Media Week

Most new ideas seem to have some sort of online on interactive element nowadays to try and bring brands closer to their consumers. It's nice to see a real world, off-line example, pop up this morning.

Today the first of 60,000 bottles of free water were handed out to London commuters at ten tube and rail stations across London. All branded with Three's Mobile Broadband the campaign's co-ordinated by new water-based advertising start-up Sauce Connections.

According to Mintel consumers keep bottles with them for 50 minutes, the perfect amount of time to scan through a brands' bottle-based copy. Also Sauce say the water's from the UK, the bottles are 100% recycled, carbon off-set and they even donate money for well-building too. With all that I guess it would be rude to say no to one!

News on Brand Republic that Radio 4's brought back a media programme (after, er, resting The Message). It's called The Media Show and they're broadcasting it at the media industry-friendly time of, er, 1.30pm on a Wednesday. It's sandwiched neatly between the World at One and The Archers, but i'm sure with better storylines and less farms. Thankfully a podcast and listen-again will mean some of us can actually it hear it.

Steve Hewlett's presenting and i'm assuming it's media pundit Steve Hewland rather than puppet-master Steve Hewlett. Which is a shame as some furry media commentators might make all the stories a bit more interesting. Steve previously presented, er, The Message, the previous media show on Radio 4. Now i'm sure Steve's alright, but in this ever-changing, multi-media, 360 world is there no one else who could present a show about the media? Anywhere?

At the Radio Festival it was hard not to see the glee the GMG Johns felt about having signed Chris Tarrant to present a new Saturday morning show across its Real/Century and Smooth networks. I'm sure they're even more chuffed that it turns out that they won't have to pay CT themselves as apparently, according to the great man himself, he's being paid by Nissan, whilst GMG collect the other ad money. 

CT also says that he's going to have complete editorial control of the show (which means some poor GMG staffer will be hoping that he doesn't breach the formats of the two differently formatted networks he's broadcasting to), but what about Nissan - what do they get from the programme and the host?

It's going to be an interesting to see how this content/advertising model, apparently brought in from the states, fares in the UK when the show launches later this month. Is it the beginning of more talent signing exclusive deals with brands and looking for broadcast partners? Who's next?