2012 was the year that saw content marketing truly come into its own. Brands started to take notice; publishing blogs, news, webinars, infographics and creating educational, responsive websites. They began combining owned media (websites, social media accounts and content platforms, like blogs) with paid media (advertising of all kinds, sponsorships).

In short, brands discovered the power of content – in all its forms.

What’s left for 2013, then? This is the year wherein brands’ owned and paid media strategies will take a back step; making way for the big daddy – earned media. Read More »

2012 was a fast paced year in the world of digital marketing and advertising. 2013 will be no less quick! Here are 5 predictions on the big things brands will be devoting their time and budget to, and how brands can act to stay ahead of the game in 2013.  Read More »

As consumers we’re used to logical.  We pick up documents and read from left-to-right and from top-to-bottom.  We start a film at the beginning and eventually we get to the end, and we wouldn’t listen to a song in reverse.  But the internet is different, and 2012 saw us embrace this difference and recognise how we stumble around from item to item within a vast digital landscape.

Purposeless browsing doesn’t seem logical. In fact, it seems like a step backward. After all, we were ‘surfing the web’ back in the late 1990s, and that was pretty purposeless. Read More »

The past 12 months has seen content marketing become a big hitter in the marketing discipline stakes and there are plenty of lessons marketers need to learn for the year ahead to make the most of the growing medium. 2012 has been a great year for content marketing, one that has seen it established as a key discipline as brands look to create a genuine rapport with their target audience. And there are big names leading the charge; the likes of Coca-Cola and Red Bull both embed content strategy as an integral part of their overall marketing strategy.

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I foresee two key opportunities for the industry creative this year. One is that ambient will become a key battleground for brands trying to disrupt audiences’ daily routines. The other is the move towards the big, the bold and the simple. Both these trends may well converge of course and I look forward to exploring their possibilities.

While Minority Report’s retina-scanning six sheets may not arrive in 2013, I think the drive towards mobile-first advertising and the arrival of 4G will have brands clamoring to become even more visible in our everyday lives. Using insight to identify where ambient opportunities exist will be imperative … so we may see sports drinks advertised on treadmill screens (available in a vending machine near your locker) or footwear retailers offering discounts on sturdy boots with graffiti on snow-covered pavements. Read More »

I’ve been a keen Foursquare user pretty much since the start in 2009.  Like many, the idea of gaining badges and mayorships became very addictive but the novelty soon wore off and led to many people questioning the real benefits of the service.   There are only approximately 193,000 users in the U.K, significantly less, proportionately, than countries like the US which has over 10 million  users.  Having said all of that, Foursquare has had a busy 2012 and has shown some signs of ‘growing up’, not only as a service but as a company too. Read More »

You might describe the last twelve months as being the end of the beginning of mobile marketing. In 2011 brands were testing mobile, with ad spend in the tens of thousands, this year has seen individual brand spend move to the hundreds of thousands. But with mobile representing just seven per cent of digital spend in H1 2012, we don’t yet feel that it has become a mainstream advertising choice. We expect 2013 to see continued strong investment in mobile display and other channels, but there is still some way to go before mobile reaches its potential.

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Take That, The Spice Girls, The Rolling Stones – yep, there’s no place quite like the Music industry for a good old fashioned comeback.  Did you know the phrase “Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back” was created for a Frank Sinatra comeback in the early 70s, even though he’d never been known as ‘Blue Eyes’ in his entire career?  Well done that PR man.  And if The Stone Roses was THE music comeback of 2012, what am I bid for Myspace repeating the trick in 2013? Read More »