FARM

“In a world where Brands must adapt or die, a new collective comes together”

Today we’re proud and excited to announce the launch of The Co-creation Hub - London. A collective of organisations, academics and individuals who passionately believe in doing things ‘with’ people rather than ‘at’ people.

The other founding members of The Co-creation Hub - London include our sister agencies Face, the co-creation planning agency, which has successfully co-created projects for international companies such as Coca-Cola, Nokia, Unilever and Reckitt Benckiser and Opticomm, the media planning agency. The remaining founding members include A Touch Of Mojo, the brand design agency and thrudigital, the social media development agency.  

“The campaign has already started to change perceptions and we’ve had superb feedback on the campaign from our team of journalists and presenters”

The BBC World Service, the world’s leading international broadcaster, appointed Farm to work on a specific brief to reinvigorate the BBC Arabic Channel, following a 4-way pitch.

After a successful launch of BBC Arabic TV in March ’08 and its move to 24 hour broadcast in January ’09, the brand wanted to build a greater sense of relevance and emotional engagement with its audience estimated to be just over 18 million consumers.

We devised a campaign from the endline ‘Never Stop Asking’ around BBC Arabie journalists and presenters giving their word to seek the truth no matter how hard that may be. This led to a fully integrated campaign in every medium from TV and Radio to on-line and ambient in a very complex environment.

Commenting on the campaign, Chris Travers Head of Consumer Marketing said: “We’re extremely pleased with the work Farm has done to take the BBC Arabic brand onto the next phase of its development. The campaign has already started to change perceptions and we’ve had superb feedback on the campaign from our team of journalists and presenters on the ground”.

Farm has been building the Skinny Cow hot chocolate brand for just over a year. Our latest brief has been to build on the brands taste credentials and develop its unique personality in the face of 'me too' threats from competitors. The personality of Skinny Cow is humorous, stylish and sociable – which sets it apart from the other drab low-fat Hot Chocolates and makes it the healthy option.

We used co-creation techniques with an on-line community of 24-45 year old women to generate fresh and actionable insights into why they feel guilty about enjoying themselves. These helped us create the ‘Oh Yes You Can’ campaign that encourages women to ‘banish the buts’ and feel good about indulging more. Press and Outdoor provided them with clever justifications to do whatever they want while Facebook provided a forum for Skinny Cow drinkers to share their own naughty tips and tricks.  

The results speak for themselves – brand awareness has risen by 16% in the past 12 months, Skinny Cow is now a serious player in the low fat instant Hot Chocolate market and the Facebook fanbase has gone from zero to over 37,000 willing contributors in just three months.

“Brand awareness has risen by 16% in the past 12 months”

“Farm's viral campaign for Lastminute.com has won a silver for "Best Viral Campaigns" at the prestigious Kinsale Shark Awards 2009. ”

The 3 min long video, completely written, produced and directed by Farm, was created to promote the Brand's latest retail sales push. With a meager budget of only £25,000 and quite ambitious sales targets, the campaign generated over 550,000 hits on Youtube and a 24% increase in sales. 

At Kinsale (11-12 September), the campaign was awarded with a Silver Medal for "Best new Viral created for the Web" coming a close second to Leo Burnett Chicago's work for P&G. Kinsale is a pretigious International Creative Festival, whereby work is judged by a panel of 6 Jury members, who themselves are all responsible for leading creative work throughout the world. 

You can check out the full video here

To find out more about the Kinsale Festival: 

http://www.sharkawards.com/

“Brand scoops prize at Awards rewarding excellence in Marketing”

Freesat - the free to air digital satellite TV service from the BBC and ITV - faced a huge marketing challenge. Not only did the brrand, which launched in May last year, need to develop the Freesat brand, it needed to convert this brand awareness into hard sales in a market saturated by big spending competitors such as Sky and Virgin. 

Additionally, the brand had to build a bespoke research programme, which included audience segmentation, in order to Inform both it's marketing programme and the development of the service itself. 

In short the brand was faced with a massive task. 

The London-based team of 22, led by Will Abbott, the brand's marketing and communications director, worked within a horizontal business model alongside retailers, broadcasters and manufactuireres. 

Freesat carried out extensive research to identify its target audience and determine which consumers would consider upgrading to the service. It created clear brand values based on the 'philanthropic drive to bring the best of free TV to everyone'. Tapping into the recesssion zeitgiest, the brand managed to convey complex messages to consumers from the superior quality of HDTV to the fact that the service is non-subscripton. What's more, the brand quickly established a customer support network to anwrer queries and ensure smooth delivery of the service. 

Freesat has quickly established itself on the TV landscape. Through retail marketing, an integrated TV, Online and press campaign (developed and produced by Farm) and extensive media coverage on its launch, the brand has ensured it has reached out to its target. 

Freesat managed to to achieve more than 200,000 sales by the end of 2008, despite being outspent by its competitors by a ration of 20 to 1. Brand and customer metrics are tracking upwards and positive sales continue into 2009.