“The Media doesn’t shape our idea of beauty but it can help to reshape it”

Can a woman be old and beautiful? Why are older women invisible? And is the narrow view of what we now consider beautiful entirely the fault of the media, advertisers and male TV channel controllers “still living too close to the cave”?

Robin came head-to-head with a sparky bunch of panellists including Natasha Walter, author of Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism and The New Feminism, Dame Harriet Walter DBE, Actress and author of Facing It, Reflections on Images of Older Women and Lesley Reynolds Kahn, co owner of The Harley Street Skin Clinic. The debate was chaired by Head of College, Professor Frances Corner OBE (who gave Robin a run for his money in the outré spectacles stakes).

Robin’s argument, that evolution – not the media – makes us favour young women with long blonde hair was met with shrieks from fellow panellists: “Surely we’ve evolved beyond that Robin!” argued Dame Harriet.

But as Robin pointed out, advertisers – most notably Unilever with their Dove Inner Beauty and Self-Esteem campaigns – have tried to buck the trend. Reference was also made to the vociferous response on Twitter to a Debenhams campaign using real women; “Social Media is not the voice of the traditional media but in fact the voice of real people and this is what they think. It’s in their genes” he argued.

The ensuing debate, which ranged from the sacking of older female TV presenters, butt lifts and cultural attitudes to beauty, to the fascinating Snow White Complex (when mothers envy their daughters) did, however, end on a positive note about change.

“You can alter people’s perceptions by putting different images out there,” said Dame Harriet. “It’s like a new fashion – at first you think it’s awful but then after a few months you quite like it.” A point Natasha Walter agreed with: “I don’t believe this argument that it’s all in our genes! Social change is always possible”.

This is particularly pertinent to us here at WCRS towers as we’ve been working with London Elects – the independent body who organise the election – to promote the election date and encourage Londoner’s to get out and vote. Our “Have Your Say – Vote 3^rd May” creative has been all over London these last few weeks taking in tube car panels last month, ramping up to include bus sides, 6 sheet posters, online, social, radio and press as we near the big day.

To get you in the mood for Election Day, here are some stats for those of you who cannot wait to get your swing-o-meters going:

• As of 1 December 2011, there were 5,796,259 registered voters in Greater London.
• In London as a whole, turnout for the 2008 Mayor of London election was 45.33%, for the Assembly constituency elections was 45.28% and for the Assembly list election was 45.28%.
• The election itself will see nearly 4,000 polling stations set up across London on 3^rd May. The stations will be manned by 11,400 staff between 7am and 10pm.
• Another 3,500 staff will then be on hand to help with the count.

Happy voting!

(Refer to our Clients page to read more about our work for GLA).

When you see the concept for the watch, you can understand why it has achieved success.  A sleek design combines style with technology to produce a device that has the ability to adapt to your needs.  Want to track your run? Change your music? See who’s calling without reaching into your pocket?  Ignoring that unwanted call has never been easier.  The ability to customise the experience makes each watch unique, and if it fulfils all it has promised, it may just re-energise the wristwatch market from bling back to information.

But it’s the way with which the funding has taken off which is the real story around this device.  Kickstarter is increasingly becoming a place for young inventors looking for financial backing, not just art students.  The technology and gaming sections are heavily outweighing the traditional crowd-sourced projects and pioneering a way of thinking that allows innovations to be retained by their creators.  Instead of having to sell equity in the idea, they can carry out their vision without the hassle of outside investors expecting large returns on investments.

But no.

Alas Everton came back with two late goals to crush my dreams of a boring title run in.

Instead now Utd have to go to Man City on Monday week and get some sort of result or City will be in the box seat with two matches to go and the noisy neighbours are sure to win the league.

Well my dilemma is, for the first time ever, that I can’t bring myself to watch a game of football!

In 34 odd years of being stuck zombified in front of the TV (mostly horizontal watching football in 3D), I am seriously contemplating not watching the biggest game of the year so far, certainly the biggest ever Manchester derby.

But the even bigger question, is how do you avoid big information these days?

How can I go dark like Jack Bauer would in 24?

I can’t go on Facebook, someone will be talking through every kick. I can’t use my phone because my Facebook alerts will give the score away. Can’t go on twitter for the same reasons. Laptop is out again for the same reason, rolling, scrolling non-stop streams of news about everything. I can’t watch the 4,000,00o other channels I’ve got on Sky Anytime (love it) as it’ll be too tempting to switch it over.

I suppose I could take Mrs Welch out for a meal but nowadays a member of staff will shout out goal because they have a flat screen in the kitchen. And the same goes for some other nerdy people (I’ve seen them) IPad out on the table with no manners and less shame.

No, I’ve come to the conclusion that these days in London you can’t go dark.

Although it’s changed the world for the better I suppose, that information finds itself out there to tumble dictators or catch MPs charging expenses for the wife’s porn.

Still I sometimes find myself pining for Ceefax – the original info tool that hid away unless you were really bored/desperate and, by the time you got to the page you wanted, the football would have been finished anyway.

Gaming is huge. Gamer numbers have rocketed, and traditional gamer audiences have evolved. The fact is, the people who play games aren’t the stereotype everyone’s used to seeing, and the games themselves aren’t even necessarily in the stereotypical places. Social gaming is becoming a big business, with Zynga reporting an estimated $311m (c. £194m) revenue from 153m unique users, and women make up approximately 55% of these gamers on SNS. The abililty to play with your ‘real-life friends’ attracts an older generation of women as well as those tech-savvy teens, and lends credence to the supposition that you can reach a full spectrum of people by dabbling with the world of social gaming. And it’s already being seen that social is the marijuana of the gaming industry – it seems innocent at first, but it’s only a matter of time before you’re on to the harder stuff.

Meanwhile, console gaming continues to break records. ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3′ grossed £490m worldwide in the first five days of its release – to put this in context Avatar made £48m worldwide in its opening weekend. Advertisers can take advantage of the popularity of console games, accessing these worlds with in-game advertising.

The closure of Game won’t arrest this blockbuster ascent in console game revenues, but it may accelerate the evolution of gaming, in that it brings about the demise of boxed games faster, in favour of downloadable content.

So whether it’s making money directly from a popular freemium game developed with a client, or buying perimeter board space around EPL matches in FIFA, the marketing, advertising and business opportunities in the gaming sector are only beginning to be explored. So let our Gaming Future Team be the David Livingstone to your classical period of European geographical discovery and colonial penetration of the African continent (or blog!), as we keep our eyes peeled for all the latest developments.

‘Coming Home’

Thanks British Arrows for a fun night at Battersea Revolution last week and – more importantly – for our shiny new Arrow, which has found a nice new shelf home.

Insightful, surprising and hugely engaging, Andrew guided us through his book with the kind of style and charisma Don Draper wins pitches and beds women with.

From the creative revolution of the 60’s, where he talked about how New York’s ethnic creatives used simplicity, persuasion and narration to pave the way for the standard of advertising we all enjoy today, to the top drunk, aggressive and sexually charged ad-land personalities of the Golden Age. The Real Mad Men seems to have it all, and in meticulous detail.

But more importantly, watching Andrew take us back to ‘where it began’ wasn’t just great a journey, but it made me (and probably all of us) remember why we do what we do.

To make great work. Work that cuts through. Work that slaps everything else in the face and screams ‘You’re boring, it’s over!’. Just like the Mad Men of Madison Avenue did back in the day. So here’s to more lemons and less turkeys.

The four documentaries, created in partnership with leading British documentary directors including Bafta-winning Asif Kapadia of Senna fame, and Richard De Aragues of TT3D: Closer to the Edge, feature Olympic and Paralympic athletes from the BMW London 2012 Performance Team.

 The last in the series is Stevan Riley‘s film, ‘Beneath the Surface’, which looks at the mental and physical challenges swimmer Rebecca Adlington faces in constantly improving her performance to stay at the top. At the same time it explores the success of the BMW 3 Series and how BMW’s attitude to design and engineering has meant that, since its launch in 1975 the BMW 3 Series is still the ultimate saloon.

Watch it here www.youtube.com/bmwuk  

To learn more about the project, please refer to our original post.

Stripped behind its sexy logo (my words, not theirs), Pinterest is essentially an ‘online pinboard’ which allows and encourages users to ‘organise and share things you love’. And sharing the love is precisely what they are doing: Pinterest recently boasted that they were the fastest independent site to reach 10 million monthly unique users in the US. That aside, they still impressively pull in around 11.7 million active users every single month. In three words; Pinterest is popular.

To shed a little more light on the average Pinterest user (if there is such a person); she, yep that’s a she, is an American who has a penchant for fashion, arts and crafts, recipes, special occasions, and interior design – the five current most repinned topics. Despite continually growing male usage in recent months, men, as ever, don’t like to be left out: Recent male-orientated pinboard sites have already started cropping up – for starters, Manteresting and Gentlemint. Ill-fated or not, coupled with a growing male and female userbase, these rival sites point at a real demand for Pinterest’s service and all it has to offer.

Now imagine this; you’re at home in Alabama, planning your wedding to the one you’ve been with since you were sixteen. You repin wedding dresses, bouquet arrangements, beautifully ornate and intricate cake designs, and already imagining those precious weddings moments. Then, like a freight train, it hits you: A HUGE LAWSUIT (it deserved the capitals).

Okay, this is extreme, but it is a possibility. Scary. An owner of an image, if they decide they don’t want you using their work as ‘inspiration’, can decide to sue you and Pinterest, and YOU will have to foot the bill; that’s a lawyer for you, a lawyer for Pinterest and all the costs of defending. What’s more, if you are found guilty of violating copyright laws, you will also have to pay all damages against both you and Pinterest to boot. Hello bankruptcy. But wait… Pinterest also reserves the right to prosecute you for violations. Brilliant, especially considering it is still unclear whether copyright responsibility lies with the site or user. Oh and by the way, you agreed to all this.

Having ranted, I need to say that copyright laws around social sharing are still very much blurry (and yes, that is the technical term). Alongside this, Pinterest has also introduced code which allows image owners to opt out of others being able to pin their images. So, if you seriously don’t want people to repin your image, they can’t… unless they take a screengrab. And anyway, who would anyone really bother to sue? Pinterest is non-commercial (for now at least), the images are being used ‘fairly’ to initiate conversation, and it’s considered a ‘safe harbour’ (users can flag content that violates copyright, so the site can remove it). I’m not sure we even care enough to report an image, let alone sue. Either way, whatever the copyright outcome, I can honestly say I really do like the sexy logo, but I might think twice before I repin it next time…

By Duncan Mclauchlan @duncanjmc