Brand Republic Community

Who are the real winners of X Factor?

Jack Wallington — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:34:00 GMT

Below are two trend charts from Nielsen’s Blogpulse (showing mentions on blogs) and Google Trends (showing volume of searches). For both I’m limited to three and five terms respectively, so I’ve included only the most popular participants and “John and Edward” and “Jedward” have been combined. No such thing as bad press afterall...

(Google Search Trends)

Winning Formulas To Maximise The Potential Of Twitter #BR140

Gordon Macmillan — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:08:00 GMT

Tomorrow is Brand Republic's first Twitter event and we will be tweeting throughout the afternnoon, but if you're looking for people to follow these are the ones you should checkout.

We've got Mark Palmer chairing @MaverickMark and he's been mining Twitter for examples good and bad for the first session: "Explore Practical, Real World Usage Of Twitter: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly". Did someone say Habitat?

Next up we have Alexandra Goldstein @mokuska the web editor/social media & communities at the Dogs Trust where we're going to look at how to position your brand on twitter for maximum impact.

Looking forward to this, the Dog's Trust are one of the examples that people often cite of a charity organisation getting social media right.

Straight up after the Dogs Trust; you've got me interviewing Dan Germain, head of creative, at Innocent Drinks @innocentdrinks. Innocent is a brand that has really embraced social media, but its journey is one that hasn't been without the odd misstep, which is something Dan will talk about. Should be good.

Last up we have the panel session with Alexandra Goldstein, who joins Stuart Waterman @LuckyVoice, web editor/social media manager at Lucky Voice, everybody's favourite karaoke experience (what do you mean you haven't been?); and Kerry Bridge @KerryatDell, head of digital media communications at Dell EMEA, who I've seen speak on this before and really knows her stuff.

We're hoping it is going to be a very useful afternoon. Should be some tweets emerging so look out for the hashtag #BR140. This one sold out in no time and we're following it up with a second event in February.

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I'd rather see St Winifred's School Choir headline Glasto than U2

Jeremy Lee — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:27:00 GMT

It's been announced that U2 are headlining next year's Glastonbury - the fortieth anniversary of the music festival hosted by Micheal Eavis, who has a beard and no moustache much like an Open University lecturer.

What a disappointment. I went to Glastonbury for the first time this year and it was awesome.

U2 haven't, to the best of my knowledge, don't anything notable since the Joshua Tree in 1987 other than Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and the Other One occasionally turning up like members of a sacred sect to dish out blessings to desperate politicians.

Tickets sold out for next year's Glastonbury within hours - I know because I was desperately trying to get one. Still this news should mean there will be plenty of returns for disappointed members of the Young Conservatives and legions of BBC presenters and executives to snap up.

A cloud on the horizon

steve henry — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:23:00 GMT

"Digital creativity has yet to produce its masterpiece". Discuss. Using, perhaps, 140 characters or less.

Thus spake one of the bosses of the digitally-focussed agencies I've been working with recently.

It’s fascinating. Digital media are so clearly the place to be if you care about innovative marketing – but a lot of people struggle to come up with a list of what you might call great creative ideas in that field.

Seeing as how the whole nature of digital is built around interactivity, maybe the concept of an “idea” is somehow antithetical
to how it works.

Strategically speaking, Obama's campaign WAS a massive masterpiece. Not only in its use of social media, but in the whole pull-not-push approach.

(It was the LACK of concrete “messaging” that was actually brilliant.)

And it had elements of brilliant creativity in it, like The Great Schlep.

But in terms of pure creative concepts, I guess most people would say that the best digital idea we've seen has been Subservient Chicken.

(Alternative answers on a post, please.)

So it takes a brave man or a fool to disagree with the guy who came up with that.

(And, since everyone who knows me, knows I'm a coward - I clearly fall into the second category.)

But I do want to look at what Benjamin Palmer, the highly gifted founder of Barbarian, said recently.

I may be quoting him out of context, but Benjamin was being asked about crowd-sourcing in Adweek and he said "I'm interested in the high end of marketing creativity and production, and don’t think you can get anything high end [in crowd-sourcing].”

He went on to add “By definition you’re asking people who are not at the top of their field.”

Now, as in many complicated debates, I can see both sides of this. (Ouch. This picket fence is sharp.)

I agree that only a few gifted people can regularly come up with really great ideas.

I just don't think they're all inside the tiny walled garden of the ad industry.

And I think a huge number of people can bring one-off fresh solutions to a problem

I introduced crowd-sourcing at TBWA a few years ago and we got some fascinating stuff back, including an adidas poster campaign and some great short films for Skittles.

I'm actually building a website with some friends right now to explore all this further.

But I don't think crowd-sourcing is the answer by itself. You also need strong, experienced creative direction - something which I don’t think any of the current crowd sites have.

Not just to filter the answers, but also to put the right questions out there.

However, it does really tantalise me. Out there, somewhere, are really fresh ideas, rather than the stale formulas and Youtube rip-offs that clog up most marketing campaigns.

What I'm interested in finding are the ideas that nobody else could come up with.

Genuinely unique ideas.

And talking of that, I was chatting to Tony Kaye the other day. One of the most talented people to ever work in our industry. He's giving a talk on Friday, and I can't think of anyone better equipped to talk about creativity in this country.

Tony, like Benjamin, comes up with original creative ideas as effortlessly as most agency bosses can conjure up their financial targets.

If you had a creative department filled with people like that, you wouldn’t need crowd-sourcing. But, even then, I’d want to give it a go.

Because it seems to me to be at the very heart of digital.

And just a very interesting thing to do.

Tony told me he's also got Sir George Martin and Geoff Emerick (the producer and engineer on Sgt Pepper) turning up - but with Tony you never know what you're gonna get.

So I promise you.

It will be great.

It's in Brick lane. Details and tickets at nissancubestore@borkowski.co.uk

Are aggregated data pools getting stagnant?

Nick Washbourne, Market Location — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:20:00 GMT

Aggregated data pools have become a primary source of data for many organisations in the b2b arena. Marketers using this data are able to deliver adequate results, and the relatively low cost makes them commercially viable. Yet even though I’m not suggesting that working with an aggregated pool will have a major negative effect, my issues comes from the fact that these pools aren’t the Rolls Royce solutions they tend to be sold as.

Many data pools are billed under the banner of a comprehensive ‘data universe’, but while they provide access to a large number of UK businesses, pulled together from a variety of sources and locations, they are lacking when it comes to a unified data refreshment programme. As we all know, all databases decay over time, resulting in poor quality data which will have an impact on subsequent marketing activity.

Because of the way an aggregated pool is constructed, from disparate sources of data, there exists an enormous that elements of the data may be out of date and therefore inaccurate, ultimately providing very poor quality data to end users. Unfortunately, just because a number of data owners contribute to a pool, it doesn’t mean the marketer gets the best of all worlds. Each data owner is likely to have its own techniques, principles and processes when it comes to data refreshment. Therefore, when these sources are brought together, the resulting ‘universe’ can quickly become a complex mix of accurate and out of date information, with no unified refresh solution in place.

Data of this nature can have a potentially detrimental effect on any resulting marketing activity. At the very least, contacts within the database may be out of date and therefore an obvious waste of time and investment targeting. At worst, data analysis and modelling activity could deliver wildly false results, because the vital raw material needed to drive these approaches is not up to scratch. How can a model representing today’s customers and prospects be constructed from data which may be two, three or more years old; especially in the context of the recession and the huge changes to business that we’ve seen in the last two years?

Unfortunately for the end user, there’s often no simple way of identifying whether data from an aggregated pool is accurate or not. A system of date stamping has been introduced by many, but I’d suggest this is even more misleading. Most data within an aggregated pool is appended with a single date stamp, which could indicate one of many things. The contact may well have been refreshed over the phone, but more likely could have been updated from information available at Companies House, which itself could be out of date in today’s fast moving business universe. Only one part of the data may have been updated as opposed to the entire record; again something a single date stamp may not be able to confirm.

The owners or aggregated pools also tend to have difficult issues with duplicate records. Disparities again due to the differing origins of the data can have an impact on the level of duplicates, and the ease at which these can be matched and de-duped. Even with all the best matching there will be instances of different spellings of a single company name, located at the same address. Unless this is flagged and manually checked, over the phone, it’s difficult to identify the accurate name. This one issue can also apply to the names of individual contacts within a business. We’ve developed a software tool which enables our call centre agents to display on screen and therefore check multiple records at once, which has had a dramatic impact on the de-dupe issue; but this of course requires an ongoing investment in a manual refreshment policy; something aggregated pools don’t engage in.

Aggregated pools can provide relatively low cost data to marketers. My issue with them could perhaps be a trading descriptions one. Most pools claim to offer accurate and refreshed data, backed up by date stamps to prove when an update has occurred. But few, if any, can back these ‘refreshment programmes’ up with any substantial, dedicated or robust refreshment activity. Date stamps here can be misleading; while a date stamp appended to a piece of our data will indicate exactly when the record was last verified, in full, and over the phone, an aggregated pool may simply be indicating an automated Companies House update; of less value in comparison, even if the date of the update was more recent.

Marketers and other end users should challenge suppliers, and ask them to prove the accuracy of their data, or at the very least provide details on their data refreshment policy. Without these assurances, how do you know the real value of the data you’re investing in? Aggregated pools have their uses, but I’d suggest that no-one knows data better that the company that both owns and maintains it.

Digital Marketing Group hopeful after dull half year

BOB WILLOTT — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:16:00 GMT

AIM listed Digital Marketing Group's results for the half year to 30 September, announced this morning, showed a slight fall in revenues compared with the same period last year, despite having acquired Cybercom and Gasbox since then.

The group’s operating profit margin of 6.1% remained a long way below the industry benchmark and compared with 6.3% in the corresponding six months of 2008. The situation might possibly have been worse if the latest operating profit had not benefited from a £1 million settlement with a client that went into liquidation.

The post-tax profit for the half year was a very modest £136,000 after a disproportionately high tax charge was prompted by various disallowable costs. Whether that profit would have been more or less without the client liquidation consequences remains a mystery, depending on how much work was delivered in exchange for the settlement fee. The group achieved a post-tax profit of £1.4 million for the full year to 31 March 2009.

Working capital remained tight with short-term liabilities exceeding readily realisable assets by nearly £5 million at 30 September, although the company said it had unused borrowing facilities available of a similar amount.

Chief executive Ben Langdon was optimistic about the second half of the year: “We are experiencing increased levels of new business activity which will convert into revenue for the group”, he said.

Putt on some new undies, love

Greg Taylor — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:21:00 GMT

Triumph’s (bra) cups are running over with ideas.

Its latest, a green corset-style garment, can be removed and unrolled to create a 1.5m-long putting mat whenever a lady feels like brushing up her ball skills.

When she sinks a putt into one of the cups, a built-in speaker pumps out a congratulatory "nice shot!".

The bra also features pockets for extra golf balls and tees, and a detachable flag pin that serves as a score pencil. (Tx Claire)

Twice a year, Triumph launches a new novelty bra in Japan to highlight social trends.

As you’ve probably guessed, they’re designed to raise awareness of an issue, rather than be worn regularly.

Triumph claims that the Nice Cup in Bra is a response to the growing popularity of golf among Japanese women.

In previous years the company has invented the postal bra – with pockets for letters – and one made from miso soup and rice bowls, with a special holder for chopsticks.

More recently, it unveiled the novelty husband-hunter bra.

When an engagement ring is inserted in the mechanism, the countdown clock stops and Mendelssohn’s Wedding March strikes up.

Ref. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6543240/Bra-that-can-be-used-as-a-golf-putting-mat.html

Murdoch serious about split from Google as talks held with Microsoft

Gordon Macmillan — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:09:00 GMT

Looks like Rupert Murdoch wasn't simple sabre ratting (as fun as that is) about splitting from Google. It is being reported this morning that News Corporation is in talks with Microsoft about a possible split with the search giant.

According to a report in the Financial Times the plan would involve News Corp being paid to "de-index" its news websites from Google.

Getting in bed with Microsoft makes perfect sense. Microsoft hates Google (and its plans for applications and an operating system) as much as it hates Apple and it would set up a real search engine battle between Google and Bing. Until now it doesn’t feel like we have much of a fight although ComScore says Bing is gaining ground. In October it accounted for 9.9% per cent of searches in the US in October up from 8.4% per cent at its launch.

Still it feels more like a one party state – if more fun than your average Stalinist party get together.

The paper says that although talks are at an early stage Microsoft has approached other big online publishers, but mentions no names.

Newspaper publishers would like nothing more to stop Google acting like a parasite on their businesses. As well as News Corp, which owns The Times, The Sun and The Wall Street Journal, other publishers including Guardian News & Media have also raised concerns over Google.

The FT says that one publisher said Microsoft's plan "puts enormous value on content if search engines are prepared to pay us to index with them" and added that the move was "all about Microsoft hurting Google's margins".

The talks with Microsoft come as News Corp delays plans until early next year to erect a pay wall around its content.

Although we do know as of last week from James Harding, the editor of The Times, that the paper would launch a subscription service for online access early next year making it likely that the paper would be the first News Corp title to implement a system of paid content.

Rupert Murdoch, of course, recently hit out at Google in an interview he gave to Sky News Australia where he questioned the value it brings to newspapers.

"No[ it's not a two way street with Google sending traffic] What's the point of someone coming occasionally who likes a headline they see on Google? Sure we go out and say we have so many millions of visitors. The fact is that there is not enough advertising in the world to go around to make all the websites profitable. We'd rather have fewer people coming to our websites but paying. They don't suddenly become loyal readers of our websites."

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Whatever you do, don't mention the name

Dave Trott — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 23:28:00 GMT

I was being interviewed by someone recently. They wanted my opinion about the relationship between social-media and advertising.

I said, give me an example. She said, “The crowd sourcing thing that happened at that railway station.”

I said, who was that for? She said, “Vodafone.”

I said, Vodafone?

She said, “Er, I think so, or maybe it was Nokia. Someone like that, a mobile phone company anyway.”

I said, let’s back up.

You want to know about the relationship between social-media and advertising. And as an example you’ve given me a commercial, and you can’t remember the name of the company that ran it.

What was the message you got out of that piece of communication?

She said, “Well, I suppose that it’s good to be connected. Mobile phones help everyone stay in touch and interact.”

I said, okay who is that unique to?

She said, “Well no one obviously, all mobile phones do that.”

I said, Okay, so do you think the brief was: let’s run some ads with a generic benefit and sell a lot of mobile phones, our competitors as well as our own?

She said huffily, “Obviously not.”

I said okay, so before you look at the media, look at what you’re putting in the media.

Probably you should sort out what you want to do, before you sort out where to do it.

That’s the problem.

We think we’re in the communication business, but actually we’re in the fashion business. A lot of people start at the answer and work their way back to a problem they can shoe-horn into that answer.

Currently the fashion is social-media. So that’s the answer, now what’s the question.

The actual company that ran the dancing-and-singing-in-the-station ad was T Mobile. The odd thing for me is that it wouldn’t have taken much to get her to remember that.

You don’t have to change a frame of the film. All you have to do is have a line at the end that says something like, “It’s not just a flash-mob. It’s a T Mob”.

Just an old fashioned mnemonic to link it to your brand. Then you can’t remember it as, “It’s not just a flash-mob, it’s a Vodafone”, or a Nokia, or anything else.

And you’re not spending your money advertising your competitors.

But that’s the problem with old-fashioned mnemonics. They’re old fashioned. And we’re not starting from the point of what works.

We’re starting from the point of what’s fashionable.

And fashionable thinking is all you have to do is get the brand values right. If your advertising reflects your brand values people will automatically know who it’s for. Because your brand values are unique.

But are they?

I was having a debate with some students a while back. They wanted to know about celebrities in advertising. When should you use them, when do they work?

I said, okay let’s take David Beckham’s Nike ads as an example.

What does David Beckham have to do with Nike and what does “Impossible is nothing” mean anyway?

Is it just, “Nothing is impossible” backwards? If so, why?

The students spent ten minutes telling me why Beckham was the right image for the brand. The line was modern and catchy. The ads were well written and well shot.

After ten minutes I pointed out David Beckham doesn’t advertise Nike. He advertises Adidas.

We spent 10 minutes discussing the wrong brand. And all the students went, “Oh yeah”.

And wondered what point I was trying to make. That’s why I often feel as if I’m in a different business.

The name of the brand or product is almost seen as a nuisance. Something that gets in the way of the advertising.

It reminds me of art galleries which are sponsored by big companies. These firms can have their names discreetly on the outside of the gallery, but nowhere near the art.

The art must remain pure and free from grubby commercialism. Maybe that’s what we do now. Sponsorship.

As agencies do we need to practice what we preach in social media?

Dirk Singer — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:11:00 GMT

Something that's been discussed at length in the past, is the whole issue of agencies practicing what they preach in terms of social media.

So...it's easy to rock up and recycle some stats and facts about consumers taking control, being part of the conversation, blah, blah...but do you have any credibility if you don't have any 1st hand experience of being in this space yourself?

Not surprisingly my answer is not really. I wouldn't go as far as saying that you need years of Internet experience, but some kind of hands-on, direct knowledge is crucial.

Unfortunately AdWeek has stats that show that all too often what we do is window dressing - while 56% of agency bosses say their company has a blog, 66% blog no more than once a month. Similarly 56% say they have a Twitter presence, but at the same time 57% tweet once a month or less.

Part of the problem, from personal experience, is finding the right way to use agency profiles so that it's not a straight forward sales pitch, and that it's updated often enough.

At Cow our Twitter feed was until last month, used fairly infrequently, for the simple reason that the two people updating it - my fellow digital Cow, Louise Doherty, and myself - each had our own personal Twitter profiles and just naturally concentrated on those 1st, even if it concerned agency news.

The solution we came up with was to give the feed to everyone in the agency on rotation where they talk about things of interest to them, which personally I think makes it less sales focused, as well as making it look more busy. It also puts more of a human stamp on our - corporate - social media profiles.

An example from Australia

On a much larger scale, McCanns in Australia and New Zealand, seems to have much the same in mind. Strategist Mark Pollard has a post up today on how the agency is celebrating its 50th anniversary in Oz - and a key part involves a complete website revamp - preview image above.

By the looks of things, the site will become primarily 'social', much like CP&B did the other month. But there's an added element in that McCann staffers have created new stuff specifically for it.

When the site goes live tomorrow, new content created by staff in Auckland, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney will go live, with an internal incentive for the content that gets viewed the most.

According to Mark, "through the project we’re hoping people get to experience the power – or perhaps lack of – of their own personal networks, the role content plays in social and search, the unpredictability of being online, how being transparent and authentic is not to be feared, and so on."

And so to rounds things off, maybe the secret in where some agencies go wrong can be found in the questions AdWeek asked. Agencies bosses were asked about social media...yet these are people who still by and large learned their craft in a traditional marketing world. Some of us are 'digital immigrants' in the sense that we've made the effort to learn, while others are less active.

We tell our clients that consumers now have control over our brands. Perhaps the same applies to us. Rather than adopting a top down model in controlling our social media policies, the way for agencies to become both authentic and effective is for everyone who is part of our organisation to feed into them.

Media Square shareholders’ meeting still not called

BOB WILLOTT — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:21:00 GMT

Nothing but a deafening silence has emerged from the group of agitating shareholders that were seeking to overthrow Media Square chairman Roger Parry since their request for a general meeting was rejected by the company on 11 November on the grounds that it had not “been properly called” (see Confusion about demand for Media Square shareholders’ meeting).

The request for a meeting was initiated by Bob Morton’s Hawk Investment Holdings and others. If the request was legally valid Media Square would have been obliged to issue a notice convening the meeting by last Friday.

Parry reaffirmed today that the company is of the opinion that the shareholders’ request did not constitute a “valid notice”, adding that it had received no further communication from Morton on the matter.

The most obvious reasons why a request might be invalid would be where:

the board had reason to believe that the shareholders requesting the meeting did not between them own 10% of the voting shares at the time the request was made (although this would be inconsistent with the information currently published on the Media Square website), or
the request was not suitably authenticated, or
the request failed to state the general nature of the business to be dealt with (hardly applicable in this case as the company has already stated that the purpose would be to remove Parry from the board and appoint Morton, David Wright and Keith Springall in his place).

Where a valid request has been lodged with a company and the directors fail to call a meeting within 21 days of the date when members holding at least 10% of the company’s shares requested it, the shareholders themselves would be entitled to convene the meeting.

Battle of Big Thinking

Gordon Macmillan — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:36:00 GMT

Great line-up for next week's fourth APG Battle of Big Thinking with more than 20 of the biggest thinkers the business.

One of the nice things about it is that it has a speedy format that progresses through out the day: three speakers per round, each given 15 minutes, with the audience voting at the end of each round. The winner of each round goes into an eliminator to find the supreme champion at the end of the day.

There are still a few tickets left (celia.miranda@haymarket.com). We'll be tweeting details of the conference throughout the day and you can follow the event via the hashtag #BoBT.

I'd also recommend following some of these people (if you're not already) who are all speaking at the event.

First up is Matt Willifer @matt93 who is chairman of the Account Planning Group and head of planning at M&C Saatchi.

Kicking off in the Big Global Thinking session is Will Harris, @willharris, UK marketing director of Nokia, ex of WCRS and AMV he's worked on the rebrand of BT Cellnet to O2 and Orange (not to mention being a former Conservative Party marketing chief).

Also in this slot is former BBH staffer Guy Murphy @guymurphy who for these last two years has been worldwide planning director at JWT.

For Big Thinking and Innovation John Willshire @willsh from PHD will take to the stage who is head of innovation and will be looking at "the creation and cultivation of ideas through the study of social, cultural and technological trends".

In what is likely to be one of the hottest sessions of the day head of strategy and innovation at VCCP Amelia Torode @Amelia_Torode will share what she has learnt from campaigns including comparethemarket/meerkat.com, in Big Thinking in Social Media.

Also in this slot is We Are Social's Sandrine Plasseraud @MeToo will take to the stage. She is a former Renault marketer who was responsible who helped kicked start the firm's social media strategy.

Kicking off Big Mobile Thinking will be Scott Seaborn @ScottSeaborn –head of mobile at Ogilvy Group UK and the co-chairman of the UK Mobile Marketing Association.

Joining Scott will be Todd Tran @toddtran managing director of WPP mobile marketing agency for Joule. In another life he was a strategy management consultant with Bain & Company.

Personally I’m looking forward to hearing Patrick O'Luanaigh @patrickol in Big Thinking in Free Spaces. He's the CEO of game developer and production company, nDreams and has been creative director at SCi and Eidos. He founded nDreams with an unusual approach and take (they were behind what was dubbed world's first ever console 'Alternate Reality Game' that scored over 4m visits in 12 weeks). Wonder if he's been playing COD:MW2?

The former Unilever marketer who worked with BBH on the much talked about repositioning of Lynx. He now leads Plum Baby, the private equity backed premium organic baby-food brand.

It's near the end of the day, but Big Thinking in Marketing will be another goodie with Justin Basini @justinbasini the former vice-president for marketing at Capital One and Deutsche Bank who is now working on a new venture, which will be launching in 2010.

Other include some of the industry's up and coming talent who will take to microphone in the Open Mic Session. Speakers here include Katy Lindemann @katylindemann a senior strategist Naked Communications.

One of these speakers is going to win the day.

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So, farewell then...

Felix Velarde — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:24:00 GMT

So, the time has come. Or rather, the untimely end has come. Revolution is taken off the stands, its feature article spiked.

It is, in my opinion, a huge shame. I've been involved in the magazine in one way or another – reader, writer, interviewee, critic, blogger – for a dozen years. I've seen it change and grow and mature since its earliest raison d'etre of providing a more client-friendly window on our industry than NMA's then-trade newsletter view.

We, that is my friends and colleagues in the industry, even put up with the doldrum years of that one awful front-cover photoshop template and remained loyal. It's a crying shame that ad revenues couldn't support the title... but it's also testament to the power of the digital revolution itself, which Revolution has so diligently reflected, that has led to the incorporation of marketing into the online. The digital universe, once so revolutionary, took over.

That the print edition is going is not so sad, except that it ends a vital period of reporting and advocacy that has now, quite inevitably and probably quite rightly, moved online. As with all changes like this though it leaves the hugely talented and engaging people behind it adrift. I hope that this talent doesn't go wasted or diluted. Gareth Jones, Andy McCormick and the rest of the team deserve congratulations, as do their predecessors, for providing an important and valued perspective on our industry, one that has been accessible, informative and fun.

So, farewell then. Revolution is dead. Long live the revolution.

Eprivacy Directive: van Rompuy should reconsider.

Rob Taylor — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:35:00 GMT

Although his direct powers are limited, and the ink still wet on his papers, the new EU president Herman van Rompuy should consider using his influence to create a consensus for reviewing the recent passing of the EU’s eprivacy directive.

Part of the directive, which is about to be fully adopted, covers cookies and user’s rights. The individual member states are responsible for interpreting and enforcing the directive, but should the UK fully follow the bells and whistles route we could see virtually all digital activity requiring the user’s opt-in before being able to drop cookies. This will have a disastrous effect on the digital economy, and effectively catapult us back to the Stone Age. The success of digital Britain is due in part to advertising money underpinning all the rich content we see on the internet today. The advertising money is there because it’s possible to track the effectiveness of every penny spent - thanks to the use of cookies. Remove this visibility and advertisers will be less willing to spend, which means less money for the content editors. An impoverished experience for all will be the outcome.

Pile driver to crack a walnut? I think so. I’m making some really rough calculations here, but I estimate there to have been around 1x1015 cookies dropped on people’s machines in the past 10 years of the internet. I’ve tried to find a case of someone’s privacy being breached through cookie use, but I couldn’t. There probably are cases, but there’s likely only to be a handful. Not a bad ratio, and not surprising really when you consider that a cookie is just a random collection of digits with no personally identifiable information.

A big weight on the mind of the policy makers is the dreaded spectre of unforeseen consequences. In my mind, the consequences are stark. The internet is the future and the UK is at the forefront of developments in this medium. This directive will seriously hinder the UK’s competitiveness in the global arena with dire consequences for the future.

Who need’s Phil Collins when you can have Zingolo?

Chris Reed — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:22:00 GMT

The new Cadbury's Dairy Milk partnership with Ghanaian entertainment culture is wonderfully positive and full of life as well as a glass and half full of milk! Zingolo is the first single released from “Glass and Half Full” records, Cadbury’s own record label. This is launched to celebrate Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Fairtrade certification. Ghana is the heart of the Fairtrade chocolate made by Cadbury and this track as well as the overall Ghana connection celebrates everything Ghanaian. Cadbury’s have really gone to town with the positive Ghana associations recruiting dancers, artists, wood carvers as well as musicians. Rather than do this heart-heartedly they have even really invested in marketing the new music and putting it on iTunes to buy as well as promoting all the other Ghanaian cultural connections. It’s a risk as it’s so far removed from the award winning gorilla/Phil Collins, plane/queen big productions. It also assumes that people know that Ghanaian chocolate is the best. However the positive association with vibrancy, colours and a lust for life through the links with Ghanaian entertainers will communicate very positive product and brand values and that Cadbury’s give you a boost and makes you feel better. The only additional other angles worth persuing would be brand partnerships with high street retailers like HMV or fashion brands selling Ghanaian clothes should such exist or travel agents promoting Cadbury through all different associated angles. Overall a wonderfully vibrant brand partnership.

Call Britannia, an interesting new initiative

Neville Upton — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:53:00 GMT

I was interested to read that SimplySwitch founder Karen Darby has launched ‘Call Britannia,’ a call centre business aiming to create 10,000 jobs for the unemployed. It is hard to escape the media coverage surrounding the rise of unemployment amongst young people and the fact that an increasing number of graduates are turning to call centres for employment as a result of the recession.

Call Britannia is an interesting initiative and Karen Darby’s intentions are, in many ways, similar to the vision we have here at The Listening Company. Our emphasis is focused on providing young people with life and communication skills in order for them to have a successful long term career in either contact centres or elsewhere. In today’s commercial environment businesses place a premium on quality customer service and as a result, there are excellent opportunities available for people looking to pursue a career in the contact centre industry.

We have been creating employment and careers for young people for over a decade and have made substantial investments in training and people development including the launch of an Academy as a dedicated training and development arm to The Listening Company. The Academy enables each member of staff to build skills for life and gain an accredited qualification they can take with them into the future.

With a total of six sites across the UK including Newcastle and Glasgow, which are both areas with growing unemployment, we are continuing to create jobs for people from a variety of different backgrounds and have the skills to make excellent customer service agents.

Best resources in Social Media? A personal plotted history...

Richard Monk — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:06:00 GMT

Television and newspaper reports make ‘Social Media‘ and ‘Social Networking‘ buzz words sound like something that’s arrived on the scene in the past couple of years – but at least the basics pre-date the existence of the internet itself. Early BBS (Bulletin Board Systems) existed before anyone had even heard the term ‘internet’, and in concept will probably exist when its moved on from its current form.

My first experiences of the Internet involved struggling to make an Acorn RISC PC (post-Archimedes era RISCOS system) connect to Demon Internet – something I very shortly lost interest with and then attempted again a year or two later using Compuserve as an ISP. At the time this involved a sign-up fee, monthly subscription costs and national rate BT call charges. Compuserve had a built in message board structure as well as IRC (Internet Relay Chat), then later First Class (combining the two, plus rich media) which was adopted by the Open University quite early on – something I got involved in quite heavily as a means of exploring the diverse social aspect of the net. But all of this was heavily limited by both the inherent costs of being online for any significant period of time and the critically slow connection speed of a 56.6kbps modem.

If you’ve been using the internet since as early as 1996 (or even earlier) then your experiences of connecting to other users for social reasons may be very similar, and like me, you’re probably keen to embrace new forms of social networking, especially if they can offer something new.

Instant messenger clients like MSN, AIM and ICQ proceeded Internet Relay Chat use and existed way before any of the current social networking sites came into play. They’re still very popular, although the media still seem to be stuck in the mindset that IM’s are still ‘chat rooms‘ and lead to children being duped into strangers’ cars.

MySpace seemed to be the first Social Networking site to get mainstream news coverage and therefore mass popularisation, but its novelty seemed to be centred around having the highest friend count out there. It suffered from grotesquely heavy amounts of spam, and now seems to be almost entirely left for dead by its user base. Has anyone asked you “are you on MySpace?” in the last year and a half? Despite its flaws however, MySpace does seem to still be the default option for Bands on a self-promotion tip. To an extent it’s probably still one of the best options as the site is still very well trusted, and it’s big advantage is how heavily it can be customised – ideal for bands and labels who want their artwork to be fully integrated online. Somehow it does seem ironic though that the default MySpace music player re-encodes mp3’s to a noticeably poor bitrate. I’d say MySpace’s days are probably numbered and without re-inventing themselves or taking better advantage of their music profiling niche, then at some point in the next 5 years it may well find itself at the online graveyard with Geocities....

[Full article available at 1985... Click to read]

eModeration's Social Media Round-up #14

Tia Fisher — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:19:00 GMT

Welcome to eModeration's weekly round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams (@emodkate). This week: President Obama's thumbs; Twillionaires; and 'intextication'.

Next week, eModeration is sending me on a social-skills course (day one: eating with implements) - so the next round-up will be on Friday the 4th December. See you then.

THE HEADLINES ...

President Obama has revealed that his absence from Twitter is due to a lack of dexterity in the thumb department. He was asked by a group of Shanghai students if they should be able to use Twitter freely – and the thumb quip launched a careful response about freedom of speech: “I have a lot of critics in the United States who can say all kinds of things about me, I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don’t want to hear.”

Stephen Fry this week claimed that Twitter celebs like himself can now opt out of the ‘pact with the devil’ which required them to open up their private lives to journalists, in return for press coverage of their work. Now, he says, Twillionaires like he and Britney can “reach their circulation just by typing into my keyboard.” Grave news indeed for Sleb magazines, which are already clinging on for dear life to the sinking ship of print.

Facebook came in for widespread and heavy criticism this week, for failing to follow Bebo’s lead in including a ‘Report’ button developed by the Child Exploitation and On-line Protection Centre. CEOP’s boss Jim Gamble urged the social networks to adopt the feature, which allows young users to log bullying, hate speech and sexually explicit content, and to contact trained advisers: “there is a responsibility, a duty of care, to the young and the vulnerable”, he said.

The scam offers scandal could spiral still further: a team of Sacramento lawyers is investigating complaints that unauthorized charges were made without users’ knowledge – and are considering class actions against Facebook, MySpace, Zynga, and Offerpal amongst others.

Yes, it’s that time of the decade already: as we inch painfully towards 2010, the Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences bestowed Webby Awards on the top 10 internet moments of the last 10 years. Amongst the chosen: Facebook, Twitter, and the iPhone, along with the birth of Wikipedia and the Iranian elections.

Channel 4’s landmark deal with YouTube went live this week, unleashing around 5000 videos – 80% of which are full lengths shows – upon a grateful nation. Peep Show and Gordon Ramsay's F Word are among the goodies, which Channel 4 is hoping will lure in fresh advertisers.

The Digital Economy Bill was amongst those trailed in The Queen’s Speech yesterday. The bill proposes that those caught in the illegal-download act would first be sent warning letters – but would lose their connections if they continued to break the law. No mention, though, of the hotly-disputed Broadband Tax, which now looks likely to be slotted into the Finance Bill, due in 2010.

THE LOWDOWN ...

Every now and again comes a piece of news to which the only response is a brief contemplation of the expression “it takes all sorts to make a world”, and here is just such a one: a French company has developed a set of bathroom scales which will tweet your weight to your followers.

Teens are risking their own lives, as well as others’, by texting while driving- and worse, the figures seem to show that they’re learning from their parents. A new report claims that people are well aware of the dangers of texting on the road – but their desire to stay connected to their networks is stronger than their desire to stay connected to the tarmac.

Which leads us neatly to the American Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year shortlist, which, in an example of terrifying cultural serendipity, this year contains the word ‘intexticated’: the condition of being distracted by texting while driving. Sadly it was pipped at the post by ‘unfriend’ - possibly more useful but not quite as clever.

UK Twitterers are confirmed lefties - the Citizen Smiths of the Interweb. The news comes from a joint poll by Prospect Magazine and YouGov, which found that the average Twitter user is under-35 and London-based – and somewhat to the left of the Labour Party.

Trying to sell your house? Facing a wall of indifference, despite your original features and your central location? Could be that potential vendors are put off by your slow broadband connection. ISPreview.co.uk's survey reveals that 75% of people won’t buy a house – even an adorable one - if the best broadband ISP speed it could achieve was just 1Mbps.

IN OTHER NEWS ...

Yelps of excitement here, as Bing is launched in the UK – with enhanced visual search, Twitter integration and an “instant answers” service for real-time news on football scores and suchlike. But should Google be perspiring slightly and watching its back – or has it nothing to fear from the young pretender? iCrossing reveals the Five Things You Need To Know about Bing.

Bebo, whose web TV slate includes KateModern, Sofia's Diary, and The Gap Year, has nixed all new commissions, following parent company AOL’s announcement that it would slash 100 jobs globally.

Despite Rupert Murdoch’s admission last week that his paywall plans were likely to be delayed, it’s been announced that Times Online will start charging for content in the spring. James Harding, editor of The Times, said the site would offer 24-hour passes, as well as subscriptions.

The European Interactive Advertising Association – which includes stalwarts like AOL, the BBC, and Condé Nast amongst its members – predicts that online advertising will laugh in the face of the recession next year, with a projected 7.6% year-on-year rise in Europe, and a further 15% increase predicted for 2011.

And if further proof were needed that it is customers who are now directing the brand message, 360i reports that 77% of social media search results are generated by individuals with no affiliation to the brand.

ON FACEBOOK ...

It’s good news for Facebook this week: it towers above the nearest competition in the British social network league, netting half of all visits in UK last month. Twitter languishes a distant fourth, with a contextually-microscopic 1.9% of UK visitors.

But wait! Whispers of coming gloom can be heard, as research by WPP Group’s Mindshare suggests that the crucial older teen and twentysomething demographic might be drumming its fingers and looking round for something new.

Sony is catching up with rivals Microsoft, which recently hooked Facebook and Twitter to their Xbox 360. New software for the PlayStation means that gamers can now link their PS3s to their Facebook accounts to share game-play updates with friends.

ON TWITTER ...

Despite the recent slowdown in Twitter’s growth, it can still produce stats that make us gasp: according to Pingdom the average number of Tweets per hour is 1.1 million; the daily figure is 27.3 million; and at this rate, we’re looking at 10 billion tweets a year.

The typical Twitter user is male, and in his late twenties/early thirties – and wants brands to listen and respond to his questions, finds new research from InSites. News which sits uneasily against this other study, which finds, amongst other interesting tidbits, that 76% of brands on Twitter are infrequent users - and only 9% use it as a customer-service channel.

BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

Marmite has formed a secret society – the Marmarati – to develop an extra-strong version of the loveit/hateit yeast-based spread. Members were chosen because they expressed their love for the Unilever-owned brand on social networking sites, and fans will be able to win a sneak-pretaste of the new spread by uploading marmite-centric content.

Mydeco.com, which sells homewares and furniture, has inked a deal with Sony's PlayStation Home to sell iconic pieces of virtual furniture – for example, the famous Marilyn ‘Lips’ sofa – on the community-based network.

Maclaren, who produce children’s buggies, recently offered a voluntary product-recall on one million of its pushchairs, amid reports that children had lost fingers in their folding mechanisms. But it found itself at the wrong end of a sharp social-media stick when UK customers discovered that only US customers were included – and this week it was force to roll out the offer worldwide.

For this year's Los Angeles Design Challenge, Audi has tapped its Facebook community of famously partisan fans to help design a fantasy Youthmobile for release in the year 2030 – you can see some of the designs here. http://www.facebook.com/audi

ON GOOGLE ...

The tech world was agog this week, as rumours swirled that Google’s eagerly-awaited new Chrome operating system might be available for download as soon as next week, with Search Engine Journal suggesting that the traction being gained by Windows 7 might be motivating a hasty launch.

Eek. Californian developer Frank McCabe created a programming language in 2004, and named it Go. He published a research paper about it in 2004. And a book in 2007. All the more surprising, then, that Google has just called IT”s new language by the same name. McCabe says he doesn’t have a trademark and can’t afford a lawsuit, but is determined not to let the search giant steamroller his prior claim.

Meanwhile, the Swiss data protection organization says its complaints to Google about breaches of privacy in Street View have fallen on deaf ears. It alleges that the company has refused to fix insufficiently blurred faces and numberplates, which could lead to individuals being identified in ‘sensitive’ locations - outside hospitals, prisons and schools.

Google means business with its latest policy on scam and malware advertisers who use Adwords – it’s imposing a blanket policy of ‘guilty till proven innocent’ on all suspect ads, and a lifetime ban on confirmed scammers.

Social Search, Google’s snazzy new feature which allows users to combine search with social data, has gone down – and according to a baffled Mashable, will remain down till early next week. What, Mashable wonders, could have happened to Social Search that could possibly take that long to fix?

ON YOUTUBE ...

YouTube has launched a dedicated channel called YouTube Direct, specifically for citizen journalists to bring their work to a larger audience. The tool allows media companies to connect directly with user-reporters, and request and rebroadcast news clips.

The video-sharing site is also testing a new approach to making online ads relevant – allowing users to skip the ones that bore them – with the idea that they will then engage more deeply with the ones that they do in fact watch.

ON MOBILE ...

T-Mobile faces consumer wrath again this week after it emerged that one of their workers had been selling customers’ details to a rival company - a major breach of data protection regulation.

In the first mobile-Twitter deal, Orange have snagged an agreement with Twitter to let users upload photos by text, via Snapshot - a custom picture platform developed by Orange.

73% of marketing execs think mobile is the UK’s ‘most likely to expand’ medium, says the IAB, whose survey canvassed the opinions of 100 senior agency reps.

VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

Hi-yah! Kung Fu Panda World – in development for the last 2 years and targeted at kids of 8-12 – is to be launched in early 2010. The world will feature high levels of parental control, and will offer both long-term and one-day subscriptions.

Despite a spot of bother with its in-game ads – which some have suggested are rather dastardly - social games company Zynga’s investors are clearly chomping at the bit. The upwardly-mobile games enterprise, whose biggest success is the Facebook mega-game Farmville - has just received a massive injection of cash: $15.1 million to be precise, bringing its total haul to over $54 million.

Quick work: Gravity Bear, who declared as a social games developer less than four weeks ago, has already unveiled Battle Punks, a Facebook app which it bills as a ‘3D social game. It’s due to launch in open beta before 2010.

Subscription revenues for Disney’s Club Penguin were up a cozy 4% last quarter, contributing to a overall increase in revenue for the company - despite an icy economy.

That's all folks!

We’re dreaming of a green Christmas

Greg Taylor — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:12:00 GMT

For all the traditional merriment they embody, Christmas trees are a) awkward to transport and b) terribly depressing when they're discarded in January.

No longer if L.A. landscape architect, Scott Martin, has his way.

Scott founded The Living Christmas Company, which gives L.A. residents the chance to rent a living Christmas tree and have it delivered right to their door.

Unlike regular Christmas trees, around 20 million of which are felled each year in the US, living trees are transplanted, roots and all, into pots for the festive period.

After the holidays, Scott and his team pick up the trees, replant them and nurture them until next year. 

Customers can order a tree from the company's website, and sizes range from 3–8 feet and prices—including delivery and collection by bio-diesel truck—are comparable to those of felled trees.

While the company isn't the first to offer tree rentals for Christmas, it is the first we've seen that lets customers adopt a pine, allowing them to share Christmas with the same tree year after year, watching it grow along with their family.

Adopted trees are tracked by barcode.

The concept will certainly appeal to eco-conscious Angelenos, who may not get a white Christmas, but can now choose a greener one.

Ref. http://www.springwise.com/eco_sustainability/livingchristmas/

Murdoch: online news to be smaller and less important

Gordon Macmillan — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:52:00 GMT

In case you were in some doubt regarding the future for online news James Murdoch is telling it straight. He says that online news will in the future have a smaller audience, be less important (than broadcast) and come with a premium price tag.

James Murdoch, who is chief executive of News Corporation Europe, gives the impression that online and printed news is going to be sidelined almost by a future which the company -- he is set to lead -- is ushering in. And that is the wider reality: news outlets are being sidelined and shuttered as there is no longer any revenue to support them -- the world it seems is shrinking. We saw that this week with the closure of Media Week.

According to James Murdoch there is a role for online and print journalism, but it is not as big as that of entertainment: "In the business of ideas, which is the business that we are in, we do think journalism plays a role, and we do think there are business models there that will make a lot of sense, albeit perhaps not at the scale of some of our broadcasting businesses and other entertainment businesses.

"Is it going to be as big a role? No," he said. "Structurally, television is vastly more profitable and a big opportunity,"

Murdoch, who was speaking who was speaking at the Morgan Stanley annual Technology, Media and Telecoms Conference in Barcelona, also spoke about developing what he called a wholesale market for its digital news, which is part of its plans to erect a pay wall around its content with The Times and The Sunday Times in the UK being the first to implement this. Earlier this week Times editor James Harding said that his paper would launch a subscription service for online access early next year.

"Our digital activities -- we are going to push them harder but we are actually going to be charging a premium price for them. We will have a smaller audience than giving it away for free, but I think it is the crucial step in starting to develop a wholesale market for digital journalism," James Murdoch said.

Murdoch told Reuters that his top priorities were building on News Corp's positions in pay TV in Europe and India (where it has Star TV) as well as "rebuilding the profitability of newspapers".

"We invest quite a lot in our journalism, we're very proud of it, we think it has great quality and great value, and we think that we should be charging a fair price for it, both to customers but also to other firms who might want to take it to customers in whatever way.

"We think that there's a very exciting market place, potentially a wholesale market place for digital journalism that we'll be developing," he added.

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Ludicrous media hysteria follows 'Le hand of Frog'

Ed Kemp — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:40:00 GMT

What happened to Ireland on Wednesday was hard to watch. But the reaction by the players, fans and media has gone too far.

Henry Winter calling for Thierry Henry to be banned for the finals is a ludicrous over-reaction that you would expect from an irate fan after a couple of beers, not from a respected football journalist. Remember that horrible little winker Ronaldo getting Rooney sent off in 2006? It was pretty awful and Ronaldo got booed not banned.

The Times has also reacted hysterically. 'Sleight of hand couuld cost Henry a fortune as luctractive sponsorship deals slip from his grasp' it claims. Two reporters it would seem worked on this utterly pointless story, which also claims the handball could hamper a proposed move to New York Red Bulls (whoever they are) next year. Again, total rubbish.

Calls for a replay are equally ridiculous. If you had a replay for every time a player cheated to win a game we would probably still be contesting the 1993/94 Premier League season.

Ireland did not fail to qualify for the 2010 World Cup because of Thierry Henry. They failed because they did not secure automatic qualification from their group - when that happens you enter a bit of a lottery (albeit a lottery that FIFA had skewed in the favour of the bigger nations).

Thierry Henry cheated - as most professional players do every single week - but it was FIFA that inexplicably changed the qualification system at the last minute.

If the Irish really want to pursue this issue, they should go after FIFA on those grounds rather than poor officiating or a cheating Frenchman.

Putting things in boxes

A Different Hat — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:40:00 GMT

A few years ago, in a moment of visionary genius, I realised that, over time, more and more products were going to be sold over the internet. Amazon’s business was growing at an extraordinary rate.

At the time, Amazon had made its name as the website of choice for books. Now, of course, Amazon sells virtually everything. But I remember thinking that books were a great place to start because, especially if you bought one at a time, they fitted conveniently through your average domestic letter-box.

Generally speaking, though, if you bought more than one book, or anything larger than the size of your letter-box, you had to be at home or a little card was popped through your door telling you that the Post Office had tried delivering a package but that, in order to retrieve it, and most annoyingly, you would have to pick it up yourself - back at the Post Office.

Well, I didn’t know much about the Post Office other than posting letters in nice, warm-red pillar boxes and receiving them through my letter-box. But I did know that sometime, somehow, somewhere, a box containing my online order arrived at the Post Office, was loaded into a nice red van and driven to my house. Then, if I was out, the driver would drive my box back to the Post Office it came from – with my order still undelivered.

In this new-age world, with more and more people buying more and more products online, this all seemed a rather inefficient, and decidedly non-eco-friendly, delivery system.

Now, please put all of the above in a little box in your head because while I realised this was happening, I became aware of another market trend.

More and more, at a rate similar to the growth in online purchasing, I read that Post Offices were being closed all over the country. In fact, the deeper into the country you lived, the more likely would it be that your Post Office would be closed. This meant that if you jumped onto the bandwagon of buying products online, but were not at home for them to be delivered, the wagon with your box in it would drive even further to find you were out and even further back to where it had come from.

Surely, if there was a system where you asked for your products to be delivered to your Post Office and that the card saying it had arrived was delivered by lunchtime with the rest of your morning mail, then you could go and collect your order at your convenience?

And surely this would save time and petrol and carbon for the Post Office as well as provide an exciting new reason for your local branch to survive?

Online retailers would offer their customers two options:

1. Would you like your order delivered to your home?

2. Would you like your order delivered to your local Post Office for you to “collect at your convenience (you will be notified when it arrives)”?

By saving all the inefficiencies outlined above, Option 2 might even be cheaper, creating a win-win-win situation. No need to close Post Offices (and perhaps the opportunity to open bigger and better branches); online retailers offering a choice of delivery options (and possibly cost savings); consumers in more control of their purchasing decisions (and supporting the survival of their local Post Office, especially in rural areas).

Perhaps, even, the Post Office could develop an expansion strategy? Maybe they have a wider product offering than they think? Maybe, because they have to store all these undelivered boxes, they Post Office has become a STORAGE, as well as a DELIVERY, service?

Why not invest in those storage places that have sprung up all over the place (especially those revolting, ugly, intrusive, big yellow ones which you can paint in your nice, warm, royal, pillar-box red)? There’s lots of boxes in those and they make lots of money. And yes, PO, you can charge money for storage. Even if only pennies a day, there'll be lots of them.

So come on PO – please don’t GO, we want you to GROW!

What a great idea. I dreamt of my destiny as a dotcom millionaire and, on 2 November 2005, I wrote to the Post Office. I told them what their problem was (but I didn’t tell them my solution).

What happened? Well I know my letter arrived, because a person describing himself as ‘Managing Director’ of a branch of the Post Office called me. He asked me to tell him my idea over the phone. I replied that if I did that, the Post Office could nick my idea (and my millions). He told me the Post Office had loads of new ideas and if I wouldn’t tell him mine over the phone, then he wasn’t interested. He put me back in my box.

Much more recently, Adam Crozier has been on the box. On the Andrew Marr Show (BBC Sun 27 Oct 09) he said: "Our market in the letters side is shrinking all the time whilst, at the same time, we are growing massively in terms of packets and parcels".

There you go. Even the Post Office agrees with what I told them would happen four years ago. So now we have more and more products being sold online, more and more boxes being driven around in more and more vans to more and more empty houses and more and more Post Offices being closed - apparently, since 1997, the number of post office branches has fallen from 19,000 to 11,000.

Can this be right?

And where did I go wrong?

Oh no. Tonight is Children In Need

Jeremy Lee — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:24:00 GMT

I love television - at its best it brings us all together and acts as social glue.

But at its worst, it's creepy, smug, self-satisfied and sanctimonious. And tonight's the night when that becomes most apparent.

While I don't have any massive problem with the charity concerned (although I'm not yet convinced that it is the BBC's remit to extricate funds from viewers when it won't even tell them how much it pays its 'talent'), I do with this show.

Tonight's highlights include the hosts of The One Show doing a skit from Fame, musical contributions from those tremendous actors from The Bill and Hollyoaks, and Sir Terry Wogan appearing in a special edition of Lark Rise to Candleford.

Wogan says that he will continue presenting the event until 'hell freezes over'; I never thought that I'd look forward to that happening.

Goodbye Media Week, it was a comic anyway

Arif Durrani — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:48:00 GMT

Some media owners and agency leaders would be forgiven for greeting news of Media Week’s closure with initial relief on Tuesday.

It’s never easy being watched, let alone reported on and critiqued as well. And in the current climate, where every major launch or account win is offset by a deluge of loses and people moves, it must’ve at times been plain annoying.

Yet, once the dust settles and the world keeps turning, I suspect Media Week’s attentive gaze will be missed. Working in “meedja” is never going to hold the attention of the nationals for long, and no other business mag is devoted to it.

The commercial media business has had a committed advocate in Steve Barrett, who genuinely cares about the business and the people in it. I could only admire as he repeatedly pushed media launches and wins to the front of an issue, while relegating redundancies to online or a few pars at the back. The focus was always on the positive, while acknowledging the challenges facing the market.

Media Week’s focus on bite-sized exclusive news stories (in addition to great, industry-led features) and its bitchy back page, made it a weekly 20 minute romping read, a comic to its harshest critics perhaps, but it was the media industry’s own comic nonetheless.

(Naval gazing warning ahead)

But let’s be blunt: the writing’s been on the wall for Media Week for some time. The heady circulation days of 20,000 had long past, and once the worst advertising recession in living memory took hold, drastic action was required.

The phasing out of the controlled circ model for the subscription-only one introduced this summer was initially intended for media owners (because they’re loaded right now of course) but was soon extended to encompass agencies as well.

Many questioned the move, especially when the magazine’s content was still available for free online. But these were desperate times.

The good news is that most companies did indeed see a value in the magazine and initial orders, although low, were placed. I’m reliably informed these continued to rise right up until its demise.

But it all proved too little, too late for Haymarket management, and, while I haven’t been privy to the P&L sheets, I know enough to admit they couldn’t have been pretty.

Yet Media Week becoming an online-only proposition had been muted long-before any downturn. The magazine’s own founder Tim Brooks, now steering Guardian News & Media through the choppy waters, predicted the magazine, along with most other B2B titles, would close its print offering by 2010, and that was five years ago.

His reasoning, while surprisingly candid – especially made as it was in an interview with Media Week – reflected the growing groundswell of opinion. As the possibilities of the internet began to unfold in a post dotcom-bust world, B2B publishers were well aware of the need to reposition themselves.

I remember reporting on David Hill, president and chief executive of IDG, one of the largest B2B powerhouses in the world, when he announced “we’re not magazine publishers any more” in 2002. At the time it was near-revolutionary. He preferred instead the idea of being a media content provider, regardless of vehicle.

This sentiment of diversification soon became the newly-labelled B2B media’s mantra, and to be fair Media Week embraced it with open arms. With its website, two news bulletins a day, podcast and Media Week TV, in addition to its annual Media360 conference and those coveted awards, it has set the pace for Haymarket's Brand Media's portfolio. It will be interesting to see if these brand extensions continue to prosper without the magazine.

But there has always been an elephant in the room, whose presence now looms larger than ever: online ad revenues alone do not generate enough to sustain the costs of running a substantial news desk.

I learned this lesson first hand as I watched my colleagues ebb away at Centaur’s Mad.co.uk. That had been an exciting, dynamic news wire environment that broke its fair share of exclusives – not least Bauer’s decision to buy Emap (a move which in itself seemed to symbolise the seismic shifts taking place).

But falls in recruitment ads started to take its toll. It's interesting to note that during this time Brand Republic’s own dedicated news desk was also at its strongest (& biggest), and proved a daily nuisance to all of Haymarket’s magazine brands. But that elephant just wasn’t going away, and so in the last couple of years the power at both companies has shifted back towards their stable of print brands.

This week’s announcement at Haymarket signals another step-change, and for me it makes the most sense to-date. Keep a hub of news reporters feeding into both online and magazine brands, with the emphasis in print more firmly placed on features, comments and analysis.

I’ve no doubt it’ll be messy at first, but certainly more efficient – and who knows, it might just satisfy that elephant.

There are alternative, interesting business models emerging in the sector of course, not least PaidContent and Utalkmarketing. Both are fleet of foot and relatively inexpensive, but they also rely on other peoples good old fashioned, expensive journalism upon which to draw. The Guardian is also set to unveil a new regional blogging initiative too, an innovative move that just might go some way in redressing the balance of news coverage at a local level.

But for now, spare a thought for the one that didn’t make it, just three months before turning 25. I know in the grand scheme of closures in 2009 Media Week's demise is small fry, just last week GNM announced it was scrapping its Business & Media supplement after more than 30 years and making more than 100 redundancies to boot, but its passing is indicative and will leave a void all the same.

Now Mystic Tim, if you’ll just email me next week’s lottery numbers, and I’ll get my coat.

Education, education, education (part three...and final)

Nick Stringer — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:40:00 GMT

I’ve banged the drum in previous weeks about the importance of consumer education about behavioural advertising, and the IAB's recent research has highlighted the need for this.

Today the IAB has published a guide on behavioural advertising specifically for industry, our first step in helping educate the market about this practice (although you’ll be glad to know that this will be my last blog – for now - talking about education). The guide explains how behavioural advertising works, how it differs to other types of targeted advertising on the internet, its benefits to web publishers and advertisers, consumer attitudes as well as online privacy and industry good practice.

The guide – sponsored by technology company Audience Science – hasn’t been written exclusively by the IAB but by the experts themselves, with contributions from the likes of AOL, Guardian, Profero, Post Office, Yahoo!, ValueClick Media and, of course, Audience Science.

It may not make the Amazon bestsellers list (its free after all) but for anyone who wants to know a little more about behavioural advertising, this one’s for you. Enjoy!

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