Right wing bloggers force Dunkin Donuts to pull 'Jihadi' ad

It isn't friendly fire. Dunkin Donuts has got itself into a sticky mess all of its own making after pulling an ad starring US TV chef and talkshow host Rachael Ray because she is wearing an Arab keffiyeh scarf favoured by terrorists and kids the world over.

Dunkin' Donuts got spooked after right-wing bloggers threatened to boycott the company and, like some one had stepped on one of its not so tasty donuts it caved in like…well a thing that caves in really quickly. It should have held firm and ridden it out, but folded after Jewish blogger Pam Geller let loose under the headline "Rachel Ray: Dunkin Donuts Jihad Tool".

You have to laugh if you've seen one of these ads (take a look a the foot of this piece, it isn't "the" ad, but a Ray ad) as she is one of those factory-ready absurdly cheerful types that inhabit daytime TV and is clearly no more a tool of suicide-friendly Islamic terrorists than Mickey Mouse.

The "controversial ad" appeared earlier this month and the steam has been rising ever since - beginning with Geller who accused Ray of wearing the "icon of Yasser Arafatbastard and the bloody Islamic jihad" and said it was part of a "cultural jihad".

The case was picked up by rightwing bulwark and Fox News commentator Michelle Malkin, who wrote on her website michellemalkin.com that the keffiyeh "has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad. Popularized by Yasser Arafat and a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos, the apparel has been mainstreamed by both ignorant (and not so ignorant) fashion designers, celebrities and left-wing icons".

She isn't wrong - that is all true and we have all seen enough grainy videos and we have been reading about them again today on the anniversary of five Britons being taken hostage in Baghdad. But the scarf Ray wore was selected by a stylist, as that's where we're at these days. It has graduated from the West Bank and student activists to your average London teenager. Even I have one and I wore in the winter as it is so warm and while I might be to the left of the political spectrum I'm also pro-war in Iraq/Afghanistan and have always been a supporter of Israel.

Margie Myers, senior VP-communications for Dunkin' Brands, said in a statement: "In a recent online ad, Rachael Ray is wearing a black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design. It was selected by the stylist for the advertising shoot. Absolutely no symbolism was intended. However, as of this past weekend, we are no longer using the online ad because the possibility of misperception detracted from its original intention to promote our iced coffee."

It is a non-story as Ray's publicist Charlie Dougiello has written, but it is also a story as it underlines the insecurity we all feel currently in this climate where two wars are still being fought and that scarf is a symbol of that as well as being a fashion statement.

To be honest more of a worry is that Ray who is known best for her cooking shows on the Food Network, '30 Minute Meals' and 'Rachael Ray's Tasty Travels', signed up as the spokeswoman of Donuts in the first place.

Celebrity chef and travel writer Anthony Bourdain has lambasted Ray's affiliation with Dunkin' Donuts as "evil" and like "endorsing crack for kids".

Bet she is regretting it now.

Ben & Jerry's peace wash-out with Lennon

I got invited to a lecture recently. I sighed, raised My eyebrows, before deleting the invite to 'Can brands save the world?'. To be honest it seemed the only response, but I was thinking about this morning as I read about Ben & Jerry's supporting a modern-day 'Peace Bed-In'.

The peace bed-in is to raise global awareness of the UN day of global ceasefire and non-violence on September 21 and they are getting together with The Lennon Estate and non-profit group Peace One Day.

It is 39 years since John Lennon and Yoko Ono peaced out in bed in New York as the Vietnam War raged on.

Now the people who brought you Coffee Heath Bar Crunch Ice Cream and Cherry Garcia Low Fat Frozen Yogurt have got some celebrities together (well Maggie Gyllenhaal) to host a modern-day Peace Bed-In.

Is it me or is a photo opportunity waste of time designed to make Ben & Jerry's feel better about themselves and look good?

I could be wrong, but I read this long press release with statements from Walt Freese, Chief Euphoria Officer of Ben & Jerry (who is thrilled) and it comes across as the equivalent of greenwash. It's peace wash.

I mean when it comes to matters of substance, other than an photo opportunity for Gyllenhall and Ben & Jerry's co-founder Jerry Greenfield, the Unilever-owned brand held a nationwide search to identify modern-day peace activists who "embody the values set forth by Lennon through their work to create positive change in the world". Let's hope they are not talking about all the terrible music and many drugs from the later years... oh wait they are, but really what a load of garbage.

Ben & Jerry's has chosen two people to represent the next generation of "peace pioneers" who get $10k a piece. I'm being funny here, but really? Do you see the peace wash? How far does that money go and what kind of a commitment to peace is that? It's loose change that isn't going to stretch to more than a few placards for the recipients the lamely named Student Peace Alliance and the Peace Camp Initiative, which is a worthy group at least providing summer camp experiences for children from Israel and Palestine.

To top it all Ben & Jerry's have come up with The John Lennon tribute flavour Imagine Whirled Peace - a caramel and sweet cream based ice cream with toffee cookies and chocolate peace signs developed to further support Ben & Jerry's social mission campaign.

Those interested in "sharing their personal messages and images of peace and/or learning more about the peace partnerships and (not to forget) Imagine Whirled Peace ice cream can visit benjerry.com/imagine.

That's more like it. Peace wash out.

PS: Can brand save the world? Oh come on, not in this life time or the next, but should be interested in going along then feel free.

Google widens search lead over rivals

On the same day that Google moves ahead again in the search battle (it had almost 62% of the market), billionaire co-founder Larry Page criticised the potential Microsoft tie-up with Yahoo!, saying it would "concentrate too much power in the online communications market". Clearly Page has a real sense of humour.

Google extended its US lead in web search in April, taking market share from Yahoo! and Microsoft, according to the latest ComScore data.

The firm said Google captured a record-high 61.6% of the US market in April, up from 59.8% in March. Does anyone see that going south any time soon? No, it seems that like the irrepressible 80s pop classic "the only way is up" for Larry.

I mean the evidence is all there. For the last two years, Google has continuously gained share and at the expense of rivals.

Furthermore Google, was the only search company to record an increase in the number of searches in April, while Yahoo!, Microsoft, AOL network and Ask.com all posted a decline of 5% or more.

Yahoo!'s US search market share fell to 20.4% a 0.9 percentage point decline from March, while Microsoft's slipped to 9.1% from 9.4%. AOL meanwhile dropped 0.2 percentage points to 4.6% and Ask dropped to 4.3% from 4.7%.

All this as Page criticises Microsoft's efforts to cut some kind of a deal with Yahoo!, but look at the numbers: combined in terms of search, the two will only have 29.5%, putting them 32.1% behind Google.

His argument is that a successful Microsoft-Yahoo deal would "close a lot of things that are really important... like instant messaging" and also web-based e-mail communications.

"Now, if you put 90% of communications all in one company ... that's really a big risk, especially one [Microsoft] that has a history of doing bad stuff," he said. "So if you want to have good products, you need to have some degree of openness."

There is certainly truth to that line, with ComScore saying that a combined Microsoft-Yahoo! would have about a 70% of email and instant messaging market share in the US. That seems high, but it is no different to what has happened to the search market and the online ad market.

Crap advertising and the Apprentice

Is most advertising crap? I certainly think so, if you weren't convinced you only needed to have watched last night's 'The Apprentice' on BBC One and witnessed the sheer awfulness of the efforts of rank amateur TV wannabes to know that really it is harder than it looks.

I should say at this point that I do not watch 'The Apprentice', I don't know who any of the people on it are and can't see why I should be concerned. What a frighteningly awful bunch of individuals.

That said how hard can it be to come up with a brand and make a 30 second spot? Piece of cake right?

Well on the evidence presented last night by a group of people who profess to be interested in business and what makes it work then the answer is a categorical "no".

First the brands. One team did pretty well with a brand called Atischu and a brightly coloured yellow box. The second decided on blandness all the way both in terms of a startlingly unstriking product design and in the name for their brand 'I Love My tissues'.

From that point out it was downhill. With one team producing a sub sub sub-standard spot from the used up old hack school of daytime advertising (Ocean Finance ads suddenly looking like works of a genius). The judges from Rory Sutherland (but where was the bowtie? Very disappointing) and Gary Leih gave it a muted thumbs up.

With a script that was based on the idea that if you say the phrase "anti bacterial" often enough, people will get the idea that your tissues in your BRIGHTLY coloured box are "anti bacterial". Fair enough, I can remember that even this morning, although they still failed to add the why into equation. Yes its "anti bacterial", but why should I care? Okay because it kills all known germs dead? But they were almost there.

The second team, went rank up the spaz metre to the full and got themselves a celebrity, but having come up with an idea centring on children rather than getting a mother or someone associated with children they got Sian Lloyd…who has no children and is associated with the weather. Maybe they were thinking, well you know the wind blows just like a nose…okay maybe not.

The end product cut most of Sian Lloyd out and had a couple of school kids with crushes comforting each other as a little boy offered a tissue to a girl, but the product was completely incidental.

Now, of course, this is okay if you are Cadbury and you are an established brand. As you have values, signage and more importantly very recognisable brand collateral (such as the colour purple).

If you are a new brand you have none of those advantages, which means if you make some cute but meaningless piece of piss you will fall flat on your face as that team did.



And really no surprise as they were led by somebody called "Raef" who seemed to be wearing more make-up than someone who wears a lot of make-up. Was that really pink lipgloss? Oh boy. He got his arse fired and we all learned something well more than one thing really.

Firstly pink lipstick is not a good look on "straight" men and secondly, yes, most advertising is crap, but it is crap that quite adequately sells the products that it is designed to promote; and lastly people working in advertising might actually it seems know a thing or two about which they speak. We live and learn.

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Will Microsoft really buy Facebook and challenge the Google Monster?

That's the story that is starting to go around again, and it could do so for as much as $20bn. This could, in effect, create two scary companies, but isn't that better than one?

Here is how the story goes. Robert Scoble on his blog says he is hearing Microsoft will buy Facebook for as much as $15bn-$20bn. When it has done that, it will then merge it with Yahoo!'s search business, which it might now acquire after the talks restarted at the weekend.

The stories that Microsoft will buy Facebook have been around for a while and they did immediately resurface again when the Microsoft/Yahoo! deal fell through earlier this month.

The logic being that, one way or another, Microsoft needs to do a large scale internet deal. If it can not have Yahoo! then it goes for Facebook, although the price tag is large when you consider than Bebo sold for an $850m song.

Today on the Scobleizer, he says: "I'm hearing these rumors too that John Furrier (my ex-boss) is reporting. That Microsoft will buy Yahoo!'s search and then buy Facebook for $15bn to $20bn. Add that to all the news that Microsoft is buying Yahoo's search and that gets very interesting."

If it happens it could create an online firm with enough power and reach to tackle Google, and let's face it Google need tackling. It's big and it's getting bigger. It's a monster. It's the Google Monster.

Google knows something is up, which is why it is very keen to get a search advertising deal done with Yahoo! to stop it tying any of its business together with Microsoft.

Scoble says it's a bad thing if Microsoft/Facebook/Yahoo! get together because they will effectively create a closed network. How's that?

Well, it is now all about data. It has been the talk of the digital world of late with Google and MySpace talking interoperability and open source technology to allow the sharing of data (profiles and pictures) between networks. Except that Facebook has not taken part.

Google has been making a thing of this and posting on its blog about the fact that Facebook does not want to join up with Google Friend Connect, which puts users in control of their data. It is part of its "open move".

Google is making out that it is Facebook who are the bad boys here and that it is just trying to help the world along and "share". Yeah, right.

So why's that? Well, it is all very well for Google to talk about linking with everyone, but one of its reason for doing that is it doesn't have a social network. Or it does, but who uses Orkurt? Exactly.

It wants to be able to offer things such as people search on Google, which it has not been able to do at the moment, but if it can not have the pre-eminent social network as part of that then this makes it a much weaker proposition.

This is where Microsoft comes in. It wants Facebook combined with Yahoo! to do just that and it will not share. To a degree you have to say why should it?

It needs to find a way to make its search offering attractive to users. If it can do that by offering some kind of people/data search then it will achieve this and rival Google at the same time.

As people have pointed out, this will create another scary online giant, but isn't better to have two online scary giants than one big bully?

*Follow me on Twitter.

ITV starts to Twitter

The Twitter bug has hit ITV and the broadcaster plans to post regular Twitter updates.

It will be interesting to see how this works. Email can be slow so it will interesting to see how the press office uses Twitter and how fast it responds.

So far, we have updates on the 'Crossroads' lost episode from 1965, which is to be aired exclusively online. Nice start. The launch was part of a push for its archive.

The arrival of Twitter at ITV shows that use of the social media tool is spreading and slipping into the mainstream. There is a way to go.

Still, I am quite enjoying Twitter at least if not more than Facebook in the earlier days of that social media phenomenon. Clearly, it is not as big, there is not the rush of national news stories (it's more a smattering), but with the likes of 10 Downing Street adopting it, the ripple is spreading outwards. Downing Street is now being followed by more than 2,487, which is probably more than who are following Gordon Brown... just kidding.

The fact that it is purer than Facebook and that it is only about micro blogging (maybe as a term it is not the most embracing -- can you imagine trying to sell it to people: "It's micro blogging, its great." "But why would I want to micro blog?" "Mmm, I'll get back to you on that.") and nothing else is what makes it appealing.

Follow me on Twitter.

Digg turned down $100m offer from Al Gore

Social media darling Digg apparently turned down a $100m bid from Al Gore and his CurrentTV.com two years ago. As the Web 2.0 firm struggles to find a buyer, I wonder if they wished they had accepted.
The news that Al Gore applied the charm offensive to the social media firm Digg, which basically allows people to recommend articles (like this one) and for users to define their own news agenda, comes in tech journalist Sarah Lacy's book 'Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0 (on sale tomorrow Thursday).

Despite the charm, the Digg founders walked away from the $100m offer over issues of control and have been trying to sell it unsuccessfully ever since.

The price tag for Digg, like all Web 2.0 firms, has steadily risen from a paltry few million in change to Gore's $100m and most recently anything between $200m and $300m, depending on what you read.

There are questions about the business model (Digg like Twitter and many others have shown little ability to monetise their business -- and funnily enough people running the slide rule see that as a problem) and questions over if it, like a lot of Web 2.0 firms, is actually worth the money being quoted/asked for.

With Facebook worth a laughable $15bn it probably looks cheap, but is it? Bebo was probably a steal at $850m as unlike Digg (and more like Facebook) it has a much deeper relationship with its users.

For Digg though, all those you might expect to take a look have passed on the opportunity, which says as much as anything about the price tag that investment bank Allen & Company is touting on its behalf. So much for the hot start-up.

It does not help that there are so many similar 2.0 start-ups out there to Digg doing very similar things, including del.icio.us, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.

There is also another Mixx, which is getting a lot of positive buzz. It attracted the Los Angeles Times as an investor in December two months after Mixx launched.

Twitter comes of age in China quake

It always takes a disaster. Be it the 7/7 bomb attacks in London for user generated news photos or the China earthquakes for Twitter, which was the first that some got to hear about the devastation.

Tech blogger Robert Scoble was busy writing about it on his Scobleizer blog. When Scoble wrote on his blog, the news spread far and wide. He has about 23,000 people following him. He makes big claims, including that the news was on Twitter even before the United States Geological Survey was reporting it.

"I reported the major quake to my followers on Twitter before the USGS Website had a report up and about an hour before CNN or major press started talking about it. Now there's lots of info over on Google News.

"How did I do that? Well, I was watching Twitter on Google Talk. Several people in China reported to me they felt the quake WHILE IT WAS GOING ON!!!

"Over the next two hours I pointed at anyone who had info about the quake on my Twitter account. It's amazing the kind of news you can learn by being on Twitter and the connections you can make among people across the world."

Many others, including the likes of the Wall Street Journal, have been picking up on the impact services like Twitter have had. The WSJ ("Technology Speeds First Draft of Disaster") reported how when the earthquake struck, the first instinct of one college student in Sichuan province, some sixty miles from the epicentre was to duck for cover in his dormitory room and the second to post it online.

The result was some extremely swift on-the-ground reports as well as plenty of rumours. There was video, and photos, but micro blogging with Twitter proved perfect for short updates, which acted as alternate form of communication.

It became even more useful as the quake disrupted the phone system in some areas.

"Buses are so packed, they can't close the doors anymore," Chengdu resident Casper Oppenhuis de Jong posted on his Twitter account, providing updates on the quake's aftermath there. Later, he wrote: "Street is still packed with Chinese." Then, "People don't seem to dare moving back into their houses."

As the WSJ has it, in a slightly unflattering way (it has to be said) that fails to see the upside of the service prior to this, Twitter was initially was viewed as the pastime of students, tech geeks and dilettantes with a desire to advertise the minutiae of their lives. It has, even before that, become slightly more, but no one is entirely sure what.

I try to hold back on the day-to-day stuff and to stay industry and newsy. So I skipped posting the fact this morning that I have a lump on the side my face and a swollen mouth after getting hit in the face by a softball last night.

That is part of the conundrum as we wrestle with exactly what it is as we Twitter, as we wrestle with the one thing and not the other identity of the technology.

Twitter is teetering on the edge as it demonstrates its usefulness in incidents like the China emergencies or the California fires, when it is quicker and a more useful way to stay informed, and as a breaking news service that also lets you know people you know are hanging in Starbucks or freeloading on someone else's wi-fi.

Before Monday, Daniel Ebbut, an English national studying Chinese at Sichuan University, had only two "followers" -- people who read his updates regularly -- on his Twitter account. Now he has 93.

"Twitter was very important and valuable today," Ebbut told the WSJ.

About 10:30 pm Beijing time, he wrote, "There are hundreds of people outside, some even with blankets & tents, some in cars."

At midnight, he wrote, "More aftershock now, at least they're getting further apart."

There are other takes, of course, such as the headline on one Silicon Valley blog "News via Twitter now you can feel saddened and powerless minutes ...".

*Follow me on Twitter* 

Craigslist battles for independence

Ebay has turned into the big bad as it rounds on classified site Craigslist, which is fighting off a lawsuit from its unwanted auction site shareholder.

In the FT today, Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist, has spoken about the battle and the trappings of success that the soaraway success that the classified advertising website, credited with helping to finish off parts of the US newspaper industry, have bought him.

"I don’t have a yacht or a Gulfstream. I rent a house. I don't own a car, I have a bike."

You have to wonder if the bike is going to be enough after Ebay started beating up on the site after it claimed that a stake it acquired from a former employee of the site is being diluted by Craigslist.

If that wasn't enough Ebay has put the boot in and has launched a rival classified site.

Ebay picked up a 28% stake in 2004 much to the displeasure of Buckmaster and founder Craig Newmark who control the company.

In an entry posted on Craigslist's blog last month called 'Tainted Love', the San Francisco firm founded in 1995 asserted that eBay's accusations were unfounded and insisted the lawsuit came as a complete surprise.

"Coming from a company that views Craigslist as a prime competitor, filing suit without so much as mentioning these assertions to us beforehand seems unethical and suggests ulterior motives."

Among the suggestions that Ebay has made to the duo is buy the company outright. Not a nice way to go about things, but then if you are a global internet giant like Ebay then maybe that is how you do business. Maybe it also had a motto when it started that read "do no evil" that got lost in translation and now reads "beat the crap out of them".

Buckmaster seems in the FT to be appealing for a white knight to ride into town and save the plucky crew holed up at the fort.

"If someone wanted to come up with a dump truck and give us a lot of cash we wouldn’t say no," Buckmaster said before adding that he and Newmark have no interest in being answerable to outside shareholders.

Besides outside shareholders would scratch their heads and be dumbstruck by the anti-establishment, just getting by way of doing things. I mean the site's fees are only enough to sustain and grow it and Buckmaster says they only want to be profitable so that "we don’t have to raise cash or do a stock offering".

Having shareholders only seems turns you into Ebay or Google and we all know how that story pans out.

But whatever happens there is nothing much that is going to stop Craigslist. It is now covering almost 50 cities with half of those outside the US and some in the UK as it makes inroads on this side of the Atlantic. It recently added Bath, Coventry, Derby, Dundee, Essex, Kent and Nottingham.

*Follow me on Twitter 

Making the most of Twitter

The Guardian technology supplement has a useful feature today on getting the most out of Twitter.

The piece has a really good guide to showing how it can really work. It uses the example of how during an interview at the SXSW festival in March, audience dissatisfaction with tech journalist and blogger Sarah Lacy's interviewing style with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg resulted in "silent but powerful" discourse among the audience: one calls it a "train wreck".

I have been encouraging people to use it, but they have been ignoring me. One of the things the piece does is try to answer the question that people ask most often about Twitter. What is it for? It has a pretty good answer.

"As with any social network, the answer is the same: whatever you make of it. Some think that its immediacy makes it ideal for spreading news. Others find it useful to ask questions of their peers; still others, for following what people or topics they're interested in. The BBC and the Guardian, for example, already offer Twitter services for breaking news."

Brand Republic uses it a bit like an RSS feed and I think that's something we need to look at, which we will.

I really enjoy the conversations that it sparks, some of the comments that flow back and forth.

It is certainly moving upwards with traffic rising steeply. Downing Street's Twitter feed for instance has several thousand followers now and rising.

The piece estimates that there are now around 1.05m Twitter users -- up from 518,000 in October -- putting it on the edge of going mainstream and an exciting juncture in its development.

There are several questions it now faces, chief among which is how will it make money? Will it take advertising or will it charge?

The Japanese site has, as I wrote earlier, experimented with ads.
So for a handy guide to get you Twittering, take a look at the Guardian piece. It suggests various bits of software you can use to make Twittering easier both on the web and from your phone.

It also has help to work out how you should be following, with links to things like the directory Twitdir.com and a list of top Twitters.

So get going.

*Follow me on Twitter*

and if you are not already you can follow Brand Repubic. 

Ill deserved victory for the Evening Standard

It's a shame that unlike New York, London only has one newspaper and as the election campaign for the London Mayor has shown, the city is poorer for it after the paper's non-stop browbeating and stream of negative Ken Livingstone stories as part of its campaign to help elect blonde Tory buffoon Boris Johnson as mayor.

It would have been a different result if London (as it should have) had another voice, but it doesn't and instead has to settle for the half-arsed pseudo-national the Evening Standard, which completely failed Londoners with its partisan election coverage.

The Evening Standard has long battled with Ken Livingstone and the animosity runs deep. Part of that was of the former Labour mayor's own making, in particularly the bust-up over the comments relating to anti-Semitic comments made to a Jewish reporter, Oliver Finegold, on the paper.

But that alone does not excuse the single-minded campaign run by the paper's editor Veronica Wadley and chief political hack Andrew Gilligan who claimed yesterday tried to claim in the Independent that it was not "the Standard wot won it for Boris.

"What the Standard can claim is this. Firstly, in the same way as Boris brought together an existing anti-Ken majority, our investigations into Lee Jasper and the missing millions crystallised many Londoners' existing doubts about Livingstone.

"Had our news stories been 'spurious', 'virulent' or "Tory campaigns" they would not have mattered. But they were factual and measured, thoroughly and transparently sourced, widely followed-up, had important real consequences, such as resignations and arrests, and have of course never, in any specific particular, been denied."

Gilligan is fooling no one. If you needed proof read his amusing line about while there was plenty to find on Livingstone the Standard found it hard to find stories about Boris.

"I was the first reporter to expose what became Johnson's single biggest campaign headache, his unrealistic Routemaster bus costings. Beyond that, we looked – quite hard – for other things, but as he hasn't been in power for the last eight years, there was little new to find."

With dwindling sales, the paper can ill afford to alienate so many readers, but that did not stop it as it helped to put the previously unelectable Boris into City Hall where he can quaff champagne and caviar and wonder what the hell he has got himself into.

The election campaign is undoubtedly the paper's last hurrah, but it has served owners, the Daily Mail & General Trust well. It faced an uphill battle getting its rail distribution deal for the lucrative Metro renewed under Livingstone. Not so under Boris. He and the Tory party owe the paper a big fat thank you.

That made its campaign as politically cynical as it gets. Its partisan political coverage is in stark contrast to US rivals. In New York, the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post endorsed Democratic Presidential contender Barack Obama.

"We don't agree much with Obama on substantive issues. But many Democrats will. He should be their choice on Tuesday."

The Evening Standard did not agree with Ken Livingstone or anything he stood for. It ignored his record on the key issues of transport, housing and the environment and then sort to dismantle him individually and politically in the most lamentable way possible.

The only body it seems to come out of this campaign with any credibility is YouGov. In the end, it was spot on with its predictions.

Its press release over the weekend was headlined: YouGov exactly right in mayoral election and that it was.

Its final poll, published on Thursday morning, showed Boris leading Livingstone by 53%-47%. The result? Boris won by 53%-47%.

Other market research firms also conducted six surveys over the same period and none of them showed Boris well ahead. Their figures ranged from a lead for Livingstone of 4% to a lead for Boris of 2%.

YouGov, run by Tory Peter Kellner, partnered with the Standard and fought off complaints by the Livingstone team about possibly flawed results, and remained confident to the end.

Did they know something that we didn't? I'm guessing not.

Maxim editor goes off deep end in 'wankers' rant

Is Maxim editor Michael Donlevy a Millwall fan? Could be. He reacted rather badly to yesterday's story about his magazine's plummeting sales (down 40%) by sending an email to staff declaring that "trade journalists are wankers" and that they don't like its publisher, Dennis.

Millwall fans are famous for saying everybody hates them and they don't care. Donlevy seems to be have adopted the same attitude.

The story published in Campaign yesterday and on Brand Republic reported that the magazine had sold just 24,000 copies of its April issue, an all-time low.

Maxim's sales have been falling steadily for some time. It was selling more than 140,000 in 2006 and lost its last editor, Derek Harbinson, after a year and Greg Gutfeld before him didn't last too long either.

Back in 2005, it was selling 234,183 copies. Do you see the trend? No one is making this shit up.

Its last ABC saw a period-on-period fall of 27.1% to 78,463 copies and its sales are now said to be less than 70,000 according to yesterday's story.

The email that Donlevy wrote has been forwarded to just about everyone, including all the "wankers" here.

He is under the impression that journalists are giving him and his title a good kicking, when all that is happening is the decline of a magazine out of step with the times being reported.

Maybe he should send an email to Mike Soutar, the man behind free men's magazine Shortlist, for taking some of his sales as he probably has, but not many.

He also says that we should be writing about Arena selling "four fucking copies". We have, he hasn't been paying close enough attention. Why is anyone still publishing that magazine? Well, because of the advertisers it gave then owner Emap and current owner Bauer too. Well, that's their story at least. But seriously, who reads Arena?

I digress, Donlevy attacked the article as "scaremongering" and then goes on to admit that "we don't have the final sales figures for the Mischa [Barton] issue... But it's fair to say it didn't do very well".

Not sure how that can be classed as scaremongering. It is a dead cert, as sure as the sun rises, that Maxim's next ABC will be down unless there is a miracle, which are pretty much unheard of in magazine publishing.

Anyway, take a read for yourself in full.

Dear all

You may or may not have seen this link. If you haven't, you may well do.
Take a look and then read on...

www.brandrepublic.com/login/News/806293/

Basically, we've taken a bit of a kicking, but I want to make a few points to reassure everyone. And if any of your contacts or friends ask, this is how to shut them up.

We don't have the final sales figures for the Mischa issue. But it's fair to say it didn't do very well. However, this story doesn't include the likes of subscriptions, so it's fair to say our next ABC will not be this figure!

There's a reason for that. I hope everyone is well aware that we are trying to change the perception of the magazine from what it was before. It was made very clear to me before I started that this would involve taking a hit in sales to convince agents that we are the right magazine for their UK celebrities. Mischa was clearly not a cover that made consumers grab it, but agents like it. So this is part of our long-term plan.

Eva Mendes sold well. Gellar is up on Barton. This is a one off, and as Simon told the journalist (although it wasn't printed) no-one should judge a magazine on one issue. I am well used to, for example, the Men's Fitness Jan/Feb issue selling shitloads and, say, May selling fuck all. Our ABC over six months is what's important. In fact, our next ABC is not *that* important, in the grand scheme of things. What we're doing to change the magazine will take time. We should be judged on, say, the ABC after the ABC after the ABC after next, not the sales of the April 2008 issue.

I don't want to baffle everyone by getting technical but we are not at risk of being delisted by retailers, as stated in the story. The major retailers --­ the likes of WH Smith, Tesco, Sainsbury's, etc -- back what we're doing (let's face it, our new covers are less threatening to their wholesome image than Lucy Pinder with her tits out). We won't, for example, have to hide our covers in supermarkets any more.

Our print run has gone down. This is one very simple reason why our sales will go down before they go up. You can't sell what you don't print.

The company backs what we're doing. Just as I was made aware that sales would go down before I started, so was the board, and so was Felix. This scaremongering story does not mean we are at risk.

Trade journalists are wankers. They don't like Dennis --­ never have, never will. So they will give us a kicking instead of reporting that Esquire sold 15,000 or Arena sold four fucking copies.

While there's no denying April didn't fly off the shelves this story really pisses me off. Firstly, we have a long-term plan --­ and the strategy day last week was part of implementing that and evolving the mag. Secondly, we still have a really strong brand --­ the website is there for all to see and internationally we are still massive. Finally, for the first time since I started I feel as if we are close to having a team in place to do really great things with Maxim. If I didn't believe that, or didn't believe it was possible when I took over, I wouldn't be here. So let's concentrate on what we're doing, produce a really good mag (as we have been already) and ignore shit like this.

Any questions, give me a shout.

Michael Donlevy
Editor

Maxim

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No surprises at Friends Reunited

So Friends Reunited has dropped its charges and gone free as part of its relaunch. What was that... did someone say too little too late, as it tries to jump on the social networking bandwagon?

Maybe or maybe not, I think there probably is a future for Friends Reunited, but it is, I think, hampered by its name.

When ITV bought it back in December of 2005 for a hefty £120m, the site was still at the top of its game, but failure to respond to the threat of social networking sites like Facebook have hurt it.

Maybe there is still an audience for it and maybe that is an older audience, which is the one that ITV is going for -- the over 30s, 40s and 50s who are still interested in exploring old school and work ties.

Let's face it, the rest of us really don't need another social networking site. At least we don't think we do. This might of course, change tomorrow when I discover the new must just join Peoplebase.com -- totally revolutionary and new... I bet there is a Peoplebase out there, I haven't looked.

The site will have to rely completely on advertising, some of which it already takes.

It should have dropped the subs model ages ago as that has really stalled its growth, with many people logging on but not sending messages because they did not want to pay. And why should they?

The Battlestar effect

I can't tell you how disappointed I am. You go away for a few days and back home earth shattering news rocks the TV world. No not Dawn Airey, but the return of 'Blake's 7'.

Anyone who has been here before will know that I am of the firm belief that 'Battlestar Galactica' is some of the best television ever made and that reimagining the show as a dark and desperate struggle for survival in a post 9/11 world has made for compelling viewing.

While at the end of the 1970s the US was enjoying the camp original of 'Battlestar Galactica' we had 'Blake's 7', which was as dark as British sci-fi gets.

A band of rebels on the run in a cool ship from the totalitarian Federation regime, and now it is on its way to Sky One.

Actually that was two cool ships, and one after the other they all ended up in small pieces. First the Liberator.

...and then Scorpio, each with their distinctive onboard computers.

Slight worry as the station has little track record with drama (it did some sub-'Buffy the Vampire' show called 'Hex', but it had short bumpy, cast-changing run). But Sky also had a co-production role in the "re-imagining" of 'Battlestar Galactica' so it does know TV magic when it sees it.

'Blake's 7' has already made a little comeback with audio stories, but a move to TV is what fans have really wanted. Sky has commissioned two 60-minute shows and six scripts have in all been mapped out. I just hope it doesn't go the way of Sky's botched remake of the 'The Prisoner', which got dropped.

For a Big Brother/1984 set-in-space story about a society that controlled the lives of its civilians, 'Blake's 7' is perfect for a return. The only shame is that they did not do it sooner because it looks unlikely that any of the cast will make a reappearance -- retired as most are.

Oddly enough, like the new 'Battlestar Galactica', now in its fourth and final season, 'Blake's 7' only ran for four years until Paul Darrow's Avon shot dead the eponymous Blake in the final episode in a spectacular shootout.



Why the BBC hasn't moved on this before, after the success of revamping 'Doctor Who', is anyone's guess, but as a broadcaster it has never handled sc-fi very well -- even now (softening Doctor who with earlier timeslots and the awful Catherine Tate).

Oddly enough, it is making a 'Blake 7' -alike show about outcasts from Earth looking for a new home... which is odd, but very BBC like.

The success of the show will depend on whether Sky One can sell it, as the BBC has done with 'Doctor Who', in the US. First time around, the BBC sold 'Blacke's 7' in 40 countries around the world and that was in the 70s/80s, when most of the ships and props were made along strict guidelines set by 'Blue Peter'.

Sky has already said that Blake will be back as a character and you have to hope Federation boss Servalan will also return. She brought a dark touch of glamour to the show and Daniela Nardini, Anna from 'This Life' fame, would be a shoe-in -- she has been playing the role in the audio dramas.

The best role and the best lines belonged to Avon. The cool, cold and calculating cynic, who pretty much always dressed in black, and much will rely on who gets cast there.

There's so much to look forward. In the meantime, there is always YouTube. My favourite line: "Staying with your requires a level of stupidity I'm not capable of", but here are some more of top quips.