Standard Class

I read with great interest that Heineken UK have diverted their 6.5 million Ad spend away from the thirty second spot. I was slightly disappointed to see that they are concentrating on sport sponsorship and point of sale rather than doing something more radical.
I hope that they realise in time that there one even more efficient ways to reach the 18 to 26 year old audience.
Having said that, they need a huge slap on the back for making such a brave move. Even bigger congratulations to the senior management team that let them go through with it.

Astroturfing: The act of creating a fake grass roots community to support your cause or blog that has generally only been started for marketing purposes.

Apparently Senator Lloyd Bentsen coined this great piece of jargon

Podcasting, If you have not tried it get out there and start downloading now. I have been listening to Cameron Riley for what must be a year now, his Podcast network now has lots of different shows but his original one "G'Day World" remains a firm favourite. Podcasting is not just sound files on the web, nor is it radio on demand, it is much better than that. It is niche focussed conversations available when and where you want it. Radio interviews are never long enough to be interesting, podcasts allow people like Cameron to delve deep into a subject. I am lucky that I have very similar interests and attitudes to Cameron, you may not, find a show that fits you and start getting into it. Despite the name there is no need to even have an Ipod, I have an Archos AV400 and it works brilliantly on that. It also plays video files, so Cameron when is the first podcast network vidcast?

MTV have decided to roll out it's consumer generated channel MTVU Uber as a broadband channel. The channel was piloted on student campuses and has proved successful enough for MTV to try a broader launch.
How many steps are we away from this content being used by MTV as content for their broadcast channels? Or have they gone a step further and realised that the broadcast model is dead?

Either way it is an interesting strategy to get other people to do the expensive and arduous job of producing programming for you. Particularly in MTV's case where they could not employ sufficient numbers of cool hunters and trend spotters to create content this "street"

Thanks to PSFK for pointing this item out

Paul Graham makes an interesting point "Competitors are rarely as dangerous as they seem. Most will self-destruct before you can destroy them. And it certainly doesn't matter how many of them there are, any more than it matters to the winner of a marathon how many runners are behind him. " He is talking in terms of start ups but I think it is true of most organisations, stop looking in the rear view mirror and concentrate on the road ahead.
you will rarely steal a march on the competition by copying what they do.

Thank you Lucy Charlesworth for introducing me to Matt Denyer who introduced me to
The Leyla bar in the Cihangir area of Istanbul, if you are in the area it is a must for a stop off. Very cool and although I did not have time for anything to eat, Matt reliably informs me that the food is excellent.
Update, another great place to go is Ulus 29, great views and Turkish food but in a modern upbeat setting.

Ofcom seem to have buckled and allowed Audi to start their own channel, I will be fascinated to see who will follow. I think that James Cherkoff has missed the point, but probably so have Audi looking at the budget, I can think of a few clients of mine who might be interested but if Audi are just going to use it to show their cars they are missing a huge trick. What they should be doing is providing excellent entertainment that will bring people to the channel, perhaps focused around the 19:00 to 23:00 slot and then do the car stuff the rest of the time with a couple of infomercial in between. The infomercial need to be entertaining and not seem like advertising. If people want to come to your channel Audi will have won a battle and fixed the advertising problem in one solution, they will need a bigger budget to make it work though!

So it looks like David Cameron is going to win control of the Conservatives. This is a good move for them as any other choice would have lead to the imminent and ultimate demise of the party. If David has won it may survive for a little longer. I think that everybody no matter what their political persuasion will be happy to see a return to two party politics with an opposition worth the name. The real excitement will build once Tony steps down with a hospital pass to Gordon.
A fair fight is always more interesting, nowhere more so than in politics.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1785690_1,00.html

I bet Darryl Collis, the managing director of Seesaw Media, a specialist product placement company is kicking himself after spilling the beans to the Times undercover reporter. Audiences however are going to have to realise the economic realities of free to air television. Corporations are paying for your attention in some shape or form, as advertising becomes less effective product placement and advertiser funded programming start funding content. If you don't like it don't watch , corporations will follow your feet Art the Content provider.

The BBC seems to be pulling itself in so many directions at the moment. One hand is cutting cost by moving everybody to editing on final cut pro and using digi beta cameras whilst trying to get rid of huge swathes of staff.
The other half is staying in the Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky for The News Xchange 2005 and blowing 40 k.
In reality fat cats will be fat cats and this is just a red herring, the BBC needs to radically innovate to survive.
Once the license fee has been renewed perhaps they will calm down a little, I hope not ,they are in a position to lead the world. The reality of moving to lower quality footage means that they will be perfectly placed to take advantage of a global network of consumers generating content.
They need to excel at being a filter and interpreter of this content tobecome THE global destination for impartial excellent news content .

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2005470766,,00.html

http://www.broadcastfreelancer.com/broadcast/content/ViewEditorialContentStory.do?contentId=1043

You would have thought that;

"Hi Tom, Always remember one thing. Life is very, very short and nothing is worth limiting yourself from seeing the ones you love. I hadn't seen my father in 15 years until 2 years ago. I was apprehensive but I kept telling myself that no matter how estranged we'd become there was no river to wide to cross. Drop me a line if I can be of any more help. Cheers, Barry"

Was a genuine heartfelt comment on a blog, not so, it was a shill marketing ploy by Cillit Bang , how have marketers got it so wrong? Honesty will always thrive in the end.

I am not sure how any marketer really thought that this sort of approach would increase sales! So i see the comment on the site, trackback to the cillit bang site go "wow what great products I must buy some" very unlikely.

thanks to Tom Coates at plasticbag for pointing this out

I have just been away on holiday near Radda in Chianti in Tuscany, lovely area but a lack of good pizza and no delivery service which is surprising since there is no shortage of youths driving mopeds very dangerously. However Pizza Pie in Radda made up for all that, cheap friendly services, huge pizzas to share with loads of tasty toppings, fantastic (unlike the weather)