Advertising is blowing up in Poland

You may never have heard of the Tour of Poland, but its been going for 68 years and I can tell you one thing, the Poles know how to get brand advertising across on tv.

Take a look at any professional cycling team kit and it's covered in sponsors logos - bike races are essentially huge marketing exercises, from the caravan of promotional vehicles that drive the course for the fans before the race to the helicopters capturing the stunning scenery for the tv audience of millions. Hell, I even booked a holiday in Italy this year because the scenery looked so beautiful.

I have to hand it to the organisers of the Tour of Poland, I've never seen so many different vehicles for brands. Thousands of 12ft tall, multi-coloured, inflatable balloons line the road, 300ft banners laid out on the ground and even horse riders carrying banners as they gallop alongside the peloton. If it's inflatable and you can stick a logo on it, they've used it.

In fact if it wasn't for the fact that the cyclist is basically a moving billboard, there would be no professional cycling on tv around the world, no Tour de France, nothing. And yet as I write this, the top ranked team in the world, HTC-highroad (Mark Cavendish's team) has just gone belly up because of a shortfall in sponsorship revenue. In what other sport would that happen?

4 minutes 10 seconds to find out why this video will cost the earth.

Political cleavage?

A lot of fuss over this bit of self publicity for the CDU candidate, Vera Lensgfeld in Germany today. Poster reads “We have more to offer.”

Lengsfeld said over 17,000 people had visited her election blog since she shot into the public eye.

"If only a tenth of them also look at the content of my policies, I will have reached many more people than I could have done with classic street canvassing.

No doubt its livened up politics, should she “put it away love” or does sex sell?

Just being sociable

Hello and welcome to Wildcat Creative Blogs’ very first entry. I realise we are hardly the first to do so, but there comes a time when you’ve just got to stop worrying about the water temperature and jump right in.

Ok, let’s start with current hot topic - Social Media. Appears there’s an awful lot of it about - over 20 channels by my quick head count, including: Facebook, Bebo, Twitter, Plurk, Linked-in, Myspace, Blogs, Micro Blogs... the list goes on.

To break it down, these weird and wonderful entities all fall into 7 categories:

1. Blogging: Your competition has a blog and so should you. Blogs can serve many purposes. You should consistently keep it updated - why else would readers come back to it?

2. Social Networking: My Space and Facebook are the largest. Building relationships online are a big part of having a successful Internet business. Social networking allows you to interact with people that have similar interests to you.

3. Micro Blogging: Twitter.com is a combination of social networking and blogging. Building a large list of followers is a great way to meet people and increase traffic to your blog and websites. Plus Tweeting can be fun!

4. Social Bookmarking: Directories such as Digg and Technorati serve as search engine bait for your blog posts and for new traffic from people who read your blog articles. Bookmarking a blog post is very easy to do and the rewards can pay off for years to come.

5. Discussion Forums: A great way to learn about the area of your business and to drive traffic to it. But try not to spend hours on end in discussion forums getting dragged into conversations that wander miles off the point.

6. Email Marketing: A list of potential client email addresses is always a good idea. The trick is not to annoy your list with hard sell. Get friendly with your list, impart some of your wisdom and then sell to it when you have established some trust. You can also make your email interactive for added pizazz.

7. Video Marketing: Everyone knows YouTube. Video marketing is an important part of Social Media. Internet marketers can drive traffic and build credibility by adding videos to their blog and website.

So, how many channels should you use for your Brand? Which ones are likely to be compatible with your target market? After all there’s no use in starting a Linkedin account if everyones on Facebook.

We don’t think there is a simple answer to this, it all depends on the resources you have available. A big multinational like Starbucks uses 11 channels and has 6 full time staff dedicated to Social Media. Now we know the likes of us are never going to be in that league but it shouldn’t stop your company or organisation from starting to use social media, because the benefits are significant, organic and viral.

So, come on in - its time to test the water, even if you can’t see how it will benefit you in the short term or to put it this way, your competition is probably doing it and who wants to get left floundering in the shallow end?