It's gonna cost you

Recently the press picked up on the impending English Premier League rights bidding war that’s about to kick-off around the region. It was timely given that I just got a hold of some figures from ESPN STAR Sports which tells me (a) EPL is still mind-numbingly popular, and (b) it’s not going to come cheap for both the broadcaster and in the end, the football fan as well.

ESS says the current season of the Premier League live matches and ancillary programming reached more male viewers 15+ than the combined reach of news, education and entertainment programmes between 15 August 2008 to 25 February 2009.

According to AGB NMR, over the same period, more than 63% of all cable viewers aged 15+ in Malaysia have already watched the BPL (Barclays Premier League) 2008/2009 matches and its ancillary programming.

The BPL match between Manchester United and Liverpool on March 14 hit a Top 3 spot^ over the March 1 - 15 period, achieving an average rating of 6.6% among male viewers 15+ on cable, with the highest audience share (among regional cable broadcasters) of 17.3% during television viewing primetime, only second to a local-language channel.

But it’s not just the matches that ESS is able to tap on. It produces close to 1,500 hours of original football content a year including Nokia Football Crazy, Football Focus, Goals, Football Forecast, First Edition and Football Extra.

And because ESS also has the rights for the UEFA Champions League FA Cup, the company’s senior director of marketing and corporate communications, Paras Sharma is confident they will retain the EPL rights for next three seasons (from July 2010 onwards).

Still, ESS has lost out before, back in 2007 in Singapore (although they still handle the ad sales for that market).

StarHub paid a reported $250 million for the Singapore rights which were also seen as a strategic attempt to ensure rival SingTel wouldn’t be able to add the Premier League to its IPTV mio-TV platform.

Closer to home, Malaysia's state-owned Telekom Malaysia recently went on the record to say it may challenge Astro and bid for the exclusive rights which will open for bidding in the second quarter of this year. TM is hoping to secure attractive content for its IPTV platform which launches at the end of 2009.

So while Singapore is sold as a standalone market with other markets a part of a cluster - who knows what will happen this time.

Whatever happens, you can bet it’s going to involve a lot of money and it’s going to cost the football fan.

“You can make corrections if the business isn’t going up but clearly it is,” Sharma said.


*During period 15 Aug 2008-25 Feb 2009 in Malaysia. Refers to CNN, MTV Asia and Discovery. Source: AGB NMR
^Source: AGB NMR, Top 100 Broadcasts on Cable TV channels in Malaysia for March

Sucked in

My daily consumption habits of news online brought me to an interesting story by a Singapore news portal which asked the question, how many people out there think that Singapore sucks?

The answer, according to the news portal, can be found in the number of members who belong to a Facebook group called ‘Singapore Sucks’ – which has 375 members at the time of writing. And was created by a Singaporean (so it has been reported).

Under Basic Info, the Facebook group says: “While Singapore has enjoyed stable economic growth for decades now, its people and culture have not progressed forward. Prolonged periods of tight government control on all aspects of life have created an atmosphere of workaholism because there is simply nothing else to do.”

“The purposes of this group are to raise awareness for people from everywhere in the world about the current state of Singapore and for members to vent their frustration.

And it goes on to say that “Singapore needs a liberal government... and for that to happen Singaporeans have to change and have to start asking for a change.”

The page goes on to list a number of “facts” which supposedly highlight Singapore’s backwardness in a number of areas and mentions everything from its rankings in the Reporters Without Borders’ Worldwide Press Freedom Index, to accusations the nation is supporting the Burmese military junta.

To be honest I am surprised the Facebook is group still active (it gained nearly 50 more members since the article in the news portal was published) especially now that mainstream media has turned its attention to it.

But what do you guys think? Will it get shutdown – does it deserve to be? And if the Group gets shutdown now does it not prove the point of its creator about Singapore’s media laws?

If something similar were to happen here with an anti-Malaysia Facebook group being discovered - what would the media’s reaction and government’s reaction to it be?

But your Facebook status says so

It's always amusing when social networking sites provide the headliners for daily newspapers. Just yesterday, on April Fool's Day no less, the national newspapers were taken for a good-humoured ride by politician Teresa Kok.

Kok, who is Seputeh MP poked fun at the day's events when she posted a link to a news story which said: "Oh no, I am now national news!"

The joke started much earlier in the day at 9.41am when she set her Facebook status to read "Teresa Kok is Luvin' It although her marriage plans have as many combinations as a McDonald's menu."

The 45-year-old DAP stalwart - a member of the opposition coalition - was then subjected to a barrage of phone calls from journos who were waiting to get the dirt about her tying the knot.

It didn't help that there were a flood of congratulatory comments and questions left on her page.
In the end, The Star got the scoop before mid-day reporting that Kok said she is not getting married, clarifying her Facebook posting, adding that it "got the media buzzing".

At 12.06pm, Kok, who was reportedly at a state exco meeting (it's usually held on Wednesdays) in Shah Alam, then updated her status to read: "Teresa Kok's last status msg about 'marriage plans' was her April Fool's joke. Too many reporters are phoning her up for comments so she has to, reluctantly, reveal it's a joke today, instead of tomorrow".

Nice.

The power of Google

In a recent whirlwind trip to Malaysia, A+M managed to sneak in a few minutes for some Q&A with Derek Callow, Google's Marketing head of Southeast Asia.
He speaks of how SEM provides marketers the space on the worldwide web to push their products and services and how agencies are or are not stepping up to push the goodness of SEM.

Hegarty's got bite but does he still have vision

As I begin to finally recover from my Singha beer hangover and the memories of my first trip to Pattaya for AdFest come rushing back, I can now recall the lasting presence - good or bad - that Sir John Hegarty left on the festival.

He was jury president for many of the big awards on offer, such as the Lotus Roots, Film, Radio, Innova, and 360 Lotus, and it was good to see an advertising legend, which Hegarty is, judging work from our region.

But a few things struck me about him during the festival which were that(1) Hegarty still has the aura about him of being one of the world's most famous creative and (2) The man knows how to make great ads but (3) Is he slightly out of touch with today's market?

There's no real need for me to question (1) and (2) - those are facts and it would be pointless for me to argue otherwise. But point (3) is what I want to discuss.

In a room packed full with ad men (and there were plenty of presentations played out to a quarter filled room at AdFest, so Hegarty still has that drawing power) he gave a presentation on the seven basic principles he thought the creative industry needed to consider to succeed.

It was a clear and concise presentation with some great old ads BBH had done in the past mixed in with some new ones like the Audi ad fresh off the production line.

My only problem with the presentation was that it felt a bit old-world. And this nagging feeling was seemingly backed up moments later by the CEO of a competing agency who commented to me that his ideas seemed "outdated".

As a journalist you're trained to be objective and it should be noted that the basis of this post came from Hegarty's reaction to a question posed by another journalist on of ours in fact (Matt Eaton, editor of Hong Kong Marketing and blogger on The Pitch Hong Kong) at a press conference shortly after Hegarty's talk.

In response to a question on whether digital is the place the industry is heading... with reference to waning popularity of TV, Hegarty said the industry had lost the fight against the new digital paradigm.

But when the journalist said, "actually cant you say the opposite? That the industry is taking up the fight and going where people are consuming media?" - he ranted on about how industry journalists were perpetuating some sort of myth about digital and the death of TV. It felt a little defensive.

It's long been unpopular to question the 'black sheep' but there it is but what do you guys think?

Google-killer in the making?

In case you haven’t noticed – we’ve gone Twitter friendly. For the past month or so, MarketingEds has been working hard with the tweeting and we now have over 1000 followers. But as I start to become more comfortable with this new technology or phenomenon, I realise that Twitter has the potential to be a Google-killer.

Ok I might be exaggerating slightly but if you think of Twitter as a human powered search engine then you can see where I am coming from.

Don’t think of Twitter as a place where you can find out what so and so ate for breakfast, instead use it as a tool where you can get the best search results or problem solving information from.

A Twitter account with a quality following has the capacity to do just this. It’s generally powered by people you know, and who will respond. The next time I am in KL, and unsure of how to get to my next meeting, I might just tweet someone for the directions instead of Googling it.

You know it’s not your day when…

You know it’s not your day when…a client asks you to reach the entire literate world on a budget of less than $8 million.

Spare a thought for Katherine Kinsella, president of Kinsella Media which is an ad agency specializing in notices for class action lawsuits.

When her client Google settled a class action lawsuit (brought on behalf of authors whose works it scanned for its controversial Book Project) it reportedly agreed to pay $125 million to develop a way for consumers to pay for reading a copyrighted book – Google and the writer(s) will split the earnings.

The search begins for writers.


We got the news from our electronic tip off function but it’s making waves around the world.

Basically, Kinsella Media has recommended to Google to run print ads in newspapers, magazines and journals all over the world in a bid to reach writers – because writers are readers.

No easy task. Especially since the ads intend to drive the audience to a website where the settlement is described, and has to be translated into 70 different languages, and… nobody wants to get on the bad side of Google.

if you’re reading this and you’re an author of a piece of work in Malaysia that Google has scanned for its Book Project – well its good you clicked through – I’ve just saved Kinsella Media some of that precious $8 million dollar budget.

Enjoy the long weekend!