There are critics of Google’s move and many say it’s twisting search results in order to boost its own social network. Twitter’s general counsel Alex Macgillivray has been vocal and said it’s a “bad day for the internet”. Twitter expects that its own content will be sidelined and that Google+ will be given undue prominence in search results. But Google cannot index content from Facebook and Twitter as the networks do not allow it to crawl their pages for data.

For many, Google is the gateway to the internet and how they find information on events, their passions and products. So for brands, social search will be important because it adds another factor to the way Google ranks pages for different keywords. We might see some brands being forced to reconsider the importance of Google+ as a social network to reach out to their target audience – because Google has played its trump card to make it significant: search.

Facebook’s growing popularity is a big problem for Google. Facebook is a walled garden which effectively means that Google cannot index any of the content on the site. Google makes billions organising the web, but if it cannot index a large and growing section of that audience, its business is going to suffer. Google is obviously very concerned and its chief internet evangelist Vint Cerf made a rather bold statement saying Facebook must open up or it would suffer the same fate as AOL. Google has also responded to the rise of Facebook by trying to create its own social experience. So far, Google has failed: Wave was scrapped; Google+, despite an initial growth spurt, looks like it’s confined to the technology community; while Google’s only real social success is YouTube, which it acquired.

Facebook’s F8 announcements are so significant because they will attract people to the site, keep them there for longer and arm Facebook with greater insight into them. You log into Facebook, tell it who you are, where you’ve been, what you like to watch, listen to and read. While you are doing this, Facebook is getting a 360-degree picture of who you are and the type of things that will catch your attention. This data is the kind of information that advertisers crave, as brands seek a more sophisticated approach to advertising. For decades advertisers adopted a scattergun approach – firing campaigns at a mass audience in hope that their messages would potentially hit the right people. Facebook is now offering access to a mass audience, but it’s also offering advertisers access to the right audience. If Facebook can offer up adverts on your profile which are crafted especially for you, there’s a greater chance you’ll click on it and therefore earn money for the company and its advertising network partners.

Oil is one of the most valuable commodities in the world; companies go to the ends of the earth to get it and countries have gone to war for it. It has been said that data is the new oil, and Google and Facebook have squared up to drill for as much information about people in the world as they can. If these businesses can attract you to their online properties, they get your time and data. Both of these are essential to sell to advertisers. The war these two internet giants are fighting is one of the biggest battles in business today. The company which can mine the most data will ultimately succeed and will win a huge slice of the multi-billion pound internet advertising market.

They hope to stand out, in what is increasingly becoming an extremely crowded market, be selling their tablets in a range of colours. At first it seems like a weak strategy to take on the might of Apple, but it may turn out to be an interesting tactic.

As the wave of tablets that are being released all generally run an Android OS, Packard Bell could be giving themselves an opportunity to differentiate themselves by offering colour customisation.

It also signals an interesting shift at who tablets are being postioned towards. As with most new technologies tablets were scooped up by the early adopters – the kind of technology geeks that wait for hours outside Apple stores to get the latest product first.

However it appears tablets are starting to be aimed at a wider consumer audience. It will be interesting over the coming months to see whether we begin to see a change in how tablets are publicised by PR agencies and marketing departments. It may herald a shift away from articleabout technical specifications and a move towards stories which have lighter and fluffier angles.

Brands have already recognised the huge potential of marketing on Facebook and many have developed dedicated a Facebook presence (for a consumer facing brand a Facebook page is now essential). There have been some fantastic ways in which brands have engaged with the Facebook fraternity. Skittles asked Facebookers to bury a man in Skittles, every new ‘Like’ the page received meant sugary treats were poured onto the man.

Now Facebook Questions gives brands a genuinely exciting way to engage their followers and potential followers in a two way conversation they actually want to be a part of. The potential is huge, as now brands can not only reach their Facebook fans but also their fans’ friends; this gives brands a chance to get their message to a new audience. The service will allow brands to gauge opinion, conduct market research or crowd source for inspiration  in an extremely effective and almost instant way from their audience.

However there are a number of potential pitfalls that brand could face when using Facebook Questions. Kia invested heavily in their social media strategy and after experimenting have found their feet. Kia UK’s digital marketing manager, John Bache, has quickly realised that they received less interest in their posts if they try to sell to people. He recently told Marketing Week: “One thing we have noticed is that if we ask people to watch a video, or try to push product related messages to them, interaction with those posts is a lot less than if we ask for user generated content, such as ‘where did you take your Kia this weekend?’”

This anecdotal evidence of marketing on Facebook just goes to show that if Facebook Questions is used incorrectly, brands will struggle to engage fans with the service. Just using Facebook Questions in an obvious way – trying to sell to people or shouting corporate messaging at them – will not work as effectively as it could. People log onto Facebook to socialise and to be advertised at; so marketing on Facebook needs to talk to people in an interesting and genuine way.  If companies or products talk at people and do not engage them in a conversation, people will show their disapproval by disliking the brand on Facebook and potentially in the real world.

When you think of Lucozade you immediately think of sport. So Lucozade’s ties in with the Premier League and its high energy sports led works and makes sense.

However Lucozade has partnered with Spotify for the months of March and May to offer drinkers a chance to win free access to Spotify’s Premium service. It seems a bit of a bizarre partnership considering music lovers are a world apart from Lucozade’s traditional core market.

If Lucozade are trying to tap into a new audience then this type of promotion is perhaps a sensible way to do it. But the Lucozade/Spotify deal only lasts until the end of May – and two months to win over a new market is simply not long enough.

Also with Gatorade – the goliath of the sports drink market in America –planning on a marketing pushing in the UK this summer, positioning it as the ‘resource for athletes and amateur fitness fans’, it may be a wiser strategy for Lucozade focuses their energy on defending their current market position.

Now you can see their thinking, they didn’t want thousands of angry people going online and creating negative noise about their brand and also ringing their customer service departments on Christmas Eve and demanding to know where their presents were. Perhaps a sensible approach, but in doing this though they lost out on bundles of cash, which may have been scooped up by their rivals.

Geoff Galat, Worldwide VP of Marketing at Tealeaf, recently posted an interesting article on Econsultancy that discussed brand loyalty for online shoppers. He argued that people’s loyalty towards retailers has diminished as they turn to the Internet to shop. This is no doubt due to the ease in which people can compare and shop around online compared to the high street.

So retailers could have taken the short-term view that people will not be loyal anyway, so they may as well take their cash and renegade of their customer service commitments. But the majority took the long-term view and are trying to build a good relationship with their customers in order to try and earn their loyalty. Galat goes onto argue that if you get your customer service right you will build a loyal customer base, who because of social media may become an advocate of your brand.

It was of course the correct decision by these brands to stop taking orders for Christmas. Online retailers have very few differentiators, they offer the same products at the generally the same price, with the same delivery timescales, but what can set them apart is customer service. There would be nothing worse than disappointing thousands of people for Christmas and would diminish all hope of building a positive relationship with people. By being open and honest with their customers the online retailers took a positive step to creating brand loyalty by building trust.

But what caught my attention was that the man in charge of communications behemoth WPP said that data is the thing that excites him most. I agree with him (not just because he heads up a company which owns a huge chunk of the industry which I hope to progress in and he’s pretty much always right anyway) because more scientific and logical thinking creates better communication.

Companies have always craved a greater understanding of consumers. Account planning in advertising was developed to give creative work more of a scientific basis. The practice is the brainchild of legendary adman Stanley Pollitt, who felt his clients deserved advertising that was less reliant on gut feeling and more on logical insights.

The use of data can be effectively used across marketing to great effect, if you know how people tick, you know how to communicate to them. Tesco’s Clubcard loyalty programme is a great example of how data about consumers can be used to obtain a detailed understanding of their behaviour. Although Tesco harvests a vast amount of data there have been very few concerns raised about privacy, this is down to the fact that the scheme is opt-in. People want to be part of the scheme and can see its benefits due to useful vouchers being sent to them.

Just as Tesco uses its data to ensure it only sends relevant vouchers to its Clubcard members, there has been a growing trend of marketers who want targeted communication. Alexia Quadrani, who covers the advertising industry for JP Morgan Chase in New York, rightly says: “To do that effectively you need the data.”

As technology has developed it has made it easier to get data, Tesco were on able to launch the Clubcard scheme after magnetic strips on cards made it cost effective to track individual’s behaviour. The Internet is now an essential part of many of our lives and it has meant there are more opportunities for our likes, dislikes and behaviour to be tracked and ana

lysed.

But this lust from marketers to gather data also raises serious concerns about privacy. Facebook has got in a world of trouble about its privacy issues. Mark Zuckerberg, in what turned out to be a massive PR gaffe, famously said ‘the age of privacy is over’. However the data from its users’ profiles is exactly the kind of stuff advertisers crave. That’s why advertising on Facebook is so powerful, as it uses people’s profile information such as their age/gender/location/likes to ensure only relevant ads are shown on people’s pages. On my Facebook page adverts include those about football, poker and things to do in London. All fairly accurate and things that would catch my attention, therefore I would be more likely to click on them. Although people have freely entered information on Facebook, there have still been various complaints about the way Facebook uses the data to sell to advertisers, many saying it is a gross invasion of privacy.

Also as more and more people get smartphones and as apps are widely downloaded and used, there has been concerns raised about how some developers are using their apps to mine consumer data. The Wall Street Journal recently broke a story about how various apps have been sending personal data – such as location, age, gender and other personal details – in order to gain a detailed analysis of people in order to sell onto marketers. The more that is known about a person the more revenue that can be generated, for example ads targeted by location bring in two to five times as much money as untargeted ads.

Marketers like targeted advertising as instead of using a megaphone tactic, shouting their message at a crowd and hoping it’ll be heard by at least some relevant people, they are getting targeted, sophisticated and their message to the right audience. Also because it’s targeted they are willing to pay for more for it, so there is a big market out there for companies that can provide information about people and their behaviour.

Some find it creepy and invasive they are receiving advertising that’s targeted and personal to them, personally I find it useful as I am increasingly seeing things that interest me. There is no point advertising a Venus razor at me – because although the lady showcasing the Greek goddess type qualities may catch my attention – as there’s no way I’ll ever buy one.

Boohoo.com's first poster in their advertising campaign

When I first saw the advert for online shopping website boohoo.com on a giant poster in London, I smiled. It was a great piece of communication, beautifully simple, yet wonderfully powerful.

The advert spoke to its audience so well. The clothes look wonderful, the language used (OMG) is the language that would be common in their lives, and the first model who was used (picture above) looked like the kind of girl girls want to be friends with. The clothes pictured and named in the copy (playsuit, clutch, jumpsuit) are only things that the target audience will know about, so the ad creates a sense that they are ‘in’ on the message of the advertising.

But what makes this advertising really work is the model, her expression captures you attention, draws you in and it reinforces the message. It communicates that boohoo provides the shopping experience that women crave – that they should fall in love with their clothes and they should excite them.

However the follow up spots disappointed me (one of them is below). They had the same copy, the same style, the same feel but they were wrong. This was all because of the model. Not only do they look far less friendly, like the kind of girl who would say she liked a friend’s new clutch but then bitch about it behind her back and then no doubt try and seduce her boyfriend round the back of a club by some bins. Also their faces have a strange expression and does not paint a picture of shock or excitement.

One of the follow up spots for boohoo.com

For advertising to make a full impact every little detail has to be perfect. In the case of boohoo.com the first in the series was spot on, but the follow ups, although near identical, were not as effective. The models were not effectively communicating boohoo’s brand values that were pouring out from the first spot.

Adidas’ miCoach app was launched a while agi with a bit of a bang through a high-profile advertising campaign featuring a string of the brand’s star athletes. According to the company spiel, the app allows people with smartphones to turn their device into a personal trainer. The award-winning miCoach app is itself a piece of marketing for Adidas, but no doubt the aim of the advertising campaign was to create an online buzz through Twitter and YouTube and help the video go viral, much in the same way Nike’s World Cup advert did earlier this year.

The online buzz which the Adidas spot was intended to create would have helped drive people to Adidas’ website and towards the iPhone application. Even with so many stars crammed into a one minute spot the advert was far from epic despite the potential, in fact it only generated just over 200,000 views compared to Nike’s effort which was seen well over 20 million times

Adidas also managed to get a couple of decent hits in some top publications through a bit of PR work. There were stories featuring Adidas’ sponsored athletes including Chris Hoy on the Daily Mail Online, Andy Murray in the Sun, and David Davies (swimmer) on Skysport.co.uk. Now some nice hits, but the miCoach is not the narrative of the story, it merely gets a scant mention at the end. The launch of the app also managed to generate a bit of coverage in the marketing, tech and some high-profile titles, and it also continues to be mentioned in various fitness related articles in the press.

Don’t get me wrong the app is a fantastic idea and a great way for a sports brand to connect with its market and build brand loyalty. However the whole communication plan for the app has been below par compared to the amount of potential the app presents; therefore the app would be best promoted through a digital campaign.

The campaign is all about using the app to reach the top of your game and becoming the best you can be. The advertising implies that these top athletes are helped in their quest for excellence by the miCoach app and therefore indirectly by Adidas. In order for the marketing potential for the app to be reached I would launch the miCoach challenge through a digital campaign.

The focus of the campaign would be a mission to turn ordinary people into the best athletes they can be. Adidas would find people with average fitness around the country and then over a course of three/four months these people would use the miCoach app to train with the aim of improving their fitness. People from different areas of the country would be chosen who compete in different sports. The variance in gender, geography, and sports would help engage a wide audience throughout the UK.

The central focus of the campaign would be a microsite with interactive features, such as blogs and vlogs from the competitors who could talk about their training with a personal slant. People could comment on the blogs/vlogs and offer encouragement and ask questions. Addidas’ sponsored athletes could also be filmed training with the competitors and the videos put on the site. The athletes could answer questions and host webcasts from the public sent in through Twitter, email and text.

Various social media applications can be embedded into the site including Twitter and Flickr, where the competitors could engage with their followers. Adidas’ sports scientists would track the progress of the competitors throughout the period the campaign is taking place, and the winner would be the person who has improved their fitness the most. As a follow up challenge they could all participate in the London Marathon and the person who finished first would be crowned the ultimate champion. The marathon lends itself to a great digital campaign as the competitors could be fitted with GPS in order to track their progress throughout the marathon.

The microsite would help build a community around the miCoach app and help allow it to become the focus of the marketing campaign instead of in the background. People are bombarded with so much marketing that is becoming easier to ignore, so therefore brands need to think creatively in order to connect with their audiences.

News broke earlier this month that Amazon were selling a how to guide for paedophiles on its online bookstore, however after receiving a bit of a backlash in the media and on Twitter the book was promptly removed. Various journos were looking for comment but were faced by an Amazon media blackout. Claudine Beaumont of the Telegraph displayed her displeasure, she Tweeted ‘Utterly hacked off at Amazon press office. They’ve stonewalled journalists all day on this ebook story. Why bother employing PRs?’ Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC responded by Tweeting: ‘totally agree re Amazon…but bet they’ll be on the phone about an e-Christmas any minute…’.

It’s not particularly surprising that journalists were ignored, as this is a controversial story and Amazon’s higher ups were no doubt concerned that by responding they could make the situation worse. By not commenting they may have also hoped to take the sting out of the story and push it down the news agenda.

Amazon’s communications team have to assess whether ignoring the journos and the story would do more damage than responding to the story. But as the festive season is fast approaching Amazon needs to get as much media coverage as possible in order to drive sales. But by angering the media they will be doing themselves no favours among within media circles  and may find it tough to sell in their news to these journalists.

Now, it’s sometimes a PR’s role in a crisis to make sure nothing is said to make sure a situation doesn’t become worse, and fair play to Amazon’s communication team if this was the plan, as they did it pretty well. But now as the media has moved online and social media has exploded is it not better to be involved in the bad news debate about your own brand, rather than ignoring it and hoping it goes away? Is the silence worse than wading in and potentially saying something that could do damage to the brand?

As she fell to the floor of the X Factor stage and had a hissy fit, the hopes of the nation rose – could this be the week Katie ‘The Weasel’ Waissel finally got knocked out of the competition. But alas it was not to be, the most hated girl in Britain lives to sing another week.

But although it all kicked off on Twitter/Facebook/Blogs and in the mainstream media, it should not come as a surprise to anyone why the judges chose to save Waissel. PR is more important to the X Factor than real talent will ever be. Waissel is a controversial kooky character, who generates publicity for the show, which helps keep viewing figures high and in turn generates more revenue. Despite spelling her name in a daft way, Treyc Cohen, is like watching beige paint dry, she is frankly boring and as such has not received the same attention and media coverage as other contestants.

Some in our industry say all publicity is good publicity. Yes, the scandal of the judges keeping Waissel in the show may keep people interested for a short while, but it will do serious long term damage to X Factor’s brand. We are told the X Factor is about finding a new singing sensation, and as the less talented but media friendly acts are spared at the expense of the talented, people may begin to feel they are being manipulated and lose faith in the X Factor brand.

It is the same for any brand who are operating across any sector, trust is so important. If organisations begin to sacrifice their principles for desperate attempts to get in the media it will affect their long term credibility among their audiences and markets.

The longer I work in the communication biz I cannot look at a story without thinking who has placed it and the reason it is in the media. So when I saw an interesting story in the BBC earlier titled ‘Local Councils in England have £14bn in reserve’ it got me thinking.

The BBC ‘learned’ about the information so it has obviously been leaked to them, but for what reason and by who?

So you have to ask, what will the people reading the story think when they read it, also who benefits from this story and what they are trying to achieve by placing it?

We only have to go back a week and to the Coalition’s Comprehensive Spending Review. Now there were a lot of cuts that were announced by George Osborne, but the deepest of the cuts will fall on the local government budget at almost 30% over four years. With these deep cuts in the local government budget the Coalition’s strategy was to pass the tough decisions onto local councils, and as such help divert public resentment away from themselves.

However the Coalition has got a lot of bad media coverage nationally and locally about their decision to cut local government spending by so much. The BBC story is an attempt to deflect responsibility back onto local councils. By saying they have money in reserve and implying their coffers are bulging, the strategy behind this story is to once again put responsibility back on local government and show the public that any cuts are their own decisions and not that of the Coalition Government.

So this gives a reason why this story is in the media and also demonstrates that someone from within the government has given the BBC this information.

On the surface of it Waitrose’s latest marketing plan to match Tesco on 1000 branded goods seem a little bit strange.

The scheme has been backed up with a heavy TV, press, outdoor and email advertising campaign,  and the launch of the price match has also received a number of mentions in the media.

Waitrose has carved itself a lovely niche in the market by offering quality premium goods, which is different from the low cost strategy of Tesco and Asda.  It seems strange Waitrose wants to try and compete with the bargain supermarkets as it is already an extremely competitive end of the market; and an end that seems to demand a constant slew of the advertising in order to keep market share intact.

The timing of the price match is also bizarre. Why launch it now when the economy has recovered and not during the recession when value for money was high on the agenda? Also the thrust of this campaign is that they will match the price of Tesco, not beat it, not undercut them, not actually save anyone any money, so they are offering no unique benefit for people. It also does not match of the other several branded products that supermarkets offer.

A Waitrose shopper has been willing to pay a bit more for their weekly shop in a trade of for quality, they are the Marks and Spencer yummy mummy who are doing their big weekly shop.

So trying to position the supermarket in the same bracket as Tesco, one that is competitive on price, may also damage the brand’s reputation of quality.

However I think this campaign will work. It helps reassure existing customers they are not being ripped off by paying over the odds for the same items, and it will also help to draw in new customers as well. I can imagine this campaign has been launched after a lot of research in which the main finding was that people are intrigued by Waitrose but are put off because of the perceived high price of their goods.

But 19 years ago my mother, a regular Asda shopper, thought she would give Tesco a whirl after hearing it was a little bit better than Asda and just as cheap. So off to Tesco she went to do her regular weekly shop and to her horror she discovered that it had cost her over £10 more. She agreed that some of the goods were better, but she has never been back to Tesco to do her main shop since that day.

So the price match may work in dragging extra people in Waitrose, but once they discover that their shopping costs more the majority will soon revert back to their normal cheaper supermarket.

But a few may enjoy the experience and the food within Waitrose that they may decide to keep on shopping there. So I think this bold strategy will work for the company as it tries to snatch more market share in the ultra-competitive world of supermarket retail.

Now the Tories have the perfect attack on Ed Miliband and therefore the Labour Party. We have already seen a number of protests and strikes from unionised workers and as we all know major cuts will be coming in October, this will lead to more industrial action.

It gives the Tories a narrative to attack Labour and it gives the media a story. It is an extremely powerful message and one that is already no doubt being fleshed out by Tory strategists.

The Tories can paint Ed M as being indebted to the unions. It will be an extremely powerful line, one that will almost certainly be picked up by a media that is sympathetic to the government, and a message is likely the resonate with the pubic. Instead of people such as Bob Crow (head of the RMT union) becoming the cause of annoyance and figures of hate, it will become Ed Miliband and as such the Labour Party.

Although people will be angry at cuts to their services, they also get angry when their lives are disrupted. Look at the recent strikes by RMT workers that put a stop to large sections of the London Underground. People do not care about whether ticket offices remain open, what they do care about is that their journeying around London was disrupted. If the action of unionised members affect people’s lives the Tories will try to get Miliband to denounce them, if he does not they will say it is because they got him elected. This is not a new strategy, but it will be more powerful on Ed and will be more powerful because of the cuts that will be coming. It may help deflect some of the public anger away that is coming the Tories’ way and shift it onto Labour.

So how does Ed Miliband and Labour combat this forthcoming attack? Simple it needs to tell a story why the unions are striking and link it back to direct decisions the government has made.

Labour has to get across that they support the unionised members because they are ordinary hard-working people who are merely opposed to vicious cuts imposed by the coalition. Another powerful counter is that members are not striking to save their jobs but to protect the services that everyone in our country  rely upon. That they do not strike because of some dogma, they strike to try to save the services that people need, unlike Tory cuts which are driven by a party doctrine.

Wayne Rooney may be dropped by Coca-Cola after his alleged liaisons with hookers, according to reports in the press.

Coke’s top bods in Atlanta are apparently pushing the top bods in London to drop Rooney as they are worried it will hurt the brand’s family-friendly image.

If he is dropped he would lose a huge chunk out of endorsement deals – his deal with the drinks manufacturer is reportedly worth £600,000 a year.

It is a tough spot for Coca-Cola, as either keeping Rooney or dropping him could have consequences for the business, as its different brands appeal to different consumers.

Coleen Rooney is a role-model to young women in the UK and as such a role-model to the core market of Diet Coke. If Rooney is kept on it may turn women off the brand. Also Coca-Cola has positioned itself as a family-friendly brand. Women tend to do the shopping for households, if Coke continues to support Rooney it may turn mothers away from the brand and they may be less inclined to buy Coke’s products when doing the family shop.

However Coca-Cola’s other brands may suffer if Rooney is dropped. Rooney is paid by the company to represent their PowerAde and Coke Zero brands, both of these are geared towards a young male market. In fact Zero is often referred to as ‘Bloke Coke’ and PowerAde is pretty much wholly consumed by young men in the 18- to 30-year-old demographic.

They are unlikely to be particularly upset by Rooney’s infidelity (compared to women), as it is viewed as the laddish behaviour that is to be expected of a footballer and an ordinary bloke. A source (probably one of Coke’s London execs) hit home on this point, they said: “Americans cannot fathom the laddish culture that surrounds football.’’

And if Coke drops an icon for young lads/men this may also have an adverse affect on sales of Coca-Cola’s brand geared towards this end of the market.

The company is in a very tricky position as whatever it decision it makes on Rooney’s sponsorship deal it could have damaging effects on its overall brand, its individual brands and its sales.

Legendary Romanian tennis player Ilie Năstase had just won his second Grand Slam, triumphing over Nikola Pilić in straight sets at Roland Garros to win the 1973 French Open. He won the US Open the previous year and was now the World’s number one tennis player. So he seemed like an obvious choice to be paid to wear Blue Ribbon Sports’ new tennis shoe.

He was the first person the company endorsed and he would be the first in a long line of winners and champions that the company would align itself with. But Năstase was also a notorious womaniser, he was named by Maxim magazine in its top ten “Living Sex Legends” list, reportedly having slept with over 2,500 women. This was a sign of things to come for the company, as he would be first in a long line of their winners and champions who would cause sexual scandals. When Năstase’s career petered out in the late 70s Blue Ribbon Sports turned to a new tennis star. The company signed up John McEnroe in 1978 and in the same year renamed itself Nike Inc.

Sponsoring the world’s greatest athletes is a massive part of Nike’s marketing strategy and they now have sponsorship deals with thousands of sports stars and sports team around the world. And just like Ilie Năstase did, a raft of Nike’s sponsored athletes have caused scandal recently with lurid tales of their private lives.

A string of Nike’s athletes have been involved in murky sexual dealings recently. Wayne Rooney reportedly slept with vice girls, Tiger Woods cheated on his wife with a string of women, Christiano Ronaldo fathered a love child, Ashley Cole is now divorced after bedding a number of women, and Frank Ribery solicited sex from an underage prostitute.

But what happens to the public’s perception of Nike when their athletes go bad, does it adversely affect Nike’s brand and reputation and have a knock on effect on their sales?

Nike seem bullish about their long term sales prospects, they reckon by 2015 its revenue will have risen by 40% to $27 billion. But in the short term there has been a massive hit on one of their brands, sales of its Woods branded golf merchandise has slumped, this come at a time when golf apparel sales overall are on the up. But is this sales slide due to Woods’ infidelity or the fact he has not been playing as much golf, and when he has been playing he has not been winning?

So there seems to be a short term hit on one of Nike’s brands but what is the long term damage? Nike has stood by their athletes, generally releasing statements saying it is a private matter for the stars. But by standing by their athletes – and effectively not condoning their behaviour – is the company doing serious damage to its brand in the eyes of the public and specifically women?

We look at the actions of Rooney and Cole who have allegedly wronged their other halves, Coleen Rooney and Cheryl Cole, who are both role models and are viewed very positively by women in the UK. Would Nike supporting athletes such as Cole and Rooney have more of an effect on whether women choose Nike over its rivals, or does Nike’s association with top women athletes have more of an effect? What would be the stronger influence in the mind of women when choosing a sporting goods brand, is it positive role models the brand associates itself with or the brand not condoning the sleazy antics of its male athletes?

'Ground Zero Mosque' protesters

There is a right old kick off in America about a muslim community centre and mosque planning to be built a few blocks away from the site of the World Trade Centre.

As Charlie Brooker puts it:
Millions are hopping mad over the news that a bunch of triumphalist Muslim extremists are about to build a “victory mosque” slap bang in the middle of Ground Zero.

The planned “ultra-mosque” will be a staggering 5,600ft tall – more than five times higher than the tallest building on Earth – and will be capped with an immense dome of highly-polished solid gold, carefully positioned to bounce sunlight directly toward the pavement, where it will blind pedestrians and fry small dogs. The main structure will be delimited by 600 minarets, each shaped like an upraised middle finger, and housing a powerful amplifier: when synchronised, their combined sonic might will be capable of relaying the muezzin’s call to prayer at such deafening volume, it will be clearly audible in the Afghan mountains, where thousands of terrorists are poised to celebrate by running around with scarves over their faces, firing AK-47s into the sky and yelling whatever the foreign word for “victory” is.”

The way the development has been framed by its opponents has been a fantastic piece of PR positioning. The term ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ provides a media friendly soundbite that sticks in people’s minds. It is a term that creates a powerful picture and one that stirs up emotion and controversy. Although the building is not really a mosque  and will not be built at Ground Zero. In fact it will be built nearly 200m away and will be community centre which will include a swimming pool, gym, theatre and various sports facilities.

Now the media has run with this story because it provides a fantastic narrative for them, it is controversial and there are two very vocal opposing sides of the debate.

I was exposed to the most advertising while in the Underground

Apparently we live in an over advertised world and it is claimed we are exposed to an ever increasing amount of advertising. There is no place in the UK where you are more likely to see a marketing message than in London.

In fact it is said that in one 45-minute journey, the average London commuter is exposed to more than 130 adverts, featuring more than 80 different products. And in an entire day, we’re likely to see 3,500 marketing messages.

So I thought I would do a little test of my own to see how many adverts passed me by and how many I could remember at the end of my journey.

I travelled from Camberwell to Old Street by catching a bus, travelling on the Underground and finally walking to my destination. It took me 34 minutes and I reckon I saw a total of 127 adverts.

How many adverts between Camberwell & Old Street?

The Numbers

I was on the bus for 13 minutes and saw 27 adverts

I was in the Underground for 14 minutes and saw 89 adverts

And I was walking for 7 minutes and saw 11 adverts

I could only recall 6 adverts, and of those adverts I could only remember the message of 3 adverts

The adverts I recalled

Of all the 127 adverts I saw on the side of buses, plastered on phone boxes and bus stops, pasted onto the walls of Underground stations, placed inside Underground trains and put onto billboards, I could only remember 6. They were:

* A Specsavers ad featuring a handsome chap which offered me 2 for 1 on designer specs.

* A wonderful Nando’s spot on the tube which was promoting Peri-Peri sauce. It was a lovely poster that stuck in my head as it made me smile. It basically asked to introduce a fellow passenger to Peri-Peri sauce and as thanks they would be so grateful they name their children after you (an arrow points down to a seat, where hopefully someone is sat).

* A Carling ad telling us the beer now has a great tasting brew that is locked in the can

* Lucozade  - all I remember was a swoosh of Lucozade

* Toy Story 3

* BT and random footballers

Of all the adverts the Nando’s spot was the only one that had an effect on me. This spot reinforced my belief that Nando’s has great tasting food, provides an experience that people will remember and it is a fun and quirky brand.

A wonderful interactive poster from VW

Well it’s Saturday so there are no free newspapers or magazines to entertain people while travelling on the London Underground. So to break the boredom I decided to glance round the carraiges, take a closer look at the adverts and find my favourite.

The winner by a landslide was this spot for Volkswagen. It is a wonderful piece which has a excellent strategy and is beautifully simple. While online is suited for consumers to interact with marketing this print poster has managed to pull it off, and far more effectively then most online campaigns. It is fantastic as it engages, has a lovely pay-off and is brave enough to not show the product.

David Cameron and George Osborne - the two men behind today's Emergency Budget should be happy at the way it has been positioned

The government has been quick to announce it is cutting its PR and communication budget but what is interesting is the PR of the cuts.

The Emergency Budget is set to be announced today, just as promised within 50 days since the election.

The Government believes it is going to have to make severe cuts to get the country’s finances back in order. The government have tested the public with the earlier announcement of cuts of £6bn of cuts. These were merely just the non-controversial start, ID cards and Quangos are not going to upset too many people and they allowed the government a chance to gauge public opinion.

But we are likely to see the true scale of the cuts in a couple of today’s budget and also further cuts likely to come in the Autumn.

Cuts in the public spending are always going to be controversial, so PR has been vital in order to try to position the government favourably.

The focus of the Con-Dem Government’s media activity has been about the economy and specifically about the need for cuts. They are trying to convince the public – and essentially voters – that the cuts are necessary, the cuts are Labour’s fault and the Con-Dem coalition are saving the economy and the country from tougher times in the future.

The first focus of this PR campaign started before the election with the Conservatives attacking Labour about their handling of the economy. But Luckily for the Conservatives a political consensus had formed about the need for cuts, this allowed the message to be accepted by the public.

Then after forming a government the Conservatives attempted to show the public that the tough decisions they will have to make are merely down to Labour. Stories were fed to the media about how bad the economy and public finances were and how it was all down to Labour. Examples of this are Ministers proclaiming black holes in the department’s budget, the Liam Bryne’s ‘No Money Left’ letter, etc. The strategy then moved onto the consequences of not making cuts, for example Nick Clegg claimed it would not be progressive for future generations to pay for our spending. We have seen in interviews and speeches over the past few weeks time after time government ministers telling us tough times lay ahead, severe cuts will have to be made. They have not given the public details but are merely preparing them for the budget. The public now believe cuts are necessary and that severe cuts are going to be made in today’s Emergency Budget.

We have also had leaks about certain aspects of the budget to try to prepare the public for the cuts and tax rises that will be announced later today – for example a rise in VAT is widely anticipated and if it is confirmed today it will not be a shock.

Overall the Conservative’s communication strategy has been good and they way they have positioned today’s budget, its cuts and tax rises has been top-notch

A World Cup themed poster trying to encourage people to visit Germany

Apparently there is a football tournament taking place, so I thought I better jump on the bandwagon and start talking about the World Cup. It is not just me, every brand has jumped of the World Cup wagon, and even if they are not official sponsors they have found various strange ways to be associated with football.

But this bizarre poster, which caught my eye while on an escalator escaping the Northern line, has to be the strangest World Cup advertising I have come across.

During a time when the English public are whipped up in a patriotic mood the German National Tourist Board launch this campaign. Now you can see their logic ‘It is World Cup themed, so it bound to attract people’s attention’.

But using England’s fiercest footballing rivals to promote Germany as a holiday destination during the World Cup is an awful, awful strategy. They even try to further antagonise the public by writing ‘You can’t beat Germany’.

I fear for the poster, as it is only a matter of time before it becomes severely vandalised, especially if England somehow manage to beat Slovenia and end up facing Germany.

Just one of the many shots of a Dell computer shown in TV show 24

I am becoming a  brand geek. While on a marathon session of watching a box set of 24, I couldn’t help but notice a brand after brand popping up on screen.

In my defence it is not hard to notice brand after brand after brand on 24 – it is a television show that is particularly heavy on product placements.

In earlier seasons of 24 Apple paid to have its Mac computers splashed across our TVs. In season one Jack and the fellow good guys used Macs and the terrorists and associated bad guys used computers with a Windows system.

Two giant computer makes, Dell and Hewlett-Packard, have paid to have their brand placed into series four of the show. Practically every time a computer in the Counter Terrorism Unit is shown, which is the main setting of the show, you saw Dell or HP logo.

This is the perfect association for both of these American companies. Not only are HP’s logo and Dell’s logo continually flashed at people, but they are creating a perception that their computers are cutting edge. They are showing consumers their computers are capable of tackling some of the most technologically advanced terrorists that the US of A has faced, they perform some of the most complex computing tasks at top speed and they do it all without crashing.

Now both HP and Dell have paid huge amounts of money to have their brand used in this way in the show. But I was shocked when star of the show Jack Baeur (a Federal Agent) has to hide out in a house. Now he needs a computer. This is the transcript from the scene:

Tony ‘What kind of communication do you need?’

Jack ‘A wifi and a hardline.’

Tony ‘Ok we will go back to my place.’

Jack ‘OK, thank you Tony.’

Tony ‘Wait til you see it before you thank me.’

An old school Dell computer being used by Jack Bauer in 24

6 Music has received unprecedented publicity over the past few days when the news that it may close broke

In a round-a-bout way the threat that the BBC may shut down 6 Music could be the best thing to happen to the niche radio station.

The threat of the axe has provided an enormous amount of publicity for 6 Music. Suddenly everyone is talking about 6 Music. Our televisions, papers, magazines, social networking sites, forums, news websites and blogs, have been taken over by news and opinion about 6 Music.

The same thing happened when Jade Goody received the news she has cancer last year, she received far more publicity and coverage in the media when she was on her way out, and the same is now true for 6 Music.

Although the mainstream media broke the story about the possible closure of 6 Music, new media has taken the story over. The station seems to have a vocal core of supporters who are behind the online campaign to save it.

For a station with such a small audience the coverage has been nothing short of extraordinary. The loss of another digital BBC station, Asian Network, seems to have been drowned out by the mainstream because of this digital campaign to save 6 Music.

BBC Radio 6 Music has become a major trending topic on Twitter

However it is only natural that a digital campaign is behind the plan to save the digital station. Various campaigns have been set up on Facebook and a trending topic has been launched on Twitter. The publicity and online activity for 6 Music is great news for the station as its brand is being talked about on websites where you will find a chunk of its core demographic.

The hype around the station has been helped by a string of celebrities who have popped up to defend the station. Phil Jupitus, Lauren Laverne and Lily Allen have all had their say as to why the station should not be closed.

The celeb endorsement not only gives a chance for the mainstream media to keep the story alive and keep promoting the brand, but the endorsement is also picked up by their followers on social media.

And as people’s behaviour is hugely influenced by celebrities, 6 Music should be seeing a spike in listeners tuning in.

The closure is just about the most positive news that 6 Music could hope for as it attempts to increase on its 620,000 weekly listeners and maybe justify its existence.

The rabid defence of the network and the coverage in the media and on social media has so far been sensational PR for BBC 6 Music. And with this publicity it may make people think again about the station – not only the listening public but also BBC bosses.

A product that insults people may make them think twice about buying it.

There are many ways to insult someone, but one of the easiest ways is to call them lazy. So it seems pretty daft that a brand would insult a consumer and then expect them to buy their product.

But this is exactly what this product called ‘Very Lazy’ does – it insults people.

At first glance the product sniffs of quality. I love how the label does not take over the packaging. It lets the attractive natural colour of the produce dominate and as a result it works well.

But they have got the branding of the product so very wrong. No-one likes being called lazy. We all may be a bit lazy from time to time but who in all honestly  is proud to be called lazy. So why would a consumer want to be associated with laziness. Products are supposed to make people feel good.

I can see why such a name may work for a product like this, people have busy lives so they don’t want to come home from a long day at work and start cooking a lengthy gourmet meal. People with modern lifestyles want food that is quick and easy to make, but also is tasty and nutritious. The product tries to position itself with good food that can be made speedily and easily. But there are far more positive associations of speed and ease that could be attached to the product.

‘Very Lazy’ is a horrible name for the product. It may as well be called ‘Sloth’ or ‘Can’t be Arsed’ or ‘Idel’.

Act on CO2 has launched various advertising campaigns over the last couple of years

Act on C02’s advertising may seem like it is a bit of a mish-mash of different deliveries but as an initiative launched by a mish-mash of government departments it is understandable.

Although there is a single theme running through all the campaigns – getting us all to think about our impact on the planet and getting us to lower our carbon footprint – there has been a variety of creative executions.

They offered us up a visually stunning creative image with muddy footprints showing everyone has a carbon footprint.

They then moved onto a simple message, with simple solutions, offered up through a simple delivery with ‘Save money, save energy’.

They showed how to save the planet by saving water with ‘Save water’.

Then a bedtime story played on our guilt by suggesting we will leave an apocalyptic future for our children if we don’t ‘Change how the story ends’.

And now we have the latest campaign which asks us to ‘Drive 5 miles less a week’.

The campaign that sticks out is the advert with the dad and his family. It is by far the least creative of the bunch, its delivery is not as powerful, its message is not a strong, but it is by far the best advertising of all the campaigns.

It is entirely focused on trying to change behaviours and not on the far greater challenge of trying to change people’s attitudes of climate change. Although there are snippets of encouraging a change of behaviour in the other adverts, their core theme is the wider picture of global warming.

Everyone has heard about the climate change and some may feel strongly about it, but the majority are indifferent to it. It is not relevant to their lives or they may not be able to see what impact climate change could have on them.

The creative powerhouses washed over my mum, she didn’t scoff at them nor did she turn into an eco-warrior, it just didn’t produce any strong emotion, it genuinely didn’t effect her. But the adverts with the dodgy dad made her take notice. The advert will help lower carbon emissions through the back door as what it was asking us to do was achievable, it is relevant to people and it offered a benefit -saving money.

Climate Change is such a massive issue and it is easy for people to feel overwhelmed by it, but the dad advert is by far the best as it empowers people instead of making them feel powerless.