Morning bulletin: £597m-Poundland, Ebay pop-ups, a Pokemon coffee shop and junk food love
For the second of our daily doses of marketing round-up’s we’ve trawled the web once more to bring you all the latest news and developments, so you don’t have to.
First in line this morning is a report from Marketing Week stating that online auction house Ebay will soon stake out a High Street presence by piggybacking on Sainsbury’s estate with creation of a suite of pop-up collection points.
Retail Week has the inside track on a planned £597m takeover of Poundland by Steinhoff, the South Africa-based retail holding company, with reports that the pair have agreed terms to a recommended cash offer.
Over at Campaign meanwhile a Barclaycard shopping study confirms what most of us already knew, Britons are hopelessly addicted to junk food. Listing the top items to appear in our trolleys, the banking provider found that traditional staples of fish & chips, Sunday roasts and tea topped the charts; with the remainder of the top ten composed of fry ups, strawberries and cream, scones, Victoria sponge, chip butties, crumpets and 99 ice creams.
At Business Insider this morning’s lead story is a report on the growing fight between the CEO’s of rival cloud storage services Box and Dropbox. Dropbox chief Drew Houston drew first blood by claiming his firm was ‘generating cash’ well ahead of its arch rival but Box’s Aaron Levie has hit back saying: “I recall Blockbuster was cash flow positive before Netflix".
AdAge continues to get swept along by Pokémon Go fever as it regales readers of how Atlanta-based creative agency Huge has transformed their offices into a Pokémon coffee shop drawing players and virtual creatures alike through their doors to indulge in a bit of fun and stumble upon unexpected customers.
AdAge also carries news that trainer firm New Balance is on the hunt for a new global creative agency, supplanting Arnold which has been an incumbent on the account for six years.
A different angle is adopted by Ad Exchanger which notes that Google has again been tinkering with its shopping and travel ads, this time to improve price alerts and product relevancy as it seeks to limit ‘machine-driven’ algorithms and allow greater input from retailers directly.
The Guardian continues to shine a spotlight on the BBC by relaying a report from the broadcaster’s governing body which found that 27 per cent of primetime BBC2 schedules now comprise repeats, sparking fresh calls for the public service to ensure it becomes more distinctive by taking more risks.
The Times carries a warning for rail passengers that their safety is ‘at risk’ after hackers infiltrated the network in four separate cyber-attacks, potentially allowing criminals to control physical infrastructure such as signals and junctions.
Lastly, the Guardian provides some belated cheer for Chris Evans following his brutal Top Gear departure, with the BBC’s commercial arm confirming that the Evans run was ‘a bigger global hit than the Jeremy Clarkson version’ irrespective of dismal UK ratings.