Brand Republic Blogs

Brand Believers External website

by Louise Brice, 24/05/2013

Everyone has one. A drawer of tech – old mobiles, chargers, battery chargers, old cameras, that newer tech has made redundant.

I cannot quite bear to turn mine out, they remind me of good times.

by Greg Taylor, 24/05/2013

The lights are on and hundreds of commuters are home. To show-off its new home décor range, Target built a life-size dollhouse in Grand Central Station.

by Chris Arnold, 24/05/2013

What do you believe in? God, football, politics, vegetarianism, ethics… don’t say you don’t, we are all hard wired to believe in things. The trouble is, sometimes those beliefs deserve a little more open mindedness.

Small talk External website

by Greg Taylor, 23/05/2013

Forget the Fisher Price smiley-faced phone. Now children can make real calls from a real mobile all of their own. (Cheers, Andy P.)

Dubbed the BratBerry by sceptics, 1stfone is the brainchild of Ownphone and is aimed at children between four and nine.

by Greg Taylor, 22/05/2013

To promote its new Office 365 software, Microsoft placed an ad with free wifi in a special edition of Forbes magazine. (Nice spot, Alex.)

The ad was made up of four pages, with a super-skinny router and battery packed in between. After activating the wifi, readers could get online for free (thanks to T-Mobile) for 15 days, wherever they took the magazine.

by Greg Taylor, 21/05/2013

Mayonnaise isn’t just for sandwiches. At a supermarket in São Paulo, Hellmann’s used NFC technology to suggest new recipes to shoppers as they perused the aisles. (Thanks, Tim.)

by Greg Taylor, 20/05/2013

First there was easyJet. Then easyHotel. And now there’s easyGym.
Yes, Stelios has expanded into the fitness market with a chain of no-frill gyms. You can already work up an orange sweat in six spots across the UK. And from next month, there’ll be a new branch on Oxford Street, too. (Good find, Andy P.)

by Greg Taylor, 17/05/2013

Some robots would be no good at mixing a martini. C3PO, for example, would no doubt bruise the gin with those inflexible elbows of his, despite his plummy butler act. But these ‘guys’ put the most balletic of bartenders to shame. Fresh from MIT’s Senseable City Lab and rocking the bar in Milan is Makr Shakr: three robotic arms that can mix any drink you desire.

by John Carroll, 17/05/2013

On a recent aeroplane flight, I looked around the cabin and all I saw were people absorbed in their smartphones and tablets of all shapes and sizes. There was even the awfully named cross breed device called the phablet. Well, it is either a phone or it isn’t and, anyway, I think it would be much more fun to call it a tablerone. The latest National Readership Survey (NRS) estimates that 53% of British adults now use a smartphone and 31% use a tablet, with the latter enjoying an incredible 246% increase in just 12 months.

by Mark Barber, 16/05/2013

The news this morning is that Google is launching a music streaming subscription service called Google Play Music All Access to compete with the likes of Spotify and Microsoft’s Xbox Music. Initially to launch in the US, the Android based service will soon be rolled out in the UK and other countries.

by Greg Taylor, 16/05/2013

First we fell in love with the synchronized-swimming Waterbabies. Then, those lockin’ n’ poppin’ Rollerbabies. Now, it’s time to connect with your own inner baby. Evian’s newest CGI tots are taking the Viral Video Chart by storm, as “Baby & Me” has topped the No. 1 spot with around 50million views, generating more than 80 related clips, 740,000 Facebook shares, and 11,000 comments.

by Rhys McLachlan, 15/05/2013

US broadcasters and media traders are starting to realise that the traditional trading relationship between broadcaster and advertiser may need to change.It’s a big week for telly types in the US. The great and the good of the world’s largest TV market are gathering for their traditional preview of next season’s broadcasts.
The results of their deliberations will change the way that billions of dollars are committed by the media agencies for the upcoming season.
But there are signs that this traditional way of doing business is about to change, fundamentally and forever. Articles in both the Financial Times and the New York Times have highlighted this year as the moment that programmatic buying (and not just Real Time Bidding there is a significant difference, see my article here) becomes a major part of the future of ad-funded TV.
Essentially, US TV networks have been hit by a perfect storm of online video, greater competition and new technological challenges.
First of all, ratings dominance for network programming is dropping, giving the networks less bargaining power. Advertisers continue to shift money to smaller cable channels that can also deliver much more targeted advertising options.
Second, consumers spending a portion of their viewing time on alternate technologies, online video and in particular Netflix, Amazon and other streaming services.
Finally, new technologies such as Aereo, which takes the free to air broadcasts and streams them over the internet to paying subscribers, also represent a new challenge.
None of this is about the quality of TV being broadcast by the networks; it’s simply a recognition that the commercial model of broadcasting needs to change.
It would be foolhardy to claim that everything that happens in the US TV market will necessary cross the pond to be applied verbatim to the UK TV market. That said however, we can’t help but feel that due to the increasing prevalence of broadband enabled distribution technology for broadcaster content, and the growing UK viewer appetite to supplement their regular TV viewing with on-demand content, over all devices, we’re also entering a very interesting period for the UK TV market.

by Greg Taylor, 15/05/2013

James Bond’s video wristwatch. Captain Kirk’s communicator. Wearable technology is no longer a fantasy, but coming soon to a body part near you. And the battle for who’s going to own the platform, set the standards and attract the world’s top developers is about to start raging.

by Chris Arnold, 14/05/2013

This year, how green will the festival you are going to be? Festivals are getting greener and one is even banning commercial giveaways to reduce wate.

App gifting External website

by Greg Taylor, 14/05/2013

Today is your other half’s birthday. A big one. Only you haven’t got them a present. And you’re on the other side of the world. What do you do? There’s a new app with the answer: Jifiti. It lets you scan product barcodes and instantly send a voucher, for your specific, hand-chosen gift. (How thoughtful Tim!)

by Greg Taylor, 13/05/2013

eBay is literally taking window-shopping to a whole new level. This summer they’re revealing a giant touchscreen pop-up store in partnership with NY retailer Kate Spade Saturday.

by Sophie Burke, 08/05/2013

We all know the media landscape is changing. The print trees are parting to allow the digital river to flow. But it’s not just the landscape; the people that live there are evolving just as quickly. Consumers are no longer being told how they must absorb media.

by Dominic Guba, 30/04/2013

The distribution of video content is fragmenting at an exponential rate. Cheaper laptops, massive tablet growth, the proliferation of smartphones and the emerging force of connected TVs means that consumers are no longer limited to traditional TV to watch video. To take one example, young adults in the US now watch 11 hours of video online each month and a further six hours on their mobiles.

by Chris Arnold, 27/04/2013

Shock may work well for artists with little talent because it gets you noticed, but when ad agency creatives indulge themselves with insensitive mock suicide scripts, because they can’t think up a really good idea, you have to question if they should keep their jobs.

It’s time for video to step out on its own External website

by James Grant, 24/04/2013

According to folklore Henry Ford once said, “If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said faster horses.” Although it’s never been confirmed if Ford actually spoke these words out loud, this quote is often used by business leaders in speeches about creativity and innovation – Steve Jobs most famously.

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