Being a life-long West Ham fan, I read with a huge amount of resentment and bitterness about Tottenham’s latest cunning plan to make more money last week. Not content with having one sponsor, they’ve only gone and got themselves a second one – just for cup and European games.

Why didn’t West Ham think of that? Aside from the fact that we’re not in Europe, will no doubt get knocked out of the Carling Cup by Oxford United tonight and possibly of the FA Cup by, hmmm… let’s say Bolton in the fourth round, it seems to be a pretty good idea to generate more revenue for clubs in these tough times for the beautiful game.

Realistically, this brainwave will mainly suit the bigger, more successful clubs as the additional sponsors would have to feel they were getting enough exposure for their money and therefore a decent run in these competitions. But why not extend the idea even further to have a separate sponsor for home and away kits?

Logic would dictate that this will result in one of the following outcomes:

either the floodgates will open for the marketing departments of companies not currently represented to get their brand names splashed across the kits of other top-flight clubs in some way, shape or form;

or existing sponsors will up their money to retain exclusivity across all competitions.

The other scenario is that brands won’t play ball at all – but I suspect the lure of all that publicity will be too great and there will always be someone who will jump in to fill their shoes.

And let’s not forget the replica kit sales – 4p to make, £40 to buy and now you not only need home and away, but also the limited edition Champions League, FA Cup and Carling Cup version. All revenue for these cash-strapped clubs!

Come to think of it, why stop at football – there are plenty of other televised sports to target too.

I suspect there will be a window of opportunity opening for affiliate marketers and sponsors following Tottenham’s tactics and my advice to agencies is to hit those phones now – or better still get the longest established (and best) new business agency to do it on your behalf!

PS – for any Spurs fans reading this, check out http://www.dearmrlevy.com – it’s a cracking site.

I read an article in Marketing Week recently which explored the new buzzword of digital marketing, ‘Social eCommerce’.

Social eCommerce is the integration of eCommerce and social media and it’s a movement that has really taken off in the past few months. However, I do wonder whether this concept has been introduced to the digital mix too soon, especially at a time when some retailers have not even mastered the art of providing good transactional sites and many websites still remain difficult to navigate and fail to entice customers to buy their products.

Amazon is one of the first companies to embrace social eCommerce and they have definitely earned that right, as advocators of the eCommerce explosion.

So what have Amazon actually done?

Amazon has launched a new program that lets shoppers access their Facebook pages directly through Amazon.com. The program allows them to receive personalised movies, music and book recommendations based on the preferences listed within their profiles on the social networking site. The application also keeps track of friend’s birthdays and can automatically provide you with gift suggestions based on their listed preferences.

Amazon, sensing the backlash about privacy, has already promised not to share information with Facebook or any outside sources. However, despite this promise, there still seems to be scepticism about other companies going down this route and it remains to be seen how popular this new feature will be.

Whatever the cost, brands in this day and age need to be continuously demonstrating that they are moving with the times and this is probably why Amazon have been prepared to take the risk.

Please let us know if any of you have had any experiences with social eCommerce and whether you feel it will take off.

2010 has been interesting for a number of political, sporting and other factors. However, Alchemis is focused on advertising and marketing and the Guardian article (July 12th) was a great sanity check as it mirrors our experiences over the first half of 2010.

The article focuses on the recent Bellwether report, published by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. It has found that one in five companies cut annual advertising spend between April and June. This compares with 15% that said spend was increased.

It was as recent as Quarter One when the report announced that more UK companies raised their marketing budgets than cut them for the first time in two-and-a-half years.

Advertising took a knock, although big events such as the World Cup meant the dip in this area was not as significant as it could have been. Sales promotion was hit very hard, with the report recording “the third fastest downgrade to spending on the sales promotion sector in the Bellwether survey’s history”

It is not all doom and gloom. For those in the digital sector spend went up, although at a very slow rate. Internet advertising continued to grow, with social media remaining a major focus. With ROI crucial, digital media’s measurability is very appealing to company bean counters.

Despite all of this, as a new business agency, we (and our clients) should latch onto Rory Sutherland’s (IPA President) comments – “Although this indicates a less optimistic picture than previously thought for this year, marketing spend is still set to increase.”

In fact, we are optimistic at Alchemis. As I mention above, our experiences have mirrored the positive first quarter followed by a slower second quarter with the digital sector remaining the growth area. We, and our clients, entered 2010 with a bang. New briefs were plentiful and outstanding proposals suddenly got the green light. We had a record quarter for clients converting business in all disciplines. The feeling from the market and our clients felt positive. Companies and marketing departments had stuck two fingers up to the recession and the combined efforts of Alchemis and our clients over the last hard 12 months were paying dividends.

Quarter Two did see a dip, although in fact, there were and are still lots of opportunities out there for small to medium sized agencies and results from the second quarter still smashed the figures from 2009. I am not an economist, but there is no doubt in my mind that the uncertainty both before and following the election was a factor. Those are out of the way now and the one thing that has not waned is the number of marketing professionals who have wanted to meet new agencies. We have set record numbers of meetings in May and June. If times are tough, you need to look at quality, cost-effective solutions. I’ve waxed lyrical about it before, but our client base of small to medium sized agencies offer exactly that and the market is really open to approaches from them.

There is still much uncertainty out there and whilst commentators will have their opinion, what happens next is anyone’s guess. However, we know that you will need to be prepared for both a down or upturn. If your current clients cut their budgets, you need to have irons in the fire with new business. If, as we all hope, the second quarter dip is short lived, you want to make sure that you have got the introductions out of the way before those budgets are released and allocated.

The Lib-Cons will be there for a while yet, Germany has beaten us again, but who knows what the rest of 2010 will bring? All I know is that everyone in agency land needs to be prepared for any eventuality.