Brief: Interactive advertising Request for Proposal (RFP) LoveOnlineAndForever Ltd. is a UK company specialising in online dating services.

We organise online and offline dating events for a selected customer group. We offer luxury events, personalised matching, computer-based matching, holidays and romantic events. We want to target especially the UK market and generate a new stream of income from on-line subscriptions to our services. Our audience profile: Female customers 25 to 40 years old Average income band 30,000 Location: UK Male customers: 25 to 40 years old Average income band 38,000 Location: UK We are looking for a comprehensive on-line advertising strategy including: How to promote our web site and services How to optimise our presence in search engines How to create a brand identity Tools and strategies for a successful interactive campaign Ideas of interactive advertising using several digital platforms (web, social media, mobile phones, interactive TV etc.)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The style of this campaign is directed to enhance the services offered by Loveonlineandforever Ltd, in order to build up the service online community. The whole experience will be designed around a solid and consistent brand identity, to give unity to the entire components programmed. The website, as a cluster of the mobiles, social networks and interactive videos promotional channels, will be endorsed by means of a noticeable increase of interactivity. All the branches of the project will be monitored in order to maximize their efficiency according to the users. The search engine rank will be escalated in order to rapidly maximise the brand popularity and encourage the service subscription. REQUIREMENTS Designing for ever- lasting love The services and products offered by Loveonlineandforever Ltd, require a promotional online campaign that will enhance the company's approaches to their young and interactive- savvy target audience. After an accurate statistical and 'immersive' (Kozinets, 2002) analysis of the online marketplace, Ekate Ad Solutions, elaborated a competitive and versatile action plan, aimed to effectively drive traffic on the website and create a long- term bond of trust with 1

costumers (Ryan and Jones, 2009). All the tools and channels will be deployed in the campaign with the purpose of building a solid and consistent brand identity, which will grab the attention and engage the public (Schmitt, 2009). The promotional endeavours will be directed to upgrading the value proposition of the company in order to maximise the profits and transform costumers to 'online advocates' of the brand (Chaffey 2009). The core of the promotion will be a series of online interactive videos linked with a competition. This cutting -edge advertising tool combines the advantages conveyed by rich media and interactivity in the communication strategy (Experian, 2010). The campaign integration with social media will establish a direct dialogue with the public; furthermore it will allow a direct monitoring of the humours and perceptions of the brand within the online community (Mangold and Faulds, 2009). The mobile communication component of the plan will exploit the multiple creditworthiness of the medium: fast diffusion and ubiquity (Aguado and Martinez, 2009), along with the location based data transmission through GPS technology (Bruner and Kumar, 2007). This overall innovative approach will engage the influential public segment of early adopters (Advertising Age, 2010) and lead to a positive word of mouth towards the brand (Shimp, 2010). The website has to convey all the nodes of the communication strategy, clustering all the users expectations (Ryan and Jones, 2009). The online traffic on the website will be optimized by means of the effective indexing inside the website code, in conformity with the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) advanced techniques (Obringer, 2010). To culminate these solutions we will offer a complete testing of the effectiveness, which comprehend the realization of the costumer database. Our statistical analysis will combine the results both from the analytics measurements (www.philosophe.com), and from the online survey designed to evaluate the users psychological feedback of the online service (Bloc and Bloc, 2005). PROPOSED SOLUTIONS This session delineates each block of the advertising and communication plan. Interactive video Ekate expertise offers high quality promotional videos, integrated with the empowerment of the user experience, conveyed through the interactive component (Jenkins, 2006). The collection of five independent episodes will narrate the experience of Loveonlineandforever services. The characters and the storyboards will be modelled around the main characteristics of the audience profiles to facilitate identification, and consequently emulation (Shimp, 2010). Furthermore the user will have the opportunity to choose between three different endings for each video, thus there will be a broader exposition of the service features and consequentely a 2

deeper engagement with the active participation in the creation of meaning (Deuze, 2006). We will assure the optimization of the video quality with the speed of downloading, to avoid the user loss of interest regarding the product (Nielsen, 2002). Competition The integration of online dating with luxury events and holidays, offered by

Loveonlineandforever, is the optimal field for the creation of a competition. The contest will be developed in two sessions: loyal customers will post videos that recount their 'online and forever' love story. The entire Loveonlineandforever community will be able to vote on the clips. The winning video makers will be rewarded with romantic cruises or holidays; the 'jury' will be put in to a draw. The prize giving ceremony will take place during a dancing event with the participation of a celebrity; using our company's contact with Pixie Lott's PR agency. The event will summarize the style and the standards of Loveonlineandforever products; moreover it will increase the motivation to subscription to the contest. The trend of enhancing the online dating, with more tangible attributes to maximize the user satisfaction, has been experimented by offering a virtual dating experience to the participants (Frost et al, 2008). Our solution is designed to present a unique package combining all the brand values that endorse the online dating, while emphasizing the whole product's proposition. Buzzing through social networks 'Social media is the newest and most actively engaging forum for customer and company interaction' (Larson, 2009). The branding experience of Loveonlineandforever through social networks will be in line with the excellence of the service. As well as the creation of a company profile, the campaign includes the design of a Facebook application. The gadget will contain a set of personality tests, with the possibility of comparing user's results and approaching the members by giving them virtual gifts or initiating a chat. Basing on the matter of fact that 26% of consumers in 2009 have 'followed' a brand on Twitter (Schmitt, 2009, p.8), our attention to the evolution of audience orientation to communication channels, recommends the creation of a Twitter profile of the brand. The tool is easy to manage and allows the continuous update of the brand's novelties (Experian, 2010). Making it move The mobile application we planned for the Loveonlineandforever customers, exploits the GPS technology property to localize the users within an area (Kumar, 2007). The application will 3

notify the availability of other community members, proving them the possibility to start a chat and arrange an instant meeting. The target audience will enjoy this tailored model of 'speed dating: the application will allow customers to maximize their time, while fomenting the brand exposure and newsworthiness (Shimp, 2010). This application will be realized both in the iPhone and Android smart phone technologies, to be accessible to a wide range of users (Becker, 2010). As well as the application, there will be an SMS or MMS based advertising of the services features, the exponential diffusion of the communication channel drove the adoption of the medium by more than half of marketers in Europe's most advanced mobile markets (Merisavo et al, 2007). The brand melting pot The effectiveness of this multichannel approach will be determined through a solid brand identity. The website will assemble and orchestrate all the branches and actions of the advertising plan. To increase intuitiveness, the navigation scheme will be modified with the inclusion of the campaign features and of the site map (Nielsen, 2002). The association of distinctive colours with product and services (Lee Stone, 2007), together with the creation of a company logo will be an effective solution to strengthen brand wholeness (Sametz, 2010). The endeavours will also be directed to intensify the interactivity within the community through the creation of a chat (Frost et Al, 2008) and of a company blog. This instrument will enable the real time monitoring of the users opinions and preferences (Schmitt, 2009). This control will be completed by recording how 'visitors are using different pages or features of the website' (Econsultancy, 2008). The traffic on the website will also be increase through the effective indexing and meta- tags to 'get high rankings within keyword searches' (Obringer, 2010). BENEFITS AND UNIQUE SELLING POINTS The elaboration of the campaign is the result of an in- depth study of the marketplace opportunities towards the costumers satisfaction, acquisition and retention (Chaffey, 2009). The aim of the immersive exploration has been to improve the understanding of the cultural backgrounds, gatherings and favourite channels for the exchange of information of the target audience (Kozintes, 2006). The comparative analysis of the findings with recent statistical data (Econsultancy, 2010; Experian, 2010; Scmitt, 2009) driven to the selection of the best blend of channels will optimize the campaign effectiveness. Operating in the web 2.0 environments, the 'interactive users' reach for personalized and participative experiences (Deuze, 2006), while in the other side, they tend to gather in new forms of collective identities constructed around shared interests (Cova et al, 2007). Users attribute high importance to their ' online 4

connections' opinion (Sheehan and Morrison, 2009), our campaign monitoring service will handle the 'rumors' (Shimp, 2010) that could damage the online reputation of Loveonlineandforever. The optimization of the design of the website thought as 'conversion engine for the traffic gathered through the marketing project' (Ryan and Jones, 2009, p.40) will guarantee the branding consistency by conveying harmony and balance to the whole experience (Lee Stone, 2007). Realizing a uniform and balanced design with a coherent organization of tools, sessions and connections endorse the customer branding perception (Norman, 2010). The creation of a brand logo intends to disclose the interpretative process of symbolic associations to products and services. The audience will couple the trademark with the whole experience; therefore the logo will guarantee the unity of every element of the campaign (Macrury, 2010). The multichannel advertising strategy will be designed around the principle of achieving consistent brand identity to engage the users and give them the feeling of being part of a community (Bilton, 2006; Chaffey et Al, 2009; Jenkins, 2006; Ryan and Jones, 2009). The advantages of the interactive videos go beyond the presentation of the service range encouraging the discovery with interactivity: the narration of a story creates an emotional connection of the user with the brand (Schrack and Flessing, 2010). In addition, the associate competition enhances the personal engagement: 'the brand concept become content that consumers embrace and extend' (Sheean and Morrison, 2007). We identified the channels of distribution of the videos through the analysis of the audience demographic and traffic rank for UK popular entertainment and culture websites (www.alexa.com), to convey their visibility to the target audience (Shimp, 2010). The delivery channels of the advertising videos will also comprehend also Facebook, the purpose of this ploy, is to reach the wide catchment area of the social network (Experian, 2010) and drive the traffic to the dedicated application, which will lead them to the website. The Facebook application functionality is designed to enrich the value proposition of the online dating (Frost et al, 2008) and endorse the concept of community around which the campaign is designed (Chaffey et al, 2009). The application for the mobile phone will affirm the unity of design to enhance the brand consistency (Ryan and Jones, 2009); furthermore it completes the cross- media customer experience towards the gadget-loving framework that characterize the usage of mobile phones (Aguado, Martinez, 2009). The SMS or MMS based advertising should keep in regard the consumer acceptance of the service (Merisavo et al, 2007). A good strategy is to apply the opt- in principle: asking the costumer, at the moment of the subscription, if SMS

notifications about the service are appreciated or not (Pelsmacker, 2010).

The exclusive monitoring of the campaign performance offered by Ekate Ad Solutions is aimed to recording and proactively modelling the online experience around the unpredictable audience response (Bilton, 2007). Users will be provided with multiple possibilities of customization at the moment of the subscription to the service (Business Link, 2010). The data provided while tracing their preferences, together with the analytics monitoring of the users experience (Econsultancy, 2009) and the results of the online survey, will offer a complete spectrum of users taste and attitudes towards the products. This process is aimed to lead the marketing endeavours towards the users satisfaction (Chaffey et al, 2009). The updating of the brand equity and competitiveness will be realized through 'proactive and reactive PR efforts, undertaken with the intention to influencing the conversations that take place among people about products (and) services' (Shimp, 2010, p.546). The core idea that shapes this multichannel and interactive promotion strategy is to mirror the lifestyle market segment in a luxurious and glossy package (Bilton, 2006). The Loveonlineandforever community members will be wrapped up in a virtual, ever- accessible environment, where they will find their 'kindred spirit profile'.

RESOURCES IMPLICATIONS The completion of the project entails the outsourcing of the realization of the mobile and social network applications, as well as the hiring of a professional HD camera kit. Regarding the apps development, a London we based opt for the collaboration technology, with Redkey and

(http://redkeydigital.com/),

interactive

consultancy

development agency. Their expertise encompasses the design of the required applications; their clients portfolio includes 'The independent', 'Nokia', 'The phantom of the opera'. In addition they have a multi- channel organizational approach that concurs with our methods. Contacts: Redkey Digital Ltd, Tel: +44 20 3286 4818, email info@redkeydigital.com For the camera crew service, we recommend the trusted mastery of Bluefin

(http://www.bluefintv.com/index_visited.html). Our suggestion is to engage their HD Cam Kit (see Appendix 1), comprehensive of specialist operators, lighting and sound apparatus and

crew vehicle. The thoroughness and high professionalism of their service will be in sync with the standard defined for the series of the videos in the program. Contacts: Bluefin Television Ltd Tel: +44 207 622 0870, email info@bluefintv.com EKATE AD SOLUTION STAFF EXPERTISE Silvia Destefanis, Brand Manger and Digital Creative Responsible of the application of the e- CRM and e-marketing techniques for the realization of companies' brands image and equity. Creative direction and Video Production Experience: Advertising Video Artist for Telemix (London, UK); Web Video Creative Director for Adnkronos (Rome, Italy); Documentary Post Producer for Sky (Rome, Italy) Milan Kundera, Online campaign Manger and Head of Search Optimization Planning of the online campaign strategy, implementation of the online marketing plan and monitoring of key performance indicators (KPI's). . Management of keyword campaigns and optimisation of the website content and structure 'to make it search engine friendly'. Experience: creation of the online campaign for VM Motor (Prague); realization of the SEO of websites like www.esycar.com (London); http://www.extolinn.cz/ (Hotel, Prague) Khalil Gibran, Web Designer and Flash Developer Web design: Adobe Creative Suite, HTML and AS3 coding, Usability issues expert, SEO wizard Design of http://www.musicoflebanon.com/ (Beirut, Libanon); game development of http://www.flashgames247.com/game/flash-fun-games/crazy-koala.html USA) (www.iabuk.net; http://jobs.brandrepublic.com) The company portfolio encompasses the realization of the online campaign for the electropunk band Spectrum's new album: 'Kinda new' (out 2nd June, 2010). The realization of both 7 (Sydney, Australia); Interactive coding implementation of Henkel Campaign 2009 (New York,

the website and the series of interactive videos for the online campaign of Dr Stuart's herbal teas, and the creation of a series of educational flash mini games and interactive videos for the Italian Department for Education and Skills.

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