since the space shuttle programme ended six years ago. the private spacex falcon rocket is carrying cargo to replenish supplies on the international space station. launch pad thirty—nine—a first became famous in the 1960s for the giant saturn five rockets nasa used to carry astronauts to the moon. now, the weather. we have a lot of cloud in the uk, not for all, but predominantly. a combination of weather fronts across the uk, most of them fairly weak affairs, as you can see, rolling in the atlantic. that's the important bit of the forecast — they are coming in from the west, relatively mild, and bringing an awful lot of cloud. through the night, that weak band of drizzly rain will sink to the south and then pep up again in the south and then pep up again in the northwest. temperatures

overnight will be higher than the daytime average for this time of year. they will get higher still tomorrow. they are tempered somewhat by these gusty winds. trans—pennine route, across the east of the grampians, you will get buffeted during the rush—hour. chilly air following to the north, but further south, we could have 15 or 16 celsius tomorrow. we will start to see something potentially more stormy in the middle part of the week. more on that later. hello. this is bbc news. the headlines: thousands of prison officers in london and the south east of england are to get an instant pay increase of between £3000 and £5000. ministers said they wanted to attract the best talent after concerns the prison service was understaffed. iraqi forces say they've taken several villages to the south of mosul, hours after launching a major offensive to retake the western half of the city from islamic state militants. save the children warn there's around 350,000 children

trapped in the city. the chief executive of sainsbury‘s calls for "fundamental reforms" of business rates, amid concerns upcoming rises could spark high—street closures. the us defence secretary has public disagreed with his boss that the press is the enemy. earlier, president trump had attacked the media, but the defence secretary says he has no issues with the media. now, on bbc news, it's talking business. welcome to london. in a world teeming with products and messages, how do you filter out the noise? in this week's talking business, we examine how big names survive in this brave, brand—new world. welcome to the programme.

i'm tanya beckett. the explosion of media, from snapchat to breitbart, has fragmented audiences across the globe. the days when half a country's population would watch or listen to a programme or an event live at the same time, are gone. so, how do big brands reach disparate consumers on such a plethora of platforms? and how do they remain relevant and inspire loyalty in a fickle world? here to discuss it are three industry experts. johannes smith is co—founder of the agency hugo & cat, which specialises in digital strategies for big—name brands. rita clifton, cbe, is chairman of the consultancy brandcap. and, dominique delport is global managing director of marketing and communications giant havas media group.

welcome to all of you. dominique, what happened of course in the last few years, very obviously in your world, is the rise of social media and its influence. how has that changed the way people perceive brands and through what mechanism? i think for the first time in history you've got that scale. 1 billion people connected to the same platform, mobile or social platform. never happened before. i think for the first time it reversed the mechanism, the audience is now the media. everyone is able to push comments, positive or negative, about everything, including brands. so brands are not managing the conversation anymore. they need to look at what people say, because when they say it loud it can destroy a reputation in a few days. and it happens every week. so you've got that complete inversion of that communication mechanism. i think brands understand

that if they don't go intimately into this platform, snapchat is very different from facebook. if you apply the same strategy, you fail. so you need really to go in—depth into every platform, and i'm not talking about the chinese platform or the korean orjapanese, so every country have developed its own way to integrate services, brands, commerce, it's a brand—new world. so, rita, if one were to summarise what dominique is saying there, first of all, your brand can be very easily destroyed in social media because what we call the democratisation of media, meaning everybody is contributing to the media content and each type of social media, each platform has its own way of operating and it needs to be understood? in the digital age, if people talk about sexy youtube videos, social media stance and everything else, but actually the killer insight about that is you've got to be a really great business in the first place. so absolutely, we need to get into conversations. brands need to get

into conversations. but of course, you need to do something to get into those conversations properly and also to earn trust. because in the digital age, everything is visible, so everything counts. what that means is that there's no use big brands spending lots of money on marketing communication, however smart, however beautiful and digital and everything else. if they are not as good on the inside as they are on the outside, people are going to find out and they're going to find out really, really quickly, with a scale and a speed that will take your breath away. johannes, it suggests a little bit the type of brand you build and how you build it is very affected by social media. absolutely, and i think you can't script it any more. you've got to listen to the audience and understand what people actually want, and what the emotional triggers are, what people respond to, and then build the brand around those emotional triggers. that's how you build a great brand these days, by really understanding the audience and really listening and building a community around your brand. but it has to be true, as rita says, it has to actually resonate with people and be real.

so it's not really a case of going into a boardroom or sitting in an ivory tower and drawing out a plan and that's it. and it has to be a very responsive process, is that what we are saying, dominique? yes, and there is a big lack of trust now. and that's really a wake—up call. if we look at some surveys, 74% of brands could disappear overnight. what do you mean, they could disappear? people don't care? people don't care, they could skip, there is such an oversupply of brands that people have a choice, and they are very mature consumers. they can go online, they can disrupt traditional retail, so that really is a new empowered consumer that really wants to understand, what is a trade—off? that is a pivotal moment in brand marketing. advertising is good, it boosts the economic machine, it creates jobs, there is a lot of positivity around that, but on the other hand, you need transparency. with the other thing

that's very noticeable is that if you have bought, for example, a pair of shoes, or whatever it is that you've bought, you notice you are on your computer and these things keep popping up. johannes, or maybe rita, does anybody know how an algorithm works? i think that's a good question for dominique, absolutely. it's like cooking, you've got ingredients but you need a recipe and you follow the recipe. that's a very nice way of describing them. algorithm is a cooking recipe. we have got a scientist, mathematician, expert who writes algorithm like they can write poetry, in a way. you have to understand these big platforms — google, facebook, twitter — are run by algorithms. google page ranks all the websites, facebook is edge ranked with everyone on the same platform, but every profile and news feed is different due to your choice, behaviours and taste. so these mathematical environments enable the automation. what we have seen with the financial markets a few years ago is coming

to the media market. so, instead of calling the bbc, calling the mail or the times to buy some advertising space, now everything is made automatically. but when it gets it right it's great, but when it gets it wrong? it does. a pair of shoes have been following me around for a very long time, i can assure you. sometimes you feel a bit stalked. blame the algorithm. but i think what's really interesting and maybe an irony about the loss of trust is that in this explosion of channels, conversations and everything else, it's never been more important to find brands to be able to navigate to people you can trust. because actually, human beings aren't going to be able to stay awake for long enough to read all the rubbish people put on mobile sites, websites and everything else. you need to be able to go to brands you trust, and if you trust those brands, you want to spend time with them and you will buy more from them and so on. every now and again,

particularly when we have such an extraordinary change in the digital world where there is a consumer downturn, maybe, you read articles about, is this twilight of the brands, is this death of the brands because products and prices are now laid bare in the digital age? the thing is, you've got to be able to find places you trust to keep yourself sane. that's why brands are really, really important. what's really interesting there is, as you said, dominique, advertising is very problematic. it is optimised dynamically as you go, but i think increasingly what we are seeing is the whole experience is becoming optimised, end to end. all interaction you have with the brand, not just advertising but all the little experiences we have with the brands are being optimised on—the—fly by looking at the data, looking at what kind of customer you are, looking at what you've done before and trying to give you the best possible experience. what's interesting is that people don't tend to trust adverts very much. they said that they don't trust adverts, but they do want a valuable exchange with the brand, they want relevant promotions and relevant offers. so they are willing to give up a little bit of data in return

for something and i think brands increasingly have to think about what are they giving in return. so if they are going to harvest data and be clever about it, they have to give something back, and people are open to that. what can they give back? they can give relevant promotions, they can understand what you've been buying before and say, if you buy certain things, we might be able to give you a little bit of a discount, we might be able to optimise the experience for you, make it easier for you to buy. recommend a friend? imagine you have kids with a food allergy, you will really seek advice and tips for brands that understand these kinds of allergies and can indicate what are good products for the allergy and the right product for you. so you need absolutely to have that kind of knowledge and services from brands. i think brands need to provide more services, notjust a product. it is what we are studying. and tv still is a phenomenal medium. we did something with heathrow airport, they did

a tv advert with the two bears and it has been incredibly successful because people want emotion, and the big tv screen is also, despite all the digital success, a phenomenal way to convey emotion and connect people and brands. i think that's a really important point here. it is so exciting what one can do these days in terms of automation and in terms of programmatic marketing and so on, it's very truly exciting. and terms of programme marketing and so on, it's very truly exciting. but in the end, sometimes, some core principles still apply, don't they, to building a brand in whatever age? you have to be clear about what that stands for. you have to be coherent about how that shows up through everything you do, the whole experience. you've got to make sure you keep on innovating and keep on renewing your brand overtime. you just happen to have lots of channels to do that and frankly, if you are not doing it properly, there are endless ways of getting found out. and what it is as well,

it is an opportunity for brands to innovate all this data, they can try things so much faster than they could before. they can launch new products, launch new services and if it doesn't work, try something else. thank you all for now. so, later in the programme we'll examine how brands are creating challenges, education campaigns and media content in the hope of converting us from fickle customers to loyal disciples. but first our comedy consultant and one—man brand colm 0'regan takes a look at ireland's image. here's this week's talking point. in today's era of globalised business, countriesjust like products and services, are brands themselves. so welcome to brand ireland. there was a time when images of ireland were lazy stereotypes consisting mainly of drinking, fighting and fiddle—de—dee. but that was then and this is now. today ireland is a far more contemporary image in the global economy. what are the elements that go to make up our brand as a country and i wonder,

can i think of a snappy way of summing them up? the irish and brand ireland is a huge entity, and there's so many variables involved. 0urfocus is making sure the corporate world understands why ireland is a great place to do business. it is a competition to win investment worldwide. often times, when our executives are walking into boardrooms to pitch for certain bits of business, they are meeting their competitors from other countries that they will meet next week in paris, that they will meet next week in singapore, so ireland as a brand, is being represented through the ida in all of those boardrooms, and we are pitching hard for jobs in ireland. about 70% of the foreign investment that comes into ireland is us—focused. a lot of that is tech. ireland now is synonymous with companies like google, facebook, linkedin, twitter, having their european headquarters here. they are very powerful reference sells for us across the world. when one company sees their competitor going

to a jurisdiction, they begin to ask questions, why aren't they there? they must know something we don't. but how do you create a strong national brand in a global context? 0ne industry that does that is the airline industry. aer lingus is ireland's national airline, having been founded in 1936. its mission then, to connect ireland to the world. but what is that ireland these days? everybody knows us for warmth and friendliness. however, when we go globally, that's extremely important and it's probably our unique selling point. but we need to do other things as well. ireland is marketed as a global business destination, obviously a lot of big businesses are based here so we have to make sure that for the business traveller we have a very good offer on aer lingus. we need to be very professional, most passengers like for us to be on time, they like a punctual airline with the aer lingus unique warmth, irish hospitality. so that's it — ireland, the small country but the global brand.

now, to try and sum it up with a snappy description. maybe i could adapt an existing advertising slogan? ireland, impossible is nothing. is it a song lyric? ireland, my kind of town. 2a hours from ireland. clowns to the left of us, jokers to the right. i still haven't found what i'm looking for. colm 0'regan, with his take on brand ireland. remember, you can see more of his short films on our website. our guests are dominique, rita and johannes and they are still with us, which i am glad to report. what is a meaningful brand? rita, perhaps you could start us off with that, what does it mean to be what we describe as a meaningful brand? i think there are a number of different ways of describing it. they are brands that are particularly relevant to people's lives. i know that sounds completely obvious, but to be truly successful

you need to elevate it beyond relevance to people rationally loving and promoting your brand too. apple is a classic example, it must be the most overused case study in the world, but people queue around the corner to buy apple products. and that's part of the experience? absolutely, part of experience. if you think of those brands that have become almost a life portal for you, life—editing brands. these are brands like amazon, brands like john lewis partnership in the uk, more broadly maybe brands like facebook and google. these are brands that wrap themselves around you and your lives, they can understand a lot about you. you trust them to sort out some of your problems. yes, to go and find products for you, actually to be a gateway into conversations with friends and family and so on. and they simplify your life and navigate a lot of the stuff that would otherwise drive you mad. dominique, your company has done a study of what i meaningful brand a study of what a meaningful brand

is and what is noticeable, is the words that come at the top have a lot to do with organising your life, rather than how you look. as rita said, we studied 350,000 consumers in 33 countries, asking them what is a meaningful brand for you? as i said, it is a personalfeeling, perception, i want that brand to make my life easier, i want great value for money, i want innovation, but also i want an impact for my community. my family, my neighbourhood, great employer, sustainability practices, transparency, ethics, all of these components, and of course, a great product. and when we look at that, yes, amazon, whatsapp or paypal, when you look at apple, apple is not perceived as meaningful because it's too expensive. so if you look in 33 countries, it's still for an elite, less than 5% of the market share. for those people, it's a passion brand. it's a passion brand, absolutely. if you have the money for buying these products, of course, like in western countries. and when we look at how these brands have performed

in the stock market, plus 206%, it is massive. if you are relevant for your audience, then they are going to love you. close to the heart, close to the wallet. they are going to overspend with your brands... close to the heart, close to the wallet, i'm going to remember that one. it is interesting, as i said, that these are lifestyle brands, things that organise your life for you, but that might be just a function of the fact that information technology has developed so rapidly over recent years. i think it is to a larger extent and i think now that people interact with brands in so many different ways, brands have to be much more mindful about the entire experience they create with brands, from the initial awareness where people interact and they search, how people find brands, whether it is through voice search now. right the way through to the interactions on the mobile app, on the website, in the stores, the user interface, all of it has to come together. one little weakness in that chain ruins brand perception because people expect these brands tojust be extremely good at all of these different things.

there is so much competition, it's so easy to change from one brand to another now, you can just download another app and move from one brand to another, so it's fickle. if you were to go onto a site for socks, for example, you will very often notice reviews. customer reviews. we are talking about something like 84, 85% of customers are influenced in their purchases by the recommendations of friends. people would tend to believe any of the consumers rather than the corporation who's trying to sell. so, at every stage of the research, the recommendation, the buying, the review process, you can be hijacked. you might be in pole position in people's minds, but if they go online and they find out someone hates you and everything else. this is why the only remedy in this brand new world, —— this is why the only remedy in this brand—new world,

is you've got to be really, really good at what you do and your staff and your people have got to believe in what you are doing, they've got to build a consistent idea together they're prepared to tell other people about and they need to make people love you so much, they will go and tell other people as well. that is the cheapest way to do marketing. dominique, i want to come back to what you said at the beginning. there needs to be this lifestyle aspect to it. in a way in needs to represent something more to you than just the products itself, something about... how do you transcend just being a brand? through content. more and more people expect from brands that they will produce more content about the process, the components of the brand, of the product, how it works. for instance, 71% of consumers expect brands to produce content because the consumerjourney... what do you mean by content? short form documentaries, long form. they want to know better, what's behind the stage. this is one of the big areas for brands now, which is content marketing. look at a platform like netflix, there isn't one single advert. if you add ad skipping and blocking on a site where there is no advertising at all,

brands have to think of another way to interact with people. companies often advertise describing an experience rather than the product itself. brands have to describe experience. it is very transparent and they cannot create this image that is untrue. if we look at trust. it is tapping into emotions and understanding customers and how to respond to those emotions, whether it is creating entertainment. for example? inside out, all these different emotions, it isjoy, it could be fear. understanding where people might have moments of fear, worried about identity theft and brands can respond to that and reassure and build trust. one of the reasons i think amazon was so successful, it is an incredibly successful retailer that doesn't have any shops, you don't talk to anybody. but it has content? it

absolutely has content. it understood people would be anxious about logistics, getting their deliveries on time and securing payment. they totally understood that and they were reliable for delivering it. and that is how they started building of trust, because they delivered. you have noticed that where you do have high street shops, they have become a lifestyle experience. you go in and it is all going on, plenty of show and tell, it is notjust rails and shelves? a lot of stores are not there to make money within the shop, they are there to build brand perception and build experience and showcase what the brand is about and showcased the connection with the story. you have brands who have done very well through the recession from 2008 because they had a truthful story.

the founder is passionate about the product. passionate about sport. that authenticity shines through. but also the flow from online, it has to be able to sustain those. extraordinary brands manage the combination of stores, online. using catwalk shows to tweet to the world. lego was a dying brand, now it is a movie, which boosts sales. it is a store where experience is everything. the seamlessness is important. thank you very much to all of you, rita, johannes and dominique. join us again next week when we will be in singapore discussing china's rising economic imperialism. goodbye. per hello there. good afternoon to

you. mild, in a word, tonightand tomorrow, for the majority. we have had 1a celsius today. this sunshine materialise across eastern areas. further west, in contrast, materialise across eastern areas. furtherwest, in contrast, it's rather miss the iain gray in parts of cornwall, and that is because it is here that the cloud is arriving first of the atlantic. the sea is fairly chilly at this time of year, so fairly chilly at this time of year, so you get misty, murky weather arriving. we have a weak weather

front to complicate matters, giving patchy rain and drizzle around the coast and on the hills. heavy rain in the northwest later today. through the evening and overnight, that weakens as it heads south. you can imagine, with all that cloud, it a cts can imagine, with all that cloud, it acts like a blanket, stopping the fall in temperature overnight. it is fairly breezy as well, so on monday morning, it will be rather grey, lots of mist and merck around. —— it will be misty and murky. we start the day on tens and 11s, the daytime average anyway, but we could say yet —— see a 15 or 16 tomorrow, and possibly a 17. there will be coastal fog around the english channel, hill fog around the english channel, hill fog and rain as we had further north. —— as we head further north.

heavy rain in scotland and parts of northern ireland. there will be some brea ks northern ireland. there will be some breaks in the cloud developing east of the grampians and the pennines, but there will be gusty winds. 0n the a1 tomorrow morning, it will not be particularly nice. it does clear up be particularly nice. it does clear up in the day. for the bulk of us, temperatures in double figures. that milderair is temperatures in double figures. that milder air is meandering around in the south. further north, brighter initially, but more wet and windy weather arriving in the northwest. it could get slightly less mild mid week or towards the end of the week, with blustery winds as well. temperatures will be up and down, with lots of weather fronts crossing the country. you can keep up—to—date on the website. this is bbc news.

i'm reeta chakrabarti. the headlines at five: thousands of prison officers in london and the south east of england are to get a pay increase of up to £5,000. iraqi forces say they have captured several villages on the first day of their offensive to re—take western mosul from so called islamic state. save the children warn that 350,000 children could be trapped in the city. it is iraq's last city held by the islamic state but the assault on the last day of the islamic state is now under way. the chief executive of sainsbury‘s calls for "fundamental reforms" of business rates, amid concerns upcoming rises could spark closures on the high street. white house chief of staff reince priebus echo's donald trump's claims

that he receives unfair treatment in some parts of the media.