Despite the overarching reach of Facebook and Twitter, people are flocking more and more to niche services. Research by Experian shows that Between July 2011 and July 2012 use of both Instagram and Pinterest shot up worldwide, as well as other more specific social services.

In Australia, for instance, Instragram use rose a massive 362%, and a staggering 17, 319% in North America. Here in the UK the rise was over 2000%. Figures were similar for Pinterest, which saw a 798% usage spike in Australia, and 2373% in Hong Kong, and 1489% in the UK. Read More »

The Economist takes a look at the other side of the Arab Spring as investors look for the next big idea to come out of the troubled region.

It reports on how private-equity are investing in high-growth companies as they help incubate new internet and mobile companies across the Middle East from Cairo and Beirut to Dubai and Jordan.

Although in the same way that people have struggled to change regimes start-ups face problems of their own from bankruptcy being a criminal offence in several countries to miles of red tape elsewhere. Read More »

London’s hosting of the 2012 Olympic Games caused an inevitable deluge of sport-related advertising – whether the brands in question were ‘Official Partners of the Games’ or not. Amidst the monsoon of press ads, all featuring desaturated shots of sportspeople looking a bit too serious, I noticed something: almost all of these sport-focused brands’ expensive creations signed off with nothing more than a hashtag as a call to action.

Whether we were being told to #makeitcount by Nike, #takethestage by Adidas, #winfromwithin by Gatorade or #witnessmyrevival by Lucozade (whose revival exactly?), it was clear that it was all about the hashtag. When this dawned on me, I was – despite working in digital advertising – rather taken aback. Read More »

Listen closely and you will hear the ghosts of Australia’s marketing sector speaking. Actually, you don’t have to listen that hard.

They’re all over the place and they’re droning on rather loudly. They just don’t know they’re dead yet. Sadly, neither do the businesses that listen to them and buy their services.

They are the old guard of the marketing sector; those advertising and PR executives who have emerged from their creative and journalistic antecedents and who believe truly in the adage, “there’s no such thing as bad advertising”. Read More »