Craftsman Logos

Virgin Media has proudly announced that ‘TV on Demand’ (its catch up television service) has reached the very important 1 billion views milestone. Nearly 490 million hours of television is watched in this way.

The Virgin TiVo box was launched last year. Since then, Virgin Media has managed to increase the number of users to its catch-up service by 14 per cent since 2010.

Virgin is putting the rise in percentage down to the innovations found in its set-top, including the likes of backwards EPG functionality, not to mention the amount of personalisation the TiVo service offers – that, with the addition of the famous Sky Anytime on its platform.

According to Virgin Media, the most watched boxset the much-loved ‘The Vampire Diaries’. ‘Paul’ has been the most watched film of the year, according to the company and traditional Coronation Street was the most-watched TV for the second year in a row.

Cindy Rose, the executive director of digital entertainment at Virgin Media explained about the numbers: “Essentially people are watching more TV; whether that’s On Demand, suggestions recorded for them, or as a result of new and exciting interactive experiences. We know On Demand is incredibly popular as it’s watched more than any channel except for BBC1 or ITV1 but we far surpassed our expectations in 2011.The TV world is changing, with TiVo’s powerful functionality and ease of use giving people even more control over what they watch and when. The advocacy we’re seeing from users is vociferous with over half telling us they’re recommending the service to their friends and family.”

Last year Tesco announced their ‘Big Price Drop’ to much fanfare. However after being beaten by the likes of Sainsbury’s and Morrison’s over the Christmas period and having £5billion knocked off their market share the supermarket giant has decided to revert back to their voucher system.

It was clear to many that their price drop scheme would be a failure after many news publications printed at the time all Tesco had done in the weeks preceding the price drop was to increase prices, so that when they dropped prices customers weren’t really saving any money. A dirty tactic which backfired on the supermarket chain, when shoppers realised what had been done, they then left in droves, taking their customer to Tesco’s main rivals.

Their new national print campaign offers customers a £5-off voucher when they spend more than £40 on a shop, features the strapline; “a helping hand from Tesco” and is backed up by the statement, “It’s just our way of saying ‘thanks’”.

It does seem like Tesco is tempting customers back with the vouchers, however what people really want is the truth from supermarkets. Chief executive Philip Clark admitted that the supermarket was wrong to switch its strategy away from voucher activity over the Christmas period.

Tesco’s rivals Sainsbury’s saw a record-breaking Christmas on the back of its Brand Match strategy, where customers saw prices matched of brands sold by Tesco and Asda via vouchers provided at the till.

The Tesco offer has been running this week, however there isn’t any indication on how long it will last for, but it is also available to customers shopping online as well.

They may look like normal posts, however you will be surprised to know that some of the posts on your news feed will now be paid adverts, with the only difference being that they will say ‘featured content’. For now Facebook will insert one advert per day however they haven’t ruled out that there may be more per day in the future. In the past adverts has come under ‘sponsored content’ however Facebook thought that they blended in too easily.

It’s possible that if you have ‘liked’ anything in the past you could now start advertising to your friends through news feeds. According to critics, you could unwittingly click on them thinking they are just a news feed from friends without realising. Facebook have assured users though that it will only display adverts for goods and services that somebody has already ‘liked’. The adverts will only be seen on full versions of Facebook and not on mobile sites.

This isn’t the first time Facebook has run adverts in the news feed the company ran them between 2006 and 2009, before Facebook reached the popularity it now has. However it’s thought it could be very lucrative now for the company to do so, because of the number of people now signed up to the social networking site.

It’s not yet clear how the adverts will go down with Facebook users as many don’t seem to like change. The recent changes made to the interface including the constantly-updated ticker and the Timeline feature has not gone down well with users. According to a poll by 86 per cent of users hated the update and an even higher number of teenagers, 91 per cent hated it.

Bain & Company conducted a survey of 6,000 UK shoppers to find which brand most people would recommend to a friend or colleague, hair care brand Kerastase was found to be “most advocated” brand in the UK according to the results of the survey.

Companies were ranked on their a Net Promoter Score (NPS) which is calculated by the percentage of people rating the brand highly on a scale of recommendation, subtracted by the percentage of those who would only rate it between 0-6 on a scale of 1 to 10. Kerastase achieved 80%, 26 percentage points higher than its closest rival in the survey, Mercedes.

When it comes to trying new products, family, partners, friends and experts are normally the main advocates who influence shoppers, especially when it comes to alcohol, fashion, skincare and makeup. This is why the results from the survey are so important for companies. According to the report “winning” consumer products brands must keep shoppers and consumers at the “heart” of everything they do and make their brands distinctive and relevant to shopper needs and “occasions”, such as at point of sale where consumers may be tempted to buy rival brands.

Looking at the brands who reached the top ten of the “most advocated”, only one of them is British (Hotel Chocolate) which means our UK brands have a long way to go to gather consumer support.

The results:

10. Rolex – NPS: 51%

9. Audi – NPS: 52%

8. HTC – NPS: 53%

7. Apple iPod – NPS: 53%

6. Cohiba – NPS: 57%

5. Hotel Chocolat – NPS: 59%

4. Redken – NPS: 59%

3. Apple iPhone – NPS: 60%

2. Mercedes – NPS: 66%

1. Kerastase – NPS: 80%

An expert industry panel is to be set up by the Advertising Association (AA) to examine industry practices around advertising and marketing communications to children, which was laid out by the Governments Baily review.

It’s thought that those involved will be specialists in the children’s market, along with an independent academic expert, however no details have yet been announced on which media and advertising personnel will be involved.

In recent months there has been a lot more scrutiny within advertising by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat government who are focusing on those responsible for marketing and advertising to children. The Government promised in its pre-election manifestos last February that they would look into the effects of advertising has on young children and to crack down on advertisements that aren’t suitable for children, which includes all forms of advertisements. Last June the coalition government formed its  “childhood and families taskforce” following the election.

Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, said at its launch: “We are committed to cracking down on irresponsible advertising and marketing. If we are really going to restore and protect the innocence of childhood, action here is absolutely key.”

According to Tim Lefroy, chief executive of the AA: “Advertising and the commercial world is a big part of what makes childhood enjoyable and fun, but we mustn’t forget that kids are learning to understand it and need to be treated with care. The current system of self-regulation is strong, but it would only stay that way if “we understand our market and our customers’ concerns”.

Prime Minister David Cameron stated that he thought that those in marketing were exploiting children by launching “irresponsible” marketing campaigns during an address on the country’s “well-being” in November.