Average percentage of marketing budget spent on digital channels:
UK 26%
Ireland 3%
Ireland 3%
As an Irish agency, these figures worried us. We suspected that there was a lack of understanding in the Irish business community.
We decided we needed to do something about it.
We scratched our heads and went for a walk.
While we were out and about we noticed a lot of empty retail space. Maybe we could use these shops to make businesses realise the value of digital marketing?
We called it the
Digital Café.
The idea was to invite anyone into this shop for free advice, and maybe some coffee and buns.
To make sure we could answer any conceivable questions on digital marketing, we invited a range of organisations and agencies to join us on the day.
All free of charge, of course.
Then we set about letting everyone know about it.
There was the Café website, which explained the concept and allowed people to register for a consultation.
There were Twitter and Facebook pages and online ads. And there were emails sent to select databases by our partners and ourselves.
But we also needed to reach people who weren’t plugged in and online.
So we generated a lot of PR in print and on the radio. We even ran a few traditional press ads (with space provided by our partners).
View work:
Digital Café website
Twitter page
Facebook page
Agency homepage
Online and press ads
PR & digital PR
Other material
We were giving some talks at the National Digital Summit in Dublin two weeks before the shop opened.
So we took this opportunity to promote it.
Soon enough, people were tweeting and talking about it; they seemed to the idea, and the free coffee went down well too.
Hoarding went up in the shopping centre one week before the event.
On April 15th, the day itself, the Digital Café website turned into a live Twitter feed, which was fed back through to the Café itself.
By the time we opened, there were over 100 confirmed bookings.
And plenty of people turned up unannounced on the day itself.
It wasn’t easy, but all were catered for.
We also ran a Foursquare competition on the day.
And afterwards we wrote about the interesting people we met and ideas we had on the Café website (which was now a blog).
And the results?
We can report the following...
