Odeon has unveiled a new website, designed and built in partnership with Amaze and Krankikom, as the cinema group looks to make the site simpler with improved user experience.

Users of the new site will benefit from customised experiences, including the ability to watch enhanced trailers on a newly designed player which, inspired by the immersive quality of cinema, is now much larger and wider.

Commercial director of Odeon, Andy Edge, said: “We wanted to create a platform which replicated the immersive experience of visiting an Odeon cinema, and we think that the improved functionality and enhanced features and interactivity of the new website deliver just that.”

The website has also been designed to allow for optimal browsing on smart phones and tablets with a new long page design and with all website functions fully compatible for mobile devices.

Natalie Gross, CEO of Amaze, said: “We wanted to help build a site that would break out of the current industry mould and really reflect the unique Odeon cinema experience. In embarking on this journey towards a single brand experience, we’ve spent time redeveloping all aspects of the site in partnership with Odeon – covering everything from detailed research of emotive design across digital innovators to the impressive development and build with Krankikom.”

The site will also now include a ‘buzz’ rating function, which allows users to share their level of anticipation and excitement for upcoming films.

Trade magazine PR Week has today announced that it is relaunching its print edition as a monthly, with the last weekly issue to be out this Friday.

The brand, part of the Haymarket stable, will publish its first monthly edition on 9 October and will relaunch its website on the same day.

Announcing the news on its website, PR Week alluded to "weekly digital products" that will follow its relaunch and a monthly interactive app that will be made available in November.

PR Week brand editor Ruth Wyatt said: "We will continue to deliver all the elements our readers tell us they need and want, alongside some things they won’t be expecting.”

It is yet to be confirmed whether the magazine will change its name to PR Month, or stick with its PR Week moniker.

Creative agency Rosie Lee has completed a redesign of the UK headquarters of global brand Nike in London.

The redesign was completed on Friday.

In a statement announcing the design, Nike said Rosie Lee used campaign props from the Nike archive.

BT Sport has launched its ‘Name that Team’ competition, which asks fans to find and name all 44 sports teams hidden in visual clues in an illustration.

The competition, which aims to encourage sports fans to think laterally and really put their sporting knowledge to the test, will be open until 30 September.

Participants that find and name all 20 teams from the Barclays Premier League will be entered into a prize draw to win a pair of tickets to a Barclays Premier League game of their choice.

Likewise, fans that find and name all 12 rugby teams from the Aviva Premiership will be entered into a prize draw to win a pair of tickets to an Aviva Premiership game.

Majestic Wine has partnered with SDL Fredhopper as it revamps its website, with changes to include tailoring the range of wines available online to an individual user by matching it to the selection available in their local store.

Users can specify delivery options in advance, and results are returned depending on where the delivery is going.

Richard Weaver, e-commerce director at Majestic Wine, said: “When customers shop online with us, they are actually shopping with their local Majestic store, so they get all the benefits that this brings in terms of an expanded range and passionate customer service.

“These new ways of personalising our customer experience are being achieved by joining up the channels to make the entire shopping journey more relevant to the individual.”

Customers can review and rate wines, and can also limit searches to only show wines with a minimum rating from other customers.

The specialist wine retailer will also access customer data and purchase history to send out a personalised autumn print promotion which will be tailored according to the types of wine each customer tends to buy. For example, if their online purchase history suggests they enjoy wine from Spain, the promotion will feature predominantly Spanish wines.

Allyson Tremblay, UK sales director at SDL Fredhopper, said: “Wine is a product with many attributes that can be used to make a selection. Different people search for wine in different ways; some are oriented by geography, while others may look for a specific grape variety, positive ratings or have a very fixed budget in mind. We are making sure that customers are able to navigate the Majestic Wine catalogue as effortlessly as possible – this means providing a truly flexible browsing experience.”

The Beans Group, owners of the student website studentbeans.com, has launched a new independent brand, Voxburner, to house research reports and events such as Youth Marketing Strategy and the Youth 100.

The new company will report on the new generation and focus on youth consumer insight that helps brands and agencies shape strategy, product development and communications.

Led by head of insight, Luke Mitchell, who ran youth marketing consultancy Reach Students, Voxburner has also appointed Gerard Ward, previously of Time Out, as editor.

Mitchell said: “It was clear from the success of the groundwork of The Beans Group’s research and the popularity of events that brands and agencies had an appetite for a dynamic new service. We’re committed to delivering daily website insights, monthly specialist reports backed by fresh research and a schedule of unique events. The name Voxburner comes from opinion and voice - ‘Vox’ - and the idea of ‘burning’ data to create digestible insights. The team is excited to be launching officially after building up content over the past few months.”

Simon Eder will head up the events in his role as commercial director, having held the same role at The Beans Group since 2012.

Golden Wonder launched a timely campaign yesterday around Gareth Bale’s record-breaking transfer to Real Madrid.

Rather than mocking something up and having it sit in the office until the announcement, Golden Wonder ran with the idea of a tweet wall outside White Hart Lane and driving around North London which displayed a running stream of good wishes from Spurs fans to Gareth Bale.

The day-long campaign resulted in over 450 tweets using the #goodluckgareth hashtag, the majority of which were positive.

Google has teamed with Nestlé having announced that the name of the latest version of its Android mobile operating system will be KitKat.

The operating system has been named after the chocolate wafer bar, leading to Nestlé running a tie in competition across 18 markets such as the UK, Australia, Brazil, Germany, India, Japan, Middle East, Russia and the United States.

Head of marketing for Nestlé, Patrice Bula, said that the move would help KitKat in terms of social media and engagement.
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“We continue to build on its strong digital presence with interactive, creative branding campaigns," she added.

Just over half of the UK public, 52 per cent, cite TV as the advertising platform which has the most impact on them, according to a report published by Deloitte.

The annual survey ranked TV at the top for the fifth year on the trot although in that time the proportion of respondents naming TV in their top three has slipped from a high of 64 per cent in 2009.

Newspaper advertising suffered an even more precipitous decline in that time, dipping from 30 per cent in 2009 to just 14 per cent in 2013; with the comparable figures for radio being 18 per cent and eight per cent.

Television also performed well relative to newcomer digital formats with opt-in emails rated as being amongst the top three formats by between 13 and 14 per cent of respondents between 2011 and 2013. Video ads and banner ads were ranked lowest, garnering support from just 2 per cent of respondents who placed it in their top two.

Jodi Birkett, TMT partner at Deloitte in the north west said: “Television advertising continues to have a big impact on the public and capture their imagination because it consistently attracts a large audience, with a typical viewer watching more than four hours a day.

“Although we are over a decade into our digital revolution, for every hour spent watching television, we spend about three minutes on YouTube and two minutes on Facebook.”

In the UK there are now close to a trillion adverts screened each year with 12 per cent of TV’s sold in 2012 being 42in or larger.

The ASA has ruled in favour of footballer Wayne Rooney in respect of a marketing tweet issued from his official Twitter account over concern from a complainant that it was not obviously discernible as a marketing communication.

This concerned a message penned by the star saying: “The pitches change. The killer instinct doesn't. Own the turf, anywhere. @NikeFootball #myground pic.twitter.com/22jrPwdgC1”

Responding to the complaint Nike stated that they believed consumers would understand that a Rooney tweet referencing @NikeFootball would only be used for marketing purposes, something that the ASA In their ruling the ASA concurred with in their own ruling which read: “We considered the reference to Nike Football was prominent and clearly linked the tweet with the Nike brand.

“Whilst we considered that not all Twitter users would be aware of Wayne Rooney's sponsorship deal with Nike or the particular Nike campaign the tweet promoted, we considered that in the particular context of a tweet by Wayne Rooney the wording of the initial statement was such that in combination with "@NikeFootball" and "#myground", the overall effect was that the tweet was obviously identifiable as a Nike marketing
communication.”

No further action in the case was deemed to be necessary.

Public health minister Anna Soubry has blamed ‘gorgeous’ cigarette packaging for her decision to take up the habit as a teenager.

Describing their branding as a ‘symbol of glamour’ Soubry’s intervention comes in the wake of the government’s decision to shelve plans to mandate plain packaging for all cigarettes in order to assess more evidence.

Speaking in the Commons Soubry recounted her own experiences at the age of 17 where she described the ‘power of the package’ as being a ‘powerfully important driver’ in drawing young people to addiction.

Soubry said: “I want to make it absolutely clear, like so many smokers I took up smoking before the age of 18. It’s one of these moments where you always most want to confess.

“It sounds very weak, I accept. But the power of the packet as a 17-year-old in Worksop, working in a toy shop, which in those days sold cigarettes.

“I have never forgotten the first time I bought a packet of cigarettes and I deliberately chose a packet of St Moritz because they were green and they were gorgeous and they were a symbol of, may I say, glamour.

“And I distinctly remember, it was the power of that package, the opening of the cellophane, the gold and the silver, that is so powerfully important to many people who take up smoking."

In response to the speech a government spokesperson said: “These are questions, understandably, with regard to plain packaging. The Government set out the basis on which it was going forward and the rationale for that... There’s been no change."

Fashion chain Burberry has recruited George Barnett, frontman of These New Puritans, to launch its new men’s fragrance, Brit Rhythm.

The music inspired campaign will conclude with three live gigs in London, New York and Singapore and takes the form of a short film in which Barnett gets up close and personal with actress Suki Waterhouse.

This sees the model come musician spray himself with the fragrance before grabbing a guitar and strumming some tunes.

The short film dovetails with an in-store capsule collection of clothes and accessories with Facebook and Twitter users who visit their website given the opportunity to win tickets for the live events.

To be in with a chance of winning entrants must sign up for a scented temporary tattoo in the shape of the Brit Rhythm bottle.

Christopher Bailey, chief creative officer of Burberry said: “Sexy and provocative, Brit Rhythm is inspired by the exhilaration and adrenaline of live music and the electric energy of the crowd.”

The Irishman Whiskey has undergone a rebrand led by Craig Mackinlay of Breeze Creative.

With the objective of honing in and refining the brand, a new brand identity and packaging was created.

The message of ‘making it personal’ became central to the brand positioning and the new packaging features a portrait of Bernard Walsh ‘The Irishman’ on the label, aiming to reflect the quality of the brand.

The new branding was launched at Vinexpo in June.

Nearly 300,000 attempts at accessing websites categorised as pornography originated from computers inside Parliament. The figures were released by IT managers at Westminster in a response to a Freedom of Information request. It covers devices linked to the Parliamentary Network, including those used by MPs and peers, their staff and other employees.

A spokesman for Parliament attempted to downplay the figures, suggesting real world events were inflated figures. IT managers are also reported to be investigating the reason for wide variations between the monthly figures - with as many as 114,844 in November but just 15 in February, claiming that pop-ups, auto-refresh and web-designs were the real reasons that figures appeared to vary so much.

A House of Commons spokeswoman said: "We do not consider the data to provide an accurate representation of the number of purposeful requests made by network users due to the variety of ways in which websites can be designed to act, react and interact and due to the potential operation of third party software."

Prime Minister David Cameron announced last month that porn sites will be filtered by major ISPs by the year 2014 under plans that require consumers to ‘opt in’. The default position will be to that content will be unavailable unless consumers choose to receive it.

Online pornography was "corroding childhood" and "distorting" children's understanding of sex and relationships, he argued.

An international study looking at the impact of smart TV on advertising effectiveness has concluded that interactive formats are the best way to increase brand engagement.

It found that connectivity is a key factor for 78 per cent of British Smart TV users and that 31 per cent of global viewers engage in an action as a result of a Smart TV ad. Moreover smart TV ads which dovetail with traditional TV advertising result in an increase in the advertising effect of TV campaigns.

Conducted by smartclip, the multiscreen and video brand advertising platform, the pilot study follows recent research indicating that 12.7m Smart TV’s were shipped in Q1, 2013.

Shirlene Chandrapal, SVP of connected TV at smartclip commented: “Our research has shown that combined with ads on traditional TV, Smart TV ads are extremely effective for engaging viewers, and as a focal medium the TV set continues to bring the family together in the living room. Traditional TV is losing users to Smart TV though; its interactive quality creates a deeper engagement between the viewer and the content being viewed, including brand advertising.

“By creating interactive and incentive driven campaigns for Smart TV, brands can more easily track the influence of their content and measure engagement and resulting actions amongst the UK market. All over the world users are now looking for a more connected viewing experience where apps and the internet play a larger role, so it is imperative that brands monitor whether they are achieving this by measuring engagement. This research has revealed that Smart TV has huge potential to engage audiences and we expect to see more and more advertisers capitalising on this platform in more creative ways.”

Spotify is on the receiving end of a lawsuit from dance brand Ministry of Sound over allegations that it infringed its compilation album copyrights by hosting playlists which mirrored their content.

Legal action followed a refusal by the music streaming service to delete users playlists which mimicked such albums, prompting the commencement of legal proceedings at the UK High Court.

Ministry of Sound chief executive Lohan Presencer said that he had been making such requests since 2012, adding: “It's been incredibly frustrating: we think it's been very clear what we're arguing, but there has been a brick wall from Spotify.”

Ambiguities exist on whether a compilation album qualifies for copyright protection however as Spotify has the rights to stream all the tracks individually.

Presencer argues however: “What we do is a lot more than putting playlists together: a lot of research goes into creating our compilation albums, and the intellectual property involved in that. It's not appropriate for someone to just cut and paste them.

“Everyone is talking about curation, but curation has been the cornerstone of our business for the last 20 years. If we don't step up and take some action against a service and users that are dismissing our curation skills as just a list, that opens up the floodgates to anybody who wants to copy what a curator is doing."

Police have sited social media service Facebook as being responsible for over 1,000 criminal offences in the UK last year; with incidents ranging from sexual grooming to harassment.

Law enforcement officials are concerned by the increasing ‘help’ such online services provide to the perpetrators of such crimes, such as the case of a registered sex offender who used the platform to contact a 14 year old girl to ask for sex.

In a separate case a jilted husband was also picked up after posting naked pictures of his ex-wife on the network.

Other less serious cases include examples of convicted criminals boasting of their behaviour.

A spokesperson for the social network said: “At Facebook, nothing is more important to us than the safety of the people using our service.

‘There is no place for harassment on Facebook but, unfortunately, a small minority of malicious individuals exist online, just as they do offline.”

Every week The Drum, in association with Synergist, publishes a selection of new creative work.

Now you can vote for the work you like best with the winners to feature in the next issue of The Drum (27 September). Submit your vote before Wednesday 11 September to guarantee your favourite makes it into the printed magazine.

To submit work for future publication contact gillian.west@thedrum.com.

Boutique Digital, the independent digital media planning and buying agency based in Leeds, has formed a partnership with leading social media engagement agency Huddle Media to deliver through-the-line social and digital solutions to clients.

By partnering, both businesses will work collaboratively on a number of key accounts to offer comprehensive social media services, develop consumer engagement via both social conversation and monitoring and paid for social promotional media.

Speaking of the partnership Colin Sneath, Huddle Media’s managing director, said: “We’re delighted to be working with Boutique. Both companies share a determination to invest time and energy in properly understanding client needs and goals before delivering truly bespoke and expert solutions. Our specialist focus on social media engagement and monitoring perfectly complements Boutique’s integrated approach to digital media solutions. Besides which they’re great people to work with, our cultures are very similar.”

Elliot Jones of Boutique Digital added: “We’re thrilled to be working with Huddle Media; our partnership means both agencies can bring their respective expertise to the table, offering an exceptionally strong and truly unified social solution to our clients. With social media being an intrinsic aspect of the consumer’s everyday life, this 360 approach is, to our mind, a vital requirement, enabling us to genuinely engage and build brand / consumer relationships online.

Both Boutique Digital and Huddle Media have seen increasing evidence of media spend being reinvested from other channels to engage with a targeted, and measurable social audience, and believe agencies need to offer a rounded and all encompassing solution to meet this need.

Boutique Media is a member of MiNetwork, the UK-wide organisation for ambitious agency owners. For more information on how MiNetwork could support you in raising your agency's profile, maximise your agency profits and build your leadership skills visit the MiNetwork website.

Spotify has partnered with UniDays, a student verification platform used by retailers like Asos, Topshop and Apple, to help promote the music streaming service’s 50 per cent discount to students.

This new partnership forms part of the brand’s wider student marketing campaign to reach 18-24 year olds.

UniDays now manages access to student-specific pricing of Spotify’s Premium. The new partnership will be promoted by Spotify through its social media channels, newsletter and targeted ads across major UK cities as well as a student ambassador program to get students spreading the word across university campuses.

UniDays will market the offer to its active user base via web, mobile, app and social media channels, plus its growing UK email database of over one million UK students.

Retailers using the platform typically see a 30-50 per cent uplift in student customer acquisition.

Nikki Lambert, European marketing director, Spotify said: “Students today are more financially challenged than ever before, but music remains as important as ever. Many UK students are regular users of our free service and we want the richest Spotify experience to be accessible to everyone, so we’ve partnered with UniDays to offer UK students Spotify Premium for half price in an instant through its verification platform.

“This partnership supports our ongoing efforts to bring students a legal, best in class music offering.”