Happy's marketing news - 21.07.17
It’s been a busy week in the marketing world, here’s what has caught our eye!
Research from anti-bullying charity Ditch the Label suggests social media is making youngsters more anxious. Forty per cent said they felt bad if nobody liked their selfies and 35% said their confidence was directly linked to the number of followers they had. Instagram was highlighted as having become the vehicle most used for mean comments. Seven per cent of young social network users said they had been bullied on the Facebook-owned photo app. That compared to a figure of 6% for Facebook itself, 5% for Snapchat and 2% for Twitter and YouTube.
The International Space Station has become the first “off planet” addition to Google Maps’ Street View facility. Astronauts helped capture 360-degree panoramas of the insides of the ISS modules, as well as views down to the Earth below. Some of the photography features pop-up text descriptions, marking the first time such annotations have appeared on the Maps platform. This is not the first time 360-degree imagery has been captured beyond Earth. In 2015, the European Space Agency published its own interactive tour of the ISS. And last year Nasa re-purposed images captured by its Pathfinder mission to Mars to create clips suitable for virtual reality headsets.
Price comparison website Moneysupermarket.com has been fined £80,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office for sending millions of emails to customers who had made it clear they didn’t want to be contacted in that way. The company sent 7.1 million emails over 10 days updating customers with its Terms and Conditions. But all the recipients had previously opted out of direct marketing. Moneysupermarket’s email included a section entitled ‘Preference Centre Update’ which read: “We hold an e-mail address for you which means we could be sending you personalised news, products and promot¡ons. You’ve told us in the past you prefer not to receive these. If you’d like to reconsider, simply click the following link to start receiving our e-mails.” Asking people to consent to future marketing messages when they have already opted out is against the law.
Broadcaster Chris Evans has topped the list of the BBC’s best-paid stars – with BBC Sport’s Gary Lineker second. Evans made between £2.2m and £2.25m in 2016/17, with Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker earning between £1.75m and £1.8m. The list, published at 11am as part of the BBC’s annual report, revealed the 96 stars earning more than £150,000 a year. Only a third of the names on the list were women and director general Lord Hall said the Corporation needed to “go further and faster” on gender issues. Claudia Winkleman was the BBC’s highest-paid female celebrity, earning between £400,000 and £450,000. George Alagiah, Jason Mohammad and Trevor Nelson were the highest paid BAME stars, each receiving between £250,000 and £300,000
Marketers are planning to go on a hiring spree over the next three months, with twice as many saying they expect to increase staff numbers as expect to see a decline. In the IPA’s quarterly Bellwether report, 33% said they expected growth, while 15% anticipated a fall. That means a net balance of 18.2% of companies are expecting to see employment rise, up from 14.4% in the preceding quarter and the highest figure since the data started being collected for Marketing Week a year ago. The positive outlook reflects ongoing growth in workloads. However, IHS Markit’s senior economist and the report’s author Paul Smith warned that “it remains to be seen” if employment growth will continue given the political uncertainty around Brexit.
