4 Fuks Saké

Televised Football But Not As We Know It

“Interesting. Very interesting!” screamed Barry Davies on Match of the Day back in the day. Who would have thought the same could apply to Adam Lallana running round in circles, or Martin Skrtel clearing his nasal passages?

On Wednesday evening Liverpool play Sevilla in the Europa League Final, Europe’s also-ran club tournament – and a chunk of UK football fans will be watching the game live on YouTube.

The match itself is unlikely to be memorable (although it’ll be enough for me to forgo watching the wash-up of Peggy Mitchell’s death). BT’s decision to make the game available as part of its “wider digital strategy”, throws up all manner of interesting thoughts and discussions about where sport, TV, digital platforms, broadband providers and hardware manufacturers are heading (other than the UEFA hospitality boxes in Basel).

There’s the digital platforms themselves. YouTube aren’t messing about, and their intentions are clear. CEO Susan Wojcicki got straight to the point with North American advertisers a fortnight ago, stating YouTube reaches “more 18-49 year olds during primetime than the top 10 TV shows combined.” Its claim for the mass audience – real people you meet in the pub, street or in the office – starts clouding things for the men running sports banking enormous cheques from TV companies.

Take the English Cricket Board for example. It picked up a BAFTA for its coverage of England’s last Ashes win, yet as Sean Ingle pointed out in The Guardian, more people watched a 1974 episode of Colombo on ITV3. In December, Joe Root failed to make the short list for BBC Sports Personality of the Year, and team sponsor Waitrose called it a day.

If YouTube is ‘normal TV’, where does that leave the likes of the TV companies currently staying in the game by borrowing money from the City?

It’s here we can poke around the “wider digital strategy” hinted at by BT. Whatever channel or platform the sport is on – it’s got to get into our home or onto our tablet somehow – and that requires a network. The greater the demand for content via a network, the stronger and more reliable that network needs to be.

So if you’re a telcomms company with a best-in-market broadband and mobile network, pumping stuff into peoples’ homes whatever its source; that’s not a bad place to be.

It also puts you in a more robust position. What happens if Tim Cook wakes up tomorrow and says, ‘right, next, let’s do Apple Sport?’ Or Google’s Eric Schmidt says to YouTube’s Wojcicki, “would you like me to call Richard Scudamore?”

On the one hand, they don’t need to. They may wish to wait and allow the sports bodies to continue to approach them. US sports continue to make overtures with the NBA big advocates of YouTube, and the NFL agreeing a deal to screen games exclusively on Twitter. Sport isn’t rational though – and it has a habit of making men do stupid things with their money, through the blind love of it all. Why else would we get up at 4am to go to Sunderland?

People in grey-glassed offices will start to shift uncomfortably – but for fans, that’s a day to be welcomed. More eyes on more sports at more accessible prices and on more accessible platforms? What’s not to love about that?

It's Intelligent To Dumb Down

Here’s a picture of Benny.

His owner Richard tweeted his picture, and Bob’s your uncle, Benny’s “the world’s most famous dog.” (Mail Online). Mail Online, is the world’s biggest English language newspaper site. Benny’s been shared 697 times. A story alongside on it, on the reform of the British welfare system is shared 243 times.

Without stating the bleeding obvious, or building on what Siobhan Sharpe might say; there is, what is often referred to in a patronising manner, "a lesson here."

Agency planners are paid, and build their careers on their intelligence. It is in their personal interest to build their personal brands with the trappings of that evidence. Data, intelligent publications, tweeting Economist and Harvard Business Review links to clients all do their bit to build credibility and sell an idea. Creatives too, lean heavily on culture for commercial gain. Work emanating from art, design and theatrical studios in cities across the world, end up in diluted form for commercial gain within 12 months.

None of that is to be sniffed at – just as long as the intelligenzia that help to shift consume products recognise the power that comes from the lowest common denominator. It’s a world where the written word is simply not needed. The copywriter becomes surplus to requirements.

An image that makes you laugh, fantasise or cringe, is your passport to worldwide fame and access to eyeballs. Benny is living proof and by dint of statistic, cannot be ignored.

The ingredients of imagery - useful for any creative session - include:

• Cats & dogs (Benny).
• Animals displaying human qualities (PG Tips, meerkats, page 3 of Metro every day).
• Physical disfiguration, (Cheryl Cole, C4’s Undateables, war).
• Wealth extremes (Kardashians, Benefits Street).
• Class divison. (Binge drink vomiting montages, Ladies day at Aintree, Kardashians).
• A bikini (Every newspaper site, notably Mail Online’s sidebar of shame).
• Cleavage (ditto).
• Attractive women in dresses (ditto).

In the search for intelligence – it’s best not to overlook what stares you in the face every day.

Burger Porn War

Draw a circle on a map around Shoreditch and Soho. If you know people that live and work in it, you’ll be familiar with the terms "Five Guys" and "Shake Shack" from your social media feeds.

George Osborne goes to Byron. Everyone that hates George Osborne, is currently calling judgement on the two rival - authentic but slightly more expensive - burger chains. The tool of judgement is the smartphone.

There's only one way to call who is winning the war. Who is pulling in the largest volume of burger porn from its customers, measured by Instagram and Vine posts?

Early scores on the doors suggest two things:

1. Five Guys is on the back foot.

2. No-one is using Vine

Instagram

#ShakeShackuk 410

#Fiveguysuk 235

Vine

#shakeshackuk 0

#Fiveguysuk 2

(Written for Daily Espress)

Snacked To Death

Hectoring cabinet ministers and your gran have always promoted the virtues of three square meals a day. Get yourself a good nutritious blend of protein, carbohydrates and whatever’s in broccoli. Good nourishment, leads to a healthy body and mind. 

Just don’t snack.

All we want to do is snack. We want snack-sized content intravenously dripped, 19 hours a day. Pictures please, with as little copy as possible. News stories no more than 100 words. Is a 15 second video clip or a 6 second video clip the best length? Feed me loads of this stuff whenever there’s a gap in the day.

The phrase ‘snack-sized content’ is utterly ubiquitous in marketing and content forums. There is a nuancing to ‘snack-sized’ content though, that brands attempting to woo punters into their domains would do well to adhere to.

There is unhealthy snacking of course. Tessa Jowell tells you not to eat crisps and biscuits but you know – you’re drawn to the cupboard. Beer brands know it. Exion’s research tells us that whether we like it or not, blokes can’t resist visuals of chests or some mild misogyny.

Pick up the Sunday Mirror supplement this weekend and flick to the lifestyle pages. You’ll find something in there about good, regular snacking. “Feeling peckish? Try a handful of nuts and pulses” is the answer every weekend if you can’t wait for your lunch of skinless chicken and a glass of tap water.

Smart brands spot the smart snackers. Busy, well-informed, nimble, researched-to-the-back teeth punters who dart from bite-sized gobbets of content to form an overall picture of a company, brand or product. Is this revolutionary product any good? A fleet-footed nip across a variety of social networks captures dozens of well-articulated opinion in a matter of minutes.

At the end of the day, we are what we consume. Rubbish food and content leads to rubber bodies and brains. Brands that succeed respect their customers in the new social channels. Those that combine pace with intelligence and empathy for their customers – via the vehicle of ‘snack-sized content’ - will ultimately prevail.

Clarks Give The Rest A Shoeing

(Clarks and others brands in less 'meaningful' use). 

The 2013 edition of Havas Meaningful Brands is out today. It operates on a simple premise. Brands that make things better, lives easier, give you a bit of fun, or make your Mum happier will sell more stuff. Here is a shit load of smart methodology and research that proves it.

In the UK Clarks are in at number one, and an eyebrow raising ASDA at 3. (If you will set your stall out to drive prices as low as you can go, then expect to be popular).

Tuck in to the global and UK lists, plus a hub on The Guardian.

"Do Me A Favour Instagram. Oh, You Have."

5 times a week I'll use the phrase 'Oh for fuck's sake." It's been eight months since I've done that and then felt compelled to write something on my blog with the same name. It's Instagram again.

I refer you to my April post, about Silicon Valley entrepreneurs' ingenuity at duping people who wear expensive trainers for their own commercial gain. This week, they've said they're going to sell photos of your kids to McDonalds, who'll in turn advertise Big Macs. That's what I've understood it to be anyway. 

Four things.

1. This bloke nails it, citing this collective sense of self-delusion. Search #coffee and look: there's your shot of a latte, filtered in Hudson, alongside 450,000 others. 

2. Your photo was rubbish. Instagram made it look nicer, so much so, that you felt compelled to share it with others. As far as I'm aware, you haven't paid them since you opened your account.

3. Instagram have been stupid. The more avid a user of social media you are, the greater your propensity to attention seek. So attention seekers (their core audience) pour through social T&Cs with the meticulousness of a Manhattan lawyer. They do it for their own benefit, not the crowd. I don't believe Facebook and Instagram want to sell pictures of my kids to Exxon, nor do I think lawyers will allow them to. If they can, who's the bell end for putting them there in the first place? Howevere, if they want to sell pictures of my uncooked ribeyes or empty espresso cups, that's a fair deal for me.

4. If you don't like it, vote with your feet. Go to Flickr's new app or the next photo sharing network you've yet to hear of. They'll end up doing the same thing to you.

"Hey Guys, I'm A Bit Uncomfortable You Made A $1bn. Let's Have A Diet Coke And Talk."

I've held an opinion for a while that a large proportion of people working in social media had sand kicked in their faces at school. Technology has always been 'nerdy' and there is a revelling in the outsider term 'geek.' Naturally, social media in its infant years attracted the types who worked their way up from Star Wars figures through to circuit boards. 

Woe betide anyone that leaves the geek crowd and gets accepted by the in crowd. Backs will be turned.  

Like Instagram. They had the audacity to take $1bn off Facebook. They have "sold out."  People get fucked off and talk of betrayal. The issue seems to be that:

a) They took money off the big enemy, Facebook.

b) That Instagram made the user feel special and important, and now they don't.

I would suggest the following.

1. People come up with ideas and go to work to try and make money. That includes the founders of Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, and whatever a couple of people in San Francisco are working on right now, that we'll fall in love with later this year or early next.

2. People with relaxed dress codes, white teeth, and nice smiles from California, are adept at making geeks feel special. Like the Instagram "guys" pictured. Wouldn't you just love to have a Diet Coke with them? They give them things to play with. Coax personal information out of them to make money, and then persuade them to promote the whole process.

3. If someone makes $1bn out of something like nice pictures of babies, cats and food - rather than oil or guns, then that's a good thing. 

4. If you are uncomfortable with Instagram making money in the social media industry, stop doing it yourself. Stop walking into publications and/or businesses asking for much smaller amounts of money to advise on how to use Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest etc...to make money. 

5. If you don't like Facebook, delete your account.

Congratulations to Instagram. I love your product, I love your work, and I'm glad you're making money. As Paul Carr, said "They didn't sell out, they just sold. They're a company, not the fucking Rolling Stones."

 

Tesco. Fat And Knackered.

I think they’re in trouble. Well, I say trouble. Tesco announced profits of £3.7bn in the UK this morning so they’re hardly in shit. More than we made last year. 

That said, shareholders aren’t going to take too kindly to days when the share price drops 16%.

The headlines say the supermarket's Christmas campaign failed to entice shoppers into store. This won't be a marketing issue, but an operational one. This is a company that is massive, bloated and listless. Its non-food businesses have done bonkers numbers in the last few years, and now occupy enormous acres of floor space. The shrinking core food business retracts apologetically, literally in front of the eyes of customers.

Its massive bloatedness and no doubt hideous bureaucracy, will be hampering clear thinking and communication. Its nearest and dearest rivals remain crystal in the conscious of the public. ASDA – price. Sainsbury’s – value. Waitrose – posh. Lidl/ALDI – cheap. Tesco? Huge and "I don’t know where everything is."

For a large of the population that’s the level of decision-making as the keys go into the ignition.

You've got to feel for CEO, Philip Clarke - the Wilf McGuinness to Sir Terry Leahy's Matt Busby. They’ve got a few issues in there, and they're not going to be fixed in a quarter. 

Pic: MrLomo/Flickr

Democracy. Rubbish Commercially.

Ever so slightly nauseated this week by The Guardian's decision to publish its newslist. "You can help us make the news." "Have your say." All that bullshit. It's the sort of move that grants some swooning at a Haymarket conference with words like "progressive," "open" and "bold experiment," bandied around.

I love The Guardian and its variety of digital and paper products. I'm 38 years old, work in something media related and crucially, know who Korn are. On that basis, it's the only paper I'm allowed to buy. The only downside to The Guardian unfortunately is that for all its cleverness - the bastard hemorrhages money.

If you want to make money one day (retain readership, properly monetise that large global audience etc) don't cheapen the product. Handing the editorship of the paper over to bored people in train carriages with smartphones seems counter to what you ought to be paying for. I'd like to hand my money over to an editor, who selects some great writing and presents it to me in a nice typeface on a couple of screens and on paper. I'm not giving it to the bloke sat next to me.

Dennis Wise Up

"We haven't considered making them a big offer because we believe that they are fans of Chelsea Football Club and want to do what's best for Chelsea Football Club and we've offered them a couple of things relating to their role as a fan." Bruce Buck, Chairman, Chelsea FC. 

So concludes one of the most objectionable, offensive and idiotic quotes from a football businessman since...er...since probably Garry Cook tried to pin the cancer gag on the IT guy.

Nearly 20 years ago Chelsea were shit, playing in front of 20,000 South/South West Londoners. Today, visiting fans to a packed Stamford Bridge sing the simple song: "Where were you when you were shit?" Answer: anywhere but there. 

Except for a minority. A minority were actually there when they were shit, and some organised themselves to buy the freehold to keep football in SW6. Nice little patch that for property developers, after all. You could imagine a hotel there, maybe some restaurants. Oh, hold on. 

Since then, a lot of people have got rich at Chelsea. Players. Managers. Sacked managers. Peter Kenyon. Marco Pierre White. The hotel people. A bunch of other knobheads.

A lot of people have got poorer at Chelsea. The fans. Football is more expensive than it used to be, but the game is the same.

Football is big business as Buck, Richard Scudamore are keen to tell the FT and Asian-based sponsors. Fans become a customer database. The club becomes a vehicle to talk to a global market. Fans will stay in line of course, do what they're told, they'll be 'loyal.' Clubs beseech them to be 'true fans.'

Hypocrisy, insensitivity and ignorance knows no bounds in football. CPO: you're part of the business not the football. Tell Buck to do one and pay the market rate. You deserve recognition financially for the commercial value of your contribution.

Yours,

A QPR fan.