the hope the agency will write the brief for them, and the clients’ lack of direction is frustrating as agency profits are eroded.
The advertising fraternity has long bemoaned problems with the pitch process but digital agencies say the situation has worsened in the past two years as marketers have placed increasing emphasis on digital accounts.
In response more than a dozen digital agencies have worked with The Communications Council to create a set of pitch guidelines.
The managing director of digital agency The Dubs, Josh Frith, said: ”Everyone in this game wants to win business and to do that you’re expected to show your wares. And you’re almost never told who else is pitching for the business, even when you ask nicely.”
The new guide covers defining pitch requirements, the pitch process, the brief, intellectual property, copyright and assessment criteria. It suggests marketers pay a pitch fee of up to $5000 to each digital agency invited to pitch.
But that fee is a drop in the ocean. Simon Morgan, a partner at Publicis Digital, said it was involved in eight to 10 pitches a year that each cost $10,000 to $100,000. ”There is a lot of frustration that the pitch process is being used to define the actual brief. It’s just not a fair process.”
Darren Woolley, of Trinity P3, said clients needed to be clear about what they need before calling a pitch, otherwise they are ”the ultimate tyre-kicker”.
Mr Woolley said an example of a poorly run pitch came from the airline industry, which had limited all communication with those pitching for its account. ”The airline is asking digital agencies to answer the brief and upload their pitch to a website, which is an extremely bad example of how to pitch your account.”
The X Factor 2011 website has just launched and we’re hugely proud to have been chosen for the 8th year running as the official digital partner.
Once again, The Dubs proprietary content platform underpins The X Factor website, ensuring that The X Factor content teams can rapidily and simply publish and share a plethora of X Factor content with fans pre, during and post TX.
“The Dubs is a great partner agency and are uniquely positioned to provide strategic, technical and developmental solutions across our flagship brands. They are committed and enthusiastic and can be relied on to execute top quality work in highly pressured, commercially sensitive environments. Our 8+ year association with The Dubs continues to ensure that the digital offering for the largest broadcast Entertainment brands in the UK remains best of breed”.
Oliver Davies, Head of Production. Talkback Thames.
The Dubs’ technical team has worked collaboratively with Talkback Thames and ITV’s technical and design teams over the last few months in prepartion for launch and wishes all involved the very best of luck with this year’s show!
Finally – if like us you love telly and have a penchant for the web’s way back machine - visit The Dub’s Behance channel to see how The X Factor website has visually evolved over the years…
Premium UK Talent Management company Hamilton Hodell recently commissioned The Dubs to redesign their digital channels, the first iteration of the work is now live.
Hamilton Hodell represent some of the world’s most extraordinary talent including Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson, Rupert Grint and Tilda Swinton and were keen to reposition their digital offering to better showcase this vast list of clients and harness their industry insights; the Hamilton Hodell website has become a much richer destination:
The Dubs has introduced rich media CV templates for both acting talent and voice artists – these use HTML5 to optimise the showreel and promo videos for iPhone/iPad consumption:
In addition. the Hamilton Hodell website now has a seamlessly integrated WordPress blog where the Hamilton Hodell team share client news and updates from some of the world’s most prestigious industry award and cultural events:
To further enhance the discoverability of talent and content, the introduction of a simple Google site search (with a few Dubs custom-built search add-ons thrown into the mix!) allows site users to view search results from both the site pages (including the vast talent database) and the integrated WordPress blog:
So, whether you are looking to cast a movie, watch the latest Skins trailer, view Robert Lindsey’s show reel, find a way to get your fan mail to Stephen Fry, ogle the Hamilton Hodell team as babies (aww) or find out which feature films will premiere at this year’s prestigious South By Southwest (SXSW) Festival - the brand new site is well worth a visit.
The heart of our remit is to ensure ING Direct’s Australian customers get the best experience online while from a marketing standpoint our strategic brief tasks us with stitching digital into all available marketing and communications channels.
As a snapshot at any point in time you’ll find us evolving ING Direct’s website customer experience, be crafting online advertising campaigns to promote new products, or extending other channels such as experiential and direct to include tactical microsites and email marketing to maximise their reach.
And as far as we have been told we are the only agency across any marketing discipline to handle ING Direct in more than one territory.
While that speaks well for us in itself we think our duration and depth of work with ING Direct stems from the range of digital services and results we deliver for them consistently.
Following ING Direct Australia’s rebrand spearheaded by the adoption of Charles the Orangutan as brand ambassador, digital engagement agency The Dubs has moved the bank into its next phase with social media.
The Dubs has launched a conversation campaign under the moniker of “Charles Writes” via Facebook to create an emotive connection with people in social media, uncluttered by standard industry bank product messaging.
While Charles is a fictional character (and obviously an Orangutan) he gave us an opportunity to build his persona and explore human emotional aspects common to all of us, we couldn’t do that while Billy Connolly was the face of ING Direct – there’s a bit of an irony to that!
Charles Writes is not a standard marketing approach of direct bank messaging, so we crafted a back story to Charles and an ongoing story arc that will be exposed over time.
It’s about creating a suspension of disbelief, when we watch a movie or read a book we all know the characters aren’t real but good story telling still allows us to relate on a personal level with these characters. We wanted to test if this approach could be applied to Charles Writes and whether through Facebook we could generate a two-way dialogue we our audience.
We’re pleased with the response so far given the campaign premise was to test the validity of storytelling associated with the brand. It’s all been organic growth as we have not started any content seeding strategy at this point to really drive activity.
We’re seeing people are overwhelmingly sticking with us as this story unfolds. We can count the people who have unliked Charles Writes on one hand (it’s four!).
To create the character of Charles Writes The Dubs has employed the talents of a contemporary social commentator from mainstream media.
The Dubs worked with their commentator and ING Direct’s marketing team to create the ongoing story arc that is progressing through themes such as food; given food festivals are rolling out, travel; as peoples’ attention is turning to holidays in the lead up to summer, and gadgets with Christmas present giving in mind.
However, there is an underlying theme that all people can relate to – love.
During this conversation campaign, Charles is going to meet a girl and talk with the Facebook audience about things like tips for first dates or what to do when you meet the family. These are experiences about developing relationships common to us all.
Outside of the Facebook fan page at www.facebook.com/charleswrites The Dubs created a microsite to introduce Charles as ING Direct’s new brand ambassador and the rebrand launch online advertising campaign.
Charles also has a voice on Twitter with his Facebook comments being rebroadcast as tweets while associated videos are played out through Facebook and YouTube.
For more information on ING Direct, www.ingdirect.com.au
Charles on TV:
Charles on Facebook:
Charles’ dedicated microsite:
The Dubs has launched a branded conversation campaign for Tony Ferguson which sees two ‘Buddies’ share their weight loss stories in real time via Facebook.
The Buddies were chosen from a global recruitment drive across the Tony Ferguson Facebook channel – they are 100% real people with an eight week period in which to reach their respective weight loss goals. They will be sharing their daily experiences, no matter what occurs…
The content driven campaign sees daily micro content from The Buddies appearing on the Tony Ferguson Facebook wall and a weekly round up video which brings together their experiences from the last seven days - great if you miss a day of the story via the wall!
Week one has seen The Buddies tackle hunger, light-headedness and things to remember when exercising, all of which have also been covered in their week one round up video.
Importantly, The Buddies’ stories run alongside everyone else’s experiences, they simply represent one of the many extraordinary stories within the bigger picture of the global Tony Ferguson community and hope to inspire and be inspired by others throughout their journey.
Each week is unpredictable – The Buddies are real people after all, they have holidays planned, children on half term and plans involving house guests bearing alcoholic and carb ridden gifts. How will they manage their weight loss programme in the face of such distractions? We simply don’t know at this stage, which is what makes their stories so compelling.
As week two gets underway, one of The Buddies must face the challenge of a weekend in New York, her first time there. Determined to stay on track, we wish her all the best of luck in sticking to her weight loss plan and we can’t wait to hear all about it via her daily updates from the Big Apple…
We hope The Buddies reach their weight loss goals by week eight and look forward to them choosing a few festive outfits in a size or two smaller than this time last year…
Having launched the digital incarnation of the Tony Ferguson Weightloss brand in the UK, The Dubs was subsequently asked by Tony Ferguson Weightloss to create a brand engagement campaign to run on Facebook.
The Dubs created and produced ‘The Buddies’, an eight week branded content series which kicked off with a global recruitment drive across Facebook to find two individuals who were willing to buddy-up and follow the Tony Ferguson Weightloss Programme for eight weeks; sharing their weight loss stories and experiences in real time and every day, via the Tony Ferguson Facebook channel:
The Buddies series saw daily micro content from Philippa and Claudine (The Buddies) appearing on the Tony Ferguson Facebook Wall as well as a weekly round-up video produced per week which featured The Buddies in conversation; rounding up and discussing the highs and lows of their respective weeks and incorporating, amplifying and debating themes and tips touched on by the global Facebook community.
The weekly round-up videos can be viewed via the Tony Ferguson Weightloss Facebook page.
The Dubs also rolled out a BMI Checker via Facebook during the campaign period to contextually complement The Buddies series and further drive traffic between the global suite of Tony Ferguson websites and the brand’s unique Facebook proposition within the weight loss market.
Overall, the bulk of all media traffic to The Tony Ferguson Facebook page during The Buddies campaign period was via video views (The Buddies weekly videos) and per month, The Buddies was attracting upwards of 3,500 active users and an average of 5,000 views per post.
Retention of fans was also excellent, with an average retention rate of 71%. Undoubtedly there was a positive correlation between fan loyalty and new content; the more new content released, the higher the ratio of loyal fans:
