The average Briton spends 36% of their time sleeping. And yet dinosaur agencies still spend less than 1% of their budgets on interrupting people while they snooze. This is the most eye-opening finding of a new independent survey, carried out by completely objective experts at the Sleep Marketing Foundation. Read more »
The Fall has officially fallen. The clocks go back on Sunday. The fancy dress shops are stocking up on blonde wigs, gold tracksuits and cigars for Hallowe’en. Parents will soon be buying explosive devices for their kids, to celebrate the torture and execution of a religious terrorist. And what could be more Autumnal than all the Christmas lights and advertising?
5 martinis. That’s the average number of drinks that Daniel Craig’s Bond has drank per film, becoming the booziest Bond of the franchise according to some very geeky analysts at The Economist. Craig’s Bond has now broken another record; being the first who drinks beer in the franchise – neither ‘shaken nor stirred’ I suppose, thanks to a $45 million deal signed with Heineken.
Since the deal was announced in March, there has been a lot of controversy around the movie and the advertising campaign starring Craig, with 007 fans claiming it is breaking all the sacred Bond rules. But the truth is that Bond has never been known for playing by the rules, and Heineken seems to have decided to adopt the same attitude. As General MacArthur would say – ‘you are remembered for the rules you break’. Read more »
The patterns in the way that brands invest in media have been set for 2012. By the time we hit October/November, the vast bulk of the year’s money will have been committed.
So what can we learn from 2012 that might help us plan or anticipate changes in 2013? Read more »
This week, something truly remarkable will happen but you won’t notice. And I blame the village of Whitehaven in Cumbria.
In the early hours of Wednesday 24th of October, the last remaining analogue TV signal in the UK will be switched off and all television in this country will be digital. Read more »
So, I was having a chat with the legendary Dave Trott the other day (I know, I know: I’ve only been doing this blog for 4 weeks and I’ve already resorted to scraping around for ideas from other people). Read more »
Earlier this year it was quite difficult to read any of the 2012 marketing trend predictions without coming across Pinterest. There was a lot of excitement around this new kid on the social media block with its two key fundamentals of social media; sharing and visual content. Pinterest has enjoyed skyrocketing growth and according to Shareaholic’s web traffic statistics, it now refers more traffic than Google, Yahoo and Twitter. However, it still has its share of skeptics among the marketing industry and many brands see Pinterest’s lack of an advertising platform and metrics as a barrier. Earlier this week Rachel Weiss, L’Oreal Social Media Chief, sparked some headlines by saying she was bored with Pinterest and was waiting to see what it could offer brands.
Apparently an ad platform is coming, but some brands are not waiting for that to create commercial opportunities. There is a lot of experimentation going on and we are seeing great examples of brands that have used Pinterest in creative and innovative ways. Read more »
A few years ago, Scouting for Girls sang, ‘I wish I was James Bond, just for the day.’ With ‘Unlock the 007 in you’, Coke Zero seems to promise that this is possible for your average punter.
So, I read the other week that Hornby, the makers of model train sets, Airfix models, Corgi toys, Scalectrix, Werthers Originals and comfortable slippers, have issued a profit warning to the City.
I hate it when that happens. I was all set to write a piece arguing that brands should feature other brands in their ads more.
I had a tenuous analogy set up and ready to go – The Avengers.
The point I was going to make was that brands are like Super Heroes. They have super powers that can be used for good or evil, but as the recent Avengers movie demonstrated, they are more powerful when they work together. (I did say the analogy was tenious.) Read more »
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