The Advertising Structure in the UK

This graphic below shows the big picture of how the advertising industry generally works. Playing attention to the main players and their connexions, we can get a good sense of how this process evolve from the simple idea, to millions of people trhough mass media.

The Business Idea

This is just one example of what a crazy business idea with could get out of a brainstorm of words.

Creating an interactive gallery, museum or exhibition with a very broad sense of the topic psychology and human behaviour. The concept would be a kind of "journey" into the human mind; and since it's a subjective and difficult thing to embody, the display of the exhibition would use a lot of lights, sounds, video screens, movement,images and colors that could help to make the audience feel to be summerged in a person's thinking. The aim would be to show to the people how human behaviour and our brain works.

The exhibition would be designed in an specific way to catch general public's attention from all ages; it would count with many interactive screens, games, holograms, tunnels, dark rooms, and all kinds of devices that could make the visitors sumerge their attention in the information, that would be delivered in all kinds of ways (sounds, texts, videos, etc.). It must include and make use of psychology and advertising methods to make everything appealing and fun and easy to learn. The exhibition would cost a fair yet accesible price to access.

One image: A dark room showing videos of memories and unconscious thoughts

One sound: An approach of what would sound like to hear all the thoughts that a person haves in a minute

One word: Knowledge

Talking about Convergence...

Convergence is a new phenomenon that its taking over the minds of producers and media makers...where are the media channels going when now there are new devices capable of joining them?

The variety points of view and opinions about this subject are endless. In one hand, there are many people that believe that some traditional media channels, such as press, magazines and TV are in their way of disappearing due to the new technology. Now we can watch TV through the Internet on our computers, and read magazines and news papers on our phones.
Some other reject this idea. They argue that people won't stop enjoying the benefits of the old forms of media; maybe because of the pleasure of recognition and convenience of tradition.
Either way, we will have to wait and still speculating and expecting the changes of this to prove our beliefs. Moreover, there are even more questions to be answered about this. For example the roll of convergence in London's multiculturalism and creativity?
Many agree that convergence, meaning technological advances that innovate the city, and better communication systems that bring people closer; will contribute to improve these features of London.
Lastly, we can talk about how convergence can help the creative industries in the UK to become more varied and multicultural. Advance, technology, innovation, and forward thinking are some of the ideas that arises when we talk about convergence, and all of these are factors and facilitators to make industries more open.

10 Useful Sources

Below, there's a list of 10 good resources related to our field. This can help us a lot for researching advertising basic information and the understanding of their main concepts and ideas:

1. Academic Article

Pratt, Andy C. "Creativity and The British Advertising Industry." The London School of Economics website. London School of Economics, 01 Mar. 2004. Web. http://www2.lse.ac.uk/geographyAndEnvironment/research/AP_AdvertisingUKJapan/Creativity%20and%20the%20British%20Advertising%20industry3.pdf.

Very extent but clear and easy to read article by a scholar from LSE. The principal aim of the research is to "examine the role that creativity plays in British advertising industry"(Pratt, 2004).

Contains well explained and extent history of advertising in Britain, and the history of the leading advertising companies until now.

2. Advertising Standards Authority Statement

UK. Advertising Standards Authority. http://www.asa.org.uk/. ASA, 2008. Web. http://www.asa.org.uk/About-ASA/Annual-Report.aspx?gclid=CPL5_Mjn058CFZAA4wodal2jcg.

A report full of statistics, facts and some explanations, examples and details on what this authority has done, specially in 2008; what are their plans, their aims and how do they act in order to achieve them.

This is good to understand what sort of censoring the government does and how the process is done.

3. Department for Culture, Media and Sports Statement

UK. Department for Culture, Media and Sports. Creative Industries Economic Estimates Statistical Bulletin. DCMS website, Jan. 2009. Web.

This is a statement by the DCMS highlighting the most important economic facts and statistics that the creative industry contributed from 1997 to 2007.

It is helpful to visualize better how this industry have behaved and developed through the last decade.

4. Advertising Blog

Web log post. Madcomments. Centaur Media Ltd., 2006. Web. http://www.madcomments.co.uk/.

Professional, yet casual blog where anyone working in the media can create an account and speak their opinions on new advertising tendencies, ads, campaigns, etc ; as well as posting new materials that they want to debate or point out as interesting.

An authentic view of what the workers think of the industry and the media.

5. Advertising Article on Website

"Ad Age Advertising Century: Top 100 Advertising Campaigns." Advertising Age - Ad & Marketing Industry News. 1999 & 2005, Advertising Age. Web. http://adage.com/century/campaigns.html.

The list of which advetising campaings, according to Advertising Age website, have been the top 100 most successful ones of the last century.

This is useful information to be aware of the advertising history: how advertising have changed and developed through the past years and which examples of campaigns have been influential.

6. Advertising Online Newspaper

AdWeek. Nielsen Business Media Marketing and Media Group, 2010. Web. http://www.adweek.com/aw/index.jsp.

This website is good source of news, articles, reviews, opinions, comments and information regarding the advertising and marketing field.

I find it very useful since it gather very relevant information and introduce new findings from studies made by the leading advertising and marketing companies in the world.

7. Advertising article on Website

Duncan, April. "10 Ways to Run Your Own Advertising Campaign." Advertising - Advertising Careers and Jobs - Advertising Strategies - Advertising Help for Small Businesses. About.com. Web. 03 Feb. 2010. http://advertising.about.com/od/smallbusinesscampaigns/a/youradcampaign.htm.

This is a brief list of tips and advice on how to manage to create a good advertising campaign and how to work on it.

It contains in a general way, important points to think about.

8. Academic Journal

Waterson, M. J. "Advertising Facts and Advertising Illusions." International Journal of Advertising P207-221, 15p 3.3. Business Source Complete. Web. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=11943189&site=ehost-live.

A long article from an academic journal.

It contains very good and clear analytical value. In this text Waterson writes about how advertising is usualy portrayed as negative, specially from sociologists and economists; but he states that actually, the absence of advertising would lead to less choices and innovation

9. Advertising Blog

Web log comment. Business Advertising Blog. WordPress, 2010. Web. http://www.businessadvertisingblog.co.uk/.

Another blog dedicated to advertising. This posts, comments and feedback are way more professional than the previous one.

The ideas that they publish are very clear and concrete; the purpose of it is more informational.

10. Advertising Newletter

Brand Republic. Haymarket Media, 2010. Web. http://www.brandrepublic.com/.

A news site concerned with advertising, marketing, media and public relations. This is a very much broader site than the first one.

It is also a good way to be updated in every field that realted to advertising.

The Bigger Picture: Staticstics and Facts of Advertising in the UK

The advertising industry is a highly productive one for the UK in the last few years. Official stats say that:

• The total UK expenditure in advertising in 2007 was £18.0 billion.


• In 2006, the GVA of the advertising industry in the UK was £5,300 million, which corresponds to 0.6% of the UK GVA.


• In 2007, 93,800 people were employed in the advertising industry.


• There are 13,200 advertising businesses registered in the UK.


• There were also many regulations held in 2008. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received 26,433 complaints about 15,556 ads from media including television, radio, press, internet and posters, from which 2,475 were obligated to be modified or withdrawn.