Adnews have just published their ranking of the top 50 powerbrokers in Australian advertising, media and marketing. Our principals, David Fare and Mark Treasure are not on the list, evidently coming in at 51st and 52nd respectively.
Foxtel CEO Kim Williams was interviewed recently by the ABC’s Media Report. Full transcript here. Audio here. Edited short bits here:
“We are about the empowerment of consumers to choose what they want to watch, when they want to watch it. So that we have without question, the best children’s programming in Australia, we have the best documentary programming in Australia, we have seven independent news channels that provide a diversity of opinion and information across the globe for consumers. We have notwithstanding the very strong restrictions on sports rights in Australia, an extraordinarily comprehensive sports service, which unusually in the Australian landscape, plays sport live.
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“This year was the first year in which Western Australia surpassed Queensland in its selling rates, and I think it’s entirely attributable to the AFL.
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“One can over-train on sport in dealing with a company like Foxtel. Foxtel enjoys the highest share of viewing in Foxtel homes, in other words in subscription television homes, in the world. For the first 26 weeks of this year, over 60% of the time spent watching television in a Foxtel home, was spent viewing Foxtel. To put that in the context of, for example, British homes, about 45% to 47% of the subscriber’s time is spent watching the subscription television service in that country.
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“On average we add an extra interactive application to our platform every two weeks.
Once people get the service, they tend to keep it. We have the lowest churn rate in the world.
We achieved the fastest digital uptake in world history, we converted all of our existing customer-base to digital in 33 months, and we have seen compound average growth over the course of the last four years, of more than 10% per annum.”
In the first six months of 2007 compared to same period 2006. Some of this growth has been put down to the retail sector, well GOODNESS US, that would be an opportunity to plug TorchMedia, who we do represent in Western Australia!
The growth news coincides with an excellent feature on OOH in AdNews. Nina Lees’ article says that FMCG, Entertainment and Retail have been the mainstay of Point of Purchase but Service, Finance, Insurance and Travel have emerged as significant advertisers in the sector in the past 12 months.
Upscale tonic waters are the latest thing you know…
Have a lust at QTonic’s packaging.
Gin was invented in Holland, as a medication of course. William of Orange was the Dutch-born consort of Queen Mary. He outlawed French and German spirits, creating quite a strong market for Dutch spirits and giving rise to the expression Dutch Courage. The history of Gin and Tonic includes the fact that the English government reduced consumption of Gin from 11 million tonnes per annum to 2 million by restricting its distribution outlets. Praps they cut out bottle shops?
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And speaking of expensive mixers, here is BlingH2O; $40 a throw in handcrafted bottles with Swarovsky crystals.
One of the finest pieces of Web 2.0 communication we’ve seen. The Members Project invites Amex members to create charitable projects then vote for the one that gets the 5 million quid. Here is their smart little video.
An article in The West Australian reports on a Main Roads study – travel times for Perth motorists are up to 50% longer than 10 years ago. There will soon be more than 2 million cars in the City of Perth, all tuning in to the Australian Traffic Network wondering if they will ever get home.
From this week’s newsletter: Almost one in three Australians subscribes to STV. Week 26 newsletter shows that in all metro homes, STV scored 23.9% of female viewers 13 – 24 years. This is an increase of 21% on the same period in 2006. Subscribe to the newsletter here.
“Pay-TV has been doing extremely well, growing its audience, and to me the next half of this year will just see more of the same” – Television analyst Glen Dyer, quoted in the Media Report on Radio National this week. Full transcript here.
Media Tonic