The King of the World is dead, long live the King of the World.

You have to hand it to James Cameron: at $1.88billion in takings to date, his 3D epic Avatar is officially the biggest box office ticket of all time. And having taken only six weeks to eclipse the record set by Titanic, JC’s last feature film, this is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg.

Yes, the world and his wife (and their three children, plus extended circle of friends) have queued up at cinemas to see Avatar: whilst it’s not perhaps a film for everybody, it has nonetheless garnered some strong reviews, and, 3D effects aside, features some of the best CGI ever used in medium. The spectacle in 3D, however, elevates Avatar beyond movie to experience, drawing the audience into Cameron’s alien world of Pandora without simply resorting to the customary “oh, that was the 3D bit” camera pans. Not all 3D films can claim to do the same.

Avatar is a 3D success because the extra something this technology brings makes us believe it more, enriching the immersion and further suspending disbelief. The question is, how to monetise this on a more regular basis, as opposed to only once every 15 years, when Mr Cameron decides to take us one step beyond?

Naturally, the answer came in the form of the ever-inventive Sky, with Sky Sports’ first foray into 3D programming the live coverage of Arsenal vs Manchester United last weekend. For those lucky enough to be in one of the nine bars across the UK to feature 3D screens - well, if you’d call ‘lucky’ being reciprocally filmed by Sky Sports looking like the rejects from a Buddy Holly casting session - the experience was mixed. The customary Sky Sports graphics, player line-ups (where a sense of depth and perspective is inherent to the camera view) and wide angle shots from behind goal were suitably impressive; however, the third dimension was not the totally eye-popping revolution many were imagining.

To be fair, Sky does spoil the viewer: with up to 20 cameras tracking the game in regular Ds and lovely High Definition crispness for those willing to pay an extra tenner a month - it’s hard to say whether the final spectacle of 3D could ever match up to our expectations. It’s no massive surprise that this was basically a glorified experiment by the broadcaster - football may not be the ultimate sport to benefit from an extra dimension, versus, say boxing, rugby, or even golf - but the fanfare of such a world’s first certainly captured the public’s imagination, leaving viewers hungry, or at least peckish, for more.

Whatever the future holds for in-home 3D, it’s clear that from a sporting perspective, as James Cameron understands, the extra dimension needs to add something to our experience, to give something back, with Sunday’s experiment representing a small step in furthering Sky’s opinion on exactly how it plans to achieve this.

By Jonathan Izzard on February 2nd, 2010

Tags: Barclays Premier League, Branded content, Broadcast sponsorship, Experiential marketing, Football, Football Sponsorship, Manchester United, Media, Sport, Television, Television audiences

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Having won the MCCA ‘Best Campaign Featuring Sponsorship’ last year for its Team GB campaign around the Beijing Olympics, it’s great to be able to say that the Powerade 2009 InnerGear campaign has again been shortlisted in this year’s MCCA BEST Awards. Building on the insights and imagery of the Team GB campaign, Powerade brought the same InnerGear core creative idea to two of its international rugby assets – the English and Welsh rugby teams.

The 2009 edition featured England captain Steve Borthwick, Paul Sackey and IRB World Player of the Year, Shane Williams, in some equally impactful creative, and was supported through the line by Powerade’s cross agency team.

By Jonathan Izzard on January 20th, 2010

Tags: Beijing 2008, Olympic sponsorship, Olympics, Rugby, Sponsorship, Synergy, Team GB

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When I tell you that I’m a big fan of Chrome, relax, I’m not hinting that anyone get Westwood round to pimp my ride – I am rather referencing Google Chrome, the web browser launched in late 2008 by the ubiquitous internet behemoth.

Having used it as my default browser since downloading the programme over a year ago, I’ve since installed it on my home PC and laptop, as a welcome break from Internet Explorer. I realise that I’m not the first person to break convention here, with any Mac users out there, along with the more technologically savvy, already well aware of life after Microsoft when browsing the web, with Safari – Apple’s own browser – and Mozilla’s Firefox, the main contenders for IE’s crown in the years BC (that’s Before Chrome); however, December 2009 finally saw Google’s new window onto the web overtake Safari’s hard-won market share. No mean feat, a year after launch.

This leaves the stats from December 2009 looking something like:

1. Internet Explorer - 62.69%

2. Mozilla Firefox - 24.61%

3. Google Chrome - 4.63%

4. Safari - 4.46%

5. Opera - 2.93%

6. Netscape Navigator - 0.32%

7. Various others - 0.68%

(Source: Market Share)

This may not look too significant a shift, although given that this % represents around 40 million users, and that Internet Explorer’s global usage dropped by almost 7% last year (from 69.23% in Feb 2009), you might start to appreciate the long-term machinations of Messrs Page and Brin, and how these might impact on one William Henry Gates III in the war of the super-rich supernerds.

In quite a major move for the brand, Google has even been running an offline ad campaign publicising Chrome. Commuters at Oxford Circus may well be familiar with both the posters and digital escalator creatives drawing attention to the ‘fast, new browser, made for everyone’. Indeed, in the lead-up to Christmas, Google engaged in another rare piece of ATL, with a Metro wrap (you may have seen this repeated last week), as well as a call to action for people to make Chrome one of their Xmas gifts to a loved one, via the www.givechrome.com website. Well, it’s better than a pair of socks.

This activity certainly translated into curiosity amongst web users, with searches for Chrome overtaking Internet Explorer for the first time ever, which Google – or its media department – would doubtless argue contributed to its rise in the browser rankings that very month.

So, what’s good about the product? Well, it’s very clean, clear, fast and free; you can have lots of different web pages running at the same time with no drag, and if any particular page crashes, Chrome simply shuts down that tab, rather than the whole browser. I’d definitely recommend it, although the programme is still not a catch-all: certain Microsoft plug-ins are incompatible with Chrome (hmmmm, how unexpected), making it difficult to use some online applications such as the SkyPlayer. For everyday browsing of the internet, however, it’s fantastic.

Other than the slow burn process of accruing new advocates and users, what next for Google Chrome? The answer is actually slightly more ambitious than you might think, with Google now moving further into Microsoft’s back yard through the development of the Google Chrome OS (Operating System). Whilst it’s still a way off, with an official release scheduled for the latter half of 2010, the concept is remarkably different to the traditional Windows offering. As outlined by company chiefs at Google HQ in November last year, the OS is designed with a focus on three user requirements: ‘Speed…Simplicity…Security’, achieving its aims via a radical approach: to all intents and purposes, Google Chrome OS only works when you are online.

What the hell? So I’ve got to be online for my PC to work, you say? Well, sort of.

Although this may sound pretty restricting, Google are not setting themselves the challenge of beating Microsoft at its own game, but rather carving up a piece of the action for themselves, namely through appealing to the burgeoning netbook market. Sales of these small, light, web-friendly PCs were up 103% in 2009, and with decreased price points and increased wi-fi availability, this trend looks to continue. To date, the concept has received a mixed reaction: for the always-online professional netbookers out there, Google are preaching to the converted, with a promise of a system that will be ready to surf the web within seven seconds of power-up; plus they won’t need to store all their docs on their hard disc, with data instead stored remotely and accessed via the web. Google aren’t the first to use a ‘cloud’ system, but probably are the first to take the concept of virtual storage for mobile PC users to such a commercial extreme.

From starting life as the cleanest, fastest and most efficient way to find what you need on the internet, Google has, in an incredibly short space of time become part of our culture, our very vocabulary. And in today’s information age, there appears to be no stopping them: news, video, mail, maps, photos, phones, toolbars, Trends, translation, into China (and out again?) - and we search, and we search, and we search…

By Jonathan Izzard on January 19th, 2010

Tags: Advertising, Brand marketing, China, Digital marketing, Media

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So, the draw for the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ finals is almost upon us. At 5pm GMT today in Cape Town, Sepp Blatter, Charlize Theron (yes, really) and co will select the teams from the four designated pots that will make up Groups A – H next summer in South Africa.

But what does it all really mean to the brands, the fans and to FIFA’s flagship?

From a brand perspective there are no surprises in terms of the major head-to-heads we’ll be seeing: Nike managed to comprehensively crash adidas’s party in Germany at the last World Cup, with Joga Bonito stealing adi’s ball from its own back yard. What about 2010, though? As the first World Cup to take place on the African continent, will the joy, enthusiasm and raw power that characterise African football play into Nike’s hands, or, as kit supplier to 11 of the 32 teams, including hosts South Africa (versus Nike’s 10), do adidas have something else in their locker? Although if anyone understands African football, it’s Puma. Together with reigining champions Italy, Puma supplies four of the continent’s six nations: the brand’s use of its African assets in Africa’s World Cup will be interesting to track.

So what about the draw itself? Whilst Portugal and France’s poor qualifying records have upped the ante on any prospective Group of Death, all we can do at this stage is wait and speculate. For sponsors, a killer draw may represent a challenge, for others an opportunity: big Group Stage fixtures in the diary drive scale and anticipation and allow for advanced planning…but also affect permutations in the Knockout Stage. From a fan perspective, no one wants a Group of Death – but who imagined they’d see France getting ‘Senegalled’ back in 2002? Whether it’s the relief of a dream Group, the agony of the worst draw imaginable, or the buzz of a being drawn against a historic or local rival, this will be THE big global sports story of the next few days no matter what happens today.

What about FIFA? After a 2006 tournament remembered for Zidane’s madness, rather than his magic, a sticky tie here or there is likely go down pretty well with the organisers, adding to the colour and vibrancy already imbued by hosts South Africa. And, as a prelude to Samba Football going home at the 2014 FIFA World Cup™ in Brazil, the 2010 draw is a critical moment in FIFA’s perennial brand and business rivalry with UEFA and its titans, the Champions League and the European Football Championships.

By Jonathan Izzard on December 4th, 2009

Tags: Default, Football, Football Sponsorship, Synergy, World Cup

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So John Cleese will be footing a £12.5 million bill for his divorce of second wife, Alyce Faye Eichelberger. As Cleese put it, “I got off lightly. Think what I’d have had to pay if she’d contributed anything.” Whatever the reason for this split, there may be more proceedings to be filed over the coming months, following news of the imminent release of Championship Manager 2010 from software house Eidos.

For a limited time only, Eidos is offering its revered football management title to online consumers through a ‘pay what you think it’s worth’ mechanic. Aside from a non-negotiable £2.50 ‘delivery charge’, buyers can theoretically spend as little as a penny extra to own the game. It’s an audacious move, with even the staunchest of CM fans likely to pay less than RRP to get a piece of their narcotic of choice. The risk-reward ratio must come down to how many new enthusiasts/devotees/junkies can be brought into the franchise through either the reality of the deal, or the PR noise it’s made. It’s brave, it’s bold, but one has the feeling it’s based on a commercial reality – surely someone at Eidos has done their sums before this launch got the green light? Radiohead employed a similar tactic on the release of their album ‘In Rainbows’ and claimed to enjoy the last laugh, making more money than all their other albums put together.

The fact is that much of this has been made possible by the move from the physical to the virtual transaction. Whilst there’s no suggestion that making £2.51 a time off a product traditionally retailing at around £40 will keep the CEO in your pocket, the shift from purchase off-shelf to online does fundamentally change the business model: no packaging, no CD, no negotiated shelf-space, no point of sale material…no hassle. It’s not as though this is anything new – software has always been available via the internet, legally or otherwise, but the bandwidth has got broader and the delivery mechanisms more mainstream. We’re not talking about shady P2P software ‘shopping’ services for the tech-savvy, but point-and-click, monetised downloads for the wider PC/console/mobile user.

The iTunes App Store blazes a trail with its well-vaunted billion downloads worldwide, giving an impression as to the appetite of iPhone and iTouch owners for the various games, utilities and services available. Similarly, both the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 have their own download services for the broadband generation, offering software updates – such as the well-publicised England kit that Umbro automatically ‘launched’ in Pro Evolution Soccer – and full games. In fact, digital distribution of this kind of content – whilst not a replacement for a physical purchase given the size of modern console games versus their in-built storage capacity – has proven hugely profitable for a number of companies. The classic software title Worms, recouped its development costs within four hours of its release on Xbox Live Arcade – a staggering feat without a single CD in sight.

And now, Championship Manager, the football sim notable for its reputation of turning male university students into soccer stat-devouring zombies after countless all-night sessions on their PCs – long the bane of other halves across the globe. Officially cited in over 35 divorce proceeding to date, it’s the pastime that makes regular football widows grief look half-baked, and the dirty little secret that should set alarm bells ringing in any prospective relationship. With incidences of laptops being thrown from windows following any given catastrophic loss, to that of the player fabled to have dressed in a suit and tie for his team’s appearance in the FA Cup Final - the game has created its own Masonic subculture of transfer tips, war stories and spousal rejection.

And thanks to the Eidos honesty box, it’s about to get worse…

By Jonathan Izzard on August 20th, 2009

Tags: Default, Downloads, Football, Mobile, New Product Development

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Can you recall the last CD you bought? Unless you’re either a seriously early adopter or an MP3 evangelist, you’ll probably be able to dredge up that memory. What about the last album you downloaded? Chances are you might be able to remember that too. Okay, so what was the last single you got from iTunes? Maybe trickier?

Granted, I’ll still buy the odd CD, but we’re talking about a handful of artists whose records I’ve always bought – somewhere between a fan’s loyalty and a collector’s prerogative. Do I download full albums? Very rarely. You’d need to be talking about either a pretty esoteric band (which iTunes isn’t always guaranteed to stock) or a download-only release. And I’m not alone. Singles rule the download charts, whole careers etched out through a few million mouse clicks on Apple’s site.

Last year Katy Perry notched up over 2 million downloads of ‘I Kissed a Girl’ on iTunes (no wonder she liked it), but only 282,000 copies of her album. That sort of singles-to-album sales ratio simply never happened pre-iTunes.

Over the past couple of years both the distributors of digital content (read: iTunes) and even artists themselves have found this troubling enough a trend to warrant two very different reactions.

For iTunes this has meant ‘Complete My Album’. Described (by Apple) as “a wonderful new way that iTunes helps customers grow and enjoy their music collections”, this is an additional service made available for six months following the purchase of any individual song/songs from a given album, iTunes offers a discounted rate on the rest of the collection in question. In fact, by mid 2008, ‘Complete My Album’ was said to be responsible for 52% of all album purchases on iTunes, with a 10% conversion rate from single to full work. In response, a number of recording artists have capitalised on this opportunity, digitally releasing tracks in advance of the full album being made available, whilst ensuring that their fanbases are made aware of the facility and the deal iTunes is offering them.

By contrast, Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins has publicly stated that the band will only be releasing singles, rather than full albums: “We’re done with that. There is no point. People don’t even listen to it all. They put it on their iPod, they drag over the two singles and skip over the rest.” Taking this a step further, AC/DC simply refuse to put their music on iTunes, stating “We don’t make singles, we make albums.” Schoolboy error? Given that their last album, ‘Black Ice’ sold over 8 million copies, having debuted at #1 in 29 countries, I’d say they’re fairly switched on.

Guy Garvey, lead singer of Elbow has described downloads, and iTunes in particular, as being “responsible for the death of the album”, although you can most certainly purchase the band’s wares on said site. I guess there’s still something to be said about the age-old quest for albums that are all killer, no filler – but what happens to those records with the songs that used to grow on you? Understanding where a band was, artistically, when they wrote any given piece of music? Do certain tunes always have the same impact in isolation of their creative surrounds?

I mean, other than an executive at Sony, whose favourite album is a ‘Best of…’?

By Jonathan Izzard on July 22nd, 2009

Tags: Default, Digital marketing, Music

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Ever thought about naming a star? How about owning a nice plot of land on the dark side of the Moon? Fancy sponsoring a three-toed sloth in Costa Rica?

As PT Barnum famously never said, “There’s a sucker born every minute” – applying Newton’s Third Law (he’ll now be spinning in his Westminster Abbey sarcophagus) would suggest an equal and opposite reaction. After all, you only know you’re a mark once you’ve been conned, right? Therefore every sap needs a swindler, and in today’s society, there always seems to be someone out there ready to sell you something:

a) That isn’t theirs to flog

b) The customer can never really own

c) With strong virtual but low actual value

So it’s nice to see a company turning the tables on the snake oil salesmen and scammers: why buy something that’s worth nothing, when you can use something that costs nothing?

The company in question is Intel, whose 2009 ATL campaign, set to roll out over the next three years, sees the technology giant using the sign-off “Sponsors of Tomorrow”. I mean, who’s going to monetise ‘Tomorrow’…Annie?

It’s interesting that Intel should be using the collective plural ‘sponsors’ here, a move, in line with the content of their ATL, to both humanise the company and express the broad range of areas across which it – I mean ‘they’ – work.

Neatly turning things on their head, the campaign is less ‘Intel Inside’, and more ‘Inside Intel’. The execution below might aim at geek-chic, but it also emphasises who makes up the company, not just what the company makes.

You’ll notice that even the brand-defining/ubiquitous/maddeningly annoying Intel ‘chimes’ are now performed in the new ads by company employees (okay, the actors portraying company employees), reminding us of a company’s most important asset – its people.

As “Sponsors of Tomorrow”, the casual perspective of Intel being just a sticker on your PC may have had its chips.

By Jonathan Izzard on June 12th, 2009

Tags: Advertising, Ambush campaign, Brand marketing, Branded content, Digital marketing, Employee engagement, Media, New Product Development, Sales promotion, Sponsorship, Viral Marketing

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Isn’t it always the way: you wait a lifetime to see a film in 3D about a hero named Bolt, and then two come along in a matter of months. Granted one was the John Travolta-voiced Disney blockbuster, whilst the other was footage of the all-conquering Olympian Usain Bolt smashing another world record at the Bupa Great City Games in Manchester this year. But it begs the question of just how many befuddled 6 year-olds out there thought they were off to see their favourite animated canine star, only for an altogether different eponymous hero to come bursting through the cinema screen.

In fact, this raises an interesting topic for the cinema-going public in 2009: how many more 3D films are we going to be expected to see? Bolt (both cute dog and sprint God) seemed to work; similarly Monsters vs Aliens made use of the third dimension, albeit, according to fans, slightly less successfully. Then Coraline, the new animation from Henry Selick, whilst a critically-acclaimed film, gains little more than a bit of textural richness with the addition of 3D specs. And don’t even get me started on Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience…

Are we seriously heading for Scorsese in 3D? Would a ‘remastered’ Withnail and I really offer a better experience if the audience felt every drunken lurch from Richard E Grant? And just how many geological eras will have to pass before Terence Malick gets round to pulling out the third dimensional stops?

With the advent of Avatar, James Cameron’s CGI magnum opus – widely tipped to be the most expensive film ever made – we might see a big screen production to truly make use of that extra ‘D’, though I guess the point is just because we can go beyond 2D, doesn’t mean we always have to – it should be something that feels worthwhile and relevant.

However, this is where the mighty cinema industry might disagree with me.

From the early 1980s, when VHS emerged victorious from the home video format wars, film piracy had become a reality for the major studios. Then the ‘90s brought DVD, and with it the potential for lossless data duplication. Coupled with faster, cheaper PCs, offering massive, inexpensive data storage, the widespread availability of DVD authoring software and the geometric growth of both the internet and home broadband capabilities – not to mention that feller in my local with the carrier bag full of iffy films – the piracy situation begins to look understandably grim.

Star Wars Episode III, Casino Royale, The Hulk, and most recently X-Men Origins: Wolverine – every one a $100+ million production – have all been circulated online prior to their official release. And once a film is in the public domain, things only get worse. With a host of questionable websites allowing web users free access to streamed (though largely crackling, jerky and unwatchable) movies, Hollywood needs a solution. Reading between the lines the studios’ answer seems to be to fight tech with tech: if you can’t pirate a ‘3D experience’, then you’ll have to go to the cinema, won’t you?

Well, according to at least one well-informed, well-respected (not to mention well-coiffed) critic – no. Mark Kermode’s POV – worth watching just for the clip of the unfinished cut of Wolverine that surfaced online – revolves around the question of the changing landscape of film.

In short, cinema might be the medium of choice for the all-encapsulating visceral movie experience, but the internet has offered a genuine alternative in the home – what the film industry needs to do is offer its wares to the right people, at the right time, crucially, in the right place. Oh, and stop green-lighting Alien vs Predator spin-offs.

By Jonathan Izzard on June 1st, 2009

Tags: Blogging, Default, Film, Media, The Arts, YouTube

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No, not that Wolves.

In an unlikely turn of events, a single T-shirt, sold on Amazon.com has become one of the most popular items in the online retailer’s clothing section, experiencing a 2300% sales boost in a matter of months.

But what manner of apparel could be doing such incredible business? Is it a niche limited edition…? Is it the work of an up-and-coming Harajuku enfant terrible…? Was it worn by all four Beatles during their final tour of the US? I’m afraid not.

The item in question is in fact the ‘Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt’ - the kind of outerwear normally reserved for heavy metal concerts and sci-fi conventions. If you don’t believe me, have a quick look at it here.

Nothing special, you might think (if you do think it’s something special, you might want to stop reading). In fact, thanks to a jokey post from one satisfied (alleged) owner in the product’s ‘Customer Reviews’ section, with feedback on said T-shirt including “Pros: has wolves on it…attracts women…Cons: could probably have used more wolves on the ‘guns’…”, the item has become an internet hit.

Thanks to the wonders of viral email, the product now sports over 300 reviews from satisfied customers, ranging from the humorous to the mildly disturbing. At present, Amazon has not appeared to overtly censor user comments, perhaps content that the phenomenon is translating into an unlikely sales lift.

Whatever way you look at it, there’s no denying the power of a the odd well-placed, web-based witticism - even more so, given that this has led to hundreds of people parting with their hard-earned cash on the back of it.

N.B. Crushingly for UK-based lupine aficionados, the ‘Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt’ is not currently available on our shores. Amazon.co.uk are stocking a single wolf variant, however. I guess you could always buy three of them…

By Jonathan Izzard on May 21st, 2009

Tags: Default, Fashion, New Product Development, Product placement, Sales promotion, Viral Marketing

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Heard of Wolfram Alpha yet? With its official launch happening sometime today, chances are that within the next couple of months, you will have.

So what is it?

Described as ‘computational answer-engine’ – it is not a online search facility, and it’s definitely not a Google. It doesn’t reference indexed web pages and documents, but rather ‘listens’ to your question, and with recourse to a single sourced information bank, provides an answer. The point is it thinks about what you want from your question; it summarises key facts, unearths statistics, produces charts, and, fascinatingly, shows you how it got there.

Wikipedia naturally has a page on it, which is worth checking out.

Even more information is – aptly – provided at the official website, where in this video the product’s creator, a British physicist called Stephen Wolfram, runs through a mind-boggling set of example questions.

Whether it ends up setting the world alight, or merely aglow, this certainly should be one to watch over the coming year.

By Jonathan Izzard on May 15th, 2009

Tags: Default

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