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Pop-Up Park In London's Trafalgar Square

Today, the most effective marketing campaigns are those that add something of value to a community, rather than clutter it up with more of what has now become "urban spam"

For the next two days, Londoners will be able to soak up the sun and picnic in the center of London's busiest square.  Yesterday, all of London's iconic Trafalgar Square was suddenly turned into a "pop-up park" and covered in lovely green grass. The project is the brainstorm of the UK based brand entertainment and pr agency Cake, to promote “Village London,” a campaign launched by Visit London.

One of the things that I really like about this promotion is that it has no damage to the environment. After the event the turf will be transferred to Bishops Park in Hammersmith and Fulham, where it will be planted beneath an avenue of majestic plane trees close to the River Thames and Fulham Palace. The whole project is carbon neutral courtesy of Global Cool.

The FedEx Banner Ad That Has Me Hooked

Even though my career is in online marketing (or maybe because my career is in online marketing) I honestly can't remember the last time that a banner ad caught my eye and I actually clicked on it. 

My theory is that after spending countless hours on the internet I've actually subconsciously trained myself to get rid of all ads on a  webpage not by using any sort of filtering software, but rather by subconsciously training my brain to anticipate exactly where the ads will be on the web page before it even loads.

So anything 740p pixels X 90 pixels or 300 x 250 becomes this grey haze that I don't even see.

 

So what the hell was it about the Fedex ad (shown at the top) that had me not only noticing it, clicking on it, but also staying engaged with it for at least a minute?

The first thing had to be that the ad displays in clean, bold lettering the exact time of the day. The flipping of the seconds that went by pulled my eye from the article to the ad.

The other thing that pulled me in had to be the unique call to action:

"Set Alarm" 

Set alarm? Why would I set an alarm on a banner ad?

I had to find out, so I did. 

The next thing I had to do was to wait 20 seconds until the timer went off. 

Why?

I don't know, but I had to and I did.

So I guess here's my back of the napkin analysis why this simple FedEx ad "worked" on me while thousands of others don't:

The simple elegance of the design, coupled with a great visual (the real time clock), coupled with a unique call to action.  The combination of all of them had me hooked.

Lessons to be learned here for sure.