Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to get award at Cannes International Advertising festival
March 30, 2009
Steve Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft, will be named media person of the year at the Cannes International Advertising festival in June.
Ballmer, who took control of the direction of the world’s largest software company following founder Bill Gates’s retirement last summer, follows in the footsteps of previous recipients such as Sir Anthony O’Reilly, the former chief executive of Independent News & Media; Lachlan Murdoch; Viacom’s chairman and chief executive, Sumner Redstone; and the Italian prime minister and media magnate Silvio Berlusconi.
“This is a time of sweeping innovation and transformation in advertising and publishing and there are incredible opportunities to use technology to deliver more value to both advertisers and consumers,” said Ballmer.
He will be presented with the award at this year’s festival, for which Guardian News & Media is the official UK representative, on 24 June during the press, design and Cyber Lions awards for advertising.
Ballmer, who spearheaded Microsoft’s ultimately unsuccessful .5bn (£33.2bn) bid to take over Yahoo last year, will also be making a presentation at Cannes during the Microsoft Advertising seminar.
Philip Thomas, the chief executive of the festival, said that Ballmer had a “passionate and dynamic personality” – perhaps best summed up by his remarkable “monkey dance” in 2006 expressing his love of Microsoft – and had “touched the lives of millions and changed the face of worldwide communication”.
In January, Ballmer, who joined Microsoft in 1980 when the company had just 24 employees and became chief executive in 2000, made the decision to cut 5,000 jobs to cope with the sharp downturn in technology spending during the recession.
Microsoft has been a sponsor of the Cannes International Advertising festival since 2002. The sponsorship deal expires following the festival in 2010.
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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to get award at Cannes International Advertising Festival
March 30, 2009
Steve Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft, will be named media person of the year at the Cannes International Advertising festival in June.
Ballmer, who took control of the direction of the world’s largest software company following founder Bill Gates’s retirement last summer, follows in the footsteps of previous recipients such as Sir Anthony O’Reilly, the former chief executive of Independent News & Media; Lachlan Murdoch; Viacom chairman and chief executive Sumner Redstone; and Italian prime minister and media magnate Silvio Berlusconi.
“This is a time of sweeping innovation and transformation in advertising and publishing and there are incredible opportunities to use technology to deliver more value to both advertisers and consumers,” said Ballmer.
He will be presented with the award at this year’s festival, for which Guardian News & Media is the official UK representative, on 24 June during the press, design and Cyber Lions awards for advertising.
Ballmer, who spearheaded Microsoft’s utimately unsuccessful .5bn (£33.2bn) bid to take over Yahoo last year, will also be making a presentation at Cannes during the Microsoft Advertising seminar.
Philip Thomas, the chief executive of the festival, said that Ballmer had a “passionate and dynamic personality” – perhaps best summed up by his remarkable “monkey dance” in 2006 expressing his love of Microsoft – and had “touched the lives of millions and changed the face of worldwide communication”.
In January Ballmer, who joined Microsoft in 1980 when the company had just 24 employees and became chief executive in 2000, made the decision to cut 5,000 jobs to cope with the sharp downturn in technology spending during the recession.
Microsoft has been a sponsor of the Cannes International Advertising festival since 2002. The sponsorship deal expires following the festival in 2010.
• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.
• If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”.
From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/advertising/rss
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Media industry news
March 30, 2009
Northern Ireland
Europa reborn
As a Daily Express reporter during The Troubles I spent many days, weeks and months based at Belfast’s Europa Hotel, which reopened recently. To gain entrance to the heavily fortified hotel you had to enter a cage surmounted by barbed wire, and be vetted in a dingy hut, where, invariably, the luckless occupant would be grabbing 40 winks. The Europa – managed by Harper Brown – never closed despite constant threats, and held a record as the most bombed hotel in Europe, hit 27 times. It was a place of intrigue and rumour and ribald hilarity. Paramilitaries, pretending to be ordinary people, mingled with us. There were also British spies – possibly MI5, easily recognisable – posing as journalists.
How things have changed in Northern Ireland since the advent of peace. The Europa is unrecognisable from its former incarnation. Instead of the plain glass front – a wonderful target for bombers – Corinthian pillars adorn its marble entrance hall. Inside, the rooms are lavishly furnished. In the past you were offered a room with a window, or a room with a board where a window used to be – the latter having lost its glass in some explosion or other.
I remember a bomb going off when Jack Kay, a photographer colleague of mine, was on the phone to the picture desk in London. The astonished executive at the other end of the line shouted “What’s that?”. “Just another paragraph of gelignite,” replied Jack.
In 1981, when the leader of the hunger strikers, Bobby Sands, died we gathered the next day at his home on the doleful Twinbrook estate. Told to get inside, we duly trooped in and saw the emaciated body of Sands, surrounded by a balaclava-wearing, Armalite-bearing IRA “guard of honour”. Back at the Europa, a sombre mood ensued, relieved by gallons of Guinness.
“It was a totally inappropriate revelry, when you look back,” says the former Sunday Times man Chris Ryder. “We would sit inside with our drinks and see all the lights go out at 6.20pm. The streets would be deserted, apart from army patrols. The hotel was a beacon. You could say that much of the conflict was reported from the Europa bar. Now there is a new mood of confidence … You see Paisley and Martin McGuinness laughing together. They are now known as the Chuckle Brothers. That was unimaginable before.”
Michael O’Flaherty
Newspapers
Star of the recession
The economy’s slide toward oblivion may be dragging the majority of the newspaper industry along with it, but for the Morning Star, the socialist daily, all is not bleak. With a staff pay dispute settled, the paper is about to benefit from the first instalment of a £600,000 donation from a group of supporters – to be staggered over three years – and launch an expansion project.
While other papers are considering downpaging, the Morning Star’s plans will see it increase pagination by 33% by June – growing from 12 pages to 16 on weekdays, and up to 20 for the Saturday edition – and doubling its colour pages. The aim is to add an extra 2,000 copies to its daily circulation – the paper claims a print run of 20,000, although newsstand sales are thought to be around half of this.
Perhaps more incredibly, given the industry-wide redundancy trend, the Morning Star is looking to hire six staff. “For the first time in the history of the paper we are picking up working journalists that have worked on other papers, usually we have to train staff ourselves,” says the editor, Bill Benfield.
So could the downturn prove to be biggest boon in the paper’s near 80-year history? “People tend to have more sympathy with what we are saying when the free market falls flat on its fat arse,” says Benfield. As capitalism collapses around it, will the Morning Star – which last year lost nearly £13,000 – be blowing raspberries? “I could look back and say I told you so, but it would be lousy journalism to say that,” says Benfield. “We’ll be looking to build a broader alliance to remove capitalism, to replace it with a system based on need not greed.”
But that won’t mean closer ties with that other alternative to the mainstream press, the Socialist Worker. “We don’t see ourselves [with the Socialist Worker] as an alliance of radical newspapers. We see ourselves as the daily paper of the progressive trade union movement.”
Benfield is not getting carried away – nor is he expecting the extra cash to send circulation soaring. In fact, the cash injection has brought a new set of problems for a title built for ideals, not profit. Now it has to make sure it has enough cash to sustain itself once the donation runs dry. “It’s a worthy ambition – whether it’s achievable, we’ll find out.”
Oliver Luft
Advertising
Driving sales
It is not a good time to be a car manufacturer. UK car production is reported to have fallen by 60% and sales have slumped around the globe. So what next for the glossy advertising spectaculars that announce a new model? Will they face a similarly uncertain future?
The figures are grim. In January this year there were double-digit falls in car industry expenditure on print, radio and television advertising, according to the Nielsen Company – the exception being cinema, which grew by 31%.
But shrinking expenditure does not necessarily equate to less advertising, says Lorna Tilbian, the executive director at Numis Securities. Because TV advertising rates have fallen, she says – and manufacturers have stock they must shift – the sector will continue to spend on TV ads. “If you’re in trouble and have a massive inventory and the form of shifting it is cheaper than it has been for a generation you advertise to get the cash coming in.”
Future sales, or the hope of them, is also a reason for brands to keep advertising, says Charlie Rudd, the managing director at Bartle Bogle Hegarty London. “What will shift cars off forecourts tomorrow is the tactical ads in the press or online.”
Gerry Moira, the chairman of Euro RSCG, agrees: “People know that in the second half of next year it won’t be like this so you don’t want to have been forgotten when that comes around.”
But costs still matter. Companies are expecting more from agencies in terms of online and integrated activity, Moira says, and brands are even reusing old ads. Honda, which has halted production at its Swindon plant until June, for instance is re-running Wieden & Kennedy London’s 2006 90-second epic Impossible Dreams – more exposure without the cost of a new ad (Impossible Dreams is reported to have cost around £1.5m).
Malcolm White, founder of Fiat’s agency, Krow Communications, says companies are being selective about what they back. “They’re trying to use the best tools to reap the biggest benefit. We’re doing more on the Fiat 500 for example,” he says. And Land Rover, which has a new ad, wants to position the car as a vehicle for all occasions, with up to £7,500 off. Car advertising may not be in as bad a shape as the industry it represents. But we’re unlikely to see any £1.5m spectaculars for a while.
Claire Billings
From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/advertising/rss
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The Hard Sell: Halifax
March 28, 2009
A recent Private Eye cartoon showed a bank manager telling a customer, “Sorry, we can’t lend you your money.” The grasping, curmudgeonly gall of the bailed-out banking industry, given the calamities their ill-thought out dealings have visited upon us is breathtaking. Thank goodness, then, for Halifax, AKA HBOS, whose latest ad bids to demonstrate that far from being incompetent, vampiric sharks, Halifax will go to extraordinary lengths to give the customer a more than fair shake. To an acoustic soundtrack that would grace any hippy campfire and true to the bank’s communitarian spirit, we see Halifax staff converge from all sides on a town centre. There, they swiftly group into human pyramids, enabling staff members to access mezzanine cafes and third-floor office block windows, even to get across a station concourse to dole out fivers to grateful customers. This, you see, is their new “reward” account. “At Halifax, we think banks should look after their customers,” trills the voiceover, smugly, as if this were some extra-special distinguishing feature as opposed to a basic requirement (and, as the recent £37bn government bailout showed, one they failed to live up to). In comparison with the Busby Berkeley-style ads of old, or the horrible hubris of the singing Howard, this ad is relatively humble. They used to give you extra; now it’s a “little extra”. But a fiver set against £37bn, and dispatched by such a ridiculously wasteful delivery system, feels just a bit too little. Especially when you know that they’re looking to somehow chisel a minimum of £5.01 out of each customer in return.
From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/advertising/rss
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UK games champion that lost its winning touch
March 27, 2009
Unloved by investors, demonised by the tabloids, sidelined by the government but adored by teenage boys. Who will mourn the passing of the UK’s last listed video games company?
From: http://www.ft.com/rss/companies/media
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London Pride returns to TV sets
March 27, 2009
LONDON – Fuller’s London Pride is launching a TV campaign this spring to promote the brand to beer drinkers
From: http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/RSS/
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Panasonic enters white goods market
March 27, 2009
LONDON – Panasonic, the electrical goods giant, is launching its ‘white goods’ into UK stores next week.
From: http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/RSS/
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Children’s social networking site Yoursphere launches in UK with slots for brands
March 27, 2009
LONDON – Yoursphere, a new social networking site targeting children under 18, is to launch in the UK backed by a social media campaign.
From: http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/RSS/
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Leukaemia CARE plots campaign to target Generation Y
March 27, 2009
LONDON – Leukaemia CARE is planning to sign up corporate sponsors and celebrities for a campaign to encourage 18- to 29-year-olds to support the charity.
From: http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/RSS/
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Wall’s sausage ad looks to capitalise on final Boat Race on ITV
March 27, 2009
The final airing of the Boat Race on ITV1 before it returns to the BBC will be marked with a TV ad by Wall’s Sausages suggesting that the only bits of the venerable clash between Oxford and Cambridge worth watching are the few seconds at the start and finish.
Wall’s, which late last year ran a viral showing two George Bush gaffes in its ad strategy to show its sausages only use “the two best cuts” of meat, has secured the centre ad break on ITV1 during the 155th Boat Race on Sunday.
The commercial, created by ad agency Beattie McGuinness Bungay, opens with footage of the start of a previous Boat Race. “That’s, ah, Oxford on the far side of course, Cambridge nearer us,” says the commentator. “And they’re off,” he continues.
However, after just two strokes the TV ad cuts straight to the end of the race. “And it’s Cambridge,” says the commentator as the ad closes.
“We only select the two best bits,” runs a voiceover and on-screen strapline. “Wall’s. Made with the two finest cuts of pork for sausages.”
A previous ad, “Baby”, showed the “two best bits” of being a father – cuddling his new born “gorgeous boy”, which then cuts away to his grown teenage son moving away from home. Other Wall’s TV ads have included the best parts of a Goldfish’s life, and black and white footage of a tower block being celebrated swiftly cut to show a modern shot of it being demolished.
In December ITV revealed that it would not continue televising the annual clash between Oxford and Cambridge after this year. When ITV snatched the rights to the race from the BBC on a five-year deal in 2004 it was hailed as a coup.
The race was a fixture in the BBC television schedules for 50 years. However, despite winning awards for its coverage ITV decided to focus its sports investment on football as the advertising recession forced it to cut programming spend.
• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.
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From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/advertising/rss
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