BLOG > Advertising

As part of the RAB's push to improve the creativity of radio advertising in the UK the Aerial Awards have been refreshed and relaunched. 

Commercials approved by the advertiser and on air within the past calendar month are eligible for entry. Emer Stamp and Ben Tollett from Adam&Eve/DDB will be the first judges of the awards.

The European Court of Human Rights has upheld the UK ban on political advertising on broadcast media after an 8 year appeal. The appeal was made by the campaign group Animal Defenders International (ADI) following a 2005 ban on their TV commercial promoting ADI's concerns of the commercial use of primates on TV.

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) have announced their latest council of experts to focus on the platform of online audio advertising. Red Apple Creative are delighted to be part of the council and looking forward to the development and forthcoming projects that the council will lead.

Figures out today show that advertising spend on mobile has increased by 148% year on year to £526 million.

Christmas 2012 promised to be the year of the tablet as the most commonly received/requested present and unsurprisingly the fastest rate of growth for mobile ad spend was in the latter half of the year.

I don’t know what the gentleman’s equivalent is. Our headline is of course metaphorical and not a direct request to some unidentified voyeur.

It is however, unidentified voyeurs of a sort that the sentiment is directed at.  Having spent the morning talking to companies across the marketing world and reading their insights into the ‘big thing’ for 2013 in our industry I have been left feeling a little unsettled. I don’t know what the gentleman’s equivalent is. Our headline is of course metaphorical and not a direct request to some unidentified voyeur.

A retrospective glance at 2012 is all you need to be reminded of the corporate distrust, the media distrust and the governmental distrust the nation felt thanks to tax avoidance, tax loopholes and the ongoing saga of hacking.

So will this new year herald a fresh start for the companies who have been smeared with the Dick Turpin tag?

The New Year blasted off in traditional fashion - fireworks over Sydney Harbour, fireworks over the Pantheon, fireworks over Big Ben...etc. Nothing remarkably different from any other New Year's Eve. Socially the networks were busy with the usual blub of homogenised 'New Year' messages. In reality, the social scene was much quieter. In fact, I think this is the most subdued New Year's Eve I've ever known. Has the recession taken it's toll too heavily on the pockets of the nation? Or has the hype for what was once the most socially decadent and expensive night of the year finally had it's day?

The Autumn Statement this week saw George Osborne announce a 25% tax relief starting April 2013 for the game, animation and high-end TV industries.

It’s great news that these creative industries are being supported and given the chance to thrive in economically tough times.
To put the cherry on top, £6 million is being made available for training in these industries.

We have to mention the decision to suspend SodaStream's TV commercial from broadcast. With just hours to spare Clearcast withdrew it approval on the grounds that the commercial 'denigrates the bottled drink industry'. Cue much debate on either side and whilst we have our own opinion, the real winner seems to be SodaStream who have received a fair amount of coverage in the press and are signposting interested parties to YouTube where the commercial can be enjoyed without restraint.

Still, it's not as wild as the XXL TV commercial in Norway featuring zombies! The commercial is now banned from broadcast prior to 9pm for complaints that it was “provocative and stupid”...if that comment were carried forward to UK TV advertising that poor Go Compare chap and the semi-violent ads he currently appears in would be appearing before a committee of MPs to explain themselves!

To start the week off news that Churchill Insurance fell unexpectedly foul of that terrible curse of casting when their advertising frontman, Martin Clunes had his driving license suspended. We’ve blogged about the benefits and pitfalls of high profile casting, still at least their mascot nodding dog shouldn't cause them too much trouble. Unless it starts destroying sofas in a insurance scam?!

Audio advertising is our strong suit and we've been making audio commercials for.....oooh,many years! Over the course of time audio has made the move into the online world and we've been delighted to use this space to show how powerful the auditory sense is in terms of engagement. 

Last Wednesday the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) hosted the last of 3 seminars on Advertising in a Online Environment and we were delighted to share our thoughts on this aspect of the advertising world alongside representatives from LastFM, We7, Spotify, Absolute and the BPI.

Advertising is an artform. To take a brand or a product and encourage people to feel something for it, to covet it, desire it, collect it, reserve it ahead of it's release or buy it in bulk, to recommend it to friends and to follow it on social network sites is not as easy as it seems. With some brands, say Chanel's perfunes the job is perhaps a little easier. Who doesn't want to smell divinely sensual?

Some products are a little more down to earth, who remembers the one click air freshner TV spot featuring a terribly precocious child and the infamous line "I'm going to do a poo at Paul's house!"

There have been many discussions in the past few years regarding what is and isn't acceptable for children to see from advertisers. The overtly sexual images in advertising have been censored to appropriate time and location placements. Junk food advertising regulation is continuously being reviewed. The regulations surrounding advertising to children are enormous. 

So how did the 6 year old daughter of a friend manage to watch the trailer for Paranormal Acticvity 4 as a pre-roll advertisment on Youtube? A film classified as suitable for 18 years and over, designed to terrify adults will have been required to adhere to strict time scheduling for TV commercial broadcasts. How is it that the online video is broadcast without restriction?

We've been looking forward to the launch of JK Rowling's first novel for adults after the earth shattering success of the the Harry Potter franchise. So, it was with delight that we helped Audible takeover Spotify for the day with a promotion for the audiobook of The Casual Vacancy. 

The cosmetic industry is set for a serious review following the recent PIP implant scandal. Amongst the areas for review it's been suggested that the advertising of cosmetic surgery should be pulled in for tighter regulation. I'm curious to know how tightening the regs of advertising cosmetic surgery is likely to improve the standards of the industry? Understandably, the argument is that the over exposure of cosmetic surgery advertising means that it appears to have a commonplace part in our society - but, it does have a commonplace part in our society, doesn't it?! Botox parties, lunchtime face lifts, do you know someone who hasn't had some form of cosmetic treatment?

The roads are blocked. Hundreds of lycra clad individuals have descended on the capital. The white tracksuit clad 'Jimmy Saville Tribute Act' that is the Torch Relay has finally made it's way to the centre of the events and those odd creatures, Wenlock and Mandeville are suddenly ubiquitously littering the streets. That's right, London  2012 is upon us and with it comes the enforcement of sponsor credential. There is a distinct division between those who believe that the corporate sponsors should be congratulated for supporting (financially) an event of this magnitude. And there are those who believe that it is the global evil of our times where corporate power overpowers moral responsibility. But I think there is a clear winner outside of the corporate sponsor boundaries.

Oops for O2 as their UK network crashed spectacularly this week causing many of their 23million customers to lose all services for a considerable period. So what do you do when you can't access your mobile? 

En route to a client meeting this week, we realised how lost (literally) we'd have been without our trusty smartphones. Checking client emails for the venue address, using Google maps to navigate to the venue, checking travel times and reservations for the return route. All fairly basic everyday stuff. In fact, it's been so long since we didn't have these services that we've forgotten what we'd do without them.

This, as we are regularly reminded will be the year to remember. The much hyped London 2012 Olympic Games have arrived in the same year that England qualified for the Euros and therefore advertising revenues should be revitalised. I recall reading that the year England failed to qualify was estimated to have cost the British economy £1b a good proporation of which would be the advertising spend for the accompaniements that we expect with big footballing fixtures, TV's, Cars, alcohol and takeaways (the irony of watching world class sportmen while enjoying a double pepperoni deep pan and a few bottles of larger!)

When we saw this, we thought it must be shared. What a wonderful job and an ingenious tribute to the weekend just passed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c40espvGsM8

Walking to the studios last week we noticed a man loading cake slices into a bus ad. We see many strange things near our studios - a man dressed in tin foil knight armour, a person dressed in a rhino outfit outside a notorious 'gentleman's' club. But never cakes into a bus ad before. Still - this is London, a city of ecclectic eccentrics and you never really question these things. 

So today is International Women's Day. And it occurred to me that, in amongst this conversation about liberating women and the stereotypes that befall us, that I (also a woman) had commited one of those cardinal sins. 

We recently produced a Spotify audio commercial for Crunchy Nut. Quite a fun one to promote bowling for the family and quite without hesitation I cast the voiceover as a woman and told the story from the view point of the mother.

We know that retailers have been studying and analysing our buying and browsing habits in detail for a while now. Last week's story regarding US retailer Target rather letting the cat out of the bag by posting coupons for baby products to a teenage shoppers' home address before she'd had a chance to tell her parents, gave some very interesting insights into their analysis and predictions on consumers changing lifestyles.