Search results matching tag 'media'

Goodbye Media Week, it was a comic anyway

1641923 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:48:00 GMT

Some media owners and agency leaders would be forgiven for greeting news of Media Week’s closure with initial relief on Tuesday.

It’s never easy being watched, let alone reported on and critiqued as well. And in the current climate, where every major launch or account win is offset by a deluge of loses and people moves, it must’ve at times been plain annoying.

Yet, once the dust settles and the world keeps turning, I suspect Media Week’s attentive gaze will be missed. Working in “meedja” is never going to hold the attention of the nationals for long, and no other business mag is devoted to it.

The commercial media business has had a committed advocate in Steve Barrett, who genuinely cares about the business and the people in it. I could only admire as he repeatedly pushed media launches and wins to the front of an issue, while relegating redundancies to online or a few pars at the back. The focus was always on the positive, while acknowledging the challenges facing the market.

Media Week’s focus on bite-sized exclusive news stories (in addition to great, industry-led features) and its bitchy back page, made it a weekly 20 minute romping read, a comic to its harshest critics perhaps, but it was the media industry’s own comic nonetheless.

(Naval gazing warning ahead)

But let’s be blunt: the writing’s been on the wall for Media Week for some time. The heady circulation days of 20,000 had long past, and once the worst advertising recession in living memory took hold, drastic action was required.

The phasing out of the controlled circ model for the subscription-only one introduced this summer was initially intended for media owners (because they’re loaded right now of course) but was soon extended to encompass agencies as well.

Many questioned the move, especially when the magazine’s content was still available for free online. But these were desperate times.

The good news is that most companies did indeed see a value in the magazine and initial orders, although low, were placed. I’m reliably informed these continued to rise right up until its demise.

But it all proved too little, too late for Haymarket management, and, while I haven’t been privy to the P&L sheets, I know enough to admit they couldn’t have been pretty.

Yet Media Week becoming an online-only proposition had been muted long-before any downturn. The magazine’s own founder Tim Brooks, now steering Guardian News & Media through the choppy waters, predicted the magazine, along with most other B2B titles, would close its print offering by 2010, and that was five years ago.

His reasoning, while surprisingly candid – especially made as it was in an interview with Media Week – reflected the growing groundswell of opinion. As the possibilities of the internet began to unfold in a post dotcom-bust world, B2B publishers were well aware of the need to reposition themselves.

I remember reporting on David Hill, president and chief executive of IDG, one of the largest B2B powerhouses in the world, when he announced “we’re not magazine publishers any more” in 2002. At the time it was near-revolutionary. He preferred instead the idea of being a media content provider, regardless of vehicle.

This sentiment of diversification soon became the newly-labelled B2B media’s mantra, and to be fair Media Week embraced it with open arms. With its website, two news bulletins a day, podcast and Media Week TV, in addition to its annual Media360 conference and those coveted awards, it has set the pace for Haymarket's Brand Media's portfolio. It will be interesting to see if these brand extensions continue to prosper without the magazine.

But there has always been an elephant in the room, whose presence now looms larger than ever: online ad revenues alone do not generate enough to sustain the costs of running a substantial news desk.

I learned this lesson first hand as I watched my colleagues ebb away at Centaur’s Mad.co.uk. That had been an exciting, dynamic news wire environment that broke its fair share of exclusives – not least Bauer’s decision to buy Emap (a move which in itself seemed to symbolise the seismic shifts taking place).

But falls in recruitment ads started to take its toll. It's interesting to note that during this time Brand Republic’s own dedicated news desk was also at its strongest (& biggest), and proved a daily nuisance to all of Haymarket’s magazine brands. But that elephant just wasn’t going away, and so in the last couple of years the power at both companies has shifted back towards their stable of print brands.

This week’s announcement at Haymarket signals another step-change, and for me it makes the most sense to-date. Keep a hub of news reporters feeding into both online and magazine brands, with the emphasis in print more firmly placed on features, comments and analysis.

I’ve no doubt it’ll be messy at first, but certainly more efficient – and who knows, it might just satisfy that elephant.

There are alternative, interesting business models emerging in the sector of course, not least PaidContent and Utalkmarketing. Both are fleet of foot and relatively inexpensive, but they also rely on other peoples good old fashioned, expensive journalism upon which to draw. The Guardian is also set to unveil a new regional blogging initiative too, an innovative move that just might go some way in redressing the balance of news coverage at a local level.

But for now, spare a thought for the one that didn’t make it, just three months before turning 25. I know in the grand scheme of closures in 2009 Media Week's demise is small fry, just last week GNM announced it was scrapping its Business & Media supplement after more than 30 years and making more than 100 redundancies to boot, but its passing is indicative and will leave a void all the same.

Now Mystic Tim, if you’ll just email me next week’s lottery numbers, and I’ll get my coat.

How to built up a media portfolio?

2643433 — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:30:23 GMT

Advertising students have ads in their portfolio, multimedia design students stuff like websites. But how do you built up a portfolio if you want to work in media planning and buying?

Is George Parker too big to fail?

822535 — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:26:00 GMT

Why am I not jumping up and down with joy when I read that Multi-zillionaire, Eric Schmidt, Google’s Chief Executive douchenozzle reported a 27% increase in profit in the third quarter, signaling what he referred to as the beginning of a recovery in the search-advertising market. He was also emphatic when stating that the worst of the economic downturn is over.

This on the same day that America’s biggest bank reports huge losses (no doubt requiring more of my tax dollars, cos it’s too bloody big to fail… Mmmm, as they happen to hold the mortgage on my house, I wonder if they’d help me out in the same way… Fat chance!) Also, GE reported quarterly financials that beat analysts expectations, even though profits fell 42% and revenue was down 20%… Which makes you wonder about these so called analysts.

Anyway, the point of this rant, isn’t necessarily political (Well, just a bit.) It’s that we have arrived at a situation where major corporations are underpinned their profitability by massive cost cutting and restructuring… Or in plain English, laying thousands of workers off. Ergo… No work… No money… No buying stuff… No advertising.

I don’t care how many times multi-billionaire CEO’s of advertising and marketing mega-companies tell us we have turned the corner with the light at the end of the tunnel showing us the green shoots… It’s bulls*h*i*t.

In the meantime, as my mortgage is too big to fail, please send donations to the George Parker Benevolent Fund. Ta very much!

President Sarkozy dans le mer*d!!!

822535 — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:45:00 GMT

In the truth is stranger than fiction dept, French satirical investigative journalism weekly “Le Canard Enchaîné,“ has outed holier-than-thou French president, Nicolas Sarkozy for violating copyright laws.

In a stunning display of hypocrisy, the presidential department of audiovisual services produced 400 unauthorized copies of the 52 minutes documentary “A visage découvert : Nicolas Sarkozy“. This while President Sarkozy, just happens to be the one pushing the HADOPI law, which would disconnect the Internet service of an alleged copyright pirate after three allegations of infringement.

This isn't the first time he's been connected to copyright violations, either. His party had to pay €30K for using a song at a political rally without authorization. If he were subject to his own law, which is in effect a three strikes and you’re out provision, President Sarkozy would be having his Internet disconnected the next time he pirates something.

I wonder if Carla has checked her CD collection recently?

TV eats digital dust

1713999 — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:27:00 GMT

What a week - if you work in digital media you would have had to have your head buried in the sand to have not heard about this news by about 9:05am on Wednesday this week, let along Friday afternoon. But just in case you missed it: the IAB's latest spend figures finally brought the news that we've all been waiting for - in H1 2009 online advertising spend overtook TV ad spend for the first time, (sort of) giving it a larger share of spend than any other media.

The actual figures then - online ad spend grew by 4.6% but, in the context of a market that saw an overall contraction of 16.6%, this translated into a whopping jump in market share, up from 18.7% for the same period in 2008 to 23.5%!

As soon as the news broke there was much discussion at LBi as to whether the counting was fair - should digital really be lumped all into one or should it be split into display, search, affiliates and beyond? To me this seemed a bit like the equivalent of saying DRTV, product placement and the sponsorship of X Factor should all be counted separately and I couldn't help but argue that just because tv is so one dimensional doesn't mean the rest of us deserve to get a raw deal when the money gets counted. When you look across the other categories though, it is obvious that by that logic digital still has a way to go if it wants to have the largest share of spend - in the IAB's number print is actually split into classified and display, despite the fact that no such distinction is made for digital.

At the end of the day of course none of this is particularly important - as an agency or advertiser if you are buying in traditional and digital media (I don't, thankfully!) it may mean you should reconsider the respective weighting of your team. What is important is how your channels work together and that's what advertisers need to be focused on, not which is biggest. The big takeaway though? That 16.6% decline in spend... We're still in a recession, folks, even if the sun shines on digital.

Is Purefold pure gold for brands or pure confusion?

2292853 — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:14:00 GMT

Coming soon from Free Scott, the new entertainment venture of Ridley Scott and his brother Tony, is a trippy new sci-fi entertainment project called Purefold that plans to let brand’s sponsor the content, and let the audience drive the plot line using social networking platforms.

Produced by Ag8, the concept will see participating brands “…take an alternative route to brand integration than traditional product placement and embrace invention within a narrative framework.” The project explores transmedia entertainment and will launch off of cross-platform channels. What? Purefold just might represent pure gold for brands looking to reach audiences in an extremely interactive format, but as of now, it has a lot of people baffled as to how it will work, what it will be, and if branded content is a good idea or not.

Discussions about Purefold on Friend Feed, the main resource planned to “harvest” story ideas, are already brewing about the question of what it means to be human, the driving theme behind the story that will be loosely based on Blade Runner. Ag8 is getting people to explore the idea of what “transhumanism” is in the Purefold discussion group on Friend Feed, but the project is often met with confusion, with participants trying to understand what is happening, and what role they will play. For insight as to what people think of Purefold, I’ve been asking around.

A few entertainment insiders were willing to go on the record to share what they think of the project and here is what they had to say: Jenifer Hanen, a blogger from Los Angeles, was wary of the idea of brand’s sponsoring content based on projects she has seen fail, but likes the DIY media side of the project and the idea to have the plot line driven by the audience. Listen to a conversation I had with Jen about Purefold here.

Film Production Designer Tema L. Staig, who is based in Los Angeles, first reacted to the idea of Purefold saying “The project sounds almost like virtual mad libs for content and advertising.” She also had this to say: "Universally, people have always needed to create visual and/or verbal stories and have a cathartic experience through those stories, either through the telling or the viewing. This is what makes us human. This is what connects us across the globe. Historically, unrelated cultures share similar myths and stories, suggesting that we all have a desire to explain the natural, unnatural, and supernatural. It’s our most primal of needs.

It will be interesting to see how Ag8 takes story telling to humanity’s next level. The idea of us, the greater audience being involved directly in the story is compelling in that it creates (in theory) even more empathy for the characters – those characters are a part of us. It’s our baby, even if just a little bit. How will it effect society? Will it bring us together around a global campfire? What new brainstorms might it spark? The possibilities are endless."

Here in London, I asked Mervyn Lyn, who is Vice President of Strategic Partnerships for Sony Music and often gets involved with branded content for the entertainment company, what he thinks of Purefold. At first reaction, he said it reminds him of MTV’s Dubplate Drama that turned to the audience to drive the story line, a show he enjoyed because it made the viewers feel part of the show. As for letting brand’s sponsor the content, he was cautionary about the idea because so often people are suspicious when a company attempts to sell them something through a new medium. “It depends how it is done and if it is trying to lean on branded content then they will have to strike a balance between the brand and the content so that each side doesn’t feel they are losing out,” he said.

They need to be very careful in making it driven by advertising because people see this as being railroaded and people will be cynically asking ‘what are they trying to sell me?’” The approach Purefold is using will be ground breaking in entertainment, according to producers, and it will be distributed according to the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license, giving both audiences, brands and platforms equal use rights through their participation.

According to Ag8’s Tom Himpe, Purefold will be broadcast across a variety of media platforms and spread virally across the Internet. “Most brands are aware of the fact that social media has changed the dynamics of the conversation, and they can't just spell out their message in the same way as with one-way advertising methods,” he said. “We are giving brands the opportunity to create stories over an extended period of time, in collaboration with their audiences and relying on top industry talent in both writing and directing. That's quite a unique package, especially in view of the fact that they can use the audiovisual assets freely across all their platforms and channels, from retail to mobile, from cinema to television.”

For now Ag8 is not revealing who the brand sponsors will be, but based on Friend Feed discussions the writers are already compiling what the story line will be, all set in the near future. The question many have is how brands will fit into the discussion, and for that, Himpe had this to say:

“There are two ways in which we are "guiding" the conversation. First of all, the brand is setting up the framework of the conversation, by defining one or multiple brand propositions they want to explore and picking a story line through which they want to explore that proposition. This sets up the framework within which we harvest online conversations.

So we're not just harvesting random conversations across the entire web, we set out specific parameters with the participating brands. Secondly, while we're listening to what the audience wants to see within the episodes, the ultimate creative control still resides with our editorial team and the Free Scott Directors, who are making creative sense of the audience's input. So there is another level of control there. However, it's very important for brands to understand that Purefold is about creating top quality entertainment, and not about extended the length of their tv commercials.

There's a different balance here, and sure, that's something they might have to get used to.”

Still confused, but ready to watch Purefold unfold,

-Lisa

I just need $100 million to start this new social network. Trust me, it’s going to be worth billions!

822535 — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:29:00 GMT

Did you happen to read the amazing interview in Monday’s Wall Street Journal with Jeff Horing, co-founder of Insight Venture Partners, a New York private-equity firm that was the lead investor in Twitter’s third and latest fund-raising round?

These are the geezers who just pumped in $100 million in funding to the 140 character wunderkindt, to give it a valuation of over ONE BILLION F******G DOLLARS. This for a company that to date, generates not one penny in revenue.

When asked about this amazing number, Horing said… “When we modeled it, we were looking at revenue somewhere between Google and Facebook. Google monetizes at $30 a user and Facebook is about $2 a user. If you look at Twitter’s user community and make some fairly conservative assumptions about revenue, we thought you could make a healthy exit at a multiple of a $1 billion.”

Hey, pardon me, but based on the Google and Facebook numbers, and the fact the Twitter's founders have made no bones about how at this stage, they don’t have a bloody clue how they’re going to start making money… For this guy to claim they are making conservative assumptions about revenue, smacks of either pig-headed bravado, or pig headed stupidity.

Remember, it was just three short years ago that Rupert Murdoch paid over half a billion dollars for MySpace, and all the pundit's said it was a steal? Now after massive layoffs, it’s leaking money like a sieve, and in all the happy chat about social media, it hardly ever gets mentioned.

In the Social-Sphere, three years is an eternity.

Something smells like Boo.Com to me.

September's here, it's time to quit

1641923 — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:07:00 GMT

‘The summer’s over, I’ve had time to think about it, I want to quit,’ appears to be the mantra being followed by many high-profile media execs this month.

Recession or not, September has lived up to its billing as the month which gets headhunters hearts racing.

Today’s news that Andy Brent, group brand marketing director at BSkyB, has parted company with the pay-TV broadcaster just one year into the job, has taken many by surprise.

His departure, confirmed in an email by Jeremy Darroch, BSkyB's chief executive, leaves a gapping hole in the management of the media and broadcasting group’s £100m plus marketing operations.

You can bet on Brent resurfacing somewhere soon.

But as unexpected as his exit is, it's far from unusual this month. Also on the move is News International’s chief marketing officer Jeremy Schwartz, who walked out less than nine months into the top marketing role.

Let's remember it took News Int almost six months to find Schwartz for its first overarching CMO role for The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun, and News of The World, so it seems safe to assume News Int's newly promoted chief executive Rebekah Brooks nee Wade was less than convinced.

The newspaper publisher is now expected to move back to its tried and tested model of having individual marketing directors responsible for each title.

Elsewhere, advertising veteran’s Daryl Fielding’s brief foray into newspapers ended abruptly on Monday, and Simon Davies is already primed to take over the role of commercial director of The Independent and The Independent on Sunday.

Despite best intentions, sometimes, things just don't work out - ask outgoing PPA chief executive Jonathan Shephard, who has attracted widespread criticism for his 18 month spell at the association for consumer and B2B magazines.

His decision to cull the association's events and marketing activities during what is arguably the most challenging time the magazine industry has ever faced, didn't go down too well with many publishing members.

And Shephard's own unique style of management and communication didn't appear to help his cause, with many vocally against him from the outset.

And we haven't even mentioned C4's Andy Duncan, News Int's Mike Anderson, Mindshare's Nick Waters or SMG's Jim Marshall.

All of which make for a heated return from the summer, and you get the sense it's just the beginning.

Re: RE: BBC to close Good Homes magazine

1932328 — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:39:53 GMT

Firstly Monty, BBCWW has a remit to deliver profit back to the BBC - which will presumably offset the license fee so clearly it does have something to do with license fee payers. Secondly, you can sell anything at the right market price. I'll give you £1 for the title.

Matter explained

758183 — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:26:00 GMT

Ours is an ambitious task–to create a new kind of advertising–based on the simple idea that giving (media-weary) consumers something is better than telling them something.

But, a simple concept for consumers turns into a complicated prospect for advertisers. My simple idea challenges quite a bit of accepted wisdom–which was kind of the point–and I spend quite a bit of time going through why it's 'not this' and 'not that'.

Advertising, like most industries, is bound by simplified wisdoms that serve as a shorthand so that everybody can get the job done and the ads out quickly. Deviate from this formula; challenge some of the wisdoms and you're in for a long night of arm-waving. What starts as a simple idea spawns a million questions that all take quite a bit of explaining.

I often joke that my life would be easier if I'd invented a TV channel and called it Dave. I wouldn't have to explain TV channels, measurements, pricing comparisons, consumer interaction–never mind the concept of television.

I've presented Matter enough times that I could do in my sleep (and maybe I do). The physical nature of it creates some logistical challenges, so it seemed like a good idea to make a film of my explanation. Seeing the result, it was still a shock to learn quite how much it takes to fully explain–so much so that we had to split into three films.

Now I'm wondering whether I make it over-complicated, so it would be interesting to hear what you all think.