(Hong Kong & London) The judges of the i-Mego TopTrakz Challenge, the new Europe-wide music competition designed to showcase the best talent amongst unsigned European bands, have selected a winner – and an unplanned second-place finisher. The HarringTones from the United Kingdom won for their track Age after a panel of expert judges picked them from a 35-strong shortlist. But the judges were so overwhelmed with the quality of entries they decided to add a second prize, choosing Germany-based singer Cathleen for her song Maybe Someday.

The judging panel also selected 10 runners-up. The TopTrakz Chellenge, created by global headphones brand i-Mego, attracted hundreds of entries from across Europe. The submissions represented a wide range of musical genres, including rock, pop, hip hop, reggae, electronic, house, punk, grunge, heavy metal, folk and R&B. The expert judging panel made its choices based partly on artistic merit and partly on the voting support for entrants by their fans via i-Mego’s Facebook page.

One of the judges noted: “The HarringTones show great energy and spark. Age is simply a fantastic rocking track. It’s just a really well-crafted song and the band demonstrates some fine musicianship while creating a sharp and edgy sound. These guys should have a great future. And Cathleen has this beautiful, textured folky sound and a gorgeous voice to match.”

As the winning band, The HarringTones will receive top-range i-Mego headphones and a day of recording in a professional studio, while second place finisher Cathleen will receive i-Mego headphones and a half a day of studio time. All runners-up will receive products from i-Mego’s range of high-quality audio gear. Links to both the winning tracks and those of the runners-up can be found on the i-Mego Facebook page. The runners-up (in alphabetical order) are:

404 (France) for Roots Addict

Asthor Odinn (Iceland) for Mamma

The Blacktie Affairs (UK) for Wanna Be Free

David Welfare (UK) for Go

EB11 (Spain) for System Breakdown

Joyshop (UK) for Frost

Kosmonuts (Italy) for Slowdown

Moon Visionairies (UK) for Mr Hollywood

PostMortuM (Netherlands) for Stompin’ 2010

Skeletonjones (Ireland) for The Great Escape

The TopTrakz Challenge is a unique music competition launched across Europe in August for unsigned bands and solo artists of all types. Entrants were invited to submit up to two original numbers. The idea is to help promote music of all types made by great musicians looking for their first big commercial break.

Miranda Hudson, Marketing Director for i-Mego, commented: “The competition attracted hundreds of entries from around Europe and demonstrated that there is real musical talent in pretty much every European country. The shortlist featured so many great tracks, representing just about every type of music, that the judging panel struggled to single out just one band or artist as the winner – so we decided to add the second prize.

“Our congratulations go to the winners and the 10 runners up. We hope The HarringTones and Cathleen can benefit from the studio time we are giving them as a prize and hopefully it will go some way towards helping them establish themselves on the European music scene. Finding music that you love is what i-Mego is all about.”

- ENDS -

i-Mego

i-Mego is the global audio accessory brand that broke onto the market in 2009 and now has a distribution network across Europe, Scandinavia and North America.  Bridging the gap between cool and quality, i-Mego headphones not only produce high-fidelity sound, but are also stylish gear for street, club or studio.

i-Mego products may be found at http://www.i-mego.com

The central point of this video is how Facebook and the like become all consuming.  Your friendships and relationships are just as digital as they are ‘real’.  The more you use it, the more you propagate it, despite its sometimes negative consequences (queue the girlfriend dumping the central character) .

The one thing that makes this so clever is not actually the video itself but the effect of it.  Bearing in mind the point its making, the irony of producing such an effective video on social media platforms, like this video, is that it will inevitably go viral.  People will pass it on, show their friends, and yes, blog about it. Therefore, I feel really rather cliché for (a) having found this on a social networking site and (b) for doing what I’m about to do – but as it’s so good, have to share with you.  What this does prove however is that video or any other media really does rely on good content and clever concepts for the viral phenomenon to happen.

Watch and enjoy … and if you want to be part of the cliché why not share it too!

New survey reveals main support is for proportional representation – not represented in forthcoming May referendum

A majority of the British electorate want to get rid of the current First-past-the-Post parliamentary voting system, and replace it either with the Alternative Vote or with Proportional Representation, according to new research from analysts Lindsell Marketing.

In a poll of over 2,000 British adults, just 29% wanted to keep the current voting system, with 20% in favour of the Alternative Vote system (the subject of a national referendum on May 5^th 2011) and 45% wanting some form of proportional representation.

The results of this Lindsell survey call into question the validity of the May 2011 referendum, in that it does not reflect a true choice of voting systems.  The Alternative Vote is regarded by many as fairer than First-past-the-Post, but does not ensure that the national party balance of MPs is proportionate to the total volume of votes cast for each party.  To be truly representative of available voting system options, the May referendum should also present citizens with proportional systems such as Additional Member, Alternative Vote Plus, Single Transferable Vote or Party List.

Support for First-past-the-Post is skewed towards men (34%), whereas a higher percentage of women (69%) want AV or PR, compared with men (61%).

Regional preferences show the electorate the South East and the Midlands have the strongest desire to keep First-past-the-Post, with Wales (71%) and Yorkshire & Humberside (74%) most strongly in favour of a change to AV or PR.

Paul Lindsell, Managing Director of Lindsell Marketing, comments, “We felt it high time that a preliminary barometer reading of voting system preferences should be taken, at a sensible distance from last May’s elections, but also early enough to inform the structure of the proposed May 5^th Referendum on electoral reform.

“It is startlingly obvious from these survey findings that to conduct a referendum where the only options are First-past-the-Post or the Alternative Vote is utterly nonsensical.  The strongest demand amongst the electorate is clearly for some form of proportional representation, where the balance of the national vote is reflected in the balance of parties represented in the House of Commons.  It is even more evident that a clear (proportionate) minority of voters want to hold onto the old voting system.

“Debates within and between the parties about whether they would be electorally better off with the old system or a proportional alternative have become increasingly sterile and nakedly self-interested in recent years.  Now, even within the old system, the country is being run by a coalition, seriously undermining the supposed link between proportional representation and weak government.  The British people have spoken.  Surely is now time for politicians of all colours to face to the inevitability of electoral change, if they are not to further lose the public’s confidence.”

Methodology

2,003 British adults were interviewed between 25^th October and 5^th November 2010.  The interview sample was representative by age, gender, region and social grade.  Respondents were asked about their preferred parliamentary voting system, first-past-the-post, the alternative vote, or some form of proportional representation.  Respondents were able to view a clear and simple explanation of how each system works, in order that their responses were fully informed.

© Lindsell Marketing, November 2010

As ConLib cuts just keep on coming, we thought we’d canvass the opinion of senior managers for their views on essential service areas for the chop. Read a summary of the results here.

With a track record for successful award entries for our clients – here’s a case study example for those interested - we thought we’d share a few tips to help you in your planning for next year.

1. Try to build your case study portfolio throughout the year so you have a selection of well written and already approved customer stories that you can potentially enter.

2. Speaking to your customers about entering awards well in advance gives them a chance to organise themselves and appropriate approvals in good time – this will help with the last minute sign-off.

3. Make sure that there is tangible evidence for project/contract success and that your customer is happy for you to include quantifiable outcomes – this will be the key to whether you are short-listed or not!

4. Tell a story – an awards entry is not a sales tool or piece of collateral. If you treat it as such, you will only end up alienating the judges.  The entry needs to give the judges a real idea of what your organisation has done to deserve this award and why. So you should look to build a picture of the original customer pain, aims or goals, solution implementation and benefits. Just copying and pasting from an existing piece of material isn’t good enough.

5. Read the entry criteria – you don’t want to waste time writing up a great entry which may not qualify.

In short, drafting successful award entries requires a fine balance between persuasiveness without being salesy or pushy.  Knowledge and experience of tailoring content to different audiences is vital if you’re to have a chance of being short-listed.

I wonder if there’s an Award out there for writing award entries?  Perhaps that’s one for PR Week …

If got right, the tagline can be an effective and memorable device that is a true reflection of what your company does and your brand values. If got wrong, it could be the business world’s equivalent of an awful bar-side chat-up line.

While a number of great consumer taglines spring to mind, it seems to be more of a challenge to get it right in the B2B environment and so easy to go off message. Take for example the tagline for IPEX 2010 – the international print exhibition that happens every four years:

Perfect time. Perfect place. One unique opportunity.

This is just a bit too cryptic. It doesn’t tell us what the event is all about. There’s no mention of print or communications anywhere here. One unique opportunity starts to say something but if you didn’t know what IPEX is all about then the audience is left thinking, “One unique opportunity for what …?”

In the B2B world, marketers have the challenge of competing with their consumer counterparts whose brands and products naturally lend themselves to more catchy, funny, or even ‘sexy’ lines. The B2B remit however is more complex and tone will most likely remain businesslike. Yet there’s so much scope for effective tagline creation.

Working with a specialist agency who understands the B2B and vertical landscape is important. A good tagline that reflects your core value proposition and cutting edge principles can often be a perfect springboard for consistent messaging across all your content. And as we all know, “content is king”.

1. Don’t sit there while you try to fix the problem and hope that it won’t affect your customers. Why not be pro-active and inform customers in the affected areas that you’re working to sort the problem out? They’ll appreciate your honesty and forward planning a whole lot more.
2. Don’t try to make out that the business or person calling up is in fact not a customer. That will just make you look (a) silly and (b) show that your internal systems cannot perform the simplest of tasks like confirming whether you are a customer or not.
3. Don’t say that the problem is ‘only’ affecting 500 customers. Any number going into three digits sounds like a lot to me, particularly when so many organisations rely on broadband to complete every day business tasks and important transactions.
4. Don’t take 5 working days to try to get some sort of resolution or organise an engineer to be sent out.  A lot can and should be happening in 5 business days with a good internet connection!
5. Don’t refuse to offer any apology whatsoever, ignore the requirement for some sort of compensation or provide an interim solution to ensure business continuity.  With mobile broadband (you know those dongles/USBs that you see everyone using) a commonly available service these days there’s no excuse not to provide your business customers with a short-term solution while you fix the problem.

The business world, and marketers in particular, are always trying to highlight the importance of customer experience and crisis management in maintaining good relationships and stemming churn rates. Our recent office experience just proves that large corporates are still not practising what they preach to handle these situations effectively.

Okay rant over.  Anyone know of a good broadband provider that doesn’t have a two letter acronym as part of its name…?

Since the ’90s, consumers have associated Marmite with the love it or hate it tagline thanks to their ever successful above the line advertising. Today, they have very cleverly extended it to everything they do, including their web presence and CSR activity by offering consumers free Horrid Henry audio books in association with Reading for Life when they buy their jars of Marmite.

This is a great example of how you can marry interesting and fresh content with existing strong brand messaging.  Keep up the good work, Marmite.  We’d welcome any ‘samples’ you might want to send through to the Lindsell office … but perhaps not the Marmite flavoured washing powder.

Last year saw a turning point in its organisation. The organisers stepped up their game in terms of thought leadership, and this year are offering up to 80 sessions and keynotes from leading industry organisations like Google, Chartered Institute of Marketing and YouTube. This was also helped by the move in 2008 from the smaller Olympia venue to a larger presence at Earls Court. All this has transformed the show into a valuable industry leading event at a time when it would have been easy for the organisers to sit on their laurels being the only DM show around.

Thought leadership, analysis and industry insight has clearly become the focus, drawing in the visitors and exhibitors. And yet looking at the TFM press room, the exhibitor publicity is seriously lacking in effective thought leadership content.  The usual, mundane, “We’re going to be at TFM, this is what we do, please come and visit our stand” is the rule rather than the exception.  Snoozzz. Why not generate original research or publicise your client successes to help you stand out and draw interested punters in?

Luckily my colleague Hugh Filman will be visiting the show.  If you want advice on how to create an effective trade show PR strategy, that is more than a bland press release, flag him down – he’ll be more than happy to help!

LONDON – The latest research from London-based working capital solutions provider Demica shows that firms are increasingly seeking to raise finance from traditional asset categories such as trade receivables. The report, which surveyed over 1,500 firms with over 50 employees in the UK, France and Germany, revealed that Europe is turning back to trade receivables, considered to be one of the most liquid and creditworthy asset categories on the balance sheet. The current scarcity of credit was listed as a major setback, encouraging firms to raise a greater proportion of finance in this way. A significant number of firms also reported having no other choice but to offer asset categories such as trade receivables if they were to convince banks to extend lines of credit.

Some 36% of European companies (UK 31%, France 43% and Germany 34%) reported that they had already raised finance against the security of their trade receivables. Furthermore, finance raised on this asset category is set to grow substantially over the next 12-18 months. Just under half of respondents (44%) said they planned to increase their levels of finance raised against the security of trade receivables. Germany and the UK (48% and 44% accordingly) showed the most interest in developing this technique, suggesting that they will soon match already elevated levels of uptake in France..

The European Securitisation Forum forecast overall securitisation issuance to fall to €272 billion in 2008, the lowest level since 2004.[1] However, the decline in overall securitisation activity is thought to be a direct result of problems caused by low quality assets – with solid assets such as trade receivables not experiencing the same negative impact. Securitisation of more robust, stable assets such as trade receivables is expected to rise. Demica’s research sought to quantify this, and found that 56% (UK 54%, France 53% and Germany 61%)  of European firms believe the scarcity of standard bank credit will see large firms choosing to raise a greater proportion of their finance on the basis of trade receivables securitisations.

Banks seem equally keen for firms to offer this asset category, as the solution lifts the lid on lending without taking on unacceptable risk. Over the last year, commentators have witnessed a rising demand for greater levels of security from banks’ clients to avoid facing caps on their credit limits. Demica’s research showed that 61% (UK 57%,  France 64% and Germany 63%) of European firms had experienced this, recognising that certain banks are unwilling to extend credit unless businesses can offer stable assets such as trade receivables as security.

Demica CEO Phillip Kerle comments: “Scarcity of traditional credit has become a real problem over the last two years. If European firms are to raise finance successfully in the future, the focus will have to be taken off liquid assets. Trade receivables are leading the way as invoice debt is seen to be a high quality security and therefore has the ability to improve access to credit significantly.

“Astute firms are finding ways around the current liquidity crisis by expanding the level of finance raised on the security of their trade receivables. These lines of finance have the additional benefit of being less complex than other transactions and although, to a certain extent, they remain complicated, they are relatively easy to monitor and therefore incur less risk. Specialist technology-based services are available that automate these processes and provide regular monitoring and reporting of the asset base. We can expect take-up of such services to soar over the next year. “

For further press information, please contact:

Marc Gossage – marc@lindsellmarketing.com – +44 (0)207 402 0510

Paul Lindsell – paul@lindsellmarketing.com – +44 (0)207 402 0510

About Demica
Demica Limited is a market leading provider of specialised working capital solutions providing consulting, advisory and technology services to a diverse range of multi-national clients. Demica works with the world’s leading banks, private equity sponsors and global corporations to implement innovative solutions to their securitisation and supply chain finance requirements. Demica’s technology is used around the globe running invoice-based transactions on its Citadel® platform. Based in London, Demica is a wholly owned subsidiary of the J.M. Huber Corporation, one of the largest privately held companies in the United States.

For more information, visit www.demica.com