The reason might have something to do with social media and TV, which kids spend more of their leisure time attached to these days. TV tie-in magazines like Simpsons Comics, with a circulation of 52,000, are proving more popular than antiquated comics like the Beano. Moshi Monsters, a magazine based on the eponymous social network where youngsters can raise virtual pets, has a circulation of 228,000.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
The decline of classic boys' comics
Sales today are a quarter of what they were in 2007. The circulation is just over 7,000 today. There are about 500 subscribers in all, enough to fit into a medium-sized playground. The Beano, owned by the same publisher, is more popular but shows similar signs of decline. Circulation has halved since 2007; it was 38,000 in 2011.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Facespook: Russian spies order $1mln software to influence social networks
Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has ordered three systems worth about US$1 million that will automatically spread information on the Internet.
The third, and probably most important, of the systems is Storm-12 – its task is to automatically spread the necessary information through the blogosphere, as well as “information support of operations with pre-prepared scenarios of influence on mass audience in social networks.”
The third, and probably most important, of the systems is Storm-12 – its task is to automatically spread the necessary information through the blogosphere, as well as “information support of operations with pre-prepared scenarios of influence on mass audience in social networks.”
TV ad campaigns fail to reach audiences
Nationwide US television advertising campaigns are failing to reach a large portion of their target audiences, according to new research based on TV viewing data.
Wenda Millard, president at consultancy MediaLink, which works with advertising companies and marketers said: “TV advertising always has been spray and pray. Because we couldn’t do anything about it, we used to laugh.
“Now that joke is long over. It’s not funny to waste billions and billions of dollars.”
Russians spend it while they’ve got it
Unemployment has been steady at 4.9 per cent – the lowest in Russia for more than a decade – and real wages are rising at 10 per cent each year. While salary growth is starting to slow, there are no signs that consumers are trimming their spending.
“Gold is really expensive right now, the stock market is falling all the time,” says Alexander Prostakov, a 33-year-old advertising copywriter in Moscow. “I think because of this [market uncertainty] people are buying a lot more cars and other things, because no one understands where else you can invest.”
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Raunchy ad banned from brand’s own store
Shoe brand Brian Atwood have had to remove an overtly-sexual billboard advert from outside their own Madison Avenue, New York store after it was deemed unsuitable by the building's owners.
The brand were told to remove a billboard-sized image from outside their Madison Avenue store by the building's owners after it was deemed unsuitable for public consumption owing to its featured nudity and sexual connotations. The banned image shows Victoria's Secret model Candice Swanepoel wearing a basque, stockings, and tiger-print Atwood shoes cavorting with two naked male companions. It is just one of four images from the brand's racy autumn/winter 2012 campaign, which was shot by photography duo Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott.
The brand were told to remove a billboard-sized image from outside their Madison Avenue store by the building's owners after it was deemed unsuitable for public consumption owing to its featured nudity and sexual connotations. The banned image shows Victoria's Secret model Candice Swanepoel wearing a basque, stockings, and tiger-print Atwood shoes cavorting with two naked male companions. It is just one of four images from the brand's racy autumn/winter 2012 campaign, which was shot by photography duo Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Premier Foods - Brands hatched
A debt-ridden firm tries to breathe new life into old brands
Bought by a private- equity group in the late 1990s, Premier was re-listed on the stockmarket in 2004. It then went on a buying spree, taking advantage of cheap credit to acquire branded-food veterans such as Oxo and Bachelors. Bulking up would mean the firm could not be pushed around by the big supermarket chains when bargaining over prices, it was thought. As brands are often cheaper to buy than to build, Premier went shopping.
Bought by a private- equity group in the late 1990s, Premier was re-listed on the stockmarket in 2004. It then went on a buying spree, taking advantage of cheap credit to acquire branded-food veterans such as Oxo and Bachelors. Bulking up would mean the firm could not be pushed around by the big supermarket chains when bargaining over prices, it was thought. As brands are often cheaper to buy than to build, Premier went shopping.
The Future of Printers
An industry that puts ink to paper is fighting for survival
An industry that has raked in fat profits for years is struggling. Plunging circulation has forced many newspapers and magazines to shut. Survivors are seeing readers increasingly opt for screen over inky paper, so media companies are printing fewer and slimmer physical copies. Rising online sales and wobbly economies mean that retailers are not ordering catalogues and marketing material as they once did. The rising cost of paper has not helped.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
My Italian TV Hell - Tobias Jones
Berlusconi's political movement, Forzismo, might be vaguely dangerous for democracy, but for television it's simply disastrous
To familiarise yourself with the terrain of Italian TV, there is one key word to learn: Canzonissima. It means, simply, "very song". It was, for decades, the most important programme on Italian television, and has now been replaced by dozens of derivatives. Singing, it's very obvious, is the foundation stone of Italian television. The listings magazines even publish the lyrics to the old hits so that you can sing along at home. It makes TV appear like one long karaoke show, with comperes clicking their fingers as the band springs to life. By far the most followed event on TV is the San Remo festival in February, which serves up a week of syrupy songs.
To familiarise yourself with the terrain of Italian TV, there is one key word to learn: Canzonissima. It means, simply, "very song". It was, for decades, the most important programme on Italian television, and has now been replaced by dozens of derivatives. Singing, it's very obvious, is the foundation stone of Italian television. The listings magazines even publish the lyrics to the old hits so that you can sing along at home. It makes TV appear like one long karaoke show, with comperes clicking their fingers as the band springs to life. By far the most followed event on TV is the San Remo festival in February, which serves up a week of syrupy songs.
In the Spotlight - Sugarpova
This week, tennis star Maria Sharapova brought the world something it only dimly realized it needed: "premium" fruit gums under her own brand called Sugarpova
She is an all-American sports personality now, complete with her sportsman fiance, basketball player Sasha Vujacic. And her savvy way with marketing is evident from her website, where tennis is almost an afterthought.
The candy launch got blanket coverage from sports media to magazines such as Vogue and People. Gossip website Gawker was one of the few to strike a skeptical note, arguing that the sweets' "premium" tag simply meant "normal product but very overpriced."
Management the Microsoft Way
Supposing Microsoft had managed to hire technology’s top players into a single unit before they made their names elsewhere—Steve Jobs of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Larry Page of Google, Larry Ellison of Oracle, and Jeff Bezos of Amazon—regardless of performance, under one of the iterations of stack ranking, two of them would have to be rated as below average, with one deemed disastrous.
A FASCINATING piece of reporting in this month’s Vanity Fair picks over Microsoft’s woes. Most people are acquainted with the bare facts. Microsoft was once the world’s biggest publicly-listed firm but has been stagnant for years. Around the turn of the century it had a market capitalisation of over $600 billion; today it is not even worth half of that (see Daily chart). Sclerosis took hold thanks to a slew of missed opportunities. Potential riches from e-readers, digital music players and tablet computers all went to competitors because it could not get its products to market quickly enough.
A FASCINATING piece of reporting in this month’s Vanity Fair picks over Microsoft’s woes. Most people are acquainted with the bare facts. Microsoft was once the world’s biggest publicly-listed firm but has been stagnant for years. Around the turn of the century it had a market capitalisation of over $600 billion; today it is not even worth half of that (see Daily chart). Sclerosis took hold thanks to a slew of missed opportunities. Potential riches from e-readers, digital music players and tablet computers all went to competitors because it could not get its products to market quickly enough.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Business Fights Back Against Kremlin War on Vice
Health experts have welcomed government moves to limit advertising and make both alcohol and tobacco more expensive, while producers, distributors and vendors are already adapting to the new legal environment. But the moves have sparked acrimony about who benefits from the laws, with many smaller retailers, especially kiosk owners, accusing the government of using public health as an excuse for enriching supermarkets.
Especially contentious are the advertising restrictions.
“Obviously, this will be followed by job loses. The brewing industry spends millions of rubles on ads on the Internet, and this prohibition will have extremely negative consequences for the advertising industry in Russia”
Greater Communication
Americans are exchanging ever more words
HOW will we consume words in a few decades' time? To answer that question, the McKinsey Global Institute, the in-house think-tank of the eponymous consultancy, looked at trends in communication in America since 1900. It compared not only communication technologies with each other, but with speech and traditional mail. The findings contradict some well-worn themes: print's share of our communication with each other has not been squeezed as dramatically by the rise of the internet as some might think. Radio, on the other hand, has undergone a clear sharp decline. Television, too, accounts for a declining share of American media consumption. McKinsey's purpose with this report is to show room for growth in social media. The consultancy is no doubt right, as several of the other media they describe (television, for example) are digital, and so can and presumably will be made more social in future.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Suburban Kiosk Cashes In on 7-Eleven's Fame
In fact, the use of a logo does not violate Russian law as long as the U.S. owner hasn't registered it here, said Sergei Gorbylyov, a lawyer with Yukov, Khrenov & Partners.
The kiosk is a striking example of the problem that Russia still faces in protecting intellectual property rights even as it becomes the 155th member of the World Trade Organization on Wednesday. Intellectual property infringements ranging from pirated movies to counterfeit sneakers have long posed a serious barrier in the country's 18-year marathon for accession.
The Big Apple
Will Apple become the first trillion-dollar company?
EARLIER this year, there was plenty of speculation that Apple’s stock had entered bubble territory. Investors apparently think otherwise: on August 20th the firm’s share price hit $665, giving it a market capitalisation of more than $623 billion—and making it the most valuable listed company of all time. This record was previously held by another tech behemoth, Microsoft, whose market capitalisation reached $616 billion in December 1999. Although in real terms Microsoft still holds the crown (in today’s dollars, its record market capitalisation would be around $850 billion), no other technology company has ever carried as much weight as Apple currently does in the global equity markets: it accounts for 4.8% of the S&P 500, 3.7% of America’s stockmarket and 1.3% of the global equity market. Some bank analysts have started to report America’s corporate earnings without Apple, because the firm's inclusion skews results. Bulls reckon that the price could go even higher—and that Apple could become the world’s first public company with a trillion-dollar market capitalisation.
Monday, August 20, 2012
Officials Ban River Race With Sex Dolls
Leningrad region authorities have banned a yearly race in which participants compete to see who can swim the fastest riding an inflatable sex doll.
The Bubble Baba Challenge 2012 was set to take place under the slogan: "A rubber woman isn't anything more than a means of transportation."
At last year's event, 543 people between the ages of 15 and 59 years old took part, including swimmers from France and Finland, according to the Bubble Baba Challenge website.
Puffed out
Daily cigarette smoking by men and women
Exactly how many people smoke where—as well as how old they are, how many cigarettes they smoke each day and at what the rate they quit—has remained somewhat blurry. A new study helps to change that.
Exactly how many people smoke where—as well as how old they are, how many cigarettes they smoke each day and at what the rate they quit—has remained somewhat blurry. A new study helps to change that.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Lucy Kellaway - Why I’m inspired by the veteran Cosmo girl
What she did and what no one else seems to do any more was to say exceedingly sensible, realistic things about work.
But the final tip is the most valuable of all. Gurley Brown has discovered the answer to the problem so many of us suffer from: we can’t for the life of us remember people’s names, even when we’ve worked with them for ages. For her, the answer was simple: she called everyone Pussycat.
What makes this so inspired was that far from making people feel insignificant, it made them feel she loved them, and so they loved her back.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
In the Spotlight - Sobchak vs Shayk
This week, the sultry model girlfriend of footballer Cristiano Ronaldo was hired to replace Ksenia Sobchak as the judge of "Russia's Next Top Model" after the channel got cold feet about Sobchak's political protest activities.
"The world economic crisis could not shake the Sobchak business model, but politics very well could," Russian Forbes magazine wrote in July.
On the upside, she made U.S. Harper's Bazaar posing — bizarrely — in a wedding dress in Manhattan for an interview titled "From Party Girl to Putin's Threat.
From BBC to NYT
A new boss for an old paper
THE New York Times Company, an American newspaper group, has a history of ill-fated acquisitions, such as About.com, a loss-making online information service it bought in 2005 and may soon offload. On August 14th the company appointed Mark Thompson, the departing director-general of the BBC, a British public broadcaster, as its new boss. Will Mr Thompson be another acquisition that the company will regret?
A Continent goes Shopping
Africa’s fast-growing middle class has money to spend
AFRICAN consumers are underserved and overcharged, reckons Frank Braeken, Unilever’s boss in Africa. Until recently, South Africans who craved shampoo made specially for African hair, or cosmetics for black skin, had little choice besides costly American imports. Unilever spotted an opportunity: its Motions range of shampoos and conditioners is now a hit.
The Anglo-Dutch consumer-goods giant is making a big effort to tailor products for African customers: affordable food, water-thrifty washing powders and grooming products to fit local tastes. It is also helping other businesses. Last year Unilever opened the Motions Academy in Johannesburg. Each year it will train up to 5,000 hairdressers who want to open their own salons. It is also a laboratory to test products and to try out new business models. If it works, Unilever plans to replicate it elsewhere in Africa.
AFRICAN consumers are underserved and overcharged, reckons Frank Braeken, Unilever’s boss in Africa. Until recently, South Africans who craved shampoo made specially for African hair, or cosmetics for black skin, had little choice besides costly American imports. Unilever spotted an opportunity: its Motions range of shampoos and conditioners is now a hit.
The Anglo-Dutch consumer-goods giant is making a big effort to tailor products for African customers: affordable food, water-thrifty washing powders and grooming products to fit local tastes. It is also helping other businesses. Last year Unilever opened the Motions Academy in Johannesburg. Each year it will train up to 5,000 hairdressers who want to open their own salons. It is also a laboratory to test products and to try out new business models. If it works, Unilever plans to replicate it elsewhere in Africa.
Zahia Dehar: the perfect media story
Zahia Dehar is a lingerie designer, a protege of Karl Lagerfeld. But she's also at the centre of a scandal involving two of France's top footballers and allegations of underage prostitution
Despite her best efforts, Zahia Dehar is still best known in France as a footballer's birthday present. The 20-year-old surprise new muse and protege of the fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld was not long ago a teenage, underaged prostitute who met clients in VIP bars around Paris's Champs-Elysées while her mother apparently thought she was at sleepovers with schoolfriends, and was paid for sex by one of France's most famous football stars.
Slowdown hits eastern European consumers
“We have to remember that this is a slowdown but not a crisis.”
In Russia, too, retail sales growth has been decelerating, falling to 6.4 per cent in April and remaining below 7 per cent in the two subsequent months.
“In Russia the cost of doing business is extremely high, so all the global players are struggling to develop products at the right price point for those consumers,” she says, adding that local companies have been more successful at this.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Ragú TV commercial stirs up storm
Catching your parents in bed at the wrong moment is mortifying. But so is an ad that portrays a young boy undergoing this cringe-inducing rite of passage and resolves it with a steamy bowl of spaghetti.
Whether the campaign translates into sales remains to be seen. The ad appears to jettison taste in more than one aspect and shows the extremes marketers take in attempts to capture viewers attention. Some internet users called the ad “genius” and “laugh-out-loud funny”.
But complaints posted on YouTube attacked the link between comfort eating and trauma “in the midst of an obesity crisis”.
Retailers target grey spending power
Globally, those over 55 – dubbed the “silver segment” by Boston Consulting Group – will account for more than half the consumer spending growth in developed markets over the next two decades, according to the consultancy.
“As people get older their taste buds start going, so, in the US, Mexican food is doing well, not just among the Hispanic community,” says Nigel Bagley, director of customer relations at Unilever. “Older people want spicier tastes.”
Equally – like its peers in the world of face creams and body emollients – Unilever has added a “pro-age” line to its Dove personal care brand. But, as Mr Bagley says, this is about more than spices and wrinkle-busting.
“Easy to open packaging is key,” he says. “We have a lot of work to do on this. It is all a new area for us, it’s a new area for the whole industry.”
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Sex and advertising - Retail therapy
How Ernest Dichter, an acolyte of Sigmund Freud, revolutionised marketing
Between the late 1930s and 1960s Dichter became famous for transforming the fates of businesses such as Procter & Gamble, Exxon, Chrysler, General Mills and DuPont. His insight changed the way hundreds of products were sold, from cars to cake mix. He pioneered research techniques such as the focus group, understood the power of word-of-mouth persuasion and earned startling fees for his theories. By the late 1950s his global business reached an annual turnover of $1m ($8m today), and he enjoyed a reputation as the Freud of the supermarket age.
The Future of Books
The End of Borders and the Future of Books
There’s no question that the book industry is in flux, with digital sales last year making up about $900 million of the $28 billion-a-year market and increasing fast. But a sizable portion of the book business is still taking place in actual stores. Barnes & Noble, the nation’s largest book retailer, hasn’t been forced to close its 700 locations. Thus, it wasn’t Amazon —or Amazon alone—that sank Borders. “When there’s a massive transition in an industry, the strong players make it through to the other side,” explains David A. Schick, a retail analyst who covers booksellers for Stifel Nicolaus Equity Research. “What gets caught up in the change are the weaker players.”
There’s no question that the book industry is in flux, with digital sales last year making up about $900 million of the $28 billion-a-year market and increasing fast. But a sizable portion of the book business is still taking place in actual stores. Barnes & Noble, the nation’s largest book retailer, hasn’t been forced to close its 700 locations. Thus, it wasn’t Amazon —or Amazon alone—that sank Borders. “When there’s a massive transition in an industry, the strong players make it through to the other side,” explains David A. Schick, a retail analyst who covers booksellers for Stifel Nicolaus Equity Research. “What gets caught up in the change are the weaker players.”
Monday, August 13, 2012
The tyranny of choice
If you can have everything in 57 varieties, making decisions becomes hard work
Wheel a trolley down the aisle of any modern Western hypermarket, and the choice of all sorts is dazzling. The average American supermarket now carries 48,750 items, according to the Food Marketing Institute, more than five times the number in 1975. Britain's Tesco stocks 91 different shampoos, 93 varieties of toothpaste and 115 of household cleaner. Carrefour's hypermarket in the Paris suburb of Montesson, a hangar-like place filled with everything from mountain bikes to foie gras, is so vast that staff circulate on rollerblades.
Choice seduces the modern consumer at every turn. Lattes come tall, short, skinny, decaf, flavoured, iced, spiced or frappé. Jeans come flared, bootlegged, skinny, cropped, straight, low-rise, bleach-rinsed, dark-washed or distressed. Moisturiser nourishes, lifts, smooths, revitalises, conditions, firms, refreshes and rejuvenates. Tropicana, another part of PepsiCo, turns out freshly pulped juice in more than 20 different varieties, up from just six in 2004; it says there could be as many as 30 in the next decade.
Media's ageing audiences
Viewers, listeners and readers are ageing fast. Oddly, media companies don’t regard that as a catastrophe
The noisy disruption of media business models by the internet in the past decade has obscured a profound demographic transformation. Whether they are buying music, listening to the radio, reading newspapers or watching television, media consumers are ageing even more quickly than the overall population. Rather than trying to reverse this trend by attracting younger people, many companies are attempting to profit from the greying of media.
The noisy disruption of media business models by the internet in the past decade has obscured a profound demographic transformation. Whether they are buying music, listening to the radio, reading newspapers or watching television, media consumers are ageing even more quickly than the overall population. Rather than trying to reverse this trend by attracting younger people, many companies are attempting to profit from the greying of media.
Hollywood goes global - Bigger abroad
Forget the Oscars. Films need foreign viewers, not American prizes
Russia, with its shrinking teenage population, is an unlikely spot for a box-office boom. Yet cinema-building is proceeding apace, and supply has created demand. Last year 160m cinema tickets were sold in Russia—the first time in recent years that sales have exceeded the country's population. Ticket prices have risen, in part because the new cinemas are superior, with digital projectors that can show 3D films.
Russia, with its shrinking teenage population, is an unlikely spot for a box-office boom. Yet cinema-building is proceeding apace, and supply has created demand. Last year 160m cinema tickets were sold in Russia—the first time in recent years that sales have exceeded the country's population. Ticket prices have risen, in part because the new cinemas are superior, with digital projectors that can show 3D films.
Television - An interactive future
The last remaining mass medium needs to engage with its audience and target its offerings
Television is supreme at holding the attention of a large number of people for long periods. Other gadgets divert people from the box, but not nearly as much as TV diverts them from all those other gadgets. And technology has undermined some of television's biggest competitors, notably newspapers. In a world of fragmenting audiences it is the only real global mass medium. If TV can combine scale with specificity, become more responsive to its audience and learn to aim adverts more precisely, it will continue to thrive.
The return of advertising - The Box Rocks
As the advertising market recovers, two clear winners are emerging: the internet and television
First, its power to monopolise attention is undiminished. Many newspaper readers have moved online, where they are worth less to advertisers. Not so TV viewers. In the first quarter of this year the average American spent 158 hours per month in front of the box, according to Nielsen, a research firm. That was two hours more than a year earlier. By comparison, he spent just three hours watching video online and three-and-a-half hours watching it on his mobile phone. Keith Weed, the head of marketing at Unilever, a huge consumer-goods firm, is excited by the potential of online and mobile video. But for now, he admits, “it doesn't have the same presence” as television.
First, its power to monopolise attention is undiminished. Many newspaper readers have moved online, where they are worth less to advertisers. Not so TV viewers. In the first quarter of this year the average American spent 158 hours per month in front of the box, according to Nielsen, a research firm. That was two hours more than a year earlier. By comparison, he spent just three hours watching video online and three-and-a-half hours watching it on his mobile phone. Keith Weed, the head of marketing at Unilever, a huge consumer-goods firm, is excited by the potential of online and mobile video. But for now, he admits, “it doesn't have the same presence” as television.
Out-of-home advertising - Billboard boom
The future of out-of-home advertising is rosy, and digital
MagnaGlobal, a media researcher, predicts that worldwide spending on out-of-home advertising will expand by 8.3% in 2011 to about $26.4 billion, faster growth than that seen for other non-internet forms of advertising (see chart). Spending on digital billboards and posters is expected to double in the next five years, to $5.2 billion.
MagnaGlobal, a media researcher, predicts that worldwide spending on out-of-home advertising will expand by 8.3% in 2011 to about $26.4 billion, faster growth than that seen for other non-internet forms of advertising (see chart). Spending on digital billboards and posters is expected to double in the next five years, to $5.2 billion.
The importance of fun - Video Games
Why video games will be an enduring success
The history of media technologies suggests that it is rare for any of them to be entirely superseded by others. Long-playing records did not make live concerts obsolete. Television did not kill radio. Books still sell in the age of the internet. This is known as “Riepl's law”, after a German newspaper editor who first noticed the effect in 1913. The chances are that, even if video games overtake books and television (and they are still a long way from doing so), the earlier forms will survive alongside them.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Over-the-top phone services
Mobile operators are trying both to repel and to imitate invaders
THE rise of the smartphone has been a mixed blessing for operators of mobile networks. People have been pleasingly eager to buy smartphones and to clock up data charges by playing games, watching videos and dawdling on social networks, as well as to make calls and send text messages. Yet smartphones have also opened the door to disruptive newcomers. Suppliers of “over the top” (OTT, or “value added”) services have been pinching the network operators’ customers by offering messaging and voice-over-internet-protocol (VOIP) calls via smartphone apps.
The boredom of boozeless business
The sad demise of the three-Martini lunch
...anyone who thinks that “Mad Men”, a TV drama in which 1960s advertising executives spend the working day sucking up Scotch, is a pastiche, would do well to talk to an account manager from the time—though his memory may be hazy.
Tipsy employees, they say, find it hard to focus on a task, but this makes them more likely to come up with innovative ideas. This may help to explain the success of Silicon Valley, one of the last workplaces in America where hard and soft drinks still jostle for space in the company fridge.
...anyone who thinks that “Mad Men”, a TV drama in which 1960s advertising executives spend the working day sucking up Scotch, is a pastiche, would do well to talk to an account manager from the time—though his memory may be hazy.
Tipsy employees, they say, find it hard to focus on a task, but this makes them more likely to come up with innovative ideas. This may help to explain the success of Silicon Valley, one of the last workplaces in America where hard and soft drinks still jostle for space in the company fridge.
The Joy of the Nudge Olympics
A highly successful Olympics contains two lessons for Britain’s policymakers. Only one is reassuring
In fact most Olympics work pretty well. But each host achieves that end by different means. In 2008 China staged a command-and-control games, shunting dissidents and other undesirables out of Beijing, ordering locals not to drive and even launching 1,100 cloud-seeding missiles before the opening ceremony to make it rain somewhere other than over the main stadium.
By contrast, the London games have been a “nudge” Olympics, where locals and visitors have been coaxed rather than coerced. Nudging, a theory developed by two American academics, Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, is in vogue in Britain.
What works stunningly well for a fortnight is impossible to replicate over a longer period. And, like all those Olympic athletes, the games organisers toiled for seven long years to achieve two glorious weeks in 2012.
In fact most Olympics work pretty well. But each host achieves that end by different means. In 2008 China staged a command-and-control games, shunting dissidents and other undesirables out of Beijing, ordering locals not to drive and even launching 1,100 cloud-seeding missiles before the opening ceremony to make it rain somewhere other than over the main stadium.
By contrast, the London games have been a “nudge” Olympics, where locals and visitors have been coaxed rather than coerced. Nudging, a theory developed by two American academics, Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, is in vogue in Britain.
What works stunningly well for a fortnight is impossible to replicate over a longer period. And, like all those Olympic athletes, the games organisers toiled for seven long years to achieve two glorious weeks in 2012.
Advertisers cautious of move to mobile - FT
Mobile internet use accounted for 10.1 per cent of media use in the US at the end of last year but attracted only 0.9 per cent of the total money spent on advertising, according to US research firm eMarketer
For now, advertising rates are “terrible”, with CPMs, or cost per thousand views, running at 35-40 cents, says Matt Murphy, who runs the mobile start-up fund at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. That compares with rates that are as much as 20 times higher for premium web sites. With advertising the lifeblood of much of the PC-based web, that has left a yawning chasm for many companies to cross before they can cash in on the latest internet boom.
Thanks in part to lower advertising rates on mobile, the average amount of money Google makes each time a user clicks on an advert has fallen in each of the last three quarters, with the decline accelerating to 16 per cent in the latest quarter. Facebook, meanwhile, revealed that the 16 per cent growth in its daily user numbers in the US and Europe in the latest quarter was entirely due to mobile, where it has just started experimenting with advertising. As a result, in the same quarter that the company made its debut on Wall Street, the number of adverts it carried in the US actually fell.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Rihanna: too raunchy for Nivea
Nivea's new CEO, Stefan Heidenreich, aired his concern about the role the 24-year-old played in modelling for the brand
"Rihanna is a no go... I do not understand how to bring the core brand of Nivea in conjunction with Rihanna" he said, explaining: "Nivea is a company which stands for trust, family and reliability."
Looks like Heidenreich, who has tasked himself with reviving Nivea's fortunes and creating a new company logo, will have to do it without the help of one of the most famous women on the planet.
"Rihanna is a no go... I do not understand how to bring the core brand of Nivea in conjunction with Rihanna" he said, explaining: "Nivea is a company which stands for trust, family and reliability."
Looks like Heidenreich, who has tasked himself with reviving Nivea's fortunes and creating a new company logo, will have to do it without the help of one of the most famous women on the planet.
Madonna Riding Virginal Russian Fitness Wave
"It's amazing to me how in less than a decade the face of fitness in Russia switched from mafia soldiers to office workers"
The fitness industry is growing by 20 percent each year, Dmitry Kalashnikov, the president of the Association of Fitness Professionals, told Rossiiskaya Gazeta.
Analysts said that there is stable demand for premium-level fitness clubs in the capital. Around 40 percent of the brands are developing in the business class segment, where the target audience is professionals 21 to 35 years old who are willing to pay up to 50,000 rubles ($1,500) for an annual gym membership.
Although the fitness industry in Russia is booming, there is still a lot of room for growth, experts said. Only 2 percent of Russians visit fitness centers, compared to 14.1 percent of the population in the United States and 6 percent in Britain.
Russian Banking - Abacus to ATM
The transformation of Sberbank into a modern financial institution
Under Mr Gref the bank has become, by nearly all measures save ownership, a modern financial institution. Profitability compares very well with European banks partly because the economic picture is brighter in Russia and partly because the bank's funding costs are so low as a result of limited competition in the regions. Sberbank has more than 70m retail customers in a country of 142m people, many of them pensioners and civil servants who worry more about safety than the interest on their deposits.
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Economist Group - Lean Back 2.0
This Lean Back 2.0 blog aims to examine, discuss and track the impact that new digital reading devices, particularly tablets, are having on both reader behaviours and media businesses. It includes thinking from leading commentators across the media, publishing, advertising and technology industries.
Why do we call this blog Lean Back 2.0? The print age created a Lean Back experience with reading as a solitary, ritual pleasure. The web age introduced Lean Forward as readers began to embrace information from multiple sources, actively researching and sharing content. Tablets and eReaders are driving yet another profound change in our relationship with content. They have made reading an immersive, lean-back experience again and created new opportunities to read. This is Lean Back 2.0.
Why do we call this blog Lean Back 2.0? The print age created a Lean Back experience with reading as a solitary, ritual pleasure. The web age introduced Lean Forward as readers began to embrace information from multiple sources, actively researching and sharing content. Tablets and eReaders are driving yet another profound change in our relationship with content. They have made reading an immersive, lean-back experience again and created new opportunities to read. This is Lean Back 2.0.
Simon Kuper - Spectator Sport
It’s London, but not as we know it. The Olympics, as seen in these exclusive images by Simon Roberts, renew the entire city
I live in Paris, and on July 6 2005, the day the host of these Olympics was chosen, I stood in the crowd outside the Hôtel de Ville expecting to see my new hometown get the nod. Instead, London won, and the assembled Parisians sighed briefly before disappearing into the BHV department store for a spot of retail therapy. I was briefly disappointed too. But now I am thankful that London was named host. These Games are deepening and enriching my understanding of a city that I thought I knew. I lived in London for 15 years, but I’m now seeing it as if for the first time.
I live in Paris, and on July 6 2005, the day the host of these Olympics was chosen, I stood in the crowd outside the Hôtel de Ville expecting to see my new hometown get the nod. Instead, London won, and the assembled Parisians sighed briefly before disappearing into the BHV department store for a spot of retail therapy. I was briefly disappointed too. But now I am thankful that London was named host. These Games are deepening and enriching my understanding of a city that I thought I knew. I lived in London for 15 years, but I’m now seeing it as if for the first time.
Monday, August 6, 2012
Brand New
Emerging-market companies are trying to build global brands
Yet becoming a global brand is exceedingly hard. Emerging-market firms must struggle with limited budgets and unlimited prejudice. GfK, a consumer-research company, found that only one-third of Americans were willing even to consider buying an Indian or Chinese car. Wipro, a successful Indian outsourcer, points out that its total sales are roughly the size of IBM’s marketing budget. Only four emerging-market brands make Interbrand’s list of the world’s 100 most valuable: Samsung and Hyundai of South Korea, Mexico’s Corona beer and Taiwan’s HTC.
Facebook - Work in Progress
The stockmarket has lost no time in unfriending the social network
IT IS still gaining members—there were 955m by the end of June—but Facebook has been losing friends ever since it became a public company on May 18th. Delays in trading on the frenzied opening day were scarcely the social-networking company’s fault. But not since that first day has the share price closed above its bloated debut mark of $38; and recently it has lurched lower. It dropped by 8% after hours on July 25th when Zynga, a games company that uses Facebook as a base, reported poor quarterly results, and by another 10% after Facebook’s own figures came out the next day. It has fallen further since. On August 1st Facebook’s shares closed at $20.88, the lowest yet
IT IS still gaining members—there were 955m by the end of June—but Facebook has been losing friends ever since it became a public company on May 18th. Delays in trading on the frenzied opening day were scarcely the social-networking company’s fault. But not since that first day has the share price closed above its bloated debut mark of $38; and recently it has lurched lower. It dropped by 8% after hours on July 25th when Zynga, a games company that uses Facebook as a base, reported poor quarterly results, and by another 10% after Facebook’s own figures came out the next day. It has fallen further since. On August 1st Facebook’s shares closed at $20.88, the lowest yet
Victor Yanukovych and the media
Eventually even Victor Yanukovych, the president, voiced his concern: “It is critically important for a democratic country to protect freedom of speech and prevent pressure on media," he declared. Yet it is hard not to feel that what Mr Yanukovych is aiming for is the minimum level of freedom needed to keep international institutions quiet, and no more.
TVi should survive at least until polling day. The channel is not out of the woods yet, however. It was denied a digital licence last year. Certain cable providers are refusing to carry it. It is easy to see why the channel riles the authorities. Programmes such as Exclamation Mark routinely expose large-scale corruption (English version of one report here), while satirical shows mock the country's leaders. Its independence is guaranteed by an editorial board that includes such luminaries as Poland's Adam Michnik. Crucially, says Mr Kniazhytsky, TVi's owner has no other business interests in Ukraine.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)