Marketing
The bank brand has rolled out an exclusive range of cards, available from today in provocative "Never Mind the Bollocks" and "Anarchy in the UK" album artwork designs. The illustrated credit cards have been rolled out thirty-eight years after the Sex Pistols first signed to Virgin Records, part of the Branson empire. The move is designed to "celebrate Virgin's heritage and difference."
Campaign
Creston, which is listed on London's Stock Exchange, has paid GBP1 million cash for a 27 percent share in 18 Feet & Rising. Barrie Brien, Creston's group chief executive since the first quarter of 2014, will sit on 18 Feet & Rising's board, but the creative agency will not move the office as part of the deal. 18 Feet & Rising will only adopt the Unlimited suffix to its name when working on the group's shared clients.
The Guardian
BT Sport has announced that Gary Lineker will anchor its coverage of the Champions League next season. The former England striker and Match of the Day presenter was unveiled as the channel's new face of European football at a press conference on Tuesday, while Steven Gerrard, the Chelsea manager Jos Mourinho and the former England captain Rio Ferdinand will be regular pundits. BT Sport paid GBP897m to beat ITV and Sky to the rights to the Champions League in 2013, with the deal due to run for three seasons.
The Guardian
Sky's coverage of the Champions League final between Barcelona and Juventus drew fewer than 500,000 viewers, as its sports chief complained that this has been the worst season ever for audiences. Its coverage of the final on Saturday night drew an average of just 497,000 viewers, almost a third the audience it attracted for the 2014 final. Sky and co-broadcaster ITV, which attracted an average of 4.18m viewers and a 22.5% share, have lost the TV rights to BT from next season after it paid an eye-watering GBP900m for exclusivity.
The Guardian
Apple unveiled its long-awaited streaming music service on Monday, entering a crowded market for online music that already includes Spotify, Amazon and Google, as the company seeks to re-exert its dominance in digital music. The launch at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco was introduced by the rapper Drake. Apple Music, as it's known, was built by the team behind the Beats Music service that Apple acquired as part of its $3bn purchase of music-tech firm Beats Electronics in 2014.
Marketing Week
Which? is calling on the government, regulators and businesses to step up their efforts to put an end to nuisance calls and texts after finding that just 2% of the calls are reported. Over 60,000 complaints have been filed since December, according to a new analysis of data from the Information Commissioner's Office completed by Which? A recent survey by Populus, commissioned by Which?, also showed that only 2% of people report calls to the regulator and a quarter of people don't know where to complain.
Marketing Week
The news that Shop Direct is planning to shut down the last vestige of the Woolworths' brand - its online store - suggests this could finally be the end for the popular UK retail brand. Shop Direct Group bought the Woolworths name in February 2009, three months after it went into administration. It has since run it as an online retailer. However, Shop Direct is now informing customers with a Woolworths.co.uk account that their details will be transferred to Very.co.uk. Subsequently the Woolworths website will be shut down.
The Drum
People are increasingly watching long-form video content via their mobile devices, rather than snack-size content, which could open up new potential for monetising mobile video, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)'s latest study. The report, unveiled today at the IAB's Digital Video conference in New York, polled 4,800 people across 24 countries. Of these, 36 percent said they watch mobile videos for longer than five minutes on a daily basis.
The Drum
McDonald's is getting closer to building consumer profiles that match the depth of those held by Amazon, according to the restaurant's Senior Director of Digital Strategy Lex Bradshaw-Zanger. Speaking at the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA's) London Forum today yesterday Bradshaw-Zanger said McDonald's is working to reach a point where it can build a profile of a user to understand exactly what they are buying and when they are buying it.
The Drum
Retailers should be "quickly" moving their advertising budgets away from print to mobile as customers' consumption of media continues to shift toward digital devices, according to Walmart Vice President of Media and Digital Marketing Wanda Young. Speaking to The Drum following her talk at the Mobile Marketing Association's (MMA) London Forum yesterday, Young said that the retailer and parent company of Asda, is working to push out less print-based advertising as it looks to target millennials.