Morning Update: Coke’s Brazilian Christmas; Where are the power elite now; Amazon times new drone ad for Thanksgiving
AdWeek: A Boy’s Christmas Wish Comes True in This Lovely Coca-Cola Film
Coca-Cola isn’t producing a new Christmas commercial for the U.S. market this year (it’s doing some festive packaging instead) but has produced an impressive cinematic short film in Brazil that captures the wonder of the season through a child’s eyes.
The spot, “Uma Ponte para Noel” (“A Bridge for Santa”), from J. Walter Thompson Brazil, tells the story of a village that Santa Claus appears to have forgotten in recent years. One boy in town speculates that it’s because the main bridge into town is broken, and Santa’s carriage can’t cross it. He leaves a message for Santa in a Coke bottle, and his father, upon reading it, resolves to try to fix the bridge—hoping for a little Christmas magic.
The Guardian: MediaGuardian 100: power elite of 2001 – where are they now?
How many of the original list of media power players have survived? For all the major changes in the industry since July 2001, 11 of the original squad are in the 2015 list – and, fascinatingly, most of them are doing the same job or something very similar.
Rupert Murdoch (then No 1) and Martin Sorrell (5) are still running their respective empires. Alan Parker (79) is the sole ever-present from PR. Richard Desmond (29) is a press baron, as he was in 2001, after adding a television fiefdom and selling it off in the intervening years.
Paul Dacre (8) and Nicholas Coleridge (87) remain the supremos at the Mail titles and Conde Nast UK respectively, with Lord Rothermere (33) – aged 34 in 2001 – still Dacre’s boss; while Ian Hislop (40) continues to edit Private Eye and was already into his second decade on Have I Got News for You at the time of the original list. John Witherow (69), then editing the Sunday Times, has switched to its daily sister title.
Techcrunch: Amazon’s Drone Video Is The Perfect Devious Holiday Ad Campaign
Amazon showed off a brand new Amazon Prime Air video yesterday. While it’s interesting to see that the project is still alive and moving forward, you can’t help but think that Amazon is trying to boost its holiday sales and public image with Prime Air.
This isn’t the first time Amazon has talked about its Prime Air project. The company released the first video announcing the project on December 1, 2013.
It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving, in other words, a slow news day. Everyone covered the new Amazon drone. 60 Minutes interviewed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and showcased the device.
AdAge: Kids These Days: They Might Just Pay for Digital Content
Media consumers who prefer native digital content now make up nearly half the audience for entertainment in developed markets and more than a third of the audience for publishing and online services. In developing markets, those shares are slightly lower but trending in the same direction, Bain & Company’s new survey of 7,000 people in 10 countries finds.
These consumers, whom we call Generation #hashtag (regardless of age), favor content and services that have been designed and distributed exclusively through digital (and especially mobile) channels. Perhaps most important for media companies, a younger cohort among Generation #hashtag says that it is increasingly willing to pay for content, especially for video, music and games.
The Drum: Now that The Sun’s paywall is down, News UK is rethinking how it works with advertisers
The Sun may be one of the country’s most well known media brands but News UK admits it hasn’t monetised this popularity as well it could have done, with its paywall coming down today (30 November) offering a chance to right those wrongs and instil a more progressive commercial attitude at the business.
The red top’s paywall hasn’t “worked for us in the right way”, News UK commercial chief Dominic Carter concedes. It’s always been about “scale and being a part of the social fabric of the country”, he continued. And yet setting up a paywall to try and premiumise that proposition was counterintuitive to both those ideals.
