The Bloom Media Blog» Stuff & Nonsense

Time for replay technology Herr Blatter!

Brian Wadsworth — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 09:14:39 +0000

One wonders why one, aged old man is allowed to stand in the way of progress and not use technology for the good of the game. Thats not a question … its meant to be rhetorical!
Almost every other major sport uses it to advantage, yet Herr Blatter refuses to yield. It seems that social responsibility and governance has no part to play in FIFA?
But then I assume that IF the technology was deployed, there would be no room for such blatant “human error”!
Yes, I know, thats an emotional reaction to yesterdays bloopers by officials in the England World Cup game, but the time has come for change.
Whislt I’m on the subject of Herr B … WHY do we have to have a new world cup ball every tournament; other than for Adidas (and others?) to make more money? AND WHY did the Germans have a whole season to play with the ‘new’ ball to their advantage?? Could that have had an impact on yesterdays result?

Well ….. 3 blogs on the same (similar) topic now in 30 mins …. I feel much better … (NOT!). But at least I’ve vented my spleen!

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Why are England always ‘cheated’ out of the world cup?

Brian Wadsworth — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 09:13:50 +0000

After ‘66 when a Russian linesman made the right call we have had to suffer all sorts of under-handed tactics to oust us from footballs premier international tournament: Gordon Banks being ‘poisened’ to keep him out of the quarter-final against W. Germany (that cost us the game!), Booby Moore being arrested for shop lifting in the same tournament, Maradonna’s hand of God goal, Sol Campbells disallowed goal against Argentina, Beckham being harshly sent off against Argentina, and now … the amazing disallowed goal of this weekend! I CANNOT believe that, when almost everyone else within sight of the ball KNEW it had crossed the line by a good distance, WHY didnt the 2 officials? There is no doubt it had a major impact on the course of the game as England had to chase the game and left themselves exposed to counter-attack.
Is there a conspiracy against England? Even if not, I, for one, am fed up with these incidences having a major impact on our chances of winning this tournament. No other country has had to put up with such abuse. Enough is enough!

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An Alternative view on World Cup exit

Brian Wadsworth — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 09:08:08 +0000

An astute observation by a legendary All Black captain and tough second rower, Colin Meads, once stated that “you never beat the Welsh … you only score more points”! being welsh, this sets the tone for my latest blog ….
After ‘our’ demise from the World Cup over the weekend and in response to the knee jerk emotional reaction from ‘our’ media, I thought I’d present a less emotional perspective; even if equally biased?!
The facts of the game are, England shaded the match stats having more possession, more shots on goal and more corners than Germany; even though we played poorly and made the Germans look a much better team than I think they are. We gifted the Germans 3 if not 4 school boy error goals, had a perfectly good goal amazingly disallowed (more on that later!) and had as many good chances to score as Germany. Yet we lost 4-1. Thats life. Why all this media frenzy for the head of Capello? Its the players that didnt turn up. I’m sure they were motivated and wanted to win; they just didnt play as a team … thats where any inquest should foucs. Maybe Terry trying to keep hold of the Captaincy should be investigated; he should certainly learn that humility is part of leadership, should be part of that inquest.
Capello and his management team must also take their share of the blame but we should remember that even Alex Ferguson started at Man U with a couple of bad seasons yet look how he turned out. We also had an excellent WC qualifying run. The xenophobia that always erumpts from so called experts in the sports media is purely emotional claptrap. They couldn’t wait to take the head of Sven and that dumped us with the Max Clifford preened, teeth whitened, hair powdered, umbrella carrying Steve Mclaren! Lets not keep on repeating mistakes and show some balanced maturity ….. for a change!

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Media B..Locks! …. C’mon England!!

Brian Wadsworth — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 08:51:19 +0000

‘Our media’ are going to cost us hosting the 2018 World Cup and are about to cost us potentially winning the 2010 WC! Poor Robert Green didnt have a chance after Tyldsdales blunder as the ITV commentator; yet Green has the media dump on him …. whilst he, the commentator and cause, gets away scot-free!?
With a full 10 minutes to halftime (!!) Tyldlsley outrageously produces a mega-gaff by stating that Capellos half-time team talk will now be more positive for a change with England going into the dressing room winning 1-0 …. a commentators curse.
He probably has never kicked a football (or hit a ping-pong ball!) in his life but as a so-called professional sports commentator he should at least know how to talk about it and also know of the syndrom of the ‘commentators curse’. A couple of minutes after that comment what happens … Greens blunder … but as I say; he had no chance.
So instead of dumping on him and Capello and the rest of the team why dont they stand up and ’support’ them and stop the whinging?!
PS: I am Welsh but even I want England to win!
C’mon lads …. just do it!

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New offices – shiny shiny!

Alex Craven — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 14:01:55 +0000

Hi to all interested in our agency.

As you may be aware we moved offices over the weekend from our old home in Roundhay back to town in the Holbeck Urban Village next to the Round Foundry Media Centre.. we”ll be uploading some time elapsed video plus something a little more creative in due course but workloads amongst the after effects guys are going to mean thats not forthcoming for a while.

In the meantime I thought I’d share these pics to give you an idea..all welcome to pop in for a look and to say hello!

View from accross the Midnight Bell Courtyard

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A Blooming Brilliant SEO Role

Sarah Carling — Wed, 19 May 2010 09:07:43 +0000

We’re looking to recruit a blooming brilliant SEO to join the team here in our Leeds office at Bloom Media. If you think you are the person we’re looking for and you can answer yes to all of the questions below, drop me a line at scarling(at)bloommedia.co.uk with your CV and a few words about why you’re blooming brilliant!

I love SEO, in fact I live, eat & breath it
I love solving problems
I love working with a team of enthusiastic people
I understand that SEO is a holistic approach between on site & off site optimisation
I can demonstrate the results I have achieved as an SEO

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Are you an FMCG brand? Its time to get social and emotional!

Alex Craven — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:12:21 +0000

On the whole I’m neither a great fan nor believer in the FMCG ‘brand experience’ website.

The first and only time I have visited the Persil website was just before writing this post and having visited it is safe to say it’s likely to be the last time. Similarly, If you’ll excuse the pun, it’s hard to give crap about your toilet paper brand isn’t it, so why would you go to look at the Andrex website? (oh alright it’s got cute puppies on it but you get what I mean right?!)

It would seem most UK consumers agree.. this unscientific look at traffic volumes to FMCG brand website shows very low traffic volumes to these sites despite some of the largest above the line advertising spends in the UK.

Brand/Site	traffic
www.persil.com	14,000
www.andrexpuppy.co.uk	9,500
www.coca-cola.com	750,000
www.nescafe.co.uk	40,000

You can clearly see that brands which struggle to enjoy an emotional attachment, such as washing powders, receive far less traffic than brands that have succeeded in bridging this void.

Up until now FMCGbrands haven’t had much choice but to try and provide, somewhat tackily in some instances, games and other “fun” things to attract & keep site visitors, after all, there really wasn’t any other reason to visit their sites.

Recently though we have seen more and more FMCG brands approach us to start exploring the role social media can play in their online activity, and what we’ve been seeing could be really exciting for the future of FMCG online. Social media finally gives digital a leading role to play in the promotion of, and emotional engagement with FMCG brands!

So how and why is social media changing the game? Here’s a quick introduction to how and why your FMCG brand should take a serious look at social media:

Why?

Establish an emotional connection with your brand!

Most FMCG brands are not related to things were are naturally emotionally connected to, social media enables brands to align themselves to causes that fill this void, have the potential for huge reach and enable a dialogue between the brand and consumers.

Enable word of mouth marketing

Successful alignment of your brand with issues and causes that people care about means your brand will be carried along with the cause. Social media tools such as Facebook enable people to quickly share events such as the charitable cause they are embarking upon, if you have thought carefully about this mechanic then your brand will get carried along too!

Drive sales

Successful use of social media marketing will drive an uplift in sales, if people care about your brand they will use you they will switch to you and you will make money, this is of course the only real reason to do this.

How?

Find a big idea!

You will know what your brand stands for, so look for causes, events, charities etc that make sense for you to get involved in (you may already support these through your CSR activity) and that have the broad or niche appeal required to achieve your ambition

Integrate

As an FMCG brand manager you are probably lucky enough to have a significant above the line marketing budget, you can use it to ensure that this is a success. Once you are clear about your ‘big idea’, promote it! An integrated campaign will ensure that this builds to a critical mass.

Measure

There is a return on your investment to be had here, it may seem hard to correlate the uplift in sales to the social media campaign but there are plenty of ways in which to ensure that the campaign can be measured and its ROI calculated.

Image credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/earlysound/2186172726/

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Vodafone Experience a Twittergate of their Own

stuartpturner — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:11:05 +0000

Remember Stephen Frygate on Twitter? This afternoon chief execs at Vodafone will be extremely red faced after a massive blunder on their Twitter account.

An employee managed to tweet a fairly offensive message to the world which resulted in a spectacular page of @replies:

The company has already issued two desperate pleas for forgiveness across to all people who responded to the tweet and appear to be frozen in panic as I write this post. The one positive may be that their followers will increase out of pure rubbernecking curiosity to see how this car crash pans out.

This perfectly illustrates the dangers of social media and why as a large corporate it is important to regulate access and activity to your accounts. We speak to a lot of big brands about these issues and whether it is right for them to dive into social mediia, as a result it will be extremely interesting to see the fallout of this event and how they handle it.

Oh and by the way Vodafone – if you need reputation management from an award winning digital agency just give us a call

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Digital PR, Social Media & Content manager – Vacancy

Alex Craven — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:47:55 +0000

We have a new vacancy within Bloom (see below) we are happy consider candidates that are on their way to becoming this rather than perhaps being there already.. what we do want is someone really bright, really motivated & excited by the social media revolution and its impact on digital/SEO & PR, really straight talking and personable.. this is a new discipline for us so we are looking for someone from a PR agency background who can add new strings to our bow!

Digital PR vacancy

Bloom Media is a leading digital agency in Leeds west Yorkshire, we are enjoying a buoyant start to 2010 and are expanding our team. Last year we won a prestigious Dadi award for an innovative social media campaign and are looking to strengthen our digital marketing offering with a specialist in online PR, content strategy and social media marketing.

You will be an online and digital PR specialist, you will love online PR and social media like it is your very own offspring! You will be an budding online PR and social media expert with at least two years experience in this field and an excellent understanding of the evolving digital landscape. You will be a digital evangelist, who are able to demonstrate the effectiveness of online PR to existing and potential new clients, as well as helping the agency as a whole stay at the forefront of digital innovation and trends.

You will have solid proven experience working on website content/copy, social media and digital campaigns and understanding of how to develop relationships with key online opinion formers and brand evangelists. A brilliant nose for news and experience working on crisis and issues would be useful as well as the ability to drive and direct campaigns to support traditional PR activity. Bringing blogger contacts would be advantageous and as would stakeholder and media relations and management experience/exposure.

The Role
You will join an existing team: setting the direction for all online PR activity within the agency, working closely with the SEO and development teams on new business pitches, and developing existing client relationships. The ideal candidate will have an excellent knowledge of relevant UK online media.

You will have:

- Great communication skills, both over the phone and face-to-face
- Excellent copy writing skills
- The ability to meet strict deadlines
- Proactive approach with the ability to use own initiative
- Ability to deal effortlessly with several tasks
- Excellent telephone manner and team working skills
- An obsession with digital media!

The Agency
We are vibrant digital agency with a great blue chip client base including some of the UK’s most innovative online brands. We’re passionate about digital and love our jobs, we’re looking for someone who shares this and wants to thrive in an environment full of likeminded individuals with a great team spirit.

Update: Sorry – this position has been filled!

Keep checking back for future opportunities.

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Merry Christmas from Bloom! hope you’re ready for this… ;-)

Alex Craven — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:36:02 +0000

We think we’ve excelled ourselves this year with our very own version of ‘Little Drummer Boy’ (eat your heart out Wogan & Jones).. I think its safe to say that Bloom isn’t a hot bed of vocal talent but those of you who know us, we hope this brings a smile to your face and i suspect a tear to your eye for those who don’t well this might be a little wierd..

Enjoy!

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