http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1JZ9O15280&feature=related

As a creative company, I’m always looking at new styles used in commercial or video art. Not to mention TV technology. Hence the above link.

The dark side is that as soon as I see Adobe or Apple release new software, I see their software turning up on television advertising within days, selling washing powder, machines, motorcars or something else.

‘The advertising industry is full of this. It’s as is if ’selling’ has become secondary to software!

‘

Selling’ has become a  a dirty word in the advertising industry because it implies getting results. And what agency wants to have to prove results?

‘Brand Building’ and ‘Brand Awareness’ are much easier subjects to talk about because they’re almost impossible to measure except at the highest levels.

I operate at the highest level – Wembley Stadium, London Eye,  O2, Harrods, CBI, Personal Travel Group – and I’m telling you, the only figure that matters at the end of the day are the number of people paying hard cash to go through your door or buy your product. That’s a fact for everyone.

Present me with one business owner who disagrees with me…

Modern advertising consultants seem to get younger every year in equal proportion to me getting older! I don’t blame them for that.

But in the UK particularly, these young advertisers and their bosses, seldom talk about the direct benefit of the product for the consumer -  unlike the USA.

In Britain we still see cars driving past overgrowm tulips and giant hairdriers. What in heck has that got to do with a car?

In America, they show me the features and keep it simple – ‘This car could be yours for $299 a month’.

I favour the American approach to advertising, but you’re free to disagree.

The woman in this video link  went on to win the Ukrainian equivalent of ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ because she’s brilliant. I would vote for her.

I wish I had her on my creative team or that I could afford what must now be impossible prices for her work. But she doesn’t use software – she simply uses her talent, her hands, and sand…

I suggest you take a look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1JZ9O15280&feature=related

We were part of the team that wrote this series, directed it, and filmed it in conjunction with a great team including Frank from Quanvision as well as Martin from Personal Travel Group.

We know we’ve achieved a success with this project.

It’s aimed at a wide demographic to mostly 40 year olds plus – male and female – but is designed to entertain anyone who happens upon it, to find the travel industry interesting.

There are six parts in this series – and we’re currently working on a more  cutting edge of this promotion to appeal to an even younger audience.

We just finished filming the new part of it yesterday, so there’s lots to come…

Take a look. here’s  the links;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOHt3_qBmuo&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgdIbtDt4Po&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvAHHESJUfQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWv4Vgd4KNw&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ONRKGzpGU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKY8ib7M0CU&feature=related

And finally Ofcom appears to have succumbed.

In the current economic climate, companies such as ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 – along with a myriad of smaller commercial channels, have been finding it all but impossible to survive in the economic downturn.

Why?

Because strict Ofcom rules prevent product placement and restrict advertising to a maximum of 12 minutes in an hour.

So while people expect to watch a programme like Coronation Street at a cost of maybe £500,000 per hour production costs, ITV has only 12 minutes to recover the money making each 30 second spot cost an average of £20,000 or more.

And instead of a character walking into the Rovers and ordering a pint of ‘John Smiths’ which could offset some of the costs, the TV makers are only allowed to have them say a pint of ‘Bitter’. Being able to replace the word ‘Bitter’ with ‘John Smiths’  could be worth an extra couple of million pounds a year to the channel. Being able to place a package of ‘Kellogs Cornflakes’ on a breakfast table, instead of an anonymous box, could be worth another million.

Ironically, for years now, Hollywood movies have been using Product placement in their movies left right and center – and it’s perfectly legal to show those movies on UK TV. How many times have you seen Danny DeVito stuffing his face with ‘Dunkin Donuts’ or James Bond drive an Aston Martin or BMW.

But put the same commercial transactions together in the UK and they become illegal. Nuts!

The arguement that product placement will diiminish tv quality is also not viable – we’ll just get used to it. Programme makers know that to overdo the product placement part will only diminish the quality of the story line. As I say, just look at how successfully Hollywood has been doing this for years. If anything, product placement can sometimes enhance a scene by making it possible to see a product at work as it can’t be seen in a regular commercial.

The 12 minute rule is another one that I still think is unfair to UK TV makers.

12 minutes advertising per hour is a European Guideline that’s applicable to all European countries. But no other country enforces it with the stamina of the UK. It’s like parking tickets. In Spain if you overrun by a few minutes, the Parking attendant will usually let you off. In Britain if you overrun by seconds, you get a ticket slapped on your car.

MTV was recently fined by OFCOM for overrunning the 12 minute rule by a minute an hour and were fined – ALL – their profits for doing so. Imagine if a Premier league footballer was treated with that severity, they’d be a riot in the stands!

On top of all of this, ITV is  a company with high standards and is one of the few that has to compete against a superbly well funded non commercial broadcaster in the form of the BBC.

It’s time they we’re given a break to keep doing what they do best – make great TV, and be given a chance to make some money at the same time.

It is this.

We now have a situation where the majority of British homes are multi-visual.

In other words, while people are watching television, there is a growing tendency for them to also ’surf’ the Internet at the same time.

It’s interesting that this figure is now officially documented by Ofcom. At Loudhailer we’ve been talking about this phenomenom for years but without back-up data to support us.

I know that in my house – believe this or not – we can have the television on and as a family of 4 we can be using as many as 3 other computers at the same time. We find this perfectly normal.

This is definetly the future. The kids log into MSN or Facebook while TV adverts are on and then go back to watching the TV afterwards. When their favourite programme is over, they leave the sitting room and go to their own dens.

For me, I might check an advert or a political statement online while they are still speaking on the television. How do you think so many emails arrive into the studios of GMTV or BBC in the morning or as comments are going ‘Live’?

Tell me I’m wrong.

And where is the average Corporate Communication in relation to this. Nowhere.

We still have to deal with clients who want to ‘Print’ brochures. How archaic.

By the way, I’m writing this from a remote cafe in Cumbria using wireless technology (Sedbergh to be precise) and I know that people in London and New York will be reading my point of view in minutes from now because I have clients there.

Archaic? Or time for a change…

I mention him because on this page we have a video clip that uses the ‘THIS IS IT’ image of what was to be his forthcoming concert in London at the O2 arena.

The video you see on this page was done by us as part of a PR promotion.

As part of that promotion we could pick and choose whatever images we wanted to use – Rolling Stones, Andrea Bocelli, Kylie, Led Zeppelin etc. We choose the image of Michael Jackson to front the video.

The video itself is only a ‘teaser’ for use in youtube and social networks and isn’t intended to be a fully fledged promotion.

Nevertheless, we’re grateful that despite all of the options we had at our disposal, and despite doing this promotion at a time when the UK Press did not have a single good word to say about the man – we used Michael Jackson to front O2 as being ‘WITH IT’.

Even before he died, we saw him as Iconic and above the others.

We’re so glad that we did…

Those of us who use airlines a lot are tired of misleading promotions. In a recent altercation with the Advertising Standards Authority, Ryanair was asked to demonstrate that it did indeed have:- 2 MILLION SEATS FROM £10 ONE WAY, TAXES & CHARGES INCLUDED as stated in its ads.

Ryanair could only find 2 booking forms that qualified for this fare and the advert was withdrawn…This was the adjudication that finally led Ryanair to the doors of the OFT.

Now we need to see some proper fines for this type of behaviour because it’s wholly unfair on the rest of the airline industry and on advertisers in general.

On a day to day level, an advertised price of £10 or something ridiculous is promoted at the front end of the website, but by the time you’ve got a seat and booked your luggage in, another £100 has been added to your bill.

Following todays ruling, this should now be stopped and apparently, Ryanair has now implemented the changes required. Hmm…

At Loudhailer we have to deal with the ASA and OFT regularly on behalf of clients. We’ll be keeping a close eye on whether the OFT has the muscle to keep up its end of the deal and ensure that Ryanair doesn’t invent some new way to step out of line…

I’m sure I’ll find out the next time I book a flight to Ireland or England…

Cheltenham Nannies is a service company offering nanny consultancy in London. In addition to nanny services, it offers advice and recruitment from its London offices as well as from its original base in Cheltenham.

Many of its clients are not necessarily English, so the Internet plays an important role in attracting new customers. Americans for instance, moving to the UK, will probably seek some assistance with a nanny.

But Google has trouble seeing the difference between Cheltenham and London and so do Americans.

‘London Nannies’ are keywords that the client would obviously prefer, but when you type them in, Google Maps appears with all websites that have a reference to London in them – whereas our client is based in Cheltenham.

To try and alleviate this problem, we’ve been putting out PR to ‘educate’ the Media and we’ve been placing articles on Toffsworld to redirect Google towards the clients preferred keywords.

However, we’ve managed to place ‘London Nannies’ top of Google Video! And we’ve managed to get the term Nanny Consultancy onto Page 1 of Google web.

VISIT: Cheltenham Nannies

All in a days work…

Now Twitter is in the sights of those looking to have their fame and status artificially increased.

Web traffic and promotion company uSocial.net – who famously received and ignored a Cease & Desist order from Digg after selling votes on the site – have just launched a service allowing Twitter users to purchase packages of followers if they are having trouble attaining them on their own.

Starting in packages of 1,000 and going up to 100,000 followers, the company launched the ‘Buy Twitter followers’ service not long ago.

“It was obvious people had been looking for a service like this for some time as the day we launched we actually had to start turning people away before close of business,” said uSocial CEO Leon Hill. “It was a shock, but within a couple of days we revamped our systems to ensure we could handle the workload.”

uSocial themselves own three of their own Twitter accounts which have all been active for only seven weeks and each of them number between 8,000 and 14,000 followers, totaling over 30,000 people following their activities. It was the methods they used to create this large follower base in such a short amount of time that they now use on their clients accounts.

“We’ve had everyone from churches and automotive blogs, to Fortune 500 companies express interest and invest in our services,” said Hill. “And with the growing popularity of Twitter, we can only see an even larger variety of organizations and businesses jumping on the bandwagon.”

The service is the second offered by uSocial that works on unnaturally increasing rankings or popularity on a social site. Upon their launch in December of 2008 the only service the company offered was their paid social bookmarking services which allowed clients to purchase votes on sites like Digg and StumbleUpon.

Oh Boy, what new world are we entering now!

When you want to sleep easy, pick Warren Evans for your bed, and Loudhailer for your partner!

Loudhailer is currently pushing out a message for their client Warren Evans, both through the media, and through Toffsworld (the online luxury web portal). Keep your eyes open for Warren Evans in the media over the coming weeks, and drop us a line to tell us when and where you saw them!

AWARD-WINNING bed manufacturer Warren Evans is not only one of Britain’s best “green” companies – they promise personal service, reliability and a wide range of stylish beds. Also they are the UK’s first and only bed maker to be certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

This means that all their timber is guaranteed to be well managed at every stage – from the forest and harvesting, right through to when the customer takes delivery of their beautifully-designed, hand crafted, new wooden bed.

Warren Evans are environmentally aware in everything they do and follow a strict code of ethical business and sustainable production. This means materials are sourced responsibly, production and waste management are incredibly efficient, and workshops, processes and packaging follow the same principles.

The company’s efforts have been independently recognised by some high-status organisations and awards. They were hailed by The Sunday Times as “green pioneers“ and named Best Local Retailer for the second year running in the 2009 Observer Ethical Awards, as well as being Premier Award winners in the BCE Environmental Leadership Awards – the longest-running and most prestigious green awards.

The Observer praised not just the company’s environmental awareness but also their focus on customer care, superior service and exquisite range of long-lasting beds and high quality luxurious mattresses. “The award was the result of customers’ votes and show that it is still possible in 2009 to shop at thriving – and caring – independent stores,” says company founder Warren Evans.

http://www.warrenevans.com/

Just visit websites like wordpress.com or blogger.com (part of Google) and off you go.

You can have a blogging account up and running in minutes.

That might be sufficient for you if you’re a student or a hobbyist. If however you’re trying to run a business, then Free Blogging accounts may not be the way forward for you.

To begin with, a free blog doesn’t say anything positive about you – but if it helps you to get to grips with the idea of blogging, then by all means give it a go.

For commercial purposes however, you need to maintain your own independence with your own name otherwise your marketing efforts are being diluted.

To build a blog that carries your identity and has flexibility, you either have to run one from your own server or share a server – which costs money.

But lets suppose you have your site built. Then what?

Well, the hard work begins. Getting people to read it.

To improve the ‘whose reading’ you have to become pro-active with your account. You have to start pushing your content in front of people. But how?

The simplest way is to advertise it. Google Adwords has done very well in recent year driving traffic to websites in exchange for money. But more than a few of you out there have noticed that this has started to become quite expensive – I wonder why? More another time.

Others among you have spent quite a lot on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). So rather than doing real work on your website like publishing useful material – companies have wasted fortunes on Geeks who claimed that trickery was the way forward. Well was it? Some of you will have gained some success doing this, but most of you will wonder where the money went and what have you got to show for it.

This is why I know that most companies have to go back to the drawing board.
So where is this traffic coming from?

Advertising in the Press – oh pleaase…newspapers are on their knees because no intelligent advertiser needs their product in this day and age.

So we’re into Article Publishing, RSS feeds, Social Networking (traditional word of mouth and digital) and Television. (There’s always PR and Sponsorship – slightly different subjects covered elsewhere.)

Television at the moment is CHEAP – but still the cost of entry is High. We do a lot of TV advertising and we’re talking £1,000’sss to get even a basic campaign off the ground. Not the subject of this article.

The answers rest with Article Publishing RSS feeds and Social Networking – the reason behind our Blogg.