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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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Pay someone to streak at a all the Premiership games one weekend. It's bound to get space in the national papers and SR's name would be bound to be mentioned if they all had the splat logo painted on them. :P
how about i get a tattoo of the splat logo across my face then I go on Question Time with Jeremy Paxman and ask Mr. Blair where i left my glasses
you volunteering, Lindgren?
-Sponsor events. Look at how Sony manipulated the minds of impressionable youths by sponsoring various “cool” events a few years ago. The Playstation brand was given a major boost by this and turned many children into Playstation obsessed zombies, and although Special Reserve would be on a smaller scale, it could help gamers of the ages of 15 and beyond to see who you are. I’m sure there’s plenty of local smaller scale hip and happening events out there that need sponsoring.
-Richard Branson is a super rich business tycoon who likes to give his advertising sector a huge boost every so often by attempting ludicrous adventuring challenges in balloons and other such craft with the Virgin logo pasted all over it. They always end in failure but he gets plenty of media attention for himself.
I’m sure Tony, being the super rich businessman that he is could try similar things in the name of advertising. Perhaps you could offer another EGAD for people to think up near impossible challenges for Tony to do in a balloon style craft (with a giant Special Reserve logo attached). For the first few challenges you may only get the attention of local news companies, but as the challenges get more and more ambitious, the news coverage will grow and grow.
-You could also try to have a few staged scandals regarding selling BB guns to underage kids. It wouldn’t be great for your image and may get you closed down, but as they say, any free advertising is good. The Daily Mail probably has a fairly large readership, and the story would definitely get in there.
-Start selling fake Burberry clothes and accessories, especially in the Basildon and Upminster stores. Everywhere you look in those places there are grubby street urchins hanging about, and they just love being decked out head to toe in Burberry. Just imagine the stampedes you’d get if you sold Burberry; it wouldn’t bring you a very high class of clientele, but the tills would be very busy.
-It’s probably been said by everyone before, but a new reward scheme would be good. Reddies are good and I’ve got a few good things with them down the years, but customers like to know that they’re saving money with vouchers and reward schemes. I’ve had a WH Smith reward card for ages and have got plenty of money back from it, and Game also reward their customers by giving them money back.
If all that fails, just start selling porn.
-Richard Branson is a super rich business tycoon who likes to give his advertising sector a huge boost every so often by attempting ludicrous adventuring challenges in balloons and other such craft with the Virgin logo pasted all over it. They always end in failure but he gets plenty of media attention for himself.
I’m sure Tony, being the super rich businessman that he is could try similar things in the name of advertising. Perhaps you could offer another EGAD for people to think up near impossible challenges for Tony to do in a balloon style craft (with a giant Special Reserve logo attached). For the first few challenges you may only get the attention of local news companies, but as the challenges get more and more ambitious, the news coverage will grow and grow.
-You could also try to have a few staged scandals regarding selling BB guns to underage kids. It wouldn’t be great for your image and may get you closed down, but as they say, any free advertising is good. The Daily Mail probably has a fairly large readership, and the story would definitely get in there.
-Start selling fake Burberry clothes and accessories, especially in the Basildon and Upminster stores. Everywhere you look in those places there are grubby street urchins hanging about, and they just love being decked out head to toe in Burberry. Just imagine the stampedes you’d get if you sold Burberry; it wouldn’t bring you a very high class of clientele, but the tills would be very busy.
-It’s probably been said by everyone before, but a new reward scheme would be good. Reddies are good and I’ve got a few good things with them down the years, but customers like to know that they’re saving money with vouchers and reward schemes. I’ve had a WH Smith reward card for ages and have got plenty of money back from it, and Game also reward their customers by giving them money back.
If all that fails, just start selling porn.
The current setup for SR is ok, its not catchy or anything and it has the huge drawback of looking like one of those pages which come up when a url is wrong, not a good idea. You should get a slogan or something to put at the top of the page which shows that you are not just a website which sells electrical goods, advertise the other assets which the site has such as the chat pages because that way you are gonna attract more people to come to your site. The main concern shoudln't just be selling goods because people are gonna get put off with that, if people sign up to the site they don't want forceful adverts or a big slogan telling them to buy your products, they will buy your products without having to be told by a big, annoying advert, when they browse the website they should be subtly reminded that you do sell products, reavmp the layout of the website or something, you could change the colour scheme as well if you wanted but I think the currrent one is fine.
Sponsor one of those dancing bears in Russia, and hire John Williams or someone to write an SR jingle for it to dance to.
that would be wicked! dance bear dance!
Do a deal with a magazine e.g. Gamesmaster and give away your catalogue inside that...
If you'd rather do a subscription deal, e.g. subscribe to Gamesmaster, get the irregular Special Reserve magazine, Gamesmaster magazine ever month, what else gamesmaster want to offer potential subscribers and a free gift from the SR range.
This way Gamesmaster get a better subscription take up and you get a large club fan base. You will get your money back through whatever magazine you offer this idea to.
Just a thought.
If you'd rather do a subscription deal, e.g. subscribe to Gamesmaster, get the irregular Special Reserve magazine, Gamesmaster magazine ever month, what else gamesmaster want to offer potential subscribers and a free gift from the SR range.
This way Gamesmaster get a better subscription take up and you get a large club fan base. You will get your money back through whatever magazine you offer this idea to.
Just a thought.
I did a real LOLROLFPIMP just then - who the hell did that, it's so crappy! All it needs is a red splat on it's tummy and you're sorted!
Hire goons to attempt to carbomb the president of a country, lets say Italy, but seconds before the carbomb goes off you can get Tony (Or a giant SR mascot) to save the president, and stop him being a red splat on the pavement.
This would make him a "red splat saver" and the event a "red splat saving"
He shoots. He scores.
This would make him a "red splat saver" and the event a "red splat saving"
He shoots. He scores.
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