Monthly Archives: August 2012

The public stuff sells itself

By August 30 2012, 4:24 pm Comments Off

 

I was lucky enough to visit the Olympic Park a couple of weeks ago during the Olympics. My tickets weren’t for the Olympic stadium, the Velodrome or the Aquatics Centre. No, I was there to watch Handball! Ok, so Handball may not be top of everyone’s list but it gave me a chance to take in the amazing spectacle that is the Olympic games; to walk around the park and to soak up the atmosphere of this once in a lifetime event.

For most of us who work in media, a sad reality is that you also notice ads wherever you go. And this was particularly true of my visit to the Olympic Park. So, what brands had the best poster sites, the best digital billboards or the biggest building wraps? Read more »

TV, the Second Coming?

By August 30 2012, 1:57 pm Comments Off

The Guardian believes it is Sky’s most significant strategic move since broadband, but does the launch of Sky Now TV, a pay as-you-go internet TV service, signify a new era of how we consume TV? VINDICO’s James Grant looks at the significance broadband providers will have in the battle for online content distribution and the impact it will have on the advertising industry as whole.

Read more »

London Olympics ushers in new TV behaviours

By August 24 2012, 11:20 am Comments Off

The Olympic stadiumThe latest research from Starcom MediaVest Group’s Emerging Spaces research programme shows that the London Olympics mark a watershed in TV viewing behaviour.

We asked 1,010 adults (aged 18+) across Great Britain about how they followed the London 2012 Olympic Games, using different media channels.

TV came out on top with 41.0m watching any televised events, and 38.8m watching live footage. Read more »

Get over your hangover, there’s another party coming to town

By August 22 2012, 10:18 pm Comments Off

They are the Games that just keep on giving.

As we work our way through the post Olympics gloom, advertisers are doing their best to help us get over our collective national hangover, by reminding us of our favourite moments and our heroes of the Games.

BT aired a perfectly timed post-Olympics ad last Monday, featuring lots of Games footage, and capitalising on our Olympics euphoria at just the right moment, before any other ads had a chance.  This was potentially a gamble, but one that paid off, and avoided having to compete for attention during the Games themselves. Read more »

I was wrong about The News on Sunday

By August 17 2012, 6:23 pm Comments Off

Will Richard Desmond be tempted to flog off the Daily Star Sunday to former Sunday Express editor Sue Douglas and former ITV commercial director Rupert Howell?

This might just happen, I reckon, contrary to a previous blog that Media Week ran rubbishing the idea as about as likely Desmond spending an evening of revelry with the Daily Mail’s Paul Dacre.

The reason for the change of mind: Dougals and Howell seem hell-bent on making this happen. Read more »

Are we tiring of celebrity culture?

By August 17 2012, 12:56 pm Comments Off

Are we tiring of celebrity culture?It’s that time of year again – The X Factor starts this weekend and the countdown to Christmas begins. But is it really still ‘TV gold’, or are we a bit bored of celebrity life and knowing just a bit too much about the people behind the shows?

Following the massive success of the 2012 Olympics, much has been spoken about our wonderful new role models and athletes. Has the time come where we have moved on from idolising judges on TV talent panels and caring about what they are wearing, who they are going out with and if they get on with each other? Or do we prefer to watch something a little less contrived with real people who focus purely on their talent? Read more »

Digital reading is really arousing interest

By August 17 2012, 9:40 am Comments Off

I’m not sure I want to be sexually aroused on the train on my way to work.  A colleague told me that she regularly got hot and bothered on her morning commute when working through the Fifty Shades trilogy.  As you may appreciate, this was not an easy conversation to pursue in the office, but I did establish that she openly read the paperback version rather than the e-book.  Given that Fifty Shades of Grey became the fastest-selling paperback since records began and the first e-book to sell more than one million copies, one can only wonder how many other people are reading it on their morning commute. Read more »

Olympics 2012: Engaging New Media

By August 9 2012, 2:20 pm Comments Off

How is it for you?  Here are some quick stats..

Peak BBC audience figures of 26.9 million for the Opening Ceremony.

Twitter reported a worldwide total of 9.66 million mentions of the Opening Ceremony.

The 100m final saw over 100,000 tweets per minute.

An Opening Ceremony shown in 3D.

Over 1.5 million downloads of the BBC Olympics app.

And the most watched clip on BBC Sport website  in week 1 was Bradley Wiggins’s time trial with 729,000 views. Read more »

Microsoft’s Outlook.com could be winner

By August 8 2012, 3:02 pm Comments Off

Microsoft’s new email service Outlook.com looks good, modern, uncluttered and will no doubt confine sister-service Hotmail to the rubbish heap, where it belongs.

Hotmail, over 15 –years-old and left to rot for the last eight amidst a super-fast digital industry in which more nimble and contemporary looking emails such as Gmail trumped it, needed ditching and Microsoft knew it. Read more »

Digital takes gold medal at Rajars

By August 8 2012, 11:01 am Comments Off

Digital change: BBC 6 Music:UK Station of the Year at the Sony Radio Academy AwardsOne of the most interesting themes to come out of this quarter’s RAJAR results was the news that digital radio has hit 40% listening share in London for the first time, up a healthy 10% year-on-year.

After months, nay years, of having to defend itself against accusations of failing (the BBC’s head of audio Tim Davie recently admitted that digital radio marketing was previously a total mess), the digital radio industry trade bodies finally have something to crow about. Read more »

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