BJK&E

Today the press has been full of talk about the new Honda ad airing tonight on C4 during Come Dine with Me. Following on from their headline grabbing ads, Cog and Grrr, Honda have gone one step further and are now throwing people out of planes in the name of promoting the brand!

Based on the widsom of Honda’s founder who is purported to have stated ‘difficult is worth doing’ (now the tagline used in the ads), the new ad features 19 skydivers attempting to form the word Honda in the air. The stunt will be shown ‘live’ and in ‘real time.’ Unless it rains. In which case a rehearsal jump filmed yesterday will be shown.

Of course this is all very innovative, publicity grabbing - and no doubt award winning- but do the car buying public really care that much? Do they appreciate the fact that the stunt is live? And is the reported £500k cost really worth it? I suppose the question should be - is difficult really worth doing?

Ok so I’m sure I’m not the only one impatiently awaiting the much anticipated Sex and the City film…

It began with a few whispers and hopeful predictions that a film was to be made and now the time has come for what I believe will be one of the biggest Box Office hits of the year.

Whilst us BJK&E girls are being treated to a true SATC experience of cinema and cocktails I’m not sure that my excitement can wait that long and I’m already planning Thursday night’s trip to the cinema.

Although I am a big SATC fan and I am hugely excited about the launch of the film, I worry that I may be disappointed following the hype…does Big die? does Steve cheat on Miranda? There speculations are endless and I for one worry that the film may not live up to them.
Regardless of what may loom ahead , I shall sit with my  BJK&E girls dressed in our cocktail dresses to watch the most anticipated film of the year!

On one hand we get told how we are becoming an ever more unshockable society, desensitised by ever increased violence, sex, drugs (and of course rock n roll) in the media around us. Yet 2007 experienced the highest ever number of advert complaints (a total of 14,080) according to ASA.

Coming out top was the Department of Health with their “Get unhooked” advert aimed at getting people to quit smoking, which prompted 774 complaints. Running on TV, press, internet and posters the campaign was unmissable, and certainly seemed to create a stir! Those who complained said the adverts were offensive, frightening and distressing. Don’t worry - you won’t be chased by a real fishing hook piercing your cheek! They just want you to drop the cancer stick! I have to admit it made me shudder and feel uncomfortable, but then don’t we need more shocking tactics like this when it comes to changing people’s perceptions and behaviour on topics like this?

On a lighter (and rounder) note, the 10th most complained about advert was awarded to the Sun for their bus T-side campaign, with page 3 girl Keeley promoting the new 20p cost of the paper. I actually worked at CBS outdoor at the time, who surprisingly have a rather stringent copy approval process. The 10p pieces were originally considerably smaller when copy was first submitted… these complainers should be grateful that there are these measures in place - I’m sure the original nipple-clad buses would have ranked this ad higher in the complaints chart!

Mmmm… chocolate. One of my favourite things on the planet. So I couldn’t help noticing Cadbury in Media Week’s brand barometer, following the most recent “glass-and-a-half production”. The new ad broke on 30th March, days after Terminal 5 opened its doors. I have to admit the first time I saw it I did think it was an attempt by BA to make the chaos seem more appealing, making light of losing luggage by blaming it on those cheeky trucks running riot after hours. Bad timing indeed. But how did “Trucks” fair against it’s precursor? According to BrandIndex, while our old friend Gorilla Collins pushed Cadbury’s “buzz” up 5 points, the racing airport vehicles have not managed to keep up the buzz-mentum, (two points down since the ad debuted). Oh dear. Maybe this chocolate factory is getting a bit too willy-wonky for their own good! Whatever happened to the old self-indulgent, tongue flicking, mmm-I’m-making-love-to-my-chocolate kind of ads, a la Flake? Oh yeah, they’re back. Except with the obscenely irritating Joss Stone. Mind you, at least the new Flake ad makes me want to eat chocolate, although not in the direct way I imagine they hoped. Rather, I’m so wound up with annoyance but that idiot prancing around on my TV that I crave a hit of cocoa to curb the anger! If you ask me, Aero have the right idea in getting girls to drool over a chocolate ad - put the confectionary in front of a half naked Smith from Sex and the City. Mmmm indeed!

After bouncing balls, exploding paint, plasticine rabbits now it’s foam. Exactly what this has got to do with cameras and camcorders is pretty much anyone;s guess but it looks like someone had a lot of fun filling a few square blocks of miami with foam and letting it all float about a bit.

Guess it’s not something you see eveyday so probably worth a picture

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpP_BlSDBgc

Tobermory calling 911, Womble Tomsk asking ‘what’s going down in the hood?’ If this seems almost like treason to you then PACT are doing the job with their new clip intended to highlight how British Kids TV is under threat.

British cult classic, The Wombles has been given an American makeover to highlight the need to invest in British children’s TV as just 1% of all new programmes are made in the UK.  Check out the clip at http://www.britishkidstv.com/ and then register your views on the petition!

It’s official – by next month mobile phone calls could be allowed on planes flying in European airspace. Under new European Commission rules mobiles could be used once a plane has reached an altitude of 3,000m or more.

The decision to offer the services will now fall to individual airlines, but there are some regulatory hurdles to overcome before the technology is fully approved. The European Aviation Safety Agency needs to approve the hardware that would be installed in the aircraft to ensure it didn’t interfere with other flight systems.

Air France is believed to be ready to deploy the technology while Ryanair is expected to submit an application. (Airlines to avoid, perhaps?)

I do think that allowing mobile-phone calls is a good thing, especially for people on important business. But we’ve all been stuck on a bus or train with a woman who just won’t (or seemingly can’t) stop gabbing away. Let’s hope they put in some decent restrictions so as not to annoy the majority of passengers!

Geeks. Is there an end to their abilities?  Some of the aforementioned persons of an academically inclined nature have created a MASSIVE robo-dog  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww). As we sat watching, mutterings such as the following were raised…..”That’s great. It’s freaky looking, But what does it do?”. Upon watching to the end all questions of this ilk are answered by statements such as……”oh!” and “ah, that’s what it does”. The future is now people. Scary stuff, huh?

You have been Rickrolled if you have come across a link expecting to find one thing, but actually ended up watching Rick Astley’s music video for his song “Never Gonna Give You Up”.

Rickrolling, apparently, began on 4chan’s imageboard the day of Grand Theft Auto 4’s official website premier. They received such heavy traffic, though, that it was impossible to watch the trailer for quite a while, so someone took it upon themselves to link everyone to a supposedly leaked trailer hosted on YouTube. What they got was Rick Astley.

And then came April Fools’ Day. There were lots of incidents of Rickrolling on April 1st. All the YouTube Featured Videos were hyperlinked to the Rickroll, and Livejournal also got involved by announcing that they would be adding a new member to their Advisory Board, and then linking members to the journal “rickastley”, which contained a Rickroll. Popular gaming sites also decided to Rickroll their users.

I haven’t yet been Rickrolled, but I wouldn’t mind if I was, because to be perfectly honest it is a song that makes me smile, and I’d probably listen to it all the way through too!

According to figures cited by Nielsen Online the social networking site, Facebook, had its first drop in UK users in January. It fell by 5% to 8.5 million from a previous 8.9 million. This has sparked a debate that social networking is in decline, but others argue that one month of falling audiences doesn’t mean the decline of Facebook nor of social networking.

The decrease may have reflected a lower level of fascination with the site but, with 8.5million unique users still active and a growth of 712% from January 2007, Facebook remains the most popular social networking website in the UK.

Myspace also recorded a 5% decrease in January and Bebo suffered a 2% decrease. This may show that the leading social networks are less popular in the UK than they were a year ago, but I would like to see the profile of the people who have left the sites before passing judgement. Nielsen Online measures website traffic based on a panel of UK users at home and work. It does not cover the usage in schools, universities and internet cafes, so the younger internet users are very much under-reported.

And just last week Hitwise cited that Facebook’s market share of UK Internet visits went back to its Christmas peak during the Easter week. Obviously the Easter holidays may have played a role, so we’ll just have to see how the figures change over the next few months, but I think Facebook is here to stay for a while yet!