The culture of copying
May 30, 2009
Oh no: another boring report about piracy by a strange body with an obscure title.
That was my first reaction on getting hold of Copycats? Digital Consumers in the Online Age [2.76Mb PDF] – a report for the Strategic Advisory Board on Intellectual Property.
But when I read on, the report was full of fascinating insights into the way that we’ve all begun to think about the rights and wrongs of online piracy – or rather, “unauthorised downloading”, which is how this report for the government carefully describes it.
The authors, from University College London, point to evidence that what they amusingly call the “UK’s unauthorised downloading community” now stands at nearly seven million people, and they question the assumption that these are just teenagers and students – it seems older people are downloading too.
They emphasise the sheer scale of it – 1.3 million people online sharing content at one peer-to-peer network at midday on a weekday – and the fact that fast networks are going to make it ever easier to download Star Wars in three minutes or the complete works of Dickens in the blink of an eye.
But what’s really interesting are the authors’ conclusions about the way people think about this activity. They argue that there are now two cultures – digital and the physical world – and you can’t apply one set of rules to the other.
Illegal file-sharing is not only much easier than, say, lifting a CD out of a record store; it has become far more socially acceptable – “if everyone I know is doing it, how can it be wrong?”
They point to growing confusion amongst digital consumers as to what is or is not illegal in a world where there are now so many different ways of getting hold of content. So much on the internet is free – from VOIP calls, to services like Google Earth, to social networking services – that it’s hard to remember that you are expected to pay for some things.
In the words of the report, “the vast availability of ‘free content’ changes existing perceptions of ‘ownership’ and utility.” So, among 15-to-19-year-olds, 69% now do not feel they should have to pay for music.
For the digital consumer, many file-sharing services are now as big – and as trusted – brands as those of any large, legal corporation. So Limewire or Pirate Bay is seen as offering convenience and good service, just as older consumers might have liked to shop at the Co-Op or get their paper from WH Smith.
This report was meant for the culture minister David Lammy, and feeds into the government’s thinking ahead of the Digital Britain report, but it may provide him with little comfort.
Criminalising seven million people, it concludes, will have huge costs and may not even work in a globalised economy where other countries my follow different policies. Then again, telling those seven million that it’s fine to go on downloading for nothing will make it even harder for the creative industries to develop sustainable online businesses. So, no easy answers in this report.
Whenever I talk to people about this issue, I nearly always get the same response – if only the music and movie industries got their act together and provided cheaper and easier-to-use online services, the problem would go away. Is that really the case?
Yesterday, someone contacted me to point out that Stephen Fry’s audiobook was top of the iTunes chart, saying that arguably he had got distribution, price and product all correct.
I replied, asking whether my correspondent would still not opt to download Mr Fry’s book for nothing if he could – and whether the big record labels that occupied the number one spot on iTunes in previous weeks had also got everything right. He hasn’t yet come back.
However lamentably the music industry approached the internet when the threat to its revenues first became apparent, there are now plenty of legal and reasonably cheap methods of getting hold of its products online. But in a world where it is socially acceptable to download for nothing, many people may continue to believe that it’s just daft to pay.
From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/rss.xml
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Rivals urge curbs on Sky dominance
May 29, 2009
Rivals to British Sky Broadcasting are urging Ofcom to loosen the satellite broadcaster’s grip on top-quality events
From: http://www.ft.com/rss/companies/media
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Grazia and retail guru Mary Portas team up for Westfield luxury charity-shop initiative
May 29, 2009
LONDON – TV retail expert Mary Portas has teamed up with Grazia to open a ‘Living and Giving’ shop at the Westfield London shopping centre to raise money for Save the Children as well as Barnardos and Mind.
From: http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/RSS/
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Sony Ericsson to launch Pocket TV programme
May 29, 2009
LONDON – Sony Ericsson is launching its music-entertainment show Pocket TV, which viewers can watch on their mobile or on YouTube, on 4 June.
From: http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/RSS/
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Good Housekeeping to launch travel-sized edition
May 29, 2009
LONDON – Good Housekeeping, the NatMags-owned women’s monthly title, is to launch a travel-sized version of the magazine, as it looks to revive sales.
From: http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/RSS/
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UK government challenged by alternative Digital Britain report
May 29, 2009
LONDON – Lord Carter’s flagship Digital Britain report, aimed at making Britain a leading digital economy, has been challenged by a community-based alternative report.
From: http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/RSS/
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Coral launches free bet promotion around the Derby
May 29, 2009
LONDON – Coral is launching a promotional push linking up the Derby horse race with the England football team’s game against Kazakhstan.
From: http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/RSS/
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So is the CRR verdict good news for ITV – or for its competitors?
May 29, 2009
Rivals and advertisers are pleased to see that some CRR restraints on ITV will continue. But there’s another side, too
The Office of Fair Trading’s recommendation that CRR, the mechanism that stops ITV1 from abusing its dominant position in the UK television ad market, be retained in some form has led to cautious celebration by rivals and the UK ad industry – although analysts believe ITV will still do pretty well out of the final solution.
ITV, which has pointed out that CRR has cost it hundreds of millions in potential TV ad revenue over the years, had been vigorously arguing that its beleaguered state should lead regulators to cut it free and let it maximise the earning potential of its sales force.
However, the OFT today advised the Competition Commission that, while CRR should be updated, there was a need to “retain some protection for advertisers and media buyers”. Cue a round of high fives at rival broadcasters, ad agencies and marketing departments across the UK.
ISBA, the trade body for UK advertisers, took a typically cautious view, despite its vociferous lobbying, saying that the OFT’s recommendation was “positive” and “encouraging”. The IPA, which represents ad agencies, was less reserved.
“We believe this recognition of the strength of the broadcaster and the need for continued advertiser protection represents a major success,” said Geoff Russell, IPA director of media affairs.
“In these difficult times, everyone wants to see a healthy and vigorous ITV. However, this does not mean granting the broadcaster complete freedom to exploit its market power.”
Channel Five, which has taken a particularly severe hammering on the TV ad revenue front as one of the smaller airtime sales houses, was equally pleased at the outcome and called for a wider review of the market.
ITV was still saying today that it would work towards convincing the commission of the case for complete abolition. Complete removal of CRR was a possibility, albeit a remote one, when the OFT published its consultation document in January. It isn’t now.
A source close to ITV admitted that in reality the chance of the abolition of CRR, which outgoing executive chairman Michael Grade has described as a “straitjacket”, had been eliminated altogether by the OFT.
Still, every cloud has its silver lining. The good news is that there will be some form of “son of CRR” in place by the autumn, just in time for the all-important 2010 TV airtime trading season. And the ultimate solution is designed to provide some form of relief to ITV.
“We think of it as 80% of CRR going – not perfect for ITV, but pretty good,” summed up Paul Richards, an analyst at investment bank Numis.
From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/advertising/rss
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Joy of six: Things that you no longer see in TV adverts
May 29, 2009
Television hard-sells from a vanished age
1. Cigarettes
It might not be a particularly palatable truth, but smoking is a visually attractive practice. It’s cool. It’s supercool. It’s as Kool and as clean as a breath of fresh air, and it leaves your throat refreshed.
This is mainly because all movies released from about 1927 through to the end of the Hollywood golden age (the 1950s or 1970s, take your pick) were effectively moving billboards for this most stylish of lung-threatening pursuits. But television played its part too. Here, for example, is a sexy young couple sucking down their tabs while waterskiing. While water skiing. And when it comes to choosing a cigarette, don’t let anybody push you around; let Steve McQueen push you around!
Britain chipped in as well, with the excellent 1960 “Lonely Man” ad for Strand cigarettes. In it, a laid-back Rat Pack figure waits awhile for his date, who never turns up. Shrugging with mannered insouciance, Lonely Man lights himself a lovely fag, and wanders off into the night, content to reinvigorate his larynx with thick, regenerative smoke. “You’re never alone with a Strand,” trumpeted the tagline, though sadly the British public was too dim to recognise the piece’s film noir excellence. Instead, they stopped buying Strand cigarettes altogether, because “lonely” translates into British as “loser”, as opposed its American definition of “quiet brooding square-jawed Glenn Ford-a-like SexxGodd”. State of us.
Later, of course, cigarettes were found in laboratory tests to be neither quite as Kool nor as clean a breath of fresh air as first thought. They were also not scientifically guaranteed to leave your gullet feeling particularly zingy. So the UK banned television ciggie ads in 1965. Millions of lives have since been saved as a result – but did anyone consider Lonely Man? Did they not think his feelings had already been hurt enough?
2. Old blokes who own the company as stars
The silver-haired US businessman Victor Kiam famously liked the Remington electric shaver so much, he bought the company. Without stumping up a single penny of his own, it must be said, in a leveraged buyout. But the sentiment was there when you boiled down the bones. So here he is flinging other people’s money around yet again – your own, this time, which you can have back if you decide the product doesn’t shave closer than a very rusty blade.
There he is, dressing gown on, in what looks like the toilet of a cheap Las Vegas hotel room, jabbering away like he’s just sniffed a soupcon o’ Strip Sparkler. Either that or he has grave concerns about the executive lady currently sprawled over the bed, and wants her out toot sweet before she starts rifling through his wallet. (That’s actually not why he’s jabbering, though: he’s talking quickly because he’s only stumped up for a ten-second slot, and he’s got product to shift and dollar to trouser. Get out of Victor Kiam’s way!)
Kiam’s textbook entrepreneurial charm gave British businessmen delusions of grandeur, however. Here, for example, is early 1980s Norfolk bird-annoying magnate Bernard Matthews, being worn (and possibly operated) by a cheap suit, slicing £2.19’s worth of Special Scrotal Cylinder onto his big plate. Mmm, can’t you practically smell and taste the bootiful aroma of Meat Flavor(TM)?
But the practice was brought to a juddering halt, surely forever, a couple of decades later when the worryingly decrepit-looking guy from the Personal Injury Helpline inadvertently spawned the genius of Butterfield Direct. Surely there’s not a businessman in the land prepared to risk this sort of skewering again? (We’re not offering a money-back guarantee on it never happening; there are egos at work here.)
3. Decent jingles
Cliff Adams, the musical genius behind Murray (too good to hurry) Mints, the Milk Tray theme, and the chart-bothering soundtrack for the aforementioned Lonely Man ad, was also the chap behind the timeless classic “For mash, get Smash”. He penned what proved to be his signature work in, appropriately, an instant. Issued with the slogan by agency suits, he banged out a three-note (or four-note, depending on which way you look at it) riff on the piano, announcing how he would “do something like that” when he got to work. But quicker than one can whisk up a bowl of carbohydrate dust into wet carbohydrate dust, the musician’s paymasters decided his off-the-cuff number would in fact do. And so the greatest jingle in advertising history was born.
(Interestingly, the only composer in the world of popular music who has got close to this amazing achievement is Paul McCartney, the jingle-esque Yesterday famously coming to the thumbs-aloft Beatle in a dream. Macca woke with a jolt and jotted it down, initially naming the song Scrambled Eggs – coincidentally another lumpy yellow foodstuff you mix up in a pan, then don’t really enjoy without the aid of an awful lot of additional seasonings. But that’s another story.)
The point being, writing jingles surely shouldn’t be that difficult. There have been enough of them in the past, after all: A Mars A Day Helps You Work Rest And Play; They’re tasty, tasty, very very tasty; Beanz Meanz Heinz. On the other hand, these are the sort of dots minimalist genius Steve Reich would pay proper coin to scribble down.
Either way, nobody seems to bother any longer. But why? Have jingles been found to be somehow ineffective? If so, we’d like to see the working-out. For a start, Smash is, to this day, the market leader in the field of unpleasant powdered garbage. Meanwhile, companies who have eschewed fashion, and gone with jingles since Smash’s 1970s heyday, have clearly been rewarded for their faith. For example, who wouldn’t agree that washing machines last longer with Calgon, or that Mmm … Danone?
4. Decent slogans
Decent songs haven’t died a death, though: from Bing Crosby’s Keep Going Well, Keep Going Shell, through Elvis Costello’s dad singing (but not starring in) R White’s I’m A Secret Lemonade Drinker, to US radio star Garrison Keillor crooning that song about hating everything in the sunny Honda, the practice has been kept wonderfully alive through the ages.
Those Honda ads, though: anyone remember the slogan? The adverts are collectively recognised as one of the great advertising campaigns of recent times, yet The Power of Dreams has got nuffink to do with your Vorsprung Durch Technik, y’know.
It’s a poor show, but then it’d be unfair to single out Honda; very few companies have come up with anything memorable for decades, ever since copywriters stopped drinking a pinta milka day, unzipping a banana, then going to work on an egg.
Here’s a modern day slogan picked out at random. It’s for McCoys crisps: Man Crisps. Man Crisps! First, bear in mind (and this is a tangent) the charm of this Smiths Crisps effort. Then consider the slogan itself: Man Crisps (there’s a belch delivered at the end). What does this say about the product? That it is greasy and unclean, may have inexplicable hairs in unpleasant places, and a top-note perfume of perineum? Well done, adland, we’re sure the people at McCoys are saying!
5. Instructively revealing sexism
Man Crisps, though. Can anything be more tiresomely laddish? Yes! Here’s some raging sexism, courtesy of one of England’s most treasured heroes.
“I’ll take those sharp things from you, m’love, we don’t want anyone coming to any mischief. Barman! A pint of whisky each for me and Greavsie, and a glass of squash in a Tupperware beaker for the child!”
6. Regional matters
Speaking of the local, we arrive at the ads that used to spring up on ITV, when ITV used to be the local station it was set up for. When you couldn’t move for things like this.
The almost total absence of such adverts nowadays, of course, is why ITV is broken beyond all repair. Is it really beyond the ken of somebody – anybody – working in television to recognise this? (We’re not offering a money-back guarantee on it ever happening; there are egos at work here.)
From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/advertising/rss
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Microsoft Xbox to gain access to Sky channels
May 29, 2009
Owners of the games console will be able to view a range of pay TV channels over the internet following a deal with BSkyB, in the latest sign of digital revolution in home entertainment
From: http://www.ft.com/rss/companies/media
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