The Sun On Sunday has [predictably] become the biggest selling Sunday newspaper. It’s effectively News International’s replacement for the News Of The World, which itself was the biggest seller. Back in February I said they would be aiming for 2.5m copies sold. Huge early sales of 3m+ in Feb have understandably dropped to 2.3m as the novelty has worn off – not quite as high as the NotW was when it ceased publication, but not far off.

The Mail On Sunday initially gained from the NotW closure, but that didn’t last long and the red top readers soon decided they didn’t like the Mail – circulation was soon back at its original level.

The Sunday Mirror was the big winner when the NotW shut down (about 800K) and this time, most of those new readers stuck with it. That is, until the Sun On Sunday showed its face. A short-lived price promotion kept the numbers above 1.5m in Feb, but any gains are gone. The same applies for the People.

The Daily Star Sunday can be considered a long term success story. The Northern & Shell title added 400K to its circulation back in July 2011, and has retained almost half of those despite the Sun On Sunday.

The upshot of all this is… pretty much the same number of papers are being sold now, as there were before all the changes. The overall popular and mid-market circulation is down about 300K copies year on year. A decrease like this is not unexpected and falls in line with print media trends in general.

He plans to up the girl and glamour content of the magazine, and amongst other initiatives, launch a Loaded TV channel, which he says will be “like 1970’s ITV on a Saturday night”. At last!, I hear you all cry.

The story got me thinking about the heady days of the mid 1990’s, when ‘Lad Culture’ was king, and the Mags that served the Lads were selling in huge quantities.

Of course lifestyle magazines aimed at men existed before Loaded; GQ, Arena and Esquire to name three prominent ones – these concentrated on upmarket fashion and style, maybe a tasteful supermodel shoot, along with the arts and some semi-serious comment. There was also For Him Magazine, bought by Emap in 1994 and subsequently changed to FHM.

But it was IPC’s Loaded, launched by IPC in 1994, which set a trend, and kick-started a genre, by doing something exciting and different. In the mid 90’s Vic & Bob, Blur vs Oasis, Men Behaving Badly, Euro 96, Baddiel & Skinner and Gazza were all part and parcel of what became widely known as ‘Lad Culture’, and Loaded played a huge part in it all. It tapped into what (for me anyway) was a lively period of recent cultural history. The magazine was influenced by popular culture, but it was itself an influencer.

Early Loaded covers featured Gary Oldman (Issue 1), Noel Gallagher, Uma Thurman, Kylie Minogue, Martin Clunes and David Beckham; a far cry from the no-name nubiles who grace the newsagents’ shelves nowadays. The light-hearted mix of music, alcohol, sport and women turned out to be a successful one.

The publication hit the right note at the right time. As then Editor James Brown said: “During my three years there, we had rock stars, England players, actors and actresses ringing up to come to our parties, all happy to appear in the title. The comedians, footballers, actors and actresses of the day all appeared on the cover and it sold because it was cheeky, honest, well written and passionate about what we were into…The magazine itself was like a popstar. People loved buying it, brands piled into it to advertise, and it created a new market for men’s magazines. And a new way of communicating to young men for the ad industry. Years later the head of Estée Lauder told me: “This was the first time we could reach young men in one place.”

Circulation of Loaded was 95K in 1994; by 1998 it was up at 457K. FHM started at a similar level, 81K in 1994 – and by 1998 had rocketed to a market-leading 775K. Maxim was launched into the booming market by Dennis Publishing in 1995. The age of the Lad Mag had well and truly come. Loaded won the prestigious PPA Magazine Of The Year Award an unprecedented two times in a row, in 1995 and 1996.

Of course all good things must come to an end, and 1998 would prove to be the high-point. Time passes, what was once new and exciting gets diluted and becomes the norm, tastes change, and lad culture would eventually give way to celeb-worship and obsession with reality TV. Circulations of the main players dipped slightly in 1999 and have continued to fall (drop like a stone) ever since (Men’s Health being the exception).

The reasons for this? The front covers and content became a bit more T&A (or boobs ‘n’ bums if you prefer). Newcomers such as Ice and Front were effectively porn for those too shy to reach for the top shelf. Is that what the readers really wanted? The publishers certainly thought so, and I do not doubt they did their market research. Unfortunately for them, the late 90’s and early 2000’s was the time that internet usage really started to gather pace, and we all know what’s abundantly available on the internet don’t we? Yes, T&A, and lots more besides.

The fact that these magazines have lost eyeballs to the internet is nothing to be ashamed of; it’s a reality that all printed products are facing. It’s the degree to which the market has fallen which is the interesting thing (see chart below). Maxim closed its paper version in the UK in 2009, Loaded’s UK circulation is now a tenth of what it once was, and FHM is down to 140K (although both do have an online presence).

Nuts and Zoo magazines launched in 2004, coinciding with the UK’s fascination with C-list celebrity and reality TV. Both were/are weekly publications unashamedly celebrating all things silly, gross and female-shaped. Nuts magazine actually had a ‘no-nipple’ policy at the start, but a quick glance at a recent issue confirms this is no longer the case. Gentleman’s Quarterly they are not. After peaking at around 250-300K copies each in 2005 Nuts now sells 114K copies a week, Zoo 54K.

Again, it’s not a ground breaking theory, but I’d suggest technology is the reason for this. Almost half of these mags’ readers are under 24. Smartphones are becoming more affordable and ubiquitous amongst the young. Why buy a magazine to see pictures of severed limbs and bare breasted models, when they are right there in you pocket?

So, people are now consuming media in different ways, which has led to the inevitable decline of the men’s magazine market. I’m not particularly sorry about this – whenever I flick through a copy of Loaded or FHM these days, I don’t find much to interest me. But then again, I’m not the target audience any more, like I was in 1995. The disappearing readership is not good news for advertisers, but as one medium struggles, another [online] prospers.

Mr. Baxendale-Walker is evidently a successful businessman but I fear his purchase of Loaded is a vanity project that is doomed to failure. Loaded ceased to exist as I knew it a long time ago, but it may not be long before it ceases to exist altogether. The market for girly mid-shelf mags is shrinking rapidly. However, that’s not to say I can’t be nostalgic about its early days, when it reflected good times and was vital reading for hundreds of thousands just like me.

1. Create a new folder in your documents containing the latest jQuery file.
2. Create a new HTML document in the same folder as the jquery file.
3. Open the HTML document in a text editor and add in the following code;

   
   <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN”
   “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd”>
   <html>
   <head>
   <title>jQuery Example</title>
   <script type=”text/javascript” src=”jquery-1.7.1.min.js”></script>
   <script type=”text/javascript”>
   $(document).ready(function(){
   $(“#clickMe”).click(function(){
   $(this).hide();
   });
   });
   </script>
   </head>
   <body>
   <p id=”clickMe”>Click me and I will disappear!</p>
   <p>I will not disappear.</p>
   </body>
   </html>
   

   The code highlighted in red are the elements which have been added in for this jQuery example to work.

   The element in the body with the id=”clickMe” will follow the rules set in the header script, where as the other will just display as normal.

4. Save changes to the HTML document
5. Open the HTML document in a browser to view the working webpage

Click on the top line and watch it disappear
Click on the remaining line – it shouldn’t budge!

So the latest fireworks display of CG special effects and in-your-face, headache inducing 3D has become the latest and greatest flop of all time. Am I surprised? Well actually yes and no.

Surely this movie should have done quite well based on the success of similarly brain-dead CG fests that have come before it? Many have cited the boring, plodding story and dull title as the root causes. I could say the same about many blockbusters that have still managed to make money for the studios. Others say it was badly marketed. What ever the cause it is my hope that flops like these may help movie studios move on from the CG and 3D gimmicks and invest more in quality writing, production and direction.

I read that John Carter was directed by the special effects director of Finding Nemo and WALL-E fame so is it any surprise that the result was so CG/3D-biased? This brings back memories of the ‘making of’ featurettes for the Star Wars prequels where Lucas seemed to be surrounding himself with experts in eye candy. The result was a trilogy that succeeded purely on the title. If Star Wars The Phantom Menace had been released under the title ‘John Carter’ would it have made as much money? Hmmmm.

If your social campaigns have hit a plateau these 12 tips will get your creative social juices flowing, and help you engage and build a bigger following.

Twitter 

Twitter is a great way to find out about any subject and increasingly, Twitter is now being used by people as their main source of finding content and news. Here are 6 things you can do to help grow your followers;

Create A Poll

Creating a poll on Twitter is a good way to engage with you existing followers, you also have the opportunity to gain new followers if they come across your poll and get involved. There are tons of tools out there to help you along your way, here are a few to get you started; twtpoll.com, polls.tw, polldaddy.com and twittpoll.com They vary in what you can do with them but they all allow you to run a poll via Twitter, some of them are paid tools but as with most tools the paid for versions contain a lot more functionality.

Hold A Q+A

Holding a Q+A session is a great way to start a conversation and get people involved. You can start by asking a simple question or dedicating  a day to answering questions on a specific topic. Developing this as an event either weekly or monthly will help spread the word beyond your followers, which will give you the opportunity to grow your follower base. You can even embed the tweets on to your website really easily using Twitter’s free widgets this will allow the people to, use the widget to get involved with the conversation and could potentially boost your traffic, and increase your average time on site. This can also be used as a way to gain good old natural links!

Run A Competition

Running a competition on Twitter is a good way to grow your follower base but, be aware that the followers you do gain from this will generally be following you to get something free. The followers you gain from this will not always be valuable, running a competition is used best by brands that use it to promote a new product etc. So use this one carefully and set a clear objective of what you want to get out of running a competition, more followers? Brand awareness? Once you have decided make sure you read the Twitter rules for running a contest, you will also want to add a page to your website containing the terms and conditions of the competition.

Ask A Question

Now then that sounds simple doesn’t it. Well to be quite honest it is, by asking a question you are appealing to actual humans, showing sincerity will more likely get a response than putting a tweet out that is robotic or sales like.

Follow Friday #FF

This happens every Friday on Twitter you will see #FF and then a list of usernames. How this works is you use the hashtag #FF and suggest people to follow that you think put out some good tweets. So an example tweet would be;

#FF @SEOmoz @randfish @neilpatel @WiredUK @sengineland @TechCrunch @mattcutts

Hopefully once you start building a good following you will start getting recommended in the phenomenon that is #FF.

Introduce Yourself To New Followers

This might sound silly but unless your kind of a big deal people wont be completely sure who you are, so if you do get a new follower, say hey! It just gets you off on the right foot and increases the chances that you will keep that person as a follower, rather than them following you and you just being a Twitter stream it again adds that sincerity, which is an important part of maintaining a loyal, valuable following. Your nice right, so be nice say hello!

Get more great tips on how to become a Twitter power user with this post from Neil Patel, you wont be sorry there is some great stuff in Neil’s post!

Facebook

Everyone pretty much knows about Facebook by now, it has even had a film made about it! It is undoubtedly huge with a staggering 800 million users you need to be taking advantage of Facebook, and the best part is you can have a great page at no cost, yep free.

 Ask A Question / Poll

Facebook allows you to insert a poll question easily;

You select ask question, then you will be given the option to “add poll options”. The best thing about it being a poll question is that the answer is right there, no thinking involved really, just an opinion and people love to have an opinion. Ask something that will provide some value for you so if your a marketing company, “Where does the majority of your advertising budget get spent?”a.SEO b.PPC c.Display That way you gain some insight.

Thank Your Fans

This is the same principle as I mentioned above for Twitter, thank your fans. Let them know that there is a human behind the page that they are taking the time to engage with. A thank you goes a long way and will massively improve your chances of you keeping them as a fan for longer than if you don’t thank people. If you find that it would be a huge task to thank all your new fans then group them together and thank them all at once.

Brand It!

With the new timeline pages being compulsory after the 30th of March you have a great opportunity to create a recognisable consistent brand image. Be consistent across all social networks and within your website too, so that when people come across you they know they have the right people because of your unified image. I have used SEOmoz as an example;

The SEOmoz Twitter page includes Roger, contact info and the website logo. The profile picture is also high quality both large and scaled down to timeline size.

The SEOmoz Facebook page again includes Roger, a link to the website and also the Moz top ten.

Now you can see that the branding for the social pages is all tied in to the website, Roger and the main site logo are obviously present, and SEOmoz has links to their social profiles.

Cross Promote

Cross promote your content across all the social networks, this will make sure that you achieve maximum reach and keep all your fans and followers informed. In my opinion the best way of keeping on top of your social campaigns and cross promoting is through the Hoosuite dashboard. Hootsuite allows you to see all of your social activity as well enabling you to post to multiple social networks in just one click, rather than having to jump from network to network posting the same thing.

Consistently Post

You need to keep up the pace, nothing happens overnight! Keep posting, tweeting and blogging and you should see a nice growth rate. Make sure you produce good quality content and you don’t just annoy your followers and fans, keep up with conversation and respond to people as often as you can. Keeping your social media efforts consistent is one of the most important things you can do.

Keep At It!

I have slightly just touched on this point but it is very important so I will just have to say it again, keep at it! You cant just create a profile or a page and expect them to be successful, build it and they will come does not apply here so keep at it and you will reap the rewards. ( Wow two cliches in one sentence, sorry about that )

If you like this article, do me a favour and Tweet about it, or like it please. Also we do like a good chinwag so submit your comments below!

Our next installment in the series will be here shortly!

Or more importantly from an advertiser or TV stations point of view, how many of us fast forward the ad breaks??

First, let’s take a quick look at recent TV consumption in general.

Ongoing monitoring of the TV marketplace for 2011 (Thinkbox & BARB) shows us a few interesting points.

Linear TV viewing figures in the UK for 2011 equalled the record high set in 2010.

The average viewer watched 4 hours, 2 minutes of linear TV a day in 2011 (28 hours, 14 minutes a week), according to new figures from the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB).

This strong performance underlines viewers’ preference for watching TV as it is broadcast and on a TV set whenever possible.  The many new ways to watch TV via other screens such as laptops, tablets and smartphones are growing, and a welcome solution to out of home viewing, but they are not included in BARB’s figures and are not impacting on linear viewing.

Commercial TV channels (i.e. non-BBC channels) were responsible for maintaining the record viewing level, accounting for 64% of all linear TV viewing, an increase of 1.3% points on 2010. For the younger 16-34 audience this rises to 72%.

During 2011, the average person watched 18 hours, 11 minutes of commercial TV a week, an increase of 22 minutes a week on 2010. In the last ten years, commercial TV viewing has increased by over 3 hours, 30 minutes a week. The average viewer watched 47 ads per day!

Time shifted viewing

Research shows that 9.4% of all UK viewing was viewed time shifted, this increases to 15.3% of viewing when looking at those viewers with the technology to do so (DTRs – Sky + etc)

Time shifted viewing appears to be quite stable averaging between 13.4% – 16.3% over the last six years:

Looking at those individuals with DTRs we can see that the majority of the recorded viewing is watched within 7 days (43.8%). 39.4% is VOSDAL (viewing on same day as live) and the remaining 16.8% is viewed after 7 days.

It is probably wrong to label it time shifted or catch up viewing. It would be fair to say that it is us consumers watching what we want, when we want to watch it. Nothing more. Just as we can do on other platforms, online, on demand for example.

But the question is just how many of us skip the ads when viewing our recorded content? I know I do.

Many of us have hectic lifestyles, where the time to sit down and enjoy our desired content doesn’t always come easy. A YouGov survey finds that almost 90% of viewers watching recorded content will fast forward the ads. Quite a significant amount.

So please take into account that if every one hour programme recorded can be watched in approximately 40 minutes ( if the ads are forwarded x 30) then your 3 hours of quality programming, whatever it might be, can be watched in 2, giving you back a whopping one whole hour with which to do whatever you please!

I like it. Very much so

But, by whizzing through the ads does the advertising become completely ineffective? Remember, at x30 speed on Sky+, each 30 second ad will be seen for one second. Is that enough? I would have to say yes, I believe it is.

While forwarding the ads in our recorded favourite Saturday night US crime drama, my good lady suddenly called out to stop and rewind the ads.

A popular supermarket was running a price led offer, (for salmon, if you must know, which we are both rather partial to) and the said price offer was on screen long enough, albeit for a fraction of a second, even at x30 speed to make us take another look. And I’m glad we did. A subsequent trip to supermarket X followed and we now have a freezer full of very reasonably price salmon.

It is also worth noting that this was a 10 second commercial which makes it even more astonishing that it was seen and prompted us to rewind. The key point here is that in real time execution the price offer was prominent and remained in view for 9 seconds of the 10. In FF time about 1/3 of a second!

I believe people will always fast forward ads, it won’t ever be all of the viewers doing it all of the time, or even some viewers doing it all of the time, but it will definitely be some people, some of the time. I don’t however think that advertisers or TV stations will be panicking just yet. TV is still the most effective form of advertising and is going to be around for a long time to come.

Creative Networks

Jody is responsible for launching E4.com and most recently Comedy Blaps. He’s also been in charge of online campaigns for the hit dramas Misfits and Skins and he commissioned the the digital components of the fun-fueled game shows The Million Pound Drop and The Bank Job. These projects earned him, and his team, the 2011 BAFTA award for Digital Creativity.

It was fascinating to find out how people interact with secondary devices (or distractions) while watching TV, such as house-hold chores and how games like these can increase audience participation. The prospect of winning a Million Pounds would definitely have my full attention!

I was asked to produce this promotional e-flyer, as an invitation to sign-up to the event. The design needed to reflect both his career and achievements and so I did a little digging around the internet and found Jody’s ‘Faces in Places‘ blog. This is “A photographic collection of faces found in everyday places” with a contributing community of over 3000 photographers which Jody manages in his spare time. It’s also been published as a book with a percentage of the proceeds of each book sold going to the ‘Hope for Children‘ charity.

Check out the Faces in Places Blog here: http://facesinplaces.blogspot.com
Buy the Faces in Places book on Amazon here
Follow Jody Smith on Twitter here: www.twitter.com/toastmaster

The campaign uses state-of-the-art facial recognition software (95% accurate) to determine the gender of interested viewers standing in front of the screen, displaying different content dependent upon the results. After the opening sequence, the screen will say whether it thinks you’re a guy or girl, and prompt you to touch the screen if you want to view the subsequent content, which differs according to the gender detected.

The aim is for women and girls to see the full 40 second advert, whilst men and boys are restricted to alternative content. The overall objective is to raise awareness of the lack of choices that still exist in developing nations for girls by denying males the choice to view the film.

The campaign is located in a bus shelter on Oxford Street opposite Selfridges and targets women aged 24 to 34. The screen surround and shelter are wrapped with Plan branding and a disclaimer highlighting the fact the software is not 100% accurate and does not intend to stereotype how people look.

The well-known track by Olive, You’re Not Alone, accompanies the advertising video and can be heard via a headphone socket. There is also a twitter hash tag below the screen and a QR code which appears at the end of the advert (and located to the left of the screen) to direct people to further content or comment on the activity.  Finally there is a dedicated donation short text code printed in the door surround which will allow bus users to donate on site.

Here is how we are going do it, all you need to do when you get that Friday feeling remember this hashtag #askwowfriday 

When you think of a question send us a tweet and include the hashtag #askwowfriday and we will do our best to answer your question!

We must ask you to keep it clean but, apart from that feel free ask us anything. Or why not take advantage of our wonderful in house team of specialists and ask us a question related to PPC, SEO, Web dev, Creative, TV, Radio, Data….You get the idea.

The closure of the paper was a dramatic move designed to assuage public anger at shocking revelations about the behaviour of its journalists. Rupert Murdoch at the time said “Wrongdoers turned a good newsroom bad and this was not fully understood or adequately pursued.”

Seven months on, has Leveson shown us that there has been any fundamental shift in the attitude of NI to the use of illegal newsgathering techniques and general improper practice? That’s a matter of opinion. The company has reached settlements with several phone hacking victims, which is in itself an admission of guilt. But would they be prepared to use underhand methods in the future, to get the front page scoop that trumped their competitors? Maybe, maybe not. Cynics suggest the Sun On Sunday will be just the NotW by another name.

Irrespective of all that, the ‘new’ publication will be here come Sunday, whether you like it or not. In the absence of any official blurb on the launch from our advertising contacts (so far), I’m going to have to rely on the words of Tom Mockridge, NI’s chief executive, who gushed “This is a truly historic moment in newspaper publishing and I am proud to be part of it. The Sun’s future can now be reshaped as a unique seven-day proposition in both print and digital. Our readers’ reaction to the announcement of a seventh-day Sun has been huge and we won’t let them down.”

Since the News of the World stopped publishing last July the Sunday market overall has suffered. Of the paper’s 2.67m sales in June 2011, the last month before its closure, 1.3m have simply disappeared. It seems that for some, only the News of the Screws’ particular mix of secret sheikhs and paedophile-shaming will do.

Some individual publications, however, have benefitted. 700K buyers went to the Sunday Mirror (c. 1m to c. 1.7m), who subsequently put ad rates up, and were well within their rights to do so; the rest were split between the Daily Star Sunday and the People. An initial gain of 200K by the Mail on Sunday soon evaporated, the editorial content obviously proving too cerebral for the red-top masses.

You may have gathered that as a consumer, The Sun doesn’t flick my switch, but for many the light is on and burning brightly. 2.7m copies sold every day make it Britain’s biggest selling paper, and put it in the top ten in the world. A chacun son gout, as Guardian readers might say.

From an advertiser’s perspective, the extension of such a successful product to a Sunday is good news, as it should attract those lapsed newspaper buyers who are now presumably getting their celebrity gossip online of a Sunday morning, or are simply staring glumly at their TV screens as Tim Lovejoy fails to demonstrate the latest remote control helicopter.

The new paper will be aiming for a circulation of at least 2.5m. There is obviously a concern for the rivals who gained from the disappearance of the NotW. Will their new-found readers desert them just as quickly as they arrived? Time will tell. One thing is for sure, with £3million TV and press campaign behind the launch (“In Britain the Sun comes out every day”) News International are going to do everything they can to regain their Sunday tabloid crown.

All SEO’s have their own opinion on what works and the best practices for achieving high rankings. In my opinion 2012 is going to see the growth of location based services which will effect how SEO’s have to do things, for certain clients anyway.

If you perform a local seo search in Google you will return a result that should look something like this;

As you can see the results for “Italian restaurants in leeds” are based around each listings Google places listing along with a map to the right, which you can click in to and get directions. So the top natural listing is Salvo’s, lets do a search for Salvo’s and see what comes up.

You can see here a resulting search of the restaurant results in two location based services coming up in the search results, Tripadvisor and Urbanspoon.Tripadvisor is third in the natural listings and Tripadvisor and Urbanspoon show under more reviews.

Now we will have a look at a result for Italian restaurants in Foursquare;

So we see that Salvo’s is coming up as number one again in the results for the search done on Foursquare.

The advantage to foursquare is that the app is perfect for when you’re out and about and you need to find somewhere to eat etc. Foursquare also allows businesses to create a business page and incentivise customers to check in when they visit. This can be a great resource because it not only increases presence but it also provides an opportunity to achieve repeat custom, through incentivised check ins.

An article published in The Drum in October last year suggests that Foursquare are looking at setting up an office in London due to the growth of Foursquare in Europe. These are all signs that location based services are going to become more and more popular. That means that SEO’s will have to make sure that they can provide strategy to clients for showing up across these services.

We have seen Facebook introduce check ins a long time ago but when it comes to convenience and speed Foursquare wins hands down. SEO’s everywhere should stand up and take notice of location based services, and make sure that they take advantage of the local search  opportunities that will continue to grow in 2012.

The table below displays the results of that comparison;

Both Firefox and IE have continued to decrease in popularity; however Firefox is still in top position with IE coming second. The gap between Firefox and IE has increased this year from 0.6% to 1.3%.

Google Chrome has once again converted the most users as they are very quickly closing the gap between themselves and the top two browsers. They have increased a significant 10.9% from 14.6% to 25.5% of users in a year. With Firefox and IE on a downward slope, it would be fair to speculate that in the next couple of years Chrome will take the lead as the most popular browser in Europe.

Worldwide, Internet Explorer is by far the most widely used browser. Last year Firefox was second, but has been overtaken this year by Google Chrome. It will be very interesting next year to see if Chrome can steal the crown from IE as the most popular browser worldwide.

After every Creative Networks event, held at the Leeds College of Art, attendees are asked for suggestions for future speakers. I’ve been crossing my fingers that they would be able to persuade Cyriak to give a presentation and last Thursday night, at last, I got my wish!

On the last Thursday of every month, Creative Networks host a free networking event followed by a talk from one fo the big hitters in the creative industries. At these events I’ve seen the likes of Jimmy Choo, Harry Gration, Sir John Hegarty, animator Barry Purves and Patrick Burgoyne, editor of Creative Review.

Having no television (and no wish to watch any) I’ve developed a cosy relationship with YouTube. Attracted to it’s user created content, it was inevitable that I would soon discover the wonderful and mind bending work of Cyriak (his actual name – cool eh) and have followed his work now for as long as I can remember. From his early days of insanely funny animated GIFs and experimental video mashups, Cyriak has evolved his work a great deal but without sacrificing his uniquely entertaining style.

Now producing work for TV, web and music videos, he still manages to grab enough time to produce self-initiated animation work which never fails to put a grin on my face. During his presentation it was particularly interesting to see how, when given enough creative freedom by the client, Cyriak could take any brief, no matter how bizarre and turn it into something brilliant and memorable.

http://cyriak.co.uk

Online deals are fine, but they must be applied sensibly (externally and in-house), or risk eroding margins and/or really aggravating other customers – as happened in my case! I used to be quite happy paying full price at this restaurant: but never again!

Kelly Farrington
MD, Media Wow

A lot has happened during that time. Wow’s digital arm has grown massively and we now have a more rounded marketing outlook, including in-house design and PR. References to Digital Wow and Wowcomms existed on separate micro-sites, but it is important to encapsulate the integrated nature of all Media Wow’s marketing disciplines in one, easy to navigate website. All constructive criticism is most welcome and I expect we might tweak or amend elements along the way, but I hope you like the look and feel of the new site.

Along with the serious detail of what we all do, the site hopes to offer a taste of what it is like to work at Wow. The staff profiles, Wow Gallery and Blogs are meant to be both informative and fun. Happy Browsing!

Kelly Farrington
Managing Director

As a result we can expect the media’s spotlight to fall on elements of our industry over the next week or so.

The media and other non-industry people will invariably refer to the mailing side of the marketing industry as the ‘junk mail’ industry.  At Media Wow we believe the term Junk mail – or untargeted mail – is unacceptable. We should reject this term, and to keep the terminology simple refer to it as ‘advertising mail’.  We know the difference between direct, door-to-door, unaddressed, etc, but sadly the general public and journalists do not make this distinction.

In order to pre-empt the objections I expect to see arise in That’s Britain tonight, here are a few arguments to explode the myths usually expounded by shoddy journalism:

How damaging is junk mail to the environment?

I agree that wastage from advertising mail needs to be reduced and the DMA and member companies like Media Wow have been helping the industry shape up.

In 2003, Defra set the industry the target of ensuring that 70% of all used advertising mail is recycled by 2013. This target was smashed four years early in 2009, with 76% of advertising mail being recycled.

Since 2003, the volume of advertising mail now being sent to landfill every year has fallen by 80%.  Now, advertising mail represents just 0.4% of the average household’s unrecycled waste.

I’ve never bought anything from junk mail.  Does it really work?

When people say this to me, I say, “Really, you’ve never redeemed a coupon you’ve received in the post?”  The vast majority of people have.

Advertising mail works; if it didn’t then companies would not spend money on it.  According to the Mail Media Centre, 17.7 million people bought something after receiving a mail order catalogue in the past 12 months.

Every year, advertising mail generates £16 billion in sales – a massive contribution to UK plc at a time when high street retailers are suffering.  For some businesses, it’s the only form of advertising they can afford.  Many companies can’t afford to pay for TV, radio, billboard, or newspaper ads.

People hate receiving junk mail, so why bother sending it?

Research conducted by Royal Mail shows that the majority of people still prefer to be contacted by mail by the businesses they’re customers of, than by any other method of communication: for example, 46% of BT customers prefer to be contacted by mail, compared to 22% by email; 50% of Churchill’s customers prefer to be contacted by mail, compared to 20% who prefer to be contacted by email.

There’s plenty of research to show that the majority of consumers welcome receiving advertising mail that provides them with exclusive offers on products they like. For example, research by BMRB reveals that 75% of consumers like receiving special offers and vouchers through the post. The same research also reveals that consumers like mail alerting them to new products and services they might want to try, etc

While many people conduct their lives online, (an area Media Wow’s Digital Team understands well), there are still plenty of people who don’t.  Advertising mail is a source of information on products and services they might not otherwise have access to.

Summary & Key Facts

My colleagues and I at Media Wow, agree that delivery of poorly targeted mail – ‘junk mail’ – is unacceptable. The industry now has sophisticated data collection methods and data cleaning tools, so there is no excuse for sending poorly targeted mail.  And, it’s not in the interest of businesses to waste money and annoy consumers with badly targeted mail.

Before dismissing the whole concept of ‘advertising mail’ as ‘junk’ please consider:

• The delivery of untargeted mail annoys consumers, and businesses waste money sending it
• The advertising mail industry is against junk mail too, that’s why we’re taking action to end it
• Advertising mail generates a huge amount of sales for businesses and makes a massive contribution to the UK economy
• The DMA and Defra have agreed a plan to eliminate unwanted, untargeted mail
• Many businesses invest large amounts of money on targeting their customers to drive sales – for example, Sainsbury’s Nectar mailings to customers
• Advertising mail has a minimal impact on the environment when compared to other types of household waste
• The advertising mail industry is a major UK employer
• Advertising mail subsidises Royal Mail’s Universal Service

Media Wow is adept at minimising wastage by precisely targeting key prospects to deliver sales for businesses.

For more information on the above subject and how to ensure advertising mail is not wasteful, please talk to Kelly Farrington on 0113 2053764, or email Kelly@mediawow.co.uk

Playing through the sequence of ‘courses’ feels like a journey rather than purely a challenge. The music and sound is as integral to the experience as the animation and isometric landscape. It’s a relaxing experience but that said, the gameplay is still demanding and quite addicting with additional elements coming in to play on subsequent plays.

Every now and then an interactive project comes along that reminds me why I’m so passionate about Flash and why I need to keep pushing the boundaries of what I can do. Reece and Dan Millidge I salute you!

Play Wonderputt at http://www.dampgnat.com/wonderputt

Other games are available too at http://www.dampgnat.com

Andrew uses the latest development in “sticky technology” to fix his laptop this morning… Blue Peter badge on the way mate!!

Matt Cutts tweeted:

“Weather report: expect some Panda-related flux in the next few weeks, but will have less impact than previous updates (~2%).”

This coming update will be deemed panda 2.6 and will have less impact than previous updates but it is still nothing to be ignored. The previous updates have gone in this order:

• Panda Update 1.0: Feb. 24, 2011
• Panda Update 2.0: April 11, 2011 (about 7 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.1: May 10, 2011 (about  4 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.2: June 16, 2011 (about 5 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.3: July 23, 2011 (about 5 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.4: August 12, 2011 (about 3 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.5: September 28, 2011 (about 7 week gap)

Source : Search Engine Land

This is a good change in Google’s attitude to bringing back weather reports, but if they do become a regular thing it will only be for the important stuff. With over 500 algorithmic changes on average per year some of which are not even noticeable it would be silly of us to expect Google to inform us of each and every adjustment that the make.

So what pre-flight checks can be done to reduce the impact of the upcoming update? Well If you read about panda 1.0 and how to fix your site after it hit then i would say you are already prepared. Remember the point of this update is to get rid of poor quality sites and content farms so just take a step back from the site or sites you’re managing and think is this a good site? Does it contain relevant information around the subject the site is about? Have a look at the back link profile, is there any links coming from sites that are no good? Is it a good user experience? The list goes on….

Good luck, and this time they have publicly warned you.