Morning Bulletin: Oxford Street rebrand, Crowdmix travails & BBC bullying
For the first in a new series of morning bulletins The Drum has trawled the web to dig out 10 need to know marketing stories to kick-start your day. Offering a quick-fire snapshot of a fast moving world, the bulletin brings you bang up to date with overnight events, saving you the hassle of trawling your bookmarks.
First up, the Guardian’s media section leads with an Ofcom survey of 16-24 year olds which shows the proportion of live TV consumed by this demographic continues to decline, this time by more than a quarter, amidst a general exodus toward BBC iPlayer, Netflix & Amazon et al.
Over at industry title Marketing Week meanwhile sits a piece charting a push to rebrand Oxford Street, London’s flagship shopping thoroughfare, in order for it to capitalise on the imminent arrival of Crossrail. To this end Wasserman have been appointed to reposition the destination as the setting for exclusive partnerships and ‘moments’ for shoppers to leverage up to £6bn in annual sales.
Less happy news can be found at Business Insider, which relays the sad demise of music start-up Crowdmix, throwing the future of its 130 London based staff into doubt. Not all hope is lost with the title suggesting that the business could still be sold as a going concern but it may be forced simply to flog its intellectual property rights.
Retail Week reports that Dixons Carphone has set itself the challenge of usurping Amazon Prime Day with the launch of a 10-day ‘super sale’ to snare bargain hunters from today.
Back at the Guardian, the left-leaning broadsheet updates its readers on the latest machinations within the BBC, carrying a story on director general Tony Hall who is expected to tackle the issue of workplace bullying in the wake of a damning report citing an ‘atmosphere of fear’ within its corridors.
At Ad Age meanwhile, ongoing concerns over the Zika virus outbreak leap to the fore again, with Olympic’s advertisers suffering from a walk-out of talent, the latest of which sees golfer Jordan Spieth announce that he will be sitting out the summer event over health concerns.
Elsewhere, Ad Age joins the Pokémon bandwagon by citing the viral mobile game as a potential gold mine for marketers, with retailers in particular being urged to transform their stores into ‘Pokestops’ to take advantage of the teeming multitudes scouring city streets for virtual monsters.
In more serious matters MediaPost dispels some of the recent gloom surrounding Britain’s Brexit vote by relaying an optimistic prognosis from Wall Street analyst Brian Wieser, who has raised his stock price targets for WPP, Publicis and Interpublic.
Ad Exchanger meanwhile scotches recent speculation that Yahoo may sell its core business, citing an analyst at SunTrust who notes that a likely decline in bid prices over the past month may prompt the board to conclude that shareholders would be better served by spinning off core activities as a separate business.
Finally, Ad Exchanger tackles the growing problem of online fraud with a look at bot detection company Swarm, which has just been acquired by Integral Ad Science. The enlarged business hopes to scale detection, viewability and verification capabilities in light of the deal.