Piracy on the decline

Piracy could be on the down turn in the UK as people are turning to streaming sites rather than P2P file sharing. Teenage web surfers are turning their backs to old-fashioned methods of online piracy, including file-sharing and P2P sites, in favour of live streaming, according to new research.

The study by analyst Music Ally found that overall levels of file-sharing are on the decline. Figures show that downloads are down from 42 per cent , to just 26 per cent when it comes to teenagers between 14 to 18 year filesharing once a month.

The overall percentage of filesharing has gone down about a quarter, 22 per cent of those surveyed were regularly filesharing two years ago to just 14 per cent now. This is despite the fact that the percentage of music fans who have ever fileshared has increased, rising from 28 per cent in December 2007 to 31 per cent in January 2009.

The shift to streaming sites such as YouTube, MySpace and Spotify is evident with the research showing that many teens (65 per cent) are streaming music regularly (more than once a month).

Research also shows the comparative volume of pirated tracks to legally purchased tracks has halved since their last survey just over 12 months ago. In December 2007 the ratio of tracks obtained from file-sharing compared to tracks obtained as legal purchases on an ongoing basis was 4:1. In January 2009 the ratio had narrowed to just 2:1.

The new trend is online streaming...this is the way to beat piracy as these services can be licensed (as are YouTube and Spotify) and are easier and more fun to use.

Very Innovative Stealth Marketing Campaign...you must read!

I was sitting at home in front of my laptop and I was searching for innovative marketing campaigns when I came across the new advert series by Procter & Gamble...It is a very unusual campaign for Procter & Gamble and in fact from what I could find it was only launched of a blog....maybe to test people's reaction to it.

I found a blog featuring a series of short short films about a schoolboy who one day wakes up with "girl parts" instead of "boy parts". The videos show you the problems this guy faces in adapting to the menstruation cycle and finally when the D-Day arrives how this guy deals with the issue. I was quite amazed at this viral campaign and continued to search for the marketer behind this stealth campaign when I found it was none other than Procter & Gamble's Tampax.

Since April Procter & Gamble has been quietly promoting Tampax tampons through the blog www.zack16.com, which features a series of regularly updated short films, starring Zack Johnson.

As of this week, the most viewed of nine online videos produced had been seen fewer than 6,000 times on YouTube, though it's had a few thousand additional views on such sites as StupidVideos.com. The fictitious Mr. Johnson also has a Twitter account, @ZackJohnson16, with 949 followers.

Common sense wins and Youtube enable music streaming again

Last March YouTube had decided to block all premium music supplied by record lables as PRS (the society which collects Royaliets on behalf of composers and Musicians) was demanding high royalty payments without giving signs that it wanted to review its royalty prices.

Google, owner of YouTube, thus decided to take a hard decision...stop all premium music from being streamed, thus blocking any royalties to PRS. This eventually lead PRS to the discussion table and this month a decision has been finally made...

Under the PRS's new pricing structure any digital sites will have to pay 0.0085p per track streamed online. This is a sharp decrease from the 0.22p that digital sites were asked to pay before this agreement came into force. According to PRS, this new pricing policy was necessary as the prices were previously set in 2007 and were never reviewed. Now given the expansion of the digital music market this review became necessary and potentially could lead to higher returns for PRS as more tracks will be played and more digital companies will be attracted to the market thus adding the return for artists and composers alike.

The PRS is moving ahead and changing as market needs change...will other industries follow suit?

Susan Boyle a highly requested brand personality

A numerous number of companies ranging from different industry are in search of a renowned brand personality and whose the person who's attracting the most PR currently? The answer is no sport personality but Susan Boyle, a person who before her appearance on Britain's Got Talent no person knew about. Companies are seeking to sign her up from industries including haircare, household, FMCG and even mobile however with it's contract with the production of Britain's Got Talent, she cannot sign any agreement before the end of the series later on this month.

Susan Boyle has become the brand personality to have. Anything related to her is attracting a lot of interest. In fact it's YouTube video has been viewed approximately 94 million times and it's memorabilia is selling well on auction sites such as Ebay. Even the product of the reality show is trying to cash on this wave of success as it is still seeking to close a deal with YouTube to start generating revenue from the high traffic flow that the video is attracting.

This is a clear example of how the Internet can transform a person from a complete stranger to a global phenomenon in just a couple of months...can this formula be copied by marketers to transform a complete unknown brand into a global success?

ITV and YouTube miss an opportunity to capitalise on a new artist - Susan Boyle

I was surfing on YouTube in the evening after a busy day at work and came across a video from Britain Got Talent. I used to watch this program when I was abroad and I immediately got a nostalgia feeling and said let's watch it. It was about a middle aged woman named Susan Boyle who wanted to sing her favourite song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY&feature=related). Honestly when I saw it I said it was one of those participants that would come there just to try however this was before I heard her singing...her voice was simply fantastic...it left everyone astonished. Everyone was simply wondering how such a talent could remain hidden for so long! I felt proud for this Scottish talent and decided to do a small search.

I noticed that all videos that showed Susan Boyle's performance has extremely high viewerships...I believed that in total these videos had been viewed more then 100 million times!! I wondered how come YouTube and ITV did not capitalise on this opportunity and attach small advert to these videos? The answer came from an article from Brand Republic (http://www.brandrepublic.com/Discipline/Digital/News/900557/ITV-YouTube-miss-Susan-Boyle-ad-revenue/)...ITV and YouTube could not agree on advertising terms and lost a golden opportunity to negotiate on pre-roll ads for these videos. With the huge number of people that this advert attracted, YouTube and ITV could have made a good return, a breath of fresh air during this period of economic uncertainty.

Susan Boyle became an idol for the common men in the street, a symbol of hope for those chasing apparently unrealistic dreams...These companies should look back at the opportunity they lost and learn to achieve a win win win win situation. Both companies, the artist and the advertisers all gain a share from the popularity and achieve their individual goals making such deal a fruitful deal for everyone.

Dominos Pizza discover the Power of Social Networking

I was reading an article on the Daily Mail about the Domino's employees who shot videos of one of them doing all sort of disgusting stuff with pizza ingredients (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1169881/Dominos-Pizza-workers-filmed-revolting-video-abusing-takeaway-food-charged-police.html). Just after reading the article I decided I should do a standard Google search and was amazed to see that most of the top ten results related to articles reporting the story. The actual homepage of Domino's now stood surrounded by such articles.

Following this I decided to search for the video myself and noted that all videos that were reporting the incident had high viewership rates, with the official video reporting more than a million views. One of the employees involved has also been reported to have claimed the rights from the video, forcing YouTube to put down the link. The tremendous success of this video (unfortunately for Domino's) has caught Domino's by surprise forcing them to take immediate action to try to control the damage inflicted to the brand. Apart from the normal procedure of firing those involved the company sought to replicate as fast as possible...and what better way then using the same channel that helped to create all this hype.

Domino's posted it's own YouTube video (see below) featuring it's US president Patrick Doyle clearly irritated by the action of the two employees (or ex-employees) and the effect that their action could have left on the trust of Domino's customers and the possible repercussions on the brand and it's franchisor. However till today the video although registering over 500,000 views is still behind the 1 million mark that the original video hit. The company has now embarked on the journey of Social Networking and has also created a Twitter account to keep in touch with the general public...



However why should successful companies use a reactive approach (only react after a PR blunder) to adopt new forms of marketing which have already been used successfully by other brands? Could a proactive approach have made it easier of Domino's (in this case) to react more swiftly to this unexpected event and limit the impact of the brand? As Churchill Winston said, All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes...hopefully Domino's Pizza will now learn to be more proactive and other companies would be better off learning from the mistakes of others.