Major League Baseball has one thing to say to the credit crunch and that is to launch its biggest ever ad campaign, a $65m affair, to promote the upcoming post season.
With the strapline "There's Only One October" the spots will air on Fox, TBS and feature the likes of American Idol judge Randy Jackson, actor Timothy Hutton, comedians Frank Caliendo, Jeff Foxworthy and Bill Engvall, and an animated Stewie from Family Guy.
MLB is kicking it off the campaign with this nice spot created by McCann-Erickson starring US comedy actor Rick Gonzalez of 'Coach Carter', 'War of the Worlds' and TV show 'Reaper' fame. It sort of reminds me of that recent Orange ad with cyclists Mark Beaumont.
There are a whole bunch of other similar spots on the way including one that evokes the tortured history of the Chicago Cubs, which is cool as they are currently the best team in baseball and almost a cert to make the post season.
We just had the Olympics and its almost like Major League Baseball wants to make sure that people don't switch off after a summer of sport and do instead stay tuned for Autumn the post season and the World Series. Fannation has suggested some alternative straplines including "We Guarantee The Chinese Won't Win".
It also suggests and "Now With 100% Fewer Yankees". Almost certainly true. As apart from divine intervention the Yankees look all but doomed and are unlikely to make it. This is a massive shame as it's the last year of Yankee stadium and they always make the playoffs, but with so many injuries this year it just hasn't happened. A resurgent Tampa Bay hasn't helped either.
Manny Ramirez now of the Dodgers also appears in the postseason advertising. I just hope that the Dodgers make it, if the Yankees don't. For Torre after his shabby treatment I imagine the satisfaction will be immense.
Looking forward to seeing the one with comedian Frank Caliendo, best known for impersonating President Bush, a role he reprises for the MLB. "There's Only One October..." as Caliendo, in his President Bush voice, closes by saying, "I'm pretty sure there's only one."
Talk about dancing on thin ice. Bush is, of course, a former owner of the Texas Rangers. Its almost like taking a pop at one of your own...but then it is George W Bush.
Personally, I'd like to see the Dodgers go up against the Los Angeles Angels, but the Cubs and the Rays might have something to say about that. I'm better that the Boston Red Sox can't do it again.
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Okay, Steve Jobs is not dead, unless Bloomberg knows something that the rest of us don't after it mistakenly published his obituary.
As anyone knows new organisations write these things and update them constantly, which probably goes someway to explaining what happened to Jobs. Hovering over the update button led to the publish button.
The story ran under the byline Connie Guglielmo and the headline "Steve Jobs, Apple Co-Founder, Arbitrator of Cool Technology, XXXX" (the X's to be filled in with his age at death) - was marked "HOLD FOR RELEASE - DO NOT USE - HOLD FOR RELEASE - DO NOT USE".
Apparently it should then have been sent to Bloomberg's internal wire, but instead it went on the external wire and was taken down in 30 seconds.
But once it's out its out and hundreds of stories and blog posts have since appeared. Gawker picked it up and posted the whole 17-page story. Not sure who has the time, but hey I'm sure an Apple freak or two will. That's not to say that Jobs has not made a major contribution to technology and the world in which we live (thanks for the iPod Steve, I still love it, genius).
It has happened to all of us, but not in such a high profile manner. Of course, when these reports first hit there was a little confusion as Jobs has had a pancreatic cancer scare. That was four years ago and the Apple boss seems to be going strong and Forbes is convinced his work is far from done. It took it as a moment to remind the Cuppertino tech guru that he has a lot to do before he does succumb. It suggested a top five to do list.
1. A Tablet Computer2. A Television3. A Remote Control4. A Digital Book5. The Personal Computer--Again
Well the Kindle does like a sack so I can see him having a crack at 4. and the 1. as well. But really iPod, iPhone and Mac is a pretty good list. And that's just the story so far.
I must have been sleeping while this happened. Most people know LimeWire as software used to illegally download software, but it also has a legitimate music store and it just added 1.2m tracks beginning at $0.27.It's so new its "still in beta", but it already has thousands of tracks and albums there and even plenty you would have heard of. A quick look and I saw some Marvin Gaye, Kimya Dawson, Tindersticks, Josh Rouse Lloyd Cole and The Streets and much more.LimeWire software is apparently still installed on as many as 18% of all PCs worldwide. That is a huge amount of machines downloading music although it has slipped from its heyday on the back of the success of BitTorrent.The good news is that the LimeWire store has teamed with indie digital distribution firm The Orchard, which distributes more than 1.2 million songs, from the likes of Big Star, Bob Marley, Damien Jurado, The Fall, Keane and The Pet Shop Boys among thousands of others.It is never going to compete with iTunes, but it does offer somewhere else to go and it does offer savings on some of its subscription packages offering 75 download credits for $19.99 a month, which works out to $0.27 per track. Interestingly the LimeWire store is linked to the illegal filesharing software so that users will be offered the chance to buy stuff...as they illegally download. Might work.
Does anyone use LimeWire?
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I can't get excited about the idea of Amazon's ebook reader Kindle, which is either doing really well or just okay depending on who you listen to.For me the problem is I don't want to look at any more screens. I look at one all day and part of the night. So really I'm saying enough already.It's not that I don't want my gadgets. I do. I love my iPod, my laptop, my PS3, and my Blackberry. I seriously want an Asus EEE PC. See, I'm all about the wanting. I also want to pick up a hardback book or a paperback. However, there is probably a killer app for the Kindle, but I don't think it with people who read a lot of books for pleasure. It's with students. On that level - and only on that level - it seems to make sense.
Amazon.com seems to have twigged this as well as it plans a larger-screen model of its Kindle ebook aimed at students. You know what its like you get a huge reading list that cost a fortune. These days I imagine it costs a larger fortune and puts more pressure on the strained financial resources of undergraduates.According to various reports and this Business Week post Jeff Bezos has been talking up the Kindle's potential in recent months but apparently this is just more marketing on his part. He might be talking it up after the confusion about exactly how many have been sold. Problem is Amazon won't say. TechCrunch reported a few weeks back that around 240,000 had been shifted, which seems a lot. Amazon seems to be suggesting the number is smaller. Whatever the number, so far the Kindle only exists in the US and so far no one seems to be banging on Amazon's door to get hold of one here and the retail set up still seems to have some kinks to work out.At the moment you can buy a Kindle book for anything from $5 to $10 or you can buy the paperback/hardback for $16.99. If they offered a Kindle download for free with that you could imagine more people opting for it.
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So Microsoft is making a bid to be cool. Can it really ever make it? In a word no. Microsoft is never going to be cool, Jerry Seinfeld or not. The truth is that Microsoft has never been cool and it never will be. It produces very good, but quite dull software. Windows Vista, Windows XP, Excel and word. Previously it has always been "cool" to hate Microsoft, particularly in relation to Apple. It makes huge takeover bids. Behemoth-like $33bn bids for Yahoo! That's not cool. Neither is Yahoo! for that matter. It's just big business. It might work for Apple, but Apple is different and it always has been. In its early days Apple was seen as almost a rebel brand, which appealed to a community of creatives and geeks. And in design terms, Apple was the technology that was made for creative people: journalists, designers, programmers, writers; people who had a less mainstream take on life. The company built up a strong following as a result. But Apple wasn't just about appearances. The most important thing about Apple was what it wasn't. It wasn't another IBM. It wasn't Microsoft. People saw it was offering something different - something that complemented a less corporate-driven lifestyle. Of course, personalities were involved. While a cult grew up around Steve Jobs, Bill Gates was seen by Apple's users as an antichrist figure. In their eyes, he was the head of a massive company that wanted to take over the world, that wanted its stuff on every desktop. They always thought Steve Jobs was fighting from the other corner. They thought he was bringing diversity to their desktop, and to their world. Microsoft might make the Xbox, but there is a dissociative relationship between its games platform and the rest of the company - its Microsoft Office software that we all use everyday. The Xbox, with great titles like Halo, does not feel connected to the rest of the Microsoft brand. If the company could address that issue and bring together the disparate parts of the business it might have a chance, but it will be very hard. It simply doesn't have the kind of cheerleaders that Apple attracts who weirdly worship at the temple of Steve Jobs. Apple is also blessed, whatever you think of it and I am no fan, with impressive design. Design is cool, it transcends its geekdom. Besides what other computer firm gets a hidden message planted in a book and written in binary as Douglas Coupland did with an ode the Apple Lisa in Microserfs a book about Microsoft, which is portrayed as having a feudalistic structure, with Bill Gates as its lord and the employees as "Microserfs". * On page 104-105 there is an encoded binary message that reads, when decoded: "I heart LiSA Computers." More than that though, I mean Jerry Seinfeld? Hey I like the show as much as anyone else. he is as funny as hell, but he isn't cool. He is funny and safe. He is the kind of person that a large corporation chooses. A large corporation like Microsoft. I'm not sure they could choose anyone who could get the job done. Not event the A-Team. Follow me on Twitter
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I've just seen Visit London's Olympic ads created by RKCR/Y&R for the first time and have to say was impressed.
I must be coming over with Olympic spirit or something. Okay so the river Thames motif reminds me of the credits for 'Eastenders', but hey nice work all the same.
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The New York Times today has a piece on a web institution: CuteOverload.com (a slice of heaven on your desktop). It gets as many visitors a day as political gossip blog Wonkett not to mention many other sites.
The way the paper has it the site is an antidote to all the web crappiness and nastiness that's out there, but personally all I can see are a bunch of pictures of tiny ducklings and kittens. Oh and today its squirrels. In cars and on skateboards.
Who looks at this stuff? Who are the CuteOverloaders? Meg Frost the a 36-year-old design manager at Apple who started it for one and now presides over 88,000 unique visitors a day. That's a lot and she has plenty of advertisers, but has not given up the day job. She says the site “is like taking a happy pill." She's keen to stress though that it is “cute, but not cutesy" and says the site has an edge. I'm not so sure, but hey.
Frost gets more than 100 pics sent in a day. That will be people with time on their hands and cameras and animals. That is a lot of "ands". People sure love their small fury animals as fans of some of the other sites out there, also with an "edge", such as icanhascheezburger.com, stuffonmycat.com and Kittenwars.com will know. It is a veritible mini industry.
Who knows, maybe people just want a cute new screen saver everyday. And frankly, I can hardly talk as I have this pic on my desktop. Okay I did take, but really what's the difference.
After yesterday's post on PR cancer and Jade Goody, I feel I should make amends. Here is my amends. So go ahead and knock yourself out, get that cute picture on your desktop. You know you want to.
Absolutely no surprise in the report by consumer group Which? out today that says financial price comparison websites offer confusion rather than the best price.
Having looked at sites like Confused.com, Moneysupermarket.com and Gocompare.com I've experienced the wild variations in the cheapest deals and couldn't agree more. The times I have tried I ended up calling a couple of people directly and it has always been cheaper. I've had similar experiences with online shopping comparison websites such as Kelkoo. It is easier in the end to go direct.
And yet these comparison websites are big business. Only this morning we reported on another site Beatthatquote.com appointing Leagus Delaney London to handle its UK ad account. Throw in the accounts of these other businesses and it is no wonder people flock towards these places.
Confusing and annoying kind of sums it up. The conclusion drawn by Which? in its report would be amusing if it wasn't so spot on.
The joke is that because there are so many of these price comparison websites price comparison comparison site is needed. I'm sure someone is working on it somewhere. Cue next which report.
A blogger and online marketer Robert Gilbreath has outted himself as the one behind the highly entertaining Enfatico spoof that gave us Enfartico and grabbed some nice headlines last week.
Based in Austin, Texas, he blogs at Adomatica.com. "I built the website a week ago and 'leaked' its existence to a couple of Ad blogs. I used some fake/funny whois data and that is why the site is down. More later regarding why I did it and what I learned from this online gorilla effort...".
One to watch.
Wonder what the chaps at Enfatico thought? Lol.
I have to admit when I first saw the front page of the Sun today with the "Jade Has Cancer" headline, I immediately thought "that's bound to be PR cancer, not real cancer". This thought suggests one of two really quite disturbing things.
Firstly, this means I am so deeply cynical that I am probably far beyond normal help. Abandon hope all ye who enter, is definitely scrawled on my bathroom door.
Secondly, the symbiotic tabloid reality phenomenon has hit a new low in a desperate attention seeking bid by Jade Goody and her publicist Max Clifford. Jade Goody apparently has had previous scares, and had undergone hospital tests earlier this month after her third cancer scare. It followed "four mystery collapses".
Clearly these "collapses" common to many minor celebrities, girl band members, footballers and hangers on are what most of us would call being very drunk/benders/or "off your head".
But in tabloid speak these are always called "collapses". You know, as in "Sarah Harding collapsed last night outside the Met Bar". Sarah is apparently now all okay. Phew.
Anyway, I digress, despite having these tests, Jade Goody still flew to India (who does that?) and went on the Indian version of Big Brother, partly to show she's not a racist for her disgusting performance on last year’s Celebrity Big Brother.
She probably isn't a racist in the way that many working class people are not racist, they are simply deeply, small "c" conservative. It's called working class conservatism.
The flying, the stress, the cameras and the cancer and off she goes tottering along into her latest reality vortex. She has hardly been in the Indian version of Big Brother, called Big Boss, and she is called into the Diary Room and told she has cancer ushering her onto the front pages of the tabloids.
She is now flying home. "Jade had some tests recently, then she went off to India to appear in the Indian Big Brother," Clifford said. "Yesterday we got a call from her consultant to say she had cancer of the cervix and so she has to come back straight away."
Okay go on tell me I am beyond help. It's okay really.
Didn't that other fellow traveller, Kerry Katona, surely Jade Goody's soul sister, have a similar thing? Doesn't Max Clifford handle her PR as well?
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I read this on Popbitch today - they have launched a radio station. Not only that but one with a free tune, from the Blow Monekys. Does anyone remember them? I used to love the Blow Monkeys - okay I saw love, I mean like and I think I only ever had one album, but what a great album. The lead singer Dr Robert was pretty cool - not quite Lloyd Cole, but still.
Anyway, here's the details - go download: "Over the last few months we’ve been putting together a radio station online. It’s got about 20,000 tunes on it.And it works much like a pub jukebox. Select a track and we’ll probably play it. Or just listen in. "Anyway,it’s still a work in progress but you can try it out on radiopopbitch.com. "To celebrate, we have a free download single,a new acoustic version of a very nice 80s number from the Blow Monkeys, Diggin Your Scene. And Dr Robert has kindly recorded a radio show detailing his top 10 summer tunes:radiopopbitch.com/artists/blow-monkeys.
Just while I'm here, the Blow Monkeys are like so many late 80s bands, one brilliant album and them gone. Martin Stephenson and the Daintiees anyone?
A lot of people have had a good laugh at the name of the agency that WPP Group set up to handle its global Dell account, but some joker has taken it a step further with a spoof website Enfartico, which is amusingly close to the original.
WPP is reported to have gone through a string of names before settling on Enfatico (a musical reference in Latin languages) to handle the account, which is worth $4.5bn in billings over three years. It should have tried harder (well that's my opinion). I'm not the only one.
The name to me sounds like something it got from the bargain bin and to be fair the Enfatico website does say it's a "billion-dollar agency based on a 99-cent idea". I think they should have rummaged for a bit longer.
When the agency first launched, somebody working there posted on the Brand Republic forums to say that people at the agency also thought it sucked. Sadly, this person realised, clearly after waking up in the middle of the night as a light bulb materialised over their head, that posting such comments in an industry forum was possibly career suicide. (I'm guessing here.)
The spoof Enfartico site looks like almost a direct copy of the original, although its one client is down as "Dull".
The problem for Enfatico is its shockingly easy to take the piss out of the few words that it does carry on its site. So rather than this on the Enfatico homepage:
"Building a new global agency required a delicate touch. There were loud noises. Broken rules. Crushed silos. Blown-up preconceptions. In the end, we built something that's never existed before -- a hyper-responsive, truly integrated marketing agency designed from the ground up to create value for our clients. Welcome to Enfatico. We're creativity with vision, strategy with heart, analytics with superpowers. We're a collection of wildly diverse talents reinventing the client-agency model in a zero-legacy environment. In the pursuit of faster and better, we've yet to find a convention we didn't enjoy demolishing."
You get this:
"Building a new global agency required a strong stomach. There were loud noises. Broken wind. Crushed chairs. Blown-up burritos. In the end, we built something that's never existed before -- a hyper-bored, truly unimaginative marketing agency designed from the ground up to create crap for our clients. Welcome to Enfartico. We're creativity with smell, strategy with taste, analytics with super-duper-powers. We're a collection of wildly diverse crazies reinventing the client-agency model in a zero-decorum environment. In the pursuit of cheap and tasty, we've yet to find a taco stand we didn't enjoy eating at."
Rather than a description of its proprietary analytics, Enfatylitics (is it just me or does this sound like a disease, you know in a "No doc say it ain't so, not Enfatyliticis"), like this:
"A billion-dollar agency based on a 99-cent idea. To better allocate scarce marketing dollars, weve developed EnfatyliticsTM - our proprietary cross-channel analytics engine. Think of it as X-ray vision to see inside customer behaviors and the forces driving performance. Enfatylitics combines technology and insight to enable strategic, media and creative decisions in real time as the market changes. It also enables predictive modeling that helps drive smart decisions about where and how to invest."
You get this: "An agency based on a 99-cent idea. To horde marketing dollars being pulled from traditional media, we've developed Enfartylitics - our proprietary cross-channel analytics engine. Think of it as the ultimate in BS reporting technology. Enfartylitics combines Google Analytics, a 30-day trial of WebTrends and a couple of non-paid interns to create reports that answer none of the questions our clients would find useful. It's main goal is to help us look smart and convince our clients that we can handle their online marketing budgets."
You get the picture.I thought this had been created by spoof ad agency/blog the Tribble Agency, based in Austin Texas. Who promise "to consume companies ad budgets and deliver next to nothing by way of online ROI". But although they created another spoof, on this one. Nice one whoever did.
This story is really getting around, after posting I just saw its got coverage in the New York Post, which goes with the big bold headline WPP'S ENFATICO IS EMPHATICALLY TRASHED. Ouch.
Just as I had suspected there is no money in sending out millions of SMS updates for people for free. I never signed up for the Twitter SMS service and now they have pulled the plug on it after finally working out there is not a penny to be me made.
In a email to Twitter users one of the Twitter founders Biz Stone, wrote: "It pains us to take this measure. However, we need to avoid placing undue burden on our company and our service. Even with a limit of 250 messages received per week, it could cost Twitter about $1,000 per user, per year to send SMS outside of Canada, India, or the US. It makes more sense for us to establish fair billing arrangements with mobile operators than it does to pass these high fees on to our users."
It shouldn't hit the service all that much as there are other ways to get your Twitter updates when out of the office using a Blackberry or iPhone or whatever. The mobile service for Twitter is pretty stripped down, but I can live with that just fine. It has the advantage that you don't get bombarded with loads of SMS messages.
All Twitter has to do now is workout how to make money. Still nothing new on that front and talk of ads and other such commercial activity has gone quiet.
Follow me on Twitter .Here's the email from Stone below.
-----Original Message-----From: Biz Stone [mailto:news@twitter.com]Sent: 14 August 2008 02:38To: Philip SmithSubject: Changes To Twitter SMSHi,I'm sending you this note because you registered a mobile device to work with Twitter over our UK number. I wanted to let you know that we are making some changes to the way SMS works on Twitter. There is some good news and some bad news.I'll start with the bad news. Beginning today, Twitter is no longer delivering outbound SMS over our UK number. If you enjoy receiving updates from Twitter via +44 762 480 1423, we are recommending that you explore some suggested alternatives.Note: You will still be able to UPDATE over our UK number.Before I go into more detail, here's a bit of good news: Twitter will be introducing several new, local SMS numbers in countries throughout Europe in the coming weeks and months. These new numbers will make Twittering more accessible for you if you've been using SMS to send long-distance updates from outside the UK.Why are we making these changes?Mobile operators in most of the world charge users to send updates. When you send one message to Twitter and we send it to ten followers, you aren't charged ten times--that's because we've been footing the bill. When we launched our free SMS service to the world, we set the clock ticking. As the service grew in popularity, so too would the price.Our challenge during this window of time was to establish relationships with mobile operators around the world such that our SMS services could become sustainable from a cost perspective. We achieved this goal in Canada, India, and the United States. We can provide full incoming and outgoing SMS service without passing along operator fees in these countries.We took a risk hoping to bring more nations onboard and more mobile operators around to our way of thinking but we've arrived at a point where the responsible thing to do is slow our costs and take a different approach. Since you probably don't live in Canada, India, or the US, we recommend receiving your Twitter updates via one of the following methods.m.twitter.com works on browser-enabled phones m.slandr.net works on browser-enabled phones TwitterMail.com works on email-enabled phones Cellity [http://bit.ly/12bw4R] works on java-enabled phones TwitterBerry [http://bit.ly/MFAfJ] works on BlackBerry phones Twitterific [http://bit.ly/1WxjwQ] works on iPhonesTwitter SMS by The NumbersIt pains us to take this measure. However, we need to avoid placing undue burden on our company and our service. Even with a limit of 250 messages received per week, it could cost Twitter about $1,000 per user, per year to send SMS outside of Canada, India, or the US. It makes more sense for us to establish fair billing arrangements with mobile operators than it does to pass these high fees on to our users.Twitter will continue to negotiate with mobile operators in Europe, Asia, China, and The Americas to forge relationships that benefit all our users. Our goal is to provide full, two-way service with Twitter via SMS to every nation in a way that is sustainable from a cost perspective. Talks with mobile companies around the world continue. In the meantime, more local numbers for updating via SMS are on the way. We'll keep you posted.Thank you for your attention,Biz Stone, Co-founderTwitter, Inc.http://twitter.com/bizIf you don't want to receive news from Twitter click here:http://twitter.cmail2.com/u/486439/6d34rdy1/
The editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer has had a historical brainwave. Bizarrely, against all received wisdom and sense, he wants to publish in the paper first. Forget the web, he says, we need to save new content for the newspaper. Unsurprisingly this has sparked a huge barrage of criticism.
You have to feel for the editor in question, Michael Leary, after he announced what he called his "Inquirer first" policy.
He wasn't just talking about one or two stories, but a lot in a memo sent to staff:
"Colleagues - Beginning today, we are adopting an Inquirer first policy for our signature investigative reporting, enterprise, trend stories, news features, and reviews of all sorts. What that means is that we won't post those stories online until they're in print."
There seems a bit of an us versus them thing going on with the paper and the website philly.com, as Leary goes on in his memo to say "we'll cooperate with philly.com, as we do now, in preparing extensive online packages to accompany our enterprising work. But we'll make the decision to press the button on the online packages only when readers are able to pick up The Inquirer on their doorstep or on the newsstand".
There is worse to come. While many are madly embracing blogging and the opportunities it offers for breaking news, developing stories and so much more, Leary, who maybe has King Canute's play book, insists that now blogger journalists at the paper cannot go willy nilly blogging until they have consulted editors:
"For our bloggers, especially, this may require a bit of an adjustment. Some of you like to try out ideas that end up as subjects of stories or columns in print first. If in doubt, consult your editor. Or me or Chris Krewson".
Maybe his brain took a holiday. Maybe someone told him the web wasn't going to last. Who knows, but bloggers were pretty much united in their derision.
Jeff Jarvis could hardly contain himself and put it as starkly as possible. He did not hold fire:
"You are killing the paper. You might as well just burn the place down. You're setting a match to it. This is insane. Even the slowest, most curmudgeonly, most backward in your dying, suffering industry would not be this stupid anymore. They know that the internet is the present and the future and the paper is the past. Protecting the past is no strategy for the future. It is suicide. It is murder. You should be ashamed of yourselves."
Another blogger, Steve Outing, had this to say: "But this is an argument that has been decided (or so I thought), so it's disheartening to see a major newspaper go backward."
Who knows what Leary thinks of all of this. He has not issued another memo. What we do know is this: in 1983 the paper was selling more than 500,000, in 1999 that figure was a little over 400,000 copies. Today that figure is around 334,509.
It comes, of course against a back drop of a really difficult time in the US newspaper industry as thousands of jobs are lost and pagination is cut.
Co-incidentally it is about what the Guardian now sells. Can you imagine it suddenly turning back the clock? Of course not, nor anyone else for that matter.Follow me on Twitter
I've been reading Thinkbox's latest research into how many people are watching TV ads. I have to say that it the findings don't tally with my television viewing habits or those of my friends and family.
Let me say, for starters, I think television advertising is a wonderful thing. There are ads out there that are truly quite memorable, but in the last couple of years you can count them on one hand (Cadbury's Gorilla, Tesco, Stella, Skoda, Carling and VW - maybe one or two other campaigns). Beyond that some is okay, but a vast amount is totally average and forgettable.
As a consumer I try to watch as few ads as humanly possible. I don't think I'm alone. I'll say again that I appreciate good advertising (as I write about it), but I don't want to watch most of it and nor does anyone else.
So I can't help but take Thinkbox's figures today with a slight pinch of salt when it reports that the total number of commercial impacts, or ads seen, rose by 6% compared with the same period in 2007. I just don't buy it.
The best bit is that it claims in part that the increase in TV ad viewing is down, in part, to what it calls a 'creative renaissance' in UK advertising. OMFG. A creative renaissance? Is it just me or is the body that promotes TV advertising in the UK being a bit overly generous about the quality of TV advertising that the industry is producing?
I can see it now at a lunch in the Wolseley: "I think we're witnessing a creative renaissance. A wonderful time to be in advertising."
Sorry, maybe I'm just a twisted cynic, but I don't think I am.
The report also says that new technologies are boosting television hours and commercial impacts, and includes data from Sky's Skyview panel, with the eyebrow-raising claim that households watch 5% more ads on television when they get the Sky+ service.
Again, I just do not buy it. I have Sky + and the beauty of it is that I watch next to no ads. Okay I might notice a logo, but thinking of the one bit of TV, I watched last night I don't remember any of the brands that were advertising.
Last night I watched 'Dexter' which airs on FX late on Sunday night. I fast forwarded through each ad break at 30+ and didn't touch the sides. I don't remember a single commercial message, for which I am grateful. It makes it feel almost like I am watching a show on the BBC, for which I am also grateful.
Who are these people I wonder who own Sky + boxes and have taken it upon themselves to watch more advertising as I don't think I know any of them.
The one bit of research from Thinkbox with which I wholeheartedly agree is that our lovely British weather keeps us stuck in front of the television. Now if only we could organise a climate renaissance...
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