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Video of the Week #92

Mon, 21 May 2012 15:13:00 +0000

To promote the release of Prometheus, our Parisian friends have created a platform takeover at an unused Paris metro station. The abandoned Saint-Martin station has been transformed into a cave resembling the one found in the movie. As commuters pass by the platform on the train, they get a glimpse of the artefacts, and the iconic stone head in eerie blue lights, ooh.

WACL Gather Event

Mon, 21 May 2012 14:46:00 +0000

A few of us at Maxus had the privilege of attending the WACL (Women in Advertising and Communications London) Gather event on Wednesday last week. The event, held every year, is billed as the ‘ultimate training day and networking event for women.’ And it didn’t disappoint!
The theme for 2012 was Future Proofing for Success, which means ‘thinking about how your role in both your professional and your personal life can be made more successful by thinking and building strategies around the future’. So a big remit then.

Without exception the speakers were excellent – the day kicked off with Louise Mensch, MP who gave an inspiring speech covering the many twists and turns her life has taken from music executive to MP - via the way of hugely successful novelist – all in a humorous and completely honest way. This theme of honesty and authenticity continued throughout the day with speakers such as Daryl Fielding (VP Marketing, Kraft Foods Europe) Fru Hazlitt (MD Commercial, Online and Interactive, ITV) and of course our CEO, Lindsay Pattison who sat on the ‘If I could tell you one thing’ panel and Q&A.

The day closed with the amazing Shelly Lazarus (Chairman, Ogilvy and Mather Worldwide) whose career began in the original Mad Men days. As well as giving huge amounts of useful current advice she also had lots of scandalous stories to tell about being a woman in the workplace in the 60’s – I am not too sure you’d be turned down for a position these days based upon the fact the (male) managers’ wives might not appreciate it!

The Subjectivity of Art

Tue, 08 May 2012 08:56:00 +0000

With all the media attention and advertising, the Damien Hirst exhibition has a huge buzz surrounding it. Queues lasting hours, tickets being booked months in advance, massive preparation going into it from a team of assistants and you have to think – is it worth the hype?

Living in London, it was impossible to be unaware of the Damien Hirst exhibition, posters were everywhere and the Metro was filled with reminders that it was a must see. Friends and colleagues were sharing reviews via social media and journalists were quick to give their opinion on the shocking nature of the art.

Channel 4’s online virtual tour and the interview, aired the day before the exhibition opened, featuring on the scene Noel Fielding highlighted the best bits of the exhibits. Ranging from the famous shark cut in half, cabinets of pills and a butterfly room, a lot of media attention was received. Do people want to see these exhibitions or are they jumping on the culture bandwagon? Without the thought provoking titles, the ‘art’ could be everyday objects that it would be difficult to justify paying to see. With the sell-out exhibition, it does appear that Hirst is able to turn typical objects into coveted must haves, epitomised by the £7,000 ‘limited edition’ spotted wall paper roll.

Re-using old exhibits at the Tate even takes away the shock culture of Hirst’s art it is renowned for. The shark is less fearful and the thousands of spots were painted by assistants this time around. Far from refreshing and inspiring, the art is repetitive and sensationalised. Despite this, it continues to receive ambivalent social media attention, bringing the subjectivity of art back into question - “what is one man’s trash is another man’s art”.

After watching the episode on Channel 4 however, I think personally I will be avoiding the stomach churning, fly-infested dead cow head.

The downward slippery slope for Simon Cowell….

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:57:00 +0000

It looks to have been coming for quite a while for poor Simon Cowell, but the wheels finally seem to have fallen off….in quite a big way! Year on year we seem to have witnessed numbers dropping from his flagship shows such as Britain’s Got Talent and X Factor. Where they were dropping off, they were still doing the biggest numbers across TV with highlights such as Susan Boyle and Leona Lewis helping to make the show the most popular programme for years! This year however has seen the BBC finally come up with a singing competition to rival that of the X Factor/BGT contingent and it seems to have stolen the lime light. The show in question is ‘The Voice’, which appears to have been developed and planned for a couple of years in waiting for the right time to release it. With a new take on the talent show format ‘The Voice’ judges Tom Jones, Jessie j, Will.i.am and Danny O'Donoghue decide whether to take the contestants through to the next round without seeing what they look like.

For the second week running The Voice on BBC has out done Britain’s Got Talent and it looks like it will continue to do so as people are getting bored with the repetitive format of BGT. The Voice attracted an average audience of 10.7 million viewers taking a massive 46% share of the TV watching public. By comparison, the fourth episode of ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ attracted an average audience of 9.6 million viewers, a 38.0% share, on ITV1.

Cowell anticipated the threat and decided to put himself back on the judging panel for the new series. This emerging threat of the BBC, appears to have forced ITV to make an executive decision to move BGT to a later start time to avoid the clash with ‘The Voice’. The show will start at 8.30pm from this weekend.

Simon Cowell is now in despair and looks to be going slightly off the wall to say the least. Recent reports have quoted him as lashing out at contestants in last year’s X Factor, calling them the “worst ever”. Cowell has predicted his shows could get a “kick up the ass” from rival BBC singing contest The Voice.

With this all going on for the media mogul it seems as though things are going from bad to worse! Recent tabloid news of affairs with Danni Minogue to other weird questionable behaviour such as he uses black loo roll in his bathroom and owns a feature in his garden that gives the illusion that he can walk on water. This is not to mention the drip in his US bedroom which he uses every Saturday afternoon to pump magnesium, B vitamins and pure vitamin C into his bloodstream…...No wonder he looks so cool!

Only time will tell if Mr Cowell can pull another hit out of the bag with rumours circulating of an idea for a new music show called In The Mix — a competition to find the best disc jockeys in both America and Britain. The DJs would play music to up to 3,000 clubbers who would vote with their claps and foot stomps….

Video of the Week #91

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:58:00 +0000

Mind the dog!

Zeebox…Your TV Sidekick

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:17:00 +0000

Smart TV’s and the rise in the second screen point to the inevitable evolution of television in the social age. Zeebox is the latest ground-breaking app to emerge into the digital market which takes this concept a step further. The team of 40 developers have joined forces with Sky with the aim of making TV better by bringing the power of the web to every second of live TV whilst making it a more immersive and social experience.

Zeebox is a free app that's with you on your laptop, iPhone, iPad or Android smartphone, while you watch your TV. It knows what you're watching, right now. Not only that, but it shows you what your friends are watching. It can give you more information about what you're watching, instantly. It lets you buy and download relevant content and it can tell you what shows are most popular, in real-time.

So far there has been 650,000 downloads of Zeebox, 70% of which were young adults with a slight male skew. The average time spent on the app is 30 minutes and the users are predominantly all heavy twitter and Facebook users. These figures are very promising with regard to opportunities for brand engagement.

I have recently downloaded the app to my iPhone and think it’s very clever and makes TV a whole lot more enjoyable - especially its integration with Twitter! I was watching the Grand National on Saturday (4th place for Cappa Bleu won me a free Nandos!) and was amazed by the detail of zeetags, I was able to find out information on all of the jockeys, horses and their trainers whilst also loads of information on the history of the event.

Now that Sky has secured the rights to Formula 1, they have capitalised on the opportunities behind the concept of the ‘dual screen’ viewing by using Zeebox technology. They are now able to provide users with a wide range of features such as maps of the race tracks, driver profiles, driver cameras etc.

Video of the Week #90

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 09:21:00 +0000

PROTEIGON from BURAYAN on Vimeo.