M&S to launch new breed of Ads

Who hasn't seen the M&S food adverts like those chocolate puddings with melting chocolate flowing from them! They were simply divine....you wanted to go and grab one!

This form of advertising was termed at the time as "food porn" for the way adverts were developed and the way there were presented....however this new form of Porn might come to an end as M&S has decided to focus on price and quality.

The retailer has stopped using its "This is not just..." endline in a new series of ads, in favour of the news strap line "Just because". According to M&S executive director for marketing, Steve Sharp, the ads will now concentrate on "quality, provenance, price, innovation, ethics and offers".

He said: "Virtually everyone loves M&S food – I've certainly never met anyone who doesn't – and everyone has their favourite things. However in these economic circumstances it's not enough to have a nice advert filled with indulgence...people need a bit of a justification to buy. "

The new campaigns which has been built on the success of the 'Quality Worth Every Penny' strap line which was introduced last year to celebrate our 125th Birthday, demonstrates the value and quality proposition that M&S wants to stand for in everything they sell, from clothes to chocolate.

The first of around 20 new M&S food ads, focusing on Easter products with the slogan "Quality worth every penny", is set to break on 26 March on ITV at 7.45pm, while a women swear TV ad launches on 24 March.

EasyJet Advert targets Ryanair

EasyJet and Ryanair once again face each other in an advertising clash. This is not the first time that one of the airline's advert features the other company. This is what EasyJet did in its last campaign as it was promoting the fact that they fly to major airports whereas the others fly to smaller out of town airports!

The outdoor advert featured the tagline 'Who loves flying you to the place you actually booked?', obviously implying that Ryanair flies to airports some distance from the supposed destination city (sometime the airport can be as far outside the city as two hours bus ride). Under the Ryanair section the advert reported that 'Barcelona = Girona, Paris = Beauvais, Milan = Bergamo, Venice = Treviso'. In comparison to this, under EasyJet section, the same advert reported that they fly to 'Barcelona = Barcelona, Paris = Paris, Milan = Milan, Venice = Venice'.

Ryanair filed a complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority claiming that Beauvais, Bergamo and Treviso had been officially designated as airports for their corresponding cities by the International Air Transport Association (IATA). The budget carrier said also that the way they advertise the destination is faithful to the destination...in fact they report Girona as 'Girona (Barcelona)', rather than 'Barcelona (Girona)'.

The ASA took note of the complaint and agreed with Ryanairn on the basis that it was true that IATA had designated the airports for Paris, Milan and Venice respectively, and advised easyJet to seek copy advice from CAP for future campaigns.

EasyJet UK general manager Paul Simmons said he was "disappointed" by the ruling. He said: "It is a well-know fact that easyJet flies to major airports whereas Ryanair serves out-of-town airfields which can be a two hour bus ride away from your destination."

Sony PS3 faced calendar problem...now solved

Sony's competition with Nintendo Wii and Microsoft XBOX has taken another small dip yesterday as a problem with the PS3 has left many owners unable to access the PlayStation Network or even worse play some other the most sought after games including Heavy Rain.

PlayStation 3 owners worldwide yesterday report huge issues where they were actually locked out of their online accounts and were unable to use any of the PlayStation 3’s online features. An undisclosed number of games have fallen prey to the problem too, presenting perplexed PlayStation punters with a mystifying error code whenever they try to log on.

The issue has been taken very seriously by Sony who has put most of its engineers at work to identify the issue and come up with a solution. The solution was found a few hours after a it was discovered that the PS3 was recognising the year 2010 as a leap year and hence affected the switch from February 28 to March 1 date.

Sony took all steps to communicate updates to the public and has also been using its twitter account to distribute updates (http://twitter.com/SonyPlayStation)...this helped a lot relieving some of the pressure that gaming groups could have exercised if left in the dark!

HSBC thinking to take bonuses in shares rather than cash

After the huge issues that banks all over the world faced, with some of then having to be bailed out by public funding there is a huge issue around the issue of senior management bonuses. Some of the bank bosses of these banks, including Lloyds and RBS have already announced that they will be forgoing their bonuses. Now it's HSBC turn...although the bank hasn't been bailed out from public funding it still had to resort to a gigantic right issue (£12 bn) and public opinion was not in favour of such bonuses being handed out.

Michael Geoghegan, HSBC's chief executive, is believed to be ready to announce that he will not be taking the bonus in cash (as this could be a drain on the bank liquid finances) but instead could opt in taking his bonus in shares rather when the bank reports its full year results tomorrow.

HSBC is expected to announce it made profits of more than $11bn during 2009. But its chairman, Stephen Green, who is paid a salary of more than £1m will once again announce he will be waiving his bonus entitlements for the third consecutive month.

Will this surge of public anger in the face of huge bonus paid to banking executives lead to a new era of banking executives?