The Marketing Week
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Welcome to The Marketing Week, your guide to the good, the bad and the downright bizarre marketing highlights of the last seven days.
CAMPAIGN OF THE WEEK
Hugh Grant stars in latest Guardian campaign.
Romcom actor and phone hacking campaigner Hugh Grant has never starred in a funnier film than the latest Guardian ad in which the newspaper and its Sunday edition sardonically bid to “OWN THE WEEKEND” (complete with movie trailer voiceover).
You can watch the ad here: http://youtu.be/4q6CXB0_j1Y (they won’t let us embed it on the Marketing Week site.)
STATS OF THE WEEK
- 50% The amount of a brand’s “loyal” users who will not be with them the following year, according to Bain & Company and Kantar Worldpanel’s UK Shopper Survey 2012.
- £31bn The amount research company Forrester predicts will be spent on digital marketing worldwide in 2013.
- 11% ITV’s ad revenue for January was understood to be up as much as 11 per cent following a rates row between Channel 4 and WPP which saw the agency group remove client ads from Channel 4 and over to rival broadcasters.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Matthew Langley, Brand manager at H Weston & Sons speaking about how the big brand loyalty theory is history:
GOOD WEEK FOR…
Channel 4
The broadcaster finally reached an agreement with WPP that will see the media group’s clients return to Channel 4 after weeks of tough negotiating. WPP pulled all advertising for its clients in December in an effort to get better deal on advertising rates.
Group M’s advertising hiatus was thought to be costing Channel 4 around £20m a month in lost revenues. The media group spends around £300m advertising on Channel 4 annually which accounts for roughly a quarter of the broadcaster’s ad revenue.
It’s a win win win for Channel 4, WPP and the advertisers affected.
BAD WEEK FOR…
Morrisons
The supermarket reported a 2.5 per cent decline in sales over the Christmas period while its rivals Sainsbury’s and Tesco both reported a healthy uplift. It’s never good to start the year with a fall in sales, but Morrisons has outlined significant marketing plans to help reverse the decline including a restructure of its senior marketing team, a major sponsorship partnership with ITV’s and Ant & Dec, and a separate partnership with Netmums.
In other news, elsewhere…
GLOBAL
Adidas and digital agency Iris Worldwide have marked Lionel Messi’s unprecedented fourth FIFA World Player of the Year award with an animated viral video replicating some of the footballer’s finest on-pitch moments. The video launched earlier this week targeting a global audience, especially the player’s native Argentina, and has already racked-up over 2 million views on Adidas’ YouTube page.
The tech industry converged on Las Vegas this week for CES (Consumer Electronics Show) where Sony unveiled its flagship XPERIA device and Samsung continued to woo technophiles with its Smart TV range and even a flexible, or ‘bendy’, phone.
CES also presented something of a ‘media first’ as the Associated Press featured advertising from brands at the show on its Twitter feed. A move that prompted Marketing Week’s Lara O’Reilly to question if this was a loophole that Twitter should address.
Also in the US, top brands are readying themselves for arguably the biggest advertising event of them all as the NFL Super Bowl with brands including Virgin Atlantic, Chrysler and Budweiser booking ad slots for then the final touches down in early February.
MISSING WORD ROUND
Microsoft’s interactive entertainment business leader Phil Harrison:
“You will see that in the people we hire, the companies we partner with and the business models we develop and the ______ expression we bring to life on all of these platforms”
Comment on this story or email rosie.baker@centaur.co.uk with your answer for the chance to…appear in next week’s edition of The Marketing Week! No Googling!
