Melbourne Herald Sun, 31st December, 2009
The lake in the mouth of the volcano Gunung Batur in the Balinese highlands is one of the most beautiful places on earth. At the hot spring that feeds the the waters from the active lava far below, I met an attractive Balinese girl who spoke a little English and became my tour guide for an hour or two.
I learned she was in her mid-twenties with four children. Her husband painted traditional pictures that she tried to sell me but I wasn’t in the market - the quality was not very good anyway.
She proudly told me two of the children were at school already and doing well. Perhaps they could escape the wheel of poverty that trapped her.
“I no read or write so I cannot get job in hotel, even in shop,” she explained, so they lived a hand to mouth struggle, in Paradise.
Her great ambition was if she and her husband found work, maybe between them they could earn a million rupiah a month. Then their troubles would be over.
I did a mental calculation. $25 a week. The difference between poverty and happiness for a family of six.
The few dollars’ tip I paid her would feed them for a few days but it was not the answer to third world poverty. But without the 300,000 Australian tourists a year the islanders would be in far worse shape - as revealed when the Bali bombings devastated the industry in 2002.
At this time of year, when we open our minds to peace on earth and the welfare of mankind, let’s think about what we, the cushioned, turkey-fed rich folk, can do for the developing world. And the most effective answer is business.
Tourism has become the major earner for the pretty places on earth - it’s a kind of beauty contest isn’t it? But even more important would be the opportunity for them to trade fairly with the wealthy world.
One organisation that has emerged is Fairtrade. It promotes the importation of produce like
coffee, cocoa, tea, cotton and handicrafts from poor countries like Angola, Nicaragua, East Timor and Thailand. It ensures that the producers get a fair price for the produce and helps them towards stability and self-sufficiency.
The movement is starting to develop traction. This year both BP and McDonalds have been promoting their “green” coffee. Last year Fairtrade claimed worldwide sales of $4.5 billion, and say they are benefitting 7.5 million producers and their families. Of course on a planet of six billion people that’s barely scratching the surface.
Wherever you travel in the developing world you will see the small businesses run by women. Mothers, grandmothers, girls, squatting behind a pile of vegetables or a stack of baskets or at a stand serving curry and rice off banana leaves.
Women like these make up the more than eight million borrowers of the Grameen Bank throughout Asia, Africa and South America. Professor Muhammad Yunus discovered, over 30 years ago, that poor people have enterprise, skills and intelligence - what they don’t have is the tiny amount of capital that allows them to establish a business without falling into grinding debt.
So he established what became the Grameen Bank to lend the small money and teach some basic rules of business and money management. Today the bank operates in 43 countries and has over eight billion dollars out on loan. Their repayment rate is over 98 per cent.
There are answers to world poverty and they start with us, the fortunate ones, helping them to help themselves. It needn’t take much, just examining the labels on produce before we buy. But if I were you I’d tack that on my list of new year’s resolutions.
Ray@ebeatty.com
31 December, 2009
19 December, 2009
Has the internet killed the Christmas card?
Melbourne Herald Sun, 19th December 2009
The other day I heard a comment in trendy Albert Park. Two mid-30s yummy mummies catching up over their soy lattes. “I just haven’t had a minute to send out the Christmas cards this year.” “Same here - it’s going to be emails again like last year.” They nodded in agreement.
Eavesdropping from the next table, my reaction was: “Thank goodness - I’m not the only one.” Yes I’m afraid my friends and extended family - as opposed to immediate family who have been carded and gifted already - will receive their warm, heartfelt greetings. But without the postage stamp.
Over this decade, as the internet has grown from strength to strength, the world has seen a decline in Christmas cards.
In Britain the number of festive cards bought in shops has dropped by 20 million in the past two years. Even more worrying, a recent survey showed that 40 per cent of the under-35s have given up the card habit.
In America the number of Christmas cards received in the average home dropped from 29 in 1987, to 20 in 2004. Latest figures indicate that the decline is continuing.
The ever-sunny Australia Post PR machine assures us that in fact nothing has changed. Just a few weeks age they announced that AP expects to deliver 470 million mail articles across Australia, up from 450 million in 2006. But are they Christmas cards I wonder? They are certainly not coming to my letter box, how about yours?
The post office and Christmas cards have always been linked. The first commercial cards were produced in London in 1843 by Sir Henry Cole - one of the creators of the Penny Post three years earlier, the foundation of all the world’s postal services.
For a century and a half the cards flourished as a form of social massage for the human family. Even if you only met with your cousin once every ten years, you could be guaranteed to exchange cards every Christmas. It said “I know you’re there and I still care for you”.
Modern communications have changed all that. Your cousin knows you are here because every few weeks you share a dirty joke with him and your friends in your emails. Girls now have cordless and mobile phones so they can have long chats with their girlfriends while they make the beds or cook the dinner (how does my wife do that? I am in wonder at her multi-skilling). And Skype means that even interstate or overseas friends can stay in the circle for a low cost.
In Britain again, they estimate that email cards are growing by 200 per cent a year. There are now thousands of card services on line which allow you to email all your friends and customers, and others that will produce and individualise cards from your mailing list, with your message, and send out the cards in the mail.
Of course all the Scrooges have lots of good excuses. Cards are too expensive, postage is exorbitant, a postal strike could stop them arriving, they are environmentally damaging both in production and disposal, and who has got time between job and home and kids and preparing for Christmas - to sit down and write cards?
But there is something a little sad about a barren dresser with just a few cards from your parents and aged aunts to show it is Christmas.
Well let me take this opportunity to thank you, my loyal reader, for sticking with me all year. This is my Christmas card to you, if you wish you may clip it out and place it on the mantlepiece. And do have a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS! Cheers - Ray.
Ray@ebeatty.com
The other day I heard a comment in trendy Albert Park. Two mid-30s yummy mummies catching up over their soy lattes. “I just haven’t had a minute to send out the Christmas cards this year.” “Same here - it’s going to be emails again like last year.” They nodded in agreement.
Eavesdropping from the next table, my reaction was: “Thank goodness - I’m not the only one.” Yes I’m afraid my friends and extended family - as opposed to immediate family who have been carded and gifted already - will receive their warm, heartfelt greetings. But without the postage stamp.
Over this decade, as the internet has grown from strength to strength, the world has seen a decline in Christmas cards.
In Britain the number of festive cards bought in shops has dropped by 20 million in the past two years. Even more worrying, a recent survey showed that 40 per cent of the under-35s have given up the card habit.
In America the number of Christmas cards received in the average home dropped from 29 in 1987, to 20 in 2004. Latest figures indicate that the decline is continuing.
The ever-sunny Australia Post PR machine assures us that in fact nothing has changed. Just a few weeks age they announced that AP expects to deliver 470 million mail articles across Australia, up from 450 million in 2006. But are they Christmas cards I wonder? They are certainly not coming to my letter box, how about yours?
The post office and Christmas cards have always been linked. The first commercial cards were produced in London in 1843 by Sir Henry Cole - one of the creators of the Penny Post three years earlier, the foundation of all the world’s postal services.
For a century and a half the cards flourished as a form of social massage for the human family. Even if you only met with your cousin once every ten years, you could be guaranteed to exchange cards every Christmas. It said “I know you’re there and I still care for you”.
Modern communications have changed all that. Your cousin knows you are here because every few weeks you share a dirty joke with him and your friends in your emails. Girls now have cordless and mobile phones so they can have long chats with their girlfriends while they make the beds or cook the dinner (how does my wife do that? I am in wonder at her multi-skilling). And Skype means that even interstate or overseas friends can stay in the circle for a low cost.
In Britain again, they estimate that email cards are growing by 200 per cent a year. There are now thousands of card services on line which allow you to email all your friends and customers, and others that will produce and individualise cards from your mailing list, with your message, and send out the cards in the mail.
Of course all the Scrooges have lots of good excuses. Cards are too expensive, postage is exorbitant, a postal strike could stop them arriving, they are environmentally damaging both in production and disposal, and who has got time between job and home and kids and preparing for Christmas - to sit down and write cards?
But there is something a little sad about a barren dresser with just a few cards from your parents and aged aunts to show it is Christmas.
Well let me take this opportunity to thank you, my loyal reader, for sticking with me all year. This is my Christmas card to you, if you wish you may clip it out and place it on the mantlepiece. And do have a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS! Cheers - Ray.
Ray@ebeatty.com
05 December, 2009
Mo’s and red noses chase charity dollars
Melbourne Herald Sun 5th December 2009
When my friend emailed me his photo it gave me a shock. Phillip had grown a big black moustache, and being of Greek descent he looked like some Balkan brigand rather than a mild-mannered corporate lawyer.
The reason, he explained, was Movember. He and many others in his firm had spent last month cultivating their lip-muffs in the aid of a charity, the Movember Foundation, established in Melbourne in 2004 to raise funds for Prostate Cancer Australia and Beyond Blue.
The idea has since spread around the world including the US, Canada and Ireland. It is claimed to have raised over $50 million in this time.
Now that’s a fast growth rate for a new charity in a world filled with good causes. It has all been done because of a gimmick and points out that a successful charity needs a smart angle.
It’s all about visibility, you have to be seen and remembered. Take Red Nose Day. Started in Britain in 1985 it came to Australia in 1988 where it has become a major fund-raiser, initially for SIDS and since then for a number of Australia-Pacific charities. In the US it puts on a huge telethon hosted by comedians like Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, and Whoopi Goldberg.
One of the most successful gimmicks has been Pink Ribbon Month by the National Breast Cancer Foundation. First given out in New York City in 1991, the cloth slips have become a world-wide industry engaged with the likes of Estee Lauder, Avon, and a huge range of products that market themselves with ribbons in exchange for a licence fee.
This has in turn led to criticism. Some have said that the sea of pink has terrified women beyond the reality of breast cancer’s threat. Others have coined the term slacktivism - “the desire people have to do something good without getting out of their chair.” There are also unscrupulous companies that have snuck in to market “Pink Ribbon” products - with no return to the charity.
But all the criticism doesn’t get around the fact that gimmicks work. Daffodil Day for the Cancer Council was invented in Canada in the early 1980s and now has spread world-wide. In Australia alone it raises $8 million every August.
Jeans for Genes Day is when all the office workers go to town in their jeans and contribute to a charity for the Children’s Medical Research Institute. Another visible, simple, very successful gimmick. It was started in Dorset, UK, in 1996 where this year it raised some $6 million for the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital in London.
Our own Children’s Hospital relies on its Good Friday Appeal that, funny to say, was started in 1931 by a bunch of journalists from the Herald & Weekly Times, who organised a sporting carnival in aid of charity.
But of course the most famous and world-recognised charity symbol is the red poppy, adopted after World War I by the British Legion ex-servicemen’s charity and quickly picked up by the RSL and and equivalent organisations.
Taken from the poem In Flanders Field which described the red poppies growing amongst white crosses on the battleground that saw the deaths of so many young men, it remains a simple and vivid symbol for the charities.
So if you have a charity to promote, take out your poppy and daffodil, don your red nose and pink ribbon, finger your luxuriant moustache (women may be excused) and think of a brand new gimmick.
ray@ebeatty.com
When my friend emailed me his photo it gave me a shock. Phillip had grown a big black moustache, and being of Greek descent he looked like some Balkan brigand rather than a mild-mannered corporate lawyer.
The reason, he explained, was Movember. He and many others in his firm had spent last month cultivating their lip-muffs in the aid of a charity, the Movember Foundation, established in Melbourne in 2004 to raise funds for Prostate Cancer Australia and Beyond Blue.
The idea has since spread around the world including the US, Canada and Ireland. It is claimed to have raised over $50 million in this time.
Now that’s a fast growth rate for a new charity in a world filled with good causes. It has all been done because of a gimmick and points out that a successful charity needs a smart angle.
It’s all about visibility, you have to be seen and remembered. Take Red Nose Day. Started in Britain in 1985 it came to Australia in 1988 where it has become a major fund-raiser, initially for SIDS and since then for a number of Australia-Pacific charities. In the US it puts on a huge telethon hosted by comedians like Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, and Whoopi Goldberg.
One of the most successful gimmicks has been Pink Ribbon Month by the National Breast Cancer Foundation. First given out in New York City in 1991, the cloth slips have become a world-wide industry engaged with the likes of Estee Lauder, Avon, and a huge range of products that market themselves with ribbons in exchange for a licence fee.
This has in turn led to criticism. Some have said that the sea of pink has terrified women beyond the reality of breast cancer’s threat. Others have coined the term slacktivism - “the desire people have to do something good without getting out of their chair.” There are also unscrupulous companies that have snuck in to market “Pink Ribbon” products - with no return to the charity.
But all the criticism doesn’t get around the fact that gimmicks work. Daffodil Day for the Cancer Council was invented in Canada in the early 1980s and now has spread world-wide. In Australia alone it raises $8 million every August.
Jeans for Genes Day is when all the office workers go to town in their jeans and contribute to a charity for the Children’s Medical Research Institute. Another visible, simple, very successful gimmick. It was started in Dorset, UK, in 1996 where this year it raised some $6 million for the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital in London.
Our own Children’s Hospital relies on its Good Friday Appeal that, funny to say, was started in 1931 by a bunch of journalists from the Herald & Weekly Times, who organised a sporting carnival in aid of charity.
But of course the most famous and world-recognised charity symbol is the red poppy, adopted after World War I by the British Legion ex-servicemen’s charity and quickly picked up by the RSL and and equivalent organisations.
Taken from the poem In Flanders Field which described the red poppies growing amongst white crosses on the battleground that saw the deaths of so many young men, it remains a simple and vivid symbol for the charities.
So if you have a charity to promote, take out your poppy and daffodil, don your red nose and pink ribbon, finger your luxuriant moustache (women may be excused) and think of a brand new gimmick.
ray@ebeatty.com
28 November, 2009
Money-sucking vampires bite teenage girls
Melbourne Herald Sun, 28 November, 2009
The spectacular success of this week’s money-sucking vampires just goes to show that teenage girls still go gaga at handsome, pale skinned, sexually dangerous young men. And their boyfrends are happy to take them along to the movies in the hope of receiving some of the transferred arousal afterwards.
The Twilight Saga: New Moon serves to remind us that there is plenty of financial clout tucked into the pockets of teenagers’ jeans. The opening weekend pulled $16 million, leapfrogging the biggest-opening Harry Potter films by two million.
In North America it pulled $150 million - huge, but which is actually a lot less than here, on a per-head basis. In the UK, where Twilight fever is equally manic, the first weekend scored $20 million - again much less than Oz when you count the heads. Here we managed to take over a quarter of the country’s cinema screens to satisfy the were-wolf frenzy of the fans.
Teen passions have always been a market driver since before the time of the yo-yo and the hoola hoop. Harry Potter showed how a wizardly schoolyard tale can be as engulfing now as The Wizard of Oz was in great-grandma’s day. And with the addition of endless merchandising - yes there’s already a Barbie Twilight Edward doll - the loot can more than double the theatre takings.
Advertisers watch these fads very closely because such passions can give them an inroad to that difficult-to-penetrate territory, the teenage mind.
We know that among 12-24 year olds TV viewing is at its lowest. Teens watch 50 per cent less TV than their parents. At school they are taught to never accept advertising at its face value, and this justifies their natural suspicion of grown-ups selling them things.
This distrust extends to what they read in advertising on the internet. After years of being exposed to dubious medical promises that they can barely understand, who can blame them?
For the girls there are their teen magazines - against an ebb tide for magazines in general and women’s magazines especially, the ever pink and bubbly Dolly has managed to increase its circulation by four per cent. Celebrities are still big, with the latest Who Did What to Whom mag, Famous, climbing by 20 per cent.
Boys are left out in the wilderness. The only recent attempt to give them a teen magazine, Explode, in fact imploded after a mere eight months. If their hoodies and sunnies make them look hard to penetrate, that’s because they are.
So maybe the answer is screen advertising. The multiplex is the one place where you are guaranteed to meet swarms of teenagers. And there’s no fad like a movie fad.
On You-Tube worldwide interviews show girls, surrounded by obligatory girlfriends and a couple of token boys, clutching each other and swearing they thought they would die when Taylor Lautner took his shirt off. And each claimed to be the very first in her school to see the movie after queuing for most of the night.
Screen advertising has long been the poor relation at the media feast. But right now things are looking pretty good.
Paul Butler is Managing Director of Val Morgan, Australia’s leading cinema advertising network. Naturally enough, he has a smile on his face this week. “This year’s box office is running 16 per cent higher than last,” he said. “We’re very likely to top the $1 billion mark this year.”
With Christmas approaching, life is looking good on the axminster carpets. “Christmas is always a boom time,” he adds, and in just three weeks we’ll see the release of Avatar, another guaranteed blockbuster.
So if you plan to spend any Christmas time with teenage kids, I hope you like popcorn.
Ray@ebeatty.com
END
The spectacular success of this week’s money-sucking vampires just goes to show that teenage girls still go gaga at handsome, pale skinned, sexually dangerous young men. And their boyfrends are happy to take them along to the movies in the hope of receiving some of the transferred arousal afterwards.
The Twilight Saga: New Moon serves to remind us that there is plenty of financial clout tucked into the pockets of teenagers’ jeans. The opening weekend pulled $16 million, leapfrogging the biggest-opening Harry Potter films by two million.
In North America it pulled $150 million - huge, but which is actually a lot less than here, on a per-head basis. In the UK, where Twilight fever is equally manic, the first weekend scored $20 million - again much less than Oz when you count the heads. Here we managed to take over a quarter of the country’s cinema screens to satisfy the were-wolf frenzy of the fans.
Teen passions have always been a market driver since before the time of the yo-yo and the hoola hoop. Harry Potter showed how a wizardly schoolyard tale can be as engulfing now as The Wizard of Oz was in great-grandma’s day. And with the addition of endless merchandising - yes there’s already a Barbie Twilight Edward doll - the loot can more than double the theatre takings.
Advertisers watch these fads very closely because such passions can give them an inroad to that difficult-to-penetrate territory, the teenage mind.
We know that among 12-24 year olds TV viewing is at its lowest. Teens watch 50 per cent less TV than their parents. At school they are taught to never accept advertising at its face value, and this justifies their natural suspicion of grown-ups selling them things.
This distrust extends to what they read in advertising on the internet. After years of being exposed to dubious medical promises that they can barely understand, who can blame them?
For the girls there are their teen magazines - against an ebb tide for magazines in general and women’s magazines especially, the ever pink and bubbly Dolly has managed to increase its circulation by four per cent. Celebrities are still big, with the latest Who Did What to Whom mag, Famous, climbing by 20 per cent.
Boys are left out in the wilderness. The only recent attempt to give them a teen magazine, Explode, in fact imploded after a mere eight months. If their hoodies and sunnies make them look hard to penetrate, that’s because they are.
So maybe the answer is screen advertising. The multiplex is the one place where you are guaranteed to meet swarms of teenagers. And there’s no fad like a movie fad.
On You-Tube worldwide interviews show girls, surrounded by obligatory girlfriends and a couple of token boys, clutching each other and swearing they thought they would die when Taylor Lautner took his shirt off. And each claimed to be the very first in her school to see the movie after queuing for most of the night.
Screen advertising has long been the poor relation at the media feast. But right now things are looking pretty good.
Paul Butler is Managing Director of Val Morgan, Australia’s leading cinema advertising network. Naturally enough, he has a smile on his face this week. “This year’s box office is running 16 per cent higher than last,” he said. “We’re very likely to top the $1 billion mark this year.”
With Christmas approaching, life is looking good on the axminster carpets. “Christmas is always a boom time,” he adds, and in just three weeks we’ll see the release of Avatar, another guaranteed blockbuster.
So if you plan to spend any Christmas time with teenage kids, I hope you like popcorn.
Ray@ebeatty.com
END
21 November, 2009
Entice them with the carrot, beat them with the stick
Melbourne Herald Sun, 21 November, 2009
Earlier this year the Government spent $42 billion to give large numbers of citizens $900 grants so they may spend money and therefore stimulate our flagging economy.
But in fact they already have a mechanism that dangles carrots before the public snouts, egging them on the spend money and participate in our economy. This system not only pays for itself, it even contributes taxes to the government coffers. It’s called advertising.
Yes advertising dangles the lure that makes you get up in the morning, and work to earn enough to buy the next new car or mega-TV. It urges you to brush your teeth and dress in style, it makes the children eat their cereals and the adults disinfect their bathrooms.
If the economy was a Bruce Petty cartoon carthorse, at the rear would be the prodding pitchforks and cracking whips of hunger and homelessness while at the front would be the dangled carrots and fruits of the advertising promise.
But then you walk down your high street and see lumbering overweight adults and kids. Aha, you think, too much carrot. But is the answer to jump on the advertising industry for over-stimulating, or is the problem more complex than that?
This week the ad folks have made another move to improve their self-regulation. The Advertising Federation of Australia, which represents the agency managements, has merged with the Australian Writers and Art Directors Association which represents the ‘creative’ side of the business. They will now be called The Communication Council.
A major objective of the new body will be to keep the encroaching censors at bay. Labor governments have always been filled with public advocates and lawyers who want to tell everybody else what to do. And advertising is always an easy target for the reformers.
Sure enough, Health Minister Nicola Roxon formed the National Preventive Health Taskforce early in her reign, who have recently reported back. One recommendation waved a red flag at the advertisers: “Reduce exposure of children and others to marketing, advertising, promotion and sponsorship of energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods and beverages.” For which read: “fast-foods, sweets and soft drinks”.
And if they don’t respond to the whip crack, “Introduce legislation if these measures are not effective.” This is what the advertisers are scared of. For many years they have been able to persuade governments of all colours to let them self-regulate.
The Advertising Standards Bureau is the main tool they use. This is the body you turn to when you feel offended by a poster offering “longer sex”. They gather in all the complaints about sexist detergent ads or stick to your ribs double-whopper-burger ads in children’s shows, and make a ruling.
The reformists object because those rules were written by the agencies themselves. But recent research reported that the bureau’s judgements were pretty much in line with public perceptions, while many objections were seen by Joe Public as being a bit over the top.
There are 20 members on the judging panel including figures like Natasha Stott Despoja, Thomas Keneally, and actress Sibylla Budd. Not exactly tools of capitalism.
The ASB promises that it will re-examine its regulations and hold more meetings. Many more complaints are examined these days and last year they forced the withdrawal or amendment of 15 per cent of the ads brought before them.
But I have to confess to a lack of shock at any of the ads we see. Compared to the language on television dramas, or the careless wolfing down of fast foods you see in the street every day, commercials present a chocolate-box world.
Ray@ebeatty.com
Earlier this year the Government spent $42 billion to give large numbers of citizens $900 grants so they may spend money and therefore stimulate our flagging economy.
But in fact they already have a mechanism that dangles carrots before the public snouts, egging them on the spend money and participate in our economy. This system not only pays for itself, it even contributes taxes to the government coffers. It’s called advertising.
Yes advertising dangles the lure that makes you get up in the morning, and work to earn enough to buy the next new car or mega-TV. It urges you to brush your teeth and dress in style, it makes the children eat their cereals and the adults disinfect their bathrooms.
If the economy was a Bruce Petty cartoon carthorse, at the rear would be the prodding pitchforks and cracking whips of hunger and homelessness while at the front would be the dangled carrots and fruits of the advertising promise.
But then you walk down your high street and see lumbering overweight adults and kids. Aha, you think, too much carrot. But is the answer to jump on the advertising industry for over-stimulating, or is the problem more complex than that?
This week the ad folks have made another move to improve their self-regulation. The Advertising Federation of Australia, which represents the agency managements, has merged with the Australian Writers and Art Directors Association which represents the ‘creative’ side of the business. They will now be called The Communication Council.
A major objective of the new body will be to keep the encroaching censors at bay. Labor governments have always been filled with public advocates and lawyers who want to tell everybody else what to do. And advertising is always an easy target for the reformers.
Sure enough, Health Minister Nicola Roxon formed the National Preventive Health Taskforce early in her reign, who have recently reported back. One recommendation waved a red flag at the advertisers: “Reduce exposure of children and others to marketing, advertising, promotion and sponsorship of energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods and beverages.” For which read: “fast-foods, sweets and soft drinks”.
And if they don’t respond to the whip crack, “Introduce legislation if these measures are not effective.” This is what the advertisers are scared of. For many years they have been able to persuade governments of all colours to let them self-regulate.
The Advertising Standards Bureau is the main tool they use. This is the body you turn to when you feel offended by a poster offering “longer sex”. They gather in all the complaints about sexist detergent ads or stick to your ribs double-whopper-burger ads in children’s shows, and make a ruling.
The reformists object because those rules were written by the agencies themselves. But recent research reported that the bureau’s judgements were pretty much in line with public perceptions, while many objections were seen by Joe Public as being a bit over the top.
There are 20 members on the judging panel including figures like Natasha Stott Despoja, Thomas Keneally, and actress Sibylla Budd. Not exactly tools of capitalism.
The ASB promises that it will re-examine its regulations and hold more meetings. Many more complaints are examined these days and last year they forced the withdrawal or amendment of 15 per cent of the ads brought before them.
But I have to confess to a lack of shock at any of the ads we see. Compared to the language on television dramas, or the careless wolfing down of fast foods you see in the street every day, commercials present a chocolate-box world.
Ray@ebeatty.com
14 November, 2009
How the Internet made them rich
Melbourne Herald Sun 14th November, 2009
There’s a formula to making millions in a hurry. It’s simple and quick, and there are many thousands doing it right now all around the world but particularly in the US.
We saw it this week with the headline: “Google buys AdMob for $800 million". Obviously you’ve heard of Google but probably not AdMob. So what do they do that makes them worth nearly a billion bucks?
In mythology get-rich-quick stories were like Jack climbing the beanstalk, geese laying golden eggs or Cinderella sparking the lust of a young prince. These days they tend to start at Stanford or Harvard or Oxford.
In this case it was the University of Pennsylvania where, less than four years ago, a young MBA student called Omar Hamoui had a bright idea.
Mobile phone applications were beginning to take off as the technology became increasingly sophisticated. So sites would emerge where you could go to select ring tones, get the weather, book movie tickets and the like.
These sites would make extra revenue through banner ads on the screen, like happens on the Internet. But the business was very haphazard and disorganised, there was no way to be able to measure the effects of your ads or create big enough targets to attract major brands.
Having started and run several companies on this mobile market, Hamoui understood the problems - and worked out how to fix them. In January 2006 he started AdMob as a media coordinator that brought together the providers, the advertisers, their agencies, and the audience.
So take the example of Land Rover. They could target a high-income male audience that browsed sites featuring sports utility vehicles. The viewer could then click through to pictures of the car range where the company would offer them test drives and put them in contact with the nearest dealers.
By bringing together thousands of such sites AdMob could assemble and manage a well-documented advertising package that would speak to corporations and advertising agencies in terms they could relate to.
Within a year they attracted the attention of one of Silicon Valley’s biggest venture capitalists, Accel. A list of Accel’s success stories says it all: Facebook, BitTorrent, Uunet, and many more. They find a good, successful idea, pour money and management into it, and make it huge.
The venture capitalists themselves are often funded by citizen investors. Mums and dads and retirees who don’t trust their whole nest-egg to the superannuation funds. Any week of the year you can find conferences and introductory nights by the likes of Australian Venture Capital Association, Business Angels, Venture Capital Marketplace and many more.
They have their get-rich-quick rulebook too. Make sure the business is successful and profitable, take a big slice of the equity (at which point the developer will usually go into a decision crisis - does he really want to invite this cuckoo into his nest?) and quickly fatten it for market, ideally within three years.
The good ones do it well. Accel invested $17 million and helped AdMob grow into the world’s biggest mobile advertising platform in two years, turning over more than $100 million a year. And so attractive that Google was willing to pay a fortune to take it into its fold, rather than have to compete with it. So far it looks like the company will be left intact with the same management in charge. So expect to see a few more Ferraris on the roads of northern California.
Another Accel money spinner, Playfish, sold this week for $303 million to Electronic Arts. This was from an investment of $1 million - in 2008. Who said that magic beans and golden eggs are fairy tales? Aladdin’s cave could be no further away than your mobile phone.
ray@ebeatty.com
There’s a formula to making millions in a hurry. It’s simple and quick, and there are many thousands doing it right now all around the world but particularly in the US.
We saw it this week with the headline: “Google buys AdMob for $800 million". Obviously you’ve heard of Google but probably not AdMob. So what do they do that makes them worth nearly a billion bucks?
In mythology get-rich-quick stories were like Jack climbing the beanstalk, geese laying golden eggs or Cinderella sparking the lust of a young prince. These days they tend to start at Stanford or Harvard or Oxford.
In this case it was the University of Pennsylvania where, less than four years ago, a young MBA student called Omar Hamoui had a bright idea.
Mobile phone applications were beginning to take off as the technology became increasingly sophisticated. So sites would emerge where you could go to select ring tones, get the weather, book movie tickets and the like.
These sites would make extra revenue through banner ads on the screen, like happens on the Internet. But the business was very haphazard and disorganised, there was no way to be able to measure the effects of your ads or create big enough targets to attract major brands.
Having started and run several companies on this mobile market, Hamoui understood the problems - and worked out how to fix them. In January 2006 he started AdMob as a media coordinator that brought together the providers, the advertisers, their agencies, and the audience.
So take the example of Land Rover. They could target a high-income male audience that browsed sites featuring sports utility vehicles. The viewer could then click through to pictures of the car range where the company would offer them test drives and put them in contact with the nearest dealers.
By bringing together thousands of such sites AdMob could assemble and manage a well-documented advertising package that would speak to corporations and advertising agencies in terms they could relate to.
Within a year they attracted the attention of one of Silicon Valley’s biggest venture capitalists, Accel. A list of Accel’s success stories says it all: Facebook, BitTorrent, Uunet, and many more. They find a good, successful idea, pour money and management into it, and make it huge.
The venture capitalists themselves are often funded by citizen investors. Mums and dads and retirees who don’t trust their whole nest-egg to the superannuation funds. Any week of the year you can find conferences and introductory nights by the likes of Australian Venture Capital Association, Business Angels, Venture Capital Marketplace and many more.
They have their get-rich-quick rulebook too. Make sure the business is successful and profitable, take a big slice of the equity (at which point the developer will usually go into a decision crisis - does he really want to invite this cuckoo into his nest?) and quickly fatten it for market, ideally within three years.
The good ones do it well. Accel invested $17 million and helped AdMob grow into the world’s biggest mobile advertising platform in two years, turning over more than $100 million a year. And so attractive that Google was willing to pay a fortune to take it into its fold, rather than have to compete with it. So far it looks like the company will be left intact with the same management in charge. So expect to see a few more Ferraris on the roads of northern California.
Another Accel money spinner, Playfish, sold this week for $303 million to Electronic Arts. This was from an investment of $1 million - in 2008. Who said that magic beans and golden eggs are fairy tales? Aladdin’s cave could be no further away than your mobile phone.
ray@ebeatty.com
31 October, 2009
Did your children really come from another planet?
Melbourne Herald Sun, 31st October, 2009
Did our children really come from another planet - or under all the clothes, the talk, the music are they really little copies of us?
Putting this in business terms, the questions are: does all our expensive advertising appeal in the same way to each generation, do they use the same media, are they even looking?
A recently published report from Luma Research is bound to draw a sigh of relief. Yes they are different - but not that different.
It’ll come as no surprise that the oldies - 45 plus - spend two-thirds more time in front of the TV than a teenager. What is surprising is that they also spend three times more hours on the internet. So what do those teenyboppers get up to when they’re not in sight? Let’s put a good face on it and hope they are attending to their studies.
You can’t accuse the survey of being too narrow. Over 20 years they questioned 240,000 people in 50 countries. Definitely a representative sample.
But what every business person wants to know is: do people even notice my ads? And what is it that makes them buy?
Teens are more aware of advertising than their elders but this does not make them any more responsive. Uniformly, right across the generations, before the consumer will respond to the ad - and buy the product - they have to develop a relationship with it, what the researchers call “bonding”.
They have to like the ad. Respond to it, feel that it is talking to them. If that happens they will be pulled to your product, they will probably buy it. No surprises there - except for those who think that if they scream loudly enough out of the TV, the customer will be bludgeoned into submission.
Certainly different kinds of ads bond in different ways. If they are buying a car and you have the model they want at the price they expect to pay, a line ad in our classified pages will do the trick. It’s purely information. They will also look on the web, in local newspapers - they are just seeking their goal.
But as soon as you start promoting which car they should buy, and how much they ought to spend - then you are getting into image, fashion, relationship. This is where the emotional bonding comes in.
Our gen Zs, the teenagers, like stories and fantasy - not surprising. Their older siblings Gen Y (under 30s) respond to narration ads, telling a more straightforward message in words and pictures. But in the end it all comes down to the quality of the idea behind the ad, and the skill in promoting the benefits, in other words being creative.
This is where too many of the ads you’ll see on tonight’s TV, or in this weekend’s magazines, fall down. Look at them with a critical eye. Do they have personality? Is there any that makes you laugh or yearn or respond? It’s these emotions that create the bond, that make the ad - and the product - your friend.
Even though you and your kids have different reasons for choosing friends, across the generation divide, the mechanism of friendship remains the same. So it is with advertising, underneath we are no different. This is where the execution needs to be lined up with the age group and their concerns and fashions of the day.
But as far as the choice of the internet as an advertising medium, the surprising outcome of this research is that it is far more effective in reaching the Gen X and Baby Boomers (35+) than their kids. It’s mum and dad that are hogging the data line, while the kids go off onto their own planet.
Ray@ebeatty.com
Did our children really come from another planet - or under all the clothes, the talk, the music are they really little copies of us?
Putting this in business terms, the questions are: does all our expensive advertising appeal in the same way to each generation, do they use the same media, are they even looking?
A recently published report from Luma Research is bound to draw a sigh of relief. Yes they are different - but not that different.
It’ll come as no surprise that the oldies - 45 plus - spend two-thirds more time in front of the TV than a teenager. What is surprising is that they also spend three times more hours on the internet. So what do those teenyboppers get up to when they’re not in sight? Let’s put a good face on it and hope they are attending to their studies.
You can’t accuse the survey of being too narrow. Over 20 years they questioned 240,000 people in 50 countries. Definitely a representative sample.
But what every business person wants to know is: do people even notice my ads? And what is it that makes them buy?
Teens are more aware of advertising than their elders but this does not make them any more responsive. Uniformly, right across the generations, before the consumer will respond to the ad - and buy the product - they have to develop a relationship with it, what the researchers call “bonding”.
They have to like the ad. Respond to it, feel that it is talking to them. If that happens they will be pulled to your product, they will probably buy it. No surprises there - except for those who think that if they scream loudly enough out of the TV, the customer will be bludgeoned into submission.
Certainly different kinds of ads bond in different ways. If they are buying a car and you have the model they want at the price they expect to pay, a line ad in our classified pages will do the trick. It’s purely information. They will also look on the web, in local newspapers - they are just seeking their goal.
But as soon as you start promoting which car they should buy, and how much they ought to spend - then you are getting into image, fashion, relationship. This is where the emotional bonding comes in.
Our gen Zs, the teenagers, like stories and fantasy - not surprising. Their older siblings Gen Y (under 30s) respond to narration ads, telling a more straightforward message in words and pictures. But in the end it all comes down to the quality of the idea behind the ad, and the skill in promoting the benefits, in other words being creative.
This is where too many of the ads you’ll see on tonight’s TV, or in this weekend’s magazines, fall down. Look at them with a critical eye. Do they have personality? Is there any that makes you laugh or yearn or respond? It’s these emotions that create the bond, that make the ad - and the product - your friend.
Even though you and your kids have different reasons for choosing friends, across the generation divide, the mechanism of friendship remains the same. So it is with advertising, underneath we are no different. This is where the execution needs to be lined up with the age group and their concerns and fashions of the day.
But as far as the choice of the internet as an advertising medium, the surprising outcome of this research is that it is far more effective in reaching the Gen X and Baby Boomers (35+) than their kids. It’s mum and dad that are hogging the data line, while the kids go off onto their own planet.
Ray@ebeatty.com
17 October, 2009
Big man in media makes millions
Melbourne Herald Sun 17th October, 2009
It was a long time ago I first met Harold Mitchell, at the advertising agency Masius. Little did I suspect that he would one day be both rich and famous.
While I was a junior copywriter, he was only a few years older than me, still in his 20s. But already he had become national media director of one of this country’s leading agencies.
He was as smart as he was big. In board rooms he’d sit quietly as the creatives and account managers pitched a campaign to the clients. His job was to tell them how their money would be spent - on TV, newspapers, billboards - he’d briskly set out the media he would purchase for them, millions of dollars. And while they had lots to say about the ads, these clients said little about where the money would flow, trusting that Harold would buy the most cost-efficient plan.
In 1976 he picked up a new idea from the US. A consultancy specialising just in advertising media, with highly skilled professionals choosing and negotiating the very best media rates for clients, working with them directly or through their own advertising agency.
Naturally the agencies thought it was a terrible idea - this was their source of income after all - but some key advertisers like Just Jeans and Bob Jane liked the flexibility, speed and cost-savings this gave them.
Before long Mitchells were turning over millions of dollars in media billings. Nowadays it’s $1.3 billion which makes him a pretty big customer to the media. No wonder Kerry and Rupert always picked up the phone when he called.
In his recently published book, Living Large, Harold Mitchell doesn’t exactly tell all - but he tells enough about life amongst the millionaires to make it fascinating reading. I wouldn’t call it an autobiography, more what the French call a carnet. Part reminiscence, part anecdotes, part philosophy and history.
It certainly sounds like him. Short, sharp sentences crisply delivering the facts. Don’t expect to find any poetic interludes or intimate romance here. Always the soul of discretion, he tells you enough to pique your interest - but not so much as to be scandalous.
So while he devotes a chapter to Kerry Packer, it’s from the point of view of a friend he looked up to. He’s not so kind about Christopher Skase or Alan Bond.
His regard for Packer is understandable. In the 1987 stockmarket crash he came close to losing it all. The Big Fella tossed him a couple of million dollars, unasked. It was enough to keep the wheels turning till Mitchell could dig himself out of the hole.
He passes these favours on, too. One time a large client of mine suddenly crashed leaving me holding a substantial media debt. It’s the sort of thing that happens in advertising. I told Harold I couldn’t pay him. “So what can you pay?” We worked out a percentage and did the deal on a handshake. Not many blokes like that in today’s business.
It’s indicative of Harold’s political skills that the back of the book has tributes from both Steve Bracks and Jeff Kennett. They both learned that when a job needs to deliver results, he’s the man to call.
He has proved this repeatedly over the past 20 years as Chairman of the National Gallery of Australia, Victorian Museum, and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Just this week I have been missing that entrepreneurial spark that so energised the Melbourne Festival when he was its president.
Masius in the early seventies was a cauldron of talent - author Peter Carey; creators of The Campaign Palace Lionel Hunt and Gordon Trembath; food writer Terry Durack. But none bigger, then as now, than Harold Mitchell.
ray@ebeatty.com
It was a long time ago I first met Harold Mitchell, at the advertising agency Masius. Little did I suspect that he would one day be both rich and famous.
While I was a junior copywriter, he was only a few years older than me, still in his 20s. But already he had become national media director of one of this country’s leading agencies.
He was as smart as he was big. In board rooms he’d sit quietly as the creatives and account managers pitched a campaign to the clients. His job was to tell them how their money would be spent - on TV, newspapers, billboards - he’d briskly set out the media he would purchase for them, millions of dollars. And while they had lots to say about the ads, these clients said little about where the money would flow, trusting that Harold would buy the most cost-efficient plan.
In 1976 he picked up a new idea from the US. A consultancy specialising just in advertising media, with highly skilled professionals choosing and negotiating the very best media rates for clients, working with them directly or through their own advertising agency.
Naturally the agencies thought it was a terrible idea - this was their source of income after all - but some key advertisers like Just Jeans and Bob Jane liked the flexibility, speed and cost-savings this gave them.
Before long Mitchells were turning over millions of dollars in media billings. Nowadays it’s $1.3 billion which makes him a pretty big customer to the media. No wonder Kerry and Rupert always picked up the phone when he called.
In his recently published book, Living Large, Harold Mitchell doesn’t exactly tell all - but he tells enough about life amongst the millionaires to make it fascinating reading. I wouldn’t call it an autobiography, more what the French call a carnet. Part reminiscence, part anecdotes, part philosophy and history.
It certainly sounds like him. Short, sharp sentences crisply delivering the facts. Don’t expect to find any poetic interludes or intimate romance here. Always the soul of discretion, he tells you enough to pique your interest - but not so much as to be scandalous.
So while he devotes a chapter to Kerry Packer, it’s from the point of view of a friend he looked up to. He’s not so kind about Christopher Skase or Alan Bond.
His regard for Packer is understandable. In the 1987 stockmarket crash he came close to losing it all. The Big Fella tossed him a couple of million dollars, unasked. It was enough to keep the wheels turning till Mitchell could dig himself out of the hole.
He passes these favours on, too. One time a large client of mine suddenly crashed leaving me holding a substantial media debt. It’s the sort of thing that happens in advertising. I told Harold I couldn’t pay him. “So what can you pay?” We worked out a percentage and did the deal on a handshake. Not many blokes like that in today’s business.
It’s indicative of Harold’s political skills that the back of the book has tributes from both Steve Bracks and Jeff Kennett. They both learned that when a job needs to deliver results, he’s the man to call.
He has proved this repeatedly over the past 20 years as Chairman of the National Gallery of Australia, Victorian Museum, and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Just this week I have been missing that entrepreneurial spark that so energised the Melbourne Festival when he was its president.
Masius in the early seventies was a cauldron of talent - author Peter Carey; creators of The Campaign Palace Lionel Hunt and Gordon Trembath; food writer Terry Durack. But none bigger, then as now, than Harold Mitchell.
ray@ebeatty.com
12 October, 2009
Student exchange makes the businessman
12th October, 2009
I assume that most of my readers work in some kind of business, and many of you are the parents of children. Maybe you want them to come into your business, or to be successful in their own right. Well I can tell you from my own experience that the best thing to do for them is to send them away.
I discovered this by accident 20 years ago. All I wanted was away to persuade my son to continue his Japanese classes at the end of their first year, when the going got tough and his mates dropped out. “Hang in there and I’ll send you to Japan on exchange,” I promised.
He agreed and two years later, aged 15, set off for Osaka. Fortunately the three years’ Japanese lessons taught him at least how to read the toilet signs at the airport. But from a speech point of view he felt dumb.
He lived with a host family in central Osaka - but none of them spoke English. He travelled an hour and a half each way, by train, to the school. Classes were six days a week, plus two hours’ “club” time each afternoon. Then when he got home, two hours’ homework. Very few people in the school could speak English, but having the agile brain of a teenager he absorbed Japanese like a sponge.
At the end of the exchange year he was perfectly fluent in Japanese - both formal and local dialect - could read and write all three Japanese scripts like a native. He had chosen the school’s Judo Club so by the end of the year he had a black belt and more importantly, his skinny frame had filled out into a muscular, young man.
Did he miss very much? Well I knew from his older sister that Year 10 is not an academically important year. They seemed to spend much of their time on parties, social experiments, and discovering the opposite sex, as they waited for Year 11.
So it was that my boy missed making the front pages when a riot broke out between a large number of his schoolfriends and some gatecrashers. He also wasn’t there when some of his schoolfellows were busted for drugs.
When he returned he was no longer interested in teenage mischief. The Japanese work ethic was so strong that he powered his way through the Baccalaureate. At university the BA in Japanese he did in two years without a strain, and put his efforts into a Bachelor of Commerce.
I first came across exchangers when I worked at an advertising agency in Bangkok. These young executives had spent a year of their teens at school in America or Australia and were the only ones among our local staff who deeply understood western marketing and advertising, and could translate them into a Thai context. In fact the firm would actively seek them out.
So I knew my kid would never be unemployed. Hell, even if the whole world economy collapsed he could still drive a tourist bus. My stepdaughter is a few years older and also exchanged, spending a year in an American high school learning to chew gum and put marshmallows in the salad.
Her mother soon straightened her out that this wasn’t 90210 but the maturing process had done its trick.
She’s now a marketing manager with a world-leading IT company, has a Qantas Club card and takes her husband on overseas luxury holidays on her frequent flyer points.
So, seriously, take a good look at your teenybopper. Maybe the best thing you can do for them is send them away.
ray@ebeatty.com
I assume that most of my readers work in some kind of business, and many of you are the parents of children. Maybe you want them to come into your business, or to be successful in their own right. Well I can tell you from my own experience that the best thing to do for them is to send them away.
I discovered this by accident 20 years ago. All I wanted was away to persuade my son to continue his Japanese classes at the end of their first year, when the going got tough and his mates dropped out. “Hang in there and I’ll send you to Japan on exchange,” I promised.
He agreed and two years later, aged 15, set off for Osaka. Fortunately the three years’ Japanese lessons taught him at least how to read the toilet signs at the airport. But from a speech point of view he felt dumb.
He lived with a host family in central Osaka - but none of them spoke English. He travelled an hour and a half each way, by train, to the school. Classes were six days a week, plus two hours’ “club” time each afternoon. Then when he got home, two hours’ homework. Very few people in the school could speak English, but having the agile brain of a teenager he absorbed Japanese like a sponge.
At the end of the exchange year he was perfectly fluent in Japanese - both formal and local dialect - could read and write all three Japanese scripts like a native. He had chosen the school’s Judo Club so by the end of the year he had a black belt and more importantly, his skinny frame had filled out into a muscular, young man.
Did he miss very much? Well I knew from his older sister that Year 10 is not an academically important year. They seemed to spend much of their time on parties, social experiments, and discovering the opposite sex, as they waited for Year 11.
So it was that my boy missed making the front pages when a riot broke out between a large number of his schoolfriends and some gatecrashers. He also wasn’t there when some of his schoolfellows were busted for drugs.
When he returned he was no longer interested in teenage mischief. The Japanese work ethic was so strong that he powered his way through the Baccalaureate. At university the BA in Japanese he did in two years without a strain, and put his efforts into a Bachelor of Commerce.
I first came across exchangers when I worked at an advertising agency in Bangkok. These young executives had spent a year of their teens at school in America or Australia and were the only ones among our local staff who deeply understood western marketing and advertising, and could translate them into a Thai context. In fact the firm would actively seek them out.
So I knew my kid would never be unemployed. Hell, even if the whole world economy collapsed he could still drive a tourist bus. My stepdaughter is a few years older and also exchanged, spending a year in an American high school learning to chew gum and put marshmallows in the salad.
Her mother soon straightened her out that this wasn’t 90210 but the maturing process had done its trick.
She’s now a marketing manager with a world-leading IT company, has a Qantas Club card and takes her husband on overseas luxury holidays on her frequent flyer points.
So, seriously, take a good look at your teenybopper. Maybe the best thing you can do for them is send them away.
ray@ebeatty.com
03 October, 2009
Who's brave enough to mess with Vegemite?
Melbourne Herald Sun, 3rd October, 2009
My friend on the phone was ropeable. "Have you seen what they've done to Vegemite? Called their new product iSnack2. What sort of name's that? They should be whipped, messing about with an Australian icon like that."
My friend, an art director for many years, is passionate about his marketing and this move pressed all the wrong buttons. "What are they going to do next, rebrand Coca Cola ‘iDrink'? 'Cause that's what you do with it." I'll modestly pass over his suggestions for Sorbent toilet paper. Let's just say he was annoyed. And he was not alone.
The company, Kraft, was hit by such a flood of indignation that within days they announced that the new name was ditched and something better would be found. But how could this happen with a name that was democratically selected?
Kraft had asked its customers to name the new product - basically Vegemite with added cheese - in a competition that drew 48,000 entries. You can imagine the range of responses they received, with varying degrees of printability but very little marketing strategy.
The name they really wanted was CheesyMite but that already belonged to Baker's Delight. Instead they chose to take the trendy, digital iPod, iPhone, iTunes track and even added the two at the end to make it sound like software. But it isn't software so it just sounded phoney. The idea wasn't thought through to explore all the angles.
Sometimes public input can work, but it has to be managed well. NASA recently announced the winner of its own competition. To name the new planet rover that will explore Mars in 2011. The winner was 12 year old Clara Ma from Kansas - and the Mars Rover will be called Curiosity. "Houston, this is Mars - Curiosity has landed!" Yeah that sort of works, a lot better than iRove.
The attraction of a naming competition is all the free publicity it can generate. Zoos are fond of producing fluffy little animals and asking the public to name them. This guarantees that your panda or lion cub or giraffe makes the news and then gets repeated mentions until the name is chosen.
The secret is to make sure the final decision is made in-house. Otherwise you can have problems like another NASA contest earlier this year. They asked for a name for part of the International Space Station. Comedian Stephen Colbert urged his viewers to write-in ‘Colbert' and won with a hefty 230,000 votes. Fortunately the judges retained the last word.
This February Virgin launched their new cut-price trans-Pacific airline. And they too decided to put it to a vote. Their competition drew thousands of suggestions, but they were not allowed to use the word ‘Virgin' for legal reasons. The final choice was less than thrilling: ‘V Australia'. But could we have lived with one of the also-rans like ‘Matilda Blue' or ‘Didgeree Blue'?
The big contest at the moment is not for a name but for a slogan. Minister Simon Crean offered $20 million to the advertising agency that could come up with an Australian slogan better than ‘So where the bloody hell are you?' (Not difficult.) But up there with ‘100% New Zealand' or South Africa's ‘Rainbow Nation'. Big ask.
Now once upon a time you'd get half a dozen of an agency's most creative minds and lock them in a luxury hotel suite for a long weekend. They would then brainstorm and debate, applying logic or emotion depending on the time of day or night, and filling sheets of butcher's paper with dozens of scrawled ideas.
Finally the Creative Director would reduce the jumble down to ten good lines which would be researched. Hopefully you'd end up with two good candidates that would work whichever one the client chose. That's called professional marketing. But hey, a competition's much more fun isn't it?
ray@ebeatty.com
END
My friend on the phone was ropeable. "Have you seen what they've done to Vegemite? Called their new product iSnack2. What sort of name's that? They should be whipped, messing about with an Australian icon like that."
My friend, an art director for many years, is passionate about his marketing and this move pressed all the wrong buttons. "What are they going to do next, rebrand Coca Cola ‘iDrink'? 'Cause that's what you do with it." I'll modestly pass over his suggestions for Sorbent toilet paper. Let's just say he was annoyed. And he was not alone.
The company, Kraft, was hit by such a flood of indignation that within days they announced that the new name was ditched and something better would be found. But how could this happen with a name that was democratically selected?
Kraft had asked its customers to name the new product - basically Vegemite with added cheese - in a competition that drew 48,000 entries. You can imagine the range of responses they received, with varying degrees of printability but very little marketing strategy.
The name they really wanted was CheesyMite but that already belonged to Baker's Delight. Instead they chose to take the trendy, digital iPod, iPhone, iTunes track and even added the two at the end to make it sound like software. But it isn't software so it just sounded phoney. The idea wasn't thought through to explore all the angles.
Sometimes public input can work, but it has to be managed well. NASA recently announced the winner of its own competition. To name the new planet rover that will explore Mars in 2011. The winner was 12 year old Clara Ma from Kansas - and the Mars Rover will be called Curiosity. "Houston, this is Mars - Curiosity has landed!" Yeah that sort of works, a lot better than iRove.
The attraction of a naming competition is all the free publicity it can generate. Zoos are fond of producing fluffy little animals and asking the public to name them. This guarantees that your panda or lion cub or giraffe makes the news and then gets repeated mentions until the name is chosen.
The secret is to make sure the final decision is made in-house. Otherwise you can have problems like another NASA contest earlier this year. They asked for a name for part of the International Space Station. Comedian Stephen Colbert urged his viewers to write-in ‘Colbert' and won with a hefty 230,000 votes. Fortunately the judges retained the last word.
This February Virgin launched their new cut-price trans-Pacific airline. And they too decided to put it to a vote. Their competition drew thousands of suggestions, but they were not allowed to use the word ‘Virgin' for legal reasons. The final choice was less than thrilling: ‘V Australia'. But could we have lived with one of the also-rans like ‘Matilda Blue' or ‘Didgeree Blue'?
The big contest at the moment is not for a name but for a slogan. Minister Simon Crean offered $20 million to the advertising agency that could come up with an Australian slogan better than ‘So where the bloody hell are you?' (Not difficult.) But up there with ‘100% New Zealand' or South Africa's ‘Rainbow Nation'. Big ask.
Now once upon a time you'd get half a dozen of an agency's most creative minds and lock them in a luxury hotel suite for a long weekend. They would then brainstorm and debate, applying logic or emotion depending on the time of day or night, and filling sheets of butcher's paper with dozens of scrawled ideas.
Finally the Creative Director would reduce the jumble down to ten good lines which would be researched. Hopefully you'd end up with two good candidates that would work whichever one the client chose. That's called professional marketing. But hey, a competition's much more fun isn't it?
ray@ebeatty.com
END
26 September, 2009
Product placement in TV and movies: Mr Spock’s Nokia
Melbourne Herald Sun, 26th September 2009
You’ll be surprised to know that in 2250 there will still be Nokia mobile phones and Budweiser beer, along with Captain Kirk and Mr Spock. Can these products last another 240 years? Well in the world of brand placement they can - they were seen in this year’s Star Trek movie.
Brand Placement is a $180 million business, which compared to the billions spent in advertising is pretty small fry - but it’s enough to affect almost every movie and TV drama you will see in the next year.
It’s 30 years since the business was born, when Christopher Reeve smashed into a giant neon Coke sign in Superman I.
Since then, those sneaky little product shots creeping into the actors’ hands have gone from occasional, to regular, to a pain in the eyeballs. But the producers insist that they are a necessary part of financing today’s film and TV business.
The British have always been stand-offish about the practice, even pixillating the logo on Simon Cowell’s drink when American Idol is shown there. But this week their culture minister, Ben Bradshaw, has permitted the practice “in order to help save the TV industry”.
He has been hit by a public storm that we in Oz, being already contaminated, would find surprising. But in Coronation Street they have their own brand of beer, and in Midsomer Murders the packets and bottles are always turned away from the camera. So allowing a logo to be seen is a scandal.
America, of course, has the most sophisticated system. And its champion user is Ford, who in the 2008 Product Placement Awards was clocked to have featured in 60 percent of the top box-office movies. They’re still up there this year.
If the movie shows a New York taxi it will be a Ford. They were in Transformers (1 and 2), I Am Legend, American Gangster, 17 Again, Hannah Montana - and of course that glorified motor show on celluloid, Fast & Furious. They have a Global Brand Entertainment Team whose job it is to stick Fords into movies.
Last year, of the 20 films to have a number-one weekend at the box office, each placed an average of 22 brands. The only clean skins were Harry Potter and Pixar’s Up. Inglourious Basterds was almost clean with just one product reference - to Walther pistols.
It’s only human to take things too far and so you’ll see cases where the tail starts to wag the dog. NBC has a TV comedy called Chuck, where a CIA agent works undercover in a shopping mall. The new season will only be made through the support of Subway sandwiches. So I wonder where the agent is going to work?
In these days when advertising income is being syphoned off by the Internet and new media, is this sneaky advertising the only alternative to endless, cheaper, reality shows and panel quizzes?
Maybe we’ll get used to it, as we have in sporting coverage. Will we see actors with Samsung logos on their shirts? Billboards in every external scene? Beam me up, Scotty!
I’d just like to conclude by assuring you that I received no payment for the mention of Coca Cola, Ford, Budweiser, Subway, Walther, Samsung, or Nokia in this article. More’s the pity.
ray@ebeatty.com
You’ll be surprised to know that in 2250 there will still be Nokia mobile phones and Budweiser beer, along with Captain Kirk and Mr Spock. Can these products last another 240 years? Well in the world of brand placement they can - they were seen in this year’s Star Trek movie.
Brand Placement is a $180 million business, which compared to the billions spent in advertising is pretty small fry - but it’s enough to affect almost every movie and TV drama you will see in the next year.
It’s 30 years since the business was born, when Christopher Reeve smashed into a giant neon Coke sign in Superman I.
Since then, those sneaky little product shots creeping into the actors’ hands have gone from occasional, to regular, to a pain in the eyeballs. But the producers insist that they are a necessary part of financing today’s film and TV business.
The British have always been stand-offish about the practice, even pixillating the logo on Simon Cowell’s drink when American Idol is shown there. But this week their culture minister, Ben Bradshaw, has permitted the practice “in order to help save the TV industry”.
He has been hit by a public storm that we in Oz, being already contaminated, would find surprising. But in Coronation Street they have their own brand of beer, and in Midsomer Murders the packets and bottles are always turned away from the camera. So allowing a logo to be seen is a scandal.
America, of course, has the most sophisticated system. And its champion user is Ford, who in the 2008 Product Placement Awards was clocked to have featured in 60 percent of the top box-office movies. They’re still up there this year.
If the movie shows a New York taxi it will be a Ford. They were in Transformers (1 and 2), I Am Legend, American Gangster, 17 Again, Hannah Montana - and of course that glorified motor show on celluloid, Fast & Furious. They have a Global Brand Entertainment Team whose job it is to stick Fords into movies.
Last year, of the 20 films to have a number-one weekend at the box office, each placed an average of 22 brands. The only clean skins were Harry Potter and Pixar’s Up. Inglourious Basterds was almost clean with just one product reference - to Walther pistols.
It’s only human to take things too far and so you’ll see cases where the tail starts to wag the dog. NBC has a TV comedy called Chuck, where a CIA agent works undercover in a shopping mall. The new season will only be made through the support of Subway sandwiches. So I wonder where the agent is going to work?
In these days when advertising income is being syphoned off by the Internet and new media, is this sneaky advertising the only alternative to endless, cheaper, reality shows and panel quizzes?
Maybe we’ll get used to it, as we have in sporting coverage. Will we see actors with Samsung logos on their shirts? Billboards in every external scene? Beam me up, Scotty!
I’d just like to conclude by assuring you that I received no payment for the mention of Coca Cola, Ford, Budweiser, Subway, Walther, Samsung, or Nokia in this article. More’s the pity.
ray@ebeatty.com
12 September, 2009
Why can’t a woman be more like a man?
Melbourne Herald Sun, 12th September, 2009
“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” asked Professor Higgins. Well I’m sorry mate, she ain’t and never will be. So that’s why Fernwood Women’s Health Club was invented.
The fitness franchise celebrated twenty years last month and in the process has launched a new advertising campaign.
Diana Williams has given us a classic example of market positioning. You take a product, even in an intensely competitive field, and you give it an angle that nobody else has - in advertising parlance, the “unique selling proposition”.
Bear in mind that it does not really have to be unique, in that it does not exist anywhere else. But in perception - if you are the first person to promote that benefit, and bring it to the public’s attention, then as far as the public is concerned, you invented it.
So it was with Fernwood. Twenty years ago, back in little old Bendigo, Diana Williams stood up and promoted a gym as being exclusively for women, no men allowed. Then she stuck to her guns. She knew her market.
Let’s face it, many women get embarrassed sweating and straining in leotards that fail to disguise the lumps and bumps in their figures, before a roomful of men. They want to relax from looking good, even as they work on it. They responded to a man-free zone.
So much so that the clubs were opened in Melbourne and eventually around the country under a franchise model. And every one of them made the same promise. As immortalised in a Fernwood ad campaign a few years ago: “No Toms. No Harrys. No Dicks.”
Having hammered that message home for years, their new campaign can afford to concentrate on their customers’ self-image and aspirations. So the new line is “Find your inner fox”. Presumably talking about Jimmy Hendrix’s Foxy Lady or as they put it, “Happy, Sexy, Fun”.
The ads will run on TV, print, outdoor and online media. A typical poster ad declares: “Be a fox without botox”. The message being that if you exercise regularly you’ll feel fitter, look better, and be more confident.
The “No Dicks” campaigned positioned them securely in the public’s mind, so now they can afford to promote those more positive benefits.
The strategy has worked incredibly well. Fernwood is now the largest women’s health club in Australia, with 77 facilities, 80,000 members, 2,200 employees, and an annual turnover of $90m.
However, in July Victorian Attorney General Rob Hulls blundered into a hornet’s nest when he attacked the gender discrimination of men’s clubs. Why shouldn’t women be able to join the Melbourne Club and the Athenaeum, he asked?
The problem was that by taking a shot at these male clubs he also hit institutions like Fernwood and the Lyceum Club. They argue just as loudly for their right to be exclusively female, as men do for theirs.
There is a longer-term problem to this move, too. In recent years, throughout society, membership of groups and organisations has been falling - ask any political party to check its own numbers.
If you took away the gender exclusivity many of these clubs would have no more reason to exist, they would be killed off by political correctness.
There is now a parliamentary committee questioning the exceptions allowed under the Equal Opportunity Act, which is expected to report next month.
Now if they rule that women’s clubs are legal but men’s are not, expect much mouth-frothing from the top of Collins Street.
On the other hand I cannot see them ruling that women’s clubs are illegal. After all, it would be a very brave politician who would stand up before the wrath of 80,000 angry women in leotards.
ray@ebeatty.com
“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” asked Professor Higgins. Well I’m sorry mate, she ain’t and never will be. So that’s why Fernwood Women’s Health Club was invented.
The fitness franchise celebrated twenty years last month and in the process has launched a new advertising campaign.
Diana Williams has given us a classic example of market positioning. You take a product, even in an intensely competitive field, and you give it an angle that nobody else has - in advertising parlance, the “unique selling proposition”.
Bear in mind that it does not really have to be unique, in that it does not exist anywhere else. But in perception - if you are the first person to promote that benefit, and bring it to the public’s attention, then as far as the public is concerned, you invented it.
So it was with Fernwood. Twenty years ago, back in little old Bendigo, Diana Williams stood up and promoted a gym as being exclusively for women, no men allowed. Then she stuck to her guns. She knew her market.
Let’s face it, many women get embarrassed sweating and straining in leotards that fail to disguise the lumps and bumps in their figures, before a roomful of men. They want to relax from looking good, even as they work on it. They responded to a man-free zone.
So much so that the clubs were opened in Melbourne and eventually around the country under a franchise model. And every one of them made the same promise. As immortalised in a Fernwood ad campaign a few years ago: “No Toms. No Harrys. No Dicks.”
Having hammered that message home for years, their new campaign can afford to concentrate on their customers’ self-image and aspirations. So the new line is “Find your inner fox”. Presumably talking about Jimmy Hendrix’s Foxy Lady or as they put it, “Happy, Sexy, Fun”.
The ads will run on TV, print, outdoor and online media. A typical poster ad declares: “Be a fox without botox”. The message being that if you exercise regularly you’ll feel fitter, look better, and be more confident.
The “No Dicks” campaigned positioned them securely in the public’s mind, so now they can afford to promote those more positive benefits.
The strategy has worked incredibly well. Fernwood is now the largest women’s health club in Australia, with 77 facilities, 80,000 members, 2,200 employees, and an annual turnover of $90m.
However, in July Victorian Attorney General Rob Hulls blundered into a hornet’s nest when he attacked the gender discrimination of men’s clubs. Why shouldn’t women be able to join the Melbourne Club and the Athenaeum, he asked?
The problem was that by taking a shot at these male clubs he also hit institutions like Fernwood and the Lyceum Club. They argue just as loudly for their right to be exclusively female, as men do for theirs.
There is a longer-term problem to this move, too. In recent years, throughout society, membership of groups and organisations has been falling - ask any political party to check its own numbers.
If you took away the gender exclusivity many of these clubs would have no more reason to exist, they would be killed off by political correctness.
There is now a parliamentary committee questioning the exceptions allowed under the Equal Opportunity Act, which is expected to report next month.
Now if they rule that women’s clubs are legal but men’s are not, expect much mouth-frothing from the top of Collins Street.
On the other hand I cannot see them ruling that women’s clubs are illegal. After all, it would be a very brave politician who would stand up before the wrath of 80,000 angry women in leotards.
ray@ebeatty.com
25 July, 2009
What’s the shelf life of a Master Chef medal?
Melbourne Herald Sun 25th July, 2009
Having won the Australian Masterchef contest, Julie Goodwin can rest assured that the award will last her for life and she will never be short of work or sponsors.
But for the rest of us just how long is the lifespan of an award? And in cool marketing terms, what’s it worth?
No doubt Julie’s win will sell lots of her cookbooks once she publishes, and draw a stream of customers into her restaurant. So yes you would call it bankable and worth much more than the prize on Sunday night.
Think about sports stars. An Olympic medal has no shelf life. Herb Elliot is still an Olympian even now he’s pushing 70, his wins as highly regarded as the recently minted medals of Stephanie Rice. They have both been able to make hay from the glint of the gold.
But what about advertising? A great deal of fuss is made about awards, whether the local ones like Award or Caxton, or the big international ones like Cannes or Clio.
Agencies proudly display them behind the reception desk as a hallmark of quality - “Look at how good we are”. However winning the gong does not always mean that the advertisements generated spectacular sales for the clients.
They are also time-sensitive. After a very few years the gloss pales. Let me confess that in my own case, introducing myself to new clients, I will mention Clio and Penguin awards - then quickly move the conversation on before someone asks me how long ago I won them. In this regard I know I’m not alone.
Contemplating this subject I read the label on a Dewar’s scotch (an aid to contemplation) to find that it displayed 14 gold medals from great international exhibitions. London to Paris to Cairo to Zurich and more. But they started in 1886 and ended in 1930.
Presumably anyone involved in the creation of those award-winning brews is long gone (one would hope). So how does that recommend today’s tipple?
Looking in my pantry I found a bottle of Lupi olive oil boasting a gold medal from somewhere in Italy - in 1880. Our own Cobram Estate olive oil is at least current, with Perth 2008 on its label.
Another honour used in marketing is the royal warrant. This is where a product is allowed to display a crest and “As appointed by...” on the label. Some companies, like Schweppes and Twinings, have had them for centuries.
Contrary to popular belief they don’t pay for them with truckloads of free tea and soft drinks - they are paid like any other tradespeople. These days a warrant needs to be renewed every five years and ends after the death of the grantor. So you cannot legally claim: “By appointment to King Edward VII”, and the Queen Mother’s favourites expired five years after her.
To get the nod you have to be pretty classy. The Queen includes Rolls Royce and Bentley, Aston Martin, Burberry, Royal Doulton, Jaguars, Steinway and Range Rover. Hm, obviously has a very large garage.
But it’s not only big-ticket items, the list includes trades like dry cleaners, fishmongers, and these days even computer software. In Australia Hardy Brothers the jewellers have showed off their crest for 80 years.
But the Royal Warrant can be lost too. Harrods were proud holders of appointments by the whole Royal Family. But in 2000 the Duke of Edinburgh had had enough of Mohamed al-Fayed’s accusations about “the murder” of his son and Princess Diana, and rescinded his warrant.
Al-Fayed blew a raspberry and removed all the royal coats of arms on his store, including those that had not expired. Prince Phillip blamed a "significant decline in the trading relationship" for the spat.
He’s not wrong - no royal has shopped in Harrods since Princess Diana’s death in 1997.
ray@ebeatty.com
Having won the Australian Masterchef contest, Julie Goodwin can rest assured that the award will last her for life and she will never be short of work or sponsors.
But for the rest of us just how long is the lifespan of an award? And in cool marketing terms, what’s it worth?
No doubt Julie’s win will sell lots of her cookbooks once she publishes, and draw a stream of customers into her restaurant. So yes you would call it bankable and worth much more than the prize on Sunday night.
Think about sports stars. An Olympic medal has no shelf life. Herb Elliot is still an Olympian even now he’s pushing 70, his wins as highly regarded as the recently minted medals of Stephanie Rice. They have both been able to make hay from the glint of the gold.
But what about advertising? A great deal of fuss is made about awards, whether the local ones like Award or Caxton, or the big international ones like Cannes or Clio.
Agencies proudly display them behind the reception desk as a hallmark of quality - “Look at how good we are”. However winning the gong does not always mean that the advertisements generated spectacular sales for the clients.
They are also time-sensitive. After a very few years the gloss pales. Let me confess that in my own case, introducing myself to new clients, I will mention Clio and Penguin awards - then quickly move the conversation on before someone asks me how long ago I won them. In this regard I know I’m not alone.
Contemplating this subject I read the label on a Dewar’s scotch (an aid to contemplation) to find that it displayed 14 gold medals from great international exhibitions. London to Paris to Cairo to Zurich and more. But they started in 1886 and ended in 1930.
Presumably anyone involved in the creation of those award-winning brews is long gone (one would hope). So how does that recommend today’s tipple?
Looking in my pantry I found a bottle of Lupi olive oil boasting a gold medal from somewhere in Italy - in 1880. Our own Cobram Estate olive oil is at least current, with Perth 2008 on its label.
Another honour used in marketing is the royal warrant. This is where a product is allowed to display a crest and “As appointed by...” on the label. Some companies, like Schweppes and Twinings, have had them for centuries.
Contrary to popular belief they don’t pay for them with truckloads of free tea and soft drinks - they are paid like any other tradespeople. These days a warrant needs to be renewed every five years and ends after the death of the grantor. So you cannot legally claim: “By appointment to King Edward VII”, and the Queen Mother’s favourites expired five years after her.
To get the nod you have to be pretty classy. The Queen includes Rolls Royce and Bentley, Aston Martin, Burberry, Royal Doulton, Jaguars, Steinway and Range Rover. Hm, obviously has a very large garage.
But it’s not only big-ticket items, the list includes trades like dry cleaners, fishmongers, and these days even computer software. In Australia Hardy Brothers the jewellers have showed off their crest for 80 years.
But the Royal Warrant can be lost too. Harrods were proud holders of appointments by the whole Royal Family. But in 2000 the Duke of Edinburgh had had enough of Mohamed al-Fayed’s accusations about “the murder” of his son and Princess Diana, and rescinded his warrant.
Al-Fayed blew a raspberry and removed all the royal coats of arms on his store, including those that had not expired. Prince Phillip blamed a "significant decline in the trading relationship" for the spat.
He’s not wrong - no royal has shopped in Harrods since Princess Diana’s death in 1997.
ray@ebeatty.com
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