RED DRESS PRODUCTIONS is a newly formed division of Fern Marketing and has been specifically established to help young, and the sometimes not so young, but equally talented aspiring actors, directors, producers and artists to generate awareness and voice for themselves. In a time when the Arts are finding it increasingly difficult to attract big budget sponsors maybe there is a real case for industry to look at more creatively challenging and different ways to get involved.

A New Website is being built so please do bookmark www.reddressproductions.co.uk  but in the meantime if you want to find out more please call today on 0208 405 0897

ISPs are currently advertising broadband speeds that are more than double the actual download speeds, according to new Ofcom research.

Ofcom recommends that if speeds are used in broadband advertising, the figures should be based on a typical speeds range so that consumers have a clearer idea about what average speed to expect.

On  average, British consumers are receiving average broadband speeds of 6.2 MB per second, which is less than half of the average 13.8 MB speed that is advertised.

Its research looked at 11 packages provided by the seven largest ISPs in the market, including BT, Virgin Media and Sky, which represents over 90% of residential broadband in the UK.

He adds: “It is important that the rules around broadband advertising change so that customers are able to make more informed decisions based on the adverts they see, and that advertisers are able to communicate more clearly how their products compare to others in the market.”

The independent policy advisory body has also called for a clear and simple way of advertising broadband speeds to be developed to ensure consumers are not misled.

Jon James, executive director of broadband at Virgin Media, says: “Ofcom’s latest report is yet another damning indictment that consumers continue to be treated like mugs and misled by ISPs that simply cannot deliver on their advertised speed claims.”

Yes Jon, and Virgin are one of the main offenders!! If you simply cannot deliver advertised speeds  don’t claim them in the first place!!

Animal charities want Costa’s ‘monkeys’ ad dropped hmm a PR punt from the charities trying to gain some awareness

The ad, which launched a week ago, uses a group of monkeys and poses the question of whether they will eventually produce the entire works of Shakespeare if left in a room full of typewriters.

Costa’s coffee had received certification from the Rainforest Alliance, but five animal charities want the certification removed from the brand because they believe the ad promotes buying monkeys as pets. I think this is no more than an opportunistic PR punt from the charities trying to generate some awareness during a tough recession!

Note: No monkeys were harmed during the creation of this blog

There are three basic types of marketeers (and some of them are very basic). Type 1 is the Academic. Type 2 is Action Man. Type 3 the Street Trader. The problem is to decide which type is going to work best for you. Qualifications are irrelevant, as is knowledge!! Its the conviction with which you play the role that’s crucial.

The Academic

Regardless of educational background, you should behave as if you  went to Oxford or Cambridge. Because so many marketing men did go to Oxbridge. It’s dangerous to make too precise a claim. You will have studied History or English or perhaps Modern languages, possibly a Science subject - but certainly not Economics!

You should read the marketing press openly and keep clippings from obscure (or American) marketing journals about your desk. You have of course rerad In Search of Excellence but you know that its sequel A Passion for Excellence is better because it’s more “action-orientated”.

The Academic marketing man doesn’t do things (at least not without much research and many feasibility studies) but he is proud to be action-orientated. As an Academic bluffer you will also have read the popular classics of business like like The Principle, Up the Organisation and Further up the Organisation. You will, however,be less open about these particular works and pass off their practical wisdom as your own “insights”.

You dress well (a penchant for nbow-ties is acceptable), drive a Series 5 BMW and, if the conversation turns to sporting pastimes, admit to having fenced a little at university or played a spot of real Tennis - but not recently. When you take your holidays - which you may do frequently- you make it clear that they are taken not for the sake of entertainment or relaxation per se but to “recharge your creative batteries”. Your herios are levitt and Porter and you will refer to them as your ‘mentors’.

A sub-grouping of the Academic is the Strategist. The strategist shares most of the same behavioural traits as the Academic but tends to be less showy and moreaddicted to smoking a pipe.

As a Strastegist you should constantly ask your colleagues (and superiors) whether a particular action meets the agreed strategic objectives (never the strategy). Since there’s a good chance that most people won’t remember heir corporate objectives (let alone thier business mission) you score highly. All you need to know is that the actions of those who can help you and your career are “on Strategy”. The rest aren’t.

You can bolster the impact of your questions by citing obscure analogies from military history. “Is this the Somme in early 1916?”, you will enquire, or perhaps “the Sino-Manchurian conflict of 1905?”. This is guaranteed to leave everyone else silent - particularly those who trained as historians - and the field will be clear to draw your own conclusions.

But beware of too many definite answers. Strategy is about long term issues not short term actions. Your hero may well be The Duke of Wellington - but he was monosyllabic, down to earth and intolerant of fools.

Next Month  - The Action Man

David Wheldon former brand director of Vodafone recently stated that “marketing is one of the worlds most fascinating professions” and it is and one to be celebrated and enjoyed not winged about and condemed.

Stop saying marketing has changed: it hasn’t, the channels have altered, as have the opportunities for consumer feedback. But essentially you still need to know the brand’s values, you still have to know and understand your supply chain, know the value of your proposition, and you have to know who your customers are - and that is no different from ten, fifteen , or twenty years ago.

As the Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ says “your brand is what people say about it when you are not in the room” - it essentially boils down to customer experience, the product is the best marketing you have and the consumer is the best channel. Word of mouth has amplified the challenges, but the rules of marketing are still the same. there should be no excuses, Consumers have always been in control, no one forces them to buy anything!

It is fashionable to kick the agency, but those in the marketing community are worse when they complain the marketing function is not taken seriously. If it is not at the top of the company’s agenda, it isn’t delivering as it should be.

The client-agency relationship is also far to imbalanced with too many agencies feeling the pinch thanks to the recession and have the joy of “sharing the pain” with their clients, but don’t actually get a share of the gain when times are better.

Few clients are willing to open up- although agencies are not always ready to take the risks when it is offered - the client still holds the cards.

Clients are also playing a clear role in the law of diminishing returns, there is an increasing need for agency help but most client budgets are going south, Agnecies can’t help themselves, they are always too willing to do things for less normally at the expense of another unfortunate client.

Real collaboration and relationship is the key, Honesty and pragmatism is the way forward. But listening and valuing each other has to be an overiding requirment.

Apprarantly a prototype cow which burps less is being bred in a breakthrough that could reduce a big source of the greenhouse gasses responsible for global warming.

Farm animals are responsible for nearly three quarters of total methane emissions with most of the gas coming from bovine burps, which are 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.

Already using other techniques like diet and special feeds it is estimated that they can reduce cow emissions by 12% So if every farmer in the United States reduced their cattle emmissions by 12% it would be the equal to about half a million cars being taken off the road. Funny I thought they wanted to encourage wind power!

What they Say What they Mean

Strategically Sound Boring Ad

Well branded  Very boring Ad

An idea so simple  Extremely boring Ad!

The product as hero is old hat We think the product’s crap

We think that X (a well known personality)

says so much about the brand The product really is crap

It blew their minds in research Consumers also think the

product is crap

That leaves 42% of the population that could actually spend more if given the incentives to do so. So businesses should not be looking to cut back and hide but aggressivly try and attract those to spend. Because if you dont someone else will and take your market share.

An interesting fact that I picked up yesterday, did you know that  although the UK Marine renewable industry is regarded as a world leader nevertheless the sea remains a vastly under utilsed resouce and here is the intersting bit one in which the UK is abundandant.

Europe holds between 20% and 30% of global tidal resources and the UK holds 50% of Europe’s tidal stream resource and 35% of its wave energy resource.

So plenty of opportuity for the UK to get ahead of the rest of Europe.