Recent reports
In the past five decades, women have acquired an unparalleled financial autonomy by participating in higher education, joining the workforce and becoming entrepreneurs, despite still present barriers
Nevertheless, the portrayal of women in films, TV programmes, and even more so, advertising campaigns, continues to channel stereotypes of times long gone, leading to a dearth of role models for girls
Companies that commit to diversity internally are in a stronger position to recognize clichés and innovate in their activities and messaging—only companies that walk the talk will convince
Quibi: Adjusting expectations
26 May 2020For an unproven service to attract 1.3 million active users in its first five weeks is impressive. But by its own account, Quibi’s launch underwhelmed.
Sizeable subscriber targets—7 million by year one and 16 million by year three—justify a level of spend never seen in short-form video, but are ambitious for an experimental start-up with limited brand equity.
The service’s failure to recognise the social side of mobile media, restricted use case and, critically, lack of a hit show increased scepticism of product/market fit. Now Quibi must adapt the product with knowledge of user preferences and reassess its targets, provided it can afford to do so.
Virgin Media: Fibre questions remain
26 May 2020Virgin Media’s Q1 financial performance was in line with its subdued outlook, with its key problem being a lack of demand (yet) for the ultrafast services that only it can widely provide.
CV-19 has delayed the marketing of ultrafast services from competitors, likely suppressing demand more generally; in the longer term however, the working-from-home experience will likely help drive adoption.
Virgin Media still has to solve the problem of alleviating the long-term threat of full fibre builds negating its network advantage; we believe that the best answer is to expand to a nationwide service via wholesale, and the merger with the nationwide O2 reinforces this.