Hold on to your seats. Bond is back following a starring role in the Olympic opening ceremony and promises to be better than ever. Expect the clichés: girls, guns, gadgets, glamour. But the question on many lips (have I spent too much time in marketing environments?) is “what about the product placement?”

007 has enjoyed his brands since way back when. We all know about the Aston Martins and the Bollinger.  In recent years, however, the product placement has been significantly ramped up (who can forget his clunky line when asked about his watch in Casino Royale: “Rolex?” “Omega.”) and there is significant revenue for the production company which, of course, leads to bigger and better stunts. I took a quick look to see if there was much social media buzz surrounding any brands linked with Skyfall (my thanks to Brandwatch for providing the data).

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While Chelsea Football Club currently lead the English Premier League, the Manchester United website is winning when it comes to visibility in Google UK searches, according to new research.

The two clubs’ positions are reversed again when it comes to social media, with the London club leading the way thanks in part to more people sharing links to the Chelsea on the Google+ social network.

The findings come from a study looking at the online visibility of the 20 Premier League teams by search and social analytics firm Searchmetrics. Read More »

Does brand journalism and content marketing represent the future of digital marketing? That was certainly the message from a recent panel discussion hosted by Outbrain.

Leading voices from the industry pointed to the increasingly important role of content marketing and the growing trend for brand journalism that has emerged hand in hand with social media.

However, when it comes to implementing content marketing, strategy must be a key consideration and brands must ensure they are developing authentic content. Read More »

For copywriters, the scene will be familiar. A brief lands on your desk and all of the pertinent details are there – the message, the audience, the tone – everything you need to start tapping away at your keyboard.

Now it’s down to you. You have to decide the best way to transform the information in that brief into an engaging, meaningful piece of content that works.

However, your client or whoever it was that provided this brief will often be expecting one thing and one thing only – a Word document full of information, keywords and reinforced sales messages in text form. Read More »

We have already seen stocks in social networking firms quickly decline this year and last night more of the bubble burst as social gaming firm Zynga announced, timed to coincide with the launch of the iPad Mini, that it was cutting 5% of its 3,200 workforce.

The cuts will include the closures of its operations in the UK and Japan although no word on how many are affected by these cuts.

Along with the job cuts Zynga plans to dispose of 13 older games and reduce its investment in the game The Ville.  Read More »