Tag Archives: advertising

Breaking the Bond rules

By October 24 2012, 8:26 am Leave a comment

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 curse of Cumbria

By October 22 2012, 8:58 am 1 Comment

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 »

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These are pinteresting times

By October 12 2012, 9:16 am 2 Comments

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 »

Think native and get creative

By September 28 2012, 9:43 am Leave a comment

With nearly 3 in 4 people finding online advertising annoying and click-through rates remaining below 1%, the online advertising industry is looking for less intrusive formats that blend with the user online experience and better engage with consumers. ’Native advertising’ is a new model that goes beyond traditional display formats. Native ads integrate branded content such as pictures, videos or articles directly into the site experience, usually in a form that matches the site content, instead of just placing ads framing the content.

I am very excited about native ads and the opportunities they offer for online creative, a refreshing change from annoying pop-up ads, aimed to be more visually appealing and less interruptive. Native ads force us to think outside the banner box, looking for content that fits the site and creative executions that are part of the online experience. In other words, developing branded content that delivers a message and tells a story, without it feeling and looking like an ad.  Read more »

Pecunia non olet

By September 26 2012, 10:24 am Leave a comment

In the year 70 AD, the Roman Emperor Vespasian imposed a tax on urine. Read more »

Built to last – but who cares?

By September 19 2012, 10:13 pm Leave a comment

Business books are full of delicious ironies. Read more »

Digital Mad Men: Turn on? Or click off?

By September 14 2012, 10:17 am Leave a comment

After I finished university and started working in research, I remember people asking me what I did for a living and most of the time, my ‘I work in market research’ answer used to be met with ‘oh, so you’re one of those annoying people standing outside the tube with a clipboard’. Fast forward three years, another party (all grownups, not young and fresh grads anymore), same question: so what do you do? ‘Well, I work in digital advertising research’ I say, feeling quite proud and thinking I had managed to sound cool and interesting, Mad Men meets the digital world meets David Rittenhouse. And much to my dismay, I get a similar answer to three years ago: ‘oh, all these annoying pop up ads and rolling banners that invade my screen?’

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Lessons from the Ad of the Year

By September 12 2012, 2:25 pm Leave a comment

So the Golden Summer of Sport is officially over (and after watching Scotland’s miserable football match against Macedonia last night, I can safely say that it is).

The short-term legacy is already clear: a gigantic hangover and a vastly increased vocabulary, encompassing terms like ‘peloton’, ‘omnium’ and ‘repechage’.

But what of the long-term impact? Read more »

Brought down?

By July 5 2012, 10:50 am Leave a comment

We’ve been all a-buzz at Ipsos ASI this week, talking about the latest instalments in the Go Compare campaign, namely taking out Gio (the singing man with the strange moustache, in case you didn’t realise that’s his name).

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Just how private are your privacy settings?

By June 12 2012, 8:50 am Leave a comment

Even with the most private of privacy settings there’s a wealth of information known about us without us even realising it. An article in the New Scientist sheds more light on the information social networks know about us which they are reluctant to reveal.

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