Interviews, insight & analysis on digital media & marketing

NDA News Roundup: Sprout Social, Click Consult, neverland and many more

Sprout Social has announced a new integration with Salesforce Service Cloud to provide brands with a 360-degree view of their customer interactions. Earlier this year, Sprout Social and Salesforce launched a global partnership which made Sprout the preferred social media management solution for Salesforce customers. Building upon that partnership, the new Service Cloud integration ensures Salesforce customers can manage all of their social customer care requests directly from within Service Cloud while enriching customer CRM profiles with social data to provide a holistic view of customer interactions. This functionality becomes increasingly important as service organizations rank social media the #1 non-traditional channel they use for customer support. In addition to the Service Cloud functionality, Sprout will also integrate Marketing Cloud Intelligence—Salesforce’s marketing analytics solution—into its platform to provide an automated method for bringing social data and insights into overall marketing dashboards in Salesforce and Intelligence.

UEFA has decided to continue building upon its foundations with Click Consult by extending its technical and strategic brief with the North West based agency. Click Consult will be supporting UEFA with the creation of editorial content to achieve maximum engagement, to meet best SEO practices as well as positioning UEFA well in search engine results regarding competitive keywords, and also to monitor and report performance and advise on targets and actions to improve practices.

This week, giffgaff launches its new campaign, Fast Forward, to announce its fixed UK prices until the end of 2023, continuing to offer great value and certainty to consumers amid rising costs. Fast Forward, developed by creative agency neverland, is a 360 campaign that fast forwards to December 2023. Launching on TV, it plays on the idea of what life might look like by then: sky-high prices; houseplant influencers; chatbot marriages; the latest fashion, chainmail; and turnip lattes. giffgaff’s fixed UK prices are positioned as a certainty which remains the same throughout. The cross-channel campaign will feature across TV, radio, social media, and PR. It will be supported by print ads, OOH advertising and digital OOH placements which will reactively respond to the latest news. The campaign, which giffgaff worked closely with neverland and media agency Havas to bring to life, marks the network reembracing its creative, disruptive heritage. It will run from 12th September to 30th October.

To celebrate the launch of their new handwash, the latest product in the INEOS hygienics range, INEOS has delivered a new brand campaign – You Can Handle Anything. Avoiding the cliche tropes of the hand hygiene advertising category, such as ‘99.9%’ and ‘defence’, the campaign is a bold and unfiltered look into the incredible things our hands help us to achieve every day. Creatively conceived and executed by The&Partnership, with Wavemaker responsible for all media planning and buying, You Can Handle Anything is a compelling snapshot of human endeavour – championing the vital role of hands in everyday life. In doing so, the multi-channel campaign relays the importance of protecting and caring for your hands, creating a meaningful and important role for INEOS’ hand wash in all aspects of consumers’ lives.

Victorian Plumbing has appointed Leo Burnett as its first-ever lead creative agency. Leo Burnett will partner with the bathroom retailer on brand positioning, creative platforms and all upcoming creative campaigns, with the first due to go live before the end of the year. Victorian Plumbing awarded the account to Leo Burnett without a creative pitch, following discussions with several other agencies. Leo Burnett is the first creative agency to work with Victorian Plumbing. Previously all creative was produced in-house, with Laurence Llewelyn Bowen starring in several of their recent TV adverts.

Babble, the British Cloud Comms, Contact, Cyber & Mobile technology business, has announced the acquisition of Salisbury-based Berry Telecom Limited (Berry) and Cavendish communications Group Limited (Cavendish), based out of Newhaven. Berry and Cavendish serve 1,700 and 700 customers respectively and these acquisitions provide their customers with the opportunity to enhance their technology and switch to cloud-based services. Both deals grow Babble’s Comms pillar and provide more strategic locations in the South and South-West of England.

National Express is running a campaign with Tripadvisor that aims to promote cost effective travel options in these times of economic downturn. The “Free to Express Yourself” campaign highlights the best free attractions across the UK with the message that travel is still possible even in times of increased cost of living. The campaign – exclusive to Tripadvisor – aims to inspire the UK’s travel community who may feel a holiday is not possible due to financial constraints and increased living costs. Additionally the campaign aims to support UK travellers and tourists, helping them to  get more for their money via curated lists of ultimate, free Tripadvisor experiences, whilst seamlessly connect National Express with Tripadvisor audiences to drive coach consideration and convert in-market coach travellers.

YOOBIC, the all-in-one digital workplace for frontline teams, has announced its purchase of Heystan, a digital training and knowledge management platform serving the catering and hospitality industries. Marking YOOBIC’s first-ever acquisition, the deal further bolsters the company’s presence in the vibrant food and dining space and underscores its strong momentum and continuing global growth across the hospitality and retail sectors.

PPRO, the provider of digital payments infrastructure, has integrated Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) provider Zip onto its platform, further expanding its Australian payments offering. Zip, which includes Zip Pay and Zip Money, becomes the first Australian BNPL method to be added to PPRO’s digital payments infrastructure and sits alongside other Australian local payment methods. The new integration allows PPRO’s global partners and their merchants to offer Australian consumers a way to pay with their preferred checkout option when they shop online. According to Zip’s own research, merchants offering Zip at the checkout realise a 20% increase in conversion and top line sales and 60% increase in average order value (AOV).

Outdoor gear should be put through its paces. That’s the message behind a new campaign from Berghaus, the outdoor clothing brand, as it raises awareness of its free repairs service – something it has offered since the company was founded, nearly 60 years ago. Film and stills were shot on location at the Berghaus workshop in Sunderland, UK, and focus on the rugged, handmade resilience of clothing which can weather an adventure, sustain damage, and get fixed again. Close attention is given to the craft and expertise that goes into each repair, and to the people behind the process. Berghaus worked with creative agency Stereo, which conceived the new tagline and developed a multi-disciplinary campaign built upon Berghaus’ northern heritage. The visual and audio assets, which include a logo, colour palette, imagery and motion, are led by a 30-second hero film which underlines the resilience of Berghaus products, and champions the benefits of repair and reuse.

Tech start-up SEOTesting.com has raised £120,000 ($150,000) in early-stage investment from TinySeed – a one-year remote accelerator programme designed to increase the world’s population of independent Software as a Service (SaaS) companies. SEOTesting.com is designed to help people who work on website search engine optimisation (SEO) to grow search traffic from Google through thorough experimentation and testing.

Eurora Solutions an AI/ML (artificial intelligence/machine learning) backed cross-border trade compliance platform, is opening its Central UK office in London. Eurora’s Commercial Director Paul Scratchley, an e-commerce and logistics expert, with over three decades of experience, will head the London office. The new London office aligns with their strategy to expand geographically and follows a successful US$40 million Series A funding round earlier this year.