Sitting at home, toasting my tootsies on a roaring radiator while scanning the inbox, I couldn’t believe my eyes. A jolly email from Eurostar nestled between Johnnie Boden and my sister-in-law.
The email arrived Saturday morning just after the Eurostar’s most hellish day in their 15 year history. Customers being treated worse than any banker deserves to be. Traffic chaos resembling a mass exodus caused by an impending nuclear Armageddon.
The subject matter of the email: “Give a continental gift this Christmas”. Are they off their rails?
I’m a happy customer. In fact two days previously I'd had a great day in Paris thanks mainly to Eurostar. But they’ve shown a total lack of sensitivity. Any Eurostar customer could have faced that situation and instead of recognizing this, they are selling a Christmas present to remember.
I can only think that either some overworked or hung-over marketing exec thought "I’ve been waiting months to get this away, driven the design team nuts, I don’t care, just get it out."
Or they’re just too arrogant to give a damn.
As a communication tool emails are great; but they have to be handled with care. We’ve all got a horror story to tell.
What should have happened is an email explaining what went wrong, the steps taken to rectify the situation and positioning the Christmas offer as a "thank you for understanding". I’d forgive them. After all it’s the season of goodwill.
Ian Prager, Planning Director
Monday 21 December 2009
Thursday 10 December 2009
Bronze, silver and gold!
Funny thing change.
Many of the team this morning (including me) are floating – literally on residual alcohol and metaphorically on air.
It was the DMA awards last night: new venue at Old Billingsgate market; new format with ten new categories; and a new attitude that direct marketing is not the poor relation of advertising but rather the discipline that is at the centre of many clients' marketing globe.
I felt a real sense of pride across the room in the work that we created as an industry.
And there was local pride too. We won three awards- a bronze, a silver and a gold, and were associated (as footballers say “assists) with two more.
Huge impact on the teams involved- both client members and MC&C members. And the change again from previous years. In my youth we would have celebrated today’s win all night and thought naught of the morrow. These teams took the joy from the moment- but also used it as a resolution for next year, and the basis of a pact to win not only again, but more and better.
Most mornings I reflect on how lucky I am to do what I do, but today, even through my hangover, the realisation of that privilege is more acute than ever.
Mike Colling, Managing Director
Many of the team this morning (including me) are floating – literally on residual alcohol and metaphorically on air.
It was the DMA awards last night: new venue at Old Billingsgate market; new format with ten new categories; and a new attitude that direct marketing is not the poor relation of advertising but rather the discipline that is at the centre of many clients' marketing globe.
I felt a real sense of pride across the room in the work that we created as an industry.
And there was local pride too. We won three awards- a bronze, a silver and a gold, and were associated (as footballers say “assists) with two more.
Huge impact on the teams involved- both client members and MC&C members. And the change again from previous years. In my youth we would have celebrated today’s win all night and thought naught of the morrow. These teams took the joy from the moment- but also used it as a resolution for next year, and the basis of a pact to win not only again, but more and better.
Most mornings I reflect on how lucky I am to do what I do, but today, even through my hangover, the realisation of that privilege is more acute than ever.
Mike Colling, Managing Director
Wednesday 9 December 2009
The future of online content revenues
I went to a Westminster eForum meeting yesterday. On the agenda was "The Future of online content" and much of the discussion revolved around business models.
Several contributors seemed to feel that advertising revenues would ride to the rescue of media owners and that other revenue models were not worth bothering with. In particular, video advertising was held up as a powerful revenue generator.
It is certainly true that you can pay over £20 cpm for some video advertising inventory. But you can also pay £2 cpm!
The reality is that the marketplace for video advertising is still forming and value is still being established. Online enables you to click through to a website from an advert - which can be considered as extra value. And online targeting and ad-serving does allow campaigns that are more sophisticated than TV, where small groups of people can be shown sequential advertising based on their previous online behaviour for instance.
But you can buy TV advertising of £3.50 cpm or less, and even prime-time TV can be bought for well under £20.
Is a pre-roll online ad worth so much more than TV? My belief is that media owners will struggle to maintain a premium for online video advertising – or will perhaps only be able to maintain it for highly targeted (including time targeted) inventory.
In addition, does a linear video ad, which by necessity has to be capable of delivering its message without audio, represent the best way of advertising online? Surely more interactive formats, where people can somehow "participate" in an ad, are likely to be more engaging.
Given that online display revenue actually declined last year in the UK, it seems unwise to rely on video advertising to rescue the online media industry. And while video advertising will no doubt have a part to play, media owners need to examine all other opportunities for generating revenues. These will include:
- Subscription - possibly along the lines of that being trialled by Johnson Press, or possibly of certain premium elements of a site - which common sense would dictate will be elements that are hard to find elsewhere and which are particularly suited to delivery in an online environment
- Data - which can be used to help advertisers understand marketplaces, deliver advertising messages that are effective and develop new products and services
- Syndication - but only where this doesn't have a major impact on subscription revenues
- E-commerce share - which can involve specially developed readers offers or simply a share of revenue from sales made by third parties
- Pay to participate revenues - which might include fees for joining communities (e.g. dating), talking to specialists (e.g. astrologers), competition entry fees, and fees to participate in online games and virtual environments
Of course, advertising will also be an important source of revenue - indeed it may remain the largest source of revenue for many media owners; but on its own it is unlikely to be enough to be enough to deliver a robust online business for most media owners.
Jeremy Swinfen Green, Digital Director
Tuesday 1 December 2009
Will local newspapers succeed in charging for online access?
Johnson Press’s decision to trial subscription on some of its local sites, including the Northumberland Gazette, is a sensible experiment, and particularly interesting given the recently announced plans for News International titles to do the same.
The idea of local newspapers charging for content might just be supported by the apparent early success of local titles such as Newport Daily News in charging for content.
However, it would be dangerous to assume that if something works in the USA, it will work in the UK as well. The structure of the newspaper industries in the two countries is very different, with local newspapers being held in far higher importance in the USA than they are in the UK, partly because of the absence of national newspaper brands, and partly because of the locally focussed attitude of many Americans.
Nonetheless local newspapers do have a hold on the UK psyche. And local newspapers have content that is not easy to find elsewhere. If you want to learn how Steven Young gave Choppington Travellers Rest the lead at home to Woodhorn Lane, then there are few places you will be able to find that information outside the Northumberland Gazette.
The question for Johnson Press is – are sufficient numbers of people willing to pay to find the latest on sporting prowess of the Choppington Travellers Rest soccer team.
Maybe. Certainly Johnson Press seem to have chosen an attractive price point, £5 for 3 months. If you are willing to pay something, surely you will be willing to pay that.
And the way that the Northumberland Gazette offers you a tantalising view of the first few lines of the content is surely going to work better than the approach taken by Newport Daily News where only the headlines on the front page can be read.
But Johnson will have to do better with their sign up process. At the moment visitors:
1.see an invitation to subscribe
2.and are then pointed to a log in page
3.which contains another button to a page where users register
4.after which they go to their email
5.where they confirm registration by clicking on a link
6.which takes them back to the newspaper
7.where they click on a story
8.and then see the subscribe button (again!)
9.and then (and only then) are able subscribe.
Come on guys, that’s just silly!
And remember, even if Johnson Press do make this work for their local papers, there is absolutely no reason to assume that the same will be true for the News International titles, which may well prove to be far more “substitutable”.
Jeremy Swinfen Green, Digital Director
jeremy@mcand.co.uk
The idea of local newspapers charging for content might just be supported by the apparent early success of local titles such as Newport Daily News in charging for content.
However, it would be dangerous to assume that if something works in the USA, it will work in the UK as well. The structure of the newspaper industries in the two countries is very different, with local newspapers being held in far higher importance in the USA than they are in the UK, partly because of the absence of national newspaper brands, and partly because of the locally focussed attitude of many Americans.
Nonetheless local newspapers do have a hold on the UK psyche. And local newspapers have content that is not easy to find elsewhere. If you want to learn how Steven Young gave Choppington Travellers Rest the lead at home to Woodhorn Lane, then there are few places you will be able to find that information outside the Northumberland Gazette.
The question for Johnson Press is – are sufficient numbers of people willing to pay to find the latest on sporting prowess of the Choppington Travellers Rest soccer team.
Maybe. Certainly Johnson Press seem to have chosen an attractive price point, £5 for 3 months. If you are willing to pay something, surely you will be willing to pay that.
And the way that the Northumberland Gazette offers you a tantalising view of the first few lines of the content is surely going to work better than the approach taken by Newport Daily News where only the headlines on the front page can be read.
But Johnson will have to do better with their sign up process. At the moment visitors:
1.see an invitation to subscribe
2.and are then pointed to a log in page
3.which contains another button to a page where users register
4.after which they go to their email
5.where they confirm registration by clicking on a link
6.which takes them back to the newspaper
7.where they click on a story
8.and then see the subscribe button (again!)
9.and then (and only then) are able subscribe.
Come on guys, that’s just silly!
And remember, even if Johnson Press do make this work for their local papers, there is absolutely no reason to assume that the same will be true for the News International titles, which may well prove to be far more “substitutable”.
Jeremy Swinfen Green, Digital Director
jeremy@mcand.co.uk
Monday 30 November 2009
Life Begins at 40 for The Sun
Along with millions of others I celebrated The Sun’s milestone anniversary: 40 years.
Having worked in media for nearly 35 years The Sun has been a remarkable constant in my working life. As a wet-behind-the-ears media buyer working on Hotpoint I remember the verbal assaults you received from the wild bunch at the Currant Bun, if you dared not to give them at the very least space parity with the Mirror.
I knew my career was on the up when the then ad manager Mike Moore complained to Chris Ingram about my unreasonableness and bloody mindedness. Result, a £50 spot bonus!
The Sun has fared pretty well over the last 40 years. It’s developed from a rude red top into a testimony of what makes Britain tick.
Its ability to muster public opinion is remarkable, from Guardian-esque environmental causes such as forcing Starbucks to turn off its taps, to deliciously spiteful barracking of hapless England football managers.
Iconic is an over-used expression but in the case of The Sun , especially relating to some of its headlines, it fits. Everyone has a favourite headline: mine is that gloriously succinct anti-Europe sentiment, “Up Yours, Delors”. Priceless.
In commercial terms, The Sun has maintained and enhanced its position as a major media force compared not to just other press titles but to the likes of Google and MSN. The well-trodden media fact that The Sun is read by more AB readers than The Times has even more validity, standing at 932,000. What’s more The Sun's persona has been successfully transferred to new media.
Love it or hate it The Sun just can’t be ignored. And long may it continue for the next 40 years!
Ian Prager, Planning Director
Having worked in media for nearly 35 years The Sun has been a remarkable constant in my working life. As a wet-behind-the-ears media buyer working on Hotpoint I remember the verbal assaults you received from the wild bunch at the Currant Bun, if you dared not to give them at the very least space parity with the Mirror.
I knew my career was on the up when the then ad manager Mike Moore complained to Chris Ingram about my unreasonableness and bloody mindedness. Result, a £50 spot bonus!
The Sun has fared pretty well over the last 40 years. It’s developed from a rude red top into a testimony of what makes Britain tick.
Its ability to muster public opinion is remarkable, from Guardian-esque environmental causes such as forcing Starbucks to turn off its taps, to deliciously spiteful barracking of hapless England football managers.
Iconic is an over-used expression but in the case of The Sun , especially relating to some of its headlines, it fits. Everyone has a favourite headline: mine is that gloriously succinct anti-Europe sentiment, “Up Yours, Delors”. Priceless.
In commercial terms, The Sun has maintained and enhanced its position as a major media force compared not to just other press titles but to the likes of Google and MSN. The well-trodden media fact that The Sun is read by more AB readers than The Times has even more validity, standing at 932,000. What’s more The Sun's persona has been successfully transferred to new media.
Love it or hate it The Sun just can’t be ignored. And long may it continue for the next 40 years!
Ian Prager, Planning Director
Wednesday 25 November 2009
Using social media for marketing
Perhaps it’s the result of some deeply buried childhood experience but I can’t help categorising things.
And one thing that does need categorising is the way marketers use social media because a lot of people talk about it as though it is just a matter of reputation management.
Of course reputation management – monitoring conversations and where appropriate responding to them and guiding them – is important. But there are several other parts of marketing that can use social media. We can start with search marketing.
Search marketing is of course focussed around keywords and key phrases. Some social media tools monitoring are great at helping with this, and add an extra dimension to the insights derived from Google’s tools. For instance Alterian’s SM2 product will allow you to generate a cloud of keyword tags created by people writing blogs and other content. This is a really easy way of discovering concepts that people think are important on any day.
Tools like SM2 or IceRocket can also be used to influence messaging strategy. If you know what people are talking about, and what they want to hear about, they it is easier to create messages that will have impact.
For instance, what are the big issues with cars at the moment: is it reliability, economy, safety? At the time of writing fuel consumption trumps reliability for motor cars – but only if the term “economy” rather than “fuel consumption” is used. And safety is more important than either.
Social media can also be used for driving traffic to websites. This can be done in two ways.
The simpler way (not that simple really!) is to identify people who are talking about your brand or an issue you are trying to get associated with and send them links to information that will interest them in the hope that they will post your links and other people will see them.
Alternatively you can listen out for people talking about your brand or issue and send them information. This is of course may well be more time consuming if there are a lot of people talking about you but you can automate this to a degree using tools like SocialOomph which works with Twitter.
I had a sweet example of this the other day. Tweeting about late (early?) blooming camellias I was immediately followed by @lovethegarden (a web entity owned by The Scott’s Miracle Gro Company) who have a website (www.lovethegarden.com) of great interest to the camellia lover.
And finally there are marketing campaigns that use social media for launching products, generating awareness or favourability, or even generating sales. More on these another day!
Jeremy Swinfen Green
Digital Director
jeremy@mcand.co.uk
And one thing that does need categorising is the way marketers use social media because a lot of people talk about it as though it is just a matter of reputation management.
Of course reputation management – monitoring conversations and where appropriate responding to them and guiding them – is important. But there are several other parts of marketing that can use social media. We can start with search marketing.
Search marketing is of course focussed around keywords and key phrases. Some social media tools monitoring are great at helping with this, and add an extra dimension to the insights derived from Google’s tools. For instance Alterian’s SM2 product will allow you to generate a cloud of keyword tags created by people writing blogs and other content. This is a really easy way of discovering concepts that people think are important on any day.
Tools like SM2 or IceRocket can also be used to influence messaging strategy. If you know what people are talking about, and what they want to hear about, they it is easier to create messages that will have impact.
For instance, what are the big issues with cars at the moment: is it reliability, economy, safety? At the time of writing fuel consumption trumps reliability for motor cars – but only if the term “economy” rather than “fuel consumption” is used. And safety is more important than either.
Social media can also be used for driving traffic to websites. This can be done in two ways.
The simpler way (not that simple really!) is to identify people who are talking about your brand or an issue you are trying to get associated with and send them links to information that will interest them in the hope that they will post your links and other people will see them.
Alternatively you can listen out for people talking about your brand or issue and send them information. This is of course may well be more time consuming if there are a lot of people talking about you but you can automate this to a degree using tools like SocialOomph which works with Twitter.
I had a sweet example of this the other day. Tweeting about late (early?) blooming camellias I was immediately followed by @lovethegarden (a web entity owned by The Scott’s Miracle Gro Company) who have a website (www.lovethegarden.com) of great interest to the camellia lover.
And finally there are marketing campaigns that use social media for launching products, generating awareness or favourability, or even generating sales. More on these another day!
Jeremy Swinfen Green
Digital Director
jeremy@mcand.co.uk
Wednesday 18 November 2009
What’s Murdoch up to with Google?
What’s Murdoch up to with Google? Can he really mean to stop Google from spidering his sites so that people can’t find the news that he is planning to charge for?
It seems barmy.
But you’d be barmy to write Murdoch off as a luddite and a fool. He is certainly neither of those things by a long way. (Pace Stan Schroeder writing in mashable).
So why the - on the surface - rather odd stance?
Well, Google does need taming. I’ve nothing against Google personally; it’s my search engine of choice (or is that habit?). But it is a very dominant (far too dominant) player in the online advertising arena.
And that dominance, enhanced by ill-informed “last click counts” models of ROI analysis, is skewing the marketplace and taking advertising revenue away from editorially-based media owners like Murdoch’s newspapers.
(If you don’t believe that then ask yourself why online display dipped this year while search continued to grow.)
Murdoch wouldn’t necessarily lose that much by REPing his sites. He would of course lose the traffic from Google – but most of that traffic is from people searching on news stories, much of which is one-off, high-bounce traffic coming from overseas and which from an advertising perspective isn’t particularly valuable. Traffic from loyal media brand visitors would be unaffected.
My problem with this is that I don’t really believe that Murdoch would do much harm to Google if he turned his back on it.
Even if all the other commercial media owners followed him (and that's a big “if”, and even then presumably the BBC wouldn't play ball) then Google would just be a slightly different beast: a place where people search for products and goods but not for content. That would be pretty unlikely to affect Google’s PPC revenue which is founded on people who are searching for products and goods.
Google would still be the medium of choice for advertisers looking to generate click through to their sites. And, until advertisers learn that the last click doesn’t count for everything, it’s likely to remain so.
Jeremy Swinfen Green
Digital Director
It seems barmy.
But you’d be barmy to write Murdoch off as a luddite and a fool. He is certainly neither of those things by a long way. (Pace Stan Schroeder writing in mashable).
So why the - on the surface - rather odd stance?
Well, Google does need taming. I’ve nothing against Google personally; it’s my search engine of choice (or is that habit?). But it is a very dominant (far too dominant) player in the online advertising arena.
And that dominance, enhanced by ill-informed “last click counts” models of ROI analysis, is skewing the marketplace and taking advertising revenue away from editorially-based media owners like Murdoch’s newspapers.
(If you don’t believe that then ask yourself why online display dipped this year while search continued to grow.)
Murdoch wouldn’t necessarily lose that much by REPing his sites. He would of course lose the traffic from Google – but most of that traffic is from people searching on news stories, much of which is one-off, high-bounce traffic coming from overseas and which from an advertising perspective isn’t particularly valuable. Traffic from loyal media brand visitors would be unaffected.
My problem with this is that I don’t really believe that Murdoch would do much harm to Google if he turned his back on it.
Even if all the other commercial media owners followed him (and that's a big “if”, and even then presumably the BBC wouldn't play ball) then Google would just be a slightly different beast: a place where people search for products and goods but not for content. That would be pretty unlikely to affect Google’s PPC revenue which is founded on people who are searching for products and goods.
Google would still be the medium of choice for advertisers looking to generate click through to their sites. And, until advertisers learn that the last click doesn’t count for everything, it’s likely to remain so.
Jeremy Swinfen Green
Digital Director
Tuesday 17 November 2009
Behavioural Economics
My father can be a terrible old curmudgeon sometimes.
When asked by his friends what it is his only son and heir does for a living he has two stock answers. Depending on his mood he either says “He puts those annoying things in that fall out of your paper” or “He sells people rubbish they don’t need”.
Interesting views both, but they recently came back to me as I was sitting in the marvellously titled IPA seminar “Behavioural Economics: Red Hot or Red Herring?”
This is the latest big thing at Belgrave Square HQ. The one-liner is as follows: “behavioural economics is a collection of disparate theories which seek to explain irrational behaviour”.
We learned how putting a picture of some scary eyes above a sign makes people pay more for milk without having to change the wording on the sign.
We learned why it is better to sell a Bentley at a yacht show than at a car show.
And we learned why fruit and veg are the first things you see in Tesco.
(Answers respectively: subliminal influence, comparative pricing, and over-purchasing of the first thing you see combined with high margins).
But why do we care?
Essentially, in a world in which the consumer’s attention is harder to gain and in which big ideas are more valuable than media buying, there is a wealth of knowledge which can make our marketing more efficient, more effective, and more innovative.
Super!
Except not, I thought. This is all very well, especially for a committed lateral thinker and crossword nut like myself, but how can we hope to introduce this into the way we work? I wholly agree that the future of media revenues is in creation of ideas that have long term impact rather than the day to day planning and buying grind, but how do we convince clients of this?
It is a strange phenomenon of the media industry that clients pay in direct proportion to the least valuable portion of what we do - i.e. media booking rather than the theory behind it. The trouble is that to change this would take a massive leap of faith on the client side as well as agencies being able to make initiatives such as behavioural economics transparent in the age of accountability that we live in.
I like to think of a great ideas as something that tells you what to do in ten years time, and what to do tomorrow. And this is the trouble, agency side: I want to get paid tomorrow, not in ten years, which means I charge for tomorrow.
So I really don’t see the status quo changing. I absolutely believe that there is something in behavioural economics, but for the time being it will be confined to interesting, but probably unrewarded, high-level thinking of how our clients can sell their stuff more effectively, while plain old media fees and commissions from bits of 200 gsm paper continue to pay my mortgage.
Tim Part, Business Development Manager
When asked by his friends what it is his only son and heir does for a living he has two stock answers. Depending on his mood he either says “He puts those annoying things in that fall out of your paper” or “He sells people rubbish they don’t need”.
Interesting views both, but they recently came back to me as I was sitting in the marvellously titled IPA seminar “Behavioural Economics: Red Hot or Red Herring?”
This is the latest big thing at Belgrave Square HQ. The one-liner is as follows: “behavioural economics is a collection of disparate theories which seek to explain irrational behaviour”.
We learned how putting a picture of some scary eyes above a sign makes people pay more for milk without having to change the wording on the sign.
We learned why it is better to sell a Bentley at a yacht show than at a car show.
And we learned why fruit and veg are the first things you see in Tesco.
(Answers respectively: subliminal influence, comparative pricing, and over-purchasing of the first thing you see combined with high margins).
But why do we care?
Essentially, in a world in which the consumer’s attention is harder to gain and in which big ideas are more valuable than media buying, there is a wealth of knowledge which can make our marketing more efficient, more effective, and more innovative.
Super!
Except not, I thought. This is all very well, especially for a committed lateral thinker and crossword nut like myself, but how can we hope to introduce this into the way we work? I wholly agree that the future of media revenues is in creation of ideas that have long term impact rather than the day to day planning and buying grind, but how do we convince clients of this?
It is a strange phenomenon of the media industry that clients pay in direct proportion to the least valuable portion of what we do - i.e. media booking rather than the theory behind it. The trouble is that to change this would take a massive leap of faith on the client side as well as agencies being able to make initiatives such as behavioural economics transparent in the age of accountability that we live in.
I like to think of a great ideas as something that tells you what to do in ten years time, and what to do tomorrow. And this is the trouble, agency side: I want to get paid tomorrow, not in ten years, which means I charge for tomorrow.
So I really don’t see the status quo changing. I absolutely believe that there is something in behavioural economics, but for the time being it will be confined to interesting, but probably unrewarded, high-level thinking of how our clients can sell their stuff more effectively, while plain old media fees and commissions from bits of 200 gsm paper continue to pay my mortgage.
Tim Part, Business Development Manager
Tuesday 10 November 2009
Farewell LondonLite
I, for one, will be sorry when the last edition of London Lite hits the streets on Friday 13th.
I’m already missing those purple jacketed distributors irritatingly shouting "free London paper, free London paper, free London paper", as they shoved a copy of thelondonpaper in your hand.
There has always been the big debate as to whether the free, London evening newspapers offered real news, but they have been a must for me on the long journey home after work.
Whether you want a few snippets of news, a bit of gossip, sports info, a look at your Stars or if only to see the endless pics of celebs looking worse for wear, falling out of nightclubs in the early hours of the morning, the newspapers were free, for goodness sake.
It was also refreshing to see how creatively the various ad shapes and sizes were utilised by advertisers, when allowed to produced something entirely different from the norm. Not many newspapers have offered the creativity, seamlessly merged with editorial that was allowed in the LondonLite - strange shapes, corner pieces etc. Which publisher will rise to that challenge now?
From an advertising point of view, there are those who say that the titles were not read and were a useless vehicle for branding and response advertisers, maybe because they were seen littering the carriages of tubes and trains.
However, if they were taken, read and left behind, does that mean that, as consumers, we did not absorb the information within? I have been known, on the odd occasion, to tear out an advertisement from one of these newspapers, seeing something that interested me, and follow up on-line or by phone. I’m just a consumer like the rest of those readers?
The sad truth is, that despite reaching a large audience, with a fresh new approach to editorial format, the numbers just did not add up. During the recession and with so much competition in the marketplace, all chasing the same advertiser money pot, the titles could not survive and profit.
Well, we still have Metro in the mornings but now we are left with the FREE London Evening Standard as our choice after work. We’ll just have to wait and see how that title evolves...
Jackie Irish
I’m already missing those purple jacketed distributors irritatingly shouting "free London paper, free London paper, free London paper", as they shoved a copy of thelondonpaper in your hand.
There has always been the big debate as to whether the free, London evening newspapers offered real news, but they have been a must for me on the long journey home after work.
Whether you want a few snippets of news, a bit of gossip, sports info, a look at your Stars or if only to see the endless pics of celebs looking worse for wear, falling out of nightclubs in the early hours of the morning, the newspapers were free, for goodness sake.
It was also refreshing to see how creatively the various ad shapes and sizes were utilised by advertisers, when allowed to produced something entirely different from the norm. Not many newspapers have offered the creativity, seamlessly merged with editorial that was allowed in the LondonLite - strange shapes, corner pieces etc. Which publisher will rise to that challenge now?
From an advertising point of view, there are those who say that the titles were not read and were a useless vehicle for branding and response advertisers, maybe because they were seen littering the carriages of tubes and trains.
However, if they were taken, read and left behind, does that mean that, as consumers, we did not absorb the information within? I have been known, on the odd occasion, to tear out an advertisement from one of these newspapers, seeing something that interested me, and follow up on-line or by phone. I’m just a consumer like the rest of those readers?
The sad truth is, that despite reaching a large audience, with a fresh new approach to editorial format, the numbers just did not add up. During the recession and with so much competition in the marketplace, all chasing the same advertiser money pot, the titles could not survive and profit.
Well, we still have Metro in the mornings but now we are left with the FREE London Evening Standard as our choice after work. We’ll just have to wait and see how that title evolves...
Jackie Irish
Thursday 5 November 2009
Should PR "own" social media?
The PR industry seems to be trying to own social media. I wonder whether this is really appropriate?
Recently I went to a seminar on social media where the focus was heavily on traditional PR techniques.
Now of course some PR techniques do have an important part to play in social media. But you can go way beyond reputation management by seeding blogs and posting photos on Flickr in this space.
Social media can be used very effectively for many other things including:
customer service
marketplace analysis
new product development
search marketing, paid and organic
recruitment
customer retention
customer acquisition
None of these were covered in the seminar.
Perhaps that was because these disciplines are not central to PR.
In addition, PR agencies may be tempted to conflate social media with online PR techniques.
So at the seminar I was subjected to a lecture on SEO PR – which hasn’t got much to do with social media!
And I was told that the way to measure campaign effectiveness was to measure the effect of seeded blogs: with no acknowledgement of the need to track blogs that hadn’t been seeded.
Any advertiser looking at social media (and who isn't?) should understand that social media techniques can enhance many aspects of a business and are not only effective in the PR space.
Jeremy Swinfen Green
Digital Director
Recently I went to a seminar on social media where the focus was heavily on traditional PR techniques.
Now of course some PR techniques do have an important part to play in social media. But you can go way beyond reputation management by seeding blogs and posting photos on Flickr in this space.
Social media can be used very effectively for many other things including:
customer service
marketplace analysis
new product development
search marketing, paid and organic
recruitment
customer retention
customer acquisition
None of these were covered in the seminar.
Perhaps that was because these disciplines are not central to PR.
In addition, PR agencies may be tempted to conflate social media with online PR techniques.
So at the seminar I was subjected to a lecture on SEO PR – which hasn’t got much to do with social media!
And I was told that the way to measure campaign effectiveness was to measure the effect of seeded blogs: with no acknowledgement of the need to track blogs that hadn’t been seeded.
Any advertiser looking at social media (and who isn't?) should understand that social media techniques can enhance many aspects of a business and are not only effective in the PR space.
Jeremy Swinfen Green
Digital Director
Friday 30 October 2009
Retail - the new online media opportunity?
Went to a fascinating talk by Alex Marks of eBay this week.
As a massive online marketplace eBay is naturally interested to see what drives online shoppers. It seems that the drivers online are similar to those offline:
» familiarity with and trust of brands and retailers
» being hooked by offers
» being told about new things for sale
» being seduced by the idea of a treat
Interestingly, trust was often the most powerful reason that people chose a particular retailer, with selection next followed by value. (Looks like QVC should have called themselves QCV!)
Behaviour differed though, with different types of shopping. Where the products were purchased regularly or had a high emotional connection with the shopper, people tended to go to familiar and trusted retailers.
But for products which were purchased only infrequently or which were largely chosen through rational decision making there was far less brand loyalty; here search and comparison were important factors driving choice.
eBay is of course a massively familiar and generally well trusted brand. And it is also a place where you can buy advertising. But, as a retail site, is it a good place to buy advertising? After all people on retail sites are there to buy particular things, aren’t they? So they won’t take much notice of any advertising.
Well, that’s not necessarily true. A lot of behaviour on retail sites is fairly undirected browsing. People are in the mindset of buying on retail sites. But they are not necessarily looking for a particular item. They can be influenced quite easily to try different things.
Which is presumably why advertising on retail sites is so very effective. Indeed according to eBay’s research 61% of people take notice of advertising on retail sites, with 41% noticing it on search sites, 12% on portals and only 7% on social media sites.
And as big retailers like eBay know an enormous amount about their visitors – who they are, what items they have looked at, where they have started the buying process, what they have bought in the past (and when) – they are capable of providing advertisers with highly targeted campaigns.
Retail media (aka sales promotion) is a massive industry in the offline world, large enough to rival traditional media spend. It seems that eBay are leading the charge to make retail media equally significant in the online space.
Jeremy Swinfen Green
Digital Director
07855 341 589
As a massive online marketplace eBay is naturally interested to see what drives online shoppers. It seems that the drivers online are similar to those offline:
» familiarity with and trust of brands and retailers
» being hooked by offers
» being told about new things for sale
» being seduced by the idea of a treat
Interestingly, trust was often the most powerful reason that people chose a particular retailer, with selection next followed by value. (Looks like QVC should have called themselves QCV!)
Behaviour differed though, with different types of shopping. Where the products were purchased regularly or had a high emotional connection with the shopper, people tended to go to familiar and trusted retailers.
But for products which were purchased only infrequently or which were largely chosen through rational decision making there was far less brand loyalty; here search and comparison were important factors driving choice.
eBay is of course a massively familiar and generally well trusted brand. And it is also a place where you can buy advertising. But, as a retail site, is it a good place to buy advertising? After all people on retail sites are there to buy particular things, aren’t they? So they won’t take much notice of any advertising.
Well, that’s not necessarily true. A lot of behaviour on retail sites is fairly undirected browsing. People are in the mindset of buying on retail sites. But they are not necessarily looking for a particular item. They can be influenced quite easily to try different things.
Which is presumably why advertising on retail sites is so very effective. Indeed according to eBay’s research 61% of people take notice of advertising on retail sites, with 41% noticing it on search sites, 12% on portals and only 7% on social media sites.
And as big retailers like eBay know an enormous amount about their visitors – who they are, what items they have looked at, where they have started the buying process, what they have bought in the past (and when) – they are capable of providing advertisers with highly targeted campaigns.
Retail media (aka sales promotion) is a massive industry in the offline world, large enough to rival traditional media spend. It seems that eBay are leading the charge to make retail media equally significant in the online space.
Jeremy Swinfen Green
Digital Director
07855 341 589
Facebook measures how happy we are!
Facebook is even more omniscient than we all thought. It can now chart the world's collective highs and lows – well, nearly!
As we all know, Facebook allows us to update our friends on the minutiae of our day-to-day lives via status updates. With millions of active users (200 million to be precise) that's a lot of data.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has recently expressed an interest in using this staggering amount of data from the updates to generate a kind of 'sentiment engine'. The Facebook data team analysed the rich information from these musings, along what they dubbed a 'Gross National Happiness' metric.
'Measuring how well-off, satisfied or happy with life the citizens of a nation are is part of the Gross National Happiness movement. The graph below represents how the nation is doing from day to day, and measures 'happiness' by looking at how many positive and negative words people are using when updating their status: when people are using more positive words (or fewer negative words) in their status updates than usual, that day is happier than usual!'
In other words, these updates are tiny windows into how people are doing, and Facebook users will soon be able to update their status even more frequently as the application is set to launch on games console Xbox 360 this month.
So does this, and other behavioural targeting (such as IPA’s TouchPoints Survey), mean we will never be served an irrelevant ad in the future? Moreover, will we soon be seeing ads targeted to our moods?
Spotify, like Facebook, already employs demographic targeting for its display and audio ads, and has now announced it will be introducing the new mood-targeting within the year.
If you're a brand that needs to reach people in a relaxed mindset – perhaps they're listening to Ibiza chill-out or Mozart – you can now serve the right brand to them at the right time, explains UK Sales Director Jon Mitchell.
However with this increased information becoming available, brands now need to think even more carefully about the optimum way to deliver their messages in a relevant way to the consumer, in order to avoid alienating their audience.
Claire Turner
As we all know, Facebook allows us to update our friends on the minutiae of our day-to-day lives via status updates. With millions of active users (200 million to be precise) that's a lot of data.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has recently expressed an interest in using this staggering amount of data from the updates to generate a kind of 'sentiment engine'. The Facebook data team analysed the rich information from these musings, along what they dubbed a 'Gross National Happiness' metric.
'Measuring how well-off, satisfied or happy with life the citizens of a nation are is part of the Gross National Happiness movement. The graph below represents how the nation is doing from day to day, and measures 'happiness' by looking at how many positive and negative words people are using when updating their status: when people are using more positive words (or fewer negative words) in their status updates than usual, that day is happier than usual!'
In other words, these updates are tiny windows into how people are doing, and Facebook users will soon be able to update their status even more frequently as the application is set to launch on games console Xbox 360 this month.
So does this, and other behavioural targeting (such as IPA’s TouchPoints Survey), mean we will never be served an irrelevant ad in the future? Moreover, will we soon be seeing ads targeted to our moods?Spotify, like Facebook, already employs demographic targeting for its display and audio ads, and has now announced it will be introducing the new mood-targeting within the year.
If you're a brand that needs to reach people in a relaxed mindset – perhaps they're listening to Ibiza chill-out or Mozart – you can now serve the right brand to them at the right time, explains UK Sales Director Jon Mitchell.
However with this increased information becoming available, brands now need to think even more carefully about the optimum way to deliver their messages in a relevant way to the consumer, in order to avoid alienating their audience.
Claire Turner
Tuesday 27 October 2009
More Power to King Fry’s Elbow
Earlier this week I wrote about how I been intrigued by Trafigura’s ability to gag the Guardian and their failure to gag online comment. I have come across another interesting example of how the Twitterati are influencing the media.
Last week an article appeared in the Daily Mail, written by journalist Jan Moir, which discussed the recent death of Stephen Gately at the age of just 33. The article was originally titled “Why there was nothing ‘natural’ about Stephen Gately’s death”. Although the article has now been amended in several ways, the original can be read as a (Google Doc.)
Within a few hours of the article being published, a furore had grown around Twitter and blog sites buzzing with anger at the perception that Moir was implying the ex-Boyzone singer’s death was intrinsically linked to his lifestyle as a homosexual.
‘King’ Fry tweeted "I gather a … nobody …has written something loathsome and inhumane," whilst Charlie Brooker blogged a scathing riposte to the article on the Guardian website .
The online backlash was so immediate and effective that by the time I became aware of the offending piece last Friday afternoon, merely hours after it had first appeared, the Press Complaints Commission had already received 1,000 complaints. At the time of writing that number has risen to a record 25,000, whilst the Daily Mail has been forced to remove adverts from around the article, after the advertisers too were bombarded with complaints.
Both this example and my earlier example about Trafigura demonstrate how people like Stephen Fry and other members of the ‘Twitterati’ have realised the potential of social media as a tool for socio-political comment.
The enforced climb-down by Carter Ruck and their ultimate failure to gag the Guardian struck a blow for the supporters of free speech and freedom of press. The reaction to the now infamous Jan Moir article however has sought to make the press more accountable and raised questions about press regulation – it could even be suggested that Moir’s freedom of speech has been curtailed! Certainly, last week was a compelling week on Twitter.
Kyle Seely, Planner Buyer
Last week an article appeared in the Daily Mail, written by journalist Jan Moir, which discussed the recent death of Stephen Gately at the age of just 33. The article was originally titled “Why there was nothing ‘natural’ about Stephen Gately’s death”. Although the article has now been amended in several ways, the original can be read as a (Google Doc.)
Within a few hours of the article being published, a furore had grown around Twitter and blog sites buzzing with anger at the perception that Moir was implying the ex-Boyzone singer’s death was intrinsically linked to his lifestyle as a homosexual.
‘King’ Fry tweeted "I gather a … nobody …has written something loathsome and inhumane," whilst Charlie Brooker blogged a scathing riposte to the article on the Guardian website .
The online backlash was so immediate and effective that by the time I became aware of the offending piece last Friday afternoon, merely hours after it had first appeared, the Press Complaints Commission had already received 1,000 complaints. At the time of writing that number has risen to a record 25,000, whilst the Daily Mail has been forced to remove adverts from around the article, after the advertisers too were bombarded with complaints.
Both this example and my earlier example about Trafigura demonstrate how people like Stephen Fry and other members of the ‘Twitterati’ have realised the potential of social media as a tool for socio-political comment.
The enforced climb-down by Carter Ruck and their ultimate failure to gag the Guardian struck a blow for the supporters of free speech and freedom of press. The reaction to the now infamous Jan Moir article however has sought to make the press more accountable and raised questions about press regulation – it could even be suggested that Moir’s freedom of speech has been curtailed! Certainly, last week was a compelling week on Twitter.
Kyle Seely, Planner Buyer
Monday 26 October 2009
The Power of King Fry and the Twitterati
Last week I was struck by an example of the ever-increasing power of social media.
On Monday, a question regarding oil company Trafigura’s dumping of toxic waste on the Ivory Coast was tabled for the forthcoming Prime Minister’s Question Time. When the Guardian attempted to report on it Trafigura’s lawyers, Carter Ruck, were quick to seek an injunction preventing them from doing so. However, the very same evening online blogs and Twitter users, unconfined by the same legal restrictions gagging the Guardian, had already uncovered all the details and they were freely available in the public domain.
By noon on Tuesday, the three most popular search terms on Twitter were "outrageous gagging order trafigura dumping scandal", "ruck" and "guardian". Trafigura and Carter Ruck, in attempting to keep the story under wraps, had inadvertently added fuel to the fire and grossly underestimated the power of the internet and social media. The injunction was dropped and Stephen Fry, surely the unofficial King of Twitter, proclaimed to his many followers, "Can it be true? Carter Ruck caves in! Hurrah! Trafigura will deny it had anything to do with Twitter, but we know don't we?"
People like Stephen Fry and other members of the ‘Twitterati’ have realised the potential of social media as a tool for socio-political comment. As this concept enters the mainstream it will inevitably have a huge effect on the way corporations try to manage online word of mouth.
And that's a great opportunity for marketing agencies...
Kyle Seeley, Planner-Buyer
On Monday, a question regarding oil company Trafigura’s dumping of toxic waste on the Ivory Coast was tabled for the forthcoming Prime Minister’s Question Time. When the Guardian attempted to report on it Trafigura’s lawyers, Carter Ruck, were quick to seek an injunction preventing them from doing so. However, the very same evening online blogs and Twitter users, unconfined by the same legal restrictions gagging the Guardian, had already uncovered all the details and they were freely available in the public domain.
By noon on Tuesday, the three most popular search terms on Twitter were "outrageous gagging order trafigura dumping scandal", "ruck" and "guardian". Trafigura and Carter Ruck, in attempting to keep the story under wraps, had inadvertently added fuel to the fire and grossly underestimated the power of the internet and social media. The injunction was dropped and Stephen Fry, surely the unofficial King of Twitter, proclaimed to his many followers, "Can it be true? Carter Ruck caves in! Hurrah! Trafigura will deny it had anything to do with Twitter, but we know don't we?"
People like Stephen Fry and other members of the ‘Twitterati’ have realised the potential of social media as a tool for socio-political comment. As this concept enters the mainstream it will inevitably have a huge effect on the way corporations try to manage online word of mouth.
And that's a great opportunity for marketing agencies...
Kyle Seeley, Planner-Buyer
Wednesday 21 October 2009
We are shortlisted for the DMA awards
We have just had the call: We have been shortlisted for three DMA awards.
Eight short words on a screen that as I write them convey none of the passion this event engenders.
Let me try to explain in a paragraph or two.
We strive every day to deliver on our brand-promise to clients: creating new value for them. We take fierce pride in this, and the results we generate.
Then once a year we take the best of our work and try to explain that year's work in three sides of A4.
Some 160 of our peers come together in a rigorous three-day process to ask: does our work have an insightful and coherent strategy; have we been creative rather than derivative in our execution of that strategy; and have we generated outstanding results?
At the end of that three days of debate, considering 600 or so entries from more than 100 agencies, the short list emerges from the conclave like white smoke from the Vatican.
And this year we have been shortlisted for three awards - for work we have done for the RSPCA and for Which?
And the thing I am most proud of? In the category that really matters to us, the “best results of the year” category, which is the closest thing to our brand, our entries are two of the three finalists.
So now we have to wait until December 9th to learn if we have won bronze, silver or gold. I will blog again on this subject on December 10th. It may not be quite so coherent though!
Mike Colling, Managing Director
Eight short words on a screen that as I write them convey none of the passion this event engenders.
Let me try to explain in a paragraph or two.
We strive every day to deliver on our brand-promise to clients: creating new value for them. We take fierce pride in this, and the results we generate.
Then once a year we take the best of our work and try to explain that year's work in three sides of A4.
Some 160 of our peers come together in a rigorous three-day process to ask: does our work have an insightful and coherent strategy; have we been creative rather than derivative in our execution of that strategy; and have we generated outstanding results?
At the end of that three days of debate, considering 600 or so entries from more than 100 agencies, the short list emerges from the conclave like white smoke from the Vatican.
And this year we have been shortlisted for three awards - for work we have done for the RSPCA and for Which?
And the thing I am most proud of? In the category that really matters to us, the “best results of the year” category, which is the closest thing to our brand, our entries are two of the three finalists.
So now we have to wait until December 9th to learn if we have won bronze, silver or gold. I will blog again on this subject on December 10th. It may not be quite so coherent though!
Mike Colling, Managing Director
Tuesday 20 October 2009
Hiscox insurance calls a spade a spade
Snapshot whilst waiting for a train this morning: a strong outdoor ad for a potentially dull brand.
Insurance company Hiscox are out to prove they speak plainly to their customer base, cutting through all the usual jargon spouted by a lot of their financial and insurance competitors. In this case, literally calling a spade a spade.
In a world where your office water-cooler arrives via local "water-dispensing solution delivery operatives" and your household rubbish is collected by "refuse waste removal management systems", it's quite refreshing to see a spade called, well, a spade.
Insurance company Hiscox are out to prove they speak plainly to their customer base, cutting through all the usual jargon spouted by a lot of their financial and insurance competitors. In this case, literally calling a spade a spade.
In a world where your office water-cooler arrives via local "water-dispensing solution delivery operatives" and your household rubbish is collected by "refuse waste removal management systems", it's quite refreshing to see a spade called, well, a spade.
Claire Turner
Is Social Media really worth bothering with?
Of course social media is (are?) at the top of the agenda for a lot of businesses.
But is this all hype or should we be taking it seriously?
Unfortunately a lot of the noise around social media marketing is enthusiastic hot air. "Everyone's doing it!", "You can get a dialogue going with all your consumers!", "It's replacing advertising!" Etcetera. Etcetera.
None of these are real reasons for investing in social media.
But there are a number of extremely strong strategic business benefits that social media can deliver. They won't all be relevant for all businesses. But the chance is that at least one or two will be relevant for your business.
Let's start with marketing. Social media can help with acquisition. At its simplest you can use social media to inform and enhance SEO and paid search campaigns. And you can also use it to contribute to advertising campaigns by seeding discussions. It's an important PR tool as well which you can use for monitoring and managing your brand's reputation. All with the aim of getting new customers.
Probably best not to be too overt about direct marketing though (unless you are talking to a group of very strong fans who want to be sold to.)
And you can use it for retention as well. Establish a dialogue with consumers and you can tell them about new products and special offers as well as identifying (and addressing) areas of unhappiness.
As part of this you can also use social media for delivering customer service where it can help retention and also deliver cost savings, by enabling your customers to help one another, and by enabling a common problem to be addressed on a one-to-many basis.
You can also use social media to affect product evolution and to guide new product development. Listen to what your consumers are saying about your products and you will have a good idea as to where your product set should be heading.
Undertake some competitor analysis using social media and you will have an even better idea about your marketplace.
Combining competitor and customer analysis will help guide investment decisons in staff, marketing and production (is your customer service up to scratch, are you wasting your advertising budget, are your products built robustly enough...)
Then there is recruitment: social media is increasingly used in this function, as a way of delivering marketplace intelligence, locating and evaluating candidates (with or without the help of recruitment agencies), and enabling candidates to find and develop positive feelings about your business. Don't forget your current staff either. Social media can powerfully develop feelings of team and increase staff morale.
And finally one should not forget The City. Social media can be used very effectively for financial PR which can positively affect share price and business stability.
The noise surrounding social media is clearly not just hype. But that doesn't mean social media campaigns are always delivered well. Far from it! But a structured and commonsense approach, combined with a willingness to experiment (and sometimes fail) will take your business a long way on the road to benefiting from these exciting new opportunities.
Jeremy Swinfen Green
Digital Director, MC&C
jeremy@mcand.co.uk
But is this all hype or should we be taking it seriously?
Unfortunately a lot of the noise around social media marketing is enthusiastic hot air. "Everyone's doing it!", "You can get a dialogue going with all your consumers!", "It's replacing advertising!" Etcetera. Etcetera.
None of these are real reasons for investing in social media.
But there are a number of extremely strong strategic business benefits that social media can deliver. They won't all be relevant for all businesses. But the chance is that at least one or two will be relevant for your business.
Let's start with marketing. Social media can help with acquisition. At its simplest you can use social media to inform and enhance SEO and paid search campaigns. And you can also use it to contribute to advertising campaigns by seeding discussions. It's an important PR tool as well which you can use for monitoring and managing your brand's reputation. All with the aim of getting new customers.
Probably best not to be too overt about direct marketing though (unless you are talking to a group of very strong fans who want to be sold to.)
And you can use it for retention as well. Establish a dialogue with consumers and you can tell them about new products and special offers as well as identifying (and addressing) areas of unhappiness.
As part of this you can also use social media for delivering customer service where it can help retention and also deliver cost savings, by enabling your customers to help one another, and by enabling a common problem to be addressed on a one-to-many basis.
You can also use social media to affect product evolution and to guide new product development. Listen to what your consumers are saying about your products and you will have a good idea as to where your product set should be heading.
Undertake some competitor analysis using social media and you will have an even better idea about your marketplace.
Combining competitor and customer analysis will help guide investment decisons in staff, marketing and production (is your customer service up to scratch, are you wasting your advertising budget, are your products built robustly enough...)
Then there is recruitment: social media is increasingly used in this function, as a way of delivering marketplace intelligence, locating and evaluating candidates (with or without the help of recruitment agencies), and enabling candidates to find and develop positive feelings about your business. Don't forget your current staff either. Social media can powerfully develop feelings of team and increase staff morale.
And finally one should not forget The City. Social media can be used very effectively for financial PR which can positively affect share price and business stability.
The noise surrounding social media is clearly not just hype. But that doesn't mean social media campaigns are always delivered well. Far from it! But a structured and commonsense approach, combined with a willingness to experiment (and sometimes fail) will take your business a long way on the road to benefiting from these exciting new opportunities.
Jeremy Swinfen Green
Digital Director, MC&C
jeremy@mcand.co.uk
Monday 19 October 2009
TV Response: the new rules
So last Thursday Louise and I went to a Thinkbox event entitled ‘TV Response, the new rules’.
Not since the late 1990’s has any real research been done into DRTV and how response is being generated, so we had high hopes that this could back up all that we say on a daily basis to our clients. On a basic level it did – so hoorah!
Now the difficulty with this research is that the clients included (anonymously of course) were not all pure DRTV clients. One who chose to wave anonymity was Honda and I don’t think they could even class themselves as a BRTV client! So possibly the 15% could be increased for many clients – maybe to as much as 50%. Where does the other response go?…
According to the study 66% of web traffic during the analysis period came via a search engine, 16% recalled the URL from the ad while the remaining 18% guessed the URL!
We still know though that putting a URL on the ad does increase web response – but maybe that’s simply because they then know they can go online – think of it as a green light to search.
The web traffic came at different times to the ads themselves though – more in the evening and more at weekends – shifting the response patterns once again.
1) There are no rules!
2) We can’t totally control the routes to response – we need to allow for the fact that the stimulus and the route to response is far less connected than before
I know though that I for one would like to attempt to get some more answers from our own responses – maybe try to replicate the study but with pure DRTV brands.
Now then who’s up for that challenge?
Nicky Legg, Broadcast Director
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