Sunday, 15 December 2013
Saturday, 14 December 2013
Christmas Miracle of WestJet
A real Christmas miracle was performed by airline company WestJet which has proven to be one of the biggest viral hits of the season with over 23 million views on YouTube. The emotions of the 250 passengers of the flight is enough to warm even Scrooges heart & has lead to a huge pay off for the airline company. Follow the link for the full story!
Intel Inside Barcelona
Spanish football giant Barcelona has signed a reported £15m deal with Intel to allow the chipmaker's logo to appear on the inside of player's shirts. Intel marketing manager said she chose Barcelona as it had an active social media community and hundreds of millions of fans globally.
Tuesday, 10 December 2013
30 Things You No Longer Need Because of iPhones
The development of a smartphone has changed how we work and interact but also the number of different products that we now need in our lives. How have other products adapted to survive against the all-in-one device?
Tuesday, 3 December 2013
Brazilian Lucozade
GSK is hoping to score with the launch of two limited-edition Lucozade drinks inspired by the 2014 FIFA World Cup. As part of a £12m brand push the Brazilian mango & mandarin flavoured Lucozade and Lucozade sport will hit stores in the next week to capitalise of the biggest sport event in the world.
Come Fly With Amazon
Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, is testing unmanned drones to deliver goods to customers, Chief Executive Jeff Bezos says. The drones, called Octocopters could deliver packages weighing up to 2.3kg to customers within 30 minutes of them placing the order. It could take up to five years for the service to start.
Friday, 29 November 2013
Paper Bottle
UK shopper will be forced to wait before the release of the UK's first wine in a paper bottle. This different type of packaging is being developed by GreenBottle and are hoping that they can change consumers views to switch to a more eco-friendly bottle.
Smart Wig
Sony have filed for a patent for a SmartWig a technology item which can be worn "in addition to natural hair" and will be able to process data and communicate wirelessly with other external devices. According to Sony the SmartWig can help navigate roads and collect information such as blood pressure. Tech experts see the wearable gadget as being the next big area of growth but will the SmartWig?
Black Friday Flurry
US shops traditionally offer big discounts on the Friday after the US Thanksgiving holiday. The UK has also pushed the same type of promotions with huge sales in a number of retail outlets. A flurry of promotions linked to Black Friday saw fights breaking out in Asda over discounted televisions of which it sold 10,000 in one hour.
Sunday, 24 November 2013
Xbox One Million
Microsoft has sold more than one million Xbox One consoles in less than 24 hours, despite some users saying they have been plagued by technical problems. The next-gen console is now sold out at most retailers after going on sale in 13 countries across the world on Friday. Now over to you PS4!
A Warburtons Christmas
Warburtons has Christmas all wrapped up with its first ever Christmas themed packaging which they claim customers could even use as wrapping paper when they have finished the loaf. They hope that the attractive attention grabbing packaging will draw in customers over the festive period.
Friday, 22 November 2013
Curb That Pay
How long would you have to work to earn $17.1m - just one year if you are a chief executive in some of Switzerland's leading companies. Swiss voters are going to the polls this weekend to decide on strict new laws to limit executive pay. The measures, if approved, would limit the salaries of top managers to no more than 12 times the wage of the lowest-paid worker in the same company. Would this work?
Samsung Pay Up
A Silicon Valley jury has ruled that Samsung must pay £180m to Apple for copying iPhone and iPad features in its devices. Samsung had argued that Apple should not have ownership over technology like what Samsung said was the "basic rectangular" shape of smartphones but Apple believe they need protection for the hard work that goes into innovation. Rumors about how Samsung paid Apple in lorry loads of coins have been found to be false.
Tuesday, 19 November 2013
App of the Month: Quiz Up
This months free app is a great quiz game which can test your knowledge of a number of different subjects with people and friends from across the globe. It has a great section of business and economics quizzes including logos and slogans and is free to download from the app store.
Peanut Hottie
Peanut-flavour drink Peanut Hottie is expanding into the sachet market. The instant hot drink that is made from roasted and powdered peanuts was launched into Sainsburys last month. They claim no one else is taking a risk in this market like they are & hope to build a large base of peanut butter lovers through social media campaigns.
Easy Jet Profits Take Off
Easyjet saw a 51% rise in yearly pre-tax profits to £478m, partly thanks to the introduction of allocated seats. Allowing passengers to book their seats had had a big impact on profitability which has boosted shares by almost 6%. Easyjet said 60.8 million passengers flew with it during the year ending 30th September. What would this indicate about the market structure of airlines?
Saturday, 16 November 2013
Christmas Dinner Cake
This quirky cake contains a mixture of carrots, sprouts, parsnips, chestnuts and cranberries and has taken its place in the stores of Waitrose/Ocado just in time for Christmas priced at £18. This specialist cake was the idea of Alison Whitmash who got backing for her idea in the shape of £50,000 from Dragons Den's Deborah Meaden.
Snapchat Deal Disappears
Mobile messaging startup Snapchat has reportedly rejected an acquisition offer from Facebook that would have valued the company at more than $3bn (£1.8bn). The app was launched in September 2011 and according to its website, at least 200 million snap chats are sent every day. The report of Facebook's interest in Snapchat comes a couple of weeks after the world's number one internet social network acknowledged it was seeing a decline in daily use by teenagers in the US.
Sainsbury's Festive Blunder
Eagle eyed viewers of Sainsbury's latest Christmas TV commercial have spotted an unconventional approach to advertising - one which has seen the retailer unwittingly promote products of its Co-Op rival. Three of the rival chains own-brand products were spied in Sainsbury's Christmas themed home video advert. A spokesman for the Co-Op remarked "It seems that our Truly Irresistible Christmas pudding, lemon torte and Christmas cake are so good even Sainsbury's can't resist advertising them.
IAG See Rise In Profits
The IAG, who own British Airways , have seen a rise in their profits. There was an 8% increase in pre-tax profits for the summer quarter of 2013, an increase of 507 million Euros compared with last year. This increase has been aided by the recovery of their Spanish airline, Iberia. Profits for the Spanish airline were 74m Euros in the summer quarter for 2013 whilst were only 1m in the same quarter in 2012. This is due to the company's focus on cutting jobs and paying at the carrier. Profits at BA also increase to 477m Euros compared to 269m Euros in the same quarter last year. BA have benefited from demand for transatlantic flights and the London market, To combat the fall in demand for business travel to London, due to last years Olympics, they were also helped by a 100m Euro
'bounce back'.
By Victoria Clayton
Wednesday, 13 November 2013
Apple Curved iPhone
Apple is said to be working on curved screens for future versions of the iPhone, as well as sensors that can detect different levels of pressure. The curved screen phones are marketed as being more durable and ergonomic but also better for watching videos and playing games. Watch this space for future developments.
30 Squats To Ride The Subway
In an effort to promote the upcoming Winter Olympic Games in Sochi and physical fitness, Moscow are allowing subway riders to pay 30 squats instead of 30 rubbles for a trip on the metro. Riders perform the squats in front of a special machine which can tell if the person is in the right position & will dispense a ticket if you complete all 30. Not quite as easy as you think!
Tuesday, 12 November 2013
Middle Class Thief
Supermarkets have reported a leap in thefts of expensive products such as meat joints and parmesan cheese - with the finger of blame being pointed at the middle classes who have had income squeezed and are looking to still maintain their lifestyles. The cost of retail theft has been estimated at £3.4bn over the past financial year in the Uk - equating to £124 per household. What will stores have to do to cope with this?
Happy Singles' Day
November 11th is China's anti-Valentine's Day, a day when young people celebrate being single. But for many, its also an excuse to log onto China's biggest online shopping platform Taobao where almost all products are sold at half price. In just 6 minutes after midnight $164 million was spent and in an hour two million bras were sold, making a pile that would be three times higher than Mount Everest!
Christmas Dinner Ravioli
Fresh pasta brand Dell'Ugo has launched a limited edition Christmas variety of its stuffed ravioli in support of the homeless. 10p from each sale will go towards Crisis which is the national charity for single homeless people. They have also previously released limited edition pasta for breast cancer awareness. How much do these limited editions help raise for charity or is it something that helps sales?
Saturday, 9 November 2013
Mobile Spending Spree
This year has been dubbed 'The Mobile Christmas' and with 48% growth in mobile shopping, retailers are increasingly targeting shoppers through digital devices. Consumers spending via mobiles and tablets is worth about £8bn a year but over the next five years, the spread of smartphones and tablets will see spending on these devices to triple to £23bn.
Play While You Pee
Urinal-based games console granted patent after being laughed off by Dragons Den. A British company Captive Media has developed technology letting men shoot and fire at targets with their stream. The divide sits above the normal urinal bowl and plays a mixture of adverts and video games using an infa-red device to detect where the urine is falling.
The Bear & the Hare
John Lewis released its eagerly anticipated Christmas advert for 2013 on Friday. The whole campaign cost £7 million, with £1 million spent on filming, £5 million on air time and £1 million on advertising across other media. The storyboards were all drawn out and painted by hand by Disney Genius Aaron Blaise with music provided by Lilly Allen. It has had a mixed reaction so far with some saying it was a copy of a popular Christmas book.
Tuesday, 5 November 2013
TV Christmas Advert Battle
By the end of this week, all the main retailers will have launched their festive campaigns - but this year they're spending a lot more cash on the internet to mirror shopping habits. Retailers are expected to spend about £390m on advertising in the last three months of the year. There will be a larger focus on digital online campaigns with M&S stepping into this format for the first time. John Lewis' much anticipated ad is been kept tightly under wraps.
Brands set to 'Stay Classy'
The long awaited sequel to Anchorman has attracted a huge amount of attention around the world with brands queuing up to get involved. Paramount UK has announced seven domestic deals with Tango hoping that the face of Ron Burgundy will push the reach of the product to more than 15 million customers.
Face Scanning Adverts
Tesco is installing face-scanning technology at its petrol stations to target advertisements to individual customers at the till. The technology, made by Lord Sugar's company Amscreen, will use a camera to identify a customer's gender & approximate age. It will then show an advert tailored to that demographic.
Saturday, 2 November 2013
McDonald's Not Lovin Heinz
McDonald's has said it is to stop serving Heinz ketchup in its stores after 40 years. The world's biggest fast-food chain said it would drop the ketchup after Bernardo Hees, the former head of rival Burger King, took over as Heinz's chief executive. "We have decided to transition our business to other suppliers over time," McDonald's said. I wonder why this has happened?
I'm A Celebrity...
Iceland are introducing the first ever frozen food board game as part of its sponsorship of ITV's 'I'm a celebrity..' reality TV show which is starting soon. It follows the concept of the show's bushtucker trial with a game of snakes and ladders and requires players to eat either forfeits or rewards. Will this be the start of frozen food board games?
Ronaldo Is Pants
Cristiano Ronaldo stepped into the world of fashion with a bang this week. The Real Madrid and Portugal forward unveiled his underwear range, CR7. Following in the footsteps of David Beckham he has worked closely with New York designer Richard Chai & Danish textile firm JBS to create a range of underwear and socks for the 28-year-old's debut fashion line.
Tuesday, 22 October 2013
iPad Air
Apple has unveiled a slimmed-down version of its iPad tablet but will charge customers up to £739 to get their hands on one. The 5th generation iPad Air is 20% thinner and only weighs 470g and will be available from November 1st. This news came on the same day as Nokia released their first ever tablet the Lumia 2520.
Chocolate That Doesn't Melt
The maker of Cadbury chocolate is close to introducing heat-resistant bars it can sell at market stalls in Africa and some of the world's hottest places. They have been working on the product for the past ten years and now are close to creating a bar which can withstand 40 degrees and not turn to liquid.
Monday, 21 October 2013
Chocolate Prices Rise
The cost of cocoa beans has soared since the start of the year, signalling a rise in the price of chocolate for consumers. More chocolate is being bought, which is though to be due to an easing in the economic crisis, despite the price of raw materials rising by more than 20%.
3D Asda
Asda, Britain's number two retailer, is offering customers a chance to be scanned and made into a detailed miniature figurine, using a 3D printer. All for just £40! Want one?
Sunday, 20 October 2013
More To Come From Apple
Apple has scheduled its highly anticipated keynote for the iPad line on 22nd October. With news about the iPad 5 and iPad Mini 2 set to be released on the same day Nokia holds its innovation reinvented showcase and Microsoft Surface 2 goes on sale in the US. What will Apple have in store now?
Gourmet Popcorn
Posh popcorn makers Joe and Seph's have turned the simple snack into a best selling gourmet feast. Gin & tonic, Madras curry and lemon poppyseed are among more than 25 exotic flavours which make the traditional flavours seem old hat. The two year old business which started in a kitchen is now going from strength to strength with orders from Selfridges, Harvey Nichols & Waitsrose.
Slimline Coke
Coke are aiming to tackle the decline of impulse purchases of soft drinks with a new slimline 250ml Coke can. Over the past three years the sales of soft drinks on-the-go have fallen 6.7% prompting the new slimline version of coke to be released at a price of around 49p. Will this small can have mass appeal?
Friday, 18 October 2013
Gummy Bear Boss Dies
The boss of German gummi bear maker Haribo has died aged 90. Hans Riegel, the son of the sweet maker's founder died of heart failure in Bonn. Mr Riegel inherited the firm from his father in 1946 and built it up into a firm that now employs 6,000 people.
Wet N Wild Goes Bust
When it opened in 1993 Wet N Wild at Royal Quays was the UK's largest indoor water park but now in its 20th year a note on its website read that the business 'Wet N Wild Enterprises Ltd entered administration October 14th 2013". Despite being profitable over the summer it struggled with cash flow problems over the winter months.
Restroom Restaurant
A rather unusual dining-trend popular in Asia is making its way over to the US - but it may not be for everyone. A toilet-themed restaurant is about to open with lavatory seats in place of dining chairs and meals served in urinals.
Windows 8 Update Confusion
Mircrosoft has released Windows 8.1, an update to its latest operating system which confused some users when it was launched last year. It ditched the familiar looking desktop for a new tiled layout which is optimised to work with touchscreen devices, such as Surface tablets but many users have found it difficult to navigate.
Tuesday, 15 October 2013
Angry Birds: The Movie
An upcoming 3D animated film based on Rovio's bestselling app Angry Birds is to be directed by Fergal Reilly of Spider-Man 2 and Clay Kaytis of Tangled fame. The success of the Angry Birds franchise has benefited the company's bottom line. In 2012, it more than doubled its revenue to £129.09 million with a quarter of a billion people playing the games every month.
Dinorama App
A fantastic free App for entrepreneurs out there who want a hands on virtual reality approach to running their own business. This game teaches some great skills about time and money management along with the element of fun of running your own dinosaur park. What else could you ask for?
Tablet Wars
Argos has launched its first own-brand android tablet computer in time for Christmas. The 7in MyTablet will retail for £100 and run on Google's Android Jelly Bean OS. This launch follows Tesco Hudl which launched last week at £119. Argos are hoping to hit the 'tweenie' market of 8 to 13 years old and pricing it so everyone in the family can have one. Will this be a success?
Saturday, 12 October 2013
Bendy Smartphone
Korean researchers are close to developing a flexible battery that could be the step towards creating the first flexible smartphone. Samsung have begun to use this technology & have released a prototype flexible phone called Youm. Is this the future of smart phones?
Imagine A World Without Shops or Factories
When you are in the middle of a torrent of change, innovation eclipsing innovation, it can be hard to know what is passing and what will last. The BBC's Peter Day believes that, here in 2013, we are in the middle of a revolution so great it could turn our old familiar world upside down.
Brand It Like Beckham
Power couple David & Victoria Beckham have increased their combined business revenue to almost £100,000 a day as documents lodged with Companies house show that Beckham Ventures Ltd, increased its turnover to £15.4m in 2012.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)