Sky Atlantic -More Repeats than an Onion Bhaji

Okay, the Dustin Hoffman promos were awful but fortunately it didn’t detract from the brilliant show opener, Boardwalk Empire.

On the face of it, Sky Atlantic’s attempt to increase subscribers with the lure of first rate US programmes is a really smart move. For advertisers, however, one problem is that, for many viewer, ad breaks will detract from the impact of the shows. One of the appeals of watching MadMen on BBC 4 is that there are no breaks.

But the real issue is the sheer volume of repeats. For a short time you can get away with repeats of really high quality new programmes when the broadcaster wants to give as many viewers as possible the opportunity to get hooked on a series. The problem with Sky Atlantic, however, is that the repeats are mostly based on ancient episodes of ER and less note worthy shows such as Star Trek Voyager which can be viewed elsewhere on satellite channels. Discerning audiences just become frustrated and bored when they have to sort the wheat from the chaff. I don’t believe you can base a channel on one great show. And Sky Atlantic will just be seen as a cynical marketing ploy sooner rather than later unless they change their game plan.

Ian Prager, Planning Partner

Hearst pays £559million for Lagadere’s International Magazine Portfolio.

Hearst Corporation has paid £559 million for Lagadere’s Magazine portfolio which includes a licensing agreement for Fashion Magazine ‘Elle’. The offer includes the sale of 102 Hachette Filipachacci titles such as ‘Inside Soap’, ‘Red’ and ‘Psychologies’. The deal also covers titles in 15 countries, including the UK, USA, Russia, The Soviet Union, Italy, Spain, China and Germany.

The most interesting part of this whole partnership though is the licensing of ‘Elle’ magazine. Lagadere has granted a license to Hearst for ‘Elle’ that will apply to magazines and all digital and audiovisual supports. In the UK, Hachette Filipachacci’s titles will be housed alongside those of the Hearst owned National Magazine Company. This will consolidate former fashion competitors ‘Elle’ and ‘Harpers’ Bazaar’ and will be pitched against other premium fashion magazines including Conde Naste’s ‘Vogue’ and will allow Hearst to have the biggest international presence of any consumer magazine publisher.

This co-operation of brands has aroused much discussion and opinion within both the media and the fashion world. Many have been asking how this will affect the brands of ‘Harpers’ Bazaar’ and ‘Elle’ and how will the takeover affect other high fashion and high society magazines like’ Vogue’, ‘Vanity Fair’ or ‘Glamour’. Media insiders, however, suggest that it might not have any effect at all and the competition will remain the same amongst the titles regardless of who the owner is. All the reader cares about is the content of the magazine. Ultimately both of the titles have strong established brands targeting different sections of the same interest market. Nicholas Coleridge, the MD at Conde Nast, speaking to Media Week, is not “anticipating any negative effect”. Both ‘Elle’ and ‘Harpers Bazaar’ are number 2 and 3 in the market and this will remain the same. People will not change allegiance just because the two are now batting for the same economic team. There is no talk of the publishers looking to ‘reinvent’ or change the titles in any way and, chances are that the readers won’t even be aware of a takeover, unless there is a price hike or the content changes.

Fashion aside, the biggest effect this acquisition will have is on Nat Mags & Hachette Filipacchi themselves; with a broader portfolio of well established titles this will mean the trading of advertising space will become easier. It will make the flow of conversation, planning and buying a lot swifter with one less buying point. The opportunities of cross selling will be vast for all the magazines and will no doubt only make the brands stronger and more integrated with time. However the main issue (in the short term) is the same with the advertiser as it is with the reader. Advertisers base their planning choices on the quality of the magazine and the relevancy of the readership, if this was to change then reconsiderations will be made, however until any evidence of any changes surface the high glossy, consumer magazine world will probably just continue to sashay along as usual!

Online Video 2011and Beyond …

Video content, including TV, dominates most people’s total media consumption time accounting for 40% of all media and communications used. According to PWC Media Research it is by far the largest media market on the planet.

In the past decade we have seen amazing growth of the online video sector illustrated by YouTube’s success. The site is growing by 13% year on year and is now reaching 17.5 m monthly unique users. Video search on YouTube accounts for 25% of all Google search queries in the US. In fact, if it were a standalone site, YouTube would be the second largest search engine after Google!

The importance of online video can no longer be ignored by advertisers and media owners, especially as it can allow them to reach a much younger audience and attract very high attention levels (second only to gaming). What is more, video offers lower rates and better targeting. The market saw substantial adoption in 2010 and some brands, such as Old Spice or Tipp-Ex, have really understood the value of video.

But it’s evident that advertisers have just got started. With scalability, optimisation, interactivity, personalisation, mobility and more features still on the horizon, this year’s journey in video will be even more impressive. Shishir Mehrotra, Director of Product Management at Google, predicts that “fragmentation will produce new opportunities for content producers, interactivity will allow for great advertisers to compete for attention with content, and convergence of video sources will ultimately lead to a better experience for viewers”.

Online video is about to go through its largest transition yet so watch out for some great video content in 2011!


Anna Zolkiewicz
Junior Analyst

Keep Taking the Tablets!

The future of magazines, or lack of it, has been commented on many times over the last few years. Publishers have found spiralling production and fulfilment costs against a backdrop of a soft advertising market difficult to operate under, while readers crave for interactivity and rich content, which, for many, paper just can’t give them.

Magazine publishers have responded by setting up web sites which give the reader more interactive content but this can seem like an endless stream of links which doesn’t replicate the joy of reading a magazine. Readers like there to be a beginning and an end to an article and the act of turning pages. This is where tablets come in. The technology captures the essence of magazine reading in which high quality writing married to stunning moving images allows readers to have the best of both worlds.

The forward thinking Swedish publisher Bonnier have done some really exciting work in this area. Their view, and one that I share, is that people are willing to pay for iphone applications where content is packaged and distributed like a product. In fact, just like a magazine.

Ian Prager, Planning Director

The Benefits of Quality over Quantity in Email Marketing

A Marketing Week study carried out in late 2010 indicated that over 50% of businesses surveyed expected their email marketing spend to increase in the next 12 months. The challenge for marketers is to understand how to maximise the return for this additional spend.

A common ethos amongst advertisers at the recent forefront of email marketing has been to forego the benefits of high price, high quality data for high volume, low cost data; the thought being that the more inboxes hit, the more likely the email is to get into the right ones. This practice is entirely unsustainable though, in that there is no consideration for the preservation of data quality. People who have signed up to such promotional sites often receive multiple emails per week, sometimes per day, diminishing responsiveness and damaging data in the longer term.

All of the apparent benefits of a low cost per thousand are lost when data does not respond to email advertising. Worse still, delivery platforms suffer negatively as a result of complaints (emails being flagged as spam by unwilling recipients), which subsequently leads to even poorer performance. All signs point to the maintainable future of email advertising being found in responsible, disciplined data management.

List owners who strictly limit the number of messages their dataset can receive in a given time period; those who realise that charging a certain cost per thousand to deter time-wasting advertisers; and those who ensure that the correct messages are sent to the correct people with selective client choices and appropriate targeting – these are the data suppliers who will all play a part in ensuring that email marketing can be a sustainable form of advertising long into the future.

Alex Prout, Senior Digital Planner/Buyer

Mobile, the 7th Mass Media Channel?

I’m sure you all agree last week was a bit of a struggle. To celebrate getting through the week a few of my esteemed colleagues and I decided to break all our new year’s resolutions and have lunch comprising of a “few” bottles of red wine. To feel less guilty, we thought we should discuss a media topic. Surprisingly, we enjoyed an immediate consensus of views on the topic - mobile.

Mobile facts started began pinging round the table like a demonic pin ball machine. Twice as many mobile phones globally than personal computers, nearly twice as many mobiles as TV sets. One fact that is obvious but still astounding is that twice as many people use SMS messaging on the phone than use email.

Alan Moore and Tomi T Ahonen in their excellent book ‘Communities Dominate Brands’ see mobile as a fully fledged mass media channel. They call it the 7th mass media channel not merely a response tool to facilitate accessibility. Mobile phones are an expression of individuality which makes them unique in media terms. From ring tone to contacts, the mobile phone is as close as you can get to an individual’s cultural finger print. There was a woman on Radio 4 last weekend who told listeners she has an erotic relationship with her phone, she sleeps with it and takes it to the loo. Maybe this is taking things a bit too far but it makes an interesting point.

As practitioners in media communications we all need to exploit the relationship consumers have with the mobile phone. So we all made a belated new year’s resolution. Ensure mobile media is an integral part of our comms planning. Much better than losing weight! If you’d like to explore how you can incorporate mobile into your media mix, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Ian Prager, Planning Director

Changes in the World of DRTV

DRTV has long been considered rather tacky and downmarket. Yes it may be cost effective for some clients, but it requires long commercials, forceful calls to action, and can only work in daytime and late night. It’s been the Poundland to mainstream TV’s Selfridges.

Well one of those ‘rules’ is about to change. Peak airtime, so long an unaffordable commodity for most drtv advertisers, may become familiar terriotory to many. We have just finished the last in a series of tests for a client that proves conclusively that, with the right support infrastructure, peak can be as cost effective as other dayparts.

I would like to claim that this is part of a long held ambition to boldly go where other direct marketers do not. But that’s not true. We have held tight to the “no peak” rule for years.

The only thing that causes us to hold our heads high is our insatiable curiosity. We love new data. And when new data arrived in the shape of Touchpoints we looked to what it told us. And to our surprise, it told us when and where people were as they responded to each media channel. And for TV we saw the familiar peak of response in the morning, and a decline throughout the afternoon, just as expected. But we also saw another rise in response, later in the day, right in the middle of forbidden territory.

Much excitement, much debate. And we convinced a client to test. And fell flat on our faces. But more than 12 months and several re-tests later we now have a string of convincing victories. And benefits that include new audiences responding, higher transaction values and many others.

So a very happy start to the year for us here and one client in particular. If you too use drtv as part of your media inventory and are confined to the daytime ghetto, give us a call.

Happy New Year!