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Greetings once more - your favourite supplemental GAD fest is back again, taunting you with prizes you probably won't win like a carrot in front of a donkey. If you didn't love it, you wouldn't keep coming back.
Something a little different this time, in that this competition actually requires you to think a little rather than splatter your 'artistic' daubings on a banner :) What we'd like you to do is come up with some ways in which Special Reserve could promote themselves effectively. Bear in mind we haven't exactly got the backing of the Sultan of Brunei, we'd like you to drop us a few ideas on how best to get across the fact that Special Reserve are cheap, reliable and have a wide product range.
This could be improvements to ways we currently run things, new product ranges you think would appeal to our customers (bear in mind we currently sell rather a lot of stuff - see left sidestrip), new exciting ways to advertise our existing offers or just any ideas that have been floating round your head. Is there some range of products you just can't get hold of that would be perfect for us to sell? Let us know!
Post your ideas in this thread and we'll announce a winner at around the end of February, let's say the 27th. The best suggestions will win whatever prizes we give them, most probably yer standard £25/£50 GAD prize.
(And before anyone brings it up, yes we do think about this stuff ourselves, but we wanted to see what you lot think as well. So button it!)
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And the winner is..... phi11ip, for the following suggestion:
"Here's an idea, and if carried out correctly could be very beneficial. I've got a nice example too just to prove to you just how beneficial it is. www.staghosting.com was a free hosting service set up last year with the intention of boosting the ratings of a a few sites belonging to a company, one of these sites was www.actiondays.co.uk. Basically, unlike your free hosting, this hosting only offered hosting to domain names, you get 200MB disk space and 4 Gig bandwidth a month, you can upload from any connection unlike Freeola. So basically the company which has nothing to do with hosting has just set up a hosting site, sounds stupid doesn't it? What the requirements of this free hosting are though is that you must display a couple of small text links on your site, on mine you can see them on the links section on the side of the page. Google counts each link as a 'vote' and increases the pagerank of the site in question meaning that it shows up higher in searches, I see you've got 'cheap games' pretty much sorted but you don't show up anywhere when 'PS2 games' is typed in. If people were to display these text links on their sites it would soon make you appear high up on the search results. www.actiondays.co.uk was absolutely nowhere when it started, it had a low pagerank and didn't appear on searches. Have a look now though and you'll see that searching for 'corporate event' on Google.com returns the site as number 2 out of 6,500,000. Think about it. You've already got the hosting capabilities, all it would require is a server and someone to monitor the sites every now and then to make sure the links are there."
Congratulations and well done to everyone who entered.
Something a little different this time, in that this competition actually requires you to think a little rather than splatter your 'artistic' daubings on a banner :) What we'd like you to do is come up with some ways in which Special Reserve could promote themselves effectively. Bear in mind we haven't exactly got the backing of the Sultan of Brunei, we'd like you to drop us a few ideas on how best to get across the fact that Special Reserve are cheap, reliable and have a wide product range.
This could be improvements to ways we currently run things, new product ranges you think would appeal to our customers (bear in mind we currently sell rather a lot of stuff - see left sidestrip), new exciting ways to advertise our existing offers or just any ideas that have been floating round your head. Is there some range of products you just can't get hold of that would be perfect for us to sell? Let us know!
Post your ideas in this thread and we'll announce a winner at around the end of February, let's say the 27th. The best suggestions will win whatever prizes we give them, most probably yer standard £25/£50 GAD prize.
(And before anyone brings it up, yes we do think about this stuff ourselves, but we wanted to see what you lot think as well. So button it!)
---------------------------------------------------------
And the winner is..... phi11ip, for the following suggestion:
"Here's an idea, and if carried out correctly could be very beneficial. I've got a nice example too just to prove to you just how beneficial it is. www.staghosting.com was a free hosting service set up last year with the intention of boosting the ratings of a a few sites belonging to a company, one of these sites was www.actiondays.co.uk. Basically, unlike your free hosting, this hosting only offered hosting to domain names, you get 200MB disk space and 4 Gig bandwidth a month, you can upload from any connection unlike Freeola. So basically the company which has nothing to do with hosting has just set up a hosting site, sounds stupid doesn't it? What the requirements of this free hosting are though is that you must display a couple of small text links on your site, on mine you can see them on the links section on the side of the page. Google counts each link as a 'vote' and increases the pagerank of the site in question meaning that it shows up higher in searches, I see you've got 'cheap games' pretty much sorted but you don't show up anywhere when 'PS2 games' is typed in. If people were to display these text links on their sites it would soon make you appear high up on the search results. www.actiondays.co.uk was absolutely nowhere when it started, it had a low pagerank and didn't appear on searches. Have a look now though and you'll see that searching for 'corporate event' on Google.com returns the site as number 2 out of 6,500,000. Think about it. You've already got the hosting capabilities, all it would require is a server and someone to monitor the sites every now and then to make sure the links are there."
Congratulations and well done to everyone who entered.
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You'd stab your mate in the back right? Literally.
Notorious Biggles wrote:
> Get Tony to assasinate Tony Blair whilst wearing a Special Reserve t
> shirt.
I'll do it :-D
> Get Tony to assasinate Tony Blair whilst wearing a Special Reserve t
> shirt.
I'll do it :-D
First of all an affiliates scheme would be a good idea.
But you could take it a step further. SR could join up with another website as an affiliate. Like CDWow.com that way you could earn some from getting your users to buy CDs from them, and they could direct people to you for games instead of selling them themselves. Perhaps books as well through BOL.com or somewhere. Lingerie through figleaves.com. A strategic partnership as it were.
Or go the whole hog and sell CDs and more DVDs online yourself.
Many other affiliate schemes around, kelkoo, dealtime, themutual.net (I like that one a lot) which get lots of people using them.
Make it easier for kids to order by joining up with splashplastic.com. That way they can order online for themselves. Most kids don't get a debit card until at least 16.
More advertising. That's how I found out about SR, through an advert in N64. An advert on TV at the right times would help.
Sponsored links on search engines. You do realise that you don't even make it into the top 100 sites on MSN when you search for computer games? Or google. Although you do have a sponsored link on Google, the interest bar on it is only half way. Yet you are far more games related than dabs.com is. However I see that some other Inter Mediates subsidiaries have better interest bars. Could there be some sort of conspiracy to shut down SR?!
Discounts to certain groups would help. Royal Bank of Scotland for instance offers 10% off of stuff from HMV if you order over the phone and have one of their youth or student accounts. Lots more banks out there.
Bus shelter adverts. Near schools. If a thousand kids see a poster advertising SR, some of them are going to check it out. Or even on the buses themselves.
You could do a sponsorship. I'm sure Gradprix would love it if you sponsored Ferrari or someone. And only £30 million or so. But seen by over a billion people mind...
Product placement. Bit less likely this one, but get someone on Hollyoaks to buy something from SR.
More stores. Yeah, I know, must be within easy driving distance of the M25. Surely there is more areas that could do with a store in that area? Not only do you just have the shop trade you also raise the whole profile of SR.
An occasional little notice sale day. Like when I know that an anonymous competitor has something half price, I tell some mates.
It would take a bit of work to get it set up, but you could sell second hand games online. Someone walks into an SR shop, buys a second hand game, gets swiped at the till, it comes off the website. Someone buys it online and a member of staff goes and gets takes it off the shelves. Drop it into a padded envelope and post 50 of them at the end of the day.
A way of generating more word of mouth advertising. Like referrals. I persuade 10 folk to join up and I get a free full price game, like a GAD.
Work on the reddies scheme. I have enough for a free gift at the moment. But I don't really want any of the free gifts. But if I could swap more of them for something better, instead of being able to get a few free gifts, I'd maybe buy something else on impulse to get up to 20 reddies and get a free game or something like that. Perhaps based on money spent rather than items bought would be a good idea, as it would encourage sales of higher value items as opposed to low value items. And I imagine you have better margins on a Maxx PC than on a Sold Out range game.
Get Tony to assasinate Tony Blair whilst wearing a Special Reserve t shirt.
Gerrod's idea of a porn star would work as well. Have the SR splat over her baps on the front page of the Sun and bingo, 3.5 million folk have just heard of you.
Bottom line is that the main techniques are:
affiliates
word of mouth advertising
media advertising
loyalty schemes
discounts to certain groups
special offers
But you could take it a step further. SR could join up with another website as an affiliate. Like CDWow.com that way you could earn some from getting your users to buy CDs from them, and they could direct people to you for games instead of selling them themselves. Perhaps books as well through BOL.com or somewhere. Lingerie through figleaves.com. A strategic partnership as it were.
Or go the whole hog and sell CDs and more DVDs online yourself.
Many other affiliate schemes around, kelkoo, dealtime, themutual.net (I like that one a lot) which get lots of people using them.
Make it easier for kids to order by joining up with splashplastic.com. That way they can order online for themselves. Most kids don't get a debit card until at least 16.
More advertising. That's how I found out about SR, through an advert in N64. An advert on TV at the right times would help.
Sponsored links on search engines. You do realise that you don't even make it into the top 100 sites on MSN when you search for computer games? Or google. Although you do have a sponsored link on Google, the interest bar on it is only half way. Yet you are far more games related than dabs.com is. However I see that some other Inter Mediates subsidiaries have better interest bars. Could there be some sort of conspiracy to shut down SR?!
Discounts to certain groups would help. Royal Bank of Scotland for instance offers 10% off of stuff from HMV if you order over the phone and have one of their youth or student accounts. Lots more banks out there.
Bus shelter adverts. Near schools. If a thousand kids see a poster advertising SR, some of them are going to check it out. Or even on the buses themselves.
You could do a sponsorship. I'm sure Gradprix would love it if you sponsored Ferrari or someone. And only £30 million or so. But seen by over a billion people mind...
Product placement. Bit less likely this one, but get someone on Hollyoaks to buy something from SR.
More stores. Yeah, I know, must be within easy driving distance of the M25. Surely there is more areas that could do with a store in that area? Not only do you just have the shop trade you also raise the whole profile of SR.
An occasional little notice sale day. Like when I know that an anonymous competitor has something half price, I tell some mates.
It would take a bit of work to get it set up, but you could sell second hand games online. Someone walks into an SR shop, buys a second hand game, gets swiped at the till, it comes off the website. Someone buys it online and a member of staff goes and gets takes it off the shelves. Drop it into a padded envelope and post 50 of them at the end of the day.
A way of generating more word of mouth advertising. Like referrals. I persuade 10 folk to join up and I get a free full price game, like a GAD.
Work on the reddies scheme. I have enough for a free gift at the moment. But I don't really want any of the free gifts. But if I could swap more of them for something better, instead of being able to get a few free gifts, I'd maybe buy something else on impulse to get up to 20 reddies and get a free game or something like that. Perhaps based on money spent rather than items bought would be a good idea, as it would encourage sales of higher value items as opposed to low value items. And I imagine you have better margins on a Maxx PC than on a Sold Out range game.
Get Tony to assasinate Tony Blair whilst wearing a Special Reserve t shirt.
Gerrod's idea of a porn star would work as well. Have the SR splat over her baps on the front page of the Sun and bingo, 3.5 million folk have just heard of you.
Bottom line is that the main techniques are:
affiliates
word of mouth advertising
media advertising
loyalty schemes
discounts to certain groups
special offers
Also - you should get a nice B-List celebrity to get her baps out everytime someone buys a game in all your stores.
And sell porn.
Tell more people that they can win games. Huzzah.
Put it on some rubbish cable channel. Like TV5 (the french one).
And get some bird to get her baps out.
And sell porn.
Tell more people that they can win games. Huzzah.
Put it on some rubbish cable channel. Like TV5 (the french one).
And get some bird to get her baps out.
All I cen decipher from this thread is that Snuggly has seen Nash's wang.
Paradox: wrote:
> That website is one thats been bought at getdotted.com but isnt
> anything to do with special reserve...
Go to 'Affiliates' and scroll down...
You shall see a big 6% for any links through.
> That website is one thats been bought at getdotted.com but isnt
> anything to do with special reserve...
Go to 'Affiliates' and scroll down...
You shall see a big 6% for any links through.
HálloHowArtThou wrote:
> Paradox: wrote:
> I propose an affiliate scheme to promote Special Reserve.
>
> ukaffiliates.com
>
> It's been done :-)
That website is one thats been bought at getdotted.com but isnt anything to do with special reserve...
> Paradox: wrote:
> I propose an affiliate scheme to promote Special Reserve.
>
> ukaffiliates.com
>
> It's been done :-)
That website is one thats been bought at getdotted.com but isnt anything to do with special reserve...
Mr Snuggly wrote:
> J Nash wrote:
> Give me 10 GAD's and I'll run around London naked for an hour with
> SR
> tattooed on my wang.
>
> That wouldn't work, you'd need to be able to see it clearly.
1) You lie.
2) Shush.
3) You've got a fat face.
> J Nash wrote:
> Give me 10 GAD's and I'll run around London naked for an hour with
> SR
> tattooed on my wang.
>
> That wouldn't work, you'd need to be able to see it clearly.
1) You lie.
2) Shush.
3) You've got a fat face.
They already have adverts in the paper or atleast in the Sawbridgeworth one.
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