Just Labour now

Sitting in the Campaign office at the tail end of 1996 there was a long discussion raging about the Campaign of the Year.

Opinion was split, but in the end it went (despite my virtual foot stamping) to the Tories and their now infamous Demon Eyes "New Labour New Danger" campaign.

I felt quite strong that the award of the campaign of the year celebrated a very negative campaign as the Tories tried desperately to cling onto power. OK, I was, as a long-time party member, pretty biased, but still.

It was a very strong campaign and it tried (without any success) to turn the positive changes that Tony Blair had made to the Labour Party, in the creation of what was dubbed New Labour, into a negative.

That said, "New Labour New Danger" was a great strapline and it harked back to the classic 1979 election poster "Labour isn't working".

There has been little as striking or memorable since, other than plays on varying plays on Tory Tax Bomb.

That was Christmas 1996 and, of course, by May of 1997 Labour stormed to the biggest victory the party had ever known to the sound of D:ream's 'Things Can Only Get Better'.

Ten years on and much has happened (I'm not even going to mention the war). This week we are spending time looking back at what has happened to Labour the brand, as it prepares for another leap with a new leader as Blair bows out.

A decade is a good innings for any political leader and Blair has shaped not only his own party, forever changing its image, but he has changed the opposition as the Conservatives under David Cameron ape Blair as maybe New Labour aped Thatcher before.

It is an essential part of any successful political party or brand. You look to what has worked and adapt your message accordingly. There was nothing new about New Labour in that.

Tomorrow, Marketing will publish a number of features looking back including "The New Labour brand 10 years on" and asking what has New Labour done for marketing.

Today though take a look at what some of our bloggers are saying as they think back.

Richard Gale writes about how Blair changed his world.

Anna Moreno's on ten years in Hong Kong. And Steve Blakeman our other resident Asian blogger asking questions.

Clueless Visa in Second Life

Visa has arrived on Second Life, it's bought an island, but has no ideas. Has the wheel come off the bandwagon?

Have you been to Second Life? If not you better hurry, the credit card brand is launching itself into the virtual world following in the footsteps of the likes of Vodafone and Coty.

Some cynics have already said that Second Life is little more than the emperor's new clothes, lacking substance or value, while others are clambering to get on board.

In the case of Visa it looks like they have gone off half cocked as there is nothing there but a building site with Second Lifers being invited to offer their thoughts on how the building should look, and what experiences they would like to participate in on the island.

The press release asks, for instance, should the island be a "place to showcase different and innovative products? A testing ground for new services? Or is it simply a fun place for people to go to and experience a virtual Visa world?

Who does Visa seriously think is going to visit Second Life to test new credit card services? Most people go there to get away from the everyday crap of real life.

I imagine many people who use Second Life will suggest packing up and going home.

I really don't see the value and it seems that Visa doesn't either otherwise it would be opening up its virtual island home with some ideas. What a lame duck.

Scrap that, my personal suggestion is to fill the island with turkeys and allow people to teleport on and blast everything away with an M60. That's probably more relevant to Bernard Mathews should the king of turkeys ever open a virtual shop.

I imagine that like others Visa was wowed by the numbers - Second Life has 4m plus users with a lot of Second Life users falling into the 25- to 34-year-old bracket - without much of a clue.

UPDATE: On the question of figures there was, of course, a recent discussion about this on Robin's blog which he has mentioned below where it was pointed out that 4m isn't really 4m.

I presume this was based on Linden Labs recent release of 'key metrics'. However, this is just shoddy journalism. Anyone with even a passing interest in Second Life and what it means for marketing will be aware that this is just not true.

I refer you to Clay Shirky's widely referenced post on the subject. Or this follow up post. Or let's face it, the basic concept of "fact checking" which surely Claire or her editor, Craig Smith, should have learnt in the first year of their journalism courses.

Don't get me wrong, Second Life is interesting (in fact I used the Pontiac and Mazda examples yesterday in a presentation to Peugeot), but it really isn't worthy of the hype and bandwagon jumping that was happening towards the end of last year, let alone Marketing's ridiculous act of closing of the stable doors once the horse has already bolted...

Murdoch summit looks at problem of news in a digital age

Rupert Murdoch has called a summit at his California ranch next week to look at how to turn news gathering, in the digital age, from a stagnant area into a growth division once again.

According to a report in the Financial Times, it is the most in-depth meeting Murdoch has held to address problems facing News Corp's newspapers, which include The Times, The Sun, The Australian and the New York Post.

It is mostly going to be News Corp execs talking, but some guest speakers will include Meg Whitman, chief executive of eBay.

Murdoch's papers, like everyone else, are being hit as sales fall away to the web and to free papers and the FT says the meeting is designed to map out a strategy for these divisions.

It could signal a switch-around of top executives with a possible move for Times editor Robert Thompson, a favourite of Murdoch's.

Murdoch might have spent fairly heavily on digital with investment at the Times and Sun in the UK, and of course the $580m he spent buying MySpace, but there is still no clear vision for the future digital distribution of news.

Last week interestingly, MySpace launched a news service that allows members of the social-networking website to decide which online stories are most deserving of attention. MySpace News will combine elements of Google News, which collates stories thematically, and Digg.com, which ranks stories submitted by readers based on their popularity. Divided into 25 topics and 300 sub-sections, it will showcase articles from across the web, and cover everything from politics to sport and entertainment.

Why would you ever go to a newspaper site if you were a MySpace member? I'm sure that will come up.

Newspapers have the dual problem of needing to attract news online, but losing facing a currently shaky online ad environment and the power of the search engines, which I wrote about the other day.

The return of Mr T

Clear evidence is presented for the return of the 'A-Team' in this lol spot for 'Snickers', which takes on those despicable footballers who feign injury in order to get people sent off and win penalties. What do you think?

Created by Abbot Mead Vickers BBDO it could all have gone badly wrong, nice to see this bit of telly nostalgia was not thrown lamely away.

It's a winner: Emap's idea of free mag for men

Media Week has some news that FHM, Zoo and Arena publisher Emap is considering a launch of a free magazine for men following in the footsteps of Sport. Could this be the talked of Grazia for men we've all heard about?

Buoyed by the success of the independent free weekly title Sport, which distributes around 320,000 in London, Emap is considering going down the free route and I think this could be a real winner as far as men are concerned.

They have little history paying for weekly magazines, but will still read  just about anything you put in  front of them. You can see this anecdoctally simply by looking at the numbers of men reading Lite and thelondonpaper on the tube.

Back in February I was quite convinced that talk of Emap's plans to launch a Grazia was doomed to failure, but the free idea is something else and it could open up a new front in the tired men's market.

Emap could get away with successfully giving away a title in this way and at the same time pursuing an upmarket thirtysomething Grazia strategy offering a mixture of sport, grooming, fashion and entertainment.

I'm still convinced that if Emap tried to put this on the newsstand it would die on its feet, but as a freebie it is a different prospect entirely. This could be very strong indeed.

Media Week reports that senior members of the media owner's male lifestyle team are meeting agencies this month to gauge their perceptions. I can see them being very receptive.

I imagine IPC Media (publisher of Zoo rival Nuts) is looking at this also and if not, why not?

Slow down for online newspapers grows

After the New York Times last week, more evidence that the lifeline of online advertising is not looking as strong as it once was, with more newspaper firms saying growth is slowing

It was reported last week after the New York Times Company warned that online advertising growth this year won't be as strong as the 30% it had projected.

Since then Tribune Company, which is in the process of being sold to Chicago real estate billionaire Sam Zell in a deal worth $8.2bn has also said that the growth rate for first-quarter interactive revenue was sharply lower than a year earlier. Tribune owns the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, which earlier in the week announced around 150 jobs at the LA Times with 70 of those in the news room. The story was posted on the newspaper's website.

Gannett, which owns Newsquest in the UK and USA Today, has also said online revenue growth slowed in the first quarter from a year earlier.

The Wall Street Journal quoted the chief executive of Washington Post's online arm, Caroline Little, as saying growth was "slowing slightly across the board but is still very healthy" while Journal publisher Dow Jones reported 30% growth in online ad revenue in the first quarter, up from 26% a year earlier. However, Dow Jones website has a different model and is subscription only.

The WSJ quoted analysts saying that the falls in online revenues at the NY Times and Tribune reflect a broader trend.

"We absolutely see slower growth coming," says Kip Cassino, vice-president of research at Borrell Associates, a media-research firm. "Generally, newspapers tend to believe things that have been good are going to get better. And that's not always the case."

It is expected that the growth rate in online ad spending in newspapers will likely fall to a percentage in the low 20s this year from 28% last year. Coupled with the decline in classified advertising, it's not good news at all.

Then there is the fact that advertisers are looking elsewhere from traditional news sites, which was a trend that began with blogs. Last week, social-networking site MySpace added a news feature and is boosting its ad-sales efforts.

According to Greg Smith, chief operating officer of Neo@Ogilvy: "Advertisers are getting less scared of blogs and newsgroups and now are beginning to take money away from the traditional newspapers' sites."

Newspapers need to attract new advertisers and sources of income online. Part of that is coming with moves into TV and radio type production, with UK papers, The Times, Telegraph and Guardian Unlimited as active as anyone.

They need more than that, however, particularly as search marketing continues to rise - but sadly for newspaper that market is owned by Google and Yahoo!. Newspapers are tying up deals with search engines, like Hearst Corp, MediaNews Group, and McClatchey signing a broad advertising deal with Yahoo!, but there is a worry that this only takes more power away from them and gives it to the search engines. The search engines already have the content (not their content of course, but it turns out that it is not content that is king, but other people's content if you are Yahoo! or Google).

No wonder that Sir Martin Sorrell said on Friday that the search giant is a long term enemy.

Net worries for the NY Times and deja vu at Time Warner

The internet is meant to be the saviour of print, but a report of lower than expected growth in digital revenues from the New York Times makes worrying reading.

No one is standing on ledges, but let’s face it, this is a bit of a blip in the second time around dotcom boom.

Internet revenues across NYT's business, which includes digital archives, NYTimes.com, Boston.com and About.com, still climbed 21.6%, but that is a lot lower than its previous forecast for 2007 internet revenue growth of 30%. The shortfall was due to a slowdown in internet advertising growth.

One dip hardly makes a bust, but it points to a levelling out in this second internet boom after the runaway enthusiasm with which US media companies have been splashing billions on snapping up just about any internet-related company.

"With internet advertising growing more slowly across the industry, the company expects that revenues from its internet-related businesses will be less than originally forecast for 2007," the NY Times said.

The drop for the NY Times pushed its shares down 2% as first-quarter profits fell 26% mostly due to a fall in print advertising, which is creating a gap that cannot be filled quick enough by the web.

Naturally, the newspaper group has hired a "major consulting firm" to help it find ways to cut costs, according to Reuters.

Elsewhere, on the subject of media giants buying up internet businesses, Time Warner was earlier this week reported to be considering buying an internet company…whoa, a little unsteady on my feet for a second with all the déjà vu.

Time Warner already turned itself into an internet company when it became AOLTimeWarner, before deciding to revert back. Now it is on the lookout again as it sees its rivals pushing ahead in the digital space.

This means it might now regret pulling out of the $900m deal for Swedish online advertising company TradeDoubler earlier this year, which fell apart as the Swedes looked for more money.

With DoubleClick just gone to Google, Time Warner must be looking back wistfully.

There is also a concern about AOL as Forbes said this week.

"AOL execs ushered the advertising world into the Time Warner Center Tuesday, where they made a glitzy pitch for more ad dollars. But rather than sell itself as a destination for everyone else's content, as Yahoo! had done at a similar event two months earlier, Time Warner's Internet unit peddled its own.

"While the rest of the Web world touts the merits of homemade video and other user-generated content, AOL was busy touting the benefits of the expensive stuff made by pros--stuff that looks a lot like television. If that strategy doesn't work, AOL is in a heap of trouble, as the company is ditching its subscription business and will soon be entirely dependent on advertising revenue."

St Wayne the Wieden winner

A very worthy Campaign Press Awards winner for Wieden & Kennedy and its 'St Wayne' ad, featuring Wayne Rooney painted to look like a bloody St George Cross.

I really liked this at the time in all its visceral glory so its good to see it get the Gold Award last night as the best individual press ad.  

It was one of the most striking images of last year  with Rooney white as a snowman, arms outstretched, painted in a bloody red cross. It's angry and striking, something primeval about it.

I could never understand why people got worked up about it with the likes of spoilsport peacenik Labour MP Stephen Pound calling it "truly horrible" last year.

"This is such a horrible image and is so horribly war-like that it can only be described as Nike being crass, offensive and insensitive as they try to hitch poor old Rooney to their commercial bandwagon."

Some of that might be true, but sometimes just accept that a striking image is what it is: a great ad.

 

Pound was, of course, not the only one. Various religious figures  threw their change into the mix.

Reverend Rod Thomas of the Church of England evangelical reform group called it disturbing and again called up its similarity to the crucifixion. There might be a case for that, but Rooney is head up and mouth open shouting. It's all defiance and no submission and the point is that is how he celebrates scoring.

As it did last night. 

Ferry disaster

Marks & Spencer has had a change of heart and done what it should have done immediately and dropped the former Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry after remarks in which he called Nazi imagery "fantastic"? 

M&S had been  called upon by Jewish groups to drop Ferry from its current 'my autograph suit' advertising campaign after his comments. Yet for all of its rebranded ethical marketing it initially refused to budge. 

This might have seen curious from a company  known for its support for Israel (a good thing as far as I'm concerned) and it is estimated do around $233m in trade with Israel every year. For this, extreme Islamic groups call for a boycott of the store, but rightly M&S has not budged.

A singer from the 1970s, Ferry, whose son Otis is a pro-fox hunting campaigner, comes out with a series of pro-Nazi remarks and the group does nothing.
Ferry told the Welt Am Sonntag newspaper: "The Nazis knew how to put themselves in the limelight and present themselves.

"The way that the Nazis staged themselves and presented themselves, my Lord! I'm talking about the films of Leni Riefenstahl and the buildings of Albert Speer and the mass marches and the flags. Just fantastic - really beautiful."

It was not only deeply stupid, but it was incredibly insensitive. Who in their right mind (other than Nazis) would come out with such a garbage.

As someone has pointed out it always starts with the flags and the uniforms.

Riefenstahl was a German film-maker who became notorious for her Nazi propaganda films while, as we know, Speer was Hitler's chief architect and minister for armaments during World War II who used armies of slave labourers on his projects.

Ferry has, of course, apologised, with some bizarre statement saying he was "deeply upset" and that his comments were solely made "from an art history perspective". Well that's okay then.

What has "the Nazis knew how to put themselves in the limelight and present themselves" got to do with art history?

Twinings twaddle

Tea firm Twinings has been doing something interesting with Stephen Fry in these spots, but the latest spot has gone off the deepend – and not in a good way. Take a look.
With the tagline "It puts the zing in your ding a ling" it has Fry running a teashop in Los Angeles with the cool black dude, "the streetwise Tyrone", who is being educated in the way of tea.

It could be me but this latest spot, create by Lowe London, with the three American women takes the double entendres/tea porn to racists levels.

I mean "Tyrone is filling us in"? Oh please.

Fatcat Rushbridger

Piers Morgan has much fun with Alan Rusbridger in this month's GQ, particularly on the thorny issue of money. It is very entertaining if a little unfair on the Guardian editor.

Former Daily Mirror editor really pulls him apart and picks up on all of the Guardian's pet subjects of fatcats, the private lives of politicians, tabloid journalism, the hypocrisy of sending his children to private schools and oddly lots about sex. Not sure what that is about, but still.

The issue of Rushbridger's sizeable salary seems to make him very sweaty under the colloar particuarly with those redundancies pending.

Here are some excerpts:

PM: And has the diet improved your sex life?
AR: I, er...
PM: Come on, Alan. It's a legitimate question.
AR: It's not. I'll pass on that one.
PM: How is your new Berliner-sized paper actually doing?
AR: It is doing, more or less, what we expected.
PM: That's what I used to say when things went badly.
AR: Do you want to see charts?
PM: No. I always used to bamboozle my critics with charts. How did you sell last week, then [December 2006]?
AR: About 386,000.
PM: And what were you selling before the Berliner redesign?
AR: We were down in the 360s, 370s. The one mistake we made was to take out 10,000 bulks, which made the figures look worse than they were.
PM: But you did that to make the relaunch look better than it was.
AR: No, we did that at the time of the relaunch.
PM: I thought you did it a couple of months before the relaunch.
AR: Er, well, we took them out a few months before and didn't put them back for the relaunch.
PM: So I was right. You did it deliberately. It's an old trick.
AR: We did. But we didn't shove them back in; that's the point.
PM: It's not my point.
AR: We were too honest.
PM: Hmmm...I read an interview in which you said that what mattered most between a paper and its staff and the readers was trust. Do you think you have to be as trustworthy privately as you are professionally?
AR: I think you have to be trustworthy in your professional life.
PM: Not personal life?
AR: [Silence for 10 seconds] I like to make a distinction between professional and private in everything we write about.
PM: Would you answer that question? Are you a public figure?
AR: Not really, no. I am accountable to the Scott Trust [owner of the Guardian Media Group], and I make The Guardian's journalism more publicly accountable than any other editor in this country.
PM: I only ask, because I remember The Guardian treating me as a public figure when I encountered various scrapes as an editor. Do you think that your own life would stand up to much ethical scrutiny?
AR: In terms of the journalism?
PM: No, I mean privately. Do you consider that infidelity is always a private matter for public figures, for instance?
AR: I think what people do legally and consensually is private.
PM: If I asked you if you had ever taken illegal drugs, would you feel compelled to answer?
AR: No, I'd say to you to mind your own business.
PM: What's your current salary?
AR: It's, er, about £350,000.
PM: What bonus did you receive last year?
AR: About £170,000, which was a way of addressing my pension.
PM: That means that you earned £520,000 last year alone. That's more than the editor of The Sun by a long way.
AR: I'll talk to you off the record about this, but not on the record.
PM: Why? In The Guardian, you never stop banging on about fat cats. Do you think that your readers would be pleased to hear that you earned £520,000 last year? Are you worth it?
AR: That's for others to say.
PM: Wouldn't it be more Guardian-like, more socialist, to take a bit less and spread the pot around a bit? We have this quaint idea that you guys are into that "all men are equal" nonsense, but you're not really, are you? You seem a lot more "equal" than others on your paper.
AR: Er... [silence].
PM: Do you ever get awkward moments when your bonus gets published? Do you wince and think, "Oh dear, Polly Toynbee's not going to like this one."
AR: Er... [silence].
PM: Or is Polly raking in so much herself that she wouldn't mind?
AR: Er... [silence].
PM: Are you embarrassed by it?
AR: No. I didn't ask for the money. And I do declare it, too.
PM: But if you earned £520,000 last year, then that must make you a multimillionaire.
AR: You say I'm a millionaire?
PM: You must be - unless you're giving it all away to charity...
AR: Er...
PM: What's your house worth?
AR: I don't want to talk about these aspects of my life.
PM: You think it's all private?
AR: I do really, yes.
PM: Did you think that about Peter Mandelson's house? I mean, you broke that story.
AR: I, er... it was a story about an elected politician.
PM: And you're not as accountable. You just reserve the right to expose his private life.
AR: We all make distinctions about this kind of thing. The line between private and public is a fine one, and you've taken up most of the interview with it.
PM: Well, only because you seem so embarrassed and confused about it.
AR: I'm not embarrassed about it. But nor do I feel I have to talk about it.
PM: What about your cars? Are you still driving that ridiculous G-Wiz thing around?
AR: Yes, and I love it.
PM: But I also read that you use taxis to ferry your stuff to and from work, which sort of negates the green effort, doesn't it?
AR: That story was a bit confused. I used to cycle to work sometimes, and if I was too tired at the end of the day then I would fold up the bike and get a cab home, yes. But about a year ago I was nearly killed in a nasty accident on my bike so I gave up cycling and bought the G-Wiz.
PM: Any other cars?
AR: A company Volvo estate.
PM: A big gas-guzzler.
AR: Yes.
PM: Bit of a culture clash with your G-Wiz, then?
AR: Let me think about that. The problem is that I also have a big dog, and it doesn't fit into the G-Wiz.
PM: I'm sure the environment will understand. Any others?
AR: My wife has a Corsa.
PM: Quite an expansive...
AR: Fleet...
PM: Yes, fleet.
AR: But I've got children as well.
PM: They're privately educated?
AR: Er... [pause].
PM: Is that a valid question?
AR: I don't... think so... no.
PM: And you went to Cranleigh, a top public school.
AR: I did, yes.
PM: Do you feel uncomfortable answering that question?
AR: It falls into the category of something I don't feel embarrassed about, but you get on to a slippery slope about what else you talk about, don't you?
PM: It's not really about your private life though, is it? It's just a fact. And I assume by your reluctance to answer the question that they are privately educated.
AR: [Pause] Again, I am trying to make a distinction between...
PM: You often run stories about Labour politicians sending their kids to private schools, and you are quite censorious about it. Are you worried that it makes you look a hypocrite again?
AR: No. I think there are boundaries. It goes back to this question of whether editors are public figures or not.
PM: And you don't think they are?
AR: Well, again, I've tried to draw a distinction between making my journalism accountable, but I have never tried to go around talking about my private life and therefore making myself into a public figure.
PM: You were originally a gossip columnist on The Guardian. Did you never write about anyone's private life?
AR: I can't remember writing about someone's private life.

Read the whole thing on the Indie's website.

Oh, I am still on holiday, but could not resist this. I'll stop now. 

R2 C2

Its 30-years since 'Stars Wars' and whatever you do don't tell George Lucas about the Beattie McGuinness Bungay ad for C2.

Stain of Cain

Maybe predictably Channel 4 is under fire for its Iraq drama 'The Mark of Cain', but you have to ask why every time a British broadcaster makes a programme about the military its main aim appears to be to put the boot in?

This Channel 4 drama 'The Mark of Cain' is just another example. It has found the worst of what British troops have done in Iraq and made it into a controversial drama, which writer Tony Marchant says with barely concealed glee will be "revelatory".

The Ministry of Defence has been saying (almost as predictably maybe) that it will put lives of British soldiers at risk. At a time when 15 are held by Iranian mullahs there is obvious truth to that claim.

We've been here before with soldiers gone bad kind of dramas most famously with the Falklands war drama 'Tumbledown', which also caused a stink.

I can't think of anything the BBC or Channel 4 has made that tells stories about troops under fire, and putting their lives on the line, as they mostly are - people doing a difficult job in very dangerous parts of the world.

The BBC is at it this week as well with the 'Timewatch' programme 'The sinking of the Sir Galahad'. It is part of its season to mark the 25th anniversary of the Falklands War, but rather than a programme about how a small outnumbered and outgunned forced sailed half way around the world and retook the islands we get to pick over the bones of one of the conflict's tragedies with talk about disaster and organised chaos. 

With British dramas concerning the military it is always the negative that is accentuated. Is it anything else other than the liberal intelligentsia having a profound dislike for the military and in this case the war in Iraq in particular? That does seem a little cliched and obvious, but...

If you look at the US then you will find quite different stories. Usually all superior in terms of production, but also in breadth of ideas. Look at award winning productions like 'Band of Brothers' or the more recent Iraq drama 'Over there'. Coming up HBO is developing a seven-hour series based on the (excellent) book by Evan Wright 'Generation Kill' about marines in the early days of the Iraq war. It tells the story of young men in battle. It doesn't necessarily seek to impose a certain point of view. Its "revelatory" nature is not in finding the very worst.

The Americans have a history of make really good dramas about their troops serving, which manage to tell human stories that don't always put them in the worst possible light. This is something that British broadcasters can't bring themselves to do.