I am NOT Maverick Marketing Sydney

AUSTRALIA’S advertising industry has enjoyed a welcome boost, with half-yearly figures released this week showing the industry’s revenue up 9.6 per cent across the board, compared with the same period last year.

The figures, released yesterday by the Commercial Economic Advisory Service of Australia (CEASA), showed total spending on advertising of $6.718 billion for the six months to the end of June.

The biggest winners were metropolitan television, up by 20.2 per cent, and online, up by 19.3 per cent.

The federal election, in which Labor spent just over $15 million and the Liberals’ $13.7 million on media advertising, was a partial driver of the strong figures.

But analysts said the figures were more a reflection of the advertising industry still being in ”catch-up mode” after the recession in the industry.

More at the Sydney Morning Herald.

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Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld complaints about an ice-cream company’s magazine ad featuring a pregnant nun, ordering that it not be published again.

The print advertisement by Antonio Federici, published in The Lady and Grazia in June, featured a heavily pregnant nun eating from a tub of ice-cream, accompanied by the slogan “immaculately conceived”.

The ad was part of its “ice-cream is our religion” campaign.

Some Catholics are said to have found it offensive, the UK advertising standards board agreed and banned it.

Quite right, too.

That should please the Catholics.

You’d think the UK Ad Standards Board would feel satisfied at a job well done.

And the company, the recipient of all this free global publicity, should be happiest of all.

All this attention, that hasn’t cost a cent, has saved them a fortune in future advertising fees.

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Editor’s Note: Some mornings you wake up at the crossroads. The draft of this particular post has sat in my site since February this year (don’t ask me why since there is no decent explanation). Today, I decided I needed to either publish it or delete it, so I clicked “publish”. I hope you enjoy it.

When it comes to the US Super Bowl, the action off the pitch is as exciting as the clashes on it. The halftime entertainment at Super Bowl XLIV featured The Who, while advertisers forked out more than $3m for a 30 second slot. No wonder the ads are so good.

BUD LIGHT

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I don’t know if you can still get Glyphius. I’ve got a copy of the 2007 software. I made this video awhile back and thought I’d share. I think the software is pretty good, even if its a little old now.

Anyway, if anyone is interested, this is how you use it.

If you’re interested in ad writing help, MSN Adlabs also has a tool. You can try MSN Ad text Writer here.

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A recent Microsoft Advertising study on reaching the multiscreen consumer found TV ads were still seen most positively.

Respondents were 10 percentage points more likely to notice ads regularly on TV vs. on the computer, 22 percentage points more likely to say they are fun to watch, and 13 points more likely to say they are more meaningful and relevant.

On the flip side, ads viewed on a computer were seen as more annoying and less noticeable—both of which applied even more strongly to ads viewed on a smartphone.
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LONDON – The long-awaited health select committee report on alcohol abuse has called for tighter restrictions for drinks marketing, including the introduction of a 9pm watershed for TV advertising, but has stopped short of calling for a blanket ban.

Instead MPs have turned their attention to the price of alcohol.

The report, made public today, recommends that government introduce a minimum pricing regime, a measure which is bound to annoy supermarkets who believe they should have the freedom to set their own prices without state interference.

MPs say a minimum price of 50p per unit would save 3,000 lives per year.

The wide-ranging report devotes a chapter to ‘Marketing and the drinks industry’.

It raises concerns that alcohol marketing vastly outspends government alcohol awareness campaigns.

According to the report, drinks brands spend up to £800m a year on advertising and sponsorship, dwarfing the COI spend of £17.6m.

Read more at the UK Marketing Magazine.

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KFC is the latest company under fire by the masses for this ad.

So, is it racist or nothing to worry about?

Do complainers have a point or too much time on their hands?

You decide.

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BROADCASTERS will be able to air extra advertising on their digital free-to-air channels and erase breaches of the rules governing free-to-air TV if they swiftly correct errors, under significant concessions given by the communications watchdog.

Program classification rules have also been relaxed, enabling the networks to show PG-rated programs throughout the day on their new free-to-air digital channels.

Previously, they were bound by rules governing the main channels requiring children’s and general classification time zones to be observed when children were likely to be watching.

Following the infamous “turkey slap” incident from Ten’s Big Brother program that was shown in online video, rules governing the portrayal of reality show contestants have been toughened to prevent participants from being shown “in a highly demeaning or highly exploitative manner”.

Depictions of sexual activity or nudity and verbal sexual references in MA-rated programs must now “be relevant to the story line or program context and must not be high in impact”.

The changes take effect from January 1 under a new code of practice for commercial TV broadcasters that was approved by the Australian Communications and Media Authority on 18 December.

Read more at The Australian.

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NEWS Corporation chief executive Rupert Murdoch said today that US advertising markets were “very much better than they were four months ago,” adding momentum to the improving sentiment on Wall Street and in the media industry.

Separately, Mr Murdoch said The Wall Street Journal would start charging users for accessing the paper on mobile devices and newspaper subscribers would pay $US1 ($1.16) a week for mobile access, while others would pay $US2 a week.

Newscorp, said Murdoch, was contemplating charging for online subscriptions for Hulu, the popular video website it launched with big media partners such as NBC Universal.

As for ad spending, Mr Murdoch said it remained nowhere near where it was in 2007, noting that revenue from News Corp’s local broadcast stations were down 20 per cent from last year, but he said the results have been “getting better every month and getting better every week”.

“I’m not an economist, but my guess is that the consensus is about right, and (the economy is) going to get a nice bump, and then it will settle back to a fairly slow recovery,” Mr Murdoch said at a media conference sponsored by Goldman Sachs Group.

Mr Murdoch was pleased the company didn’t listen to Wall Street analysts and hedge-fund managers who encouraged the company to take on debt and buy back shares when the economy was booming, saying that News Corp was likely to hold on to its cash flows.

“If we had followed their advice, we’d be billions (of dollars) more in debt now,” Mr Murdoch said. “We’re feeling very safe now.”

In its stable, News Corp owns The Australian and Dow Jones & Co, publisher of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. It had suffered financially from a weak line-up of movies in the first half, but he indicated that the film business was changing.

“We have a great slate of films lined up,” Mr Murdoch said. “The film business is a place where I feel very confident.”

Mr Murdoch said the DVD retail market remained in decline, but that the video-on-demand business from cable and satellite companies was growing, although it wasn’t yet making up the difference to film studios.

“These are very complex times, and news is more valuable to people than it has ever been,” Mr Murdoch said, so News Corp would remain focused on news as a valuable media product to consumers, despite the turmoil that has been created by the internet in the economics of the news business.

See the full story at The Australian.

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