THE FULLRUNNER
Issue 193
Tuesday 26 June 2007

Dear all,

Our summary of the week's top stories in tech marketing, media and PR follows.

Regards,

Peter Kirwan
Fullrun | www.fullrun.com

Email: peter.kirwan@fullrun.com
Direct: 0208 670 0039
Mobile: 07803 975234

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>>> THE WEEK'S TOP STORIES IN TECH MEDIA & MARCOMS

DON'T MENTION THE DOME: HACKS BAMBOOZLED BY HIGH-CONCEPT VENUE
Bobbie Johnson had a lorra laughs writing up his exclusive guided tour of The O2 the other day in The Guardian. In his account of the visit, Johnson mentioned the unmentionable in his second paragraph.
"The suited executives ask only one thing," wrote Johnson. "'Don't mention the dome.'" Naturally enough, Johnson did it again in his final par, too. For good measure, the sub-editor working on the story added a headline describing The O2 as "an unloved Greenwich tent".
In the wake of Johnson's preview, here comes PR Week with a remarkable stat. According to Factiva Insight, the venue formerly known as The Dome has received 2,757 mentions in the British media since it became The O2 on 22 May 2005. Unfortunately, hacks have used the venue's old and unmentionable name in 94% of cases.
Actually, it's worse than these figures suggest. For despite their best efforts, even those hacks who try to do the right thing end up failing dismally.
On 21st June, for example, the Telegraph's Alastair Reid reported on a boxing match scheduled to take place at the venue soon. Reid referred to "the O2 arena -- formerly known as The Dome".
At the Telegraph, Juliet Garside recently suggested that O2's sponsorship deal will cost the company £90m over the next 15 years. Unfortunately, Garside referred to the venue as "the O2" (lower case "t"). Worryingly, her 16 other mentions were all of the unmentionable variety.
Over at the Daily Mail, Lina Das recently referred to something called the "O2 Millennium Dome". And on 8th June, the Evening Standard -- invited along for another one of those "first looks" -- called it "the O2 arena".
The Independent got the name right in stories that ran in November and early March. Since then, standards at the paper have slumped alarmingly. On 13th March, arts correspondent Louise Jury referred to "the Millennium Dome in London -- now named O2".
Perhaps the venue itself had merged with fabric of the company? Perhaps not. For on 16 June, the Indy's Jonathan Brown was to be found discussing "the re-branded O2 complex".
Brown's use of a suffix appears to have caught on at the Indy. By 21 June, Nic Fildes -- who'd got the naming convention right in November -- was producing an analysis of the prospects for "the O2 entertainment complex".
Given that O2 is ploughing £10m into marketing the re-opened venue, should it be worried?
Not really, says Nicola Green, the company's head of PR.
Green tells PR Week: "When the venue is talked about politically or as history, it is always referred to as The Dome. However, we have found that when talking about the up and coming content it is referred to as The O2."
As our analysis demonstrates, Green is 100% wrong about this. But she's correct in a different and more important sense. The number of hacks using the venue's old handle, or incorrect versions of the new one, will dwindle gradually -- until there's just one diehard left. (Our money is on Simon Heffer of the Daily Mail).
In the meantime, O2 might want to encourage the process by buying one of those little box ads that used to appear in the classified section of Press Gazette. Companies like Hoover used the space to remind the nation's hacks that it was a bad thing to drop the initial capital on words like "hoover".
Alternatively, O2 might just retaliate and start referring to the Independent rather than The Independent. And so on for all of the nationals. Out of sheer bloody-mindedness, The Fullrunner has been doing this for years. And we can tell you: it feels great.
(PR Week | Paid subscription)
(The Guardian | Free access)

HOW SINISTER SPANIARDS REDUCED O2 TO "OLD-FASHIONED" MARKETING
Marketing Week has an odd take on The O2. "There is only so much loyalty to be earned from herding customers around an entertainment complex," writes David Benady. "At some point, O2 will have to play catch up and get down to the task of launching some workable, popular new communications services."
So far as Marketing Week is concerned, The O2 is merely "old-fashioned marketing". For customers who visit the ex-Dome, O2 will offer priority booking, a VIP bar and a tasty-sounding "wall where customers can project pictures of themselves".
Actually, this sounds like fun. We'd have thought that Marketing Week might appreciate the way in which O2 has profited by focusing on customer loyalty (rather than trying to hammer new technologies into productized shape prematurely). And we're curious: could this be the same Marketing Week that named Peter Erskine as Marketing CEO Of The Year last October?
For our part, we quite like O2's defence of its focus on marketing rather than innovation. This involves the standard gambit that versions 1.0 to 2.9 of any new technology are usually slow, clunky and hard to use. Operating on the same basis, Microsoft has done just fine during the past few decades.
More seriously, Marketing Week's main beef appears to be O2's decision to shut down its UK-based innovation unit and shift its responsibilities upstairs to parent company Telefonica.
Given that Telefonica runs mobile operations in 23 territories worldwide, this seems at least vaguely sensible. Presumably, what Telefonica gains in terms of cost advantages from this decision it will lose in terms of swift execution in local markets. Plus ca change -- 'twas ever the way with conglomerates.
But is there really a risk -- as Benady suggests -- that O2 will be "left behind" in five years' time when the market has "moved on to a more advanced stage of development"?
Unfortunately, Marketing Week offers up no evidence for suggesting this. Unless there's a backstory here, it seems churlish to cry over Telefonica's decision.
Of course, the UK marketing press has a penchant for going doolally when our native mobile operators fall victim to the brutish ploys of synergistic Europeans.
As I recall, Haymarket's titles gave France Telecom a particularly rough ride to when it took over Orange.
In that case, Haymarket's editors appeared to have a problem with France Telecom's tendency to meddle with a great British institution. (A great British institution? As I recall, Orange's founding shareholders, circa April 1990, included Li Ka Shing and the Pacific Telesis Corporation of Los Angeles. Oh well. . .)
Coming this time from Centaur, Marketing Week's sour take on Telefonica strikes us as similarly odd.
(MAD | Paid subscription)

GOOGLE PRESS DAY: FAWLTY TOWERS ON RUE DE RICHELIEU
Google's first-ever European Press Day -- held in Paris -- looked mighty slick from the outset. And the list of speakers was stellar: Eric Schmidt and Marissa Meyer flew in to chat, as did Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, the co-founders of YouTube.
The staff wore white lab coats and t-shirts emblazoned with the words Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite.
According to Jemima Kiss of the Guardian, the canapés were state of the art. There was "something deep fried held together with a miniature peg". And something else "that looked like a jam-coated eyeball on a stick". From the pictures we've seen, the furnishings at the venue on Rue de Richlieu were pleasant in a Philippe Starck kind of way.
Then the wi-fi network collapsed. Next, someone upended a vase on the first floor, sending water pouring through the ceiling above the stage. This in turn cut the power, leaving Marissa Meyer, Google's vice-president of search and user experience, to complete her presentation sans Powerpoint. Finally and predictably, the air conditioning packed up.
Among most attendees, the announcement that YouTube will shortly launch nine local language sites around the world went down well. Hacks from the UK, France, Spain, the Netherlands and Poland got something to write home about.
Not so the Germans, who found themselves wondering why You Tube hadn't favoured their large nation with a native language edition. Nothing personal, said the site's founders, who went on to mumble apologetically about a "lack of resources".
A lack of resources? At Google? According to the FT's Maija Palmer, the German hacks were "clearly miffed".
Presumably, Google chose to stage its first-ever European press day in Paris because mainland Europe hasn’t exactly taken to paid search with mad enthusiasm. Nice idea. But before they try doing it a second time, Google's French PR staff really must wean themselves off Basil Fawlty's Big Book of Event Management.
(FT Tech Blog 1 | Free access)
(FT Tech Blog 2 | Free access)
Does Google's French subsidiary employ anyone with a background in real-world PR? If so, the company's head of corporate communications Elliott Schrage will doubtless be muttering "Told you so" under his breath.
Schrage is a former lawyer and Washington DC foreign policy wonk. Perhaps because of some historic trauma, he does not like hiring PR professionals. Nor does he like hiring ex-hacks in PR roles.
Currently, Schrage has a remit to double the size of Google's US PR operation. But according to Silicon Valley Watcher, he wants to fill the resulting 50 vacancies with big-brained graduates from America's top universities, most of them untainted by any real-world experience.
This seems consistent with the way in which Schrage has run Google's PR machine since his appointment in 2005. According to Watcher, Google's HQ PR team contains only one former journalist and perhaps five or six individuals "recruited directly from the PR industry".
All of this is too much for Nathan Weinberg of Inside Google, who is clearly a fan of traditional craft skills. Weinberg fulminates that both the tech industry and the media know that Google's PR machine "doesn't work".
Weinberg argues: "If it isn’t working, and you’ve got the most unorthodox hiring policy of any major corporation, then you [should] change the policy."
Because there's absolutely no sign of Schrage doing that, we're bound to suggest that Google's PR operation has the all the makings of a fine case study a few years down the road. . .
(Silicon Valley Watcher | Free access)
(Inside Google | Free access)

GOOGLE TAKES THE BAIT: WHISPERING PRs WHACK ONLINE PRIVACY ACTIVISTS. . .
The suggestion by Privacy International that Google's attitudes to user privacy are among the worst in the world smells highly political.
For one thing, there's the timing. In the background, Google is currently enduring lengthy discussions with representatives from Europe's combined data protection authorities, who have clubbed together as The Article 29 Working Party.
The Working Party appears designed to exert informal bureaucratic pressure on Google and others. Its existence is a reliable sign that political concerns about online privacy are building up rapidly.
From Google's perspective, the company's plans to serve up behaviourally-targeted advertising are a major concern. For the most part, this isn’t something Google does currently. But clearly, it's keen to get started -- and on a broad canvas, too.
The upshot is that Google's plans to make lots more money could be curbed by regulators' increasing interest in the way the company handles the search data it collects from end users. This was the delicately-poised context into which Privacy International lobbed its hand grenade of a report in early June.
In its report, Privacy International -- which is based in London -- made a number of familiar criticisms of Google. In a particularly provocative move, the organization suggested that Google's stance on privacy was a good deal worse than Microsoft's.
The aggression with which Privacy International delivered its verdict was wince-inducing. Sadly, more than a few senior executives at Google fell for the bait.
According to Privacy International, Google's European PR representatives responded by whispering to journalists that the organization had links to Microsoft. The allegation -- which centres on the presence of Microsoft employee Casper Bowden on PI's board -- feels a bit tacky. (On this score, you can make up your own mind by following the links below.)
With pitch-perfect outrage, Privacy International described the whispers as a "smear campaign" and demanded an apology from Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt.
Google's European PRs weren't alone in reacting foolishly. In the report's wake, Nicole Wong, Google's legal attack dog (a.k.a general counsel), was to be seen prowling the perimeter of The Googleplex, growling and barking at all-comers.
In several news reports, Wong dismissed a series of "inaccuracies and misunderstandings" in Privacy International's report. Without detailing them, Wong suggested that these errors were "numerous".
Some accounts also suggested that Wong was "disappointed" that Privacy International hadn't offered the company a right to reply. In a predictable riposte, Privacy International pointed out that it had tried -- and failed -- to engage Google in discussions before writing the report.
In short, Google responded to Privacy International by deploying the first, second and third oldest tricks in the Book of FUD. Rather predictably, the company was left looking rattled, shifty, lumbering and incompetent.
The PR whispering campaign was a schoolboy error. Privacy International can be accused of many things, but the insinuation of a lack of ethical standards just won't wash. Scrupulous to the point of being tiresome, Simon Davies, the organisation's founder, is the Robespierre of online privacy. The fact that Google's PRs in Europe didn’t understand this is unnerving.
The way in which Wong opened Google up to the charge that it didn't register Privacy International's initial approach was an equally mundane error.
Finally, we're certain that Wong would have done her company a power of good if she'd remained in the background and allowed others criticise Privacy International's report. Happily for Google, there was no shortage of third parties willing to do this. Among them was Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land, a respected commentator whose measured critique you'll find linked below.
Having taken a bit of a drubbing, and shot itself in the foot for good measure, Google now has an opportunity to redeem itself.
That's because Privacy International has invited Google -- and other "major Internet companies" -- to discuss its interim findings at meetings in San Francisco in late July. This allows plenty of time for reasoned discussion. Hopefully, too, there will be plenty of time for Google to assemble a comms plan that's at least half-assed.
(Privacy International 1 | Free access)
(Search Engine Land | Free access)
(Privacy International 2 | Free access)
(BBC News Online | Free access)
(Privacy International 3 | Free access)

. . . WHILE OTHERS AT GOOGLEPLEX TAKE TO "PR SMOKE-BLOWING"
Google's aggressive response to Privacy International suggests that the company really is starting to feel the heat on privacy issues. So does a recent post at The Official Google Blog.
This post really should be mandatory reading for the attack dogs who swung into action against Privacy International. Written by Peter Fleischer, the company's global privacy counsel (ie: another lawyer), it's an object lesson in how to handle such explosive issues.
Fleischer starts out by contriving to show that all is well with Google's privacy policies. Among other things, he makes the point that Google's data retention policies are "consistent with EU data protection laws".
He then goes on to suggest that Google is actually quite pally with national data protection bureaucrats who sit on The Article 29 Working Party.
Indeed, Fleischer suggests, the committee's members recently wrote to Google praising the company's "readiness to consult". Apparently, this contrasts with "a relative lack of engagement by some of the other leading players in the search engine community".
At this point, in a clever sleight of hand that you'd miss if you weren't looking for it, Fleischer segues into an admission that Google has changed its policy on retaining server log data that's traceable to individual users.
The company used to keep such data for a maximum of 24 months before "anonymising" it. Now, apparently, it will only keep the data in "traceable" form for 18 months. (According to some observers, no other major search engine bothers with anonymising data -- at either 18 or 24 months.)
According to Fleischer, Google also has an announcement in the works relating to its much-disliked search cookies.
These changes appear to have been casually suggested by those ever-so-friendly chaps on The Article 29 Working Party. At the moment, both Google and the EU's data protection bureaucrats are smiling and mouthing platitudes. But the bureaucrats are starting to force real concessions out of Google.
Executives like Fleischer seem intent upon complying because they know that there's no alternative. The history of relations between the EU and Microsoft underlines this. When Microsoft was subject to the same kind of cloying bureaucratic embrace in the mid-1990s, Redmond told the bureaucrats where to stick it. The company ended up being tortured ad infinitum by the EU's anti-trust lawyers.
Under these circumstances, Google needs to be careful about how it responds to semi-detached outriders like Privacy International. Unfortunately, Wong and her whispering PR colleagues have muddied the waters. Although observers like Seth Finkelstein might dismiss Fleischer's blog posts as "PR smoke-blowing", his measured approach still strikes us as sensible.
(Peter Fleischer: Google Blog | Free access)
(Matt Cutts's Blog | Free access)
(Out Law | Free access)
(The Guardian | Free access)

GRANGER EXITS NHS IT: COMPUTER WEEKLY WANTS ANOTHER ONE JUST LIKE HIM
Richard Granger, the outgoing NHS director-general of IT, once pledged to hold suppliers’ feet to the fire until the smell of burning flesh was "overpowering".
As Accenture's shareholders would no doubt testify, Granger was true to his word. But did The Great Leader really earn as little as £50 an hour during his five years in charge of the world's largest civilian IT project?
That's what Granger told Sarah Arnott of Computing last week. A tad skeptical, we thought we'd have a go at calculating Granger's hourly rate on our tod.
Back in May, Silicon revealed the results of a Freedom of Information Act request which showed that Granger had earned around £1.05m during the past four years.
Four years. That's 1,460 days including bank holidays and weekends. Assuming that Granger worked on each and every one of those days, we're looking at gross payments before tax of £688 per day.
On the assumption that Granger typically worked for around 13.75 hours a day, his hourly rate would indeed equate to around £50.
That's less than our esteemed accountant. When you take into account the endless hours of fun and laughter Granger has provided for both his enemies and his employees, this seems like a fair old bargain. As Computing delicately put it last week: "NHS IT will never be the same again".
(Silicon | Free access)
(Computing | Free access)
On his blog, Tony Collins of Computer Weekly says he is "disappointed" that Granger -- "a most valuable asset" -- is leaving the NHS National Programme for IT.
"It is surprising the Department of Health is not doing more to keep him," writes Collins, whose battles with Granger have assumed the mythical quality of a Norse saga.
According to our sources, there's not much the Department could have done. Apparently, Granger announced his resignation unilaterally on Friday 15 June. The announcement left a slightly embarrassed Department of Health suggesting that a replacement would be found "in due course".
Talking with the Sunday Times, Collins struck a slightly different note. "The [NHS IT] programme has highlighted the need for proper electronic records in the NHS," said Collins. "But you have to ask what it has achieved that trusts could not have done on their own."
Confused? You will be -- not least because the cottage industry of public sector project watchers has been thrown into a frenzy by Granger's wholly predictable departure.
Kicking off a festival of puffery, Computer Weekly has published an open letter to Gordon Brown from Robin Guenier, whom you might remember as the public face of the government's Y2K awareness effort. Like most such exercises, this open letter manages to be simultaneously pompous and abject.
In similar fashion, four hundred years ago, low-level members of the gentry lined up to touch the hem of James I's gown as he rode from Scotland to London to become King of England. Like Guenier, they brought with them a multitude of local grievances -- from the fate of Fenland eel hatcheries to the collapse of the hosiery industry in Nottinghamshire.
That said, the most striking thing about Guenier's letter is the demand that the government should replace Granger with another strong man. In fact, Guenier hints that we need an *even stronger* strong man.
Guenier writes: "Expecting the person with overall responsibility for [NHS IT] to have a range of other responsibilities is like expecting Churchill to prosecute WW2 while giving most of his attention to painting, bricklaying and writing."
For years, critics have lambasted the NHS National Programme for IT for its focus and determination. Now, curiously enough, it seems that we need more of the same. . .
(Computer Weekly 1 | Free access)
(The Times | Free access)
(Computer Weekly 2 | Free access)

3GSM GOES SUPER-SIZED: PLOT TO DESTROY BARCELONA MAKES PROGRESS
Comdex is just a distant memory. And Cebit has entered the big expo death spiral. Patently, therefore, the world needs another all-embracing tech event.
CES is a clear contender. In January, the Las Vegas show attracted 143,000 visitors, including -- so the show's organizers tell us -- delegations from the Dominican Republic and Peru.
But what about Europe? Clearly, the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA), which kicks off in Berlin on 31 August, is an up-and-coming event. In its favour, there's the location. Among its demerits, there's the name.
Funkausstellung? Very international.
Like IFA, 3GSM takes place in a fine city. And so it comes as no surprise that the show's organizers -- the GSM Association (GSMA) -- have decided to drop the event's fusty and restrictive moniker.
From now on, it seems, 3GSM will be known as the Mobile World Show. According to the GSMA, the move is designed to reflect the "development of compelling new mobile services for end-users".
In other words: this is no longer a trade show. No sir: the new Mobile World Show will be designed to grab many more mainstream headlines.
According to Bill Ray of The Register, the intention is to attract "a more sexy media crowd" alongside the "middle-aged telecoms executives" who pitch up in Barcelona every February.
At The Inquirer, Tony Dennis rightly notes that GSM isn't everyone's cup of tea. "China will probably go for TD-SCDMA," he writes. Fairly obviously, 3GSMTDSCDMA really would have been too much of a mouthful -- even for the mobile industry.
This year, 3GSM attracted 50,000 souls. Next year, the event could move beyond the 70,000 mark. For the poor inhabitants of Barcelona, the results will presumably resemble a total eclipse of social and cultural norms.
For PRs, of course, it's good news. Next year, hordes of hacks from the traditional IT press will have an excellent excuse to come to Barcelona. Hopefully, many more mainstream hacks will attend, too. All other things being equal, there will be plenty more victims to herd into those briefing sessions.
(IFA | Free access)
(The Register | Free access)

HOW MUCH IS THAT BLOGGER IN THE WINDOW? ANSWER: AROUND £300
Ho-hum. Some of America's finest A-list bloggers have been running ads based around Microsoft's "People Ready" campaign.
Only there's a twist. These creatives contain endorsements from the authors of the blogs on which the ads appear.
On the popular GigaOm blog, for example, the creative featured founder Om Malik asking and answering a rhetorical question: "When is a business people ready? The minute you decide to strike out on your own. . . "
The campaign was brought together by a company called Federated Media -- a kind of ad network for A-list bloggers run by former Industry Standard founder John Battelle. According to one of the bloggers involved, running the ads would have netted him the princely sum of £300.
The effort to leverage paid-for advertising to generate positive editorial coverage is classic Microsoft, of course. (That said, it's true that Federated Media's first stab at this kind of campaign occurred some months back, on behalf of Cisco. Naturally enough, no-one batted an eyelid about that.)
Among those bloggers who didn't carry the ads, the creatives resulted in much huffing and puffing.
Perhaps because he understands the pressures that bear down on small publishers, Nick Denton, publisher of Valleywag and Gizmodo, was relatively understated in his criticism.
Wrote Denton: "The campaign is slick; and Microsoft is a deep-pocketed client. But it's disappointing that so many of his most reputable writers have signed on as spokespeople."
By contrast, at Buzz Machine, Jeff Jarvis was positively incandescent. Advertisers like Microsoft, he suggested, like to get into the pants of influential bloggers.
"They want us to speak their names," wrote Jarvis. "Nicely. Or at least be near them, associated with them."
Dave Winer chimed in as follows: "It’s one thing to let Microsoft buy space on your site (it’s called advertising) and quite another to accept Microsoft money for words coming out of your mouth."
Over at News.com, Charles Cooper asked why these online publishers had decided to "pimp a Microsoft advertising slogan".
Tom Foremski of Silicon Valley Watcher didn't much like the campaign, either. He wrote: "I'm gob-smackingly shocked that these top journalists went along with this lousy idea for the advertising campaign. It is a bad, bad idea and they should know better."
This episode doesn’t tell us much about Microsoft. By contrast, it tells us a lot about the economics of semi-professional blogging.
The dream of building a new blog-based media establishment -- as advanced by visionaries like Battelle -- was wonderful. But if media sales is about anything, it's about scale and longevity. And if media buyers are about anything, they're about conservatism. Sadly, as this episode proves, the future of blogging remains semi-professional -- with the accent on "semi".
(Federated Media: People Ready Business | Free access)
(Valleywag | Free access)
(Buzz Machine | Free access)
(Silicon Valley Watcher | Free access)

OPENADS: THE LONDON-BASED GOOGLE KILLER WITH 20,000 CUSTOMERS
Openads is a London-based company that has recently generated quite a bit of noise by scoring a £5m venture capital infusion. The presence of Saul Klein -- founder of Video Island and ex-head of comms for Skype -- among the ranks of investors has contributed to the noise.
Several observers are calling Openads a "free, open source ad server". Some describe the company as a potential competitor for Google.
Openads has been presiding over the open source development of its ad serving systems for the past eight years.
The idea is simple enough. Openads' software allows publishers to "rotate" ads from networks like Google Adsense, Valueclick and Tribal Fusion on their web sites. In the company's own words, publishers can "turn advertising on or off with the click of a button". Alternatively, publishers can turn off outsiders' ads and simply choose to run their own "in-house advertisements".
Sounds simple enough. But look at the numbers. According to Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine, Openads already serves "more than 20,000 publishers, 100,000 sites in 20-plus languages over 30-plus networks".
That's a lot of inventory. Donna Bogatin, a blogger and anti-Google provocateur, describes the company as being particularly strong outside the US -- in markets such as Brazil, Russia and mainland Europe, where Google's presence is typically weak.
Bogatin suggests that Openads is "undoubtedly looking forward to thwarting Google’s global growth ambitions".
We doubt that anyone at Openads would put their name to that statement -- if only because the company relies upon Google (and other ad networks) for a steady supply of ad revenues.
All the same, this is a start-up that's worth checking out. Low profile in the extreme, the company's founders don't appear to have yet retained a PR agency.
(Openads | Free access)
(Paid Content | Free access)
(Buzz Machine | Free access)
(Donna Bogatin's Blog | Free access)

NEW MEDIA ESTABLISHMENT PILES INTO MOBILE AD NETWORKS
New Media Age brings news of a tsunami of mobile ad network launches. At least three established UK-based online ad networks -- Unanimis, Adviva and Media Run -- are planning to launch mobile ad sales operations during the next few months. A fourth, Ad-2-One, has already gone public, claiming Sony BMG as its first client.
These established digital networks are arriving on a scene that has been dominated by mobile-focused start-ups until now.
The launches follow Microsoft's decision to buy the French mobile agency Screen Tonic, and AOL's acquisition of Third Screen Media, which operates an ad serving platform for mobile networks. Shortly after NMA's piece appeared, Aegis announced that it had snapped up Marvellous Mobile, its own preferred entrée to the sector.
Predictably, there's been some mewling and puking from the incumbents. Dave Barker, European managing director of Enpocket, says that the new entrants will simply "devalue inventory". (No bad thing from a client's point of view, we suspect.)
Barker adds: "You just can't sell if you don't know the industry." In our experience, this latter point is highly debatable. . .
(MAD | Paid subscription)

FACEBOOK VS. MYSPACE: GOODIE TWO-SHOES AND THE GANGSTAS
In recent weeks, Facebook has been the subject of lengthy pieces -- seemingly everywhere. The catalyst for this coverage has been the site's phenomenal UK traffic growth, which kicked off in earnest last autumn. For Facebook, it's the perfect backdrop for the planned opening of a London office in August.
Last May, Facebook was the UK's 469th most popular web site (in the eyes of Hitwise). A year on, it's ranked at no.18. According to the Guardian's Richard Wray, the idea of Facebook has entered "into the vocabulary of everyone from switched-on teens to Radio 4 listeners".
In the FT recently, John Gapper suggested that MySpace and Facebook might end up co-existing happily -- despite Rupert Murdoch's concern that online audiences are "all going to Facebook at the moment".
Gapper suggests that MySpace is a "multicoloured flashing free-for-all". It gives him a headache, and will probably evolve into "a place for teenagers seeking entertainment".
Facebook, by contrast, is "a much quieter and more private affair". It's "simple and restrained" and feels "less like entering a big club than a room with only familiar faces in it". Facebook, he suggests, might end up appealing to "adults who have less time to mess about".
But Gapper has his doubts about coexistence. Rightly, he points out that both MySpace and Facebook "require a big investment of time and effort".
Network effects will also be important in disrupting coexistence. If a user has contacts who use either MySpace or Facebook (or Bebo, for that matter), there's going to be a strong impulse for the social group in question to choose one platform over all of the others. This is a winner-takes-all market.
MySpace, Facebook and the rest are in the midst of an almighty audience landgrab. According to Nielsen NetRatings, MySpace had 6.8m UK-based unique users in April. Bebo attracted 3.6m and Facebook boasted 2.7m.
During the past six months, MySpace has grown by 30% and Bebo by 33%. By contrast, Facebook's UK audience has grown fivefold.
The audience overlaps are interesting. The biggest one of all exists between MySpace and Facebook. One-quarter of MySpace visitors also visited Facebook during April. And 60% of Facebook visitors also visited MySpace.
Clearly, UK surfers are actively sampling both sites (as well as Bebo). During the next few months, millions of individual decisions will end up defining which of these sites walks away with market leadership.
The argument for coexistence looks even shakier once you examine the demographics. Both MySpace and Facebook are relatively weak among the under-18s. According to Nielsen NetRatings, this age group accounts for 14% of MySpace uniques -- and just 5% at Facebook.
Moving up the demographic scale, Facebook is stronger among the key 18-34 demographic segment, which accounts for a whopping 70% of the site's users. (The equivalent figure at MySpace is 49%).
And then there's the curious phenomenon of MySpace's appeal to over-35s. Some 37% of MySpace users fall into this bracket, compared with just one-quarter at Facebook. Among this older cohort, MySpace also faces competition -- oddly enough -- from Bebo, where one-third of unique visitors are aged 35 or older.
All of these figures are somewhat debatable. Go to Hitwise or ComScore, and the picture will rearrange itself before your eyes. But the broad brush-strokes are visible. MySpace runs the risk of becoming the market's unfocused early mover. Bebo, meanwhile, will most likely retain its niche appeal to younger users.
Meanwhile, Facebook has rapid growth, desirable demographics and an open platform on its side.
This explains why Facebook is generating such excitement among London agencies. Even without a London office, the site is already running campaigns from the likes of H&M, O2, Apple and Sky here in the UK.
Sky? Why yes. The digerati at Murdoch's satellite broadcast operation are said to be setting up a branded location for fans within Facebook. . .
(The Guardian | Free access)
(Financial Times | Paid subscription)
According to US researcher Dinah Boyd, the difference between Facebook and MySpace is all about class.
Boyd characterizes Facebook's denizens as "the goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other 'good' kids". She continues: "These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. They are part of what we'd call hegemonic society."
Non-hegemonic types, it would seem, gravitate toward MySpace. In Boyd's words, this means: "Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, 'burnouts', 'alternative kids', 'art fags', punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn't play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm". Which in turn raises the question: which demographic would you prefer to target? (Thanks to Bobbie Johnson of the Guardian for the link.)
(Danah Boyd | Free access)

SKY LAUNCHES LONG-TERM DIGITAL BEAUTY PARADE: SEVEN AGENCIES RETAINED
For all of the hoopla about Virgin Media's creatives, it's Sky's marketing that intrigues the most. The satellite broadcaster is reputedly Britain's largest online advertiser. Last year, it increased digital spend by 54% to £20m.
At the moment, digital accounts for around 20% of Sky's £100m media budget. Marketing suggests that this proportion will rise "significantly" during 2H07. The company's recent decision to expand its roster of digital agencies from two to seven shows that it means business.
The seven agencies in question will all be on their best behaviour. According to Scott Gallacher, Sky's director of online and partner marketing, the extended roster has been assembled so that the company can treat a large number of agencies mean and keep 'em keen.
Or as Gallacher puts it: "By sampling relationships in this way, we believe we'll gain a better insight into the value the agencies could potentially offer to Sky over the longer-term."
In other words: this isn’t really a roster; it's an extended beauty pageant. In public, Sky might be content to flash its cash. But behind closed doors, the company's marketers are doubtless readying the thumbscrews.
(Marketing | Paid subscription)
Marketing suggests that Sky is the UK's largest online advertiser. Not so, says Centaur's Marketing Week, which quotes a Nielsen NetRatings study suggesting that Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and O2 were the UK's "most prolific" online advertisers during the first four months of the year.
Orange, Barclays, HSBC and WeightWatchers also appear toward the top of Nielsen's list.
Oddly, however, there's no mention of Sky. Was Scott Gallacher gilding the lily a little during his chat with Marketing? Or are online ad spend calculations so flaky that one researcher's market leader is another's non-contender? We think we should be told.
(Marketing Week | Paid subscription)
In May, media analysts at the investment bank UBS commissioned GfK to survey public attitudes to Sky and Virgin Media.
The resulting report makes relatively happy reading for Sky. Apparently, some 29% of Virgin Media customers are "likely or very likely" to move their accounts elsewhere. This compares with the 18% of Sky customers who seem to be at risk of churning.
It gets worse. According to MAD, some 45% of Virgin customers told researchers that they would rather subscribe to Sky if they had the choice.
At MAD, Branwell Johnson describes the report's findings as "pretty damning for Virgin Media’s long term prospects".
Presumably, the UBS research stung Virgin Media where it hurts. A week later, the company told the markets that it expects to return to overall customer growth during 2H07. Apparently, the company's run-rate with TV subscribers was "better than expected" during April and May.
(MAD | Paid subscription)
(Marketing Week | Paid subscription)

TOM BUREAU BIDS FAREWELL TO CNET: CAMPER VAN REVVED UP & READY TO GO
Tom Bureau, the departing managing director of CNET Networks UK, packed in the well-wishers at a good-humoured leaving party on Borough High Street last week.
Among the guests: Rod Banner of Banner Corp, Giles Fraser of Brands2Life, and Rob Lewis, who co-founded Silicon.com with Bureau back in the 1990s.
When Lewis and Bureau sold Silicon to CNET in 2002, Lewis took off, and Bureau stayed on, becoming boss of the enlarged company.
Among other things, Lewis has spent the past four-and-a-half years developing his plans for Omnifone, a music download service for mobiles.
Now that the service is finally going live worldwide, Lewis has been forced to do a nightmarish Long March of press interviews.
To be precise: 120 of them, on a back-to-back basis. "The problem with these ordeals," he told Fullrun, "is that you've got to pretend that each one is the first one. For the journalists interviewing you, that's the case. But for you, it might be the 99th in a row." Who says start-up guys don’t earn their crust?
As for Bureau, he's heading off to travel around Europe with his family in a pimped-up VW Camper Van for the next few months.
The bliss of life on the road might prove short-lived though. According to Revolution, CNET's former boss is enjoying a number of "long-range discussions with various investor groups and private equity companies".
Bureau suggests that digital media will be "at the heart, or a major part" of any new venture he gets involved with (or launches). Presumably, he'll be taking his Blackberry along for the ride this summer.
Also noted at Bureau's bash: Will Sturgeon -- currently of Silicon, soon to be employed by Lewis PR -- supping beers with his colleagues.
Because we've asked Will to become a judge at The Flackenhacks, we felt emboldened to ask him what he thought of Lewis's reputation as a hard-driving workplace.
Sturgeon's answer encompassed the usual nice stuff: "fantastic people"; "highly professional"; "I've known them for years"; "work hard, play hard" -- and so on.
All doubtless true. After a while, however, the mask slipped by a fraction. "I'm not sure that adopting a US-style hard work ethic is such a bad thing," quipped Sturgeon. "We could do with more of it in this country."
In the wake of Sturgeon's departure, we'll be watching out for a pronounced leftward tilt in the tone of Silicon's coverage. . .
(Revolution | Free access)

CMP SHUTS PRINT TITLES, SACKS STAFF: "DEAD TREE MEDIA STUNTED GROWTH"
Following IDG's lead, US tech publisher CMP -- a subsidiary of UK-based United Business Media -- is to downsize its portfolio of IT trade magazines.
The print and online editions of three titles -- Network Computing, Optimize and SysAdmin -- are to be folded into two of CMP's bigger titles, Information Week and Dr. Dobb's Journal.
The print editions of CMP's US channel titles will also feel the pinch. CRN, which is currently published on an eccentric three-times-a-month cycle, is to go fortnightly. Its companion title, VAR Business, will switch from fortnightly to monthly frequency.
The company's electronics titles will also be hit. EETimes will continue to publish on a weekly basis, but with a much-reduced circulation.
According to CMP, the changes are necessary to free up more resources for the company's web sites.
Naturally, there will be redundancies -- around 200 of them from a total workforce of 1,100. In percentage terms, that's at the high end of the range considered possible without causing serious problems within a large company.
According to Steve Weitzner, the chief executive of CMP, print-based revenues accounted for less than 50% of the company's turnover in 2006.
Here's how Weitzner described the grim reality to a US industry newsletter: "We’ve had double digit growth in online and events for some time, but we’ve been unable to feel like a growth company because we still had a lot of print."
How long before similar closures start happening in the UK? Not long, we fancy. Of course, peripheral print titles are relatively thin on the ground over here. But they do exist, and from what we hear, some finding life rather challenging at the moment.
(Newsday | Free access)

CARPHONE WAREHOUSE ISSUES 458TH APOLOGY FOR BROADBAND DISASTER
Tony Blair may have turned the collective national apology into an art form, but he's got nothing on Carphone Warehouse.
Announcing a pre-tax profit of £123m recently, Carphone's chairman John Goldersleeve was wheeled out to do the usual.
Gildersleeve admitted to being "very disappointed to have let customers down" in dealing with the massive demand for TalkTalk's "free" broadband offer.
According to our calculations, Charles Dunstone, chief executive of Carphone Warehouse, has already apologized 457 times for precisely the same thing.
Message to Carphone: Enough already with the apologizing. The fact that you're still doing it will just convince your customers that more cock-ups are in the offing.
(MAD | Paid subscription)

CISCO UNVEILS CONSUMER SPOKESMAN: STRAIGHT TALKING MAKES SHOCKWAVES
Recently, we've spent some time trying to understand what the hell Cisco is attempting to do in consumer markets.
By and large, the company's consumer-oriented acquisitions have been very interesting. And, yes, we've finally absorbed the news that Cisco will eventually liquidate the Linksys brand.
But on this subject, the broader public musings of Charles Giancarlo, the company's chief development officer, have been well nigh impenetrable.
The press conference Giancarlo led with three other Cisco executives at CES in January provided a perfect example. The verbiage was monumental in a cumulo-nimbus kind of way -- but just as insubstantial.
Now comes Ned Hooper, Cisco's new head of mergers and acquisitions, to put us out of our misery. Hooper obviously likes concrete things. After Giancarlo's abstract babbling, this is something of a relief.
Speaking with News.com recently, Hooper offered up a few examples of what Cisco is planning to do in consumer markets in the near future. To say we're grateful would be an understatement.
(News.com | Free access)
(PodTech: Cisco at CES | Free access)

HOW THE NEW BOSS OF LEXIS PR REJECTED THE REACTIVE LIFE OF A HACK
How we love the self-confidence of Margot Raggett, the incoming chief executive of Lexis PR.
Having worked for 15 years -- virtually her entire career -- at Lexis, Raggett has twice been forced to contemplate an outsider coming in to run the agency.
First time around, at the age of 28, she "put together a team of directors and spearheaded a successful MBO".
The same spectre rose in front of her eyes earlier this year when Hugh Birley decided to move upstairs to become the agency's four-day-a-week chairman. Says Raggett: "The thought of bringing in someone who didn’t understand what makes Lexis special was difficult to contemplate."
Obviously enough, she decided to do the job herself.
Best of all, though, we like the Raggett describes how she made the choice between a career in journalism and PR back in the early 1990s.
"Rather than having to react all the time, I wanted to actually try and shape things," she tells PR Week.
Happily, the implications of this statement seem to have provoked no reaction whatsoever from the PR Week hackette who interviewed Ms. Raggett.
(PR Week | Paid subscription)

THE WAGES OF JAGWYRE: APPLE PR ROBOTS BAN THE REGISTER
Ashlee Vance of The Register has been banned -- kind of -- from Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference.
Vance, who quite likes Apple's stuff in a personal capacity, asked the company for a press pass. Back came the reply from Apple's Teresa Brewer: "We appreciate your interest but cannot accommodate your request."
Sounding a tad theatrical, Vance writes: "The Register happens to be the most popular technology publication in Europe and one of the most read publications on the planet, but that's not good enough for Apple."
The man from the Register next records how he asked for clarification. Why exactly couldn't he have a press pass? Back came the stony-faced reply from Brewer: "I'm sorry, but we cannot accommodate your request."
Now Brewer is Apple's US PR manager for hardware. And Apple, Vance suggests, has a tendency to take "talented PR professionals" and turn them into "little more than call center workers".
But no, wait -- in this case, it's worse than that. According to Vance, Apple has taken to "disguising automatons in PR pod people flesh". Brewer, he suggests, is nothing more than an "impolite robot" out to "humiliate" him.
Thinking hard, Vance attributes his banning to colleague Andrew Orlowski's habit of lampooning Steve Jobs's unique pronunciation of the word Jaguar (the codeword for Apple's OS X 10.2 release).
If so, Apple's grievance is ancient. Jaguar -- or "Jagwyre" as Orlowski hears it when Jobs says it -- was released back in July 2002.
At the time, Orlowski popped along to the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. There, he heard the "stuffy and expensively-educated American trade press" sniggering at the way Jobs mispronounced the word.
Orlowski happened to mention this in the resulting article -- and then did similarly in a further fourteen articles written over the ensuing eight months.
It would seem that the Register has never been invited back.
Addressing Apple, Vance writes: "We're well past Jagwyre now and into Leper country. Can't you let it go?" Ah no, Ashlee. Apple most definitely cannot let it go. . .
(The Register | Free access)

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