News round-up: 27th January 2010
- Added:
- Jan 27, 2010
This weeks movers and shakers in the digital industry: Vodafone | Shazam | MSN | IPC | Webcredible | Hotels.com | Natmags | Capblue | Vialuna | Music Magpie | Tremor Media | eModeration | Foviance | Jam | eKomi | Melarum | Clash-Media | Net Communities | Picture Paste | VideoEgg | Direct Ferries | AKQA | Dubit | Aedgency | Flixmedia | TangentOne | FirstDirect
Vodafone UK launches online business site
Vodafone UK has launched a new online business centre, bringing information and insight on its full range of capabilities in mobile, fixed and unified communications together in one place, while completely redeveloping the business pages on www.vodafone.co.uk. The new business site has also been redesigned so that it is segmented according to three types of customer: small business, medium and large business and public sector.
Every section has the same simplified, consistent design, ensuring quick and intuitive navigation for customers while the introduction of dynamic case studies, information resources and solutions grouped by theme and business benefit bring concepts such as flexible working to life.
For small businesses, the addition of selection tools helps customers make the right choices for their business. The site will even highlight solutions that businesses may not be aware of and could be of real benefit to them by saving them money and helping their business to operate more effectively.
Dockers partners Shazam for Super Bowl mobile ad campaign
Dockers and Shazam® have developed an integrated program that allows consumers who watch the new Dockers® “Men Without Pants” TV commercial to use their mobile devices to engage at a deeper level with the brand – a world’s first. Once the ad is “shazamed,” viewers will link directly to a branded-content site. This technology is a major step forward in making TV clickable like digital media. The new commercial debuts during the Super Bowl XLIV broadcast on February 7 on CBS, the first Dockers commercial to air on the Super Bowl since 2002. Viewers who have Shazam® downloaded on their smartphones can tag the spot and are instantly taken to a branded-content page.
On this page, consumers can read about the “Wear the Pants™” campaign, learn about and purchase the “I Wear No Pants” track and more. The ad debut will also include a khaki pant giveaway promotion that can be entered immediately via consumer mobile devices with the Shazam® technology. The commercial continues through 2010 on a variety of shows and networks including NBA on TNT, FX, Comedy Central and the Discovery Channel and will also air online immediately following the Super Bowl debut. The khaki give away runs from February 7 – 15, 2010.
MSN partners Marie Claire
Microsoft portal MSN has joined forces with marieclaire.co.uk, the website from upmarket fashion glossy Marie Claire, to create a new content partnership. Marieclaire.co.uk’s content will feature in MSN’s Life & Style channel, within new Marie Claire branded beauty, fashion and news sections. In addition to news, visitors to MSN will find Marie Claire’s buys of the day, revealing the latest must-have beauty products and on-trend fashion. The Marie Claire editorial within MSN will carry links to other popular content from marieclaire.co.uk, including photo galleries, celebrity news and additional fashion and beauty.
IPC debuts food magazine following website success
IPC Connect, the mass-market women’s division of IPC Media responsible for brands including Now, Chat, Pick Me Up, Woman, Woman’s Own and Woman’s Weekly, today unveils the launch of a new monthly magazine: goodtoknow Recipes. Recipes hits the newsstand today priced £2.20 and follows the launch of the site’s comprehensive new Recipes Channel last month.
goodtoknow publishing director Oswin Grady adds: “There is a major gap in the magazine market for a practical food magazine for mass-market mums. Our experience with goodtoknow online has given us a very clear picture of what they are looking for in a magazine and goodtoknow Recipes is the perfect complement to our hugely successful site for busy mums.” goodtoknow, which already generates well over 6.1million page impressions across its 933,000 monthly unique users*, launched the online Recipes Channel as a major new content pillar last month.
Webcredible chosen by JD Sports for usability testing
Webcredible, the user experience consultancy, today announced its appointment by JD Sports for a usability testing project on its website. The project is designed to identify immediate updates that can be made to the website user experience in the short-term, as well as making strategic recommendations to feed into JD Sports' website development plans for the next year.
JD Sports is a leading sports fashion retailer with over 400 stores in the UK and Ireland and shares quoted on the London Stock Exchange. The work with Webcredible is designed to help optimise the customer experience, increase conversion rates and encourage repeat visits. Webcredible's usability testing will consist of eight participants performing various tasks on the JD Sports website. Analysis and recommendations will then be communicated to JD Sports, based on the results.
Hotels.com sponsors London Weekend Television Weather
Accommodation website Hotels.com has agreed a six-figure sponsorship deal with London Weekend Television to sponsor its weather programming throughout 2010. The campaign, which aired for the first time this week, will run until the end of the year, targeted at LWT's audiences in London and the South East of England. Hotels.com will feature in eight transmissions every weekend following ITV news and ITV London News. Two spots will run on Friday evenings, three on Saturdays and three on Sundays.
Natmags hires AdTarget for web ad sales
National Magazines, a division of Hearst Publishing, is taking control of their own search and contextual adsales and rolling out their own classified ad network across their brands using the Adprecision AdTarget platform for publishers.
Commencing with www.youandyourwedding.co.uk and www.BabyExpert.com, Adprecision's AdTarget technology for vertical ad markets will be utilised across other sites within the Natmags portfolio allowing their sales team to sell to their own advertisers across their own network of sites. This means increased ad revenues and higher page yields for Natmags compared to the traditional third-party ad network approach.
Video site for parents goes live
A new free video website www.parentchannel.tv is being launched to offer parents expert advice on raising children. A consortium of experts from the voluntary and private sectors have come together to develop an online video information service for parents, funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF).
Digital Product Development company Capablue has led the end to end project delivery of the website, from concept and user interface design through to web development and user experience. Working closely with the consortium partners, (charity Parenting UK and production company Tomorrow's Child), Capablue has built upon its digital expertise to create a flexible, scalable video-on-demand website which provides links to other parenting services which complement the parentchannel.tv videos.
DVLA appoint Royal Mail to boost car tax renewals
The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) has appointed Royal Mail to develop an integrated Dialogue Mail campaign to promote the use of the Government’s electronic services for renewing car tax. The campaign will use direct mail with a personalised URL as the call to action. Royal Mail’s Dialogue Mail offering is powered by Vialuna, a specialist provider of highly personalised dialogue led campaigns.
The campaign is designed to encourage vehicle owners to renew their car tax on time by using the DVLA’s online or phone renewal services. The campaign will take people to a personalised website which highlights the benefits of renewing car tax using these automated services.
Music Magpie ups cash for old CDs
www.musicmagpie.co.uk, a UK website offering cash for old CDs, DVDs and games, has announced that it will be offering customers 25% more cash for their DVDs, giving consumers a much needed boost to their income in the New Year. Millions of old DVDs are left lying around unwatched when they could be converted into cash, and with the 25% increase offered by www.musicmagpie.co.uk DVDs can now be worth anything up to £3.75 each, or even higher for a DVD box set.
New sales director at Tremor Media
Video ad network Tremor Media has appointed Tim Williams as its new UK sales director, the company’s second major hire in as many months. Williams joins from Utarget.Fox, where he was responsible for online video accounts in the UK and throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
As sales director, Williams will be in charge of business development and ad sales through Tremor Media’s London offices, promoting the company’s ground-breaking technology that makes it easy for publisher sites to make money from their online video content.
eModeration moderates Christmas Day ‘Teens’ Speech’
Hundreds of teenagers responded to a call from children’s charity Barnardo’s to submit videos for the Christmas Day Teens’ Speech, according to eModeration, which moderated each of the submitted videos. Young people aged between 13 and 19 were invited to submit videos on a dedicated YouTube channel, MySpace page, and via The Teens’ Speech blog. They uploaded their views on topics as diverse as crime, drugs, sex and relationships, money, family and friends, cultural diversity, politics and their views on Britain’s future. A selection of contributors were invited to participate in The Teens’ Speech film which was premiered on the MySpace homepage at 3:10pm GMT on Christmas Day. It is a brutally honest, intimate and often moving view of Britain through the eyes of its teenagers.
Teens responded positively, taking the opportunity to upload serious commentary on British society, and although every upload was checked, they proved themselves trustworthy: there was very little content that could not be posted. As you would expect from a campaign aimed at teenagers, discussion was enabled across multiple platforms: the Teens’ Speech blog, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and the Barnardo’s website. Naturally, each of these comments was also moderated by eModeration to ensure that the conversations stayed ‘clean’.
Travel site boosts conversions with Foviance recommendations
Multichannel customer experience firm Foviance, was appointed in October 2009 by lowcostholidays.com to evaluate the user experience of their website, ensuring their position as key differentiators in the Travel industry.
Lawrence Hunt, Director, lowcostholidays.com said: “Foviance brought years of user experience research and design expertise to our project and delivered a set of recommendations that were very effective when implemented. They understood our business and what we were trying to achieve through the website and focussed on the areas that would deliver an enhanced customer experience and improved business performance. Implementing just 3 of the key findings and seen a 17% improvement in our conversion rate which is a very positive return on investment!”
Case study available at http://bit.ly/66BOXR
New head of video at Jam
Digital agency Jam has appointed Lisa Keddie as their new Head of Video. Lisa joins the agency from RealNetworks, where she headed up the international video content sites that are part of the RealPlayer, working on exclusive campaigns for such clients as Paramount (Star Trek), Sony (Click) and Warner Bros (Where The Wild Things Are). Lisa comes from a strong editorial and technical background that spans online, print and television, having originally trained and worked for leading international news agency Thomson Reuters.
Lisa has been charged with developing Jam's video services as a key part of the award-winning company's growth, which includes key new appointments within the LA office, integration of the digital PR and social media teams and innovations across creative media. Her appointment coincides with recent video work including filming and encoding of interviews for Optimum Releasings' BAFTA nominated A Prophet and Icon Pictures' upcoming red carpet premiere of fashion designer Tom Ford's directorial debut A Single Man.
eKomi debuts feedback software in UK
eKomi, a provider of independent customer service and satisfaction feedback software, has officially launch into the UK market. The eKomi solution works by emailing customers who have purchased from a retailer’s website to ask them for feedback on their shopping experience with the retailer with just three questions:
· What star rating would you give this retailer?
· Comments about the service
· Would you buy from this retailer again?
Five star responses are automatically posted to the eKomi application on the retailer’s website, which is customisable to match the look and feel of the site. Every response with less than five stars is individually managed by eKomi’s customer service team to ensure, for example, that the lower review was not as a result of the customer providing inaccurate information, therefore helping the retailer to ‘problem solve’.
Melcrum & ipadio deliver social media dialogue with internal communicators
ipadio – the live phonecasting & social media service, has announced that its technology is being used to share exclusive content and speaker insight in the lead up to Melcrum’s Social Media Conference on 9th and 10th February 2010. In the run up to the conference, interviews with all the speakers will be broadcast live via ipadio at, http://www.melcrum.com/socialmedia/index.html, allowing delegates to get a sneak preview of what’s to come at the conference. People who can’t make the live broadcast can listen later. And, with ipadio’s full integration into other social media platforms, listeners are able to post questions and get them answered by the speakers in real-time.
To listen live the interviews and ask questions, http://www.melcrum.com/socialmedia/index.html and follow Twitter hashtag #MelcrumSMC.
Clash-Media expands lead generation marketing to online gaming sector
Gaming companies can use the new consumer data generated via Clash-Media's targeted Online Lead Generation campaigns to build their own email databases that enable on-going marketing and special offer campaigns that boost long-term ROI.
Clash-Media provides its clients with a centralised managed service to support any lead generation campaign. It has established a wide global network of partners that enables it to operate in any market around the world, and its quality control processes and technologies maintain the highest standard of lead generation.
www.clash-media.com
Hugh Chappell joins Net Communities as Chairman
Hugh Chappell, founder and former Managing Director of market leading publications TrustedReviews.com and bit-tech.net is joining leading on-line technology network owner and publisher Net Communities as Non-Executive Chairman.
Chappell founded TrustedReviews.com in 2003 with Editor-in-Chief, Riyad Emeran and built the most successful online publication in the sector with 2.5m unique visitors a month (source: ABC Electronic). He sold the business to IPC Media, a subsidiary of Time Warner, in October 2007. Hugh is joining Net Communities in a part-time role to assist Andy Evans (Managing Director of Net Communities) in growing the business in preparation for possible exit.
PicturePaste Solves Gmail and Hotmail Problem
PicturePaste is a new utility designed specifically for cloud-computing services such as Google Docs, Gmail, YahooMail, Wordpress and other web-based text editors. PicturePaste solves one of the usability drawbacks of using cloud-based solutions such as Google Docs, Gmail and Wordpress namely that the operating system clipboard does not allow copying and pasting of graphics and images to any web-based service. This is a restriction of all current web browsers.
One of the most commonly asked technical support questions on forums for Google Docs or Gmail is 'Why can't I paste pictures into Gmail'. PicturePaste takes any graphic or image on the system clipboard and with a single click converts this into an image that can be dropped directly into most web-based email and text editors. PicturePaste also supports easy embedding of screen-grabs (whole screen or single window) into Gmail, Hotmail or other web based editors. It also supports drag-n-drop of JPG photo files from digital cameras.
VideoEgg reaches profitability
VideoEgg, the engagement ad network, today announced seven months of profitability, starting in June 2009, despite the global recession. The company’s global sales grew 100 per cent year-on-year in 2009, supported by considerable growth in the UK market, with global revenues exceeding $25 million. The privately held company was founded in 2005 and 2009 represented a year of business maturation for VideoEgg, as it solidified operations across nine markets and four countries. VideoEgg also expanded product offerings for brand advertisers and grew its network to reach more than 100 million consumers per month. Today in the UK, VideoEgg reaches 15 million people.
Direct Ferries deploys Tealeaf to increase conversions
Direct Ferries has deployed Tealeaf’s Customer Experience Management software, to give unparalleled insights into how customers are using the company’s website. Tealeaf will enable Europe's leading ferry ticket retailer to replay the website session of any one of its 2 million online visitors each month. This will give Direct Ferries the online visibility necessary to understand ‘why’ customers’ abandon transactions, allowing the company to improve the overall online customer experience.
Tealeaf will be deployed on the online booking engine at www.directferries.co.uk to help identify issues in the checkout funnel. Direct Ferries receives 90% of its revenue through the site, making it a business critical channel for the company. By alerting Direct Ferries to issues in real-time and offering session replay, Tealeaf will enable quick resolution and aid site optimisation -- ultimately reducing any problems with the site that could have a negative business impact.
AKQA to open Berlin office
AKQA will expand its operations in Europe with a new office in Berlin. Guy Wieynk, AKQA’s European Managing Director, will be responsible for the launch of the Berlin office which will be the company’s third in Europe. AKQA Berlin’s launch client is Nokia and the agency will be developing key applications for Ovi, the mobile internet services platform for Nokia, the world’s leading maker of mobile devices. AKQA has started recruiting across Europe for the best creative, strategy and technical staff for the office. An advance team of UK employees has been working in temporary space in Berlin and AKQA will open its new office in late March 2010. In 2006 and 2007, AKQA opened offices in Amsterdam and Shanghai, respectively.
Food Standards Agency launches teen social networking application
Youth specialists Dubit have been appointed by the Food Standards Agency to create a campaign to promote healthy living to teens aged 13-17 years old. Key to Dubit’s appointment was their insight and understanding of the teen audience as well as experience in bringing about behavioural and attitudinal change. The initiative involves the creation and management of the first online magazine that exists only as a social networking application across Facebook and Bebo.
The Food Standards Agency needed an initiative that was innovative and exciting in order to communicate healthy eating messages to the target audience, encouraging teens to choose healthier diets thus reducing long-term diet-related diseases. An emphasis is to be placed on 13-17 year old boys whom it is felt are less conscious of, or interested in, the health benefits of sensible eating. The application, ‘Blink’, has just been launched to the public, with a supporting marketing campaign. The site content includes recipes, competitions, quizzes, personal healthy eating plans and user generated content. The site will also include interviews with inspirational youths who have excelled in a variety of fields such as sport, acting, fashion and art, to which the young users will be able to relate.
Aedgency introduces coupons to its portfolio of services
Performance-based marketing specialist Aedgency has announced the latest addition to its range of affiliate services. Aedgency now supports coupons and voucher codes to help advertisers and brands drive traffic to their sites by offering value added propositions such as free shipping, 2 for 1 offers, money off or percentage discounts. Consumers will be able to access discount vouchers for goods and services from a range of high profile European brands via Aedgency’s consumer portals. These will include two new one-stop shopping web services set to launch next month.
Flixmedia.tv appoint Paula Jago as Global COO
Flixmedia.tv, the online content specialists, has continued to build its management team with the appointment of ex-Profero Operations Director Paula Jago. Scott Lester, CEO at Flixmedia.tv commented, “as Flixmedia's business continues to scale globally, it’s essential that we have a savvy leader to ensure processes, logistics and resources equally scale. Paula's experience in international, multi-channel client servicing and her delivery-focused approach are key competencies for Flixmedia going forward.”
RSPCA relaunches animal welfare site
The RSPCA is launching its revamped Animal Welfare Footprint website (www.animalwelfarefootprint.com), with its popular animal welfare footprint quiz, which will be communicated using social media from this week. Full-service digital agency, Tangent One (www.tangentone.com), has been tasked to make the website more interactive. As part of this activity the results of all the completed quizzes will be placed on the website – quizzes that allow consumers to calculate their animal welfare footprint and encourage them to think about animal welfare when purchasing animal based food products or when considering buying a pet.
Tangent One has also been employed to make it easy for users to communicate their quiz results and the website on their Facebook pages and twitter feeds. To achieve this the agency has added a new function to the website that allows those who take part in the quiz the opportunity to quickly and easily have their results pre-populated directly to their Facebook pages and twitter feeds, along with a weblink that will offer others the chance to complete the quiz.
First Direct gets January campaign
Dialogue141 has created a New Year campaign to promote a wide range of product offers for online and telephone bank first direct. Dialogue141’s multi-channel initiative includes digital, press, direct marketing and call centre activity under the umbrella theme of ‘re:solutions – offers you’ll want to stick with’. It encourages people reassessing their financial situations in the New Year to take up first direct product offers.
The campaign uses first direct’s signature black and white colour scheme to present clear-cut, uncomplicated offers in a witty and intelligent way in order to appeal to the bank’s target audience of people who appreciate no-nonsense banking. It is primarily targeted at existing first direct customers, however the activity is also designed to raise awareness of the first direct brand and the bank’s mortgage offer is intended to attract new customers. Different words beginning with ‘re:’ act as the tagline for each offer. The use of ‘re:’ combined with a word relevant to each product is a concept that stretches across all the offers to set the right 'intelligent' tone of voice.
