Fergus-GONE
It seems fitting, writing a Spark blog on the departure of Sir Alex Ferguson from Manchester United. After all, as the only member of the Spark team to actually come from Manchester I am of course a proud supporter of Stockport County. However, when the longest-serving and most-successful manager in...
Continue reading...When ‘shock advertising’ goes too far
Last week, Hyundai launched an advert for its new iX35 in a bid to demonstrate just how clean their emissions are, with a 60 second long suicide joke. Yes, a suicide joke. Hyundai, what were you thinking? Controversial or ‘shock’ advertising campaigns can occasionally achieve some success; namel...
Continue reading...Spark gets into Big Data with Guavus
There has been a lot of talk about Big Data over the last year or two and there is a danger that it becomes a catch all term for all that falls under the banner of storage, analytics and data warehousing. However, to me the test of whether something falls into the big data camp is how disruptive i...
Continue reading...Maggie, Boris and the earwigs that make a great storyteller
We haven’t been able to open a newspaper for the past two weeks without seeing at least one story about Baroness Thatcher. From a communications perspective, what is most interesting is how such a divisive figure secured such a following among the electorate and was able to influence global leaders...
Continue reading...Don’t do a Boris: Top tips on handling difficult media interviews
The car crash interview between Boris Johnson and Eddie Mair on the Andrew Marr show is sure to go down in media history alongside the infamous Jeremy Paxman interview with Michael Howard as how not to handle a press interview. Boris was caught completely off guard as Mair tore strips off him,...
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