One more gorrila(less) viral

The International Fund for Animal Welfare has created a Gorilla viral all of its own with 'Gorilla, missing in action".

There have been a number of Gorrila spoof ads (okay well there was the Wonderbra model drummer viral which people seemed to really like for some reason), but although this one from the IFAW is a bit after the fact it makes its point well enough courtesy of Cadbury's classic chocolate ad. The viral has gone online today to highlight the plight of the world's rapidly disappearing endangered species from tigers, elephants, whales, turtles to gorillas.

 

The 40 second pro-bono spot was created by Magnus Thorne and Paul Turner at Rapp London, and was directed by Harry Dwyer and produced by James Sorton through the production company 2am.

 

Where next for social media as adspend shrinks

Despite social media being the biggest buzz topic this year, 2009 is not going to be easy. Yet another study says the amount of advertising revenue these sites were expected to pull in is going to sink.

Emarketer says the social media phenomenon will continue to grow, but not the revenues being generated. It is almost a cause and effect scenario. People have been commenting all year that sites like Facebook and Twitter are exciting and offer new opportunities, but do not pull in the revenues.

EMarketer has revised its projections for US social network ad spending down for 2008 from $1.4bn to $1.2bn.

But its 2009 downward revision is much greater, from $1.8bn to $1.3bn - barely any increase on 2008.

The two factors that have caused this to happen are slower-than-expected revenue growth at MySpace (still the big daddy in the US) and the recession. eMarketer has revised its forecast for MySpace and Facebook down. It had previously predicted that MySpace would bring in $755m in US adspending in 2008, but it has cut that by a whopping 22.5% to $585m. It has opted for a similar large cut at Facebook saying it will bring in 20.8% less than thought - $210m instead of $265m.

It is really difficult to say what impact this will have on marketers. Experimentation in marketing can often be the first casualty when budgets are cut. Clearly this is even more correct when you have an area of the digital space such as social media that has yet to prove itself in a commercial sense.

That said eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson is warning marketers not to write off social networks completely.

"In a difficult economy it is usually easier to market to an existing customer than to acquire a new one. With a relatively small investment, companies can use social networks to cultivate relationships with customers who have already raised their hand and expressed interest in their brand or product."

The eMarketer report follows one last month by IDC (U.S. Consumer Online Attitudes Survey Results Part III), that was critical of marketers' efforts in social media (it called them "stillborn"). Harsh, but there are plenty of stillborn efforts out there that have simply been abandoned, such as blogs that were started but failed to get traction and communities that were launched but did not have any errr community?

In a way the problem is at both ends of the equation. Marketers are still not totally sure what they are doing or are going to do or how they are going to successfully work with these sites (or exploit the medium themselves) and social networking sites have yet to reach their destination in terms of defining themselves: what they are and what they offer.

Maybe it does come back to the debate about how you can monetize someone's chitchat and social life? And, ahem, then there is the fact that not enough people click on ads.

That was the message recently from Procter & Gamble's head of marketing, Ted McConnell, who said companies should not advertise on Facebook, saying social networks have no right to monetise their customer's conversations and that it is "arrogant" to monetise social networking platforms.

Well tell Facebook and MySpace about it - they have enormous amounts of advertising inventory but have had a hard time selling it.

In its report IDC said the way forward for social networking sites was to become more like portals, which suggests services like Facebook need to bolt on additional attractions.

Does that mean services like Twitter? Twitter spurned it once, but a deal could still be done.

At this rate Facebook could snap up what's left of Yahoo! and bolt its entire service on to a larger portal. There is also talk of Facebook launching some kind of TV channel. MySpace with its music offering is well on the way to doing something similar in owning that space.

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The IWF does a 180

After a day of fevered speculation the Internet Watch Foundation having gone off the deep end and banned a 30 year old art house album cover image has now backtracked and decided that "in light of the length of time the image has existed and its wide availability, the decision has been taken to remove this webpage from our list".
 
Did someone say knee-jerk reaction? Last week no one was really aware of the IWF and this week we know that it is not really fit for the purpose or at least its systems and procedures needs some serious looking at.

 
The correct course of action should have been for the complaint to be made public and then debated rather than jumping to an immediate ban and getting people worked up over issues of censorship.

Instead the IWF banned the image along with access to editing Wikipedia articles for many UK users and there was even talk of taking Amazon down for Christmas all because someone hit the really large button on the IWF site and reported the 1976 album 'Virgin Killer' from hairy German metalers the Scorpions, which contained the image of a naked young girl.

Clearly it is a serious business and the IWF deals with issues of illegal online child sexual abuse reports and action needs to be swift, but it also needs to be correct as well. It made a bad and very public call.

It even seems to be admitting it made something of an error in its statement: "Any further reported instances of this image which are hosted abroad, will not be added to the list. Any further reported instances of this image which are hosted in the UK will be assessed in line with IWF procedures.
 
"IWF’s overriding objective is to minimise the availability of indecent images of children on the internet, however, on this occasion our efforts have had the opposite effect. We regret the unintended consequences for Wikipedia and its users. Wikipedia have been informed of the outcome of this procedure and IWF Board’s subsequent decision."

The IWF should look to the Advertising Standards Authority for some advice on how to conduct itself. The ASA investigates ads, weighs it all up before making a considered judgement. I think that body has a great track record of making the right call. Look at some of today's rulings from that body such as the ad for the children's charity Barnado's featuring repeated scenes of violence. That ad escaped a ban by the advertising watchdog despite almost 500 complaints. Clearly a lot of people wanted to see that banned, but the ASA ruled in the advertiser's favour. It was the right decision and that's all in a days work for the ASA and the industry it serves.

The IWF has a potentially bigger remit and needs to be act and be run appropriately, which is something the industry it serves needs to look at. Hopefully it will learn something from this shambles and make a better call next time. 

The IWF, Wiki, German metal, pre-pubescent art and Amazon

I'm barely aware of the Internet Watch Foundation. I guess this applies to many people, but now with its banning of a page on Wikipedia and a potential ban on Amazon we've all heard of it.

Have you seen the image o the cover of the Scorpions' 1976 album 'Virgin Killer'? When I first looked at it, and before I knew what it was or where it was from, I thought wow that looks exactly like some 70s art house picture.

I didn't actually know it was from the 1970s and has been in the public domain for errr thirty plus years. The image is at the end of this post - so if you are easily offended stop right here.

It's been in books, libraries and on the internet for years until December 2008 when someone complained to the IWF, which then blocked the image and in the process stopped people accessing Wiki articles.

The IWF in some ludicrous power grab has also been talking about blocking Amazon from UK users as well as the online retailer sells the album.

I can't get hold of anyone at the IWF, but the Amazon story is being reported in various places. Maybe they are out looking for online copies of Lolita (that film poster on Wiki is a bit racy) after some helpful member of the public pointed out that you can access this book online.

I exaggerate. At least I think I do. We can debate this, but apparently not the IWF which although is a non-governmental EU funded-body (something the EU does that the Daily Mail can support? Can't be good) has massive power to affect 95% of UK internet users.

I'm not even sure who they are having looked at the IWF website. It describes itself as "the UK's internet 'hotline' for the public and IT professionals to report potentially illegal online content within our remit".

I'm not sure what its remit is either. It seems to be all pervading. It says it works in "partnership with the online industry, law enforcement, government, the education sector, charities, international partners and the public to minimise the availability of this content, specifically, child sexual abuse content hosted anywhere in the world and criminally obscene and incitement to racial hatred content hosted in the UK".

I'm not sure what an arty album cover of an admittedly naked girl has got to do with this as clearly it does not relate to child sexual abuse or what this has got to do with Amazon, which sells CDs and DVDs and last I checked in is not in the kids porn business.

That it can even consider such a move without any kind of consultation suggests to me we have a serious problem with over zealous censors that needs to be tackled tout suite.

I haven't done my Christmas shopping yet and I plan to use Amazon. I will not be buying any German metal (even though the offending cover has been replaced with a picture of the hairy rockers themselves).

What is most concerning about this issue is that an apparent piece of art has sparked such a unilateral response suggesting a complete lack of judgement on the part of the IWF.

This organisation needs to be reined in quickly before it does any serious harm.

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Daily Mail and BBC Local conspiracy theory

It isn't like the Daily Mail needs an excuse to bash the BBC, but was there more at play in the recent "Sachsgate" affair than meets the eye? And did it cost the corporation its much vaunted BBC Local web service?

It was on Popbitch today, but it is I think worth repeating in more detail. The Daily Mail hit the BBC hard over the scandal that saw Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand leaving a regrettable message on the answer phone of the 'Fawlty Towers' actor relating to his grand daughter Georgina Baillie.

In end the Daily Mail managed to get as many as 20,000 people to complain about the Radio 2 prank that went awry.  It ran a number of stories, cried foul about falling public standards and called for heads to roll. It scored an equally regrettable victory over the BBC claiming a number of scalps including Radio 2 controller Lesley Douglas as well, cost Brand his job at the station and led to Ross being suspended from his chat show.

At the same time as that was going on the BBC Trust was also making up its mind before going on to reject the corporation's plan to invest up to £68m in a web-based local video service across the UK. Apparently the service, which would have employed 400, was of a very high standard with many saying how how good it was.

However, the Trust said it would not improve services enough "to justify either the investment of licence fee funds or the negative impact on commercial media".

The Trust reached its decision after conducting a public value test and regional newspaper groups were some of the biggest critics of the proposed service as they were afraid of being blown out of the water by the BBC leading to a loss of staff and revenues.

The Daily Mail and General Trust, which owns the Daily Mail is also a major UK publisher of regional newspapers via its Northcliffe Media subsidiary, which is behind such titles as Nottingham Post, Bristol Evening Post and the Leicester Mercury. Northcliffe is already struggling and DMGT recently announced "significant" cuts at Northcliffe Media as revenues at the regional outfit tumbled 28% year on year in October.

So did the Daily Mail go for broke on Sachsgate knowing that it would hurt the BBC when it came to a decision on BBC Local?

Or is that simply too much of a reach? Maybe it was just as the Trust put it and that BBC Local could not justify either the investment of licence fee funds or the negative impact on commercial rivals and nothing else, but hey everyone loves a good conspiracy story.

It's worth noting what is happening to local media. It is being hit hard. ITV is cutting regional output and regional newspapers are cutting staff left, right and centre. BBC Local could have been the best thing that happened to local news services in years.

GroupM revises web ad revenue down sharply in 2009

WPP's GroupM has reduced its forecast for headline UK internet ad growth dramatically from 20% to 4% for 2009. That's huge almost too huge.

It does temper this by saying that some of the fall is due to a maturing internet market and not all is downturn related, but still. The radical predictions for next year compare to 27% in its May forecast to 22% in 2008.

The report says that demand for paid search and online display is still good, but paid search growth has been slowing markedly across 2008 and display is subject to price deflation as more activity becomes cost-per-action or 'performance'-based. That's as it should be, CPA and CPP are how things should be done.

Better news GroupM says is that premium display inventory, which includes pre-roll, high-quality publishers and portals; cost-per-thousand-based rather than cost-per-action, remains in strong health, but advertiser arbitrage between per-thousand and per-action chains their respective pricing.

Premium display is typically used by larger brand advertisers, which means they are maintaining high profile usage campaigns and not cutting back online as some other reports have suggested.

GroupM does not see any sudden recovery (saying only it remains possible) because it says consumer retrenchment is simply too deep to make this likely in 2009.

However, like Sir Martin Sorrell (I recently blogged about how he expected a bounce back sooner, rather than later), GroupM does see some conditions are already improving. It points to the monetary and fiscal taps are at least open (by the US government and its $700bn bailout plan), even if the flow is sluggish.

Overall online and offline, GroupM suggests that only the US is likely to shed more ad dollars than the UK, which is going to be hard hit (as if we haven't already seen this in the tsunami of media job cuts).

"This has been a classic, hard-to-predict 'trend reversal' from our own springtime hopes of 3% UK media growth next year, with sentiment falling fastest alongside the grim September/October newsflow. Every medium is affected, and indeed nearly every country including the fast-growing BRIC/Next 11 as our forthcoming global forecast will show."

New Yorker publishes second "outrageous" Obama cover

Having depicted Barack Obama and his wife Michelle as terrorists back in July the New Yorker has done it again with another cover that is less innocent than it looks.

To you or I it might look like the New Yorker is, somewhat after the fact, lampooning Obama's the first press conference after the US presidential election when he was questioned in all seriousness by journalists about what kind of dog he would be owning when in the White House. All presidents have to have dogs. I think it has something to do with those Rose Garden photo opportunities.

In all seriousness he told reporters: "We have two criteria that need to be reconciled. One is that Malia is allergic, so it has to be hypoallergenic. But obviously, a lot of shelter dogs are mutts like me," said Obama, "So whether we're going to be able to balance those two thing, I think, is a pressing issue on the Obama household."

If you haven't seen it, it's worth a look.





But at least one blogger has decoded this mutt of a cover by the same artist Barry Blitt, who did Obama and AK-47 carrying Michelle Barack, and revealed what is hidden beneath. Life isn't all about cute dogs apparently. Huh.

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Battlestar Galactica goes constructivist with recruitment posters

The final half season of Battlestar Galactica is going to air on Sky1 in the new year and they've produced these promotional posters done in the style of Soviet Constructivism of the 1930s.

I think they're very cool and am almost tempted to buy them as the five set posters are on sale at Amazon.com for $29.95. Okay, I won't as clearly that would be too geeky for words, but I am stupidly excited by imminent'ish arrival of this televisual event that will bring a conclusion to one of the best bits of TV in recent years.

There are lots of spoilers around here and there for the final episodes (but don't click unless you want to ruin the it all - you've been warned) after makers the Sci-Fi Channel split the final series in half having aired the first ten episodes in the first part of this year. All those months to wait to find out how it ends.

There are  lots of spoilers out there giving away details of who the final Cylon model is and what happens to the rag tag fleet having reached earth and found it a nuclear wasteland. 

If you haven't already seen it here's the trailer for Battlestar Galactica 4.5.

Daily Mirror as a free sheet?

Piers Morgan has a plan for the survival of the Daily Mirror: make it a freesheet.

Writing in the British Journalism Review Morgan says that every national newspaper will be free within 10 years and that the Daily Mirror should be the first.

Sounds radical doesn't it? But with the Daily Mirror's sales continuing to steadily fall away (1.42m in October down 1.48% for the month) it could happen.

Former Mirror editor Morgan argues that Trinity Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey needs to make the radical decision before The Sun beats it to the punch.

"I would make the Daily Mirror free tomorrow, because I don't see any future for it otherwise. If The Sun were to go free tomorrow it would kill the Mirror. It's a horrific position to be in and I'm sure that if Sly Bailey could find a buyer at the right price she'd sell the national titles like a shot."

I'm pretty sure that Bailey has more than a little time to play with. 1.42m is still a big pile of newspapers and the Sun won't be going free any time soon.

It seems likely if any paper will be first to go free it will be the Evening Standard, which continues to face a costly battle against the London freesheet newspapers.

The Evening Standard's circulation might have jumped above 300,000 for the first time in four months in October, but bulks make up more than 40% of its circulation.

Just how much longer can Associated continue to poor money into producing two London evening newspapers? It has already shed staff and stories are shared with London Lite as it battles News International's Thelondonpaper.

As media jobs are cut left right and centre, advertising dries up, it seems highly unlikely that London can continue to sustain three evening newspapers.

I'm convinced that the next seismic shift in British newspapers will come in that market (unless the Independent suddenly gets sold by Independent News & Media to the Daily Mail & General Trust).

Hat tip Press Gazette

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