As I work with a number of organisations in the food industry I was interested to learn of the campaign launced this weekened by the Bristish Heart Foundation about marketing food to children.

I have curated a series of resources below for research and review purposes which you may also find of interest including content from the British Heart Foundation Twitter and Facebook pages and also articles in the traditional media. Their report is called "The 21st century gingerbread house: How companies are marketing junk food to children online".

If you are interested in the area of food marketing to children I recommend that you also review the current public consultation by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland who are reviewing how food and drink should be marketed to children in broadcast media.

View the story "The British Heart Foundation - Food Marketing To Children" on Storify]

Here is some interesting data about the use of the Internet across Europe in 2011 - the Eurostat report of Internet useby individuals and households in 2011 and is important data for any business looking to online marketing or communication:

• In the EU27, almost three quarters of households had access to the internet in the first quarter of 2011, compared with almost half in the first quarter of 2006
• The share of households with broadband internet connections more than doubled between 2006 and 2011, to reach 68% in 2011 compared with 30% in 2006
  
• During the same period, the share of individuals aged 16-74 in the EU27 who had never used the internet decreased from 42% to 24%
• Shares of internet access of 90% and over were recorded in the Netherlands (94%), Luxembourg and Sweden (both 91%) and Denmark (90%)
• Shares of 50% and below were registered in Bulgaria (45%), Romania (47%) and Greece (50%)
• Sweden (86%) registered the highest share of broadband connections in 2011, followed by Denmark (84%), the Netherlands and the United Kingdom (both 83%) and Finland (81%), while Romania (31%), Bulgaria (40%) and Greece (45%) had the lowest
• The highest proportions of those having never used the internet were observed in Romania (54% of individuals aged 16-74), Bulgaria (46%), Greece (45%), Cyprus and Portugal (both 41%), and the lowest in Sweden (5%), Denmark and the Netherlands (both 7%), Luxembourg (8%) and Finland (9%)
• Almost half of internet users4 aged 16-74 in the EU27 used the internet within the last 12 months to obtain information from websites of public authorities, and 28% to submit completed forms to public authorities, for example tax declarations (e-government)

• In 2011, 58% of internet users in the EU27 had ordered goods or services over the internet (e-commerce) within the last 12 months - t highest shares were observed in the United Kingdom (82%), Denmark and Germany (both 77%) and Sweden (75%).

Note: The survey covered households with at least one person aged 16-74, and individuals aged 16-74. The main reference period was the first quarter of 2011. Households were asked about internet access by any member of the household at home. Individuals were asked about frequency of internet use and about activities they had carried out on the internet in the last three months prior to the survey for private purposes, or in the last twelve months for e-government and e-commerce activities, at home or at any other location.

The research was reported in the Irish media and the headline that captured attention was that mMore than one-in-five Irish people aged 16-74 have never used the internet (down from 42% of Irish people in 2006).

The Digital Agenda for Europe aims to reduce the share of individuals in Europe who have never used the internet to 15% by 2015.

Access a PDF of the research here.

comScore reports that In June 2011, Facebook accounted for at least 7.4 percent of traffic going to the top five Newspaper sites in Europe.

The German publication Bild.de, which ranks as the third most popular newspaper site in Europe, saw the most incoming traffic from Facebook (14.0 percent). It also experienced the most growth over the previous year with an 11-percentage point increase in visitation from Facebook.

The British Mail Online, which ranks as the top newspaper site in Europe, saw 10.6 percent of visitors coming from Facebook in June 2011 – an increase of 6.9-percentage points over the previous year.

Guardian.co.uk, which was the second most popular newspaper site in Europe with 13.5 million unique visitors, received 7.4 percent of its visitors from Facebook, growing by 2.7 percentage points over the past year.

A recent comScore report analysed some of the largest global retail and auction sites with a specific look at how these sites are penetrating various geographic regions.

Among destinations included in the study, Amazon Sites and Apple.com Worldwide Sites showed more globally distributed audiences compared to most other brands in the study.

Amazon Sites attracted 35.4% of its audience from North America, while Europe contributed 31.8% of visitors and Asia Pacific accounted for 24.1%.

Similarly, Apple.com Worldwide Sites attracted 32.0% of its visitors from North America, while Europe contributed 29.6% of visitors and Asia Pacific accounted for 24.9%.

On the other hand, China’s Alibaba.com Corporation (85.7% and Japan’s Rakuten, Inc. (72.7%) reach sourced the vast majority of their traffic from the Asia Pacific region.

Of the 10 selected sites, MercadoLibre showed the strongest concentration of visitors from a single region with 93.3% of its audience from Latin America, where it ranked as the top retail player in the region.

comScore reports that Technology sites reached over 77 percent of the total European internet audience in June 2011.

A demographic analysis of the category showed that the highest reach appeared amongst the 55+ year olds, with over 80 percent of the age group visiting a technology site.

Males aged 55+ skewed the highest amongst all age/gender groups with 83.8 percent reach, while females over the age of 55 were slightly lower with a reach of 76.4 percent.

The most popular technology site in Europe was The Mozilla Organisation, attracting over 57.2 million unique visitors during the month, followed by Microsoft Windows with 49.7 million unique visitors during the month. The Mozilla Organisation released an update for their Firefox browser which may have played a role in making them the most visited technology site in June 2011.

Online search engines like Google and Bing accounted for 36% of traffic to Apple, Amazon and Tesco while Social Networking sites like Facebook accounted for 8% of traffic in May 2011 in the UK.

Source comScore

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Today is the celebration of Arthur's Day - the global marketing programme established by Diageo to help build the awareness and consumption of Guinness.

You could almost consider it as a second opportunity to celebrate all things Irish - the first of course being St Patricks Day.

I attended an event yesterday hosted by the Irish Internet Association and the Social Media Working Group (which I am a member of) and we covered a number of case studies about the use of social media in different international markets.

One of the case studies was from Discover Ireland and they mentioned their video that had been created and shared in Australia where they hosted a flashmob including members of Riverdance and school children in spectacular Central Station Sydney on St Patricks Day 2011. At the time of posting this article the video has been watched by over 1.8 million people.

When you watch the video, for me it invokes emotion. Particularly watch from 2:22 minutes through the video.

That is the power of mulitmedia or the written word.

That is also something that is connected to the Guinness brand also - when people drink a pint of Guinness it often reminds you of times that you have shared a pint with friends and colleagues.

When you review your marketing collateral or social media communications, what emotions are you trigger with your audience?

Start the video from 0:16 into the video to see how the event started

 

Watch now from 2:22 in for the full impact of the video.