Marketers feel underqualified to handle the challenges presented by the rise of “big data”, with 70 per cent admitting they don’t have the necessary skills, according to a GfK and Guardian Media Network report.

The report, which polled the views of 1,011 UK consumers and 157 marketers on the use of data between July and September this year, revealed the majority (86 per cent) of marketers believe “big data” is changing marketing, with over half of respondents classing it as “very important”, and 62 per cent saying their job has already changed as a result of it.

The overall sentiment from marketing respondents was that mining data sets is vital to improving cut-through to their target audiences via relevant, personalised campaigns, rather than “just relying on mass techniques and the old TV advertising standby”, according to the report.

Yet only 30 per cent consider marketers to be well-qualified to manage the challenges of big data. One respondent said: “How many marketers currently even know what an algorithm is - let alone how it can determine product development, placement, price etc?”

Meanwhile, although consumers are aware their activity is tracked by companies and that their data is used for targeting them with offers, almost half admitted they don’t know what actual data is being collected.

The report also revealed most people think little of the personalised offers they currently receive, with only 34 per cent saying they were "happy" when companies suggest products for them based on the information they know about them.

Three quarters (77 per cent) agreed it is “annoying if companies think they know me too well.”

The majority (81 per cent) of consumers said they believe companies share or sell their data to other companies online.

However, almost a third agreed that brands don’t always do much with their data, which GfK suggests could mean they are either not seeing evidence of personalisation from brands or there is not enough dialogue between brands and their customers.

Colin Strong, GfK’s managing director for Business & Technology said: “Consumer sensitivity about the way brands handle their personal data is coming at a time when the government’s midata initiative could potentially change the landscape.

“If midata legislation was implemented it would allow consumers to manage much of their own personal data so in some instances they could choose what to share with brands. This would significantly change consumer sentiment and the dynamics of the market place, giving people what they say they want, more control over their personal data.”

More than 80 per cent of consumers said they were more likely to give their business to companies that use their personal data appropriately, according to the report.

Strong believes this research shows a contradiction between what big data means for marketers and consumers.

“Whilst companies can see opportunities for cost-efficiencies and media cut-through, the people we surveyed were often underwhelmed with the personalised messages they had received as a result of campaigns using big data.

“This suggests that with the use of big data in its infancy, the marketing industry has to become more sophisticated in its use of the information it collects to convince consumers that relevant, accurately targeted offers do actually make their lives easier.

"Crucially, they also need to prove they can be trusted with people’s personal information. Those that don’t risk not only ever decreasing business returns, but reputational damage if marketing messages are considered inappropriate or intrusive.”

Strong will present his “Manifesto for Big Marketing” at The Guardian Changing Advertising Summit next month.

Dating website MySingleFriend.com has unveiled its first TV ad, showing members of the public advertising their single friends to viewers.

Set to air from today, the ad shows seven wingmen and women pitching their single friends to potential daters, following a call out on its social media profiles for volunteers.

The advert was produced by collaboration between Hungry Man and a graphics team at El Carousel, and allows interested parties to contact the TV matchmakers and their single friends through the MySingleFriend site.

Television personality and founder of MySingleFriend, Sarah Beeny, said: “Nobody has ever ‘advertised’ a single friend on television before and we’re hugely excited to be taking our love of matchmaking to the small screen. We searched the country for the most dedicated and charming wingmen to star in our ad and the finished result is fantastic. You never know, one of their friends could find the love of their life.”

MNC handled media planning for the campaign.

Guardian News & Media has today unveiled a new biannual fashion magazine, The Fashion.

The 84 page glossy magazine is set to launch on Saturday 21 September, free with the Guardian in selected regions, and is created by the style teams from both the Guardian and The Observer.

Alice Fisher, commissioning editor of The Observer Magazine, will edit the magazine. She said: “The Guardian and Observer have a fantastic team of fashion editors and stylists and we wanted to produce a standalone magazine that showcases that talent. The result is The Fashion. The first issue is an in-depth guide to the autumn/winter 2013 collections and trends, produced with the wit and intelligence that readers expect from our team of talented writers.”

The first edition, coming out at the end of London Fashion Week, will feature an interview with the creative director of Dior, an exclusive interview with British model Jourdan Dunn and an in-depth look at the relaunch of Saint Laurent.

A digital edition of The Fashion will also be available on the Guardian and Observer iPad edition.

Channel 4 Sales has announced that it is to hold a series of sealed bid auctions next month for potential advertisers to bid for 90 broadcast racedays.

The race days include the Cheltenham Festival, the Grand National, the Derby and Royal Ascot.

“Following a successful racing season this year, these ad packages are now an established commercial prospect for sports bookmakers to partner with Channel 4 Racing and align their brand with the only terrestrial broadcast destination for horseracing in the UK. Next year, we’re excited to be able to bolster this offering by creating more packages and opportunities for new partners,” said Chris Braithwaite, agency principal at Channel 4.

“Our doors are wide open to all and we look forward to inviting bids for these valuable packages which will give advertisers increased opportunities to reach dedicated racing fans," he added.

Horse Racing image via Shutterstock

Bupa, the healthcare insurer, has launched a new ad campaign across TV, print, OOH, and digital.

Aiming to highlight its services, the ‘Our focus is your health’ campaign features children painting a picture of their ideal healthcare company. Their pictures are used to illustrate Bupa’s wider offering including its 24/7 GP healthline and broader range of services and products that can be accessed without health insurance.

“Our new campaign promotes Bupa’s core focus – health. As we have no shareholders, we’re able to reinvest our profits into better treatments and services, and you don’t even need to be a health insurance customer to access our expertise,” said Saj Arshad, marketing and strategy director, Bupa UK.

“The children’s pictures illustrate Bupa’s extensive healthcare services which support customers throughout their lives, and not just when they need us to pay a bill.”

The campaign was developed by WCRS, with Matt Edwards, chief executive at the agency, adding: "Many people just don't realise the range of services Bupa offers and that they can access many of them even without having insurance. What better way to tell that story than with 60 children, 40 pots of paint and 300 crayons?"

The campaign is scheduled to run from today, 16 September, to November 2013.

Expedia has unveiled a new campaign looking to make lacklustre tweets more interesting, with TOWIE star Jessica Wright being the first to receive the ‘interesting’ treatment.

Created by Ogilvy & Mather, the Travel Yourself Interesting campaign launched at the weekend with Wright’s tweet “Can't wait for tonight with the girls but hope this rain clears up! Birthday girl tomorrow” being turned into a ditty by The Naked Cowboy.

Andrew Warner, senior marketing director EMEA at Expedia said the campaign hopes to persuade people to seize the moment. He added: “By taking people’s everyday humdrum tweets and transforming them into fun content just by placing them in a quirky new location. With almost instant content generation we are showing, directly and immediately, how rapidly you can transform the mundane to the marvellous through travel.”

Ordinary tweeters will also be encouraged to hashtag their own dull tweets for a chance to win a luxury holiday to Abu Dhabi.

Gerry Human, chief creative officer for Ogilvy & Mather London, said: “This is an outstanding next step in Expedia’s brave and smart avoidance of clichéd travel marketing in favour of a campaign that’s more about what you get out of travel, than where you go. Not only that, the world, let alone Twitter, might even be a better place if everyone was a bit more interesting.”

All #TYI tweets generated by the campaign will link to a YouTube channel where the films can be watched and shared.

Traditional industry measurement tools are not evolving fast enough for The Times and Sunday Times’ cross-platform business model, according to the newspapers’ strategy director Dylan Wyn-Pugh.

The News UK-owned newspapers, which were the first to adopt a paywall strategy in 2010, have rapidly evolved their smartphone and tablet propositions, but in doing so have outpaced existing measurement methods.

“Traditional industry measurement tools very effectively measure readership within print, but we are now four platforms, and they certainly don’t have the expertise to measure mobile or tablet.

“The reason we had to seek PwC to measure our reach is because the traditional industry tools aren’t evolving quick enough for our business model which is expanding fast and which is an edition-led sell across all platforms,” he told The Drum.

Wyn-Pugh believes The Times and Sunday Times’ proposition is becoming “increasingly complex”, as it continues to launch on new platforms, which in turn increases its competitor set and makes effective digital measurement paramount.

Traditionally media owners try to sell “everything to everyone”, and to the clients that spend the most today, but this isn’t necessarily the most sustainable option, according to Wyn-Pugh.

“The people who buy the most aren’t necessarily the ones who can spend more in the future, and they may not want to change the way they behave, as they may be a direct-response client or a grocer so will have a very formulaic way of doing things,” he said.

As a result it is focusing on segmenting its 8,000-strong customer base with the view to better understanding and meeting the bespoke needs of a particular client.

“Our key challenge is how to sell our whole audience [330,000 subscribers] on any one given day. We need to segment them [advertisers] based on their behaviour, and identify the leaders for growth then spend your time targeting them, rather than the 8,000 clients we have across News UK.

“So our customer segmentation looks at everything from their platform behaviour to their booking and brand behaviour and we layer in Neilson market data,” he said.

As part of its ongoing strategy to provide “premium” advertising across its portfolio, the publisher is focusing on “enriched ad formats”, not just on tablet and digital platforms but also in print, which remains its “bread and butter”, according to Wyn-Pugh. It is currently looking at ways to evolve its coverage of London Fashion Week, to provide a more rich content and advertising experience.

His comments coincide with the launch of Sunday Times’ Style magazine's first fashion-season special edition (pictured) since its relaunch in March this year. The new edition, which features four different front covers, and the highest pagination and print display revenue in several years, launched yesterday (15 September) for London Fashion Week.

News International was rebranded to News UK this summer after the split between News Corp and 20th Century Fox.

Barclays has revamped its mobile payment service Pingit introducing mobile-checkout ‘buy-it’ features, designed to simplify the mobile commerce experience for consumers.

The move means businesses can now offer their customers two alternative payment systems, designed to provide a fast, easy and secure way to pay for online goods and services.

The Pingit app, which launched this February, can now be used for mobile checkout if a business has integrated the ‘Pay Now with Pingit’ button into its payment options. It has been designed to ensure customers need only make a payment with few clicks, avoiding having to enter long or large amounts of personal details.

Barclays’ head of UK corporate payments, Mike Walters, said the new version of the app is an “easy, low-risk” way for new players to enter the mobile commerce market.

“For mobile enabled businesses, this is a great way to increase sales conversion by reducing payment input errors and increased consumer assurance at checkout,” he said.

Meanwhile the ‘buy it’ feature lets people buy products direct from an advert and other marketing assets by scanning a QR code. The app will display the product information including price, merchant information, delivery information and stock levels.

By confirming these details, a Pingit user can initiate an instant purchase, which can then be delivered to a chosen address. Once ordered a customer will receive a SMS or email as confirmation.

MiAwards, the annual awards that recognises the best independent marketing services agencies in the UK, has announced that Noel Penrose, the former vice president of DDB Worldwide, is to be the chairman of the judging panel in October.

The announcement of Penrose as the chairman comes as the entry deadline for MiAwards is extended to Wednesday 25th September to give ambitious agencies the chance to enter the awards.

Penrose has years of experience managing, leading and building successful agencies businesses and now through his own consultancy, Juniper2 Advisory, he works closely with the owners of independent agencies to help them grow and lead their businesses and deal with the many challenges growing agencies face.

The MiAwards are split into four distinct sections, which aim to recognise agencies for being well managed and led and also for the quality of the marketing work that they provide to their clients.
There is also a free to enter Public Vote section, which looks to canvas the marketing industry itself to find out who the most respected individuals and teams are in the industry.

The judging is set to take place at the London offices of POSSIBLE and along with Penrose sitting on the judging panel are:

• Ian Pearman of AMV BBDO
• Jim Brigden of iProspect
• Karen Welman of Pearlfisher
• Andy Edge of Odean Cinemas
• Vicky Reeves of Chameleon
• Barry Dudley of Greensquare
• Steve Antoniewicz of the Recommended Agency Register

MiAwards are sponsored by Boutique Media, The Wow Company, The Little Black Book Agency, Evolution Print and Wild Heather Digital Research.

All MiNetwork members get TWO FREE ENTRIES to MiAwards and the gala dinner takes place in Manchester on Thursday 14th November.

To request an extension to enter MiAwards please contact Nikki Gillies on 0141 559 6076 or by email at Nikki.gillies@thedrum.com.

This spot out of New York is a beautiful interpretation of the "made of more" strapline. A wheelchair-bound team play basketball on an indoor court. They're playing with total focus, and the camera captures their energy and intent with an outstanding lack of intrusion. It's not until the end that you realise the scenario isn't what you thought it was.

Agency: BBDO (New York)
Creative Director(s): David Lubars / Greg Hahn / Mike Smith / Dan Lucey / Chris Beresford-Hill / Tom Kraemer / Wil Boudreau TV Producer: Tricia Lentini Film Prod Co: Biscuit Filmworks
Director: Noam Murro
Producer: Emily Skinner
Executive Producer: Shawn Lacy
Dir of Photography: Simon Duggan
Post-Prod House: Absolute Post
Editing House: Work Post
Editor: Neil Smith

The Sunday Herald produce a talking point in Scottish politics after a bold editorial decision which left half a page blank in its double-page spread on independence.

A year ahead of the poll, the Sunday Herald asked both Downing Street and Holyrood for a contribution to the weekend’s coverage.

The paper explained: “In the interests of balance, we allocated exactly the same space to David Cameron and to First Minister Alex Salmond.

“When the Prime Minister’s statement reached us yesterday we told his office it fell far short of the First Minister’s contribution, which it would be placed next to.

“At the time of going to press, nothing else had been received from Downing Street.”

In its editorial, the paper said it would take an official position on independence before the referendum but would “strive” to provide balance in the year ahead – even if David Cameron made it difficult.

“We will strive always to eschew bias,” the editorial read. “We will give space to both sides of the debate… although it has to be said that balance can prove difficult to achieve when major players such as David Cameron are reluctant to articulate their arguments at length when given the opportunity to do so.

“In due course, on the eve of the referendum, we will offer our recommendation. Stands Scotland where is did? No longer, surely, afraid to know itself.”

This referendum will take place in exactly a year from this week, on 18 September 2014.

It probably comes as a big surprise to learn that award-winning agency OgilvyOne’s chief for Europe, the Middle East and Africa – Annette King – is an X Factor star. But she is.

Just not perhaps in the most widely-known sense of the term. She is not a star of Simon Cowell’s music competition TV franchise X Factor that seems to secure endless reboots on ITV. Better than that, she is a star of WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell’s X Factor senior management mentoring and development scheme for female executives, led by former WPP-owned Ogilvy & Mather global chief Charlotte Beers.

This programme, which has been running since 2008, selects a dozen senior women at a time from across the WPP group, and for two three-day stints they thrash out how to become better, more efficient and more confident leaders.

King completed the course five years ago when she was first appointed London CEO of OgilvyOne, and what she learned has since helped shape her approach, leading to her promotion four years later to CEO for EMEA. She describes Beers as a “great leader and icon” – a successful businesswoman at a time when the male-to-female split was far vaster in the advertising world.

“The aim of the programme was to understand our inner X factor and what made us tick as people, enabling us to be decisive about the kind of leaders we wanted and could be. It was a very closed, private environment,” says King.

At the end of the course each had a one-to-one talk with Beers, who doled out her advice on how they could improve or what they needed to do to fulfil their potential, even if it meant moving to another job.

“She said to me in her Texan accent: ‘darling you’re going to be fine, all you need to do is to learn to move like honey’. I knew exactly what she meant and that – call it a guiding principle – has played in my head every day since,” she says.

Taking the helm of a massive agency like OgilvyOne at a time when the global economy had just collapsed was a challenging feat, and one which King feels she weathered well because of the support and guidance of both the X Factor course and the coach that was assigned to her when she became CEO, both of which helped shape the leader she is today, making her both “more effective and confident”.

Under King’s smart, dynamic leadership OgilvyOne has won numerous awards at Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity and picked up a host of new clients. Yet it was an existing client that set King and the agency the most challenging task it has faced to date, and one which has set the bar high for the future.

Pitching and of course repitching for clients is bread and butter for agencies, but it’s less common for one to literally reinvent itself to meet a brief – for an existing client at that. But this is what OgilvyOne did for British Airways last year, the outcome of which changed the face of the agency and established it as a major digital contender in a space dominated by hugely successful agencies such as AKQA and SapientNitro.

At the time BA was undergoing its own internal changes, the result of which saw it consolidate two sides of its business and assign one agency to handle its ‘creative technology’ strategy across the lot. OgilvyOne already managed its loyalty business globally, but the winner of the new brief would need to cover a much broader gamut of skills and capabilities, which King believes no existing agency could demonstrate.

Its solution was to create an entirely new, virtual agency, which it named the 12th Floor. “We had worked with BA for years and they knew us, but to choose us as their creative tech partner we had to show them another side of OgilvyOne and that was the whole theme of our pitch.

“They knew we didn’t actually have a 12th floor in the building and that we were inventing a new agency model called the 12th floor for them. It was a way of showing that no agency in town could do everything they needed in the standard they wanted it done at the time,” she says.

The concept was therefore centred on collaborating with and harnessing the talents of external digital start-ups to meet the ever-changing needs of clients like BA.

“That was probably the most important part of the pitch process – when we realised we needed to collaborate with partners to create the best possible team. That was quite a radical change,” she adds.

The team “poured its heart and soul” into the pitch for four months, even creating a bespoke avatar version of King, which appeared in both the initial and final pitches – the latter in real time. “I had to stand in a very hot, velcro suit and a wired hat for three hours straight while the final meeting took place. At the end they invited me into the room, and when I padded in in bare feet and this costume all 12 BA clients in the room laughed their heads off, which is a great way to end a pitch even if you have to make a bit of a fool of yourself in the process.”

King cites winning this particular pitch as a “truly magical” moment and one of her proudest achievements. “When we got that call saying we had won the pitch there was a single moment where I didn’t know what to do with myself. It was a mix of joy, relief, a sense of achievement, pride and pure, utter jubilation, we had just put so much into it.”

She believes it is “critical” for agencies to look outside themselves to the talents of digital start-ups and collaborate if they are to stay ahead of the curve, inspire their clients and help them stay current.

“If you don’t look outside your agency for inspiration, knowledge and help you’re missing a trick, because there is a new business starting in Silicon Roundabout every day that we don’t even know about yet. No company can do it alone and expect to reap the opportunities that are out there, and they are really limitless,” she adds.

And finally, what advice would King give young women following in her footsteps? “If you’re starting out in your career make sure you choose where you work, not the other way around,” she advises.

“Think of the values you want the company you work for to have and its reputation. If you go somewhere you don’t like and that doesn’t fit your personality or your aspirations it’s your job to go and find another job. You choose where you work, it doesn’t choose you.”

This interview featured in the 13 September issue of The Drum, continuing the Girl Guides series that aims to highlight the lack of female recruits in the digital market and the fact that the industry is only getting access to half the talent base.

In a previous issue, The Drum spoke to Martha Lane Fox about her vision for the future of the digital economy and the advice she would give to young women who may be considering following in her footsteps. Read her interview here.

The Girl Guides series is sponsored by:

Tumblr has struck a deal with social media analytics firm DataSift which will enable brands and marketers to gain insight based on more than 5.5 billion global Tumblr interactions every month.

The agreement adds Tumblr insights to the big-data inspired social analytics platform, which also collates information from Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and YouTube.

Derek Gottfrid, VP of product at Tumblr, said: “Brands have turned to Tumblr for new ways to connect with highly engaged users and engage in brand storytelling.

“Through this partnership with DataSift, we’re delighted to enable these brands and agencies to unlock new insights about the audience that is consuming and sharing their creative content.”

Initial analysis of Tumblr data from DataSift showed retail, fashion and automotive issues prompted the strongest global engagement. Ford, BMW and Jeep drove the most engagement in automotive, while Fashion Week in New York and London made the industry a big talking point across the network over the last fortnight.

Steve King, CEO of marketing agency Black Swan, commented: “We’re looking at Tumblr to see how content about our clients is being shared, whether there’s anything damaging to their reputation or whether there’s insight we can gain about their audience.

“Our data science team models social data to understand customer behaviour, and having access to current and past Tumblr data will be a very important part of our model as we build out the predictive aspect.”

DataSift analysis also showed that users of the site were the most prominent creators of content, not brands, and pointed towards the potential in untapped engagement and advertising for marketers by forming strategies complementary to Tumblr users’ behaviours.

Homeware brand Kilner has unveiled the first TV campaign in its 150-year history.

Created by Liverpool design studio Black & Ginger, the ad will be shown on Really, More 4, TLC, Food Network and The Good Food Channel.

Alex Frech, Black & Ginger founder and managing director, said: “When creating an advert like this, we believe it’s really important to understand the culture surrounding the product, and with Kilner and its lengthy heritage we were incredibly lucky.

“Kilner has seen a huge revival in the home over the last couple of years with the resurgence of homemade Britain.”

The advert will screen until the end of October, covering the UK’s picking and preserving season.

Walkers will launch a new advert starring Gary Lineker during tonight’s episode of Ramsay’s Hotel Hell on Channel 4.

Viewers will be encouraged to get involved online in Gary’s Great Ingredient Hunt during the ad, which features Lineker driving his red tractor through the British countryside, dropping Walkers crisps ingredients along the way.

Lineker said: “I actually think I’m starting to get the hang of driving this red tractor! I had a few close calls with sheep and extras but I’m happy to report that no one was harmed in the making of this TV ad.”

Consumers can take part in online games by entering a code printed on promotional packets of Walkers at the brand’s website, with the chance to win prizes.

Yahoo UK has launched Tech for You , a new technology channel within Yahoo News, in partnership with Symantec.

The channel has been developed to provide users with content to help them navigate security concerns and online security threats. It features advice from technology journalists to help users protect themselves from cybercrime, and draws on the partnership with Symantec to deliver informative online security topics on Yahoo News.

Krane Jeffery, director, Yahoo Studio UK explained that the channel comes as part of a commitment to create content that hold value among today’s online users: “The new Tech For You channel provides informative content to users helping them avoid online security risks. We’re committed to developing creative and original content that is valuable to users and we’re excited to partner with Symantec to provide the Yahoo audience with industry advice regarding online security.”

“We are always looking for new ways to engage with consumers and help ensure that they are protected online,” added Shelagh McManus, consumer marketing UK and Ireland, Symantec. “The launch of the new technology channel on Yahoo News allows us to connect with an extensive audience through editorial and video content, and raises awareness of the need to protect personal identities and valuable data, showcasing suitable Norton products .”

On the channel, Yahoo will also provide links to the Norton product store with more details on security solutions and the opportunity to purchase and protect themselves against security risks.

Britain's largest supermarket chain, Tesco has said that it is ‘extremely disappointed’ that pork chops labelled as British were discovered to actually come from Holland.

The own brand pork chops, which included a British flag on the label, was purchased by the BBC as part of an investigation for the Farming Today and You & Yours programmes, from a store in Salford.

The packaging included the red tractor emblem that identifies British food, however when tested, the samples sent a laboratory in Germany found that there was less than a one per cent chance that they originated from the UK.

In reaction, a statement from Tesco read: “We are extremely disappointed to discover a pork loin product probably came from a Dutch farm, not a British farm.

"When we specify that we want British pork, we expect to be supplied with British pork. We have spoken with our supplier to make clear that this mistake is unacceptable.

"We've recently trialled this new isotope testing and we are talking to BPEX about how we can develop this alongside our existing tests, to bring even more rigour to our food testing programme."

The supplier, family owned FA Gill, also released a denial: “FA Gill can categorically deny that the pork came from their supply as they do not deal with Dutch meat.

"We correctly label the products we sell to our customers and we have the documentation to prove this."

The discovery will raise further questions of supermarkets and how much they know about the produce they sell following the horse meat scandal earlier this year.

Debenhams has revealed that its online sales have grown by 46 per cent over the last year, as mobile growth climbed by 72 per cent, according to it’s latest trading update.

The retailer announced the updated figures ahead of its full results being released on 24 October, which included online sales growth of 46.2 per cent, and the increase in mobile sales of nearly three quarters, with revenue up by 128 per cent during the year.

The update also claims that group like-for-like sales have risen by two per cent over the full year, and by 1.9 per cent during the company’s final financial quarter as it continued its aim of driving sales and improving brand perception through the use of its ‘Life Made Fabulous’ campaign.

Michael Sharp, chief executive of Debenhams, said that he was pleased with the company’s performance during the final quarter of the year.

“We have succeeded in growing both like-for-like sales and market share in a competitive market where consumers' disposable income remains under pressure. I am particularly pleased with the growth of our online business,” he continued.

"While the return to more seasonal weather conditions over the summer has been helpful, the main factor behind this performance has been the relentless focus of everyone at Debenhams on implementing the four pillars of our strategy to create a leading international, multi-channel brand. I'd like to thank all our employees for their hard work over the past year. Looking forward, we are confident in our strategy but are not expecting any rapid recovery in consumer sentiment and the marketplace remains highly competitive."

Plans for a flagship store on Oxford Street were also said to be ‘on schedule’ while new stores opened in Chesterfield and Lichfield were said to be outperforming expectations.

Commanding a global TV audience of more than 500 million at the last count, the fiercely competitive Formula 1 (F1) is a giant in the sporting world.

Yet global viewing figures have dropped over the last year, meaning the pressure is on to perform not just on the race track, but in the marketing arena. McLaren, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, has set its sights on broadening its audience base and appealing to more women, and with F1 rivals Ferrari and Red Bull already well known for generating passion and entertainment, McLaren is keen to make its mark and meet the high demand for digital content expected by the younger demographics.

It began this journey last year, teaming up with London-based special effects company Framestore, whose recent movie successes include the entirely 3G-enabled sci-fi thriller Gravity starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Framestore created a computer-animated series called Tooned, featuring the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes F1 racing team, set in and around the McLaren Technology Centre (MTC) where its cars are designed and tested.

The first series, which ran on Sky, featured the real voices of drivers Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button playing their own characters. McLaren’s group brand director John Allert says: “The idea came from a realisation that we needed to reach out to a new generation of fans, and to do so we needed to better emotionalise our brand in a way that was still relevant to who we are, because ultimately we are a high-tech, high-performance F1 racing team.”

Tooned has given the McLaren brand a more approachable, fresh, dynamic face, opening it to alternative channels to classic F1 broadcast, a key part of tapping into younger audiences who consume media across multiple digital channels.

This approach is particularly important for F1’s image in developing markets, where the sport is often regarded as “elitist” and “too premium” for local market consumption habits, according to Allert. “It also created a way to help our sponsor partners reach new demographics both in the UK and internationally,” he adds.

This has already resulted in a spin-off show for sponsor partner engine oil brand Mobil 1 and McLaren is now eyeing further international spin-offs. What had begun as an experiment for both, running on Sky alone, soon escalated as the series spread like wildfire online after it was “ripped” and posted on YouTube, generating a further 2m views.

It went on to sell more than 20,000 DVD box sets and grew a one million-strong social media following. Yet this year McLaren and Framestore have taken the series to a new level. Both companies learned much from the trial, and McLaren has now taken a more controlled approach to the second series’ distribution, managing its web seeding carefully and mining from its social media followings to help shape future plot lines and character appearances.

Each episode of the series, currently running on Sky ahead of F1 fixtures, follows a world champion in chronological order starting from Bruce McLaren in the 60s through to James Hunt, Emerson Fittipaldi, Ayrton Senna and present-day drivers Jenson Button and Sergio Perez.

Set at night in the MTC, the episodes feature a dry old professor attempting to give a lecture on McLaren to celebrate its 50th year. He is interrupted by a mechanic who interjects to reveal the “real story” of what happened with each of the drivers and the series drops into flashback mode.

The James Hunt episode, which aired ahead of the arrival of the film Rush in UK cinemas this month, raised some particular creative challenges for the Framestore team. Simon Whalley, Framestore’s executive producer, says: “The tricky thing with James Hunt is that he is known for being a notorious womaniser, which is hard to feed into a family-friendly cartoon. So we modelled his character on James Bond, which worked perfectly and meant we could be really funny with it.”

Framestore created a bespoke cartoon strip exclusively for The Drum which depicts one of the scenes in the show – a pastiche of the famous laser scene in the Bond film Goldfinger. In the show Hunt’s voice is recorded by his own son Tom Hunt, which created invaluable research for the Framestore team. “James’ son Tom looks and sounds a lot like him.

When he did his voice record he referenced real examples of things that happened during the races which we fed back into the show. He told us that once the legendary F1 commentator Murray Walker asked him for a comment when he came in for a pit stop during a race – to which James replied ‘not now old boy, there’s a race going on’. “That’s now a great moment in the episode because it’s not only very James Hunt-like but James Bond-like too,” says Whalley.

The show has been warmly received by drivers and their families, with each world champion’s voice recorded by either themselves or a close family member. Bruno Senna, who plays the voice of his uncle, has a Twitter following of more than 600,000, making him and the other drivers a valuable part of the social media community surrounding Tooned.

Yet McLaren is wise to the fact that it is not video alone that creates a full-bodied, successful branded content strategy. Allert believes branded content is a misunderstood term that is endlessly bandied around by those who think they are being creative, when in fact all they are creating is a TV ad. He describes its true meaning as “people-shaping your brand through touch points that will resonate with the people you want to target”.

That can be anything from an event, to a retail partnership, service or video – but not the latter in isolation, he says. “I get thoroughly depressed by the endless misuse of the term branded content. It shows a basic misunderstanding of what the opportunities are.” He believes the day of reckoning is coming for those who have played a little too fast and loose with their businesses’ budgets.

“The controllers of the purse strings will run out of patience with people who can’t demonstrate robust ROIs around digital activity and particularly around branded content, and I think people are only months away from being found out from over indulging in things that don’t really work,” he adds.

The Tooned world is evolving fast with longform versions, behind-the-scenes videos, and documentaries interviewing real experts in the sport all being rolled out. Framestore has developed a prototype racing game, which could either be sponsored by a McLaren partner or monetised via in-app purchases.

Meanwhile further spin-offs are in the pipeline, and McLaren is eyeing a push into physical toys and other merchandise. McLaren is seeing its target demographics – dads, kids and females – “swell” along with a “huge response” from people who speak English as a second language, as a result of Tooned, according to Allert.

“We are not doing it as a creative indulgence, we are doing it as a relevant business tool. Diversifying into areas like gaming and merchandising is commercially attractive and fits our strategy to broaden our audience.

“Not all our target audience will play mobile games, have access to YouTube or want to buy a T-shirt. But if we can make the Tooned touch points as broad as possible and monetise them we can only broaden our audience further and that underscores the viability of the business model,” he says.

Framestore too has ambitions for the franchise. Whalley adds: “Tooned is essentially an advert. Yet this is where the lines between advertising, marketing and content are completely blurring, which is exciting. What started as one thing can now grow to be much bigger. We have aspirations to make a feature film.”

This article featured in the latest edition of The Drum, which you can order here

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