Another win for Forex.com!

We are delighted to say a huge congratulations to our Client Forex.com for another big win - this time for the 'Best Forex Platform' at the FT IC Awards.

They do say good news comes in threes, so we will be eagerly awaiting news of a hat-trick!

PPretty ImPPactful PPosters

The latest Pretty Polly campaign featuring legs to die for clad in styles from the PP 'Fashion' range as well as the 'House of Holland' range designed for PP by Henry Holland goes live today.

The stunning ads can be seen towering above the streets in key London locations on large format illuminated poster sites for 3 weeks across Christmas and the New Year.

Forex.com win Best FX Broker!

Awards evenings are always a great opportunity to gather a group of colleagues, don your best cocktail dress and let your hair down whilst celebrating outstanding industry achievements, and last night The Shares Awards at the Grosvenor House Hotel was no exception.

One of Pure Media’s Clients, online FX broker Forex.com were up for two awards in the categories of Best Mobile Trading Platform, and Best FX Broker. It was a tense time as we waited to hear their fate, with nerves on edge as the presenters seemed to crawl through the other categories before finally getting to the ones we were most interested in.

However, I am pleased to say that it was worth the wait, with Forex.com being announced as the proud winners of Best FX Broker!

So congratulations to Forex.com for this great achievement and may there be many more awards evenings and wins to come in the future!

Remember Remember the 5th of November - Oh yeh, and not to place an ad for fireworks next to a story about a burn victim!!

Did anyone at Metro think that running a Tesco Ad promoting FIREWORKS alongside a story warning people of the perils of bonfire night, with a picture of a of young burns victim who suffered 3rd degree burns, and is scarred for life as a result, consider the sensitivities????? (Metro 05/11/10)

Not only that, but there is another Tesco ad running the same space size later in the issue advertising 'gaming' products ... so an eleventh hour decision could have been made to do a straight swap to avoid such a faux pas in placement if this was a case of ensuring delivery of an advertisers positional guarantee... ie. first 25x4 LH colour.

But even more ironic is that the latter (non controversial) Tesco ad is on a spread facing another ad of the same spec ---- but for the LFB ---- London Fire Brigade ----with the message : DON'T RISK IT ... relating to fireworks and safety.

Understandably, London ads often have to run later than page 11 - but this is just a case of serious oversight and a lack of consideration and judgement on behalf of the flat planners in my opinion.

'Every little helps' may be the Tesco proposition - but 'Every little bit of common sense' should really be the Metro one.

More Benefit than a Back Rub

What a week for the Media Jolly! – Monday kicked off proceedings in style with a lavish champagne charity event at the Guild Hall, followed on Tuesday by a ‘quiet client lunch’ which ran right thorough to an evening spent supporting the French wine growers of Bordeaux in their dominance of the London market. This was then followed by a truly decadent Wednesday enjoying treatments including a facial and massage at a luxurious spa day kindly laid on by a media owner in thanks for recent business. Now Friday has arrived and it goes without saying that there are hangovers a plenty today following the City am and Media Week Awards last night.

Yes, even though media agencies are no longer quite as liberal in the drink trolley department as those portrayed in the ever popular Mad Men, the Media Jolly remains a firm favourite pastime. But is this penchant for wining, dining and entertaining merely an indicator that media types like to indulge themselves more than the norm? Or are there other benefits to be gained from such seeming frivolity?

In recent years overtly lavish hospitality spending has come under scrutiny as being surplus and inappropriate to the environment in which we have been working – an environment in which companies have folded and people have been left unemployed. Indeed, many traditional fixtures in the Media Jolly calendar have been cancelled over the last year as the industry gave a nod to the sensitivities of the situation; cocktail dresses were left languishing in the wardrobe, tuxedos gathering dust waiting soberly for their next outing…

Because of course there will always be the next Media Jolly to look forward to, no matter what the economic climate. Those with enough vision to realise that the benefit of such events runs deeper than mere personal enjoyment – from the contacts made, information exchanged and gleaned, to the deals done signed and sealed, will always continue to put their hand in their (often rather large) wallets. To my mind it is true that success within the media industry is synonymous with success at building human relationships – both inside the workplace and at the 19th hole when most self-respecting professionals are working slavishly over a keyboard. Therefore experience tells me I can look my boss in the eye with a clean conscience and tell her that I really did get more benefit from my day at the spa than simply just a back rub.

i spy with my little i...

... something beginning with i .... 24 years since the last national daily newspaper launch - The first new national daily newspaper goes on sale today in what's described by many as "a last throw of the dice" for its owners.

This morning - The Independent newspaper rolled out it's new publication 'I', dubbed The Indy 'light'.

The 56-page newspaper will draw its content from The Independent, but the articles are shorter with a more populist approach.

Independent executive Andrew Mullins said: "Time-poor newspaper readers, and especially commuters, have been telling us for years that they are inundated with information and just don't have the time to read a quality newspaper on a regular basis."

The last daily nationals to launch were Eddy Shah's Today and the Independent itself, both in 1986.

But unlike the London Evening Standard and the Daily Mail's offspring Metro - to read 'I', readers will have to pay - 20p


Links to articles include ..

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=46192&c=1

Boris Bikes, Barclays and BANKSY

With Banksy across the Altantic working on attaining Global Exposure with the design of the credits for the Simpsons latest episode ... it looks like a disgruntled creative prodigee has been working their magic over the past week or so in the UK ... this time using Boris J's London Barclays bikes as the new canvas.

My personal favourite ..not the version as pictured, but the simple, yet very effective....BARCLAYS BONUS SHAKER

Freedom of speech

So Andrew Marr has outraged bloggers across the sphere with his 'stereotypical' descriptive comments - resulting in 1,000's of rants and defensive comments about not being...

Spotty
Balding
Living in their mothers basement
Constantly musing on blogs whilst drunk
Any or all of the other comments he made.....

Goes to show the power of established macro 'journalists' comment vs personal and so called micro civilian journalism given the coverage it has generated so far.

Adding another dimension to a static medium

Excellent to see the creative use of an 'old fashioned' standard
format 48 sheet poster this week.

A Johnson's World of Softness pop-up billboard was unveiled,
featuring live models advertising 24 hour body lotion, at
Westfield Shopping Centre, in west London. 07/10/10

FREE SOLAR

Fantastic new TV campaign launched this week for our visionary new client HomeSun.com who are offering homeowners free solar as a result of a government backed scheme.

Five Alive!

Richard Desmond has added to his media empire, buying Five for a
cool £100M

A Media Milestone

225 years since it's launch - the Times published it's 70,000th
issue yesterday. Which makes it the only National paper in
the English speaking world to have reached that number.

The Power of the BBC

The BBC trounced ITV in the battle of the ratings for the World Cup Final on
Sunday night ....

Almost 17 million viewers watched the final, the majority of whom, 13.9 million, opted
for BBC1's coverage, with only 2.8 million viewers choosing to watch the match
on ITV1.

The BBC may have scored with a line up of slick pundits - Linekar, Hanson and Shearer vs
the less credible ITV faces including Chiles, Southgate and Keegan.

But the reality of the situation is that the BBC's commercial-free offering is likely to have been
the biggest pull.

So whilst we know the power of TV and TV advertising - given a commercial free programming
alternative , it looks like the BBC will win every time.

The power of TV

The UK may have been one of the first major economies to see ad spend on the web exceed tv spend in recent stats published, but it is worth remembering.......

60% of all online advertising budgets are spent on Google search and only 18% of spend is attributed to display activity. The web is a powerful medium, no doubt, but it is doing a different job for advertisers across the piece.

Recent ITV audience figures prove that it is still possible to reach millions of people with a traditional TV spot.

The final of 'Britains Got Talent' on Saturday 5th June peaked at 15M viewers watching, with an average audience of 12.3M

The World Cup got of to a fast start, despite the relatively boring performances to date... the first England game vs USA on Saturday 12th June pulled in nearly 20M viewers.

So don't write the old box off just yet.

All in the name...

Fantastic new radio and online campaign running for
Cheapflights - reitterating the literal premise ...
The Name Says it all "It's called Cheapflights for a reason"

Copy and paste link below in to nav bar to listen to the radio ads

http://www.vimeo.com/user3965278

Media is the Message

Great examples of how Denver Water used media to deliver highly synergistic messages - quite literally.

Unprecedented Market Share

"Are there any other brands in the UK who can boast a market share of + 90%?"

Latest Hitwise stats for the UK Search Engine Market(May 2010)shows the power machine, search generic, that is Google, have increased market share to an unprecedented 91.7%

Radio Silence...

...it appears we've been very remiss and have ignored our Blog for some months now...... not a good example of how intuitive, topical and tactical blogs can be.

More so illustrative of how busy we have been over the past few months - clearly prioritising our efforts elsewhere.

So, before flares come back in to fashion - AGAIN, we intend to get the Pure Media blog back up and running.

The intention being to share the odd bit of agency news, media musings etc before the summer is out.

Guaranteed to win

Mecca Bingo return to the TV screens today - with the next burst of activity promoting a great new guaranteed daily jackpot of £10,000 per day every day until the middle of March

http://www.meccabingo.com/home


BINGO!

Time Flies....

... When you're having fun!

And really BUSY.

It's been a great start to the New Year for Pure Media - with lots going on for current clients and on the New Business front.

Suddenly March is upon us and the year is not so New afterall.

So the Pure Media 'Not so New Year's Resolution' is to set an example and keep this Blog up to date.

A perfectly simple idea executed beautifully

Can you believe this ad was developed 27 years ago?

It was a treatment that resulted in being the catalyst for re-appraising outdoor media and its use above and beyond paper and paste back in 1983.

The box shape of the car vs the sleek streamlinecurves of vehicles manufacturered these days is pretty much the only giveaway.