Tuesday, October 29, 2013

a football club rebrand, a lesson in “How-to-do-Facebook” lesson, healthy eating with McDonald’s & more!

Tension over a football club rebrand, a “How-to-do-Facebook” lesson for big corporates, healthy eating with McDonald’s, Irish people asking Google what love is - and the ongoing digital/print challenges for news media companies – my favourite marketing stories of the past week!
Tigers V City
Showing the importance of including all target audiences in your plans and what happens when you don’t – the Irish Independent tells us that Hull City owner, Assem Allam faces a revolt from fans as he wants to rebrand the team as the Hull Tigers.  Interesting to see whether Heritage or the more American-sounding Tigers will win out!
Furry impressive!
Anyone who uses Facebook can’t fail to see the predominance of cats on the platform but the web has more than proved itself as animal-friendly in a lovely article from Karlin Lillington in last Thursday’s Irish Times. She tells us that the web has transformed the fortunes of animal welfare and rescue groups.   The work by Animal Heaven Animal Rescue (AHAR) in Kerry is cited by Karlin as showing big corporates how to use Facebook.
Nice contract for Flahavans
Having worked on the PR for McDonald’s Restaurants of Ireland when they introduced their salads some years back, I was really interested to see that they have done a deal with Flahavans – McDonald’s already sells 100,000 portions of porridge each year in Ireland they say and they want to raise that to 250,000 – so a positive and healthy news story all round.

Irish looking for love!
Adworld tells us that Irish people apparently are asking Google ‘what is love?’ according to a Google report, issued to celebrate 10 years in Ireland, which itemised the most popular search terms in Ireland in the past year.  But Adworld also tells us that Kantar Media ROI reveals some very interesting search facts – while 73% of Irish adults use Google for search, age plays a big role in which search engine is used.  Irish 20-24 year old adults are two and a half times more likely to use About.com while 25-34 year olds are 67% more likely than the average to use Yahoo UK and Ireland.
To paywall or not to paywall
Meanwhile the UK Independent in its Media column last week covered the issue of how news media companies have been and continue to be excited by the potential of tablets vis-à-vis paywalls.  Interestingly one company claims that most tablet usage is mainly in the evenings – that users don’t carry their tablets with them during the day.  Not true in Dublin anyway!  If it were true, a media buying company claims that day’s news app is out of date by the evening and so the news media companies need to produce ‘second screen’ content i.e. content that will be viewed while people do other things such as watching TV etc. 
Times Tablet Offering to replace ePaper
Laura Slattery reported in the Irish Times last Friday, 25th October, that the paper is introducing a new tablet offering instead of its existing ePaper.  In the face of declining advertising revenue and declining circulation, the company continues to investigate digital options.  MD Liam Kavanagh said that there is just too much free media and that it’s unsustainable in the current climate.

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