The Government recently unveiled an advertising and communications campaign to promote the export opportunities that exist to British industry. Some might consider the timing to be odd given that the nation is in the middle of the worst recession in living memory. But a recent UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) conference in London at the beginning of the month proved otherwise.
At UKTI’s ‘Digital Business: India and China’ two day conference which I worked on (Reuters TV news above) small and medium sized technology and communications companies came together to share knowledge on the opportunities that lay in two countries that are bucking the downward global economic trend.
Companies from Britain’s digital, technology, mobile and gaming sectors agreed that while growth in the UK was hard, business opportunities in these two countries gave them hope for the future.
During the second day, which was devoted to China, representatives from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology gave an insight into the help that was available to UK companies thinking of investing in China, a country that is looking to move its economy towards value-adding products and services.
Welcoming The World To Britain
We’ve seen UKTI’s ‘Take It To The World’ campaign message on billboards at stations up and down the country. And companies like Playfish.com are an example of how Britain can take gaming to the world.
But what has this got to do with PR and communications? Well, it was wisely pointed out at the conference that China was not just looking to bring expertise to its home country. Businesses in China are looking to enter the British and European marketplace, thus increasing the need for services such as PR, advertising and the like for them.
And let’s be honest, Britain has usually been concerned about China and it’s new financial muscle. But with the UK PR industry suffering in the current recession the opportunities that might exist from Chinese companies wishing to expand into Europe might help.
Some of the big agencies, such as Burson-Marsteller already serve and support Chinese companies, such as online business-to-business trading company Alibaba.com, which last week announced a 39 per cent increase in revenue to over £300 million.
Agencies are getting ready for business from merging markets. Maybe Brazil will be next. Not a bad place for a business trip me thinks!
News and publishing companies, redesigning their business?
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009A lot of rumours are floating around at the moment about how publishing companies are developing digital platforms for the print offerings.
Condé Nast recently showed off a concept video of Wired’s supposed iTablet application at Wired’s New York store. The video shows Wired magazine as an interactive title that’s updated with not just print but video content. Techcruch meanwhile have seen a demo of Sports Illustrated’s concept for tablet computers (above). The Wonder Factory have worked with Sports Illustrated’s publisher Time Inc to create a video that like Wired’s concept shows how Sports Illustrated would work (below).
These are interesting times for the news and publishing industries. I said some time ago that Apple could come into the market with a tablet based device that would aggregate your favourite titles on an iTablet. Such system would use iTunes to work and manage your subscriptions. The Sydney Morning Herald ran a story at the end of October claiming that Apple had in fact ‘sent specifications of the device to Australian media companies in an effort to sound out whether they would be interested in delivering their content to the tablet.’ None would go on the record though.
And Rupert Murdoch is very much considering putting up a paywall in front of his titles while taking these off Google. This could well help the news industry bring in much needed subscription income.
The fact is that news and print as we know will have to evolve and provide more that just words and pictures if people are to subscribe. The evidence though is pointing to the fact that media companies are redesigning their business and their offerings.
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