The playlist is out now.
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Monarchy of Roses (14/11/11)
2nd single from the band’s album ‘I’m With You’
Nickelback – When We Stand Together (06/11/11)
From new album ‘Here and Now’ (21st November)
You Me At Six – Loverboy (26/09/11)
1st single from the influential young British band’s 3rd album ‘Sinners Never Sleep’ (Oct 3rd)
What’ up Blogoverse? I thought I was going to have an easy ride this week with Digital Digest (or ‘DD’ as I’m now going to call it. I figure ‘Double D’s’ will get me some more Google hits) and then what happens – Amazon rears its big book selling head and turns the online world on its bum. There’s going to be more tablets on sale in the next couple of months than you could find on the floor of a rock star’s bedroom.
Anyway, as I was saying, Amazon have announced that they are entering the tablet market battle with the Kindle Fire (artists impression). It’s being touted as the iPad Killer, and its features include a seven inch display and a $199 dollar price tag which should technically finally make the ‘tablet’ available to the masses. It’s more than capable of performing many of the tasks an iPad can do to: for example it can play movies, stream music, and obviously allows for reading both books and magazines. You can also play Angry Birds and Cut the Rope on it too, so it really is the full package. I refuse to believe it’s an iPad killer though. As far as I’m aware, the only time that the iPad will ever be toppled is if new CEO Tim Cook takes charge, and insists on making South Park’s The Human CentiPad a reality.
Imagine it, the world waits with baited breath at the October 4th iPhone announcement. Tim Cook strolls out onto stage with a smugger grin since Ashley Cole’s in ‘that’ National Lottery promotional photo. The lights dim. Camera bulbs flash throughout the arena. A loud cheer moves from row to row, front to back, as a hole appears in the middle of the stage. Smoke billows out. A plinth rises out of the billowing fog. “It’s here, it’s here, the iPhone 5 is here!” screams one crazed journalist. Only it’s not. The smoke clears, and there it is. A human centipede. With an iPad surgically attached to its buttocks. Cook proudly proclaims that this is the only way we can own an iPad from now on. Sales plummet. Apple files for bankruptcy. Nobody will ever forgot October 4th 2011.
And thats how the Amazon Fire becomes the world’s first iPad Killer.
Also this week, some clever busybody on the interweb intercuts a pitch from Mad Men with images and working models of the facebook timeline. It’s genius.
This week’s App of the week, as voted for by Gizmondo is KaleidaCam. Turn your phone into a Kaleidoscope! Save the images! Share them with your friends! It’ll be the best 69p you ever spent. (Forget that you’ve turned your £300 phone into a child’s toy that you can probably pick up now for about two quid.)
That’s it for another week. If you take anything away from this week’s Digital Digest, remember this: catching a stray baseball is always ultimately more important than your daughters well being. And as for this video, I haven’t got anything witty to say – it’s just the best touchdown celebration ever. Pain.
From Saturday 1st October, Frank Skinner’s Sony Gold award winning radio show will be heard across the Absolute Radio Network, every Saturday morning – on Absolute 80s, Absolute Radio 90s, Absolute Radio 00s and Absolute Classic Rock.
On our network of digital family of stations, the show will be time-shifted slightly and will run from 9am-11am (meaning late-risers have no excuse to miss a moment). As well as being treated to Frank’s unique take on life, listeners will still get to hear the great music which makes each of our decade stations unique.
Since his 8-10am show on Absolute Radio started in March 2009, along with the delicious Emily Dean and brilliant Alun Cochrane, Frank’s show is becoming the only way to start the weekend.
Frank has seen strong audience growth and he’s becoming a podcasting phenomenon. Already in 2011, he’s had 8 million downloads of both the show and the ‘Not The Weekend’ podcast which is released every Wednesday and is 30 minutes of exclusive podcast content. To put that into context, he enjoyed 6 million podcast listens in the whole of 2010.
It’s going to be great to have another one of our Faces For Radio broadcasting across the network, joining Christian O’Connell who’s weekday breakfast show is simulcast between 6am-10am. Frank is a unique talent and his audience, podcast downloads and Sony Gold for ‘Best Entertainment’ demonstrate his amazing skill and why he’s comedy royalty.
Here at One Golden Square we’re committed to increasing the amount of programmes on our digital stations at weekends and Frank will join the likes of Ian Wright, Pete Donaldson, Russ Williams, Leona Graham, Richie Firth, Polly James and the Cafe 80s boys in broadcasting across our family of stations.
Back in June, Absolute Radio won a prestigious Marketing Society Award for Excellence in the Mobile Marketing category for best Mobile Marketing campaign with our Rock ‘N’ Roll Football iAd campaign, beating brands like Nokia, Churchill, IBM and Waitrose to the top spot.
Tonight was the launch of the Marketing Society’s Best Practice Showcase, an interactive evening at BT in London, where a selection of award-winners came together to share tips, advice and best practice in marketing and share insight into their award-winning campaigns, the challenges they faced and how they overcame them.
I got asked to speak, alongside Ben Cull, Marketing Director for Yeo Valley Organic, and Russell Morris, UK Commercial Director for LOVEFiLM.
Absolute Radio does extremely well in the digital space, and specifically in the mobile space, having won a lot of awards this fiscal, including a Sony Award for best use of multi-platform with our mobile apps.
We believe digital is the future, and if you look at the fact that more than 60% of our listening is done via digital device, and more than 76% of our podcast downloads are via mobile, we’re absolutely justified to make digital our priority.
Apple’s iAd provided us with an innovative new way to engage with digitally-savvy mobile phone users, but allowed us to go even deeper by targeting unique interest and preferences that tapped directly into user’s passions. We were able to combine the emotion of TV advertising with the interactivity of digital advertising – which proved to be a dynamic and powerful new way to bring motion and emotion to the brand. Results spoke for themselves, exceeding Apple’s global benchmarks, reaching over 2.2m Apple users with a ‘Tap Through Rate’ (TTR) of 1.2%, indicating high engagement rates with the average ‘time spent’(TS) in ad peaking at 101.8 seconds.
Have a look at the slides from tonight’s presentation below:
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