Insight

Welcome to Kingston Smith W1’s blog.

We will be using this space to post original thought leadership and research relevant to the media sector. The idea is to encourage discussion around these issues and to open up new areas of debate.

Leading trade magazines regularly approach us for our thoughts on topical media issues. These will also be posted on this section of the site.

Social Media Survey

Nowadays, social media touches every part of our online experience and is increasingly touching our offline lives as well. It is a means by which we engage, recommend, share and interact with others, be it online networking, sharing a great article or asking customer services a question on twitter. Business to business organisations in many cases have been slow to join in the social media revolution for many reasons. They may not know where or how their clients or prospects would like to engage online, they might not think their business is appropriate for such a medium, there may be concerns about legalities or brand reputation in giving individual staff members free-rein to make a faux pas that stays ‘out there’ for eternity.

We surveyed over 100 creative communication and technology business so that you can see where your organisation lies - and are you really ‘socially acceptable’?

Click here to read more and to join the discussion

Leading property experts predict West End rent spike in 12 months

NAI Haywards, the property experts specialising in supporting business occupiers, has issued a warning that the West End office rents could spike in 12 month’s time. This may create a “perfect storm” for many media companies who are already facing a squeeze on margins.

West End office vacancy rates are under 6.0% with some submarkets being as low as 3%. The result – office rents have risen sharply and incentive packages have fallen.

Click here to read more and to join the discussion

Outlook Survey 2012

Earlier this year we conducted a survey into the views of managing directors and finance
directors of marketing services, media and consulting businesses on the future financial
prospects of their industries. This followed an equivalent survey the previous year. Following the generally upbeat tone of the responses in the last survey the climate within the media and marketing services industries has continued to be tough.

Planning for the future, whilst perhaps a little easier than the last couple of years is still very difficult and everyone is therefore naturally interested in the views.

Click here to read more and to join the discussion.

The Mashed-up business

"It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them." Steve Jobs, Co-Founder and Chief Executive, Apple

The Mashed-up business is created by joining together products and services from different firms to create a new offering that is only possible by the unique combination of resources and capabilities that you have assembled. We've been outsourcing many of our functions to achieve lower costs and better service levels for many years, we've even started outsourcing our innovation, even crowdsourcing, to speed up development of new products and services. Now it's time to take the next step - to assemble components of other people's offerings and business models to build something brand new to offer your clients - fast. Click here to read more and to join the discussion.

Digital Economy Act under fire from all
Don’t get me wrong, I do think people should be properly paid for what is theirs, but this Act has been flawed from the start with too much given to holders of IP and copyrights. It is currently the subject of a judicial review and earlier this week the LSE’s Bart Cammaerts and Bingchun Meng claimed the Act “gets the balance between copyright enforcement and innovation wrong” and that it will “stifle innovation” in the content industry. Click here to read more and to join the discussion.

Future Financial Prospects
Since the beginning of the recession the last few years within the media and marketing services industries have been a bit of a rollercoaster.

No one is quite sure whether we have completely avoided a double dip recession and things are finally starting to look rosy or whether there is more bad news around the corner. Earlier this year we conducted a survey in to the views of managing directors and finance directors of marketing services, media and consulting businesseson the future financial prospects of their industries.

Accounting Software Package
MYOB, Sage and Paprika have come out on top in our recent survey of accounting software packages used by creative companies. None of these software packages is at the high end in terms of cost and complexity, which suggests that users consider ease of use, reliability and quality of support to be as important as the range of functions and number of reports a package can generate.

Annual Survey - Financial performance of marketing services companies
Compare your financial performance with your competitors. Our research focuses on the fortunes of firms within the sector in their most recently published accounts.

Marketing Monitor
Our bi-annual newsletter looking at key performance indicators across all marketing services disciplines.

Employee Benefits
Annual research which examines the provision of employee benefits within the marketing services community.

Non-Executive Directors
Research into the value a non-executive director can bring to marketing services companies, particularly during a recession.

Gateway to Growth
Summary of recent projects including advice on accounting, tax, due diligence, sales, and mergers and acquisitions within the creative and communications sector.

Topical Tips
Top tips on key business issues

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