The Week on the Web 5-9 August

Knowing me Week on the Web; knowing you Week on the Web reader. Ah-Ha! This week we follow the news that Peter Capaldi is Doctor Who, with other internet phenomenon including something from our very own blog.   

Using Cision Social Media we can see how a fake burger, a yeast-based product and a Norwich DJ have been causing their own stir:

Alan
Alan Partridge’s latest outing is in Alpha Papa which goes on full UK release today. It is the first time the character has been the star of a major motion picture, and the blogosphere has reacted accordingly.

• The hype for the film found an outlet in clips and trailers, shared across news sites and blogs alike. Female First got its post in back in July, with a ‘first clip’ teaser.

• HeyUGuys interviewed director Declan Lowney, and talked about his previous work on Father Ted, directing Steve Coogan and what tempted him to direct Alpha Papa.

• Live for Films posted a text version of an interview AskMen.com had with Alpha Papa co-writers Neil and Rob Gibbons.

• And, of course, there are reviews everywhere. Mostly rating the film average to good, you can read them here, here, here and here. Or go to the cinema and see for yourself. Needless to say, you’ll have the last laugh.

Burger
The £215,000 hamburger that was grown in a laboratory was consumed this week at a news conference in London. The ‘more sustainable way of meeting a growing demand for meat’ was funded by Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin.

• The Drum teamed up with One Minute Brief to source ideas for an advert promoting the genetically grown beef burger. Examples are in the article with the best tagline surely going to: ‘Meat. Your Maker’, accompanied by a picture of a burger and a scientist.

• TechCrunch got involved via the Sergey Brin angle. It reported: ‘The synthetic meat could require a mere 1% of the land and 4% of the water of current livestock methods’. The sustainability of the ‘meat’ is said to be one of the reason Brin got involved.

• Off the Post even managed to cover the news by posting a clip from Sky News that inadvertently suggests Wayne Rooney is the test tube burger.

Marmite
The Marmite controversy is, for once, not about whether you either love or hate the [really tasty] spread. Its new advertising campaign sees Marmite jars ‘recovered’ from homes where they’ve been ‘neglected’. The complaints largely claim the advert ‘trivialises animal and child cruelty’.  

• In what seems like an act of penance, Marmite’s owner Unilever has donated £18,000 to RSPCA. This was reported by the Animal Blog which also said the advert had received around 400 complaints.   

• Liberate Media went with the headline: ‘Marmite Ad – love it or hate it, it’s grabbing the headlines’ [thus proving its own claim]. Outlining the salient points of the story, it also reports that from a marketing point of view, the campaign is already proving a huge success.

• Contact Music poses the question: ‘Is The “Marmite” Advert Really Offensive, or Really Funny?’ The post contains two pictures of the ad’s voice-over artist Michael Buerk and discusses how offensive the advert really is.

Cision
Cision experienced some controversy this week when we published a guest post from Cybher event founder Siân To titled: ‘No mummy bloggers allowed – Why I founded Cybher’. In the post, Siân gives her views on some bloggers’ approach to brands and freebies, and explains what makes Cybher stand out. The post received a great deal of social media attention and a raft of comments on the blog.

For Cision, it was the main story in our Week on the Web. What was yours? Let us know in the comments below.

All the graphs made with Cision Social Media via CisionPoint. All the bloggers are listed are available in the Media Database and were found with Cision’s free Influencer Search.