Big Brother - an apology

Last night's 'Big Brother' began with an apology, not for the tabloid heaven that was to follow, but for what we had already been subjected to.

If Gordon Brown was having second thoughts about how to deal with the budget deficit, he should not think twice about selling off the ratings-obsessed Channel 4.

Channel 4 has got all sections of the press in a frenzy this week. The Daily Mail ("Trampling on Diana’s grave"), Daily Telegraph and Express over its TV documentary on the death of Diana (which apparently breaks no taboo and does not show Diana's face – so much for that).

And for the second half of the week it has set the tabloids off and the lads' mags too, in what the Daily Star is calling the "sexiest Big Brother ever".

The Daily Mirror and the Sun giving a similar response.

Although surely The Sun has gone a little too far with its beast headline? Calling women beasts because they don't happen to be blonde and slim is unacceptable sexist crap. Rebekka Wade should hang her head in shame. 

Just to clear one thing up: Channel 4 is a really good broadcaster. Tru,e it likes to break taboos with lots of sex, whether this is in the guise of documentary or reality TV, and chases ratings rather too much, but overall there is much to be happy with, but really what place does this station have being in public ownership?

It does very well commercially, and 'Big Brother' shows those commercial instincts off most finely.

It will make a fat profit out of the latest series, which, although is in early days, is designed with a headline-grabbing tabloid audience in mind.

I mean come on, 18-year-old blonde twins? A Victoria Beckham lookalike? A footballers wife wannabe? Posh Tory totty? A thousand front covers of tabloid flesh have just been instantly created.

Channel 4 does this all brilliantly. It does others things very well also, more reality, endless property, drama and film, all done with a popularist twist, which only occasionally comes really unstuck ('Celebrity Big Brother' and the cancelled show about masturbation spring to mind).

But really does it need to be owned by the state any longer? Channel 4 should be sold off so the Exchequer and the rest of the nation can benefit and it can worry less about offending Daily Mail editors.

Tasteless Saatchi ads

Have you seen the Dr Martin ads featuring Kurt Cobain among other dead rockers? It can't just be me, but these forlorn looking images are utterly tasteless.

The ads feature the late Nirvana front man and Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious wearing the iconic footwear in heaven whilst sitting on a cloud. They are all over the internet.

It’s kind of depressing how bad they are. It almost feels as if the agency knew the ads were terrible, insulting pieces of junk, but did them anyway as it knew it would whip up a storm. This, however, rewards the agency with too much foresight.

Kate Stanners, executive creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi says that it is the agency's "belief that they are respectful of both the musicians and the Dr Martens brand".

On which planet Kate? They are so tacky that they make good tack look bad. Ask yourself this, could you imagine Cobain ever agreeing to something like this?

If I were the Dr Martens client I might have been tempted to sack the agency as well, particularly as David Suddens, chief executive of Airwear, says that "Dr Martens did not commission the work".

This probably means they were created by Saatchis so it could enter them into some awards, which is why the ad was tucked away in a music magazine called Fact that few have heard of and most will never see.

Stanners admits as much when she says that "we are investigating the circumstances and considering the ongoing employment of the individual who was in breach of instructions not to distribute the ads further than the original approved placement in Fact Magazine in the UK".

Approved for one placement? That'll be agencies craving awards.

Oh well, I suppose its hard to find, oh well, whatever, nevermind.

Life on other planets

ITV, are you watching? The BBC is planning to repeat the success of its award-denied hit drama 'Life on Mars' with a sci-fi drama written by the same production company.

According to the BBC today, the new high-concept series from indie Kudos will be set in space and is to be called 'Outcasts'.

It is being written by 'Spooks' writer Ben Richards and tells the story of a doomed earth and a search for a new home.

In its announcement the BBC uses this Stephen Hawking quote, almost as a scene setter. "I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars."

In a script that sounds a little like it has borrowed from Arthur C Clarke's Rama series of books, a bunch of social misfits and criminals are sent out into the depths of space to colonise a new planet.

These include a screwed-up genius and, of course, the petty thief. Hang on, that sounds like 'Blake's 7' (Avon and Villa), which, oddly enough, a production company has been trying to remake for years and recently launched a series of audio dramas, which are available on the Sci-Fi Channel's website (starring Daniela Nardini from 'This Life' as Servelan).

The settlers will face a harsh time on the new earth colony and the series promises to be “dramatic and entertaining".

With a massive hit on their hands in Russell T Davies’ smart and sassy Dr Who revival, the BBC seems to have caught the sci-fi bug, which has already proved a fertile ground for TV in the US, giving us the likes of the brilliantly realised 'Battlestar Galactica' (which still was name checked in an episode of the US version of 'The Office', in which someone says "You're not watching Battlestar Galactica? Then you're stupid") and is soon to give us a 'Terminator' TV spin-off, 'The Sarah Connor Chronicles', starring British actress Lena Headey, who played Queen Gorgo in the breathtaking '300', as Sarah Connors. A bit of a result I would say.



Michael Grade, what are you doing about all this? Either start buying some half decent US drama or spend some cash on making some. 'Primeval' doesn't count, beign a poor 'Doctor Who' rip off with dinosaurs. Okay, that's all I have to say.

Ray Ban

Someone said earlier this week that Ray Bans were back. Did they ever go away? Not if this 90-second cinema ad is anything to go by, and best of all it features the music of the much underrated Ben Kweller.
I really like Kweller and while mostly I'm really very against good artists ending up flogging their wares in TV ads this is not so bad. Plus it is a really good track - 'Make It Up' - if you haven't yet discovered Kweller this is a good place to start. This spot and Kweller has in its favour that it's not a crappy product for a start. It isn't the Only Ones in a Vodafone ad and that has to count.

Created by San Francisco agency Cutwater and is running in cinemas in Europe as well as some TV in the UK. It’s part of a campaign to support the new Ray Ban tagline 'Never hide'.



Shot in black and white, it was directed by Michael Haussman, it opens with snippets of a gig before cutting to a schoolgirl sneaking out a window to join her friends and then strangers kissing suddenly in the street.

It might be a little passé in parts with the sunlight and the water, but really that's okay as it also feels pretty much like an MTV2 music video, which is no bad thing. I like it.

What's eating Mars?

A bizarre display of what can only be described as corporate dementia broke out as Mars wobbled around the issue of adding animal products to its various lines before realising this was a really stupid thing to do and changed its mind very publicly.
When news of this got out it turned into a PR nightmare for managing director Fiona Dawson, who is clearly making herself a candidate for the sack. Within a week of the decision being announced, more than 6,000 people had called and emailed the multinational's switchboard, which usually receives 500 comments a week. More than 40 MPs also signed a petition to voice their disapproval.

Mars said it took the original decision to start adding animal products to its Mars, Snickers, Malteser and Galaxy brands to "broaden our supply base to ensure the availability of our supply, but we underestimated the impact this would have". Errr, read as didn't estimate the impact at all. Has no one at Mars ever heard of the phrase if it ain’t broke don't fix it?

This morning it is running full-page press ads all over the national press headlined "we have listened", where it goes on about the customer being the "boss" and how it will immediately begin taking animal products back out. What is also clear is that while the customer is the boss, Dawson sure isn't.

"We made a mistake," she said in the signed open letter. "We apologise. The customer is our boss. Therefore we listen to you and your feedback."

Now the situation exists that Mars has said it will remove the animal products from its production process, but in the meantime the shelves are stacked with Mars bars and Snickers bars that have animal products in. It will not recall them and it cannot say how long it will before these products will naturally disappear.

To add to the confusion, animal products will still be used in other products such as Twix, Bounty, Celebrations, Topic and Milky Way.

Clearly this is a Fudge (do they still make that bar? I have to admit I loved those as a kid, just filling enough).

Annette Pinner, chief executive of the Vegetarian Society, said: "The position is highly confused. We need to know what's going to be vegetarian - and when it's going to be vegetarian."

She added: While welcoming the U-turn, she added: "We really want clarity. That's what is important so that people know Mars can be trusted."

The whole episode has made Mars a laughing stock, but it is very funny. The independent newspaper called it a "truly cruel but funny prank played by the universe on vegetarians". I get that, and I'm a vegetarian. Oh wait, I might get in trouble with the Vegetarian Society. I'm only a demi vegetarian if that wasn't confusing enough.

Kill the editor

Working in fashion and media journalism can do strange things to you and apparently these things make you want to kill the editor of Vogue and dress up as a fireman and hold people hostage.

A former journalist on Women's Wear Daily, Peter Braunstein, who this week was in court in New York on sexual assault charges, was revealed to have planned to kill Vogue editor Anna Wintour – apparently he only got one ticket to the Vogue show in NY Fashion Week – and that was for him. He made a huge stink about it, which led to him being sacked from Vogue sister title WWD.

Braunstein wrote a personal manifesto (someone should have told him that party political manifestos are bad enough) and in it he wrote: "So I’ll tell you why I’m going to kill Anna Wintour - because I just feel like it".

This all happened before Braunstein held an ex-girlfriend, who was also the fashion editor on W magazine, hostage in October 31, 2005, and sexually assaulted her for 13 hours having dressed as a firefighter to trick his way into her Chelsea apartment.

According to the New York Post, there were no details in court of how Braunstein planned to kill Wintour, just that it was to be up close and personal. Just shooting her apparently would be "too impersonal". To be honest, the idea of being shot by someone has always appeared pretty personal to me.

"When I was a media reporter, there were many high-profile editors, and God knows they had big egos, but you could still get them on the phone. Remnick, Carter, Fuller, even Martha Stewart. But Wintour? She just never talked to peons like us," Braunstein wrote.

"It was beneath her. And all the while I'm thinking 'Who is this skank?' She plays up this aristocratic, Marie Antoinette ‘Let them eat cake' routine, but, excuse me, can I get some proof that she holds a title of nobility that goes back to the 13th Century?

"No. All she does is edit a magazine. That’s it. So what’s with the royalty routine?... I mean, for Christ's sake, the woman slept with Bob Marley, one of the most soulful people ever to walk the face of the earth. If that didn’t spiritualize her, nothing would."

"Wintour will be escorted by eunuchs to a place in Hell run entirely by large rats. Even Satan can’t get in there, because he and the rats had a falling-out a couple of millennia ago. The rats, apparently, are unionized and Satan tried to break the union; there’s been a lot of bad blood ever since."

Clearly disturbed, Braunstein celebrated serial killer Son of Sam and the Columbine school shooters, who each get a special mention in the manifesto for having taken revenge on enemies who, like his own, didn't appreciate their talents. He also quoted rapper Notorious BIG – "You’re nobody 'til you kill a whole bunch of other people" – he could have added, if you get shot yourself.

Braunstein faces a possible 25 years-to-life sentence for first degree kidnapping. His lawyers are arguing that their client is mentally ill and shouldn't be held criminally responsible for the 2005 attack.

Prosecutors say Braunstein ignited smoke bombs while wearing firefighter gear and bluffed his way into the woman's apartment.

Braunstein has pleaded not guilty to kidnapping, burglary, sex abuse and robbery…although his lawyers concede he attacked the woman.

A psychologist called by the defence, Dr. Barbara Kirwin, has testified that Braunstein is a "textbook case” of paranoid schizophrenia and a person who was determined to kill himself.

At its heart its a sad story. Wintour, of course, has a reputation as anyone who has read about her or read 'The Devil Wears Prada' (based on Nuclear Wintour), but weaponry? Surely another cappuccino is the answer. Maybe even a latte.

Panorama and the Scientologists

It's been a while since I watched the BBC's Panorama, but last night's programme on the cult of Scientology was compelling.

Cleanse Russia with Burton

Do you ever wonder what the more obscure slogans on designer T-shirts say? No, me neither - not when it looks sort of cool. Clearly Burton's doesn't worry about this kind of stuff either after it had to pull one of its garments at the weekend because of its fascist message.

The £12 T-shirt with its mix of double French eagles and Cyrillic writing looked like just the kind of thing you would pick up in a T-shirt buying spree. In this case the slogan translates as "We will cleanse Russia of non-Russians!"

You can imagine being on the Tube and proudly wearing you T-shirt and seconds later being thumped by some Eastern European who is wondering why you support ethnic cleansing in the motherland.

According to the Guardian, the error was pointed out to Burton by a Russian language student.

"I did mention to the girl as I bought one of the shirts, that it was politically probably quite dangerous. I've spoken to a Russian friend and she said you would be arrested if you wore it in Russia."

Burton's is not the first brand to fall foul of unintentionally offensive text used on their products. There are plenty of examples, among the most amusing of which was Coca Cola's slogan "Coke Adds Life", which translated into Thai as "Coke Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Dead". Nice work.

Less amusingly there was Umbro, the sportswear firm and England football kit supplier, which was forced to apologise for a brand of trainer it had named Zyklon, the name of the gas used to murder hundreds of thousands of Jews in Nazi death camps. Umbro changed the name of that shoe after protests by the Holocaust education charity the Simon Wiesenthal Centre.

That didn't stop German industrial giant Siemens, which was eventually forced to abandon plans to register the trademark Zyklon.

Then there was Sony, which dropped its patent for the 'shock and awe' phrase after coming under attack for the move.

Sony was thought to have patented the slogan for use with a series of future console games, although at the time it said it had no definite plans. The title, which is likely to be the lasting one from the war in Iraq, was used to describe the US's intense aerial bombardment of Iraq as part of the coalition's early effort to destroy elements of the Iraqi military and force it to surrender.

Tooheys with a farm quiff

I really like this spot for Australian beer brand Tooheys Extra Dry called HarvesTED created by NSW agency BMF, but it's a definite odd one.

Somehow it just reminds me of Children of the corn, well that and that early Johnny Depp movie Cry Baby. That will be the hair.

The weird combination of the farm, the pod people, bizarre machinery and rockabilly quiffs give this a really weird feel.

Executive Creative Director at BMF, Warren Brown, said: "Tooheys Extra Dry has a tradition of delivering unexpected and highly creative ideas to the market. HarvesTED has opened up a whole new territory for TED, both strategically and creatively; the passion that goes into making TED and the desire for the clean crisp taste are captured in a creatively adventurous idea that literally breaks new ground. It is an idea that is iconic, will set the bar even higher for beer advertising in this country and provide plenty of fertile ground for more innovative and unexpected ideas in the future."

Bollore and Sarkozy

France's newly elected president Nicolas Sarkozy has kicked up a storm and he has done it with the help of Havas-owner Vincent Bollore.
The French press and socialist losers have got themselves in a tizzy, much in the same way the Daily Mail does when Tony Blair took a holiday with the likes of Silvio Berlusconi.

If you are the President of France, who are you going to call? Of course, it’s going to be a billionaire and industrialist.

Le Monde showed Sarkozy's wife reclining on a deck chair, commanding: "Silence, poor people!" Ouch.

Not only that, the opposition has accused Sarkozy of "debauchery" and "tactlessness". Bollore never struck me as the debauched type, but then again he does have a 200ft "floating palace" with seven cabins for 12 people, a 17-member crew, giant plasma screens and an on-deck Jacuzzi, not to mention two jet-skis, kayaks, water skis and diving equipment.

Sarkozy doesn't seem worried and has shrugged off criticism of his three-day cruise. After all, much like Blair's trips, it doesn't cost the taxpayer a cent.

"I could have gone to a hotel, but imagine what that would have been like," said Sarkozy, "Already, when I'm on a boat you rented out planes and helicopters to take photos of me. I have no intention of hiding, I have no intention of lying, I have no intention of apologising."

Maybe Sarkozy was letting Bollore in on a few of his plans to shake up the ailing French industrial landscape. The Havas chairman was on board and Sarkozy only had praise for him.

"Vincent Bolloré, one of the great French industrialists, has never worked for the state and does honour to the French economy. I wish lots of Vincent Bollorés on the French economy, men who are able to invest to create jobs.

"You know, it's not a disgrace to have worked hard, to have created a big group, to give out jobs."

Boycott Volvic

Is it just me or is the newish Volvic ad with Tyrannosaurus Alan too awful for words? It's enough to make you boycott the French water.

I know some people seem to find the idea that there is a dinosaur called Alan amusing, but I think we have to remember that a lot of people aren't that bright.

Besides dinosaurs should not be called Alan its lame and obvious like a BBC sitcom the joke is telegraphed and you can see it coming from miles away. Then there is the whole booming Brian "I'm a volcano" Blessed (or Blessed alike) thing. It's very hackneyed. You want loud? Booming even? Then call Brian everyone else does. I'm only surprised that they resisted calling the dinosaur Brian. I bet the name was on the shortlist.

Every time the Blessed sounding volcano roars "Come on world, I'll have you for breakfast" all I can think is please god make it stop before I remember that's what remote controls were invented for.

Created by Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R, as part of the Volvic volcanicity campaign, it is the first work it has produced for Volvic since it took over from WCRS.

Do you remember that campaign? It featured a pole-dancing cavewoman. Genius right? Okay, maybe not. Volvic seems to be lurching from one creative disaster to another. Next.

Users take over the digg.com asylum

The users have revolted and effectively taken over Web 2.0 favourite and news aggregator Digg.com.

The site's chief executive has had no choice but to throw his lot in with the users after and makes this a watershed moment in the world of users generated content.

It always seemed like something like this might happen, but at Digg.com, which allows users to rank news stories and blogs.

It began like any other day when Digg.com saw some content on the site that needed banning. This happens to every site.

In the case of Digg.com it was software code that helps online pirates make bootlegged copies of movies. The entertainment industry had threatened to sue. Clearly illegal and clearly got to go.

"In order for Digg to survive, it must abide by the law," Digg Chief Executive Jay Adelson wrote on the site Tuesday afternoon, adding, "We all need to work together to protect Digg from exposure to lawsuits that could very quickly shut us down."

The users, however, did not take kindly to this and revolted and scores of Digg's 1.2m registered users started deluging the site, apparently breaking all records, with the illegal code. The game really was up for Digg.com.

Their efforts ensured that every one of the top 10 stories on the front page either included the software code or slammed Digg's managers.

Not only that but many posted links to videos on YouTube, which had the code's 32-character string of numbers and letters

There was no way to stop it other than close the site down or go with your users base, which was the choice Digg made. It backed down and opened the way for a huge legal battle with Hollywood, which could well spell its demise.

"You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you," co-founder Kevin Rose blogged, acknowledging that a lawsuit could wipe out the 3-year-old San Francisco company. "If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying."

This is huge and you can imagine the owners of other social content and UGC sites looking on and quaking with their boots.

What else could they have done? If the users are the business, their biggest asset, it seems when something like this happens you are royally screwed. It really is mob rule.

The irony is that some sites would kill for the kind of user generation that Digg has [ed some line in here about with great amounts of UGC comes...].

The return of boo.com

Do you remember boo.com and its spending spree through the first dotcom boom that frittered away £80m of other people's money? No? Well, it's back. Kind of.

An Irish company, Web Reservations International, has bought the URL and relaunched it not as a fashion brand but as a travel site.

They haven't disclosed the figure but they have told me "they paid ten times less than what it cost when it was first sold by the founders" whatever that might be.

Is it worth resurrecting a URL like that? Is Boo particularly valuable? I don't think it is. I just carried out a snap office survey (SOS) and the results were virtually no one had heard of Boo.

That's not to say it’s a bad name, its short and memorable, but is that enough?

Web Reservations International describes itself as the "leading online travel company"? I wish people wouldn't use the world leading particularly when no one has ever heard of them (that said it claims to have handled more than €300m in annual bookings last year). I'm not sure how that makes you the "ultimate online destination for travel", maybe it's ultimate in the way that the original Boo was going to be in the world of fashion. A grand enterprise with a great big whole in the middle.

Boo was perhaps the ultimate dotcom story. A tale of such glorious excess that it finally managed to waste £80m (but hey it was only VC cash, so no harm no foul) and hire so many people – a staggering 300. Oh that ominous in hindsight – before it went under and got snapped up by Fashionmall.com before it too closed.

 No word if the travel guys are bringing Ms Boo back, she's been much missed.

If you haven't read it, you should snap up a copy of the book written by Boo founder Ernst Malmsten. He was if you remember the twenty-something Nordic poet who wrote Boo Hoo: A Dotcom Story. It's a fiver on Amazon.

Branson's nasty side

It is all getting personal with Sir Richard Branson, according to James Murdoch, the BSkyB chief executive, who has been talking about his rival's nasty side.

"Given Virgin's MO [modus operandi], it was inevitable. This is what they do. They create a big bad Goliath in people's minds. They try to wring a regulatory concession out around their area, then fight like hell to protect it.

"They do it in trains, in aircraft landing slots -- anywhere. That's the way they work. They broke out of the blocks with highly personal attacks about the company and what we do, about our customer service, even about my family. A lot of really nasty stuff."

"The ITV deal is very straightforward. We're a long-term investor in the UK media sector. There are a set of players in the market. Pieces move around. Things happen. We took the view that ITV has real turn around potential and a world-class brand, huge connection with viewers, a great programme-making company.

"It was a business without leadership or any articulated strategy in an ad downturn with structural as well as cyclical components in it. It's not the time for this business to be kicked around. It needs time and some leadership. We can help provide that. We're barred from anything over a 20% stake, so we took it.

"It's a minority stake. There are sensitive issues around competition and we have no interest in mucking around with things that Michael and the team have every incentive to get on with themselves. We're happy as a passive investor to sit and watch that happen."