Movers and Groovers : The "bash the bonus bullies" banker arrives at Whitbread as CEO

Costa Coffee group Whitbread hires Alison Brittain as new chief executive

Whitbread, the owner of the Costa Coffee and Premier Inn brands, has named Alison Brittain, currently head of Lloyds Banking Group's retail division as its new chief executive.

Ms Brittain aged 50, will replace Andy Harrison, who said in April he would retire from full time executive life at the end of February next year.

Ms Brittain is one of the UK's top female bankers and has previously said she would "bash the bonus bullies" and change the sales culture at the taxpayer-owned bank.

The Lloyds boss will join the leisure group on 4 January 2016. She has previously held senior roles at Santander UK and Barclays as well as a non-executive role at Marks and Spencer.

The bank said that Ms Brittain would be replaced on an interim basis by David Oldfield, currently responsible for IT and operations. He will be replaced by Karin Cook, currently commercial banking chief operating officer.

“Alison has played a significant role in leading the transformation of our retail business and I thank her for her contribution”, said António Horta-Osório, Lloyds Baking Group chief executive. “I am also delighted we have proven executives able to step up to fill the positions created by her move.”

Talk to Mums : An affordable approach to targeting ABC mums in London this summer


How you can target mums this summer?

Talk to Mums create fun and interactive ways for brands to talk to mums offline and online.
 
Our "60 Days of Summer Live Sampling" campaign talks to ABC1 mums across inner and outer London regions.
 
We tap into our network of over 2 million mums and invite them to sample or experience your brand from the Talk to Mums experiential vehicle.
 
Brands can utilise the vehicle for 1 day or 1 week - it offers complete flexibility and affordability to suit every brand including ambient, hot and cold products.
 
Interested? Ask for the media pack. Slots are available on a first come first served basis. Or call us on: 0207 099 8638 email: sally@talktomums.co.uk
 
Thanks
Sally Durcan


Media Things: The trend of Trending ... Lee Baring Head of TV, adconnection

When working at a fast growing agency such as adconnection, you get to meet many prospective clients who have a varying amount of satisfaction with their current agency. They will come from a number of different sectors with a number of different reasons why they are thinking of a different approach.

Within the e-commerce sector, if a client is unhappy the complaint is quite surprisingly similar. Their grievance is usually one of two things, but both involve the same subject, data.

Complaint a) “We are struggling to grow our business, every time we spend more on TV our CPA’s increase and our agency recommend us to reduce our budget”.
Complaint b) “We want to obtain a greater understanding regarding the effect of our TV advertising. We know it works, but we can’t make it consistently work and our agency’s analysis doesn't seem able to develop it”.

These complaints are frustrating for a number of reasons. From a media practitioners point of view, we know how damaging a bad agency experience can be to a brand, usually leaving a bad taste in the clients mouth and fulfilling the myth that the only thing agencies care about is taking the client’s money. However by applying a little intuition and a smattering of common sense we can help those clients achieve their objective in an efficient, scalable manner.

Unique phone numbers
TV Response Analysis has changed over the years. In the early 90’s ads were aired with unique phone numbers, the consumer used that number and was therefore attributed to that specific ad. With the explosion of information access via the internet, the user doesn’t need to respond instantaneously anymore. In fact they don’t even need to know the brand website or even the brand name. As long as they know the general theme of the advert they have just seen such as “what’s that ad with the meerkat in?”, a handy search engine will point you in the right direction.

This has made the analysis of the consumer journey from ad to response a much more varied one and therefore more complicated one. Most systems that we have seen being used, will try and attribute response to an individual spot and base performance from then on. An antiquated method and one that belongs way back in time before our lives revolved around the internet.

Another failure in TV attribution is the word itself. We shouldn’t be using the word “attribute” as this implies an actual. A finality. A certainty. When in fact it’s a guess! Once you lower your blood pressure and accept that you can’t, with 100% certainty, track a respondents route you can start to build a greater understanding regarding the effect of TV advertising.

Trend Analysis

This should be a key word in TV response analysis and is one phrase that is key in adconnection’s response analysis systems. Predictive Analysis, the type used by Netflix, Google and most blue chip companies around the world never offers certainties, it offers coincidence.

“When we do this, this seems to happen”
“When a customer is 30-45, response rate increases by 13%”
“65% of consumers that have viewed House of Cards go on to watch Orange is the New Black”

One Superbowl spot
It is this type of approach that helps us improve our understanding of our client’s schedules. It is why we know that for certain categories, a spot in breakfast television can increase a day’s average response by 35%. It is how we know that a viewer watching a film is far more likely to respond when the film has finished rather than at the moment the ad has aired. It is why Steve Jobs spent an entire year’s marketing budget in one go on one Superbowl spot. 

It is the reason we will never a say that a station isn’t working, but will offer why an environment doesn’t seem efficient and it is how we manage to help our clients grow because finding the most responsive airtime isn't about finding the cheapest, smallest spots.

If you’re interested why not research the how a multiple analysis systems, combined into one brain, helped a computer win the champions of champions series in the States at the world famous game show, Jeopardy – based on identifying trends that point to the most likely answer by combining knowledge from many different sources. 



Information is everywhere, the consumers ability to engage with brands has never been closer yet the smaller the journey has become the more complex it has grown, just ask Watson, the super computer!  



Top Graphic by Shutterstock

Events : Don't let your PPC campaigns move backwards - come learn from top experts amazing new tactics, tools, tips and secret sauce

SMX London – 20th May, 2015 - 10:45 am-Noon

http://searchmarketingexpo.com/london/full_agenda/

By some estimates, there have been 1000+ changes to AdWords and Bing Ads in the past year. 

Last year's tactics will only give you last year's results. Don't let your PPC campaigns move backwards - come learn from top experts what amazing new tactics, tools, tips and secret sauce will enable you to manage your campaigns to higher levels of performance this year. 

This session presents the best of the best of the best - it's what makes it a perennial SMX favourite!

adconnection - the latest campaign for Maplin across TV and digital



Taking advantage of latest changes in viewing habits, adconnection has planned a fully integrated, cross-channel campaign that moves Maplin to all aspects of TV, AV and digital. In addition, through the use of extremely granular targeting of Maplin’s niche target audiences adconnection can massively reduce wastage even across multiple channels.
 
Alongside a first night TV roadblock and high profile spots within key ad breaks, this year’s campaign is going one step further to incorporate a number of ground-breaking video and digital formats.
 
The campaign will run on TV catch-up sites such as All4 (previously 4OD) and Demand 5, Sky adsmart to target relevant audiences with a frequency cap, as well as on other online video platforms. This will include in content video ads and interactive pre roll ads in which viewers will have the opportunity to select one of three Maplin ads to watch.
 
Henry Swift, Head of Marketing at Maplin, had this to say of the campaign: ‘With consumers increasingly watching TV & video content across a range of devices it was important to build a campaign which reflected this. By moving from a TV led to a fully Audio Visual strategy means we can tell the Maplin ‘story’ in a variety of ways and tailor content to a relevant audience’.
 
Dan Grossman, Account Director at adconnection “We’re looking forward to building on our successes with Maplin from last year’s TV campaigns. Key to our strategy for this year is implementing a fully integrated multi-channel campaign to amplify the effect of our TV spots. Harnessing new media technology and video formats, along with harmonised social media, gives us the opportunity to reach our audience across multiple devices in a highly targeted and efficient way”.
 
TV advertising, supported by a full suite of harmonised digital activity, will launch on May 3rd.
Anything you'd like to discuss? Get in touch on contact@adconnection.co.uk