Posts made in March, 2014

on Mar 26, 2014

By Natalie Mortimer The advertising industry is “backtracking a bit” as clients push and challenge creatives in new ways, Paul Shearer, chief creative officer at Arnold Worldwide has said. As part of Julian Hanford’s Assorted Nuts book, in association with The Drum and featuring exclusive portraits of some the UK’s top creative directors, The Drum has released an interview with Shearer via an exclusive podcast. Speaking to The Drum’s editor at large, Dave Birss last year, Shearer talked about his transition from a junior creative at BBDH in the late 80s to his position at Arnold Worldwide via spells at Leo Burnett and Bartle Read full story › Source: The Drum...

on Mar 26, 2014

By Ishbel Macleod It’s a very good week to work in the Facebook press office – not only has the company bought the virtual reality Oculus Rift platform for $2bn, but Instagram has reached 200 million users. Instagram had 30 million active users when it was bought by Facebook in April 2012 for £1bn, and revealed that it had 100m active users in February 2013. The company announced the milestone in a blog post, saying: “To the 50 million of you who’ve joined in the last six months, welcome. We’re so glad you’re here. And from our team to all 200 million Read full story › Source: The Drum...

on Mar 26, 2014

By Jennifer Faull Facebook’s buyout of Oculus, a virtual reality (VR) platform which has been making waves with its Oculus Rift headset, has had many speculating that soon users might be virtually chatting to friends in each other’s living rooms, but that’s just too obvious a use for the $2bn tech, according to AKQA’s executive creative development director, Andy Hood. “It was a bolt out of the blue, but it’s interesting,” said Hood on Facebook’s latest purchase. “A lot of people look at VR headsets and see them as gaming devices, so there will be a lot of initial surprise, with people Read full story › Source: The Drum...

on Mar 26, 2014

By Angela Haggerty New York Times CEO and president Mark Thompson has hit out at Bloomberg for putting “commercial interests ahead of journalism” after Bloomberg chairman Peter T Grauer appeared to backtrack on stories related to Chinese officials after the country issued a ban. Discussing Bloomberg’s comments during a speech at the Financial Times Digital Media Conference in London, the former director-general of the BBC said that the right to a free press was under attack both at a domestic and international level and insisted the New York Times would not bow to commercial pressures and would strive to keep to its core principles Read full story › Source: The Drum...

on Mar 26, 2014

By Kate Magee Chime Communications has posted pre-tax profits of £25 million for 2013, down two per cent year on year despite an 80 per cent boost in operating profit in the division housing VCCP. Read full story › Source: Campaign...