Marketing

Barcelona FC’s decision to agree to a €170m sponsorship deal with the Qatar Foundation has been criticized by Johan Cruyff, former player, and manager of the Catalan team. Chief finance director, Javier Faus, said that under the terms of the agreement the club will receive €30m each season for years, starting on July 1, 2011, and running until June 30, 2016, plus bonuses for trophies won that could total €5m. During the 2010/11 campaign, the club will also receive a further €15m in return for the Qatari-state-funded non-profit foundation being able to use the Barcelona logo, bringing the total of the deal to €170m. The club said Qatar Foundation will join Unicef on Barcelona’s…

Tourism Ireland has launched a campaign in Britain to encourage people with Irish ancestry or connections to talk about their associations with Ireland on Twitter. Developed by Indicia, the ‘My Irish 140’ campaign works focuses on the number 140, the maximum number of characters in a tweet. The campaign began at 1.40am this morning and will continue over 140 hours. Followers are being encouraged to tweet about their connection to Ireland using the hash tag #makesmeirish and can include pictures and links. Their tweets enter them into a competition, with the prize on offer for the best ‘sweet tweet’ being 140-hour short break in Ireland, with smaller prizes awarded at random…

Mobile Ad Spend to Exceed US$11bn Annually by 2015, Says Juniper Research Global ad spend on mobile channels is expected to exceed US$11bn annually by 2015, up from US$3.1bn this year, according to Juniper Research. The firm said this growth would be driven by brands seeking to capitalise on the personalised, targeted advertising and high levels of user engagement that mobile has to offer. Brands Embrace In-App Advertising and Branded Apps Juniper’s new Mobile Advertising Strategies report finds that following a surge in app downloads brands are now looking to either offer dynamic advertising in-app or, as is the case with Barclaycard and Volkswagen, create their own apps in order…

The number of smartphone owners in the US increased by 14pc to 60.7 million in the three months ending October 2010, according to a new report from comScore. This means that one in four US mobile subscribers now owns a smartphone. RIM was the leading mobile smartphone platform in the US with a 35.8pc share of smartphone subscribers, followed by Apple with a 24.6pc share. Google Android increased its share of the market by 6.5 percentage points to 23.5pc of all smartphone subscribers. comScore’s report also found that in the three months to October, 68.1pc of US mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device, up 2.1 percentage points…

When physical meets digital, you get phygital and it is in this phygital world that the future of marketing lies, says Gavin Downes. As an ever-increasing amount of marketing planning focuses on building integrated campaigns that exist seamlessly in experiences between the physical and digital worlds, a new ‘phygital’ paradigm has emerged. It’s a term that was coined by McCann-owned agency Momemtum around two years ago. The growth of the phygital world has been clearly evident since then and marketing folk across the world are starting to take notice. Some game-changing case studies exist from around the globe, with brands such as Microsoft, Coca-Cola, T-Mobile, IBM, Nike, O2 and Heineken…

Engagement and advertising responsiveness are strongest on original content rather than social media sites, according to a new UK study carried out by GfK NOP for the Association of Online Publishers. Participants in the study – The New Rules of Engagement – revealed they are almost twice as likely to trust advertising and brands on content sites versus social media sites, while they are almost three times more likely to believe that content sites are better than social media sites at influencing positive brand opinion. According to the AOP, by examining the relationship between site and audience, the study also reveals that measures such as dwell time and frequency of…

A public brainstorming event to be held for the first time this evening will look at a range of issues affecting Irish businesses, including how to save Brand Ireland. Devised by Conor Lynch, the Connector Brainstorm event promises to bring together some of Ireland’s top digital marketing experts along with some exciting start-ups and aims to provide a platform for new ideas to save Brand Ireland. According to Lynch, the event, which is being held in the Science Gallery on Pearse Street in Dublin 2, will look at ways to save Brand Ireland in the eyes of the international public and look at new business ideas that will create new…

Coca-Cola Ireland has today announced the launch of its Christmas digital activity. The campaign consists of a website, iPhone Application , Facebook application and online advertising including a homepage takeover on MSN.ie today. The company said online advertising specials will also be present on Entertainment.ie , eBay and Independent.ie during November and December. The campaign creative features the Coke Santa and Coke trucks set inside a snowglobe scene. The company is also taking a human snowglobe around the country for children to experience the Christmas in a snowglobe. The Coca-Cola snowglobes application on each of the three platforms allows users to choose from a variety of Christmas scenes, personalise the snowglobe with a number of accessories and…

Gal Trifon, CEO and co-founder at MediaMind The global click-through rate (CTR) for online advertising stopped declining in 2009 and 2010 and has remained fixed at around 0.09pc, according to a new study from MediaMind Technologies. The ‘Standard Banners – Non-Standard Results’ study shows that CTR has been decreasing over the past decade, with a large drop of 18pc during the financial crisis following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008.  Interestingly, the study reveals that one of the main reasons for the drop in CTR is the success of online display advertising: the increase in the number of online ad impressions outpaced users’ rise in clicks, which resulted…

Communications Minister Eamon Ryan is seeking the views of the public on a range of new channels proposed by RTÉ for transmission on digital television. Members of the public will have until 10 December 2010 to submit their views. The switch-on of digital television was announced by the Minister last month and will include RTÉ One, RTÉ2, TV3, and TG4. RTÉ has submitted a proposal for additional channels on this free-to-air service: RTÉ Two HD Select, RTÉ News Now, RTÉjr (channel aimed at preschool children),RTÉ Plus (repeat of peaktime RTÉ One content), and RTÉ Aertel Digital (enhanced digital teletext service). “The analogue signal will be switched off by the end…