A Slice of Pepperoni Pizza with Extra Stupidity

As an avid Radio 1 listener, I really resent their choice to put Zane Lowe on at 7pm every weekday evening to play "brand new" music...most of it is not brand new, it's just noise.....oh dear, am I seriously only 22???

Anywho, driving home one evening this week faced with the choice of "noise" or a commercial station, Absolute Radio won. 

As is the way with commercial radio, the second I flick over, the music stops and the adverts start.  Brilliant, more "noise"...but as I prepared to zone out and concentrate on the road, one of the adverts caught my attention.

The advert was for Papa John's Pizza.  The voice over artist was saying how good their Pepperoni pizza is, nothing unusual about that, until he started talking about the market research they had done to prove their pizza was better than Pizza Hut's Pepperoni offering.  On the face of it, it sounds fine...but he then went on to explain that they sampled 236 people and 59% of people preferred Papa John's to Pizza Hut.

59%??? Why would you base a whole marketing and advertising campaign on 59%? That's not even a 10% preference rate?

It's not like the sample size makes up for it...236 people!  Who are these people, where did they come from? The only thing Papa John's says about them is that none of them are "pepperoni pizza rejectors".  It's difficult to make market research completely unbiased, but that is probably why we don't hear research being quoted in adverts where the "hero" brand wins by such a measely amount as 9%! Let's work it out... 

So out of 236 repsondents, only 21 more people preferred your pizza to your main competitors...I wouldn't call that conclusive evidence, would you?

Surely the reason you say "xx% of people researched preferred our product to our competitors" is to provide potential customers with the confidence that they will enjoy your product more than if they bought a competitor's version.  An advertising campaign based on a minor victory is still going to leave customers undecided as to which one's best, therefore rendering the whole exercise pointless!

Anyway it doesn't change my opinion...I prefer Hawaiian!!

Papa John's have detailed their research and methods here: Papa John's Website

A Musical Contradiction

The subject of illegally downloading music has been in the news for many years now, and it looks like a story that won’t go away quickly…but does the music industry help itself at all?

This issue has been brought back to life due to the recent release of the Spotify iPhone app and how you are able to listen to almost any song for free (minus the £10 a month subscription fee).  Once again, the music industry has stated that every year they are losing billions of pounds due to members of the public downloading music illegally.

Fair enough, no one likes to lose money.

What gets me is that the very same music industry allowed Radio 1 to have the “first play” of Leona Lewis’ new single “Happy” on September 6^th….when the song is not available to buy until November  9^th.

That is over two months.

So for over two months, Simon Cowell and his record label expect Leona fans (I’m sure there’s some out there) to listen to the new single only when the radio stations decide to play it.  That doesn’t sound like a good plan to me.

Let’s break this down, research shows (1) that more than 60% of all people who download music illegally are aged between 14-24.  Compare that to the fact that Leona Lewis, and more widely the X Factor, is targeted mainly at teenagers, and it doesn’t take a genius to work out what the likely result is.

I understand the need to build up demand of a song, or any product, before the date of release…but surely two months is pushing it?  People will find a way to get their hands on the song, and it will end up in the music industry losing out.

It also means that by the time the song is available to buy, it will be overplayed, people will be bored of it and won’t buy it anyway!

Surely a much better idea is to build publicity around the artist and the upcoming release of their single, with the first play coming the week before the release?

I understand that the music industry is losing a lot of money thanks to the power of the internet, but they could also make their lives a lot easier by using the internet to their advantage to launch the product, rather than alienating their listeners and forcing them into downloading illegally just to get their hands on their new favourite song.

(1) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/6089126/Should-illegal-filesharers-have-their-broadband-connection-taken-away.html

Shock! Horror! I've Become A Blogger!

Hello, good day and welcome to my new blog.

I'll be using this space to write all those thoughts and random ramblings that crop up during the course of a normal working week.

So, who am I? Well, my name is Jamie, I'm a 22 year old marketing graduate from Hertfordshire, and I've just started working in the big scary real world.

I work in Client Services within a Digital Marketing agency (Brandwidth) and maintain a keen interest with all that goes on within digital, branding, social and general marketing sectors.

The plan is that this blog will cover a wide variety of subjects but should (hopefully) focus in on the marketing perspective involved.

Please feel free to ask any questions, make any comments or argue any points via the blog.

I look forward to hearing your feedback!

Thanks

Jamie