Why Google is buying DoubleClick

Straight from the horse's mouth.

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Facebook is kicking MySpace's arse

As predicted (sort of), Facebook is beginning to heavily impact on MySpace's traffic. And remember that the majority of MySpace's traffic comes from people browsing other people's MySpace pages, without contributing. Everyone on Facebook has to have their own profile, and therefore will likely have a much higher participation rate.

The number of unique UK visitors to MySpace declined by 300,000 to 6.5m in May against the previous month, while Facebook gained 527,000 visitors over the same period, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

Facebook attracted 3.2m unique UK visitors in the month and is expected to continue to grow in popularity as the site benefits from acres of free press coverage and word-of-mouth endorsement.

Bebo, the third-biggest social networking site and particularly popular with teenagers, has experienced steady growth since April, with an audience of 4m in May.

The trend is mirrored across the Atlantic, with MySpace suffering at the hands of a resurgent FaceBook in the US.

MySpace's unique US visitors declined by 450,000 to 56.6m in May, while Facebook's US audience has grown by a similar margin to 14.2m.

In the UK, Facebook has a greater reach that its US version, with 10% of the UK population logging onto the site, compared to 9% in the US.

But MySpace is more dominant than Facebook in the US, with an audience four times the size of its rival. In the UK, MySpace is only twice as big as Facebook.

Alex Burmaster, European internet analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings, said: "MySpace is, by far, still the most popular social network. However, if last month's growth rates were to remain consistent, both Bebo and Facebook would catch MySpace in September this year.

"Meanwhile, MySpace does trail the other two when it comes to user engagement. Bebo leads the way, with its average visitor spending just over an hour and a half on the site -- almost 10 more minutes than the average 'Facebooker' and almost a whole hour more than the average 'MySpacer'."

I bet Rupert is getting worried...

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The NMA Effectiveness Awards

The winners of the NMA Effectiveness Awards have been announced, with, you guessed it, R/GA winning the Special Award for Innovation for Nike+. Anyone a bit bored now?

More interestingly, the field seems to have been wide open, with lots of lesser known agencies picking up awards (AKQA was the only usual suspect to win, in the mobile category).

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May's Creative Showcase

May's Creative Showcase awards have been announced. I stand by my question of last month...

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Cannes: The results are in

The Cannes Cyberlions have been announced - you can see (and play with) all the winning entries here. O&M Canada's Dove Evolution, R/GA New York's Nike+ and Farfar Stockholm's Diesel Heidies won the Grand Prix.

Update: Profero's Daniele Fiandaca has put together a league table of the results, with the UK coming in joint 3rd with Japan, behind the US and Brazil.

Over to Campaign:

Profero was the only UK agency to bag one of the ten golds, for Mini "Follow the white rabbit". Mini was also the client in the UK's only silver-winning campaign, "Tug" by glue London.

Glue London was the most-awarded UK agency, picking up an additional two bronzes, for the Royal Navy "Get the message" and Coca-Cola "Boyband".

JWT, with "Idiots" for MTV/Autotrader, and Preloaded, with "CDX" for BBC History, were the other UK-based Bronze winners.

Crispin Porter + Bogusky was named Interative Agency of the Year, followed by Africa Propaganda in Sao Paulo and Forsman & Bodenfors in Gothenburg.

In contrast to some other Lions categories, each Cyber Grand Prix campaign was a clear winner, [Tom Eslinger, the jury president and Saatchi & Saatchi, Auckland's worldwide creative director, interactive and emerging media] said. Among the 2,700 entries there was a trend towards more varied means of consumer engagement, he noted, with less "mouse rolling" and more use of webcams and sound-activated sites.

Juror Fernando Romano, executive creative director at Lowe, New York, pointed out that there had been no technological break-through in the past year on which campaigns could ride. "It's becoming more and more about ideas," she said. "The Grand Prix winners have to be ground-shifting and game-changing."

Not a great result for the UK, considering there were 16 UK agencies shortlisted. Hmmm...

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Fallon finally take digital seriously

Aside from their stake in Hyper, up to this point Fallon have studiously ignored digital (to be fair, they probably had enough on their plate coping with their phenomenal growth as an above the line agency). 

However, today they revealed plans to "integrate digital throughout the agency" and the hires of Tim Millar (previously planning director at Zulu & Claydon Heeley and a founder of Agency Republic) and Raj Samuel (previously head of client services at Euro RSCG 4D).

Robert Senior, founding partner of Fallon, had these little gems to pass on:

These aren't digital appointments as digital on its own doesn't exist, it has become part of everything we do now and it's not to be seen as a separate thing.

It's the first sign that in five years we won't be digital and other agencies, we'll just be agencies.

The proof, as always, will be in the pudding...

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Digital vs. above the line

Continuing on from the debate sparked by the D&ADs, we now have a chance to fairly compare the creative merits of online vs. offline advertising, in the form of work on the same campaign from leading agencies in each field.

So in the digital corner, representing the dark forces of the future, we have Dare, with their online work for Vodafone's "the internet is now mobile" campaign. I'll allow Nick Emmel, a senior planner at Dare, to talk you through it.

And in the above the line corner, representing the old guard, we have BBH, with their press and TV work for the same "the internet is now mobile" campaign, this time laid bare by Simon Veksner, the copywriter half of the creative team at BBH that created the ads.

Now obviously this isn't a completely fair comparison - the agencies will have had different briefs with different objectives, and more than likely, Dare's budget will have been a fraction of BBH's (it certainly looks that way), but it's still an interesting one to make.

This isn't the strongest work I've seen from Dare, but neither is it from BBH (and I wasn't predisposed to like the BBH work due to Simon's previous wining about the voiceover - why is it that above the line agencies can get away with creating ads that might connect with people emotionally but no-one can actually remember the brand that paid for it?). I have to say I really like the idea behind BBH's work (and the Judy Dench voiceover), so for me, they have the edge.

What do you think? Who wins the fight? Was it a knock-out blow? And wouldn't a fully integrated campaign have been better?

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Career advice

It's rare that you find practical and actionable advice in a free and easy to digest form, so count yourselves lucky if you work in account or project management (or both), as this week has seen two good posts on the subject.

Firstly Leigh Householder has some advice for Account Execs (which is equally applicable for those higher up the chain) and secondly Meri Williams gives her guide to effective project management.

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Where are the Joneses?

Where are the Joneses? is a "groundbreaking interactive on-line situation comedy", conceived and developed by Imagination and sponsored by Ford. Over to David Bausola, who worked on the project:

the project had to be built upon existing web(2.0) services so that we could take the project to an audience rather than drag people into the project. YouTube is being used for video delivery, Flickr for photos, Wordpress for the blog (where the comedy is ‘played out’) and wikidot (where the audience can collaborate with each other, the actors and their production team). Dapper, Yahoo!Pipes, Facebook, various Google Apps, Twitter etc etc are also used to manage data flow and generate material for the actors to work from. If you like, it’s a UGC authentic media comedy based upon RSS feeds generating free open media.

Such factors begins to blur the answer to ‘what is content?’ We invited Baby Cow to work with us on this because of their ability to produce the highest quality comedy and evolve characters. Their team is headed up by Henry Normal (Steve Coogan’s writer and business partner) and Ali MacPhail (Who was the exec producer on productions such as Nighty Night and The Mighty Boosh). They have helped significantly in demonstrating that media can be produced for both entertainment and marketing, outside the normal broadcasting channels and platforms.

By working with a classic TV production company to create marketing that is based upon the audiences input is the opportunity to give the audience the entertainment they ask for. We are encouraging the audience to take part in the project in any way they wish to. Write scripts, design characters, recommend locations across Europe and if you want to, you can be in the production as a character - you may wish to become a Jones yourself. You can also take the media and ideas and use them for you own benefit.

To be honest, it's too early to tell if this format's going to work (it is reminiscent of KateModern, but again, that's not live yet), but certainly a bold experiment, and very interesting that it's been done by Imagination and not a Glue or a BBH.

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HMV appoints LBi to create Facebook rival

Yup, you read the headline right, HMV have lost it - what on earth makes them think that they can compete against Facebook's $38 million funding, 200 employees and 1.4 million active UK users. If they had any sense they would be building a Facebook app, and widgets for Bebo and MySpace.

Shame on LBi for keeping their mouths shut and taking the money (or worse still, coming up with the idea)...

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Simon Thompson on digital creativity

Simon Thompson, Lastminute.com's Chief Marketing Officer, on digital, creativity, awards and 'suits':

How far has creativity in digital advertising come?
I'd say we haven't started. We've come as far as trying to do offline work online. We're at a point where people accept that online should be as good as, and maybe the same as, offline. But I haven't seen anything that pushes things beyond that. I don't really believe that people have harnessed the creative opportunity that's available online. That will take time.

What's holding back great digital work?
Creativity is creativity, full stop. But I don't believe digital has prestige so it's not focused on as much as offline work. When online has the prestige and status in the agency world, then the potential will be tapped. What the communications world is ranking as important is how much budget you have, and that's a bit sad.

I have a lot of time for agencies. At the end of the day, they have the hardest job, which is to think up creative ideas. But let's be straight here: the creative world is based on fame. Great work wins awards. Then you're in a position, as a progressive organisation, to win more clients and get paid more. But no one has ever become famous through doing great creative work on digital, as yet. I haven't set it. Where's the Trevor Beattie of the digital world?

What's going to change this situation?
The consumer is going to change it, has already changed it. Who would have believed ten years ago that Google would generate more ad revenue than ITV? There are more people online during the day than watch TV, and yet prestige and fame is coming from traditional offline creative work. It's confusing to me.

From a client's perspective, how valuable are awards?
Here's a simple reality: if I never won another award in my life, I wouldn't care. It's my job to make sure that, whatever we do, the organisation sells more products. But if you want really great people to work on your account, then awards are a sign of excellence and pioneering spirit. Most of the really great talent in life wants to work for those sorts of organisations. And what happens is that those sorts of people actually drive the commercial success that you want.

How important are planners to this process?
There are only two people in agencies who are relevant to me. One is the planner and the other is the creative. The planner says what you should do and the creative makes it live. The rest are suits who take you out to lunch, but I'm generally not hungry.

Judging by that last answer, he's obviously a deranged lunatic and all his other comments should be viewed in the same light...

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More on the D&ADs

It seems like the debate will go on. Matt Law*, an Account Director at Dare, picks up the gauntlet:

Those things which are likely to cut through in interactive media are different from those things that work in traditional one-way communications.

You have to consider what the actions of the user are on the communication, as much as what you put into it. This is what makes the Virgin Casino campaign a good one. The consumer is surprised and delighted at what happens when the interact with the ad.

Also, in a seemingly unrelated post, Sam Ball, Creative Partner at LMFM, the creators of the ads in question, expounds onthe emotional impact of online advertising:

Over the past few years there has been a lot of criticism towards interactive advertising: it was considered as a cold, almost clinical way of advertising, whereas the traditional media were far better to convey emotions. Bugger of course. On the contrary: interactive can go so much deeper: leaving you speechless, feeling compassionate, laughing your head off… So I dived into the award archives and came up with a heap of top notch examples in different emotion categories.

* Matt's an old friend and colleague of mine from our time at Tribal DDB. As are Sam, Dave, Dave and Tom of LMFM.

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Digital: No more the young pretenders

A great article from David Benady on the ascendancy of digital and the resultant changes in the agency landscape:

In future, advertising will be driven by agencies that are capable of digitally locating and monitoring audiences rather than those that can create beautiful campaigns aimed at anyone prepared to watch and listen

If you look at the industry over the next ten years, you will see a group of very premium agencies emerge that will provide a new total service. These high-quality, full-service agencies will combine the technical skills of the digital specialists with the planning and creative abilities of the traditional agencies.

[via]

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Branding: The Dismal Science

In the wake of the 2012 logo, and a few other prompts, Russell Davies reconsiders branding.

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Party like it's 1999

One of the best things about the dot.com boom were the parties. They were awesome. And, in these more austere times, they are sorely missed. However, for one night only (Thursday 5th July) you have the chance to party like it's 1999.

On that night, Chinwag are hosting their big summer '07 party:

It's all about bringing people together from across the new media industries to make useful connections, celebrate the return of the new media sector as a sustainable growth industry and mingle in style in the sunshine of a London summer's evening.

The brinks and BBQ event will be at Imperial College Union in Kensington, London - encompassing 5 large rooms and the enclosed quadrangle, allowing a total capacity of 2,000 revellers.

Go sign up (it's free, but you do need to register before places run out) and I'll see you there...

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