Tag Archives: Metro

Us Against The World

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October 21, 2011

It’s official.  What’s Hot is excited about 2012.  Next year we are going to witness an abundance of media creativity in the UK. How can it not be exciting when we have the Euros, the Olympics, and even a Jubilee to plan around?

 So first, the numbers.  The latest Bellwether Report showed that despite a drop in marketing executives’ confidence, marketing spend has been revised upwards in Q3 2011.  It seems that many UK companies are increasing marketing spend in an effort to boost sales, and the main beneficiaries are online, direct marketing and sales promotion (all media channels that deliver the immediate returns to advertisers).  We estimate that 2011 ad revenue will be 2% higher than 2010.  The biggest growth sectors so far have been cars and telecoms (+10%), while Government spend has declined by 33% and Retail by 13%. Our forecast for the whole of 2012 is that ad revenue will increase by 4%.  The overall buoyancy masks a number of conflicting trends, such as a predicted 8% growth in Digital compared with 4% decline in Press.

So, what of the events?  The first big one is the Silver Jubilee and another Bank Holiday in early June.  The Royal Wedding this year took a few people by surprise, as the nation was gripped by royal family fever, or at least excited with the extra time off work.  And with it came a few smart marketing initiatives such as T Mobile’s great viral, currently at 25 million views on YouTube and still growing.  We are anticipating lots of Jubilee-inspired media campaigns in 2012.

Euro 2012 kicks off in Warsaw in June and, with apologies to our Scottish and Welsh readers, we are expecting a great tournament and a boost to the ad market, particularly  for ITV who will share the broadcast rights with the BBC.  Following this, the first British Olympics since 1948 will commence on July 22nd.  The BBC will of course have exclusive TV rights for the games.  Interestingly Channel 4 has purchased the rights for the Paralympics in August and You Tube will stream highlights of the Games to countries all over the world as part of an IOC deal.

The Press media owners have some interesting Olympics plans, including Metro and City AM planning weekend editions (Metro’s will be London-only and they are suggesting a print run of 350,000 copies).  The Outdoor market will be even more dynamic.  Vicinity sites in London, Manchester, Glasgow, Newcastle and Coventry will be exclusively sold to official Olympic sponsors and the auction process for this is already underway.  Meanwhile new non-exclusive space is becoming available around the new transport, new Central London experiential spaces and Westfield.  Poster companies are predicting 2012 revenue growth  of 15% – one of the biggest growth years ever.

So, 2012 is going to be crammed with exciting new media opportunities, increasing advertising budgets and three major events to give advertisers the opportunity to keep their communications absolutely up-to-the-minute.   It’s going to be a great year to remember in marketing.

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Material Girl

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September 23, 2011

London Fashion Week has never been so popular. Increasing numbers of brands, retailers, media, and consumers are getting involved, resulting in many more opportunities for the advertiser. But with all this additional activity, how are brands ensuring they stand out from the crowd?

This year saw more social opportunities than ever before. Burberry took the exceptional lead of launching its collection on Twitter – posting photos of each look, live, backstage – moments before the model stepped onto the catwalk. Burberry quickly hit no.2 on the global trending charts and broke their personal mentions-per-minute record. With social media platforms working to increase their advertising products, who knows what opportunities this kind of activity could generate next year. As well as their massive online presence, Burberry perfectly dovetailed this activity with the more traditional advertising channels to ensure they achieved outstanding cut-through throughout the whole week.

Traditional media, more than ever, are embracing new media platforms, offering advertisers increasing ways of being seen – and heard. Publications such as The Sunday Times Style, Grazia and Stylist were blogging, using social networking sites and broadcasting enormous amounts of content through their own sites. Grazia also provided more direct opportunities by distributing their magazines in branded tote bags to all the London Fashion Week VIPs – a great way of getting a brand directly into the hands of some of the most important people in the fashion industry. Nails Inc lead the way on this by partnering with Grazia to provide a sample in each bag. Like Grazia, the Metro were also handing out copies of their special edition issue, but they aimed their distribution at the masses – with teams giving copies away on the streets of central London.

Alongside embracing the new media platforms, newspapers and magazine continued to focus energies into their traditional London Fashion Week activity. Nearly all fashion titles and supplements increased the size of their publications and printed premium editions. This year Stylist doubled the size of their magazine and Grazia ran their largest ever issue – coming in at 300 pages – with 142 of those for advertising. Many titles used the time, both during and either side of London Fashion Week to run their fashion specials. The Sunday Times Style magazine run their special at the end of August – weeks ahead of the event – and then have over a month of fashion specials.

Burberry recently stated they are as much a media-content company as a design company. Where Burberry tread, others are sure to follow. With more content, there will be even greater opportunities for advertisers to access the fashion consumer. The trick will be to cut the wheat from the chaff and to connect and exploit these opportunities in the most creative and effective way.

(Photo above from the Burberry tweets of its Prorsum S/S 2012 collection – during London Fashion Week)

 

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Stand by Me

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July 25, 2011

 

This month has seen i, Lebedev’s succinct news digest, release its NRS (National Readership Data) for the first time. What has emerged about the quality daily paper is that it is performing well but, at the same time, not quite as anticipated…

The decision to launch a new publication into a weakening press market was a decidedly brave move. Paid-for daily press is in decline. However, Metro and Evening Standard have both seen year-on-year circulation increases (4% and 16% respectively). Evidently, there is still an appetite amongst the UK public for daily topical news content, the issue is that they are not willing to pay a high price for it. i has found the gap between the free and cheery and bulky broadsheets, targeting those who are open to paying a nominal fee (just 20p) for a concise quality newspaper to tide them over during their morning commute.

In terms of both circulation and readership, i is performing well. So well, in fact, that it’s on the verge of taking over sister title The Independent if the current month-on-month circulation increases continue (together they total more readers than The Guardian). The more interesting insight is who exactly is reading it. According to NRS data, i readers are predominantly male (55%) and about three quarters are ABC1. What has come as a surprise though is that the paper was predicted to target a younger demographic of professionals, but almost two thirds of readers are over 45. Conversely, the majority of The Indy’s readership (55%) falls below the age 45 bracket.

So what implications do these results have for clients? Currently, The Indy and i are being traded as a package, offering a wide audience and strong options for big ideas and creative solutions. As the most recent to market, i has to work harder for every advertising £. Publishing NRS data is the first step to becoming a fully recognised and reputable publication (something that other free titles have shied away from). One box ticked – what else needs to be done?

Firstly, distribution needs to be sorted. Given that Metro and ES are literally placed in the hands of readers, i would become instantly more appealing if it was more readily available to commuters. Increasing accessibility will also help tackle its major indirect competitor; commuters using smartphones as a daily morning news source. Finally, paying 20p every morning is a bit fumbly – essentially asking for payment in cash from the card generation. If payment was to become seamless (a weekly subscription card or mobile or oyster card payment maybe) then the younger demographic would be far more likely to snap it up.

i has done well so far but, all in all, it’s still just a baby in a very big and very competitive market. Ultimately it has a long way to go to become more than just a twinkle in the media eye.

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