Google has come out on top in a top 10 list of the UK's most 'simple' brands.

The study, conducted by Siegel+Gale, analysed 500 well-known brands in terms of simplicity to use and understand whilst remaining innovative. Internet giant Google placed first, beating out competition from online retailer Amazon and supermarket chain Tesco.

The top 10 brands in the Global Brand Simplicity Index are:

1. Google

2. Amazon

3. John Lewis

4. Tesco

5. Travelodge

6. Lastminute.com

7. Premier Inn

8. MacDonald’s

9. BBC

10. Apple

Siegel+Gale have found that 87% of UK consumers are more likely to recommend a simpler brand, with 5.2% of people willing to pay more for a simpler brand. Sigel+Gale's president of EMEA, Philip Davies, noted the need for streamlined, effective branding.
“In a highly competitive and cluttered market place clear communication to consumers is paramount. The Global Brand Simplicity Index reveals the desire and need for simpler communications and interactions. More importantly it shows how willing consumers are to pay for a simplified experience.”

“This year’s report clearly demonstrates that technology is the driving force that is simplifying consumers brand experiences and lives. It is saving people time and money and giving them easier access to the world. Simplicity creates an environment that promotes peace of mind with consumers, inspires confidence and generates brand loyalty. In the current climate brands should take note of the gains they are set to make by simplifying touch points for consumers.”

After working as a developer for a Travel Technology company for about 4.5 years I was looking for a new challenge, Ideally something in Social Media working with the latest technology. I spoke to Harriet as they specialise in Technical Positions and explained what I was after. Harriet was very friendly and excellent at finding relevant opportunities for me at exciting companies in Manchester. She rang me about an position at Building Blocks as a Technical Consultant for Community software, thankfully I got the job and have never looked back since. I have been @ Building Blocks for about 3 years now and have been promoted to Community Practice Manager, looking after my own team of consultants and developers. It's one of the best decisions I ever made, so if you want to grab a job you actually enjoy then I can't recommend Harriet’s team enough.

-- Adam Seabridge, Building Blocks

Google has removed over half of the "bad ads" plaguing the search engine's website following an upgrade in detection technology. Around 800,000 advertisers have been blacklisted which has resulted in 130 million ads no longer appearing on the website.

The monitoring of sensitive keywords, enhanced scanning methods and a faster response rate to flagged adverts have been detrimental in removing the majority of spam.

Engineering chief Sridhar Ramaswamy stated:

"In 2011, advertisers submitted billions of ads to Google, and of those, we disabled more than 130 million ads. And our systems continue to improve – in fact, in 2011 we reduced the percentage of bad ads by more than 50% compared with 2010."

"We're also catching the vast majority of these scam ads before they ever appear on Google or on any of our partner networks. For example, in 2011, we shut down approximately 150,000 accounts for attempting to advertise counterfeit goods, and more than 95% of these accounts were discovered through our own detection efforts and risk models."

Google will continue their crackdown on these "bad ads" through further development of their screening process. The internet giant currently relies on software to detect malware and Google users to report suspicious advertisements.

"We must remain vigilant because scammers will always try to find new ways to abuse our systems," commented Ramaswamy. "Given the number of searches on Google and the number of legitimate businesses who rely on this system to reach users, our work to remove bad ads must be precise and at scale."

 Traditional recruitment methods are still deemed to most effective despite social media’s growing influence on how businesses search for employees. At Chrysalis we have found that networking can’t be beat, and a personal approach to recruitment results in finding the right jobs for the best candidates.

Approaching a candidate via telephone or face-to-face allow for a better understanding of the person behind the CV, and a detailed exploration of candidate experience and suitability results in higher satisfaction for the recruiter and the recruited. This ability overshadows finding a potential employee through LinkedIn and communicating through e-mail. Sending 100 LinkedIn requests just doesn’t compare in its success rates than with a traditional approach.

Chrysalis Recruitment strives to find “passive” candidates and offer specific roles that match their interests and experience. This often results in a much tighter fit and a more interested candidate within the interview process. Though companies may wish to recruit their own staff to reduce recruitment costs, less than a 5th of all hiring companies opt for this route.

Companies are keen to engage with a recruitment company they trust and empower them with as much information as possible. Chrysalis Recruitment is dedicated to working alongside businesses to find the right people.

Social media can be a helpful tool in finding that shortlist, but must be used to compliment the core traditional methods of proactive search and selection. A recent study has shown that the majority of HR directors believe that social media platforms are ineffective as a recruitment tool, and the traditional CV will not be replaced with profiles on networking sites such as LinkedIn.

Harriet Sanders, Service Delivery Manager at Chrysalis says:

"It’s impossible to really 'know' someone from a social media profile. If hiring mangers are going to continue paying the hefty fees charged for finding the market’s top talent, then recruiters must strive to add value. A key way to do this is to engage with the candidate market place and build relationships. Finding 10 'potentially brilliant' developers online is easy; interviewing them, qualifying their skills and building the trust needed to entice them to interview is the hard part.

As has always been the case, the best recruiters in the market are those who know their candidates. They may utilise LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to highlight possible job seekers for their clients, but once spotted the hard work begins. So the increasing influence of social media on the recruitment industry is no doubt changing the landscape when it comes to the pipeline for a proportion of candidates, but traditional methods of securing people new jobs hasn’t changed – there is no replacing a thorough, capable recruiter to do the nitty gritty of the recruitment process."

Listen up, ladies and gents. Size matters... At least where social networking is concerned. Speaking at the ISBA annual conference, Diageo’s marketing director Philip Gladman claimed that companies with under one million Facebook fans ‘shouldn’t bother’.


In a presentation dubbed ‘Changing the Game’, the alcohol marketing mogul announced that “size matters”.

“It takes communities of one million to even start paying back on a social platform. Unless you are going to get a million, don’t bother... There’s no point having a little Facebook community bubbling along.”

He advised marketers to “stick it in TV” when distributing funds for advertising. Discussing the viral advertisement from Old Spice – shown below – Gladman noted Procter & Gamble had to spend £14 million in order to make the promotional material a success.

Gladman also commented the infamous “build it and they will come” line from baseball movie Field of Dreams was “rubbish” when applied to social media. Not that anybody had said otherwise.

MPs on the culture select committee are set to propose a boycott for businesses advertising with newspapers that do not adhere to codes set by a new press complaints body. Conservative MP and committee chairman John Whittingdale suggests that UK advertisers should refuse to spend money on controversial newspapers in a bid to ‘create pressure’ and ‘promote good practice’.


The voluntary pledge, set through advertising trade body Isba, would ask businesses to withhold millions in advertising to any newspaper that does not support the regulator replacing the PCC. Previous regulatory body Press Complaints Commission came under criticism for failure to curb phone hacking at the News of the World and is set to close.

Whittingdale stated: "We want a stronger self-regulatory system that is seen to be effective and command confidence. One of the great challenges is that it has to have all publishers sign up and accept the code. If you don't have a statutory underpinning it raises the question of how you persuade recalcitrant publishers to accept the code and jurisdiction of the [new] body."

He added the replacement body ‘had teeth’ and would avoid the complications of parliament legislation.

“The agreement would make it clear that they will expect any publication in which their ads appear to be a member and subscribe to the body's rules. It seems this is a very clear way in which we could create a real incentive, real pressure.”

Currently, UK companies spend £2.4 billion on newspaper advertising.

100 media-based companies have signed up to an IPA-led initiative in order to find employment for 300 young people in the UK.


The companies, including big names such as Facebook and ITV, are offering apprenticeships, paid internships and business support to young entrepreneurs. Applications opened yesterday in partnership with Metro, and require entrants to answer three questions:

“What is it that excited you about the category (Can-Do/Can-Code/Can-Start) you have chosen?”

“Sum up you (10 words maximum)”

“If you could create something to make life a bit more interesting, what would it be?”

They must then upload a 60 second video highlighting why they are a ‘creative pioneer’.

The scheme is the brainchild of IPA president Nicola Mendelsohn and the minister for culture, communications and creative industries Ed Vaizey.

Mendelsohn said: "We want young people from any background to enter; it’s not just about qualifications, it’s about having the right mindset and attitude; it’s about seeing yourself as part of the next generation of creative pioneers."
Vaizey said: "The IPA and the companies involved in this challenge are to be commended for nuturing and developing the next generation of film directors, web and video games designers, advertising chief and marketing experts."

Other companies involved in the initiative are Saatchi & Saatchi, Aardman Animations, Twitter and Activision. The deadline for entries is Friday 27th April.

The Advertising Standards Association (ASA) have cleared Snickers' Twitter campaign following complaints that celebrity endorsements were not clearly presented as advertisements.

The campaign involved celebrities tweeting messages that would not be expected, such as Katie Price voicing her opinion on economics, causing followers to question if the accounts had been hacked. Other celebrities featured in the promotion included X Factor singer Cher Lloyd who announced she was a secret fan of Russian literature, and footballer Rio Ferdinand.

Ferdinand posted four tweets in quick succession, confessing to a new found love for knitting:





All 'out-of-character' tweets were followed by the Snickers tag-line "You're not yourself when you're hungry", a photograph of the celebrity with the product, and hashtag #spon meaning 'sponsored tweet'.

Complaints were sent to the ASA stating it was 'not obvious' that the tweets were advertisements, and the messages not labelled #spon were in breach of ASA and Ofcom regulations. However, ASA has decided that all tweets were part of an "orchestrated" marketing campaign.

The watchdog said: "We noted the first four tweets in each series served as 'teasers', which, due to their nature, were likely to generate additional interest in the celebrities' postings.

"We also noted those tweets did not make any reference to Snickers or to Mars and were posted in relatively quick succession.

"In addition, we noted that the fifth 'reveal' tweets showed the celebrities with the product and included the text "You're not you when you're hungry @snickersUk #hungry #spon".

"We considered the combination of those elements was sufficient to make clear the tweets were advertising and that consumers would then understand each series of tweets was a marketing communication."

The decision allows gives other marketers the go-ahead to advertise in a similar manner providing all marketing is clearly disclosed to users.

Media agency AdConnection has challenged the UK’s media owners to prove who is the most innovative. Media owners taking part in the Innovation Challenge will have just five short minutes to present  a unique and innovative media solution to the team at AdConnection.



Client services director for AdConnection, Nick Baum, said: "The challenge will really put the media to the test. Five minutes is a short amount of time and we look forward to how the media will present their innovation in a punchy and creative way. It will be a great way to showcase new ideas to our team and the competition element will really add some spice to proceedings."