Matthew Robson, he of the youthful features and studious haircut has apparently enlightened Morgan Stanley's media and internet research department (no less) with a sage like report on how the youth consume media. This report is full of such pearls as -

Teenagers rarely listened to regular radio because they preferred stations without the adverts and could stream their own choice of music through services such as last.fm.

Teenagers favoured the social networking site Facebook over Twitter, because it was a better way of keeping in touch with more people.

Stephen Fry is not particularly cool. Also, for the cost of one tweet you could send quite a few text messages.

Teenagers do not use Twitter. They realise that no one is viewing their profile, so their 'tweets' are pointless.

Teenagers increasingly watched television when they wanted – because of the advent of BBC iPlayer, Virgin Media and Sky – and hardly ever bought newspapers.

Teenagers are very reluctant to pay for a newspaper (hence the popularity of freesheets such as The Metro," he wrote.

Teenagers still favoured the cinema, for the experience rather than watching a particular film, while virtually no young people would pay for music. They are very reluctant to pay for it (most never having bought a CD) and a large majority (80%) downloading it illegally from file sharing sites."

And finally Teenagers found online advertising "extremely annoying and pointless" and tended to ignore traditional billboard advertising.

Now, either the Banking world is so out of touch they're on their way on mass to see Michael Jackson at the O2 tonight, or this is PR bollocks. And if it's the latter, going public disclosing how utterly inept you are, might be something you'd rather keep quite.

Then again, we are talking about the people who believed loaning money to people who could never afford to pay it back.

The world has gone mad.

Well not for another 100 years anyway.

The sun is shining in Soho, Shoreditch and Hoxton. And the Cannes hangovers have finally gone away. Yes, all is well in the world of advertising. So let's take a quick peak at our embarrassing past. 

Makes you want to wash with caustic soda and a wire brush doesn't it?

When media buyer get it right

When media buyers get it wrong

Once a regular in lads mags the glamour model known as Jordan, long ago re-branded herself as Katie Price and transformed herself into a mini-industry selling her own particular brand of celebrity to young girls. And in doing so has gone from strength to strength.

The latest chapter sees her having martial problems with her partner Peter. So far so what?  But what’s really happening is a transmedia story and ARG played out via very traditional media.

The story is launched on ITV2, with a new series of their fly on the wall documentary, Katie and Peter Stateside. After a couple of episodes we start to see them row and bicker more than usual. Nothing too serious, nothing too nasty – just a lot more than we’re use to seeing them do. Tensions flare and make up abound.

This is then picked up and discuss endlessly in the celeb mags - 
Grazia, Hello, OK, etc. Each boasts of an exclusive, many seem to contradict one another. But this isn’t important - it gives the public something to talk about and discuss, everyone has an opinion feed to them, so conversations can be had.

And they are. Social media is a buzz.

Peter Andre twitters, Katie Price twitters. The papers report their comments to a wider audience.

New information feeds the debate.

One paper coves the story where she accuses him of having an affair. Another reports he denies it. And it’s her that, she can’t be trusted when she’s drunk.

Two days later, a new character appears.

The Sun ran a front page a showing Katie Price drunk in the company of a new man. 2 days in a row they cover this development, reader are asked if they know him? (The public are now contributors to the story.)

Later that week The News of the World expose him and run an exclusive interview with the ’mystery man”.  We can breath again – he’s married and an old horse-riding friend.

And on it goes into the next week

Finally what we all thought was going to happen happens - they announce they are separating. He goes off to Cyprus, she to the Caribbean. He talks about his sense of desperation at it going this far on the front page of The Sun.

Photo ops abound as both parades themselves in skimpy swimwear.

In the coming weeks magazines and red top papers continued with the drama with new twists; She talks about the mistakes she’d made and perhaps she’s to blame. He talks about how she was the only one for him.

New plots are introduced – The children - The fight for custody. Peter’s love for Harvey, the son that isn’t his.  The one he wants to adopt etc.

The divorce - Speculation is rife, how much would he walk away with? Will he honour the pre-nup? More new characters are introduced - who is going to represent whom?

The Broadsheets enter the fray, often via columnists, giving their own unique highbrow take and opinions - a relationship born in the public eye dies in the public eye, it’s inevitable, she’s a working mum, etc.

It’s covered on discussed on daytime TV, appears in TV News and mentioned repeatedly on topical shows, Daytime TV etc.

No one can escape. Saturation has been achieved. And the story still continues with two different production companies filming the two parties as they go through their divorce.

To date, if you google “Katie and Peter divorce” you get 906,000 links, 47,300 forum threads, 151 separate videos uploaded.

Google Katie and Peter and you get 14, 600, 000 links!

By building complexity into a range of communications and using different channels to put across different ideas you create a much larger and more engaging brand world, one that people can commit and delve into depending on their own personal involvement and passion for the brand.

For me its about building a world of referents and images, held together by a value system and a narrative and communicating it in ways that understand that both the content is fluid and that channels are no longer easily delineated.

I also believe consumers can now handle more than a single core idea. In fact, in an age where consumers increasingly control the media they consume we can no longer simply interrupt them, instead we have to offer them more than a core idea well told.

If they are to reach out to brands, we have to be delivering value and a rich content experience is valuable.

So the transmedia model builds a larger world of ideas and delivers different parts of that world in different channels. Some channels are better at some things than others.

And that is what Katie and Peter are living proof of.