BMB-Cheil deal follows a growing trend

1699071 — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 11:54:00 GMT

The reported acquisition of a 49% minority shareholding in Beattie McGuinness Bungay by publicly listed South Korean marketing group Cheil Communications follows a growing trend, although the eventually intention is clearly to progress towards 100% ownership.

Last year WPP bought just under 50% of CHI & Partners without any assumption that its stake would be increased, following the precedent set by the Leo Burnett-BBH deal some years ago. Earlier Hakuhodo had done something similar with Mustoes, although it reduced its stake in 2007 after the agency's fortunes declined.

Other acquirers have simply bought 100% control in a succession of tranches over time. For example, Next Fifteen Communications Group acquired Lexis in stages, starting with a 25% stake. Cossette Communication Group has bought majority stakes in Miles Calcraft and Dare Digital, to be followed by further tranches later.

The terms of the BMB deal have not been disclosed but a typical valuation of the entire BMB agency would have been approaching £10 million earlier this year, putting a price tag of around £5 million on the initial shareholding, assuming the terms of the deal do not justify any discount for a minority stake. BMB made a pre-tax profit of £1.1 million in 2007, but that was helped by an above-average profit margin of 19.2% which may not be maintainable.

Cheil Communications made a post-tax profit of £31.5 million in 2007 (down on 2006) and looks set to report further growth in 2008.

Carling don't get it and it annoys me!

2228399 — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 06:54:00 GMT

A mate of mine sent me a mail about the new iPint campaign from Carling. If you haven't seen it, iPint is a v.cool iPhone app which basically pours you a virtual pint of Carling. It's one of those great ideas that is naturally viral - with people naturally talking about it + mailing each other about it. Congratulations Carling and Beattie McGuinness Bungay - the agency that created it.

Congratulations to a point. Although the creative concept is great, Carling and BMB just don't seem to understand how to execute and manage viral campaigns. Two main things annoy me about the execution of this campaign:

1) The content isn't as shareable as it should be: for example, the video demo of iPint is embeded in the Carling.com website without any easy way to share it, and embed it in blogs etc. as it uses an old school proprietary video player and not a video sharing platform like YouTube.

2) Carling are stopping users from sharing their content: I only know this as when I Googled "iPint" and it came up with a clip on YouTube with the following description: " iPint game for iPod touch showing the accelerometer to simulate a pint of beer!Keeps my daughter entertained!". Of course I thought this was pure viral gold-dust for the brand, so immediately clicked the link to then only find out that it had been pulled down from YouTube by Carling for being copyrighted material.

It was at this point that my opinion of Carling and BMB turned from viral geniuses to viral dumbasses. Why on earth would Carling want to stop brand advocates from sharing their branded viral content with friends on YouTube?

Carling and BMB got so close to creating viral nirvana, but seem to have shot themselves in the foot at the last hurdle. So near, yet so far . . .

Search results matching tag 'Beattie McGuinness Bungay'

BMB-Cheil deal follows a growing trend

Carling don't get it and it annoys me!