Digital Times » Adland

Calling all app developers and brands/companies who have developed an app

Stephen — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 14:23:16 +0000

Conceived by Alchemy Events and developed with Digital Times, ‘The Appys with the Carphone Warehouse’ will celebrate the innovation and creativity now abundantly evident in the app development industry and will reward the best, the most useful and the most creative apps and their developers.
The Carphone Warehouse is the title sponsor of the awards programme while Independent.ie is the media partner. The winners will be announced at a fabulous ceremony on November 4th.
Our category partners also include O2, Meteor, Nokia, Samsung and IDA Ireland.
There are 15 categories to enter. To find out more go to www.theappys.ie where you can upload your app(s) and enter the Awards programme. You can also book your seat(s) at the Awards ceremony.
There will be great prizes on the night from many of Ireland’s leading digital companies as well as a host of your digital media/marketing contemporaries.
We will have further announcements as the days/weeks progress. Deadline for entries is September 30, 2010.

eightytwenty/interactive lands global Grafton Employment account

Stephen — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:36:31 +0000

Dublin-based agency eightytwenty/interactive has won the global Grafton Employment Group account. “eightytwenty/interactive has been appointed as Grafton Employment Group’s partner for digital Strategy and development commencing with the development of a new online presence for the Grafton Employment Group across EMEA, Asia Pacific and South America,” said David O’Connor, partner, eightytwenty/interactive. Speaking about the decision, Caroline Kilbane, group brand manager for Grafton Recruitment said, “I chose eightytwenty/interactive due to their consulting and agency approach to delivering solutions for the group.They demonstrated an in-depth understanding of my challenges and the challenges of our clients.”
The agency has also launched RTÉ’s new GAA social TV app.

Get in the game – new experiential marketing tool from Aviva

Edward — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 09:39:43 +0000

Aviva announced their new 3D point of view marketing experience today. The technology was built and designed by v-Stream, a Dublin based digital agency. Basically you get to “experience” what a player feels in the build up to and during the warm up of a game in the Aviva Stadium. Following the rituals from changing room to running out onto the pitch and having a 3D interaction with a simulated Avivia stadium. It does sound pretty cool. A little gimmicky perhaps, but then all these type of initiatives are.

Importantly, it is a world first in terms of technical innovation in software to personalise stereoscopic 3D video. A couple of quotes from the main heads are below:

Niall O’Driscoll, creative director at vStream – ”This is a big step forward in experiential marketing in Ireland, with the 3D element playing a major part. 3D is very much the next big thing, and is a first for Ireland from a visual perspective. We spent a number of months researching the technology in the UK in order to bring these capabilities into the country, and we aim to produce a lot more content of this kind. We see the world in three dimensions, so in many ways the shift from 2D to 3D is as significant as the move from black and white to color.”

Andrew Jenkinson, technical director of vStream, notes that the technology that is used to make the experience personal to each viewer is a worlds first. “Personalised 2D video has been around for a few years, but creating 3D personalised video has never been done before, and it took many months of R&D to develop the software to create a truly immersive experience for the client. We already have interest from a number of international clients.”

The 3D stadium experience will go on tour around the country in the next while and should pop up at festivals and major events such as the Electric Picnic. It will also be housed in Aviva Stadium.

A global, crowd sourcing, creative ‘fight’ from Victors & Spoils

Stephen — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:19:42 +0000

For all you creatives out there looking to impress the world, here’s something that may whet your appetite. The International ANDY Awards has announced a global ‘Call for Entries’ creative challenge developed in partnership with Victors & Spoils.
Victors & Spoils is a tres hot American ad agency that crowd sources ideas. The online competition invites people from around the world to submit original, creative concepts promoting the The 2011 International Awards call for entries. The person behind the chosen entry will be awarded the last remaining seat on next year’s prestigious ANDY Awards Jury.
The ANDYs ‘Call for Entries’ project will be conducted using a new digital platform from Victors & Spoils called ‘The Squirrel Fight’, which enables the greater creative community to submit ideas into a simple, online template. Ideas proposed through The Squirrel Fight will be shortlisted by Evan Fry and Noah Clark of Victors & Spoils. This marks the first project open to the public on the Victors & Spoils ‘Squirrel Fight’.
The deadline for ANDYs ‘Call for Entries’ submissions is September 1, 2010 and the chosen concept will be announced on September 7, 2010. To submit creative concepts to ‘The Squirrel Fight’, entrants should visit http://victorsandspoils.com/squirrelfight.
For more on the International ANDY Awards try here www.andyawards.com

The Carphone Warehouse is title sponsor of The Appys

Stephen — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 13:01:52 +0000

The Carphone Warehouse has announced its title sponsorship of The Appys 2010. The Carphone Warehouse stocks all smartphone brands across all the various app development platforms and networks and is, therefore, “an excellent title sponsor of the awards program,” says Stephen Conmy, editor, Digital Times (pictured right).
The Appys with The Carphone Warehouse was conceived by Alchemy Events and Digital Times with the aim of highlighting and rewarding the talent emerging in the app development industry.
“App development is a media sector in its own right now,” says Des Dorris, MD of Alchemy Events. “Apps are now media channels and utility tools and some of the most creative aspects of the new media landscape are emerging from app developers. We want to highlight the great work they are doing.”
The CEO of The Carphone Warehouse, Stephen Mackarel (left) says, “Apps are becoming an integral part of Irish life, and with so many available in the market, it is critical that best Apps and the people who developed them are acknowledged and awarded. As an independent mobile provider and stockist of all brands and operating systems, we wanted to sponsor The Appys to recognise app development across all platforms. We look forward to announcing the winners in November.”
To enter visit http://www.theappys.ie

The Judges for The Appys with The Carphone Warehouse are:
Stephen Mackarel, CEO, The Carphone Warehouse
Stephen Conmy, Digital Times
Alex Gibson, The Persuaders
Tim Duggan, Partner, Mercury Girl and Mercury Boy Inc.
Jonathan Forrrest, MD, Cybercom
Jane McDaid, MD, Thinkhouse,
Darragh Doyle, communications manager, Boards.ie
Colm Grealy, CEO, DRG
Ronan Higgins, CEO & Founder, Appsie
Conor Lynch, connector.ie
Patrick Lenehan, CTO, The Independent Group
Alexis Bouckaert, creative director, Rothco
Dr. Evelyn Balfe, business innovation analyst, Amdocs
Ruadhan O’Donaghue, project leader and site editor, dotMobi
Claire Carroll, digital media strategist, Ogilvy Neo
Pictured are (l-r) Des Dorris, MD Alchemy Events; Stephen Conmy & Edward Conmy

First IAB Ireland report says online ad spend worth nearly €100 million

Stephen — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:10:08 +0000

The first IAB Ireland online ad spend study has been published. Online ad spend in Ireland was €97.2 million in 2009. The report was put together by IAB and PwC with a view to establishing how much Irish advertisers spent online in 2009.
The report suggests digital ad spend in Ireland is now 10% of the total ad spend (the total Irish 2009 ad spend suggested by PwC was €940 million). This means digital advertising is now worth more than outdoor, consumer magazines, and cinema.
“Online’s strong performance in this, our benchmark study, provides great confidence for the future growth of our medium,” says Suzanne McElligott, chief executive IAB Ireland (pictured).
As a bench mark study, the report only looks at three key digital media formats: search (which accounts for 46.2%), classified (27.2%) and display (26.6%).
“We estimate that our study accounts for 90% of online ad spend,” says McElligott, “At least 90% if not 95%,” confirmed Bartley O’Connor, consultant with PwC (pictured left).
29 of Ireland’s leading online publishers participated in the study, including – Boards.ie, Donedeal.ie, entertainment.ie, Google, Independent Digital, Microsoft Advertising, MyHome.ie, The Irish Times, Ticketmaster Ireland, eircom, Daft Media, RTE, TCH, Ireland.com, and Yahoo!
Sales houses and ad networks also participated and all data was provided to PwC on a confidential basis. Google did not reveal its earnings from Irish advertisers. Instead PwC, “created an independent estimate of Google’s revenue from Irish advertisers, by extrapolating from spend data provided directly by a representative sample of Google clients”.
As search accounts for 46% of online ad spend one may assume that the bulk of this (say 40%) is spent with Google. Therefore, it is a fair estimate to suggest approximately €38 million is spent by Irish advertisers with Google each year.
75% of the study’s participants predict growth or strong growth for online ad spend in 2010.

Death knell for email marketing?

Edward — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 08:30:09 +0000

We don’t have much of a sweet tooth around here, but news of Ben and Jerry’s decision to drop email marketing in favour of social media has got the taste buds working. This is the first major brand to act on the long-held assumption that email is “for old people”. Boston College stopped issuing email accounts to students way back in November 2008. The medium is now over forty years old and people are elsewhere.

Ben and Jerry will now concentrate on Twitter and Facebook to develop a relationship with customers, but it will send one email per year to its database. That is an amazing about face, some would contend kick in the face, for a long trusted marketing channel. It is also premature for many companies to even consider. However, we shall watch this space with interest.

Billboards that recognise sex and age

Stephen — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 14:08:28 +0000

How many times has the Tom Cruise film Minority Report been referenced by writers delving into the future of outdoor advertising? Well, one of the film’s most cited scenes has finally come to life – sort of. A Japanese advertising project has fitted billboards with cameras that can read the gender and age profile of individual people thus allowing them to tailor their commercial messages.
The ‘Digital Signage Promotion Project’ is currently in test phase. It is a one year pilot project involving 27 advertising display units in subway stations around Tokyo. The project is being funded by a consortium of 11 railway companies.
Each display is capable of recognising an individual’s sex and approximate age once that person passes the display or glances at the billboard. Unlike the ‘Minority Report’ hypothesis, these billboards are not yet capable of identifying individuals. However, face recognition technology tied in with social networks could soon change this.
The owners of the high tech digital signs have promised Japanese commuters that they will not save any of the recorded images and only analyse the collated data surrounding groups of people at general times of the working day. How long this promise will stand once real advertisers become interested in the technology remains to be seen. Our guess is approximately one millisecond.

Google appoints new head of agency channel for UK and Ireland

Stephen — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 11:15:10 +0000

Google has appointed Martin Murray as head of agency channel for the UK and Ireland. In his new position, Murray will lead the Google sales team to support media, creative and digital agencies in the delivery of online marketing solutions to their clients.

Murray, who most recently was managing director of Radical (part of the Publicis Groupe Media) was also founder and MD of Interactive Return for ten years and previously worked with Ericsson and Eircom. Publicis Groupe Media acquired Interactive Return in 2008.

He holds a Masters in Industrial Engineering from University College Dublin, a Bachelors Degree in Electronic Engineering from Dublin Institute of Technology and he is a Chartered Member of Engineers Ireland.

Fooling and baiting traditional media

Stephen — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 09:33:35 +0000

There’s a bit of a trend developing in the US. Marketers are creating spoof documentaries in the hope that the videos will go viral, but also in the hope that traditional media outlets will take the stories seriously and report on them as if real.
The Hi-Tec ‘Liquid Mountaineering’ video is a good example. The documentary about some crazy Europeans and their new sport was reported as real news by NBC in Washington. A nice bit of earned media for Hi-Tec and it resulted in the spoof soaring up the viral charts, attracting 2.5 million views in one week alone.
Another piece of earned media involves the far right nit wit Bill O’Reilly of Fox News going berserk over a French TV ad for McDonald’s. O’Reilly ranted and raved about the ad which shows a clueless father trying to connect with his gay son in a McDonald’s. This ad also climbed the viral charts in the US, proving O’Reilly spectacularly wrong. He said it would ‘never’ play in America. Maybe someone should tell him about this thing called the Internet?