Mark Creighton’s promotion to chief executive of WPP’s Mindshare has been well received among the media fraternity, with at least one industry stalwart wondering what took them so long.

Creighton is a figure who seems like he’s been around for much longer than he has. He’d already made quite a name for himself as the managing director of that digital pioneer i-Level, before the government’s COI pulled the plug as a client and the business collapsed.

Since then, the 36 year old has sat within Mindshare’s management team, and as became clear in our interview, feels ready for his new leadership challenge.

He certainly enjoys some strong endorsements, not least from David Pattison, yes he who will forever enjoy having put the ‘P’ into PHD. He was chairman at i -Level during Creighton’s tenure, and has been far from surprised by his meteoric rise since then.

“If anything, I’m surprised it’s taken Mindshare so long,” he says. “Even at 31-32 years of age, you always felt like you’re talking to a grown-up.

“He thinks things through and is very collaborative. That rare blend of having a strong point of view while still taking on board the opinions of others. And clients absolutely adore him, because he always thinks about what’s right for them… and of course, he has the benefit of being very current.”

Pattison predicts: “He’ll make his own mark as leader of the agency in a quiet and measured way.”

Glowing praise indeed, and it continued when I talked to another media stalwart, Colin Gillespie, the co-founder of All Response Media.

Creighton first began his media career as an account executive at the direct response specialist in 1999. Gillespie recalls “an incredibly bright grad, who had a clarity of thought and steely determination that is very rare”.

He adds: “For a fast-paced response business like ours, the ability to think on your feet while keeping an eye on the bigger picture is essential. He had an authority about him, even at an early age.”

No doubt one of the reasons Creighton was not made CEO sooner is because of the success the agency has enjoyed under Jed Glanvill’s leadership for the past seven years.

To give him his dues, Glanvill helped secure many high profile accounts in his time, not least News international, Axa, COI’s planning and McDonalds.

He also helped retain major global business in the shape of Unilever and Nestle, while playing his part in establishing Martin Sorrell’s now beloved powerhouse, GroupM, in the UK.

Those with longer memories might even credit Glanvill with helping to knock down Mindshare’s ‘House of Media’ too. Full of charm, humour and bull in equal measure, he’ll be missed on the day to day circuit.

But time marches on, something Glanvill will be the first to recognise. The former BBJ Media graduate once told Media Week in 2008 he would not move into a GroupM role, believing himself to be a Mindshare man through and through. I wonder if that prognosis is due a revision?

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Let’s be honest, 2012 has been tough for many of us whose livelihoods are tied in one way or another to advertising expenditure. The structural and cyclical shifts taking place across the media landscape continue. But as the austerity months roll into years since 2009 dropped off a cliff, it’s getting harder to distinguish one from the other; the question is where, not just when, will growth return?

The general consensus is that our golden summer of the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics proved to be a great year for the national psyche, but not much of a fillip for ad spend, with the notable exception of those working in Outdoor.

For ZenithOptimedia, as far as the ad market is concerned, measured media in the UK enjoyed less than half as much growth as they had anticipated this time last year. In December 2011, Zenith tipped 3.7% growth for the UK’s Olympic year, last week this was downgraded to just 1.6%.

This trend is largely echoed by Interpublic’s Magna Global ad revenues forecast – which unlike spend figures strips out the standardised 15% agency commissions – and includes insights from its UM and Initiative networks.

Olympics 2012 on the BBC

No Olympic boost for UK media

This time last year, Magna expected UK media revenues to grow 4.4% in 2012, now its forecasts have been slashed to exactly half of that, at 2.2%. Vincent Letang, director of global forecasting, notes that the BBC-led Olympics proved to be a negative factor for commercial television, and goes on to tip growth of just 1.9% for 2013.

For those wanting a more uplifting message before their turkey, turn to WPP’s GroupM, where the UK has outperformed expectations this year. Last December, GroupM expected 3.2% growth, this was revised last week to 3.4%. GroupM is similarly confident about next year, with growth of 3.5% expected.

It’s worth noting that within half an hour of GroupM’s forecast being presented by future’s director Adam Smith and co in New York on Monday (3 December), WPP’s own chief executive, Sir Martin Sorrell, was even questioning its bullishness.

The Sage of Soho admitted at a UBS presentation he believed his group’s global figures for 2013 could be “a little optimistic”, and went on to identify “grey swans” that make him “err on the side of caution at the moment”.

WPP's Martin Sorrell

An adaptation of the expression “black swans”, referring to unknown and unexpected seismic events, Sorrell’s swans are grey because they are potential problems that are known about – the most pressing being an inability to avert a fiscal crisis in the US economy, short-termism in clients budgets, and problems in the Eurozone.

GroupM and Publicis Groupe’s Zenith largely agree that those operating in print have been hardest hit in 2012, with both newspapers and magazines tipped to fall in the region of 6%-10%.

Both also track a year of two halves for TV, with the first six months showing around 3% growth on the back of the Jubilee, Euro 2012 and pre-Olympics, but the second half of the year is expected to tumble around 5%, with blame apportioned to a post London 2012 comedown and George Osborne’s wider fragile economy.

For this year and next, GroupM is notably more upbeat about radio and cinema, but the biggest discrepancy between the two global groups surrounds digital, where the amount clients spend on search in particular is far harder to ascertain.

Both forecasters use IAB figures as a starting point, which are then supplemented with their own on the ground experience. GroupM is far more bullish about search (18%) and display (13%) growth this year, than Zenith (10% and 13%).

Smith highlights how much search has benefitted from the rise of mobile/tablet queries, which are substantial (20% of all queries typical for several verticals), and mostly additional to desktop. The rise of e-commerce, already 17% of UK retail per IMRG, and growing in double digits, is also believed to making a big impact on search spend.

Mobile to change media mix

Mobile to change landscape in 2013

GroupM’s North America chief executive, Rob Norman, believes mobility adds a new “proxy for intent” to search, by which he means knowing someone’s location gives the search marketer more to chew on; and as mobile is likely to be closer to the sale, attribution is clearer, which is always good for business.

The increasing role of mobile in the media mix is singled out by Havas’ global chief executive David Jones too, who believes the rise in location-based services will be “absolutely dramatic”. The 46 year old leader has already started to reposition Havas around ‘connecting people with brands through technology’ in anticipation.

While Havas doesn’t compile its own global report, Jones added: “There is no reason to believe that next year is going to be either dramatically better or dramatically worse than this year.”

Goldman Sachs has just upgraded Havas to a ‘conviction buy’, reflecting strong performances against its competitive set in many regions around the world. The Havas leader said: “When there’s a shark in the water, you don’t need to swim faster than the shark, just faster than everybody else.”

Jones didn’t go as far as to say he was leaving Martin Sorrell and Maurice Lévy to the sharks, but did tell me: “I’m looking at the next four or five years, rather than just the next year, whereas both of them – given that they are now in their 70s – are probably not looking at the next decade.”

For the record, Martin Sorrell is a sprightly 67, while Publicis Groupe’s Maurice Lévy is 70. So that’s someone off the Christmas card list.

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It is believed the 41 year old is staying within the Publicis Groupe agency as chairman, a role left vacant since the departure of Derek Morris when he took on the new role as the chief operating officer of VivaKi UK in April 2010.

Zenith Media is already on the hunt for a new managing director following Stephen Farquhar’s decision to take the role of MD of Zenith China this summer. The new CEO role has become part of that recruitment process being led by global chief executive, Steve King.

Boyle became chief executive when Antony Young moved to New York in June 2006 and, for the past six years, his leadership has been the one constant in a network that, like the industry at large, has seen dramatic change.

From the rise and fall of its digital specialist Zed, and the coming together and then separating of Zenith and Optimedia, in addition to its relationship with the evolving group positioning of VivaKi, Boyle has provided a steady hand on the tiller.

He understands ZenithOptimedia’s DNA and its current challenges as well as anyone, and they’ll be relief all round if he is to stay on in a chairman role as expected.

It’s fair to say I haven’t always seen eye-to-eye with ZenithOptimedia’s irascible chief executive, mainly because as a media journalist I have, in the past, had the temerity to write stories about the agency that have not been officially sanctioned by him.

However, fellow agency leaders assure me his protectiveness should be seen as indicative of the passion and commitment he has for the business, rather than a desire to simply control and dictate per se.

I’ve yet to hear anyone describe him as cuddly, but the Glaswegian certainly commands admiration and respect throughout the industry. People who have worked with him recall a smart, strategic operator, and a natural, charismatic leader.

The chief executive’s pivotal role was underlined by the manner in which ZenithOptimedia bounced back from the gapping loss of Lloyds’s £80m media business to MEC in September 2009. At a time when others might have considered bowing out, Boyle is credited with truly galvanising and refocusing ZenithOptimedia in the immediate aftermath.

The agency lost no other accounts, big or small, for the next year, and embarked on a new business pitch frenzy that more than offset the loss of the high street bank to bring more than £175m worth of new billings during 2009/2010. One year later the agency also got its footing firmly back in the financial sector when it won RBS retail’s coveted business.

The chief executive’s presence is said to have been instrumental in winning the RBS account, with tales of a last minute, on the day intervention when he halted proceedings and, with near certainty, changed the outcome.

Industry figures paint a picture of Boyle as someone who, when at his best, possesses an innate ability to empathise with clients and tap into their hidden agendas.

He first made a name for himself as a planner at specialist agency Michaelides & Bednash in the late nineties, where his commitment to the discipline of comms planning is remembered fondly.

Someone who knew him back then recalls a driven young buck who stood out for bringing a new approach to age old problems. There are stories of a young Boyle taking to the streets and personally interviewing 200-odd people to glean more insight for a particular brief.

By the time he joined Zenith as head of planning back in 1999, in the pre-merger Paddington days of Zenith Media and Optimedia, he was already cultivating a fearsome reputation.

He went on to build an 85-strong team around him, which included Optimedia’s now MD Mark Howley, and went on to revitalise the planning capabilities of the renowned media powerhouse Zenith. Remembered by one former staffer as “one of the most intense people I’ve ever met,” he admits, “you always wondered what was going on behind those eyes”.

People talk of the exhilarating and daunting experience of running through a pitch preview with the Boyle taking notes, shredding slides and polishing your prose. “He certainly knows how to tell a story,” I’m told, but in his role “there’s not always time for the niceties”.

In more recent times, Boyle is known for being gracious in both pitch victories and defeats among his agency peers. The Glaswegian was also among the first to reach out to WPP’s rival MEC when the agency found itself in the cross-hairs over the engulfing scandal that soon became known as Shicklegate.

ZenithOptimedia is going into 2013 with its new group structure in place and on the back of significant investment in its digital and analytics capability, as well as Newcast, its engagement solutions division. Only this month, its relationship with RBS has been extended to include its digital business and new business has come in the guise of Totaljobs.

There’s never a perfect time for any business to replace a figurehead who’s clearly been such a potent key to its success for the last decade, but actually the end of 2012 with ZenithOptimedia’s course firmly set, is probably as good as you can get.

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Celebration was most definitely in the air at ITV’s sparkling Upfronts last week, along with some underlying vibes about becoming a more accessible brand than in years gone by.

Billed as “the biggest night of the year in the commercial calendar”, more than 600 agency leaders and advertisers packed into London Television Centre on the Southbank to get a sense of where the broadcaster finds itself at the end of 2012, and its ambitions for the coming year.

First up was ITV’s smiling commercial managing director Fru Hazlitt, looking, as she so often does, like she’d just been told a really rude joke, and dressed in what a layman like me can only describe as a hairy dress – nicer than it sounds, but definitely hirsute nonetheless.

Hazlitt told us 2013 will be the year the UK’s largest commercial broadcaster proudly celebrates its roots being “at the heart of popular culture”.

There was a sense the MD was trying to convey a step change from ITV of old. Around this time last year, she had questioned the power of UGC and social content, telling us that “most people are boring”, now here she was talking enthusiastically about being “collaborative, creative and innovative”, and about the importance of staying in touch and relevant.

She added: “Let’s be honest, these are probably not always words used to describe ITV in the past.”

Integrated partnerships looking beyond standalone traditional spots were held up as the commercial model of the future, with Talk Talk’s tie-up with ‘X Factor’, Surf with ‘TOWIE’, and the upcoming Compare the Market deal with ‘Coronation Street’, given by way of example.

“We kind of used to rent out our air time like we were some kind of motel,” said Hazlitt candidly. “We didn’t care what went on in the rooms as long as you guys paid up and it looked fairly legal…We should, and do now, care passionately.”

A dynamic, warm logo for the masses

Looming large over the stage was a 20ft model of ITV’s new logo, its first for seven years, which group marketing director Rufus Radcliffe described as “a warm, bold design based on a formalised version of human handwriting”.

When the logo appears on screen it will pick out the background colours, he explained, enabling it to become a dynamic, shifting tone that can reflect and blend with the mood of different shows.

“In the past we haven’t always been the warmest and most human people to deal with,” reiterated Radcliffe, in a sure indication the media owner is attempting to position itself as an altogether more approachable business. “But now, being the heart of popular culture, we want to put viewers and customers first and bring them a brand that is as big and warm and relevant as the programmes we make and we show.”

Industry-wise we learned, among other things, that ‘Downton Abbey’ is very big in the Nigel Sharrocks / Fiona Bruce household, Tess Alps is a bit in love with – and slightly terrified of – Keith Lemon, while Philippa Brown has a soft spot for Bolton boy Paddy McGuinness – with the girls on ‘Take Me Out’ taking her back to her Wolverhampton Comprehensive days.

There were some welcome no brainers announced too, including ITV1 set to be called simply ITV again from the new year. Meanwhile, Xtra Factor’s Caroline Flack reminded us that ITV2 is still the biggest digital channel in the country, with the likes of Bafta winning Celebrity Juice helping its portfolio of digital channels grow by more 3% this year.

Talent shines through

But ITV’s group commercial director, Simon Daglish, had told me the focus was to be firmly placed on “the talent”, and so it proved. The stage was soon handed over to Holly Willoughby, who went on to interview and introduce wave after wave of mass market TV entertainers.

From comedian Keith Lemon to ‘X Factor’s’ Gary Barlow, Louis Walsh, Nicole Scherzinger and Tulisa Contostavlos; ‘BGT’s’ Alesha and David Walliams to ‘TOWIE’s’ Joey, Gemma and Kirk, this was ITV’s equivalent of winding down the windows and cruising along the strip.

The night also featured two Spice Girls, Emma and Mel C, talking about their upcoming documentary – ‘Spice Girls Story: Viva Forever’ – and former ‘Doctor Who’ star David Tennant and Olivia Colman talking about their new series, ‘Broadchurch’, a local detective story about a murder of a boy.

Ant and Dec did their perennial turn of sending a message from the set of ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here’, describing how they would love to be with us in cold, wintry London instead of sipping cocktails and playing golf in the Australian summer.

MediaCom’s chief Karen Blackett described watching the pair “like sitting down with a couple of mates,” capturing the views of many who have grown up with them since their ‘Byker Grove Days’. The rapport the two 37 year old Geordies have with viewers must be among the strongest anywhere on TV, and in many ways represent ITV at its best.

Despite Willoughby’s heavy, and welcome, presence there was no sign of her ‘This Morning’ co-host Phillip – here’s a list I compiled from the internet – Schofield, bar a fleeting skit on a video montage. Some things perhaps are best forgotten, which might explain the absence of any ‘Daybreak’ presenters too.

It is generally accepted that ITV took one for the team in 2012, with Queen and country commanding many hours away from the commercial operator during the BBC-led Jubilee and London 2012 Olympics celebrations.

Set to make a splash in 2013

ITV’s director of television, Peter Fincham, dubbed it “a very unusual and challenging year”, but stressed it had been a “very creative” one, despite the challenging conditions.

In 2013, a year deprived of any major international sporting events, drama is set to play a key part in ITV’s schedules, with favourites ‘Downton Abbey’ and ‘Doc Martin’ being joined by the likes of ‘Mr Selfridge’, the story of a man with a mission to make shopping as thrilling as sex, and ‘Life of Crime’, about a risk-taking and impulsive rookie policewoman.

Also included among ITV’s more than 60 new commissions for 2013 is ‘The Job Lot’, a new sitcom set in a West Midlands Job Centre, and ‘Splash’, a series featuring Olympic Bronze medallist Tom Daley teaching celebrities to dive.
Fincham described ‘Splash’ as entertainment “of its time”, following the mass interest in Olympic diving this summer.

How well ITV succeeds in repositioning itself as a collaborative, innovative brand at the heart of popular culture remains to be seen. PHD’s head of planning David Wilding, who was on stage a week earlier at Channel 4’s Upfronts, felt the night had reinforced the strength of ITV and its depth of talent, but was less convinced he’d heard anything truly fresh to get excited about (More agency reaction in this week’s Campaign).

The night ended with Reverend & The Makers playing their ironic hit about under-achievers, ‘Heavyweight Champion of the World’: Popular entertainment yes, but Hazlitt and co will be hoping they won’t be just like everybody else in 2013.

[Photographs: James Carnegie]

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Edie Campbell, Nicholas Coleridge and Olympia Campbell.

At the start of the summer I had a baffling conversation with Condé Nast’s managing director, Nicholas Coleridge. The esteemed leader, and former chairman of industry body PPA, fixed me with his trademark grin before assuring me that magazines were in unbelievably rude health. 

Moreover, he said: “I never would have imagined 20 years ago that magazines would be selling so many copies as they’re selling now.”

But what about the perennial double-digit falls in copy sales, I asked, and the loss of print advertising to online? And what of the erosion of the industry’s share of total media spend to rivals old and new?

Simply not true, according to Coleridge, he’d only accept that magazines have “had a wobble” for a couple of years as the downturn hit, but certainly nothing more seismic or structural than that.

His comments seemed to defy all recent trends and forecasts. I thought back to the consolidation taking place among publishers and printers alike, the hundreds of magazine closures tracked over the past three years alone – and all the studies that suggest younger readers were migrating away from print.

Coleridge remained defiantly upbeat and I was forced to put the encounter down to ambassadorial exuberance, until last month, when things became altogether clearer.

In reports filed at Companies House, Condé Nast, the publisher of Vogue and GQ, revealed it had not only weathered the troubles of 2011, but carved out 5.2% growth in turnover to £117.9 million, and a 14% lifts in pre-tax profits, to £17.3 million.

Its wider European operation, Condé Nast International, also based in London, performed even better, with pre-tax profits up 25% to £43.5 million.

It appears both luxury advertisers and affluent consumers have largely survived the current downturn intact. In addition, the 103 year old media company appears to be successfully offsetting any slight losses in print sales with the introduction of copy sales from digital tablet editions, and significant growth in online spend.

For the best part of three years, Jamie Jouning, the former publisher of Wired UK turned digital director of Conde Nast, has played a key role in this transition.

He told me the lions share of the company’s new digital revenues can be attributed to advertising. It has not happened overnight, or by accident. You can read my interview with Jouning about the transition currently taking place at Condé Nast here.

Closer cooperation and understanding across the group is credited with luring luxury advertisers to the web, and much of the innovation has been driven directly and indirectly by the arrival of Apple’s iPad.

However, for all the recent investment online, Jouning stresses: “The print guys are doing incredibly well still. These are interesting times in publishing but certainly in our print experience it’s been business as usual.

“We are very fortunate, we have some fantastic brands and people still believe in those brands, so we provide the very best in photography and journalism and design, so fortunately we are able to continue to charge our premiums.”

So, as clichéd as it is, the secret of Condé Nast’s success turns out to be nurturing relevant, strong brands, across multimedia platforms. No wonder Coleridge continues to smile.

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You know CDP’s surreal B&H ads in the 70s and 80s would have driven the Amstrad man to distraction. He’s more a webuyanycar.com, direct response kinda guy. So it was with great interest that Alan, “I like hard-selling adverts”, Sugar took to the stage for an “audience with…” event hosted by Nabs last week.

The entrepreneur and star of The Apprentice has admitted in the past he thinks advertising people are “bullshitters, just like I am”. For the most part, he thinks advertising and marketing is “pissing money up a wall”.

On the media side, we’ve all heard the recent stories about his recent run ins with that other wallflower, Richard Desmond, with deals, double deals and histrionics aplenty flaring up over YouView, attempts to poach pilots and contra-deals involving Amscreen.

However, in front of 500 media and advertising execs at Nabs, Sugar hadn’t quite judged the mood when he began recounting an expensive TV brand campaign from yesteryear, which he believed had failed from the outset.

In a cutting observation, designed to prove that subtly and narrative is no competition for product, product, product when it comes to advertising, Sugar asked rhectorically: “Who remembers the advert, that great advert, great photography – it was a car firm – and I swear to you to this day I don’t know what car firm it was.

“A ball bearing goes over, rolls down the thing, knocks something else over, cogs turn, hits something else, something else goes on… but what’s the name of the firm?”

Hear how adland responded to this challenge in the 45 second video footage below. A fleeting moment in what proved to be a highly entertaining night for the industry charity led by Zoe Osmond, but it might just have reminded Sugar about one of marketing’s most fundamental building blocks: know your audience.

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Keenan notes "If you’re seven foot tall, covered in white fur and live in cold places, the chances are..."

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for Bauer Media’s chief exec Paul Keenan, revisiting licensing contracts, inciting regulatory battles and, of course, dabbling in some existential philosophy.

Earlier this week, Bauer’s chief wrote to advertisers, agencies, MPs and regulator Ofcom to reiterate his concerns about Global Radio’s estimated £70m acquisition of GMG Radio, the owner of Smooth and Real Radio.

Keenan believes Global’s takeover will harm both commercial radio’s competition and plurality of news. Research he commissioned from Enders Analysis is said to conclude that the merger would create “excessive concentration” in the UK radio sector.

It warned it could reduce the supply of local radio news and current affairs programming and also reduce the diversity of music playlists.

Bauer believes Global, already Britain’s biggest commercial radio group, with an empire that includes Capital, Heart, Classic and LBC, stands to command 70% of the advertising market in some areas after the takeover. Overall, Bauer is expected to have a 57% share, although Global has suggested the actual figure will be just below 50%.

Keenan’s lobbying comes days after he was forced to call urgent contract talks with licensing publishing partner Mondadori after the European publisher became the first to publish photos of a topless Kate – Duchess of Cambridge. The removal of the photographs from Closer France’s website the next day is unlikely to have been a coincidence.

Meanwhile, the chief exec, whose company in addition to Closer also publishes celebrity weekly Heat, has also had time to consider Charlotte Stockting’s attempts to reposition Hello! Magazine as non-celebrity driven weekly, preferring to view it as more a lifestyle read.

The Bard once famously asked: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet”.

This week, in what must be a strong contender for quote of the month, Keenan told me: “If you’re seven foot tall, covered in white fur, eat raw fish and live in cold places, the chances are you’re a polar bear. I think they [Hello!] can say what they like about what they think they are, the rest of the world may have a slightly different view.”

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Andrew Marr and guests discuss the weekend's newspapers

For many, the glorious glow of the Olympics and Paralympics came to an abrupt end this weekend, as unfathomable amounts of copy and airtime  filled with stories of a Duchess’ breasts and grubby publishers trying to make a quick buck.

Stories of the paparazzi topless shots of Kate Middleton swept across the media, propelled by a torrent of anger, self-righteousness and, of course, titillation.

Never mind that lives were under threat from protesting Muslims in the Middle East, or, closer to home, that the insidious and widespread corruption surrounding the Hillsborough disaster was finally being laid bare after 23 years.

There’s no accounting for what people are drawn too, a situation wryly noted by Andrew Marr and guests on his BBC news show yesterday by way of an apology for leading on the boobs.

“You’ve got on the one hand, Kate being shot at by the cameras, and on the other hand, [Prince] Harry being shot at [in Afghanistan] by real ‘things’, noted The Times’ Philip Colins. “It’s remarkable that the [topless] pictures story is knocking the other one out in most cases.”

Time magazine’s Catherine Mayer was even more animated: “This makes me really quite cross that there’s so much space devoted to these stories… It’s such a phoney debate… the really important debate about press freedoms that the Leveson inquiry has sought to look into, has been hijacked by this bizarre notion of what is important to print.”

For Media Week, of particular interest is how industry tensions of the last few days have called into question the relationships, and the amount of power ceded, among publishers who have extended brands through licensing agreements and joint ventures.

First Bauer Media and then Richard Desmond’s Northern & Shell were forced to urgently review their contractual rights, having discovered their brands have published the topless pictures through international partnerships.

Speaking to Media Week, Bauer’s Paul Keenan admitted to being “very disappointed” about the actions of Closer France, before later urging his publishing partner, Mondadori, to remove the photos from their website; which it duly did.

In a statement with strong echoes of the one made by Bauer Media, Northern & Shell sought to distance itself from the publication of the topless photos in the Irish Daily Star, a title it co-owns with INM.

Desmond is chairman of the venture, Independent Star, which publishes the newspaper, but admits to having “no editorial control” over the Irish Daily Star. The decision to run the photos falls on the shoulders of editor, Mike O’Kane, whose attempts to justify it as “a service to our readers” will no doubt haunt him for his remaining working days.

His position at the Independent Star is surely untenable. The jury is out on whether he ends up taking down the entire Irish Daily Star and its 80-strong team; Desmond has vowed to take “immediate action to close down the joint venture”.

I have suggested events of last year as one possible canary in the coal mine for staff on the daily, when the publishing group was forced to close its weekend Irish Daily Star Sunday amid tough trading conditions. The newspaper has now been replaced on the shelves by the UK edition of the Daily Star Sunday.

David Hayes, managing director of MEC Ireland, is among those surprised by O’Kane’s career suicidal tendencies. He tells me the Irish Daily Star is generally perceived in the marketplace to be “the thinking man’s redtop”.

Unlike its UK namesake or News International’s domestic rival The Sun, the newspaper does not carry topless photos of women on page three, and identifies its core audience as C1C2 – as opposed to Ds and Es.

Commercially the Irish Daily Star, like the rest of the press, has been feeling the pressures of the retreating advertising market. The once highly lucrative advertising spend around the construction industry, for example, has all but disappeared since the recession. Total press spend among the tabloids in Ireland is said to have plummeted by around 50% since 2008.

For his part, 61-year-old Desmond is known to take a very hands-on approach to the business he inherited when he acquired Express Newspapers in 2000. The departure of its managing director and a founding executive, Paul Cooke, last year is attributed in no small part to his strained relationship with N&S’s irascible leader.

Yet, for all its challenges, the Irish Daily Star and the JV which has published it since 1987, remains a profitable business (pre-tax profit of €4.3m in 2010, down 11.4%). Any attempts to close the Dublin operation,which is reported to have a branding licence with N&S running until 2037, is likely to be fought by joint shareholder INM.

Much will rest on what is stipulated in the publishing contract between the two companies. And as Duncan Lamont, a partner at media law specialist Charles Russell tells me, this could get complicated.

While publishing contracts are good at protecting themselves from the bad behaviour of celebrity endorsers, they have to be careful not to be seen to be depriving editors of the right to edit.

Many contracts will protect the reputation of ‘brands’, but this is a little different from a normal ‘morality clause’.

For example, will there in time be a ruling by the Irish regulator over the Kate photos in the Irish Daily Star? If there is, and it finds in favour of the paper, then Desmond might find withdrawing the Daily Star brand from Ireland mid-contract, and after 25 years in circulation, something easier said than done.

One supporter of Desmond’s attempts to kneecap the Irish Daily Star is fellow media magnate Evgeny Lebedev, whose family bought The Independent from INM in 2010.

“Respect Richard Desmond for ditching Irish Daily Star over topless Kate pics,” he tweeted. “Good on you Richard.”

Such vocal support for a decision that threatens to put so many jobs on the line after one bad day in the office should provide food for thought for many in Northcliffe House too.

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[View the story "Publishing contracts under pressure" on Storify]

Facebook UK's commercial leader Stephen Haines

It’s been one of the best kept secrets of the summer among the media elite, apparently; Facebook UK is soon to be under new management.

Discreet conversations with potential candidates for the role of a local managing director at the world’s largest social media network have been taking place while the rest of us were glued to London 2012.

The hunt for a new local leader makes sense from a global strategic point of view. The UK is Facebook’s largest commercial operation in Europe, and generally believed to be its second largest market outside the US.

For a US digital company like Facebook, its UK investment ticks all the right boxes. Here, the social network enjoys high penetration of around 40 million users and a leading e-commerce culture, with a higher percentage of GDP attributed to “the internet” than any G20 country.

Another known cornerstone to Facebook’s future is mobile, where ad spend is projected to reach £962m in 2014 – a 3000% increase since 2008.

So yes, Media Week’s news today of an incoming MD, and that the company’s creative chief – and client favourite – Mark D’Arcy, is relocating to London, makes sense. As does news that Joanna Shields is set to get another pair of hands at a regional level.

But the hunt for its first UK MD has already led some in the industry to question its impact. How easy will it be for anyone to take control and motivate a team whose senior management already have serious money in the bank? And it’s a bank that’s about to open its ATM for the first time.

Whether Facebook’s shares edge back towards IPO highs of $38, or remain at today’s $21 price, any staff with substantial stock remain multi-millionaires.

They are the ones being asked, ‘what still gets you up in the morning?’ They have been forced to watch as early investors cashed out last month at the first available opportunity. And soon they will be able to do the same.

Facebook employees with stakes in the company will be free to sell more than 1.4 billion shares when “Lockup” expirations arrive in October, November and December this year.

Among them is one Stephen Haines, the commercial director who was only the second person to join Facebook UK back in November 2007. Considered by many to be the archetypal sales professional, Haines has been a strong advocate for the brand and is believed to be on course to bring revenues of up to £270m this year.

But with the arrival of a new boss and a multimillion pound pay cheque, it is not unreasonable to question his motivation.

When asked about the pending changes today he remained the consummate sales man, upbeat and positive, he’d only add that he’s about to go on his first holiday in a very long time.

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The BBC's London 2012 Olympics Red Button

Considering the media winners of the London 2012 Olympics after its Closing Ceremony, I ventured it had signalled a “coming of age” for digital TV’s Red Button, this sentiment has since been bolstered by some welcome hard facts.

The 2012 Games, with its 26 individual sports, provided the ideal springboard for the BBC to develop the interface of its digital Red Button service and expand its six channel offering to 24.

Aaron Scullion, executive product manager at BBC Future Media, who led the Red Button overhaul, reports a “fantastic uptake”, with more than 24 million people (42% of the UK population) watching at least 15 minutes of Olympics coverage via its interactive service.

He explains: “We focussed on two tasks – help viewers find something to watch now, and help them decide what to watch later.

“We rejected other features – such as a full schedule, or news stories – that would have added complexity. During the Olympics there is live video for approximately 16 hours each day, so we focused on the one thing viewers would really want to do – watch it.”

More than 10 years in the making

It’s easy to forget this “nascent” television service has actually been more than a decade in the making, with the BBC having launched its first interactive digital service, BBC Text, back in 1999.

The service’s new-found significance has only been made possible by the Government-led rollout of digital television. The Games coincided with the country’s final push in its four year digital switchover, on track to be completed by 24 October.

According to Ofcom’s Communications Report last month, almost all (96%) of UK homes were able to receive digital TV, and its additional services, in the first quarter of 2012.

The uptake, according to research from Starcom MediaVest, has helped contribute to nothing short of “a watershed in media behaviour”, with 6.6 million people using the Red Button function during the Olympics for the very first time.

The agency adds that 90% of the UK’s population had followed the Games through a combination of TV, PC, mobile, tablet and social media, based on a sample size of 1,010 adults (aged 18+).

With 2,500 hours of live coverage beamed across the 24 dedicated video feeds, Scott Thompson, digital research manager at SMG, believes the BBC’s broad coverage has clearly introduced new media technologies and behaviours to new audiences.

And Thompson believes this is just the beginning: “Once people have cleared the initial hurdle of experimenting with new technologies or behaviours, the barrier to repeating them is lowered as they have a clearer understanding of the benefits, and the confidence to use them again,” he says. “We expect to see more evidence of these sorts of behaviours in the future.”

The BBC’s Scullion shares more of his Red Button insights here 

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