The Kindred blog

Friday Favourite - the Mills & Boon Pinterest page

This week, our Community Manager, Jenna Yhearm, gets all hot under the collar about a visual feast from a classic book series.

What it is:
The newly launched Pinterest board from Mills & Boon UK.

Why we love it:
• It isn’t boring. We’ve been keeping a close eye on brands using Pinterest and this is one of our favourites. It’s fun and certainly doesn’t take itself too seriously.
• It’s a guilty pleasure. Most of us would be too embarrassed to read a Mills & Boon on the Tube in the morning, so by optimising its presence on social media, particularly Pinterest, it’s started the process of breaking down the associated taboo.
• It’s ballsy. It embraces the reader stereotype and rolls with it. It’s not afraid to say ‘Hey! We love half naked, hot men’. I have only admiration for this kind of boldness.

Got your own #FridayFavourite? Let us know.

Living below the breadline

By Hattie Fitzgerald, Senior Account Executive

We’re a pretty keen bunch here at Kindred, but I don’t think any of us have starved for our clients before. However, that all changed when three of us took part in the ‘Live Below the Line’ challenge for Christian Aid.

To raise awareness – and funds – for global development charities last week, hundreds of people around the country attempted to survive on £1 a day. 

Everyone knows that the days preceding a launch can be a stressful time, but we decided to take on this challenge the week before unveiling our pop up shop for Christian Aid, whilst sourcing 20 celebrity gardening tools, arranging a photo call and launching a major national campaign to highlight Christian Aid Week. 

If anyone else is thinking of taking the ‘Live Below The Line’ challenge next year, and I’d recommend it to anyone, the one piece of advice I’d give is that Tesco value 11p noodles will be your friend. Buoyed up on a diet of the aforementioned noodles, porridge (made with oats and water), huge quantities of rice, a surprisingly tasty 23p jar of sweet and sour sauce and a multitude of glares at our cake-eating colleagues we made it through the week and raised over £1,500 for Christian Aid.

Many thanks to everyone that sponsored us and to the entire agency for giving up their snacks for our weekly company meeting. If you’d like to make a donation then you can right here.

Stay tuned for more news on the Christian Aid shop or if you’d like to visit it before it disappears, then pop down to 63 Broadwick Street before Saturday.

Below: Team Kindred (left to right: Katie Peden, Clare Richardson and Hattie Fitzgerald)

Milking it with Vinnie Jones

Our ‘make mine Milk’ team have been very busy for the past few days, announcing the new face of the campaign – none other than footballer turned Hollywood hardman, Vinnie Jones.

Vinnie will be fronting a series of bus-side ads – sporting a milk tash – under the headline ‘you know what’s good for you’. If you see one, take a picture and tweet it to @makemineMilk and you could win an exclusive prize.

The PR push behind Vinnie has already generated over 150 pieces of coverage, including this lovely piece in The Sun.

We’ve also got a raft of social media content going out, including this behind-the-scenes video:

…And a series of short films called ‘Vinnie’s Advice Corner’ – written, directed and produced by our in-house creative team. Here’s the first one, which was in the top 5 of YouTube’s comedy chart earlier on today. Enjoy!

Have we got cheese for you

Following the launch of our National Anthem for Cheddar campaign last week for the British Cheese Board, we were absolutely over the moon to see it at the centre of a three-minute conversation on Have I Got News for You on Friday night.

It’s up on the iPlayer until Friday 18 May, so if you’re reading this before that date, click here and flick to 16’15” in.

We particularly enjoyed Paul Merton’s cheddar-fuelled rendition of God Save The Queen.

Friday Favourite - IKEA Space for Rent

This week's Friday Favourite comes from our Senior Digital Strategist, Georgina Goode, and it's a cracker from IKEA in Australia.

What it is:
An opportunity for customers to rent out space in their own homes to ‘accommodate’ an IKEA catalogue. A great idea to ensure the catalogue is a permanent fixture of a person’s home, whilst reducing waste (no doubt a secondary objective).

Why we love it:
• It’s a smart concept. IKEA get to keep their catalogues in your home longer = more sales; products are accessible for longer; less wastage and re-printing costs; all whilst building a loyalty scheme of customers who will spend their ‘rent cheques’ in-store
• It works with IKEA’s overarching philosophy – using space cleverly and efficiently
• The execution of the campaign works really well across all channels

To find out more watch the video below and don't forget to tweet us your favourite bits of content with #FridayFavourite

Creating a national anthem for Cheddar

Kindred’s British Cheese Board team launched a new initiative this week to help find a new national anthem for the nation’s best-loved cheese, Cheddar.

The campaign kicked off with Sussex choir, Vivace, singing a re-worked version of Jerusalem with some cheesy new lyrics, and the search is on to find more contenders. So if you’re an aspiring songwriter or just generally a cheese lover, click here for more details.

The Sun and BBC Online have already picked up on the story with lots more coverage to follow – watch this space!

Is coding the new ‘mind mapping’?

By Max Wright, Strategy Director

Are you old enough to remember mind mapping?  I am. 

I have a clear recollection of being sent on a course with the promise that this experience was going to take my creative powers to a whole new level.  In fairness, it was helpful for improving my idea generation but it failed to instantly transform me into a creative god.  And, looking back, I never really needed to be. 

I am a strategy person with some understanding of creativity and creative processes.  My job is to help kick start that process, not to do it all. 

Of course, I’m capable of creative thinking and I’ve even had the odd good idea over the years but I prefer to leave that to the specialists, to the people that use the right-hand sides of their brains more than I do, to the people with qualifications and with years of experience in idea generation and in executional craftsmanship.  Once they develop ideas, my job is to critique them and see them through the eyes of their intended audiences.

Recently, I’ve seen lots of books, articles and blog conversations around the blanket notion that ‘everyone in agencies should learn how to code’ and a mini-industry has sprung up offering training courses to ‘learn code in a day’.    There’s even a Google Code University and various online academies. It’s all part of the trendy industry movement towards ‘making things people want’ rather than ‘making people want things’.  If only marketing was as simple as that platitude.

It’s almost as if some people and some agencies have become bored of being expert communicators.  Maybe they secretly believe that coding might lead them to becoming the next Zuckerberg. 

The implication is that we can no longer do our jobs without making things with code, that we will be more creative once we understand it and that the world will suddenly become a brighter place.  It’s only a matter of time before people start printing ‘get some HTML in your life’ t-shirts and parading around industry events.

I’m happy to admit that I’m not planning on attending one of these courses any time soon.  It’s not because I’m already a digital ninja or that I already understand the coding universe, it’s because I don’t think I need to. 

I don’t think that my limited knowledge is holding me back.  In fact, it does the opposite.  It makes me ask questions and collaborate.  In reality, Kindred has a gang of people that truly understand coding; they have masters degrees in computer sciences and expertise in the kind of mathematics that I can’t even spell correctly.

For me, it’s great to have empathy with what your colleagues do and if learning some coding helps you do that, I’m all for it.  In my case, ignorance helps me so I’ll stick to my day job and work on the strategy bit and in developing the strategic end of the big ideas, leaving it to the experts to actually make the best possible content in whatever type of code acronym they fancy. 

(N.B. No mind maps were harmed in the writing of this post.)

Friday Favourite – John Peel’s record collection

Welcome to the first of a new feature on the Kindred blog.

The Friday Favourite will involve a member of our team picking out what they see as the best piece of content knocking around on the internet at the moment, and a quick rundown on why they love it.

This week, Chris Duncan – one of our Senior Strategy Planners – is going crazy for the online showcase of John Peel’s record collection.

What it is:
Sections of the legendary late John Peel’s humongous vinyl collection are being displayed online by an Arts Council-funded project called The Space.

Click here to have a look and select ‘record collection’ (you may need the Google Chrome web browser to do this).

Why we love it:
• It’s authentic. The site allows you to believe you’re leafing through a genuine labyrinth of dusty, damaged old LPs
• It’s immersive. One hundred records are being added to the online collection each week
• It’s inspiring. Knowing over 60,000 pieces of vinyl can be kept and catalogued offers hope to hoarders everywhere

More details here.

What’s your favourite piece of content at the moment? Tweet us @kindredagency with #FridayFavourite

BAFTA hires Kindred

As you might have seen in PR Week or in The Drum, we’re delighted to announce that the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) has appointed Kindred to raise awareness of its learning and events programme.

BAFTA is the UK’s pre-eminent independent charity supporting, developing and promoting the art forms of the moving image, and its learning and events activity aims to support film, TV and video games professionals and inspire the talent of the future.

Our role is to help raise awareness of this work and encourage participation in it.

This will include promoting the 200+ masterclasses, expert lectures and initiatives that form part of BAFTA’s year-round line-up. We’re also handling publicity for the BAFTA Young Game Designers competition, which launched on May 1st, where 11-16 year-olds can design their own video game and win the chance to have it made.

The campaign launched this week, and we’ve already generated coverage with The Guardian and teen site Sugarscape.

Much more to come so watch this space!

Making the most of your social media mouthpiece

By James Honess, Account Executive

In many ways, writing online is the same as writing offline. You have to believe in what you say. And what you say has to be interesting.

But there are differences.

This isn’t a guide to community management. This is about engaging with your audience online and knowing how to keep them interested in your brand.

Woody Allen said “80% of success is just showing up”.  You’ve got your platform. People are listening. Just don’t lose them with drivel.

[Note: this blog will refer to an unnamed fictional soup in examples]

Know your audience
From tone to content, your audience will determine what you write. A post promoting a product aimed at teenagers, for instance, would be written differently to a product aimed at men in their 20s who like sport. It’s about finding something that makes them tick.

Soup aimed at kids:
If you could share a tin of soup with any pop star, who would it be?

Soup aimed at men who like sport:
Little known fact for you – Lionel Messi has a tin of tomato soup once a week. So, naturally, we’re discussing his best ever goal. Thoughts?

Variety
Variety, they say, is the spice of life. An age-old boring cliché but it lends itself to social media perfectly. Take the film Jaws. Even if it’s your favourite film, you’ll grow tired of it if you watch it 25 times in a week. It will lose its charm. The same can be said with posting and tweeting. Keep people on their toes. Throw in a few curve balls. Mix it up a bit. I guess that’s why they made a Jaws 2, Jaws 3 and Jaws 4-The Revenge.

The age of instant
Right or wrong, this is the age of instant news and information. Meeting someone with a good attention span is increasingly rare. As a social media writer, being able to react quickly to what’s going on in the world is essential. Topical posts – even if they are about the weather, it being a bank holiday or the fact that it’s National Take Your Mum to Work Day – will score well with people following your brand.

Think about building a relationship, not selling a brand
Difficult one, this. You are, of course, selling a brand. But the beauty of social media means it has become more of a personal interaction; a two-way conversation where you become the face of a brand. There’s nothing worse than a hard sell. It’s a guaranteed turn-off. Spot the difference:

Hungry? Buy this soup – it’s amazing and you won’t be hungry any more.

Andy from Stoke sent us a photo of his favourite meal. Chicken soup & crusty wholemeal bread. What’s your favourite soup / bread combo?

Make it scannable
Anything written online needs to be scannable, short snippets of information so that even at a glance the message is clear. Big blocks of text are a turn-off and it won’t hurt to include an image, either. The trick is to make it easy to digest.

Written to be shared
Three magic words. Call. To. Action. Everything you write must encourage ‘likes’, re-tweets, comments and shares. That’s what it’s all about after all. Put yourself in your audience’s shoes - would you be happy to share it with a friend?

And finally…
No LOLs. And keep these to a minimum: :-)