In a slight side-step from Neoco’s staple digital-focused posts, I thought I would air a few comments about a campaign that has almost burnt-out the pixels in my brand new TV, owing to the media buyers who seem to have bought all the slots on More 4 as part of this campaign at the minute. The campaign is for Halifax, whose recent TV ad highlights the £5 payment they offer all their award current account customers each month.

As a Halifax customer, I have to admit that this ad makes me feel genuinely embarrassed, firstly for seemingly entrusting my money to a complete bunch of social outcasts, but also for the poor individuals working for Halifax who have now had this idiotic reflection forced upon them by their marketing department.

I can usually understand the logic behind involving the staff in advertising campaigns – using it as a motivational tool by letting the staff know they are respected and valued, while at the same time appealing to the sensitivities of the consumer by appearing to be a transparent and sharing, caring organization. This has been a strong theme in a lot of above-the-line ads of late, my most memorable being the ongoing Sainsbury’s campaign, and in the main I think it works.

However, this campaign fails to build on the success of the Halifax Howard years, simply because Howard was a genuine employee, clearly having a laugh at his own expense, rallying the workforce to get on board and have a laugh with him. As such, this highlighted Halifax as a bank unafraid of breaking with stuffy banking conventions, clearly focusing on more liberal ways of doing things, whilst always continuing to credit its employees within its advertising. Unfortunately, what this new campaign has done is offer a pedestal to a group of Halifax employees who, rather than spending their days working in the bank (God forbid!), instead work at a Halifax radio station taking calls from other employees who have deluded themselves into thinking they’re in space, simply because they’ve put a waste paper bin on their head. And I’m not even going to mention the ‘high fives’ littered throughout the minute-long ad – I’m sure you can reach your own conclusion.

What DLKW have failed to realize is that the success of the Howard campaign was simply because it offered the consumer a laugh alongside the main sales message, a laugh which was at the expense of an individual rather than reflecting on the company as a whole. In my opinion, this campaign doesn’t offer nearly enough ‘entertainment’ to achieve cut-through with the audience to actually deliver the sales message (I’ve watched this ad 100 times or so now and still needed to re-wind the YouTube video just then to actually figure out what the ad is trying to say!). Not only that, it makes you wonder why you would ever put your money in the hands of a bunch of work-shy monkeys, so even if the message does hit home, you’re immediately going to question it anyway. In short, I’ll be moving my savings account. <Rant ends>

Pirate Bay logo

Prosecutors in the trial against the four men who run the file-sharing site The Pirate Bay have called for a one-year prison sentence to be imposed.

Frederik Neij, Carl Lundstom, Peter Sunde and Gottfrid Warg are accused of promoting copyright infringement.

The Pirate Bay hosts thousands of links to so-called torrent files, which allow for movies, TV programmes and applications to be shared online.

No copyright material is stored directly on The Pirate Bay servers.

“I believe that the correct punishment should be one year in prison and that is what I am requesting that the district court hand down in this case,” prosecutor Haakan Roswall told the court.

The four men, who deny the charge, have been charged with earning at least 1.2m kroner (104,000 euros) by facilitating copyright infringement.

The film, music and video games industries are seeking about 117m kronor (10.1m euros) in damages and interest for losses incurred from tens of millions of illegal downloads facilitated by the site.

Prosecutors will sum up in the case later on Monday, while the defence is scheduled to give its closing arguments on Tuesday. A decision in the case is expected to take a few more weeks.

The TV ads that get us talking?

I set out to write a blog post singing the virtues of a recent TV ad; the Barclaycard “Waterslide” advert. The problem with writing about this sort of things is always finding an angle; do I actually have anything interesting to say on this?  It’s harder than it sounds. I started off this post with the thought “what makes a great TV advert?” A quick search on Google rapidly changed the direction into “what makes a rubbish website?”

The truth is, I’m not 100% sure what makes a good TV advert. So, what do other people think? Typing “what makes a good tv advert” into Google brings up wiki.answers.com as the first entry. Its suggestion is (in its entirety; I haven’t cut anything):

“It has to be eye-catching and snappy. It could use slogans, logos, music and motos.”

So much for an answer. I particularly like the use of the word “could”.  I could write a worse answer than this, but it’s hard work:

“It has to be good. It may involve moving pictures and sound.”

And suddenly I forget why I’m even looking for an answer to the question, so incensed am I by the utter pointlessness of this “wiki” answer site.  The problem with the Internet at the moment is the sheer volume of rubbish generated by people, seemingly for the point of saying “something” (I think you can unfortunately take this blog post as a second example!) Rubbish websites, it seems, are more prevalent, and easier to spot, than excellent TV ads!

So getting back to the original point; the Barclaycard advert is good. Possibly because it’s eye-catching and snappy, and uses slogans, logos, music and motos! See for yourself.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ1PeXPNCrM]

New research by the IPA has shown that almost a third of people between the age of 15 to 25 have watched TV via the internet. And around 18% of people aged between 25 and 64 (a very broad ‘old people’ category or what?!) had too.

The IPA Touchpoints report surveyed over 5,000 people and also looked at mobile behaviour. It was found that 30% of 15 to 24 year olds watch video clips on their phones, with 13% of all mobile users doing so.

Jim Marshall, chairman of the IPA Media Futures Group, said, ” the young are still driving the take-up and use of digital media and new technology, however, the older age groups are also moving steadily towards greater adoption.” Personally, I would have thought that more than a third of 15 to 25 year olds would have watched TV online, but I suppose if this statistic was expressed as a number than a percentage it would seem greater.

Just as an extra update – overall broadband penetration now stands at 73% of all UK adults, with internet usage at an average of 45 minutes on weekdays and just over an hour at weekends.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cXNzcxDrN4]

The ad, by London-based agency AMV BBDO (now there’s a catchy name), revolves around the central concept that Heinz Deli Mayo tastes so good “it’s as if you have your own New York deli man in your kitchen”. At the end of the ad, as the father prepares to leave the house with his sandwiches, the two men share a brief kiss.

According to the Guardian, viewers have complained that it is “offensive” and “inappropriate to see two men kissing”. What exactly is inappropriate about this, in an age where same-sex relationships are perfectly accepted and same-sex marriages legal? Other parents complained that the ads would require parents to discuss the issue of same-sex relationships with their children. I can’t see how this can possibly be justified.

As reported in the Independent, Ben Summerskill, the chief executive of the gay rights group Stonewall, has urged its supporters to stop buying Heinz products. Whether this will be carried out to the point where it actually harms Heinz remains to be seen.

I personally don’t feel as angry with Heinz as I do with the idiot viewers who took it upon themselves to complain. As someone in the office pointed out, the Heinz brand is centered around the idea of the family, and a protracted fight over this issue may go against the overall interest of the brand.

As the debate spreads across the Internet it seems that despite being withdrawn, the ad will find an audience on YouTube and other video sharing sites.

I think that Sarah Britten, a blogger from the South African newspaper The Times, sums it up well:

“Heinz showed even less spine than Thabo Mbeki on Zimbabwe.”

“Never underestimate the wilful stupidity of the viewing public”

It is interesting reading the history of Friends Reunited to see just how dramatic the rise of the school-friend catch-up site was. Launched officially in July 2000, by the end of the year it had 3,000 members, a number that had increased to 2.5 million a year later. By 2005, Friends Reunited had been the centre of a TV show (The curse of Friends Reunited), resulted in libel payouts and attracted 15 million of us to the site. Looking back, it seems crazy how a site that demanded payment to actually contact anyone could become so popular.

When ITV bought the site at the end of 2005, there was every reason to believe that the site would continue to grow in popularity. Facebook was, at the time, a high school network, only opening up to key companies in 2006. However many of the features which have come to define modern social networking sites, including the ability to make friends and communicate with these friends for free, were not a part of Friends Reunited. It seems that over the next year or two social networks moved on whilst Friends Reunited stood very much still.

My experience of the new Friends Reunited site was generally positive, albeit this was when I recently deleted my profile (having not been able to unsubscribe from emails without logging into my profile, I thought that having gone to the effort of figuring out my username and password that I may as well just go the whole hog and delete my entire profile). The new design is very much in the “web 2.0” mould; stripes, gradient-background titles, uncluttered.

The new features also go some of the way towards replicating the key features of modern social networks. It seems that it is now possible to join up with friends, and all monetary barriers have been removed (it’s free!). From the new-look homepage it looks like there’s a news feed feature and more of a focus on sharing pictures.

But do people need another social network? I personally don’t know a single person who uses Friends Reunited regularly, and this is going to be a huge barrier to wanting to use the site. Whereas most people I know do use Facebook. Now I don’t even like Facebook (I’ll save that for another day) but I think the key thing here is that if I do want to contact one of my friends, Facebook is currently the place to do it – simply because of the number of people who do use it.

I think another problem with Friends Reunited is that it’s lost much of the original purpose and focus. The original idea was simple – log in and find out what your friends are doing. Right now I’ve been there and done that. I don’t actually care anymore what everyone from school is up to; and the people I am vaguely interested in are all on Facebook.

In place of the focus of the original site, Friends Reunited now offers an expanded set of features, including Genealogy (Genes Reunited of course!) and dating.

So has the horse already bolted? Alexa traffic graphs seem to suggest that interest in Friends Reunited did increase markedly after the new launch (June 2008), although shown over a ten month period traffic is still definitely decreasing.

Compare this traffic with Facebook and Bebo and you start to get the impression that the founders of Friends Reunited got a good deal, and maybe ITV should have kept their money in their pocket! (Hint: Friends Reunited is the blue line that runs at a parallel to, and infinitesimal above, the x axis).

It will be interesting to see if the redesign can have a long term impact on Friends Reunited, or if the horse really has well and truly bolted.

• no people
• lots of plants
• buildings will fall down eventually
• there may be animals in places that there aren’t now; eg: in the middle of Trafalgar square

see – Rhinos in the street – crazy!

Although the bit about animals could be absolute rubbish because this is assuming they escape from the zoo somehow.

That’s it really. I reckon if I had some editing skills I could probably get the program down to a mere 2 minute commercial-length piece of TV. Or maybe just a single still with caption:

Look! No people! Rusty car! Road with grass growing over it!

I think I’ll have to agree with Sam:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/tv/2008/05/last_nights_tv_life_without_pe.html

I reckon a monkey with a Mac could probably knock this out!

I know this ad has been out for a while and I’m possibly a bit slow on the uptake with this one but I still wanted to get my tuppence worth said about this.

I am referring of course to the recent Honey Monster adverts. What the hell is that?

As most people at Neoco are aware I am a huge Mighty Boosh fan and I heard this ad (I was in the spare room at the time) and came rushing into the lounge so fast I slipped on the wooden floor, exclaiming to my amused other half, that’s a crimp if ever I heard one.

Some of you may be unaware of what crimping is but it is a style of erm well not quite sure how to describe it…… of rap and poetry, that boosh fans have come to know and love.

It is basically a rhyme of nonsensical words that ensure that you end up with a bizarre look on your face. It is actually very clever.

To give you the idea here are the lyrics from the ad

Sugar Puffs, Sugar Puffs HUP!
Honey coated puffs in a milky bath
Put ‘em in your mouth and they make you laugh
Kept in the cupboard taken out for breakfast
Spoon’s best friend and the fridge’s favourite
Huff! Puff! Huff-puff!
Huff! Puff! Huff-puff!
Wheaty chums that settle in transit
Golden pips of a sunshine princess

The Boosh started to crimp as far as I can tell in their radio show back in 2001. Each TV series has included at least two or three crimps. They are a bit of a highlight to us booshy fans or Mod wolves to those who are in the fan club (yes arguably its sad I’m a member but WHATEVER!).

I’m sure the people at Sugar puffs see this as some sort of hip, cool, down with the kids type of tribute, but that’s certainly not how they see it. They are currently in a huge legal battle over this issue, as they are saying it is a direct copy.To be fair I have to agree, that I think it is.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/article934592.ece

After seeing this I sent the following links round at the office to spark some of the usual chit chat and see what they thought. There is only one other Boosh fan in the office, so it was a fair floor to see peoples take on it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLXMxU-FC1E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSIQ4IJAYfk

This threw up the question of can you really copyright a style of singing? I suppose that is a fair question. The lyrics are original and it is purely the way they are being said that is the issue. Do they have grounds for suing?

I suppose that we shall see what the higher powers in court have to say and see the outcome of the legal battle is.

Apparently the ad is set to run until May, and then again from early July to mid-August. All I can say is that I for one think that in the words of Tony Harrison ‘This is an outrage’

As expected, they’ve also just entered a partnership with Universal Music Group, Sony BMG and Warner Music Group, which will offer music services on MySpace, a site that’s been known as a music community ever since all the sensible people fled to Facebook in 2007. Enhancing the MySpace Music platform already in place, they’ll offer DRM-free digital downloads, ad-supported audio and video streaming, a mobile store plus plenty of other knick knacks…

Users will be given tools to personalise their profiles even more (uh oh…) by creating playlists and easy-music searches. Artists signed up to MySpace Music can offer the users digital downloads, mobile ringtones, wallpapers and text messages regarding tours and the like, plus sell concert tickets and other merchandise.

For a full article on the MySpace TV deal, go to: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7339983.stm

Last week’s Media Guardian asked ” is it time to say “you’re fired” to Sir Alan Sugar?” To which Luke Johnson (chairman of Channel 4 and apparently an “unrepentant capitalist”) responded with a resounding “Yes”.

Now I have to sympathise with Luke for “[making the] mistake of doing some business with him almost 25 years ago”. I don’t think I’d enjoy that too much either. And in terms of a creating some “Entrepreneurial Apprentice” – what does this actually mean? Surely the point of being an entrepreneur is to have the drive to just get off your ass and make it happen. Landing a job as Suralan’s reasonably well-paid assistant may make it easier to pay the mortgage, but you’re not going to become the next Bill Gates.

However, with all that said, I for one am an unrepentant Apprentice fan!

So what other complaints has Luke got with Suralan? “The show presents a wholly bogus image of what commercial life is like.” Agreed! Is this a problem? Not really. I don’t sit around thinking that the Apprentice is in any way connected with real life. I also don’t imagine for a second that doing well on the apprentice would equate to being a successful entrepreneur. But I still enjoy listening to Jennifer inform me that she’s the best sales person in Europe. Or listening to Raef explain how words are his tools.

Luke’s not the only one, of course. The Apprentice seems to be fairly proficient at polarising opinion. It’s all just pantomime; unreality reality TV, but still thoroughly enjoyable. Long live the Apprentice!