'Sorry, I spent it on myself': Harvey Nichols' Christmas campaign

Harvey Nichols launch the 'Sorry, I Spent It On Myself' gift collection, encouraging us to spend a little less on others and a little more on ourselves this Christmas



But what exactly are these ULNW gifts? Well, they include paperclips (metal plated, of course) for 99p, a luxurious bag of Authentic Lincolnshire gravel for just £1.61, a water resistant sink plug for £1.13 and a pack of 100 per cent wooden toothpicks for 47p - all housed in chic Harvey Nichols packaging. Who wouldn't want to unwrap any of those delights on Christmas morning?

Samsung to outspend Iceland's GDP on advertising & marketing

South Korean company keeps up aggressive marketing campaign to make brand 'aspirational' in spend that dwarfs rival Apple's

The outlay buys the South Korean technology giant publicity in TV and cinema ads, on billboards, and at sports and arts events from the Sydney Opera House to New York's Radio City Music Hall. Google spent less on buying Motorola's handset business.

And Samsung, which has a market value of $227bn, has made no secret of keeping up its aggressive marketing and promotion splurge as it seeks to make its brand as aspirational as Apple's. But the money it's spending doesn't always bring the desired result.

Last month, a Samsung-sponsored short-film contest finale at the Sydney Opera House received poor reviews for blatant product placement in a series of 'behind the scenes' videos. In Britain, viewers panned a product placement deal with ITV's popular X-Factor talent show. "Is this a singing competition or an extended Samsung advert?" asked Twitter user Ryan Browne.

Earlier this year, Samsung's New York launch of its latest top-of-the-range Galaxy smartphone came under fire for being sexist, portraying giggling women chatting about jewelery and nail polish while the men discussed the new phone, and the company's new fridge and washing machine launch in South Africa drew similar complaints as it featured female dancers in swimsuits.

2013's Biggest Turkeys: The Films That Flopped

Older stars like Sylvester Stallone and Harrison Ford can’t guarantee good returns at the box office. Neither can a hot up-and-comer like Benedict Cumberbatch. What’s a studio to do? Those big-name actors starred in this year’s biggest turkeys, the movies that performed the worst at the box office.

Full list of Forbes' top 10 box office turkeys of 2013

1. The Fifth Estate - 21% return
2. Bullet to the Head - 36% return
3. Paranoia - 39% return
4. Parker - 49% return
5. Broken City - 54% return
6. Battle of the Year - 55% return
7. Getaway - 58% return
8. Peeples - 60% return
9. RIPD - 60% return
10. The Big Wedding - 63% return

The Curious Case of Red Square

Trunk Is Just Steps Away From Lenin's Mausoleum



A giant Louis Vuitton trunk in Red Square just steps away from the imposing granite mausoleum where the mummified body of the mastermind of the Bolshevik Revolution remains enshrined has Russian politicians up in arms over the decision to build a shrine to bourgeois excess near such "sacred ground."                       

                   

Poor world will go from copying new technology to creating it

Developer markets

In 2014 the number of mobile-phone subscriptions will overtake the number of human beings, according to the International Telecommunication Union. Much of the growth will come from Africa and Asia, where getting a phone is only the first step: many millions more people will get online too. India and China will both launch “fourth generation” mobile broadband in 2014, with subscriptions priced well below those in the West, perhaps as low as $2 a month in India.

The opportunities for tech firms are enormous. Yet Western firms will face stiff local competition. At first this will take the form of price warfare from domestic imitators. In China Apple has been pushed into seventh spot in smartphone sales by Xiaomi, a company that openly models itself on Apple and started selling phones only in 2011. Domestic producers now have 60% of China’s smartphone market, according to Canalys, a research firm. A home-grown phone-maker, Micromax, will outsell Samsung in India in 2014.

Digital Christmas 2013 – key stories

This rolling blog provides a place to curate best media and technology commentary over the Christmas period, covering the high profile marketing campaigns by John Lewis and M&S, creative uses of technology in-store and much more, with the purpose of uncovering fundamental changes in the way we consume media and communicate

TV Is Dying, And Here Are The Stats That Prove It

http://www.businessinsider.com/cord-cutters-and-the-death-of-tv-2013-11

BuzzFeed - the website changing the way the world consumes news

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cardboard-boxes-that-look-like-david-cameron-buzzfeed--the-website-changing-the-way-the-world-consumes-news-8959628.html

You can laugh all you like at its lists – 15 Most Inspiring Moustaches In the Animal Kingdom –  but BuzzFeed is deadly serious, says Tim Walker. The website recorded 85 million visitors in one recent month

1. Languages
2. Investigative journalism
3. Political coverage
4. Foreign news
5. Narrative
6. Lists
7. Mobile
8. Social
9. Branded content
10.'Borrowing'
11. The nineties

The tech elite will join bankers and oilmen in public demonology

http://www.economist.com/news/21588893-tech-elite-will-join-bankers-and-oilmen-public-demonology-predicts-adrian-wooldridge-coming


Geeks have turned out to be some of the most ruthless capitalists around. A few years ago the new economy was a wide-open frontier. Today it is dominated by a handful of tightly held oligopolies. Google and Apple provide over 90% of the operating systems for smartphones. Facebook counts more than half of North Americans and Europeans as its customers. The lords of cyberspace have done everything possible to reduce their earthly costs. They employ remarkably few people: with a market cap of $290 billion Google is about six times bigger than GM but employs only around a fifth as many workers. At the same time the tech tycoons have displayed a banker-like enthusiasm for hoovering up public subsidies and then avoiding taxes. The American government laid the foundations of the tech revolution by investing heavily in the creation of everything from the internet to digital personal assistants. But tech giants have structured their businesses so that they give as little back as possible.

Ikea removes lesbian couple from Russian magazine

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ikea-faces-boycott-after-it-removes-lesbian-couple-from-russian-magazine-to-comply-with-putin-laws-8955178.html

Ikea was accused of cowardice by gay rights activists in Sweden, the retailer’s founding country. Ulrika Westerlund, chair of the Swedish Federation for lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights said: “I find it disappointing that Ikea has simply laid down flat. No one is really sure what ‘propaganda’ is and if Ikea had left the article in, that could have served as a test case.”

In 1994, Ikea became the first company in the world to feature a gay couple in a mainstream television commercial. But the company, once a symbol of progressive Scandinavian values, has recently appeared to subjugate its social conscience to protect commercial operations.

How books about sport got serious - By Simon Kuper

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/d1d75a48-513c-11e3-9651-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2lP4xJpQi

This kind of in-depth sports writing has become more necessary as daily sports journalism has got harder. After the early 1990s, when satellite TV channels began showing endless sport, newspapers and websites expanded their sports coverage. Many men devour it. To quote Andrew Card, chief of staff of former US president George W Bush: “He does not dwell on the newspaper, but he reads the sports page every day.” Noam Chomsky, the celebrated American political thinker, argues that any “serious media critique” needs to look at sport and soap operas: “These are the types of things which occupy most of the media – most of it isn’t shaping the news about El Salvador for politically articulate people, it’s diverting the general population from things that really matter.”

However, as sports clubs grew richer on the new TV money, they became more media-savvy. Now they control and limit sports journalism. Players get “media training”, press officers censor interviews and sports journalists are corralled into the manufactured pseudo-events that are press conferences.