Social Media and the business world

We've all heard lots and lots about social media and how it has become an indispensable part of marketers' armoury. We at Market Evolution are good example of this as we use social media techniques to enable a conversation with and between consumers for market research purposes.

But I for one have always been slightly confused by who is using what and what for?

Well help is at hand. A very helpful guy called Peter Kim has put together this useful directory of social media corporate users and uses. Thanks Peter

Click here to read

There's always one spoiling the fun for everyone else.....

A cheeky ad by the Sun gloating about Britain winning more medals than Australia at the Beijing Olympics, using a twist on the "Where the bloody hell are you?" campaign, has been banned by the ASA following a single complaint.

The regulator considered the word "bloody" to be a swearword and that it was "irresponsible" to reproduce in a medium where children could see it, and told The Sun not to use the word "bloody" on posters in the future.

3 things spring immediately to mind.

Bloody is used in headlines on the front page of several newspapers, which are available for purchase in newsagents, where many children have been spotted before buying sweets and chocolate, and newspapers are often to be found lying around in millions of households on a daily basis. I'm looking at the front page of today's Daily Mirror and Times newspapers, and I'd rather be explaining to my kids what "bloody" meant and the right and wrong context to use it in, than explaining what "Monster raped his two daughters" and "Rape father jailed over daughter's 9 children" meant.

A single complaint is therefore sufficient to allow the ASA to ponder whether the sensibilities of the nation have been offended? 48 million people aged 16 or over in the UK, and a single complaint suffices? That's got to be nonsense surely. I find Gordon Brown offensive, so if he ever appears on a piece of Labour Party marketing communication, does that mean I can get him banned from future use?

Finally, it's The Sun. And it made me smile. Which is pretty good going in today's gloomy world.

Frank talking from Roger Alton, Editor of the Independent

I'm never slow to praise frank talking, as I've felt for a while now that those who are bluffing their way through life always try hardest to hide behind a veil of unnecessary management speak and overly complicated presentation charts.

On MediaGuardian today, a great piece from Roger Alton, about the perilous state of the Independent, particularly after putting the price up to £1 and losing 16% of daily circulation year-on-year. Here is the link to the original article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/nov/24/independent-alton-price-rise

Two things to comment on. In the same way that bears like the woods, and the Pope likes to encourage lots of children, raising the cover price of any newspaper will lose sale - it's only the magnitude of the loss that is up for debate. If the paper is good enough, and provides sufficient perceived value for the additional pennies, then the losses can be minimal. In the case of the Independent, it looks like it's a bridge too far, and will only get worse given the additional editorial job-cuts in the pipeline.

Mr Alton's quote is priceless though, and hats off for plain talking....

"Asked if he regretted the decision to raise the Independent's cover price in September, he said: "Take a wild guess! We were aware of the risks when we did it and the ice cold winds of the recession have increased to gale force more or less from that day.

From the bottom of the market to charge the most was always very risky. It's made us very vulnerable.

If I could do anything to reverse [the ensuing circulation fall], literally anything - I'd saw off my right fucking forearm - I would."

I'd have guessed at a 10% plus decline from a move to a cover price of £1 without any consumer research, based purely on 11 years of cover price movement in the UK market. This does illustrate the value of market research coupled with experience when it comes to making serious commercial decisions. Do it blindly, and repent at your leisure, giving you ample time to self-flagellate with one or both of your hands.

Behind the numbers, we must not forget the people

I haven't worked through recessionary times like these before, having weathered the storm of the early 1990s inside a particularly cosy Ivory Tower, emerging blinking into a commercial world that was just beginning to find its feet again.

Reading the financial pages today, the view from the UK and the US is both interesting and alarming. Having bailed out the financial sector, the US is facing the triple whammy of the 3 largest car manufacturers holding out the begging bowl for federal cash to save themselves, with Ford, GM and Chrysler bosses appearing on Capitol Hill to try and secure a rescue package before they run out of money to pay the bills. A nice irony pointed out by Congressman Sherman was that they had all flown in by corporate jets to ask for cash, but this shouldn't mask the human cost of hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk if the big 3 are allowed to go under.

When MG Rover went under a few years back, the knock on effect on smaller suppliers further down the food chain was devastating in the West Midlands region. Imagining the knock-on effect if the Big 3 went down in the US should force a deal of some sort through one would hope.

Back in the UK, Mini are taking a month off from production in December, and Honda have announced a 2 month mothball for production in Swindon next year. With airfields across the country doubling up as car parks for unwanted new cars, this shouldn't be surprising, but somehow it still is. Jaguar are also asking for £1bn in interim loan finance, as Tata, their parent company struggles to finance the debt incurred to buy the luxury brands a couple of years ago.

On the other side of the pond, Citigroup shares have taken a battering this week, down 23% on Wednesday, 26% on Thursday and 20% on Friday, despite announcing a further 50,000 job cuts globally earlier in the week. Confidence, or lack of it, seems to be driving the share price down, as the fundamental financial health of the business is apparently reasonable. Though what this means anymore is debatable, the rules of the game have changed so much in the last few months that the pen and the word are indeed mightier than the sword. Confidence in the markets is everything, and without it, not even the mightiest financial institutions are safe. Again, the human cost if Citigroup implodes would be immense.

Finally, what to say about Woolworths? For too long now, a brand in chaos, with no clear consumer proposition and massive product ranges displayed in chaotic shelving. The commercial situation is clear - without a rescue deal being agreed with the bank syndicate providing the existing debt mountain, the business will be out of cash before Christmas and likely to be in administration before the month is out. The human cost is also clear, 30,000 staff in 840 stores face a Christmas without a job to return to.

Our predictions for newspapers in 2009 and beyond

Cheery news to end the working week with the publication of a report from Enders Analysis into the ad market for the next 5 years.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/nov/21/advertising-pressandpublishing

The UK print ad market will be the worst hit of all media sectors in 2009, down 21%, with newspaper display ads down 22% and classifieds down about 19%. Growth will not return to the print ad market until some time after 2013.

Next year digital media revenue growth will crash to just 2.1%, a long way off from previous years of explosive growth.

So, if the soothsayers have read their tea leaves correctly, it's going to be an even tougher couple of years for the newspaper sector than previously feared. We've been tracking the on-going job losses in the sector over the last week or so, with this week seeing Trinity Mirror announce a pay freeze and disappearing bonus double whamming, and the Irish times announcing 60 job losses as the situation worsens across the Irish Sea.

What does it actually mean though? Our predictions for the next 2 years are as follows.......

Costs will continue to be cut, and anything not nailed down will be jettisoned as newspapers pare expenditure to the bone.

Digital is not going to make up for the double digit drops in print ad revenue, and digital teams will also be cut back.

Functions that traditionally have been held in-house will begin to be outsourced throughout 2009.

Agencies who can offer decent revenue opportunities will be best positioned to help build new revenue opportunities from existing audiences.

At least one national newspaper will disappear from newsagents by the end of 2009.

Newspapers with courage and vision, who invest time in proper commercial partnerships with smart agencies will reap the benefits in the short term, there will still be money to be made out of audiences, but the days of sitting back and taking display and classified advertising bookings have gone for good.

Newspapers will survive, as strong brands with loyal audiences can always be profitable, but skilled management is essential.

It's going to be an interesting year.

Great Disappearing ad revenue and headcount reduction....... Part 3

The long running Slimfast diet at the Independent titles in London looks to be continuing, with reports today that another 90 jobs are being cut from the already pared to the bone business.

With reports of the monthly losses varying from £1million to £2million, it's a newspaper with serious financial problems, which can only be increasing in severity with ad revenues down by 20-30% at its larger circulating competitive newspaper rivals.

The only positive to take from this is that with commercial office space costs dropping equally quickly, the inevitable downsizing from the waterside Canary Wharf HQ into a smaller and cosier office floor elsewhere, will be a positive contribution to the cost-cutting exercise.

"The Independent - it is, are you" - was an iconic brand campaign which made individual readers feel that they were being spoken to on a one-to-one basis. At the current rate of progress, it's getting close to being that in reality. Will the last person to leave please turn out the lights?

and now for something lighter

For all you sophisticated marketers out there take a minute to read about a new and increasing powerful media.............

Consider taking Jenaé up on her offer to wear your startup shirt and talk about your company for a day. It’s $75, and she posts videos on her site, YouTube, Seesmic and Viddler, posts pictures on Flickr and tweets about it all as well.

You have to send her the shirt two weeks in advance, and afterwards she gives it away.

'It consists of me being your walking advertisement as I wear your company shirt and showcase anything else you send me. I spread the news via Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Viddler, Seesmic and my website, showcasing who you are, what you do, and how others can do business with you. For each, I create a showcase video where right on the show, I open your package, talk about your company, then wear your shirt and spread the news. The day after the company is showcased, it will be listed under our shirt & swag graveyard where others can buy the paraphernalia I showcased.'

Tempted?

"The great disappearing ad revenue and headcount adventure - Part 2"

It didn't take as long as I thought it would do for "TGDARAHA" to return, a matter of only 45 minutes.....

Haymarket has just cut 50 jobs across the business.

Though in better news for staff, mediaguardian is reporting that NI has rebuffed a truce offer from DMGT over the London freesheet wars. Any truce would undoubtedly have led to further job losses.

This said, given how bad the ad market is for paid titles, let alone free newspapers, it can only be a matter of time before there is some sort of consolidation or deal between NI and DMGT. Can't it?

Our first part in a hopefully not too regular series - "The great disappearing ad revenue and headcount adventure - Part 1"

Every day brings further raised eyebrows in our office, and I'm sure in many others across media-land.

A quick summary of media news in the last 48 hours:

CondeNet - slashing jobs across the board to deal with the slackening of digital revenue growth.

Johnston Press - 15% decline in ad revenues for the first 10 months of 2008, with 50% fall in property advertising.

DMGT - cutting 300 of what were previously the safest jobs in newspapers.

Time Out - cutting 8% of staff (OK, this is only 13 people, but it's another indicator that all advertising revenue is shrinking).

Trinity Mirror - 20% decline in underlying group advertising revenues since June, and further cost cutting planned for 2009, also showing similar near 50% decline in property advertising.

The latest NRS figures are released tomorrow, which will provide further ammunition for many newspaper execs to load up the guns and find a dark corner to sit in, as the figures will reflect the ongoing circulation decline for almost all titles and show readership levels falling in tandem (though slightly lagging) with circulation.

It's not going to be a happy Xmas in most of media-land I fear, but in times of darkness, plan for the return of the light. It's a cyclical business and always has been. Digital may have masked the traditional curve, but you can bet your last Government owned bank dollar that the good times will return at some point. Those businesses with the intelligence and balls to back investment now, and plan smartly for the future, will be best positioned to ride out the storm.

For the rest, take solace (either in quantum or smaller measures) that it could be worse, you could be an estate agent. Remember them? Annoying branded cars driven by idiots with scant respect for other road users. As I type, someone, somewhere, is probably setting up a memorial or fundraising concert in support of this former industry sector.....

New age of austerity marketing

As the economic environment worsens it seems that marketers are rushing to re position their brands.

It's no longer acceptable (or sensible) to be flash.

Spending on expensive items (even for those that can afford it) is OUT!

Affordable and sensible is IN............

Great piece in the New York Times that captures this new paradigm very well

Barack Obama - what his victory means to me

Here at Market Evolution we keep away from politics preferring to focus on consumers etc. However please allow us one small political foray. The Barack Obama election victory seems worthy of a comment. But rather than comment directly we wanted to share with you a very personal account from a colleague living in New York city:

Friends --

I know this election of ours has almost felt like an election of
yours but I suspect you believed more in your minds what we have felt
in our hearts, that a rejection of change would have hastened
America's demise. But that hasn't happened and I wanted to give you a
taste of what it feels like and sounds like to be in New York
tonight. It's half past one and the streets are crowded with people,
three deep on the sidewalk. New Yorkers have climbed on their roofs
and on to their fire escapes, there's dancing on the streets, dancing
in front of cars. There's the ceaseless noise of cheering, even -
suddenly - bagpipes playing. Tonight, we even forgive the bagpipes.
Every few seconds comes the blare of another car horn and more
screams of Obama, of Yes We Can, more whoops of utter joy.

I've been here, on and off, for more than 19 years through two
Clinton victories, big wins for the Yankees and Knicks, a dozen or
more New Year's Eves and nothing has been like this, nothing has come
even close. This is the sound of a city set free for the first time
since September 11, 2001. This is us exhaling at last. For eight
years, New York has felt like another country. What counted for
America has been owned by others and governed for others. Everything
the Bush Administration did with its exclusionary policies, its
bigotry and intolerance, its religious fascism, its economic
arrogance was done to us, not for us. Obama can't solve everything
but he has already made the greatest city in the nation feel like it
belongs to America again and he has made someone who has only been an
American for 5 years feel like he belongs for the first time. Up to
now, my belief in citizenship had been shaken by a question about
what kind of country I had joined. By showing us the best of all our
selves, Barack Obama has silenced that doubt not just for me or for
us in New York, but for millions of Americans who can have faith in
America again.

And now I'm going to bed.

Campaign for clarity of writing - Part One

This from Marketing Week:

"Integrated Voice of the Customer Architecture

World class companies have recognized significant value of connecting the Voice of the Customer (VOC) to downstream business results, and upstream to Voice of the Employee and to other key enablers. Maritz is a thought leader in designing and constructing Integrated VOC Architectures that integrate all of a company's VOC touch points and link them to financial and other business results, as well as to upstream enablers.

Clients partnering with Maritz benefit from best practice approaches gleaned from over 30 years of experience in Customer Experience work as well as cutting-edge advances in the state of the art of linkage modeling, convergent analysis, and business blueprinting."

There has to be a better way to write this text, without using the type of language and jargon that just smacks of "in-the-club-ism". For me, it's using language to preserve an air of mystique and commercial bafflement, to justify a large invoice. Clarity of thought should translate to clarity of writing, and clarity of implementation and results.

Maybe I'm wrong. What do you think?

Trade marketing, the innocent casualties

Thanks to MediaGuardian for bringing the latest battle in the coffee wars to our attention.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mediamonkeyblog/2008/nov/04/newsinternational-pressandpublishing

The in-store Starbucks deal for The Times was a groundbreaking piece of trade marketing deal making back in 2004 which has since spawned a multitude of imitators.

A genuine sales driver with the print newspaper available in-store when customers had time to buy and read it, the deal recently crumbled in unclear circumstances, with the vacuum left by The Times being filled by The Guardian.

Now the in-Wapping Starbucks franchises, previously providing subsidised Lattes to the overworked NI staff, have been replaced by a rival, as NI completes the divorce from the US coffee giant.

There's a lot of coffee drunk at Wapping, it would be interesting to see how much money Starbucks made out of the locations on an annual basis. Bet you a £1 they hadn't included this calculation in any discussions about the future of the wider in-store deal......

The Independent - predicting the future

The ongoing share-buying struggle between Denis O'Brien and Sir Anthony O'Reilly over Independent News & Media has been featured on the blog at various points over the last 18 months or so. D O'B is now the second largest shareholder, and is approaching the c30% ownership levels which would automatically trigger a takeover situation.

In essence, Sir A O'R has built the business up globally, but media interest has recently centred on the perenially loss making UK Independent titles. The rest of the empire is subject to the same market depressions seen everywhere, but are in much ruder health than the London based titles. D O'B is not impressed with the continued investment in the London losses, and wants to force a sale, and maybe even remove A O'R from the helm.

This situation is moving ever closer to a conclusion though as the credit crisis continues, as the £1.1 billion INM borrowings start to weigh down the overall group. Six months from now, £200 million of bond needs to be redeemed, which is prompting speculation of disposals to generate cash.

With the estimated £10m+ losses annually, the Independent (UK) titles aren't going to be raising cash for the group if they are disposed of. Talks to save further cost by merging back room functions with rival publishers are apparently ongoing, but even this smacks of rearranging deckchairs while the iceberg moves ever closer. With a cover price of £1 and full rate sales of only 128,738 in September, there's not much going for the Indy titles.

Would you buy them? On the plus side, a nice brand with a niche audience, but not niche enough to attract decent ad rates. On the negative side, a commercial model that promises to break even one day, but never achieves it. Our view, a step too far from a purely commercial basis.

The Independent may be the headline in the media coverage of INM and D O'B, but it's a distraction. The real battle here is on re-financing the debt without selling the family silver to do so. Interesting 6 months ahead for the Group as a whole. The big question is on who you would put your money on to come through 2009 on top, on Sir Anthony, or D O'B?

BP - profits an outrage

I never thought that I would find myself thinking let alone writing this but am I alone in thinking what an absolute outrage it is that BP profits have risen 148% whilst we have suffered 'at the pump'.

BP has seen its latest quarterly profits more than double, buoyed by record high oil prices.

Reporting its results for the three months from July to September, BP's replacement cost profit totalled $10bn (£6.4bn), up 148% from a year earlier.

Isnt it about time that 'utilities' stopped making out at our expense? BP leads the way, but the supermarkets, the power companies and the water companies are all just as bad.

Windfall tax?

Is DAB the new Betamax?

We take a broader view of media than just the traditional inky papers, and Digital Radio is in an interesting place at the moment.

Launched to a fanfare of digital trumpets, DAB heralded a brave new world of commercial digital broadcasting, where content would be king and consumers would have a wealth of radio pleasure at their fingertips, in crackle free high definition clarity.

Well, that was the thinking anyway. Media companies saw an opportunity to take the analogue advertising funded model and place it on a digital spectrum, drive up their audiences through a technologically better offer, and watch the money roll in.

Only, it's not happened. At all. With Channel 4 pulling out of their digital radio consortium at a cost of a rumoured £10m, along with the bloodbath in the advertising market predicted for 2009, where does that leave digital radio?

Let's pause for a moment and look at this from the consumer perspective. Cost of technology has come down, but it's still £50+ for a DAB radio. The signal is clear, but actually not as good as promised, and the time lag means that you need a house full of DAB radios to move from room to room without having a problem with FM synching. You do get a nice display on your radio though, which tells you which station you are listening to. We had this at home in the 1970s though, it was a little sticker which you placed on the front of the radio on the FM frequency it applied to. Not digital, but just as effective.

The controversial (though obvious) prediction for the future of DAB is that there isn't one. It'll go the way of Betamax, the Sinclair C5 and the Sega Dreamcast, replaced by better technology which consumers actually want. The future is a combined FM, DAB and internet radio, giving the consumer access to internet radio broadcasting from around all the world.

I have an internet radio, it works off the home wifi, and I can pick any country in the world, and any genre of station, literally tens of thousands of stations at my fingertips 24 hours a day. Venezualan Jazz? Not a problem. Talk radio in New Zealand? Choice of 3 (though all of them are awful and remind why I was happy my relatives decide to emigrate there). As an aside, not quite sure how a local New Zealand radio station can commercialise my "ears" and charge advertisers, but I'm sure it's on their to-do list as I type.

DAB is dead. Spread the word, the internet has claimed its next victim.

iPhone - monumental growth

Apple managed to sell 6,892,000 iPhones in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2008. They sold just 1,119,000 iPhones in fiscal Q4 of 2007.

Perhaps more interesting is they sold more phones in the quarter than RIM (blackberry to you and I!)

This makes Apple the 3rd largest mobile phone supplier in the world, behind only Nokia and Samsung (and followed by Sony Ericsson, LG, Motorola, and RIM, in that order.)

Al Qaeda - more cash than the banks?

This won’t exactly be popular with the FBI, but the terrorist organization Al Qaeda is awash in funds. Anti-terrorism efforts to expunge Al Qaeda from the worldwide banking system mean it is sheltered from the rest of the world’s economic troubles. Al Qaeda’s principle source of funding is $800 million derived from the opium and cannabis trade. Its money-handling methods may be simple—they include moving cash by hand—but then isn’t it complexity that got Western banks into trouble in the first place?

Amazing fact of the day

facebook hosts 10 billion photos.

Wow thats a lot of photos. ok so we know youve got the photos but where are the revenues?

Like school boys infront of the head

Check out the drama behind the $250 billion US bank bailout.........

The chief executives of the nine largest banks in the United States trooped into a gilded conference room at the Treasury Department at 3 p.m. Monday 13th October. To their astonishment, they were each handed a one-page document that said they agreed to sell shares to the government, then Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said they must sign it before they left.

This is great isnt it 'youve been caught out and now its time to take your punishment - no ifs, no buts, no second chances'.

Allegedly there were some whinges (partic about executive pay curbs - can you believe that!) but they all signed.

Excellent work

obvious humour - but funny anyways

Please click on image to enlarge

Who would have thought?

Economic slowdowns are hard and for many this will be the first they have ever experienced and it will be quite a shock. Some one asked me today how my sector (media) was holding up and I (after a brief pause) was able to say 'well my sector has been in an economic slow down for some time now so this whilst hard isn't so terribly hard for us (so far)'.

That's quite a thought really. In many ways it quite reassuring to find many of sectors that were allegedly performing so brilliantly to now find themselves in the doldrums (or worse).

I thought Peter Preston nailed it so brilliantly on his piece in The Observer last Sunday. He basically said that newspapers having been the punch bag for bankers for so long were now more resilient and more profitable than banks........Read Peters piece here in full. Its fun. Click here to read.

Whatever happened to those nice people at Ocean Finance?

When the UK's largest banks are having to consolidate all their loans into one new affordable monthly payment, who do they call?

These are odd times we are living in, to use an understatement of Titanic proportions. We've been commenting over the last few months on the current crisis as it unfolded. Did we predict this was on the way? Yes. Did we predict the scale of it? No, nowhere near the extent that the last 10 days have witnessed.

Today's Sunday papers have done what they do best, taking a considered and in-depth view of the current situation. They have also been hamstrung by the speed that the World is having to move, as I type, 4 of the 5 largest UK banks are working out just how much taxpayers' money they need to stay afloat. £35 billion is the current figure being bandied around, but by the morning, who knows how large this will be.

Taking counsel from my peers who are working in the media sector, in finance, and in the legal sector, there seems little cheer. Deckchairs are being arranged as the iceberg moves rapidly closer, as everywhere there is paralysis and financial confusion. When one of my good friends was personally responsible for 1% of all the mortgages granted in the UK last month (by value) then the world has truly been turned upside down.

The trouble with this meltdown is that technology has linked everyone across the Globe. We have no transparency or clarity, which is generating digital panic, which occurs everywhere, all the time.

Personally, I have absolutely no idea whether there is light at the end of the tunnel. And if there is, whether it is just an oncoming train. I cling on to the advice given by my favourite lawyer. "The sun will carry on setting, and carry on rising, and the world will keep turning. Everything else is mere detail, which you mostly can't control".

Odd times indeed.

Our banks, 44th safest in the world? Really?

Our banks, 44th safest in the world? Really?

Thanks to Tony Bonsignore | 08:35:42 | 10 October 2008 for this

If you worry about our banks being up the solvency creek without a capital paddle, then you should see what the rest of the world thinks of them.

According to the latest World Economic Forum survey, UK banks were deemed only 44th best in the world in terms of their soundness.

On a scale of 1 to 7 - with 1 indicating ‘insolvent and may require a government bailout’, and 7 representing ‘generally healthy with sound balance sheets’ - Britain apparently scored 6.0.

6.0! A great score in figure skating, certainly, but a poor-to-rubbish one for banks in a developed, G7 economy.

Just listen to the banks immediately above the UK in the list: El Salvador, Peru, Lithuania - even the United States, for goodness’ sake.

No offence meant to these great nations, of course, who if they ever read this would probably be mortified to hear their banks mentioned in the same breath as our broken behemoths.

Of course this survey was undertaken well before the recent blow up, which may account for Ireland’s bizarre positioning at number 9. And before you ask, Iceland comes in at number 36, a full eight places ahead of the UK.

So then, is the rest of the world right to consider our banks a little less safe than those in emerging Latin America or Eastern Europe? Indeed, are they even that safe any more, given this week’s events?

On a scale of 1 to 7 (7 being ‘solvent and healthy’ and 1 being ‘in a terminal state’) - where would you now place our banks

Image of the day

How to take a great message and communicate it really badly

This is a real email, sent to key decision makers and clients by this organisation.

There's some really interesting news here, but its power is muted and stifled by the delivery. Have a read, and see how good you think it is......


Dear :
I wanted to take the opportunity to share with you my excitement about our plans for mobile media measurement. As you may recall, we acquired M:Metrics, the leading mobile media measurement company, last May and have been tirelessly working to expand our mobile measurement and integrate M:Metrics’ mobile data into the comScore product suite.

In less than five months, we have fully integrated the M:Metrics data collection within the comScore infrastructure to leverage the scale and power of our platform. Data from the M:Metrics panel of metered smartphone users is currently viewable in the Media Metrix interface. On October 20, you will see the rest of the M:Metrics product suite side by side with PC web audience measurement within the MyMetrix interface, but that’s just beginning. Allow me to elaborate:

Expanding the World’s Only On-Device Mobile Behavioral Measurement
Always a leader in innovation, comScore has achieved another first in the measurement industry as the only firm to provide direct behavioral measures from the mobile device. For the past two years, M:Metrics has been metering mobile Internet usage on smartphones in the United States and United Kingdom. We are planning to dramatically expand this service in 2009 by adding the measurement of additional platforms, such as feature phones, the iPhone and BlackBerry. We have also committed to expanding the size of our metered panel to 5,000 by the end of the year, and 10,000 by the first half of 2009. This will allow comScore to provide reliable audience data for hundreds of mobile Internet sites, including metrics such as UV’s, page views, day of week, day part and session length. All of these data will be available in the MyMetrix interface and classified according to the comScore web dictionary.

Convergence is Power: PC/Mobile Overlap Panel
The recurring question for advertisers considering the mobile medium has been, “What is the incremental reach of mobile?” In the next two months, we plan to release data on mobile and web usage collected from the same people. Furthermore, we will have the first panel of people who have opted in to behavioral tracking on both their mobile phone and PC, by the end of the year. This panel will for the first time provide clients with a clear, behavioral-based view of the true reach of properties across both the PC and mobile channels. In addition to understanding the incremental reach of sites, we’ll also help clients compare mobile and online browsing behaviors, providing insight into sites and categories that have significant overlap versus those that have truly incremental users on one platform or another.
In the meantime, we have expanded our mobile survey to measure the audience for more than 300 mobile Web properties. These data are being collected in November, and will be available in the early part of December.

Leading in Innovation: Mobile Advertising Effectiveness
We are continuing to solidify our leadership position in behavioral measurement in the digital space by moving toward reporting on mobile advertising effectiveness using comScore’s patented on-device meter and by integrating mobile metrics across the comScore product portfolio, specifically Ad Metrix, Brand Metrix and Plan Metrix to enable true, behaviorally based advertising effectiveness metrics. Ultimately we’ll be able to provide our clients with the ability to measure the impact of advertising across both the mobile and online channels based on behavioral metrics, providing a true ROI measurement that the market has been requesting. Similar to the online advertising industry in the early 2000’s, the mobile advertising ecosystem needs independent, third-party measurement of traffic and advertising effectiveness to provide advertisers with the metrics necessary to continue to expand their mobile advertising spend.

We anticipate that clients will require additional support as we enhance these exciting new products. To ensure that we provide excellence in customer service we are immediately deploying a dedicated client service team that is fluent in all comScore and M:Metrics offerings. If you are interested in learning more about comScore’s mobile products, please contact your account manager.

Thank you for allowing me to convey my enthusiasm about our mobile product roadmap. We appreciate your support in our pursuit of innovation in digital media measurement.
Sincerely,
Dr. Magid Abraham
CEO, comScore, Inc.

Power blogging?

Its been quite widely reported this evening that Robert Peston's (BBC business editor) blog caused a massive sell off in banking shares today.

Mr Peston reported in his blog this morning that the heads of the UK’s largest banks had approached the government for a capital injection of up to £45bn ('Banks ask chancellor for capital').

The story has been hotly denied by the banks but the damage was done....

We dont know whether it was Robert's blog that triggered the sell off but even the suggestion that it was recasts blogs as a powerful medium with the potential to cause considerable repercussions

How old do you have to be before you are brand conscious?

My 6 year old wants an iPod.

Not just any MP3 player, but an iPod.

He's 6 and brand literate already. Slightly scary to see the power of advertising on one so young.

Life magazine reborn online

Away from all the doom and gloom of the markets some really good news...one of our favourite magazines Life is to be reborn.

The photojournalism magazine closed in 2000, is to gain a new lease of life on the web as a massive photo archive thanks to a deal with Getty Images.

Life.com will allow access to millions of archived photographs from the magazine, best known for its images of presidents, wars and Hollywood celebrities from the 40s, 50s and 60s. It was published from 1936 until 2000.

Life.com will launch early next year. Searching and viewing images on the website will be free.

Hooray

Time to run or time to fight?

All around us is the all pervading air of panic.

The financial crisis has introduced the public to names and issues that this time last year were the preserve of the City boys (and girls). The housing market continues to shrink faster than a snowman in April, and the Government continues to twist and shout like a sky blue football terrace in mid-anthem.

Today, more forecasts for the 2009 advertising market have escaped, battering the already browbeaten media sector. DMGT has issued a profits warning, Trinity Mirror continues to cut costs, ITV has seen its share price decimated (like its regional news and content is about to be), Channel 4 is looking to shed jobs, and regional newspapers are reporting 20%+ declines in ad revenues across multiple sectors.

So, what to do then?

We could all head down to Turnstile, the Cold War nuclear bunker under the Cotswolds, lock the doors and resurface in 2011 when everything looks a bit better.

Or, we could take a deep breath, and focus on the basics, "concentrate on the knitting" as one famous media guru used to say.

Even looking at the UK, there are still 60 million human beings out there (give or take a few million that the Government can't count, track down, tag, place on a register or lock-up).

Disposable income is still down, but people will still consume media in some format, they have always done so in the past, and always will do in the future. Strong brands with loyal audiences have longevity and long term profitability, the key is protecting this during the cold dark winter nights.

We think these are the basics, get these right and the cold upcoming winter may pass by without claiming too many more victims.

Knowledge is the foundation - you are fighting for a share of a shrinking consumer wallet (or purse), you have to understand why consumers spend money on your brand to understand how you protect this going forwards.

Recognising your customers - you need to know who they are, and their value to you, at an individual level - data is crucial.

Relationship building with your customers - talk to them, nurture them, engage them, be interactive with them, listen to them, watch them talking to each other about you.

Reward your customers - if you don't reward them, then someone else will.

Retain your customers - in any declining market it's easier to retain existing customrs than acquire brand new ones. Particularly in markets where the under 30s have grown up never paying for any content

Be brave - "There is no shame in failure. The shame is in not learning from it". A quote from the famous English philosopher Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards. A test is a test, if it doesn't work then learn and move onto the next test. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it already.

Be smart with budgets - you need to know what's working, why it's working and who it is working against, in as near to real time as possible. Insight is an investment, but done smartly, it will pay its way ten-fold.

Do the knitting right, and you'll have a large enough jumper to get you through the nuclear winter nice and warm while everyone else catches pneumonia. The future's bright, but not for everyone. Evolution did away with Dinosaurs, Dodos and Lehman Brothers, don't let it add you to the list.

A soothing piece of humour

Thanks to the New Yorker for this one.

Market Evolution's sister business For Fans relaunches

We've been hard at work smartening up our sister business www.forfans.co.uk. The service proved hugley popular with stay at football home fans last season.

The idea is to broaden the content selection and ultimately we hope to cover not only Sport but entertainment programmes as well

Please check it out. It may well help to solve some of those pesky Birthday & Christmas gift problems!

Metro sues Metro

Thanks to Dr. Piet Bakker for this one.

German wholesale retailer Metro is thinking about suing free paper publisher Metro International after the successful lawsuit in Hungary.

In August (see previous post) the Hungarian Metro was forced to change its name to Metropol after the retailer argued successfully that the use of the ‘Metro’ brand was an infringement to its own right.

According to business website B2B Köln first options would be Italy and France.

Other contested markets could be Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal, the Czech Republic and Russia. Also Belgium, the UK and Poland where other publishers operate Metro papers could be affected.

The Metro brand, however, is not used in all markets. In France, Italy, Russia, the Czech Republic, Denmark and Poland the company does use that specific brand name. In the Netherlands, Greece, Portugal, Spain and the UK the supermarkets are called Makro. In Belgium and Greece both names are used.

In Denmark the Metro paper is called MetroXpress. In Spain it is officially called Metro Directo although Metro is the brand used.

The Metro Cash & Carry group is longer around than Metro International (40 against 13 years) and is active in 28 markets.

Its not funny being a journo

click to increase size

Why US and European Govts and Central Bankers are sooooo worried

We havent blogged much on the financial crisis because it isnt an area that we feel equipped to pass wisdom on but it strikes us that Robert Peston's (BBC Business Ed) piece below is the truest reflection of not only the extent of the problem but the seriousness of its consequences. This is why Govt and Central bankers are moving heaven and earth to put a stop to this thing.

China could easily end up owning the lion’s share of the US and UK’s financial systems. - Robert Peston, BBC

With the collapses on Wall Street this week and signs in the United Kingdom pointing towards a housing market crisis as well, it appears that the U.S. and the U.K. have left the door open for other world economies to step in and take over the global economy. Peston reports: “It's a world in which the Chinese state, if it co-ordinated the investments of its cash-rich institutions, could end up owning more-or-less the entire financial system of the US and the UK.” It is conservative institutions, he says, and those with simpler business models with a history of careful management of their funding sources, which will become the new superpowers.

Introducing a new business model to the world of magazine selling,

This sounds like a really good idea and one that - finally - recognises that freedom and choice are crucial......

Time Inc just launched Maghound, a mix and match service for periodicals. Maghound members don't subscribe to a fixed set of magazines. Instead, they pick the number of magazines they'd like to receive every month, and can then change the selection of titles as often as they like. One month they might select Food & Wine, Forbes and Women's Health, before switching to People, New York Magazine and Smithsonian. (While the current selection of 200 titles isn't as substantial as many magazine lovers would like, it does obviously include magazines that aren't owned by Time Inc.)

Freedom of choice extends to membership terms, too—customers don't have to commit to an annual contract and can cancel at any time. And pricing is tiered: USD 4.95 for three titles a month, USD 7.95 for five, USD 9.95 for seven titles, and USD 1 per title for eight or more titles. To keep track of their mix of magazines, members can view expected delivery dates in their online account.

Metroexpress no more in Croatia

Newsflash: Metro International has closed its franchise operation in Croatia, which published the free newspaper Metroexpress in Zagreb. The company's decision followed poor results over the past six months.

This surprises us. Croatia is a fast growing economy with a fast growing - young - professional class which should be perfect reader material for Metro.

So what went wrong?

Well the failure in Croatia above all is yet another example of the weakness of the FREE model. Being totally dependent on a single revenue stream as the FREEs are isnt great by any measure. Its worsened by having that single revenue stream derived entirely from (physical) advertising in this increasingly digital market. Additionally costs of print/production and the big cost associated with unique by hand distribution model weigh heavily on the balance sheet.

Credit To Metro CEO Per Mikeal Jensen who continues to rationalise and consolidate which is exactly the strategy in these challenging times. He has got the focus, energy and board support necessary to realise Metros' potential to be profitable.

Handwritten Newspaper - genius

India's oldest Urdu-language daily paper, it is still being handwritten by calligraphers, as it was when founded 81 years ago.

whats going on a the New York Times Co

Breaking News - the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and his family have amassed a sizable 6.4% stake in the New York Times Co.

Whats this all about?

Maybe this is another example of the mega rich buying into newspapers for vanity reasons? Slim is certainly rich! In fact Forbes have him down as the richest man in the world (ahead of Gates & Buffett)and they say he worth worth $60 billion.

Somehow I doubt this is vanity. Slim is really really rich and really clever. He isnt flashy. In fact he allegedly lives rather quitely etc. More importantly he also owns most of the major media (and telecoms) in Mexico and beyond in South America.

So I suggest this is strategic.

He (like Rupert Murdoch) sees real future value in the great newspaper brands. He recognises that the NYT is a major media asset that is not only available today but at a knock down price.

The newspaper industry needs more investors like Murdoch and Slim. Men who see value in the brands and the medium and know they can run the businesses better and sustainably now and long into the future........

Happy Birthday Google - Advertiser fight back

On the 10th anniversary of Googles' launch the Association of National Advertisers sent a letter objecting to the proposed Internet search advertising partnership between Yahoo Inc and Google Inc to government regulators reviewing the deal.

Good.

The intended deal between these two giants of search isnt good news for advertisers and they should fight it hard. The alliance will see Google/Yahoo control 90% of search advertising inventory in the US..........

Call me old fashioned but 90% of the power held in only two hands isnt good for anyone (apart from those holding the power).

Its about time those holding the ad budgets began to exert some influence over digital channels as its they that fund the extraordinary growth of Google etc

September 1st - Officially the start of the autumn

Two things caught the eye over the weekend.

Firstly, consumers voting with their wallets and their feet, with Aldi reporting 44% sales growth in July, as shoppers sought out the best prices for their groceries. Aldi has featured heavily in media commentary in the last few weeks, with their limited but carefully selected product range providing significant cost savings for customers. We've commented before on their business, now it'll be interesting to see how Tesco et al respond to this new threat.

Secondly, reports in the press that Metro International may be selling or closing their US newspapers. In a previous life we were involved in the Metro New York launch, into one of the toughest markets in the World. It needed a strong digital presence to make it a success from the outset, but that wasn't a key competence of Metro back in 2004. It would be a wasted (and expensive) opportunity missed if Metro closed their US presence, so we hope PMJ can find a strategic solution to minimise the losses and build on the 4 years product and brand building.

End of the price war

From Monday the price of the weekday Times will rise by 10p to 80p, matching the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian and the Independent for the first time since the price wars that began in 1993, when Rupert Murdoch dropped its price from 45p to 30p and sent circulation soaring.

We were at News when The Times dropped its price and we played a big part in the price war. It was alot of fun and for a time price was an effective circulation builder. But its a war that should have ceased long ago. The battle now very sensibly transfers from cover price discounting to subscription discounting. A much more intelligent battle and one of course the Telegraph has a real advantage in.

Should be interesting.

Lets hope that the marketing guys wake up to the real opportunity to reward purchase loyalty not just with price discounting but with added value benefits as well. The case (as blogged here before) for loyalty programmes is growing stronger and stronger.

(bad) News Digest 28th August

Heres todays (bad) news digest from Print & Publishing sector.

Half-yearly profits tumbled 35.6% at the Independent and Independent on Sunday titles due to challenging trading conditions and poor consumer confidence, the papers' parent company said today.

The People has suspended its sports editor, Lee Horton, over alleged 'financial irregularities'

Johnston Press has said advertising revenues have slumped 21% year on year in the first seven weeks of the second half of 2008

Any good news anyone?

Clever Vending - under utilised

Electronics retailer Best Buy has installed vending machines at 8 major US airports.

It's a pilot program for the company's new Best Buy Express kiosks, which are large vending machines that carry cell phone and computer accessories, digital cameras, flash drives, MP3 players, headphones, gaming devices, travel adapters, and other items that are likely to appeal to customers on the go. Prices are similar to those in Best Buy stores.

Best Buy is targeting travellers in search of last-minute gifts, as well as those who need a replacement for a gadget or accessory they forgot to pack or lost along the way.

Ive always thought vending was under utilised. Serves as the ultimate in convenience retailing and a huge visual brand ad. This stuff is going to get really big when we can use our phones to pay (as in Japan and Finland etc)

What price loyalty in a recession?

The ongoing global financial situation continues to soak up the average consumer's spare cash, forcing people to re-assess their spending on a daily basis. I for one am bored of having to phone the bank to pre-authorise a personal loan to fill up the car with a tank of petrol before I travel on the motorway. While the media may be guilty of fanning the flames of recession talk, they certainly aren't guilty of lighting the fire in the first place.

I'm waiting for one of my favourite brands to approach loyalty smartly in these cash conscious times. I'm on databases, they have my email address, and probably my mobile number, and I'm ready and waiting for my loyalty to be rewarded. If they invest in me, then I'm happy to commit to them, there's always a good deal to be done in times like these.

However, only two brands are talking to me and trying to save me money. The Times, with their 20% off subscription offer, which is flexible, good value and promoted out of the newspaper itself, which is an industry first, and Varsity bars. Varsity bars is an odd one in this context, as it's a student focused drinks business, and my student days pre-date the internet. No matter, I signed up online to see how their CRM process worked, and to be honest, it's surprisingly good. Received an email and an SMS highlighting their special offers to save me money on beer this week. They are talking to me, and if I was a student right now, I'd be listening.

Those who know us, will recognise that we are passionate about loyalty. Identify your best customers and prospects so you can communicate with them on as near an individual basis as possible, then recognise and reward their loyalty. It's a long term game, but an ultimately profitable one. Get it right, then it can securitise a business in the medium to long term. And therein lies the challenge. The average tenure of a marketing director is apparently under three years in the UK. Successful loyalty programmes need time to develop, implement and nurture. They grow over time, but are not a short term fix, they need investment, resource and expertise to get them off the ground in a smart and successful manner. Like children, they need nurturing, attention and money.

Our view, the time is right now for successful loyalty schemes to take root, when consumers want to be recognised and rewarded. Question is, who is going to take the plunge and back a medium-term investment rather than a short term fix? Time will tell.

Is this the way its going for news?

This is powerful stuff (thanks to guardian.co.uk). Pew is the best and most credible of all US media usage surveys so we have to listen

Pew report: New breed of 'net newsers' shape US media habits

A new generation of well-educated, technically-savvy young web users are shaping the media habits of the US, with one in 20 Americans saying they do not watch TV on a typical day and a sharp decline in newspaper readership, according to new research.

The biennial Pew Research Center report on changing news audiences described 13% of the US public as "net newsers" - web users under 35 who read more political blogs than watch national news coverage, rely heavily on web-based news during the day and have a strong interest in technology and technology news.

Yahoo, MSN and CNN were the three most popular web news destinations, though users gave many of the leading mainstream media websites low credibility ratings.

Just 6% said the Huffington Post was very highly credible and 13% said the same of Google News, which aggregates news from mainstream news organisations.

Net newsers are typically affluent and 80% are graduates, making them a highly desirable demographic for advertisers.

They do favour some traditional media brands, including the New Yorker, The Atlantic and the BBC, the Pew survey of 3,600 adults found. But only 47% watch TV news on an average day.

The research paints a picture of steady decline in the US newspaper industry, with the percentage of Americans who regularly read print titles falling from 58% in 1993 to 34% in 2008.

According to the long-running survey, respondents saying they listened to radio news fell from 47% to 35% over the same period. As for network TV, the national news dropped from 60% to 29% and local news from 77% to 52%.

Cable TV grew from 33% of Pew respondents saying they watched it in 2000 to 39% this year, while the number of people who turn to web news at least three days each week rose from 2% in 1996 to 37% in 2008.

"For more than a decade, the audiences for most traditional news sources have steadily declined, as the number of people getting news online has surged," said the Pew report.

"A sizable minority of Americans find themselves at the intersection of these two long-standing trends in news consumption."

However, TV is still the most popular medium for the US, with 46% of the public classified as "traditionalists" who watch throughout the day, but are likely to be older and less well educated than net newsers.

More than 40% of this traditionalist group are unemployed, and were found to prefer visual news stories to audio and have little interest in science or technology news.

A further 14% are described as "disengaged", a poorly-educated group with little interest in current affairs.

Pew's research identified a further 23% of US media consumers as "integrators", an older group who are affluent and influential but still rely mostly on TV news and are interested in politics.

The research also found that the proportion of young people in the US getting no daily news has increased from 25% in 1998 to 34%, with only 10% of people using social networking sites for their news

Associated CD's Mcflying into the Bermuda Triangle?

A quick thought on the newspaper ABCs for July 2008. Apart from The Sun and The Sunday Times showing increases month-on-month thanks to some effective marketing, the numbers for the Mail on Sunday are most interesting.

Month on month the MoS remained level, but the year-on-year comparison makes more interesting reading, down almost 5%. This is despite heavily backed McFly and Barry Manilow CD giveaways, which would have been expected to perform well in a normally quiet month.

What to make of this? Is Barry no longer the hearthrob of the middle England twinset? Would McFly have flown better off the shelves or digital music racks than they did off the news-stand?

Either way, our view has been for a while that the free CD or DVD should be the last resort rather than the regular fare of a forward thinking marketing professional. Anyone can give something away and see a short term uplift. Very few can build sustained growth in a shrinking print market.

While The Sun and The Sunday Times are investing for future sustainable growth, what next at Associated newspapers, who have an equally might marketing war chest? We wait with interest to see some innovation in their marketing approach.

Pot Noodle: the musical - Does exactly what it says on the pot

"Pot Noodle: the musical" is being heralded as being at "the vanguard of a revolution which could transform advertising and possibly the entertainment industry over the next few years". A big claim for a play based on the students' favourite freeze dried convenience snack.

Mother has developed the concept in its "content" department to break away from the traditional advertising "product" and PN:tm is currently playing to standing ovations on the Edinburgh fringe. The result, and I quote directly from The Times, is "a riotous hour's entertainment set in a Pot Noodle factory and very very loosely based on Hamlet".

Given that the Mamma Mia film has seen the Abba Gold album rocket back to the charts for the first time in 15 years, will this alternative approach to advertising PN see the familiar plastic pot leap off the shelves of Aldi's across the country?

Either way, we applaud the vision, and the commitment to trying new ways of advertising product to audiences. The world is changing, and brands with the courage to test new routes to market now will in our view be hugely rewarded in the longer term. Put the kettle on, it's noodle time......

A challenger to supremacy of Google in search?

In an attempt to upstage their former employer, a trio of ex-Googlers have launched a search engine of their own. They are calling it "Cuil" - pronounced "cool," (not bad) - and they say it "goes beyond today’s search techniques."

They say they get "richer display of results" by indexing a whopping 120 billion web pages. According to the company, that's three times more than any other search engine.

Its going to be tough (impossible?) to knock out google as they have installed base of many many millions of content serach customers.

Here at Market Evolution towers we encourage and support competition (both as business people and as consumers) so I'm going to give it a go...........

Tell us what you think www.cuil.com

Steve Fossett - what ever happened to him?

Ive often wondered what happened to Steve - the great adventurer and friend of Richard Branson. Steve was declared officially dead in February 08 after disappearing in a light aifcraft.

The conspiracy theorists are out and about (surprise, surpise) in the media. Heres quite a good one as it comes from several investigators who were charged to find the body.

Click on Steve below and enjoy.

Steve

Timeshifting - brand friend or foe?

There's been some debate about which brands are embracing the new consumer ability to choose when, where and how to consume and interact with content and products.

One brand which has managed to re-invent itself in my personal world in the last 2 years has been the BBC. Old time, pillar of the UK society, somewhat staid in its view, it was something I consumed without really a second thought.

Now though, it's all changed. My view of the brand, and the way I interact with it have changed radically recently.

I rarely watch BBC on TV at the time they would like me to. The i-player gives me the ability to carry around my TV on the laptop to watch when I want to watch it. I used to listen to BBC radio when I could. Now, I download the podcasts I want onto my MP3, and listen at my leisure. Not convinced on bbc.co.uk's relaunched new coat, but that's a minor quibble.

I have control, which is nice, but I'm now getting into a routine of when and what I download, which is a commercial brand's dream relationship with a customer. Which non-licence fee funded brand is going to build a relationship like this with me? So far, no-one has.

McFly bigger than Barry Manilow!

The Mail on Sunday's exclusive giveaway of the new McFly album boosted its circulation 300,000 copies above its non-promotional average to 2.4m copies, according to estimates.

Couple of things strike me about this the latest in a long, long line of CD giveaways.

Firstly, McFly are more popular than Barry Manilow amongst MOS readers. Thats extraordinary. Surely no one I mean no one is bigger than Barry in middle Britain .

Who are McFly anyway?

Well the answer must lie in the popularity of McFly with MOS readers children me thinks.

Is this pester power at work at the news stands

Second thing that strikes me is how attrition seems to be finally taking its toll on these promotions. McFly beat Manilow but fell well short of Prince's Planet Earth CD last year.

All involved with these promotions are very polished at heralding their success but once again isnt it time to call into question the ROI of these deals. Its estimated that Associated Newspapers alone spend £100m a year on this type of stuff. Meanwhile the piles of unused, unwatched and unlistened to CDs and DVDs pile up - unloved - on readers shelves.

Car boot sales are the major beneficiary of these deals!

Wouldnt the money or at least part of it be better spent investing in long term relationship building with readers rather than short term bribery?

Maybe recessionary times will necessitate move toward strategic rather than tactical marketing at the papers.

That would at least be one good thing to come from these challenging times.

Is Google a victim of its own success or of a declining market

Google shares were off 8% in late trading today as it posted a profits gain but fell short of estimates.
Whilst its hard to feel sorry for these guys its ours to wonder whether they arent a victim of their own success. Posted growth in this market would be enough for most brands to set the shares alight but not Google. They post gains and analysts say not good enough and shares fall - hard.

But its not that simple is it.

Clearly Google are not only a bell weather for the advertising industry but the entire economy . Any sign of slowdown adds more evidence to what we already know so well - we are entering an economic nuclear winter.

Its unfortunate for Google stock holders that the business has become economic 'canary in the cage'

Keep warm

iPhone opening weekend sales

Apple has sold more than 1m of its new iPhone 3G handsets, the consumer electronics giant announced today, just three days since the chaotic launch of the second version of the smartphone.

Apple's chief executive Steve Jobs said that the new iPhone 3G has had "a stunning opening weekend".

"It took 74 days to sell the first 1m original iPhones, so the new iPhone 3G is clearly off to a great start around the world," Jobs added.

Bellwether report: Ad budgets see sharpest downturn since 9/11 attacks

guardian.co.uk,
Monday July 14, 2008

UK businesses are slashing their marketing and advertising budgets for the third quarter in a row in the sharpest downturn since the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, according to the latest Bellwether report published today by ad agency trade body the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising.

Internet marketing was the sole bright spot, with 19% of companies reporting a rise from the budgets set at the start of the year, and only 12% reporting a decline.

But even the growth of digital spend has slowed dramatically since the first quarter of 2008, when 27% of respondents reported an increase in their online marketing budgets since the start of the year.

Friday Queues

Soho on a Friday morning is usually an oasis of calm, with media and arty types stumbling towards lattes, cappucinos and wet decaffeinated skinny americanos.

Today however, a queue snaking along the pavement. At 8.45am. Was the European opticians having a black chunky framed glasses sale? Was the executive man-bag shop doing 2 for 1 deals?

No, the queue was for Carphone Warehouse. For the next generation i-Phone launch.

Have to hand it to Apple, it has brand loyalty like few others, and customers who go that extra mile without complaint.

Looking forward to seeing the phone in action.

Credit Crunch - just how bad is it?

With shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - two pillars of the US housing market - continuing to plummet yesterday investors and federal officials contemplated the possibility that the giants of the mortgage business could require a federal bailout.

OMG this is pretty serious stuff. These 2 companies are key part of the infrastructure that holds together the US economy (together they underwrite nearly 50% of US mortgages). Whilst they wont (cant) be allowed to fail its a huge concern that we are even close to this situation.

The conclusion that we draw from this is that the economic situation is far far worse that we are being told.

Hold on to your hats and tighten you belts

Women kills husband with folding couch

Well its friday and high time for a little lightness after a wet and rather depressing news week

Thanks to Reuters for this one - you could'nt make this stuff up

ST PETERSBURG (Reuters) - A Russian woman in St Petersburg killed her drunk husband with a folding couch, Russian media reported on Wednesday.

St Petersburg's Channel Five said the man's wife, upset with her husband for being drunk and refusing to get up, kicked a handle after an argument, activating a mechanism that folds the couch up against a wall.

The couch, which doubles as a bed, folds up automatically in order to save space. The man fell between the mattress and the back of the couch...................

TMG pan for digital ad gold abroad

Telegraph Media Group's partnership with AdGent 007, a global digital advertising services company to sell ads abroad, makes a lot of sense.

British Newspapers are very popular abroad and as recorded here in a previous post well over 50% of online usage of newspapers comes from outside the UK

The Telegraph does particularly well abroad - according to the latest ABCe audit, it recorded over 18.4m unique users globally, an increase of more than 150% over the previous year.

In a market where newspapers are experiencing the 'double whammy' of falling circulation and (fast) falling advertising revenues this kind of deal is very sensible and potentially very important.

The winds of change

Just glancing back through the archive of posts here looking for a couple of things, and couldn't help noticing how the mood has changed.

What ever happened to social networking, incredibly high valuations of digital businesses and all the hype surrounding Web 2.0?

Now it's all credit crunch, high street bloodbath, advertising recessions and redundancies.

Those who keep their heads and invest wisely in brands and audience should be able to reap the benefits in the medium term, it'll be interesting to see "who dares wins".

Trinity Mirror - Kicking a dog when its down

Trinity Mirror shares today crashed 25% after the group said profits would be 10% lower than expected.

No surprises here. Its tough out there. We have heard tales of woe from right across the newspaper market. And it aint going to get any easier anytime soon is it.

Its crazy however that the 'City' react (or overreact) in the way they do. Current market conditions have been priced into share values for sometime now so further falls in share price based on more bad news are not welcome or necessary.

Talk about kicking a dog when its down

Ongoing impact of the economic "stutter".....

A few interesting stories in the business pages today, giving a good range of examples of the real impact of the current economic slowdown.

Taylor Wimpey reportedly needing an emergency £400m in funds this week illustrates the current impact of falling share prices and a slow down in the housing market, particularly in selling the new houses recently built. Lack of demand will only get worse over the next couple of years if the doomsayers are proven right, so Norman Askew and Peter Redfern (Chairman and CEO respectively) have their work cut out to reposition the business with a share price down from over 350p a year ago to 62p last Friday. A portfolio of empty new houses in a market with dramatically reduced numbers of buyers doesn't bode well though.

On the other hand, Aldi, everyone's favourite discount supermarket chain, is taking a very bullish view of the situation, based partly on their 21% sales growth in the last 3 months, as measured by TNS. In their view, the current economic situation is only going to work in their favour, and to that extent, they are spending £1.5bn on a 5 year expansion plan in the UK. This would increase the estate from 400 to 1500 stores, giving it a much greater presence across the country. My view on Aldi as a brand isn't shaped by marketing communications, of which I've seen little, but by some limited first hand experience of the stores. Have to admit I was surprised by the product range and the pricing, and I'd like to see the expansion backed by some marketing to drive trial, I think it would pay back handsomely.

Final mention today for The Sunday Times Business section, and the Focus article on page 5 - "Back to the Great Depresssion?" Wall Street has had its worst June since 1930, and looks likely to have lost 10% of its value in June this year. Well written article, though I have a nagging doubt at the back of my mind that we are all talking ourselves into a state of panic, but a great statistic is included.

Fortis, the Belgian-Dutch financial group, sees the price of crude oil averaging $171 a barrel next year. In contrast, Royal Bank of Scotland sees an average price of $86 next year. When instiutional predictions can have a range this great, then we're in the Kingdom of the Crystal Ball. One thing is for certain, it does look like it's going to get worse before it starts getting any better.

Rumours denied or something more sinister?

all these rumours about the closure of thelondonpaper have been well and truly shot down by NI release (below) or perhaps just perhaps they protest too much!

“thelondonpaper has established itself as the capital’s leading afternoon paper with an audited daily circulation of over 500,000 and strong advertising revenue. News International, the UK’s largest national newspaper company, has backed its confidence in the long-term future of the industry with a recent £650 million investment in next generation print plants. We intend to build on the success of our market leading national titles and that of thelondonpaper in the years ahead.''

is this the end of the matter or just the beginning??

wind power

When revellers at the UK's Glastonbury Festival 2008 later this week need to recharge their mobile phones, they'll have a free and green way to do that thanks to a charging station being set up at the festival by Orange.

Measuring more than 7 meters tall, the free-standing recharge pod is a self-sufficient unit that taps into a wind generator and solar panels to charge as many as 100 mobile phones per hour. It's actually the next iteration of a portable wind charger Orange tested out at last year's festival through a partnership with Gotwind, and will serve as a trial for using renewable energy sources on a larger scale at future festivals. Orange expects the recharge pod will charge thousands of mobile phones over the course of the three-day festival, furnishing power equivalent to what would be needed to power a DJ booth for Groove Armada for 88 hours. The recharge pod will be stationed within the Pennard Hill camping grounds at Glastonbury throughout the weekend of June 27–29, when the event takes place.

Gannett buys into 'family' social network

Cozi, an intriguing Seattle based startup that’s most easily described as a social network for a family unit, is announcing an investment and business deal with newspaper conglomerate Gannett Co. The size of the investment is not being disclosed (we believe it is $8 million, however).

Cozi lets family members keep a group journal, share photos, organize chores, share calendars and create todo lists. There’s a significant overlap with genealogy sites like Geni, as well as some of the life story sites we’ve profiled from time to time. But I haven’t seen anything quite like Cozi, which also has mobile and Outlook syncing to keep everyone on the same page. The demo here gives more feature details.

The service now has 600,000 registered family members and says it’s adding 2,000 new ones per day.

We think this is a really good investment its a natural extension for Gannett. It helps keep it local and relevant. I'm sure Cozi will be delivering Gannett content, particularly local content and will will be pushing the service its users.

Stragetically smart but also helps sweat the expensive newspaper machine alittle harder which is no bad thing.

First profits for City A.M.

Well done to our friends at City A.M on the announcement of their maiden profit. Its hard work out there right now and these boys are managing not only to stay afloat but to do it profitably.

From October 2007 to March 2008, free London business paper City A.M. made a profits of £47,000 before tax (€60,000). The revenues were £3.5m in that period. Last year the publisher made a loss of £754,000. City A.M. was launched in September 2005.

City A.M. plans to increase its distribution from 100,000 to 150,000 and is also thinking of launching in other cities in the autumn. In London distribution will expand to railway stations in south-west London such as Richmond. (Press Gazette)

V2.0 Apple iphone - faster, cheaper and much more

Steve Jobs revealed the new iphone yesterday and WOW.

Its 3G so much much faster, 3 x faster in fact than its predecessor. Good news for business users.

And it lasts longer (new phone can get 300 hours of standby time, five hours of talk time on a 3G network, five to six hours of high-speed Web browsing, seven hours of video and 24 hours of audio according to Jobs).

And perhaps most importantly in these economically challenged times it costs $199 — $400 less than the original iPhone.

Faster and cheaper so far so good.

Perhaps the coolest additional feature is the built-in global positioning via satellite. The older phone triangulates a user's position via cell-phone towers. The new one has a GPS receiver that can track a user in real time. Jobs showed off the GPS capabilities with a recording that showed a 3G user driving down San Francisco's winding Lombard Street. As a tiny dot appeared on a Google map and slowly wended its way down the street, the crowd roared its approval.

Maybe just maybe we are a step closer to the marketers dreams of real-time location based services.

Apple we love you and now we might even be able to afford your iphone!

Online Advertising powers on but so does outdoor and cinema

Online advertising spending leapt over the £3bn level for the first time in the UK last year, according to new research, grabbing market share from other parts of the media such as newspapers, magazines and direct mail.

Ad spend across all media in the UK rose 4.2% to £19.4bn in 2007, according to the the Advertising Association and the World Advertising Research Centre.

The internet, cinema and the outdoor advertising sectors posted the biggest year-on-year growth, with online spending up a dramatic 39.5% - year on year - to just over £3bn. Online advertising, which was the fastest-growing sector, accounted for 16% of total UK ad spend last year.

Commentators have long maintained that advertisers are being drawn online from other areas of media such as print and direct mail. The figures seem to add weight to this hypothesis, showing that press advertising, which includes national, regional and magazine advertising, declined 1.6% year on year.

Press is, however, still the largest single sector in the UK, accounting for 40%, or £7.7bn, of advertising spending last year. Direct mail advertising, meanwhile, saw a 6.5% decline to £2.17bn last year.

The UK cinema advertising sector recorded 10.1% year-on-year growth, but the overall cinema market was worth just £207m, 1.1% of the UK's total advertising market. Outdoor advertising grew by 4.6% to £1.05bn, giving the sector a 5.5% share of UK ad spending, fuelled by the continuing digitisation of billboards and poster sites. The TV sector managed a modest 2.3% year-on-year gain to £4.67bn, accounting for 24% of all UK ad spend. (Source: Guardian Media)

newstritional disorder?

Today's younger generation is under attack from an unlikely source: news it can't adequately process. According to an international study released Monday, people aged 18 to 34 are bombarded by news, facts and updates to the point where they now suffer from "newstritional disorder," according to anthropologist Robbie Blinkoff, who headed the study. Symptoms can include a diminished attention span, news fatigue, distraction, and even agitation, which can affect how people communicate in their personal and organizational relationships.

Thanks to Time Magazine for this piece. Its actually well worth a read (the piece not the 71 page study!) as it is probably prescient and might open eyes to challenges and opportunities coming along in the future.

The Time piece can be found by clicking here

Mirror Mouthpiece launches

After an intense development period, our client the Daily Mirror, has launched their dynamic online reader panel community; developed, designed, delivered and managed by Market Evolution using eDigital Research's fine software solution (Press release at the bottom of this article)

Mouthpiece moves online research on from 1 way "ask-tell" to a 3 way dialogue with consumers - we talk to them, they talk to us, they talk to each other. It provides a rich seam of qualititative views and opinions from a large number of readers, very dynamic and very exciting.

We're very proud of it, and think it's very forward thinking of the Mirror to make this investment in showcasing its readers, and listening to their views - it really is putting the reader at the heart of the business. We obviously would say that, given they are a great client of ours, but we mean it - it's a major step forward in the industry.

www.mirror.co.uk/mouthpiece

It's currently invitation only, but the front page gives you a feel for what's inside.....


Mirror Group launches online research community
by Staff Brand Republic 09-Jun-08, 11:40

LONDON - Mirror Group has launched an online research community called Mirror Mouthpiece, which allows the Daily Mirror to get a better view of reader's attitudes to advertising and editorial.

Mirror Mouthpiece includes a mixture of forums, net chats, product ratings, polls and blogs.

It has been developed on the back of the success of Mirror Group's 5,000-strong reader panel, which has run more than 100 surveys since 2003. These include client-specific surveys for advertisers such as Pedigree, Freeview and John Smiths.

Mouthpiece is linked directly to the Reader Panel and will allow for the first time interaction between the depth of quantitative panel data and the qualitative insight.

The online research community was created by Mirror Group's strategic planning team led by Suzy Jordan and Nicky Jones, in partnership with Market Evolution and online market research firm eDigital Research.

Richard Webb, Mirror Group's managing director, said: "The launch of Mouthpiece enables us to have a regular dialogue with our readers, putting them at the heart of what we do.
"Mouthpiece has already been used for advertiser projects and can give immediate insight and feedback on their campaigns."

One example of how it has been used is with the long-running campaign for the Food & Drink Federation, to promote awareness of guideline daily allowance food labelling.
Mirror Group monitored readers' awareness of the advertising and accompanying editorial content using their Reader Panel. Mirror Mouthpiece was then used to get "under the skin" of readers' relationships with food and the actions they take to keep themselves healthy.

The Reader Panel results showed that readers' usage of GDA labels increased by 19% over the campaign period and specific topic forums on Mouthpiece gave Mirror Group Advertising invaluable insight into why labelling was important to their readers.
Jane Holdsworth, GDA campaign director, said: "This isn't just about a label, it's about encouraging people to lead healthier lives. The results from the Mirror reader panel show that this activity struck exactly the right tone

£2bn market research merger

News today that TNS and Gfk have announced a mega-merger to create the 2nd largest global research company, operating in well over 100 countries, in a 50:50 marriage of equals worth £2bn.

WPP are still stalking the party though, and with their track record, the deal may not be done until the ink is properly dry.

Those of you who know us will be aware that part of our reasoning for setting up Market Evolution in the first place was born out of frustration with big monolithic research agencies. While no-one gets fired for hiring one of the big boys, it can be a frustrating exercise which costs over the odds and delivers an underwhelming level of actionable insight. Not always of course, but the smartest minds rarely seem to flourish in a "factory" environment.

Who will do best out of the merger - shareholders, staff, or clients? My money wouldn't be on the second or third...

It will be interesting to see how this one plays out