At the moment with advertising money under pressure and web sites trying to find alternative methods of achieving profits plenty are looking at putting all or some of their content behind a pay wall. In theory this may be a viable route for some but unfortunately for the countries major newspapers it may speed the impending doom for some of them based on some research by Harris Interactive. They have found only 5% of people surveyed would pay to continue reading on their favourite news site with the most common behaviour to find an alternative free resource.

This got me thinking about which websites I would actually be willing to pay to access myself and the answer is not many. We already pay for the BBC in a round about way and the only other sites I would consider paying for are those which I have a particular affinity for such as nufc.com and aintitcool.com

Entertainment Weekly in the US is doing something a little snazzy with it’s latest issue by having a video ad in it!

Is this the begining of magazines shifting to a more dynamic creative media solution I wonder?

The ad take the form of an insert so opportunities are limited, plus the production must be eye wateringly expensive but in response to the right strategy for the right client it could be just the ticket.

I wonder which UK publication will be the first to give this a whirl?

So official product placement is soon to with us.. Any thoughts on what the impact will be? Will the investment lead to better quality programming and therefore help lift overall TV spend? Or do we think we will see a downturn in standard spot advertising as advertisers move towards more contextual advertising? Or, do we think that most advertisers will be sceptical about the returns/value of such placement?

Taylor Swift, Beyonce Knowles, Kanye West.  Three names that between them have over 60m search results on Google.  Each a successful artist in their own right, and all the centre of the latest celebrity controversy to plaster tabloids, and the internet, across the country.   Of course I am referring to MTV’s VMA awards incident that has caused much debate (or not) among the Maxus office.

This led me to think about our general fascination with celebrity and specifically what we find so appealing with it.  With this in mind I’d like to pose the following question:

If you could work with any one person or celebrity for the remainder of your life (living or dead, fictional or non-fictional) who would it be?

Gcse and a level time has rolled around again and- bring out the trumpets- its the best results ever. This obviously provokes the annual debate. Are the kids of today the cleverest ever or are exams getting easier?

I’m sure some of you will disagree… But its got to be option2 for me. Education is so geared towards exam results that you can be pretty much told what the questions are going to be and, if your enterprising witha good memory, learn a response by heart to trot out in the exam. That’s all very well and good for nailing that a* but how practically useful is that type of learning in the real world and isn’t there some relevant skills that should be taught that would equip kids for the rest of their life?
E.g. In maths- why don’t they teach you about getting a mortgage and balancing debt rather than algebra?

I’m not belittling the hard work that goes into achieving good exam results, it just doesn’t seem the best way to advance the race.

Just a thought. Now where’s that gordon brown?