January is a busy time in the office – the last of the Christmas season campaigns have completed and, in all but a very small proportion of cases, all the follow up activity and debriefing has taken place too. 2007 is now truly out of the way…however, there’s also 2008 to deal with.
This, of course, means a whole new round of pitching, client meetings, year planning. Here at Hotcow we’ve been doing just that with much activity being planned for our existing clients and a whole host of new brands coming on board. These include representatives of the fashion, TV and drinks industries and the year is already shaping up to be exciting.
First up in this week’s overview is the news that Hasbro – makers of Monopoly amongst – have signed a six-year deal with Universal to produce at least four films based on Hasbro brands. The first will be released in either 2010 or 2011 with one film per year after that. Candy Land, Battleship and Ouija are included in the partnership, but not ... 
In our industry we come across all kinds of service providers, and sometimes there are those few that really stand out from the herd. Whilst doing some research for a client we had to look into sand sculptures of the oversized kind. We got in touch with the international ....
Some of you may have noticed a story in the news the other week (well, maybe not, it was only released on Valentine’s Day…when our minds tend to be on other things) about Diageo, the drinks giant, announcing a half year pre-tax profit of £1.37 billion – 5% up on last year. You may wonder why this is in any way interesting – other than being a sort of proof that when the economy starts to wobble, we drink more.
Every now and again it pays to cast your eye over the news to see what’s on the horizon (or coming up fast) – you never know what you’ll find and how it may prove useful. One thing, however, is certain; you won’t get to the top of your profession without having a good idea of what’s going on in general terms…as ever, we’re here to help you.
These days’ marketers are, more often than not, looking further afield than traditional marketing disciplines in order to gain attention for their product’s promotion. One concept that has grown in popularity recently is that of the use of installation art as a central, or stand alone, aspect of a marketing campaign…which is all very interesting, but just what is installation art?
With the recent rumours that some London cabbies have been paid by an as yet unnamed company to eulogise their latest (also unnamed) product buzz marketing has, once again, been in the media spotlight…so then, just what is it?