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The Brexit clock continues to tick down and politicians seem to be outbidding each other on how far we’ve progressed on the Withdrawal Agreement. Michel Barnier recently said the Brexit deal was 90% agreed. The PM said earlier in the week a deal was 95% done. However, Guy Verhostadt, one of the contenders to be the next President of the European Commission, broke the trend by saying that the deal is 0% agreed until the Irish border backstop was resolved. This sounded distinctly like what Theresa May was saying last year (“Nothing is agreed, until everything is agreed”). The next eight weeks will be crucial, and despite the confidence of the Prime Minister, nobody really knows what the outcome will be.
But while the politicians fight over metrics (call them the new Metric Martyrs if you will – remember them?), we at the AA are focused on what the implications are for the advertising and marcoms sectors. Businesses want long-term certainty to aid their planning but this is in short supply at the moment. We’ll be hoping to cast some light on the situation at an AA briefing on 6 November, so get in touch if you want to come along and share your pain, it could be to all our gain.
Who would have thought, two or three years ago, that we’d be discussing Free Trade Agreements with the Government, but it seems like everyone needs to be an expert these days. The AA has just contributed a response to the Department for International Trade’s consultation on future trade agreements with the US, Australia, New Zealand and CPTPP.
For those of you (like us) who had to look that up, it stands for the “Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership” which is a trade agreement in the process of being ratified by nations including Australia, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam. A roster of countries to make any Brexiteer go weak at their global-future-for-the-UK knees.
The eleven countries represent 13.4 percent of the global gross domestic product or $13.5 trillion, making this one of the largest trade agreements after the North American Free Trade Agreement. Check out the consultations here.
On Tuesday, strategic consultancy Public First released a new report on the impact of Google in the UK. 2018 is the twentieth anniversary of Google Search, and as such, the report explores the ways in which Google is assisting people both socially and professionally. Just a few of the key findings revealed in the report are: 88% of British adults use a search engine at least once a day; every year 64% of adults use YouTube to figure out how to do DIY, and 60% for help with cooking (hopefully for more than changing a light bulb and cooking a hard boiled egg!); and Google Ads and Google Search drive at least £50 billion in economic activity.
Our CEO, Stephen Woodford, and other AA staff members attended the launch event at Parliament on Tuesday where Rachel Wolf, Founding Partner at Public First, Minister Rishi Sunak, Ronan Harris, VP & MD, Google and Kent Walker, SVP for Global Affairs and Chief Legal Officer, Google, came together to discuss the report. You can read the full report here.
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