Building on their open and friendly approach, smoothie brand Innocent has just published its first annual report. It’s not a legal or regulatory requirement, it’s done purely to engage more with its passionate users and other interested folks.

It’s a fun and informative read. Plus it balances a discussion of their successes in 2007 by giving equal prominence to, well, ‘things they learned from’ (including being called out by BBC’s Watchdog for their exploding packaging, and that polarising deal with McDonald’s).

It’s embedded below but if you want to read it and don’t have bionic eyes then you can download your very own copy here.

Coinciding with its publication, Innocent also ran the first AGM…

‘…a day when we open the doors of Fruit Towers, ask our drinkers to come and hear what we’ve been up to and let them tell us face to face what we could be doing better.”

Here’s one of the videos from the event - we can’t imagine too many AGMs being this much fun

Series:AdTalk
Series:MarketingTalk

Our December ‘07 Spotlight column in ESOMAR’s Research World magazine

Barely nine years old, few would deny that Google has had a significant impact on the world. But does Google bode well for the MR sector?

Suddenly, size has its downside.

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Forrester Research recently published an 18-page report/detailed thought-piece provocatively titled ‘The Connected Agency’, discussing the model they foresee successful advertising agencies migrating towards to overcome many of the disruptive influences and changes in consumer behaviour we’re seeing.

Needless to say we were interested in exploring these issues and challenges with one of the authors of the report. And we roped in Tony Effik, planning head at a digital agency, to better understand the ramifications not just for the advertising world but also for brand marketers, and for media, marketing and research agencies.

It’s not a pretty picture…

UPDATE: In the podcast we mention that the report’s free. Actually, it was free for a while but now they’ve started charging!

 STARRING 

• Mary Beth Kemp, report co-author and Principal analyst, Forrester Research
• Tony Effik, Head of planning, Publicis Modem. Tony also blogs about the social graph here

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14mins

 STARRING 

• Gian Fulgoni, Chairman and co-founder, comScore

As well as popping into see Max during our recent US trip, we also caught up with Gian Fulgoni of comScore in the Chicago office (their HQ is in Virginia where CEO Magid Abraham and much of the engineering team is based).

comScore is one of the main providers of internet measurement and competes with Nielsen Online (formerly Nielsen NetRatings), Compete.com, Hitwise, and Quantcast as well as others. That said, comScore and Nielsen are generally considered the bigger boys of the bunch given how often their share data is cited in the media (e.g. monthly shares in the lucrative online search market).

The internet measurement sector is very technology-hungry. In the early years, comScore literally ate up millions of dollars to get its IT infrastructure established and working right. It has one of world’s largest databases as a result of the oceans of data being sent back daily from panelist PCs (a widget records their internet activity, with their permission, and siphons it, along with detailed transaction data, over to HQ). These efforts were rewarded when, in 2007, comScore was annointed one of 47 technology pioneers at the WEF in Davos.

2007 was arguably a good year for comScore’s initial investors. 2007’s IPO provided for a much-needed liquidation for this band of investors who backed the firm since 2000, including after the dotcom bust when venture financing virtually dried up.

At one point comScore’s market cap hit $1bn; it’s still pretty amazing to think that a company that has only been trading for around seven years is already worth over half as much as TNS, a widely admired and solid growth firm, but one still largely based around traditional research techniques.

In this short chat with Gian, we discuss an area that he’s passionate about: why ad. dollars are only slowly moving online. It’s that old chestnut: online finally commands a significant amount of consumer attention (compared with other media such as tv), and yet still only commands a fraction of the advertising dollars spent on tv and other mass-market media. We also ask him about whether Facebook is worth the reported $15bn, the conversation having taken place shortly after Microsoft made its investment.

comScore is Gian’s second business success. Prior to this, both him and Magid led IRI through a period of rapid growth. And in-between, he found time to invest in Gibsons, a successful steak restaurant in Chicago (which we, of course, had to sample - very yummy!).

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 ESOMAR CONGRESS ‘07  In the final of three preCasts ahead of this year’s Berlin-based Congress, conference chair John Kearon creates a stirring debate with three of the keynotes (an Oscar-winning film director with two best-selling authors and philosopher) on creating and delivering excellence.

If you haven’t already, do listen to the earlier podcast with Florian, James and Lou in which they briefly introduce themselves

Listen to other podcasts in this series

 STARRING 

• Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Film Director, The Lives of Others
• James Surowiecki, Author, The Wisdom of Crowds
• Professor Lou Marinoff, Author, The Middle Way: Finding Happiness in a World of Extremes, Philosopher
• John Kearon, Chief Juicer, BrainJuicer (Host)

This is an ESOMAR sponsored podcast and is published according to our yumminess policy

Listen to the podcast here

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We’ve had great success working with conference organisers like ESOMAR and IIR to evangelise flagship events, success being measured by the resultant buzz/ word-of-mouth and download stats.

But wouldn’t it be cool if someone actually decided to go to a conference as a result of listening to one of the podcasts? Well, the kind Ruth McNeil, who handles marketing for the BIG Conference who we recently collaborated with, came back with just that message.

Ruth says:

…One person said that the podcasts had influenced their decision to attend (a first timer who came to the whole conference). I am pleased that so many had listened to the [pre-]conference [podcasts]!

Fantastic news.

Podcasting works because people are drawn to interesting conversations. Not conversations they feel they must listen to. Conversations that they want to listen to. That’s what makes it a perfect medium for sponsors of all kinds who want to get their compelling message across to movers and shakers.

Get in touch in case you fancy a chat (contact details as always in left sidebar).

End of advertisement

Series:Events Series:ESOMAR Series:EMRE Series:BIG Series:Wildfire

Panel discussion:

• Johnny Vulkan, Anomaly NYC
• Tom Savigar, The Future Laboratory
• Reuben Steiger, Millions of Us
• Cameron Saunders, Channel 4
• Miguel Fluxa Orti, Camper
• Jon Kamen, @radical.media
• Mark Tutssel, Leo Burnett
• Paul Kemp-Robertson, Contagious magazine (host)

19mins | Recorded @ Wildfire ‘07 | More podcasts in this series

Coverage

• Transparency, authenticity, confidence, trust
• Losing control of the ‘conversation’
• Taking risks, experimentation
• Delivering rewarding stories, ideas, advertising
• Getting teens used to paying for music, new business models
• The age of collaboration
• Old media, new media: it’s just media

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Reuben Steiger, founder and CEO of virtual world agency/consultancy Millions of Us, and former evangelist for Linden Lab, creators of virtual world Second Life, chats with Jess Greenwood of Contagious magazine about…

• The genesis of Reuben’s interest in Second Life
• Coping with the Second Life Liberation Army
• The virtual worlds landscape and the likely impact of Sony’s new virtual world ‘Home’
• Are virtual worlds a reaction to an alienation in real life?

7mins | Recorded @ Wildfire ‘07 | More podcasts in this series

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Cameron Saunders, Head of Marketing (digital) at Channel 4 TV, and Mark Tutssel, Chief Creative Officer at Leo Burnett Worldwide, chat about…

• The controversial Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle
• Earth Hour
• The John West salmon viral ad.
• How 4oD is performing (4oD is Channel 4’s online on-demand service)
• Whether UK brands are as experimental as US brands

8mins | Recorded @ Wildfire ‘07 | More podcasts in this series

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