I’ve been watching a bit too much TV recently. I get home exhausted, give a cheery wave to my wife, kick off the shoes and settle in to the telly. No recordable TV for me, so it’s a diet of whatever the channels choose to serve up. It’s an old school, passive experience punctuated by lazy flicking up and down the Freeview channel list – glorious, mindless stuff. This is TV as it’s meant to be consumed – absorbed, not chosen. I watch a lot of TV ads – and though I love it, something’s been bothering me.

There is a terrifying chart from TGI that shows how many people now find TV ads more annoying, versus 15 years ago. And it shows that Britain has steadily fallen out of love with TV advertising in a very short period of time – 40% of us now profess to finding them annoying. There are a number of mitigating factors here: TV on demand services mean that consumers don’t need to see as much advertising as they used to, and there has been a proliferation of commercialisation generally in our culture. Consumers are receiving more and more commercial messages. But I wonder if there is more to it than that.. What if TV advertising really IS getting more annoying?

Everyone remembers the glory days when most ads had a decent punchline to keep us entertained. Now many of them seem to be deliberately set up to annoy me. And it must be working, because I see more and more of them – I swear if I see that cheeky chappy from the Jobsite ad one more time I’ll throttle him. My own father  started to sing “Go Compare!” when I saw him at last week.The people who make these ads aren’t stupid, so I can only assume that these ads are helping achieve business objectives, regardless of how they tear families apart.

As an enlightened marketer I believe in building relationships between brands and consumers, but there is something refreshingly anarchic about a marketing strategy built around the platform GET everyone TO buy brand x BY making them seethingly annoyed with our communications; and since the creatives are at it – why not us media planners?

It’s actually already begun: Crazy Frog pioneered the 30 OTS optimised TV plan, and pionerring media owners are catching onto the opportunity. Last year’s annoying media gold award goes went to ITV, who forged a neat partnership with Tic Tacs whereby they cut away from their live FA Cup broadcast stream to show a minty ad while Everton scored the only goal of the match. It’s a start. I’m hoping we can all raise the bar in 2010.

Jaydiohead Ignorant Swan Medley from SUBVOYANT on Vimeo.

This week saw the launch of the new-look Times and Sunday Times websites. This marks the first time that the newspaper brands have had separate sites.
They will be accessible for registered users for an introductory four-week period before the paywall comes into effect. Access to the digital service will be included in the seven-day subscriptions of print customers, however, in a month’s time will cost non-subscribers £1 a day or £2 per week.
Search engines will not be able to display articles as the sites will only display their respective homepages to search engines.
News International has not disclosed specific subscriber targets, though it is undoubtedly prepared for a major drop in user numbers of its websites.

Those that choose to enjoy the new-improved sites can make their payment by direct debit and the £2-a-week charge will auto-renew, which is not the case for the daily charge.

I think they’ve done a great job and that the sign looks great- but is it great enough for £104 a year?

Do Wenlock and Mandeville get you excited about Sport?
This week saw London 2012 launch their Mascots Wenlock and Mandeville.
The two Mascots, Wenlock for the Olympics and Mandeville for the Paralympics, represent two drops of molten steel spilt in the making of the last steel girder used in the Olympic Stadium. In the animated video which accompanies the mascots and will form part of a series, a grandfather, George, picks up the two drops of steel on his last day at the Bolton foundry before he retires. Once home, he fashions the steel into the two figures and gives them to his grandchildren. Brought to life by a rainbow, they turn somersaults for the children before disappearing off on the road to London.
Their design is full of symbology including a headlight to represent the light of a black cab, the five Olympic rings worn as wristbands, their one eye as a camera lense and the colours gold, silver and bronze to reflect the medals. Their names are also meaningfully chosen. Much Wenlock in Shropshire is considered by many as the birthplace of the modern Olympics and Stoke Mandeville’s famous spinal injuries unit was where the Paralympic movement began.
The designs are also flexible, and the charcters can be customised into recognisable costumes and even celebrity identities. The characters also have digital potential and will tweet, have a presence on facebook and tap into the London Education Project where pupils will be able to lobby for them to visit their school in person.
It’s clear that a lot of thought and hard work went into the development of the mascots, however, they have met with much criticism over the last week from the press and the public.
Their task, however, is to resonate with children and inspire a generation to get involved in sport. They are also intended to persuade parents to contribute the £15 million the mascots are expected to raise in merchandising revenue. With merchandise going on sale in July to mark two years to the London 2012 opening ceremony- perhaps this will be the first indication of whether or not the design is a success?

Video sharing website, YouTube, is celebrating its 5th anniversary; Google acquired the site in 2006 in a deal worth $1.65 billion. The site is now boasting an impressive two billion views per day. Five years ago Chad Hurley, the site’s co-founder and chief executive, said he had pinned his hopes for YouTube on the basic premise that “everyone in the back of their mind wants to be a star”.

For the five year anniversary, YouTube have launched their, “YouTube Five Year” channel, it features the “My YouTube Story” project, which is a series of videos about individual experiences on how YouTube has had an impact on their lives. Comedian and TV host Conan O’Brien and American journalist Katie Couric are among those selected to curate the project.

My personal top five videos are:
1) Charlie bit my finger – again!
2) The sneezing baby panda
3) Battle at Kruger
4) Evolution of Dance
5) Diet Coke + Mentos

Please contribute your favourite videos, there may be some I haven’t seen and my top five could change!

If you were- you were among the nearly 10 million viewers who tuned into BBC One, ITV1, Sky News and Channel 4 between 10pm- 12am on 6th May. So, who chose to watch it where? According to recent figures, BBC One drew in the largest number of viewers with an average of 5.3m tuning in between 10pm-12am. This equates to nearly 29% share of audience. Channel Four had an average of 1.9m viewers in the same time period beating both Sky and ITV1. Their satirical take on the results called ‘Channel 4’s Alternative Election’ hosted by Jimmy Carr and David Mitchell was most popular with a younger demographic and drew in the highest proportion of 16-34s. ITV1 had an average of 1.7m viewers and Sky followed with an average of 550,000.

Attracting the audience:

A number of media owners staged experiential stunts in a bid to court viewers.
The BBC projected graphics onto Big Ben and Sky Broadcast onto Battersea Power Station. The Daily Mirror projected an image of The Mirror Chicken onto the Houses of parliament, while Channel 4 teamed up with Embrace media to use a 425,000 square foot helicopter banner to promote their ‘Alternative Election’ show.

With the global economic downturn, those in search of their dream jobs have had to think outside the box in order to get noticed – and get a foot in the door!
Most of you will have read about David Rowe. He was the history graduate, who spent five days last year as a human sandwich board roaming the streets of London proclaiming his availability for work as well as his willingness to work his first month for free. After generating much media attention and interest from various employers he was hired by JC Decaux.

That was a brilliant example of confidence and determination which paid dividends. But he’s already done it. So what next? Enter Alec Brownstein of New York. Working as a Copywriter and dreaming of a career with one of the top agencies in NY, he created an online ad campaign for only $6 which has proved to be a masterclass in online marketing! He created a campaign, in which, every time Gerry Graf, Tony Granger, David Droga, Ian Reichenthal and Scott Victrone Googled themselves, an ad would appear which read: “Googling yourself is a lot of fun. Hiring me is fun too.” He ended up being interviewed by four of the advertising chiefs and was offered a post by Reichenthal and Victrone of Y&R New York. Genius!

With the election underway, and lots of conflicting views on the role of social media in politics we thought we’d share the Maxus view!
Following on from Obama’s strong use of social media in his campaign for presidency, the UK election has tried to follow suit with parties setting up Twitter feeds and Facebook pages to encourage the masses to vote for them. But have they had an effect..?
While social media is still only reaching a smaller percentage of the population, rather than the millions reached by traditional media, it has still been testament to drawing in a younger demographic – bringing it into their social media networks on a daily basis and getting them to engage with it and form opinions of their own, a problem which has long been faced by parties previously.
While there is no doubt that social media is still becoming more relevant within our day to day life, traditional media still influences the wider population with the live TV debates drawing in approx 9 million viewers in the first airing. Work’s leading research panel found that TV registered highly at 87% with social media lagging far behind with only 7% on Twitter, 13% on Facebook and 9% on Blogs.
But social media helps create word of mouth, and influence is one of the most important factors for brands when trying to increase awareness and likeability. Friends discuss what they have seen on Facebook or comments favourite stars have made on their Twitter feed bringing the subject to the forefront of their minds and encouraging opinion forming.
Social media has certainly added a new dimension to the way political parties are campaigning and has drawn in the younger population to the debate which can only be a good thing. However, the election hasn’t been the social media election that was promised with many mistakes being made. I think political parties have a lot to learn for next time as its very difficult to control this form of communication.

thisiswork.co.uk