In a moment of admirable honesty, Sir Martin Sorrell said that the amount of corporation tax a company pays was really “a question of judgement.” However, the tipping point will come when international players such as Google and Amazon decide it is purely in their corporate interest to avoid the social stigma attached to highly artificial forms of tax avoidance, says Raymond Snoddy.
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Last week ITV announced that it will become the first commercial broadcaster to give mobile viewers the option – at a price – to watch catch-up content without ads. It’s an interesting test of an increasingly important part of the media eco-system, but is it really going to work? Whatever happens, you can bet ITV’s competitors will be watching like hawks says Dominic Mills
As Greece’s national broadcaster is pulled off the air, there have been warnings the BBC could suffer a similar fate. Should we be worried? In the obvious sense, there is no danger – but there have always been pressures and they could be about to get worse says Raymond Snoddy.
After a peaceful, media-free week in Turkey, Dominic Mills is back with a Tango flavoured war-cry as he takes a look at the latest campaign from the black sheep of adland, BBH. So, can the new ads match the genius of Howell Henry’s 1990 classics? Perhaps, but it’ll take time and money to make it really work…
From publishing to advertising, a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers shows there is cause to be optimistic about the UK’s media sector – and even the decline of magazines and newspapers is expected to ease off between now and 2017. Raymond Snoddy takes a look at the figures and notes that confidence begets confidence – and in the end becomes self-fulfilling…
If advertisers find the hard work of getting the right celebrity and the right script for an ad too much, then the result will be a lazy, counter-productive mess, says Dominic Mills. So which two high profile actors have been lured into the latest car-crash ads?
Aside from a few notable exceptions, too many ads these days fail to capture, exploit or celebrate our unique sense of Britishness argues Dominic Mills. Where are all the witty, self-deprecating, self-doubting, cynical or just plain surreal advertisements? Marketers are really missing a trick here, especially post-Olympics when we’re still – just about – celebrating our nationhood…
Placing the Sun online behind a paywall is an all-or-nothing bet by News International, so you can be certain the company will be throwing a considerable amount of promotional cash at the platform to lure in and maintain readers says Dominic Mills. However, it’s the newsbrand’s competitors who have the most to get excited about – and whoever the first port of call for Sun readers is, the one thing they won’t be doing is putting up a paywall…
From Sun+ Premier League clips and BT’s ‘free sports’ deal to ITV’s England qualifiers coverage and even Channel 4’s Paralympics win – sport is shaking up vast swathes of the media. Yet the only certainty in all this flurry of activity is that there will be only one winner says Raymond Snoddy…
In the wake of ‘soda taxes’ – in which governments are seeking to address the huge rise in global obesity – the implications for the likes of Coke are huge – which is why it has launched a new charm offensive. But Coke’s latest campaign is yuck; pure corporate hokum says Dominic Mills, and the idea of it sponsoring a government health campaign is just as ridiculous.