According to a YouGov league table, Amazon has stolen first place from google as the uk’s favourite brand. The YouGov Brand index study believes that google’s popularity has started to fall.
The bbc iPlayer has done well and is placed third, its highest ever rating. Its testament to the iPlayer adoption by big devices like xbox 360, nintendo Wii, ipad and other mobile devices.
The uk’s biggest clothing retailer Marks and Spencer has been relegated to fourth place, which is in part due to the worst quarterly sales figures for over three years.
Heinz, Sony, boots and cadbury all made it in the top twenty list securing at sixth, eighth, ninth and tenth positions respectively while Fast Moving Consumer Goods Cathedral City and colgate also made the top brand list.
The YouGov study is conducted twice a year in the uk and measures the popularity of more than 850 brands. It aims to measure changes in consumer perception by assessing quality, value, customer satisfaction, corporate reputation, general impression and the likelihood that customers will recommend the brand.
The uk top brand list
- Amazon
- BBC iPlayer
- Mark and Spencer
- BBC
- Heinz
- John Lewis
- Sony
- Boots
- Cadbury
- Sainsbury’s
- Channel 4
- Cathedral City
- Samsung
- Maltesers
- Colgate
- Freeview
- Waterstones
- Dyson
- Bosch
Giant rings measuring nearly 300m wide and 135m tall have been mown into the grass by six of Richmond Park’s shire horses.
They will welcome athletes and visitors who fly into Heathrow, as the Park lies in the flight path. The Rings will be regularly maintained during the Olympics by two shire horses whose normal job it is to cut the road side verges.
We love the fact that Shire horses have been used to maintain the park since 1637 and are especially useful during the winter when the ground is soft.
Adam Curtis, Assistant Park Manager of Richmond Park for The Royal Parks said: ‘The Royal Parks came up with the idea to create huge Rings in the grass here and LOCOG loved it! I am so proud we‘ve been able to achieve such an effective representation of the Olympic symbol.”
Part of the Olympic Cycling Road Race will pass through Richmond Park which is just one of six Royal Parks to host 11 Olympic and Paralympic events. See you there!
From Tallinn Airport to shopping centres. The new customer engagement sensation is ready to land.
Skype has 600 million users all around the world. Tallinn International Airport in Estonia is one of the first ten locations testing the new Skype Station kiosks.
The product developed by AdTech will allow users to make free video calls. One Skype Station kiosk is also being tested in the UK at Edge Hill University in Ormskirk, Lancashire.
One key market segment that will be benefiting from the kiosks are shopping centres. “Skype Station offer a really fun to watch and touch experience” explains Dmitri Friesen, the sales director of AdTech. The Skype Station unit is not just a video tool box, its 23” inch touchscreen can be programmed with adverts for nearby brands. It also allows users to use bill-pay (the Santander bill payment software) as well as top up their mobile phone.
Is it affordable?
Extremely affordable and besides using the stations as a way to enhance customer experience and give something back for free, centres can make revenue on ads which run on the touchscreen when the machine is in idle. Centres can also have their branding fully factory printed on the unit itself.
It’s very clear that soon the Skype Station will be a normality within transport locations and shopping centres. The benefits are already winning over those who have already had the pleasure of having a play.
Bullied woman in the US underlines the importance of random acts of kindness in an era of hyper-connected consumers.
A middle-school student posts in his Facebook a video showing the bullying of the 68-year-old bus monitor Karen Huff Klein and his video was shared by millions of people. In it, four boys call her fat, poor, ugly and worse and she tries to ignore them.
Social media is making these uncomfortable truths increasingly difficult to ignore and the video has now been seen more than 6m times. Thanks to that, this story has a happy ending. Max Sidorov felt compelled to launch an appeal to raise $5,000 to pay for a holiday for Klein, and donations have topped $650,000 by now!
The social-media revolution has empowered consumers to act in response to any perceived injustice. The growth of crowdfunding and campaigning platforms have given new opportunities to connect.
The fundraising for Karen Klein is just one of many examples on the web. In these austere times, brands could learn from this generosity. From Pret A Manger giving consumers coffee to Starbucks teaming up with Apple to offer shoppers songs and books, small acts of kindness can make a big impact.
Read more about Karen Huff Klein and her story.
Virgin Atlantic has today revealed their plans to overhaul its ten year old in-flight entertainment system, in exchange for a more stylish and simple to use program, named JAM.
The system will allow passengers to e-mail, SMS and make calls from their own mobile phone whilst in the air.
They’re also taking air travel in a much more social direction, with passengers able to leave comments and advice on their destinations for other travellers to review and help plan their trip. They’ve even introduced dual-screening for Premium Economy and Upper Class passengers, with a touch screen handset separate to the main screen. You can read all about the new system on Virgin’s website.
The news of the up-to-the-minute entertainment system comes less than a month after the airline claimed to be looking into the possibility of making naughty novel ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ available for passengers to enjoy as an audio book.
Whether plans for passengers to read the novel at 35,000 ft. go ahead remain to be seen, but you’ve got to admire the classic Virgin publicity machine as they never seem to miss an opportunity!
Plenty of hype and controversy has recently been focussed around London’s newest landmark, The Shard, which was officially opened yesterday by a much-anticipated light show.
Renzo Piano, an Italian architect who masterminded such projects as Paris’s Pompidou Centre, designed the Shard in 2000. Heritage organisations and local authorities initially opposed the plans, however the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott ordered an inquiry into the planning and eventually the plans were approved.
“Mr Prescott would only approve skyscrapers of exceptional design. For a building of this size to be acceptable, the quality of its design is critical. He is satisfied that the proposed tower is of the highest architectural quality.” – An official statement from the Government.
The argument between development and heritage still continues to this day and many locals have opposing views of the Shard. The main argument for the development is the generation of employment the tower will bring to the Southwark area.
– In May 2012, the Shard’s developers pledged to offer 300 jobs in the tower and surrounding area for unemployed locals.
– There is 26 floors for offices, 3 floors for restaurants, a 18 floor hotel and a spa situated in the Shard that will bring demand for people to come to Southwark and spend money in the surrounding area.
– The tower will also bring more tourism to Southwark, where it contains a spire and observatory.
However, the tower opened with all of its office floors un-let and this has been the focus of criticism by the press. The Shard has made Southwark one of the most unbalanced property value areas in the world and this has angered heritage organisation and Southwark locals.
Renzo Piano considered the tower to be a positive addition to the London skyline – he considered the presence to be far more delicate than opponents of the project alleged. However Simon Jenkins from The Guardian pronounces that the “Thames is to become a ditch of cash running through a canyon of glass”.
“I suffer from having found London’s skyline a thing of beauty. The views from Parliament and Primrose hills, from the parks and from bridges over the Thames offered a vista that allowed the eye to spread, with no part dominating the whole. Even St Paul’s did not crush its neighbours but floated above them at just twice their height. The eye has no such freedom now. From across the London basin it must rest on the Shard.” Simon Jenkins.
Yesterday though, the tower was opened in a very bold fashion by hosting a laser show and lighting up the entire north side of the building.
The show generated more publicity and an impressive artists impression, caused hundreds of people to descend on the bridges and north bank beaches of the Thames. Unfortunately many Londoners feel disappointed by the light show, I personally expected a cross between a Happy Mondays gig mixed with a scene from Close Encounters. (97% of full-scale Alien invasions begin with a ‘laser show’ over a major landmark. Source: The Poke // http://bit.ly/M0hH8o).
The real result of the show saw what I could only describe as a giant lava-lamp impression – and I had a good view. Many Shard spectators were viewing from the hills of South London and friends I spoke to in Brockley and Peckham were unaware that only the north side of the Shard would be host to the majority of the light.
What’s your view on the Shard? Is it an eyesore on London’s skyline? Is it a good opportunity for south London? Is it a tower built to holster power and arrogance? Was the light show any good?
Heineken, the Dutch lager, was chosen last month to be the official supplier of beer to London 2012.
In the previous 4 Games, the official beer was native to the hosting country, with Fosters supplying the Sydney Games with their ‘Amber nectar’, the Athenian Brewery being the choice in Athens, and Yanjing Lager of China sponsoring the Beijing Games.
Not only does the break from Olympic tradition ignore the fantastically well-produced lagers that Britain offers the world, it also goes against the Games’ emphasis on British character. Costing £4.20 for a 330mml bottle (that’s the same size as a regular can of soft drink) Heineken won’t exactly be cheap either! There’s more about their sponsorship on Marketing Magazine.
At least the Dutch brand is providing an element of fun during their sponsorship, having hired JCDecaux’s Transvision screen at Charing Cross station for 4 weeks, on which fans have been uploading photos of themselves celebrating the Games. The brand has also kitted out 150 London pubs and taken over Ally Pally for the duration of the Games so we’ve been busy making all of that happen along the way and look forward to attending the odd event in the weeks ahead!