Opera makes the most memorable TV commercials

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday December 18, 2014

Mazda likes to portray itself as a good corporate citizen, and thanks its many customers by sponsoring the annual Opera in the Bowl concert, as it did last weekend.

Of course in such a popular event the opera needs to be light, short and digestible, with lots of songs that everyone knows - even if they believe they know nothing about opera. So it was that the warm summer night was filled with Opera Australia's orchestra and finest young singers entertaining the crowd with two hours of delightful, er, TV commercials.

I don't think it was deliberate, but more than two-thirds I could remember back to a TV soundtrack. It's just that a great operatic tune is so memorable, and so made for words, that advertisers have always found them irresistible.

So when the orchestra opened with Bizet's Carmen, B&D's Roll-a-Door opened in my mind. Then Carmina Burana by Carl Orff conjured hundreds of men racing across a field chasing a beer.

The great Verdi of course was there with the Anvil Chorus (Yellow Pages), and Nabucco's Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves which caused a row in Italy when a bank used it for a TV commercial.

There is a financial reason for this resurgence of opera, far more mundane than its great beauty. Most of our favourite operas were written more than a century ago and so are out of copyright. So although you have to pay the record company or singers - you don't pay hefty original music costs or residuals. So when you can get the world's greatest music for nothing - why not?

And marketers have been filching opera tracks since before the Marx Brothers. They're all snapped up and replayed, fortunately only 30 seconds at a time. So La Donna E Mobile becomes "pasta from Leggo's". Rossini's Figaro becomes Vittoria Coffee and in an earlier commercial Doritos Chips. Pachelbel's Canon takes you to Tasmania, and Wagner's Valkyries fetch the Reflex copy paper.

Cars love the smooth ride of classical music: Debussy's Clair de Lune for Honda Accord, Rachmaninoff's Pictures at an Exhibition is Mitsubishi's Magna. Honda Legend uses the dreamlike atmosphere of Cantaloube's Songs of the Auvergne; Holden Statesman used Mozart's Piano Concerto 21; and for their Calibre, Holst's The Planets. Of course the grouind-shaker of them all was when the Army Reserve blew its trainees through the smoke bombs with Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture.

There is actually give and take in this process - Stanley Kubrick turned Richard Strauss into a hit composer when he ran Also Sprach Zarathustra as the soundtrack for his 2001. It was scarcely known then. And Delibes was yet another obscure, little known 19th century opera composer - there are thousands of them - until his Flower Duet was played through the cabin of a British Airways commercial. It was then that the dust was blown off the volumes of Lakme and it is now in the world's frequent opera repertoire.

I'll bet that a lot of my readers are now surprised to discover they are so familiar with the works of opera and classical symphonies. You may not know the names but the music is right inside you. Maybe you might use this holiday break to explore the world of classics, if you haven't been into it before. You'll be amazed at what you find, and you don't have to buy any products.

Have a very merry Christmas!

All the world's top chefs have planned your Christmas dinner

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday December 11, 2014

It has pride of place on the bench of so many a young family's kitchen. The cook book rack where the Margaret Fulton tome would sit open at that day's planned recipe. Only now it's not a book in its place but an iPad, or its clone. The recipe would be displayed as before, with bright coloured photo of what (hopefully) it will eventually look like.

It may be an actual Margaret Fulton recipe, or Jamie Oliver, or Nigella Lawson - or any of your favourite TV chefs, they all seem to have their own sites including the various Master Chef winners and their judges.

World wide there are hundreds of recipe sites, somewhere there's one for every taste and every nationality from gnocchi to spare ribs to Peking duck.

To this you can add the thousands of enthusiastic bloggers. Some have as much skill and character as the professionals; large numbers of them leave much to be desired and a queasy feeling in the tum.

But Australians appreciate their home cooking and are doing a lot of it, even if they also consume large quantities of take-away. But we are fortunate in having very affordable food. Our incomes have risen faster than prices. So the Department of Agriculture was able to report in 2012 that over the previous 20 years, while our incomes rose by 36 per cent, the spending on food only went up 13 per cent.

This is corroborated by the Australian Bureau of Statistics which reported that households spent 20 per cent of their cash on food and drink in 1984, yet 25 years later it was only 16.5 per cent. The popularity of eating certainly hasn't declined so it must be price. And that's even excluding alcohol.

Of course clever marketing joins the dots and you'll find a helluva lot of doodling in the recipe pages. I've talked before about the work Coles and Woolworths have done to develop their home delivery services.

Now Coles have taken it a step further, with the announcement of a new Recipe to Cart service. It's a marriage made in supermarket heaven: the blushing bride is Taste.com.au, the country's biggest recipe deliverer, claiming a reach of 6,277,000 readers and clickers per month between its website, magazine and newspaper lift-outs.

You choose your recipes, click the ingredients, they pass into the digital shopping basket and the next day they get delivered to your door. I wonder if there's another button you can click to deliver Curtis Stone or Heston Blumenthal to cook it up for you.

Christmas of course is a time when the nation goes extravagantly mad in its food buying. So it's an ideal time for Taste and Coles to launch this service. They have constructed a Christmas Menu Planner with lots of seasonal dishes based around products on Coles shelves.

Woolworths are fighting back with Jamie Oliver Christmas recipes, while Aldi and IGA have had their home economists toiling for months to deliver acres of appetising meals on their web sites.

So if you are one of our millions of keen on-line recipe hunters, rest assured that a very well catered Christmas has been laid out for you.

To police the TPP we need WikiLeaks

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday December 4, 2014

Australia's future as a trading nation is the subject of intense discussion. The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is an agreement being hammered out between Australia and our 11 trading neighbours including America, Canada, Japan, Chile, Mexico, Malaysia and Vietnam. But not including China or India.

How do we know about it? Certainly not through the trust of our government, which keeps the details under heavy security - as did the previous Labor government - so any information we have is thanks to WikiLeaks.

Consequently we are working on a jigsaw puzzle with 80 per cent of the pieces missing. But we do get to understand the picture.

Detractors have stormed over one of the chapters that we have seen, on intellectual property. Howls of protest have been heard from music and movie lovers at the planned tightening of copyright laws and the cutting of online piracy.

I would regard separating freedom from theft as a primary task.

Of more concern are the moves which could see Australia paying more for drugs, medicine, and health care. We are used to our PBS and generic drugs, they have made our good health affordable.

We can also expect to see Australia's already-low tariff walls descend even further on items like machines, cars and technology.

But the question will inevitable arise: will Americans free up their agriculture markets, or the Japanese permit Australian rice?

Even behind curtains, our negotiators are being scrutinised very closely and will have to justify any concessions they make to a suspicious public.

If there is anyone with a broad-ranging view of this country's economic future, it's Phil Ruthven, the chairman of Ibisworld market researchers. How did he view the TPP?

To my surprise, he was not very concerned about it. "Any treaty is always healthy," he said, "But our trade and tourism relationships are in the Asian region, not the Pacific. 80 per cent of our trade is now focussed on Asia. Two thirds of our tourists are coming from Asia.

"We're one of the fastest growing countries, mainly from immigrants, and two-thirds of those are from Asia. Any treaty with Asia is probably more valuable to us than America. In reality our future is Asian rather than Pacific orientated."

All of which makes you wonder at the treaty being so drawn-out. Are we sure we are sitting on the right side of the fence? China already has its treaty, signed last month, and India is not too far away, we are told.

Once he warmed to his theme, Phil of course was a trove of information and statistics.

"By 2016 China will be bigger than America, economically. But they won't become a power so quickly." Which leave us in between two giants.

"We are pretty tiny," muses Phil, "and we need friends everywhere."

So he advises that while we make our new accommodation with China and India, we must never neglect to stay close friends with America.

Does that mean paying more for software? "I think you'll find IP is one of the most valuable assets they have got. Look at the expense of developing drugs. I would have some sympathy for them wanting to be paid for that."

However, we still expect our negotiators to be tough nuts - and we have WikiLeaks to spy on them for us.

Bespoke and mass production will no longer be contradictions.

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday November 27, 2014

Once upon a time a son of gentry would visit the family shoemaker in Jermyn Street, London, to have his feet lasted. Perfect models would be made of his feet, carved out of hard wood, which from then on would be used to make his shoes.

Then later, while serving in India's North-West Frontier, he may decide it was time for a few new pairs. A letter to Jermyn Street would see the beautiful new, perfectly fitting shoes delivered by the next tea clipper.

This bespoke shoe making is still available in a few stores around the world, if you have about $5000 for a pair of shoes. But rapid innovations may make it available for us non-gentry, and not a very long time away.

Already there is technology that can scan your foot, digitise it, and rebuild a perfect model - the last - with a 3D printer. There are a number of companies around the world working to create just such a system. Some of the sports shoe companies already have "design your own style".

Management consultants McKinsey & Co point to a huge new marketing wave coming at us in the shape of custom choice and fitting. A lot of the software has already been written, many of the machines have already been built.

Ford and General Motors have invested heavily on interchangeable robotics - so when you order your car, details, specifications, features and colours can all be programmed into your order on-line.

We're already used to our computers being customised to the smallest details of memory, screen definition, networking capacity, inbuilt radio and TV - there seems to be no function that can't be specified when we make the purchase.

Clothing is another area where the computer comes into its own. Like the shoemaker's last, your whole body could be recorded and filed. So long as you were managing your weight, you could order your perfectly-fitting outfits from wherever you were in the world. The computer image would even show you how you will look with that particular blouse and skirt or trousers and jacket.

Of course this sounds like magical marketing but it will all depend on the ability to supply and respond. By all accounts it took our supermarkets over two years to develop a system reliable enough that now they can advertise computer shopping with home delivery.

McKinsey instruct that the first step is to identify opportunities that create value for the consumer and are supported by smooth, swift, and inexpensive transactions for both customer and producer.

The second is the tricky part - keeping costs controlled even when numbers and manufacturing complexity increase. This is why the customising of goods is still in the hands of small start-ups or separate divisions of large companies.

But now, they say, "We believe the time for widespread, profitable mass customisation may finally have come, the result of emerging or improved technologies."

They foretell it has the potential to increase a company's revenue and beat competitors, improve cash flow and reduce waste. You only make what has been ordered - and usually paid for. The customer's loyalty is guaranteed - they know you will always supply the perfect fit. You'll also gather data that can help you develop the range of standard products for the off-the-peg customers.

Customising is mass production - but one at a time. It creates a radical new marketplace.

The European grocer that invaded Australia

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday November 20, 2014

For a company that didn't believe in advertising for much of its history, the current commercial is pretty lavish. Set in a primitive, frozen, Grimm-like alpine village and inhabited by inbred coarse natives, we see them react when Johann returns from a visit to far-away Australia.

He tells them of hopping animals, cricket bats, even gets them to surf on the lake - which, being perfectly flat, just sees them sink below the ice.

Finally the villagers of Julbacken pick up burning torches and revolt. But at Johann's house they find a barbecue and table piled with Christmas fare. One prawn and they're converted to the Aussie Christmas.

The advertiser is a surprise: Aldi Supermarkets. For a price-driven, warehouse-shelved operation that doesn't even give you carry bags, they have spent big on some classy advertising for their Christmas drive.

But then you look closer and my, how they have grown without being noticed. It seems such a little time back that they were a curious German food store selling phoney Corn Flakes. You'd go there when it was close by - not very often because there weren't many - or the days before payday when you'd feel the need to be penny-pinching.

Now however there are 340 Aldi stores in Queensland, NSW, ACT and Victoria. They turn over $5 billion a year and have overtaken IGA to become number three in supermarkets with 10.3 per cent market share. All done since 2001.

Much of this was achieved with very little media advertising, compared to Coles and Woolworths. They persistently letterbox their neighbourhoods so I'll have to give that credit. But of course their main draw is their ability to dramatically prune the price of most products.

While I cuttingly describe them as "phoney" products, I do have to admit that they are quality made and packaged. I've also noticed that a lot more recognised brands are starting to penetrate their shelves. They claim that a hundred per cent of their fresh meat, eggs and bread is sourced locally.

The stores themselves are a third the size of a conventional supermarket. This means a concentration of products, so there is less range to choose from. But it also reduces the cost. In fact Choice consumer magazine had regularly done basket comparisons that show Aldi as much as 25 per cent cheaper than the big boys. They wrote in a report, "Even if a customer does not shop at ALDI, they obtain significant benefits from having an ALDI in their local area, as the Coles or Woolworths store prices more keenly".

With 9000 stores in 18 countries, the group's main gripe about Australia is that they can't grow fast enough. They like to build and own their stores but claim that this country is the most restrictive one they operate in. Such a big wide country, but they can't find the suitably sited, correctly zoned blocks.

Even the ACCC sympathised, stating in 2009: "The barriers to entry created by planning laws are particularly pronounced for independent supermarkets".

Just this June Aldi submitted to the Competition Policy Review that this lack of real estate was reducing the opportunity for Australians to enjoy the lower prices brought about by competition. Their rivals, on the other hand, already have networks of old inner-city stores that can be upgraded - as you'll no doubt have seen in some of your local supermarkets.
So don't be surprised if any large empty shops near you suddenly sprout blue and orange logos.

The Great Golden Shield of China

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday November 13, 2014
They say that you can see the Great Wall of China from the moon. Well from there you could certainly experience another wonder: the Great Firewall of China.

This is the huge barrier the Chinese government has built to protect itself not from the hoards of Mongolian marauders, but from the hoards of western democracy campaigners. All internet and email has to filter through this mighty dam to ensure that it is pure of thought and ideology.

Of course every government longs for this controlling power - just look at the measures frequently proposed in our own Parliament. However it is unbelievably expensive - and cumbersome. The Chinese call it The Golden Shield and it's estimated that as many as two million police are involved in the project. What that would do to the budget blow-out.

Naturally, Chinese computer enthusiasts devote enormous time and energy to finding ways around this colossus. They have a constant cat and mouse game with the authorities, making a hole and getting full use of it before it is found and blocked up.

However, all this censorship has not impeded the paths of profit. The world's greatest data companies see billions of dollars in trade, and huge Chinese companies have a world market to serve.

So, early next year Twitter is opening its Hong Kong office, devoted to China business even though it is banished from the land. Google already has a sales office, in a ten-storey headquarters in Beijing. Facebook has just rented its own offices in Beijing, with views of the Forbidden City.

Which is quite appropriate, because the social activities of these world giants are mired in the quagmire of Chinese censorship.

That Golden Shield has seen some mighty stoushes. Google especially has spent ten years in a market where they once had 36 per cent - that has dropped to 1.7 per cent. The government has repeatedly blocked the search engine, both in English and Chinese. You'll get no sensible response to "tank man" or "Tibetan protest" or "Hong Kong democracy demonstrations".

Facebook was blocked in 2009 - so why are they about to move into a huge new office? Well, China is where the business is. Huge clients like Alibaba, Lenovo, Xiaomi - the names may not be familiar, but their products are in your house or office: from toys to computers to clothes and shoes and phones. Probably they have someone else's brand stuck on the face - but the companies that make them are vast and they depend on exports.

At the same time our social media giants have found that there is a big hungry world out there. Twitter has 284 million users, 78 per cent of them outside the US, even without a presence in China. In the last reported quarter its revenue was US$242million - not bad for a recently launched company. Facebook made $800 million, Google $13.2 billion. And they are all complaining that business is slow.

These companies see the Asia-Pacific region as the future, with offices strategically spread from Seoul to Beijing or Hong Kong, to Singapore and Sydney. And even the world's biggest Golden Shield won't keep out these treasure hunters for long.

How Carman won over the majors

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday November 6, 2014

As marketers, our job is to produce and sell products, for the public to choose and buy. But in order to do this we need a marketplace, shelves, distributors. This is why, if you've followed this column over the years, you'll have seen me frequently complain about the shrinking space allowed to us out in that market.

The policies of the major grocery chains are working to kill off the smaller manufacturers. Need proof? Visit any Coles, Woolworths or IDG and you'll see how the supermarkets' own generic products have pushed the great brands off the shelves.

Nowadays you're lucky to find two brands competing against any home product. Even big names like Kelloggs or Kraft or Nestle are feeling the squeeze. The small local brands barely stand a chance and seem to be fading away.

Everywhere you look you'll see home brand cereals, dairy, meat, vegetables, cleaning products, frozen foods - in fact it's hard to think of a category where the competition has not been reduced to two or three brands against shelves of discounted home products. Whenever I raise this topic I receive emails of agreement from manufacturers and marketers - some well known names, though I have to keep them private because they fear the power of the retail majors.

So I am always delighted at the tales of the small manufacturer who has overcome the obstacles and made their products so uniquely desirable that they crash through onto the shelf.

This week you may have seen a TV commercial for Carman's Muesli range. It features the company's founder and CEO, Carolyn Creswell, at a very continental-looking garden breakfast setting surrounded by family and friends. Perhaps they are celebrating the success of Carmen's range of products and its ability to achieve distribution as wide-spread as the big multi-national brands.

As an 18 year old, Carolyn had a part-time job bagging muesli mix. When the company decided to close this business she bought it off them for $1000, and ran it from her kitchen in Melbourne.

So what is the most important attribute for business success? Look at the stories in any business biographies and it shines through: perseverance. Not giving in.

Carolyn hung in there for over 20 years, refining the product, building the distribution, forging the supply links. She is quick to make changes when they are needed - range extensions, listening to feedback from consumers. Which is totally different from conventional cereal companies, many of whose products were formulated a century ago and rarely adjusted since.

As she recently explained: "We introduced Blueberry Seed Nut Bars this year and they weren't performing. We replaced 'Seed' with 'Superfood' and doubled the sales. That's something you can do very quickly when you own 100 per cent of the company."

Recently Carolyn reviewed and reformulated her entire muesli range. They were hearing from customers that the muesli took too long to chew. "So we reduced the thickness of the oats to make it lighter and easier to eat," she says. "You've got to stay focused on that last 20 metres: the things a shopper will consider before they decide to buy. It's worth investing in."

The philosophy has been successful for her. She is now Australia's richest woman under 40, worth $83 million. She has export deals with the UK, South-East Asia and China. As she shows on Channel 10's Recipe to Riches, she is a marketer who knows her oats.

What can the Elves tell you about aeroplane safety?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday October 30, 2014

At the start of every international airline flight you are greeted by the safety instructions. Once they were performed as a little mime act by the cabin crew but nowadays they have been replaced by a video of smartly-pressed hostesses going through a routine you have heard so many times you just don't bother to watch.

But this time the arriving passengers, in the video, are in for a surprise - is that Elijah Wood across the aisle? On screen, is that an Elf princess giving seat belt fitting instructions from the glades of Rivendell? Or Gandalf demonstrating the safety crouch? You must be flying Air New Zealand on your way to Middle-Earth. Sure enough a lot of the broadcast comes from Hobbiton in The Shire.

The princess shows you the seat belt sign, and how to store your sacks of gold under your seat. A falling oxygen mask is fitted over the snout of a bulky Orc. Our tourist finds a gold ring but drops it off the Kawarau Bridge in Queenstown - and of course bungy jumps into the river after it.

The "passengers" demonstrate the emergency exits by fleeing from a charging army of Orcs. And finally Sir Peter Jackson makes a personal appearance in a recliner seat, to warn you about stowing your electronic devices at take-off.

So not only have you paid attention to the safety instructions, you have also been highly amused, had your appetite whetted to catch up with the film - and watched an enticing tourist ad for the beauty of New Zealand. Pretty clever for a boring grudge task.

This latest video flew into the air last week, but Air New Zealand have a history of creative safety films. Over past years they have featured All Blacks, Richard Simmons exercises, Sports Illustrated swimsuit models in the South Pacific, and previous Lord of the Rings-based promotions.

But is it frivolous, is it undignified to make fun of such a serious topic as air safety? Well if it makes passengers take notice of something that has become invisible to them, go for it.

Does it harm the bottom line? Take a look at Air NZ versus their closest neighbour Qantas, who take their air safety very seriously indeed. This 2013-14 financial year Air NZ chalked up a current profit of $300 million. Big brother Qantas has rung up a $646 million loss. Eh?

Well you can't pin that on in-transit videos, but perhaps it gives an indication of attitudes. For a start Qantas are flying a fleet with aging planes like the four-engine, thirsty Boeing 747s. Air NZ has been first to jump for the two-engined, more efficient 787-9s. Qantas had ordered those too, but has pushed the order to 2017.

As in any business game, chance comes into it too. Qantas has fierce rivals like Virgin at home and a host of Asian airlines slashing prices on the flight paths to Europe. Whereas Air NZ has much of its home turf to itself, with lots of highly profitable flights to towns like Hokitika and Paraparaumu. We can't even say them, let alone fly there.

It's only a one-stop hop to Hollywood. A long one admittedly. So no wonder their movie industry is also flourishing, carrying lots of wealthy film moguls. When they see what creative folk fly their planes, it will assure them they have come to the right place to make movies.

Halloween's coming - have you got your costume ready yet?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday October 23, 2014

It was a four-year-old's birthday party and I saw half a dozen of them, including the birthday girl, dressed in flowing blue gowns. It was a Frozen theme - based on the blockbusting Disney cartoon - and they all chose to dress as Elsa. She's the powerful, magic one you see, while the heroine Anna was a bit too nice and wimpy for these girls.

After that, everywhere I went, I couldn't seem to cross a street without seeing some Elsa or Prince Charming being ushered in and out of their parents' cars. "Tell you what," I thought, "someone must be making a mint out of all these costumes."

When I checked, I wasn't far wrong. "Halloween's been going gangbusters this year," said Dale Pruser of Creative Costumes in Prahran. "I'm so busy - especially those of us with kids. It's like everybody is going to a party, and trick-or-treating is organised for whole streets"

Dale has been in the business 20 years "but now it's huge. We'll do even more business than Christmas."

It seems that the American passion for Halloween has joined with the riotous local custom of Muck-Up Week to fill the streets with masked revellers. With mini ice-queens weaving in and out between their feet. Oh and don't forget last weekend's Zombie Shuffle over Princes Bridge. The costume people do well out of making our fresh-faced youngsters look like rotting flesh.

So what is this passion with dressing up? After thirty years of plain dressing, jeans and jumpers, are our youth angling back towards the flashy dressing of the seventies and eighties? Is Sergeant Pepper coming back?

Costumes are definitely a necessity if you're going to a party over the coming days - Dale Pruser recalled the frequency of week-before and week-after parties to celebrate Halloween.

Research in the US has indicated that this little splurge will run to $8 billion over there, and as usual we are following at a fast trot. That's a lot of pumpkin heads. In fact the average person has budgeted around $80 a head. They are looking for better costumes and more variety.

Matthew Shay is president and CEO at America's National Retail Federation, who have conducted the research for 11 years now and found rapid and consistent growth. "There's no question that the variety of adult, child and even pet costumes now available has driven the demand and popularity of Halloween among consumers of all ages," he said. Even pets?

Yes - pets are the fastest-growing category in the dress-up market and if you look around your favourite shopping centre you will discover a whole variety of doggy outfits, from $2-shop cheapies to some surprisingly expensive quality merchandise.

But then as you and your children haunt the suburban streets on Friday week, you don't want the family werewolf to let you down.

Even the Australian Retailers Association has been surprised. "I noticed yesterday four customers at Bunnings buying boxes of skull fairy lights," said Executive Director Russell Zimmerman. "I'm quite staggered by the popularity of it - it's becoming a part of the market, like Mother's Day. We'll start to look closer at it."

Perhaps this is what to do if you're too young or too poor to get invited to the Spring Racing Carnival. Because after all that's a dress-up event too.

Children's obesity - McDonald's gets slapped hand

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday October 16, 2014.

We definitely have a problem in our children's national obesity crisis. We all have a duty to be thoughtful about the lifestyle habits we are communicating to our kids, the food and messages we give them. But can a cheeseburger make a difference?

McDonald's has just had its hand slapped by the Advertising Standards Bureau for marketing to children - by giving vouchers for a small cheeseburger meal to winners of the McDonald's Team Spirit Awards. They were redeemable at franchises around the venue, at the University of Sunshine Coast Basketball Club.

Not only this - they are serial offenders, having been censured in July for giving away free small chips vouchers at a playground in Shepparton. You're warned, McDonald's - three strikes and you're out!

But seriously, these kids - playing basketball and exploring an adventure playground - are the kind we want to encourage. It's the ones who sit home in front of the telly that need to be policed.

I always worry about simplistic solutions to complex problems. You're not going to solve obesity by shooting the messenger, even if he carries chips.

I was pleased to see a report by La Trobe University, run in this paper on Tuesday, called "Beyond the Bubble Wrap". It examined school children's frequency of getting out and walking to and from school.

In typical fuddy-duddy fashion I can commence this by saying, "In my day, no kids were ever driven to school by their parents". Then with my own kids came a period were every morning was spent in a queue of cars dropping them off at the schoolyard gate. Perhaps by now things are a little more balanced.

At nine years old, says the report, 14 per cent of children make their own way to school. By the time they are 15 it has grown to 50 per cent. Of course a lot of kids live in schools too far away for a morning hike and a car or bus is a necessity.

That walk gives them more than exercise. You make friends among others on the journey, teaching you to socialise. You learn punctuality too - I knew what time a certain girl always caught her bus and would rush through my breakfast to make sure I was at the bus stop next to her.

The Bubble Wrap survey looked closely at why parents were so protective. As you would guess, there is a percentage who will always worry when their child is anywhere without them - 18 per cent worried if their child was out without an adult. But a higher number - 48 per cent - worried about "stranger danger". That the child might be approached by a stranger. Which I actually find very sad, that they must be taught to be suspicious of anyone they haven't met.

The irony is that children are approached by strangers all the time - on their computers. Games and applications are always accompanied by a simple questionnaire which drinks in the information the children are willing to give to the friendly face on the screen. Their likes and habits are picked up and used to advertise products which will appeal to them.

This of course is the kind of research that Google and Facebook rely on - that has gleaned them rewards of billions dollars and dominance of the advertising industry.

So the only time our children have to be themselves is on that quiet morning walk to school.
Encourage it.

Is this the end of men or something new?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday October 9, 2014

It's "The End of Men" says the best-selling book by Hanna Rosin. She has set an intense debate in motion around the world. Have the girls finally won?

Well they are certainly making huge leaps forward, and if your business and marketing planning isn't taking this into account, you could be in for a rude shock.

Here in Australia, the NAB Bank recently reported that 40 per cent of women recorded themselves as the main breadwinner in the household. Just seven years ago it was only 29 per cent. These are women who are married or in de facto relationships. Mind you, men saw things differently - in the same survey, 85 per cent of men saw themselves as the main breadwinner.

There are now the same number of men and women earning university bachelor degrees. Men do not become a majority till you reach PhD level.

Research by advertising agency JWT, of men in America and Britain, found that 70per cent agreed that men are becoming less dominant in society. They believe it has become harder to be a man today. It's harder to succeed as a father and husband than it was 30 years ago.

They've become more brittle about those "dumb dad" commercials which show what a dork he is. Kimberley Clark found that out in America when they ran a novel on-line competition. Five dads were left alone in a house with their babies, while the mums went off for five days' leave. "We've given Huggies the toughest test imaginable - dads!" says the narrator.

Then, Big Brother style, the dads are shown coping with baby minding, including changing the nappies. At the end they had a winner - and a backlash. Hundreds of dads from around the country signed a protest, attacking Huggies for alleging dads' incompetence. It took KC grovelling apologies and truckloads of free nappies to soothe the customer anger.

The survey also revealed 78per cent of men feel there's as much pressure to stay in shape and have a good body as there is on women. 73per cent said there's pressure to dress well and be well-groomed, as on women.

The marketer can't afford to ignore the male. Roy Morgan Research measures grocery buyers: they state that in 1997, 31per cent of main grocery buyers were male, 69per cent female. Today the figures are 38per cent men, 62per cent women. Believe me, that's a significant change.

Men's and women's roles are changing. The economy is changing. All those lost jobs in car manufacturing, engineering, factories, were mainly men's. The more computer-oriented industries favour women. It's getting harder for a man to find a job. Although a man earns some 20per cent more than a woman across the broad average, the advantage has been falling.

My recent column on "How do you run like a girl" raised a lot of comments and forwarding, winning praise for Always sanitary napkins. Just last week Beyonce declared herself a feminist on the MTV awards and no doubt won a few million girls to her cause.

Maybe now we have to look at the blokes in the background - are they being left behind? The Marlboro cowboy long since died of cancer, the Toyota Camry's "bad Dad" is as fiercely masculine as a chihuahua, and our new generation of "Millennial males" (18-34) are happy with moisturisers, waxing and facials - or at least a third to a half of them are, according to JWT.

But let's be confident. It's not "the end of men", it's a new man - but he needs to understand where he fits, and where he is going.

Ban the Book

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday October 2, 2014

A favourite American ad depicts two little girls sitting on a classroom floor. One holds a Little Red Riding Hood picture book in her hands; the other holds a huge military assault rifle. The headline asks: "One child is holding something that's been banned in America to protect them. Guess which one." The answer, of course, is the story book. Red Riding Hood has a wine bottle in her basket, for grandma.

The ad is from "Moms Demand Action", a large movement fighting America's gun-toting insanity. But what intrigues me is the amount of censorship still rife both abroad and at home. There's an awful lot of banning going on and sometimes we're not even aware of it.

There are books we do know about, though who bans them and where can vary. Tampa by Alissa Nutting is the latest controversy. The ban is not by the Classification Board, but by some booksellers in some states. The story of a beautiful young schoolteacher seducing her 14 year old pupils rang lots of alarms in these days of paedophilia fear. Yet some commentators have recommended that the book be required reading in schools, to make the children aware of possible dangers.

Where does one draw the line - and by whom? Politicians are fond of tub-thumping morality as we saw in Bill Henson's 2008 case where his moody nude portraits were accused of being pornographic. For a while it looked like we would get back to painting fig leaves on Renaissance angels. But it shows how moral fashions can twist and turn in little time.

An exhibition in the University of Melbourne, "Banned Books in Australia", pointed out that "Twentieth century Australia had the strictest censorship of any democratic nation". This is backed by an impressive list of banned titles. From Honore de Balzac in 1901 to James Baldwin, to Jackie Collins and even Daniel Defoe. Most of Genet, James Joyce, Mae West and all of Henry Miller.

No wonder, by the 60s, our youth were ready to rebel - if you saw Brilliant Creatures on TV last month, you watched as Australia's suppressed youth exploded into the world, in the shapes of Germaine Greer, Barry Humphries, Robert Hughes and Clive James. Simultaneously Richard Neville and friends trampled British obscenity laws in the Oz trial.

In Australia and Britain the young carried out constant war against censorship. In Melbourne the stern Deputy Premier Sir Arthur Rylah declared that the statuette of Michaelangelo's David was obscene, placed as it was in a shop window for all to see the young man's attributes, and ordered it covered up. He became a national laughing stock and after that it would take a very brave bigot to make such bold declarations.

In movies, the theatre, on stage, and of course in books, it looked as if the issue of censorship had faded away.

But of course it hasn't. It's still with us, but in different guises, it's a whole new censorship. For very good reasons of course, but I still feel suspicious of it. Taking photographs of children in a park. Staring too long at a pretty girl - is it admiration or is it stalking? Or even our Red Riding Hood carrying a basket to her nanna's - is that a bottle of alcohol under the napkin?

I'm even feeling sorry for smokers, as they are driven further out into the wilderness. You see them huddled against the cold rain or the burning sun, clutching their weed sticks.

Collectively, we can be awfully cruel censors.

Create your own TV channel, every night

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday September 25, 2014

Once, a day's tv came down to choosing a favourite channel and for the most part, settling in to watch the night's run of programmes. But these days it doesn't work like that any more - if you want, you can create your own channel every night, and a growing number of viewers are doing just that.

Every week, half of our population visits YouTube and views much less commercial TV, a recent Roy Morgan Research poll has revealed. In fact, half of these watch almost no commercial TV at all.

Facebook devotees also show a 16 per cent drop below average viewing. It all adds up to a major hole in the audience ratings.

Once an advertising campaign across the channels could be assured of reaching most of the targeted public. This can't be guaranteed any more, so what is an advertiser to do?

Well the perpetrators have their answer: "Come to us!" They are making increasingly aggressive efforts to bring the major brands onto their books.

As for the brands, well they have to spread their jam thinner to cover all the extra toast. But that isn't enough. They will have to be much more specific in what they say to each small bloc of viewers.

Until very recently you knew a million or so citizens would come together to watch Friends or Neighbours or Australia's Got Talent, and through research you knew what would appeal to them in your product and advertising. But now, what will ring their bells?

Tim Martin, General Manager at Roy Morgans, has been studying this new world. What are they looking for that TV doesn't supply?

"They want generated content - like their own friends, their music, entertainment, videos."
It's all much too personal for a broadcaster to supply, explains Tim. "TV is a linear medium, it's constrained by time - there's only so much of it in a day."

On the other hand, the web is not a prisoner. So all the entertainment brands have rushed in, creating a carnival of choice. Music brands like Apple, Sony, Deutsche Grammophon, enterprising singers like Shakira, movie studios like Disney and Warner Bros - all just a click away.

Mind you every carnival has its boxing tent and that is already gathering wagering crowds. Australia's biggest online movie distributor, Quickflix, swung a right hook at the world's biggest distributor, Netflix.

CEO Stephen Langsford has accused his American rival of loading his gloves. You see, Netflix is not yet officially in Australia but through a bit of trickery with Virtual Private Networks, thousands of locals have been using the site - and not paying the required licensing fees. Very profitable for Netflix and galling for Quickflix who have been obeying the law.

The world ahead of us will be hard to recognise. A night's viewing will be a smorgasbord of free to air, YouTube, downloaded movies, friends' Facebooks, cute kittens and celebrities. Advertising will be an increasingly specialised skill as the ability to pick out your widely spread audience becomes a dark art. We won't even have the sanity of the ABC to turn to after the budget gutting has done with it.

We do know that with the billions invested in media like YouTube and Netflix, the content and its promotion is going to get increasingly polished. Nevertheless, prepare for a brave new video world.

Is your smartphone camera all you need?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday September 18, 2014

Tomorrow is the release date for the new Apple iPhone 6. The order books are clogged, the sleeping bags are laid out in the malls, once again Apple has managed to generate a - somewhat milder - mass hysteria.

But there are now so many clever smart phones out there - from Samsung, HTC, Nokia, Sony - that the wonder is a little dimmed. But one feature does cause intrigue: their new camera setup.

The reviewers claim it has a smarter, faster autofocus; image stabilisation that allows you to shoot video from a bike; slow motion video; improved selfies and panoramas, and more. Giving you all the essentials for a modern young social life.

All of which leads me to ask: who now needs a camera? Is there any market left for a simple point and shoot? Films and processing were crushed by the digital camera revolution, but now these usurpers have received their own retribution. Or at least, they have shrunk.

CIPA, the camera industry association, gave out chilly figures for last year, into the first quarter of this. A 40 per cent drop in cameras shipped, and 20 per cent on lenses. Which is a serious broadside into the industry ship.

The simple cameras suffered most - they offered little that couldn't be found in the phone in your pocket. These days Canon, Nikon, Sony and the like produce exquisite little palm-held cameras packed with dazzling features and at very reasonable prices; but then with an iPhone you can also call your mum. Do you really need to carry two cameras when you go out, however fine the second may be?

Where the camera makers are holding their own is at the other, high end. They have still suffered, but not as much. There is nothing in mobile phones that comes near a 25-300mm zoom from Canon or Nikon when you want to do some serious photography. As you walk through the City you'll see some impressive hardware in the hands of tourists looking for the definitive shot of our Art Centre Spire.

So single lens reflexes fell only 19 per cent while the newer "mirrorless" high-end cameras dropped 25 per cent. Many in the industry are saying that these falls are not the fault of smartphones at all, but due to a painfully high Yen and more importantly - the manufacturers not coming up with exciting improvements and features to make the camera fanatic trade up.

When such a camera is launched, the drooling starts in earnest, like last month's Pentax 645Z. After several quiet years, Ricoh (who own Pentax) have come out with a true killer. These are impressive figures, believe me: a 51 million pixel sensor; remember when your film was ISO 100 or 400? Well this goes to ISO 204,800. So if you ever want your family photo blown up for an airport freeway billboard - this is the camera to use.

But one big 'however': unless you are a professional, you may find the $12,000 price tag a little steep. Well, considering that a Hasselblad costs $30,000 it doesn't seem so bad. And that's without a lens.

No, unless you are going to make your living and win your fame with it, perhaps you can live without the professional gear and still get pretty good photos with your smartphone. And then you can even call your mum.

Wet summer makes Europeans more renewable - REPLY

September 6, 2014

OK Mr Beatty, so marketeering is frequently an exercise of exaggeration, manipulation or distortion of facts or concepts to convince the public of a need they didn't know they had.
Usually your columns are quite interesting and not overly given to such preaching, but dear me Ray, the distortions, assumptions, errors and deliberately misleading hyperbole of your wildly alarmist column in last Thursday's Herald Sun were a worrying departure from your usual moderate writings. And all this from your "holiday in August" !
Since global statistics from multiple sources have provided thoroughly factual evidence that despite moderate increases in carbon dioxide gases the earth has had no significantly measurable warming since 1997 (when alarmists accordingly ceased propagandising "global warming" and instead rebadged to the safer ongoing catch-all of "climate change"), proponents of the dismissal of such evidence and the adherence to the hand-wringing continuance of the concept of man's responsibility for the dooming of the planet have pursued their alarmism undeterred. And the worries of your northern European holiday has now been added, expressed as some sort of verifying fact-finding trip.
Let's look at some of your hyperbole:

* "Extreme weather patterns have hit repeatedly in recent years". Yep, just like they always have, from time to time, thoughout history.
* "If you ask Europeans to name their climate sceptics, they won't know what you mean". Garbage, Ray. That (among others) is too general to be even slightly credible.
* "For them (Europeans) climate change is a fact and a worry as ancient hills and towns are blown over or washed away". Really? Ancient hills? Whole towns? You omitted even one such example, and no such extreme catastrophy seems to have made the news.
* "To a man, or woman, they are committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions". Garbage, Ray. Again, too general to be even slightly credible. That certainly wasn't my experience (or that of anyone I know) in either Europe OR north America.
* "Around the houses"......etc....."you'll see solar panels everywhere". True: it's an attempt to power their homes for less than the excruciating supplied power costs in Europe. Denmark and Germany, for instance, with a high percentage of electricity generated by so-called 'renewable energy', have the highest per KwH charges in Europe, if not the world. But due to the solar panel proliferation for self-consumption of private power, Germany now actually taxes homeowners who have their own solar panels 4.4 euro cents per KwH. For large users of self-generated power the tax is 6.24 euro cents per KwH. Expensive, this renewable power. Anywhere.
* I must admit I had to laugh at the novelty of your hyperbole in your description of a driving (in Italy) experience as....."you'll see graceful (?!) wind farms in the Tuscan hills scattered on the Mona Lisa landscape, a delightful bringing-together of the Renaissance and the future" . Poetic Ray, but ridiculous.
One of the major concerns often of even those committed to the concept of 'renewable energy' is the blight on some of the world's most pristine hilltops and scenic coastal landscapes by gigantic rows of churning (if the wind happens to be blowing) windmills. You can't possibly be unaware of that.....or insensitive to it.
* Being critical to the point of rudeness (a common reactive characteristic of Climate Change religion adherents to any indicators of a contrarian viewpoint) of the Prime Minister and the Warburton Report and findings and recommendations regarding the Renewable Energy Target is, I suppose, your prerogative and a 'freedom of expression', but attempting to convince readers of your article that having been on holiday in Europe was enough to find justification for such sentiments is, at best, simplistic nonsense.
* "People want clean energy and will pay for it". They sure will, but not in the sense you are suggesting!
* "Cutting subsidies will make little difference anyway – the prices are already tumbling" Not if the recorded experiences of Denmark and Germany (and the less advanced – in the renewable energy sense – countries) are a demonstrable example.
* After having said that on your return trip you had ONE DAY in Shanghai, you assured your readers that "There, everone talks clean energy" . WOW, one day in a city with a population of some 25 million and you can make that assurance! As a generalisation, now that's impressive!
* You went on to write that the Chinese government "seems to announce action plans every few months" and "what they declare happens with blinding speed", your inference (and that's all it was) being that China is about to launch into a vast switch into investment in and use of renewable energy.
In actual fact, though the renewable energy share in China's power generation is targeted to reach 20% by 2020, “Grid companies lack economic incentives to take in more wind power, as government-dictated on-grid wholesale prices of wind power are higher than those of thermal power,” Meng Xian’gan, secretary-general of the China Renewable Energy Society, is quoted as saying.
That's why the Chinese government has long been concentrating on the non-stop building of increasingly high-tech, inexpensive-to-operate, dependable coal-fired power stations to cope with their country's increasing demands for reliable power. A brand-new one is opened every few weeks.
As I mentioned earlier, the constantly-demonstrated prerogative adopted by the Climate Change (nee Global Warming) religion's devotees in its response to anyone with – or expressions of – contrarian opinions is one of scorn, insult, ridicule, rudeness, abuse.....and often even combative outright lies in its blatent striving to supress debate on the subject ("The science is IN" is an oft-quoted, sneering dismissal). It is surprisingly rare to see or read similar demonstration or verbiage by the alarmists' opponents: the "deny-ers", the "flat-earthers", the ignorami, or whatever derogatary description is usually applied. You would recognise, from this article of yours, that you are no exception to the affliction, even if in a more moderated way: your description of the Prime Minister's opinion as "absurd", ".....our politicians' puny minds", and "Too many of our leaders, both business and political, are stuck in the 19th century with no imagination or understanding.....", etc. Really? And your understanding is superior?
Your article does you no credit, Mr Beatty.

Bryan Huntley


* Hi Bryan *
Thank you for your lengthy and thoughtful note. I have posted it to my blog for the benefit of others - among my readers I know I have climate change "deniers" and "believers", and personally I am a passionate believer in free speech so I am content to air both sides of the debate.
Unfortunately I don't have time to reply to you line by line but let me make a few points. As an Italian speaker I was able to watch the news and debates, read the press and discuss with people, and found that the issue was regarded as simple fact. In China I have a son, daughter in law and two grandchildren who have been there a decade, and I have frequently visited and holidayed with them - I spent last Christmas in Yunnan. And I can assure you that from the bottom to the very top, the prime concern is pollution and the nation's health.
The speed and level of the catastrophe is a debatable factor, but the fact that this earth is under threat from its dominant, profligate species is a fact. The question is what are we going to do about it - sit back and say nothing is happening, or at least take whatever measures we can to reduce the attack that we are generating.
* Ray *

The man who tickled kittens' bottoms

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday September 11, 2014

Years ago I worked on the launch of Whiskas Cat Litter. One of my tasks was to write the pack instructions. Following a veterinary report provided by Uncle Ben's, I read that you introduce a kitten to the use of cat litter by setting it on the clay and tickling its bottom with cotton wool. So I wrote this instruction, which went out on a squillion packs to every corner of the land.

All these years since I have never heard a single testament that the method works. It never did for me. So I have lived with a life-long guilt for the generations of kittens whose bottoms I caused to be tormented.

These days the pet market is far more than kitty litter. At $8 billion it figures as a major economic segment. In fact out of seven million households, five million of them hold pets, one of the world's highest pet ownership rates.

In the supermarket the pets have their own aisle, not just pet food but also premium priced pet treats, healthy biscuits, vitamins and oils, medicines and shampoos. I was in a store last week and saw some delicious looking sweets, I thought I might get them for the grandkids till I looked closer. They were doggy treats. Hmm, perhaps not.

If you've ever had a sick dog or cat you'll know all about vets' fees. Some of the costs seem to rival private hospitals, especially if there is a major injury or a disease like cancer. So the insurance industry has produced a range of policies, put them through the scrutiny of their actuaries who have produced complex formulas for pet, age, location, and likelihood of injury or disease. Just like with people only more complicated.

The result is a wide range of policies from the likes of Medibank, RSPCA, Bow Wow Meow and Woolworths. If I had a four year old Australian heeler it would cost me around $750 a year for comprehensive insurance. No wonder psychologists say we regard our pets as members of our families.

They have their clothing ranges (are you ready for your pooch's spring outfit?), social media, beer, and preferred vehicles. Dog owners have particularly eager discussions about which car is best for their pets. Yes, the dog they own does have an effect on the car that is chosen for the family - that has been verified in research.

Pets have always been favoured performers in advertising, from the puppy who runs into the garden with the end of the toilet roll, to the sleek Persian who watches her premium canned food spooned out.

But if you do commercials like these you must have a substantial budget for a lot of spot frequency - because delightful pets can also be terrible vampires. Which means, they can be so adorable and watchable that the product is hardly noticed at all.

It may be that pets can be a marketing angle. I remember six years ago writing about My Dog Café at Station Pier, Port Melbourne. They seem to have gone now but at the time they did a roaring trade among the countless dog walkers along Beaconsfield Parade.

So as always the smart marketer is observant about their customers' preferences, wishes and likes. You always want to give them a bit more than they expect.

If you're a retailer with a business in the right place and time, it might be worth checking out how they feel about their pets.

Wet summer makes Europeans more renewable

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday September 4, 2014

Northern Europe was hit by storms, floods and hail the size of golf balls when I went for my holiday in August. Fortunately where I stayed, in Italy, was below the southern limit of the rogue weather. So I got perfection - sun, sand and delicious food.

In the north, though, the worry is the continuing effect of climate change. Extreme weather patterns have hit repeatedly in recent years and if you ask Europeans to name their climate sceptics, they won't know what you mean.

For them, climate change is a fact and a worry as ancient hills and towns are blown over or washed away.

To a man, or woman, they are committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Around the houses, in the stores, in the TV ads you'll see solar panels everywhere. Drive in the country and you'll see graceful wind-farms in the Tuscan hills scattered on the Mona Lisa landscape, a delightful bringing-together of the Renaissance and the future.

In June, Italy hit a target of 40 per cent of its electricity from renewables. But then you have to remember the long Italian tradition of hydro power, from all the schemes in the Alps and the Apennines. Their first renewables engineers wore sandals and togas.

The photovoltaic panel is certainly alive and well in Germany where solar generation has become a huge industry - even in a country with a fraction of Australia's sunshine. This June they broke an international record - more than 50% of Germany's electricity came from solar cells.

What is it about returning to Australia and feeling your time machine is in reverse?

I find Tony Abbott supporting the Warburton report, and its call to slash the Renewable Energy Target, quite absurd. Having seen Europe it is quite obvious that bus is already long gone. People want clean energy and will pay for it. Cutting subsidies will make little difference, anyway the prices are already tumbling.

The pity is that we have already sold off our solar industry once, when Dr Shi Zhengrong, known as "Father of Photovoltaics", moved his operation offshore for lack of support here in Australia. Now we are looking likely to lose the industry again as our home manufacturers lose out to a glut of cells due to flood in from overcapacity in China and Europe.

Forget about building new power stations, what we have now will be more than ample for future use. In Germany PV versus coal powered is driving the price of energy down - which surely was the idea in the first place?

My return trip gave me a day in Shanghai where the need for climate action is as plain as the smog in your face. There, everyone talks clean energy. Their government seems to announce action plans every few months - and unencumbered by oppositions, democracy or law courts, what they declare happens with blinding speed.

We could be working with them. There are new industries out there that have barely emerged from the test tube. There is technology that is yet to be born. This is why we need an NBN with far more capacity than our politicians' puny minds can imagine. This is why our educational standards need urgently raising.

Too many of our leaders, both business and political, are stuck in the 19th century with no imagination or understanding of the technology in our hands. We need to persuade them to let us drive this time machine into the 21st century.

Let the young show you how to vlog your product

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday August 28, 2014

As a constantly adapting business person you have embraced email, web sites, the proliferation of media like computers, smart phones and ipads. You've seen social media engulfing traditional print, TV, radio and pay TV. But there's a whole medium you are aware of, but have scarcely noticed - a tsunami of YouTube Vloggers.

Last week in London some 8000 mostly youngsters from Britain and Europe crowded into Alexandra Palace for their annual convention, Summer in the City. It was an occasion for the seldom-seen stars to meet their cheering public.

The beautiful Zoella is known for her fashion tips and her fun antics in front of the camera. She has 5 million followers to prove it. Dan and Phil's vlog has evolved into a BBC Radio 1 show with millions of listeners. Four young friends run Sorted Food, a cooking site that posts two recipes a week, with the lads having fun putting the dishes together - but always arriving at a delicious-looking meal.

From the often-solitary world of the vlogger, these presenters found they were stars to their crowds of viewers, who screamed and clamoured to get selfied with their heroes.

While most of the audience was female and 20-ish, there were plenty of other demographics present. A vlog - originally a "video blog" - can be shot in a small but well-lit and mounted studio, or by the chatty presenter walking round holding his tiny camera in his extended arm. Certainly there are no production expenses to be seen.

Most of the scripts are off the cuff, which can often make them difficult to follow. You wish sometimes they would take more time to rehearse beforehand. But then that is an area of professionalism which still has to develop, and it is probably what viewers find so attractive: the fact that these are not carefully planned and scripted messages.

But if the content is interesting and the vlogger is regular, say putting one out every week, the audience will build. If it is a subject or personality that people really take to, the numbers rise into the millions, though it takes time.

This is a fast-developing medium. The vloggers are making it up as they go along, so some work well and some don't. There are a lot of sites now with girls showing how to apply make-up or put a wardrobe together; some for the young, some for the older - an over-40 beauty Nisha, in SugaPuffAndStuff, has crowds of similarly-aged admirers, with her site carrying Nestle ads.

Another promotes jewellery, another weight loss. In this they can be similar to the daytime video shopping channels. But a vlogger can establish an intimacy with the viewer that a tv studio cannot. It is this one on oneness, I think, that makes them so appealing. You see this in the questions and responses that appear in the viewers' comments that follow each posting.

The question you have to ask yourself now is, do you want to become a vlogger for your own products? Can you or one of your team, come up with an appealing personality?

Or perhaps bond with an existing site. Most of them will accept advertising under strict conditions - it will have to be a product which will benefit their readers. But it is worth your while spending an evening or two exploring YouTube to see if there is a soulmate out there who could help to spread your message.

Latch keys versus the nanny state

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday August 14, 2014


When you’re an immigrant kid, the latch key becomes part of your uniform. From the age of 8 the front door key hung from a length of string around my neck. I was a latch key kid, but then so was half the class so no-one thought it unusual. We all had mothers and fathers working furiously to gather together home and food and create a future.

After school I’d walk home, make maybe a slice of bread and jam, and if it was a good day, I had enough to see a film at the local flea-pit. We couldn’t afford a TV yet.

Growing up like this gave me confidence and independence. Once I got a bike I really flew. Yet I am now reading that here in Victoria today, my parents would be thrown in jail and fined $3600. For leaving a child under 16 unattended!

Is this the nanny state gone mad? How are hard-working parents also expected to “not neglect” their child?

Send them to day care. But where? You can’t put a 12 year old in a creche. After school activities are fine - during the school term. But what about all those school holidays?

Perhaps this is another marketing opportunity. After all, a function of successful business is to find niches in the marketplace and provide the suitable, properly-priced answer.

Well pre-school care has already turned into a multi-million dollar industry with child places collecting as much as $120 per child per day. Don’t forget that Eddie Groves rose to $2 billion in wealth before his shaky management came tumbling down. But it wasn’t the fault of the centres - many of them were just sold elsewhere and continue to do business.

Ten years ago Roxanne and Mark Elliott felt utterly confused by their choices - and lack of choices - in the care for their child. After amassing a truck of information solving their own problem, they formed a child care resource for providers and parents to find each other, called Care for Kids. Now it receives more than 200,000 enquiries per month.

So yes the need is there. But Australia is at or near the bottom of all the UNICEF tables on childcare, and while our governments - state and Federal - are happy enough to jail those who don’t use childcare, they are not about to provide it. They no doubt see this as a business incentive.

Those 5 to 15s are provided well enough by summer camps and seasonal diversions but what about the afternoon hours waiting for mum’s arrival, or in the gaps between school and camp? Well put your thinking cap on because the market is there. All it needs is someone with the right answers.

Of course for every family, the universal baby sitter is the tv set. Kids still watch sit-coms from the 1960s and 70s, and perhaps don’t even realise they are watching their parents’ infant amusement.

The jokes haven’t improved.

Between that and the Xbox they stay occupied for hours. Sometimes even managing a bit of homework. But does the time spent alone count as neglect? Can you be charged with leaving a child unattended in possession of Wii?

It makes one wonder who dreams up these laws without a thought for the consequences - but wait a minute, aren’t our governments meant to think this through or debate them in Parliament? I seem to remember voting so I could have a say, but no-one asked me if I’d agree to making half the parents in the country potential felons.

Maybe we’d better hurry up building the teen creches.

The check-out hijackers are waiting for your trolley

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday August 7, 2014

You are pushing your trolley through Coles doing the weekly shop and pick up a six-pack of continental soft drink. As you reach the check-out a message dings on your phone. "Six pack of Chinotto half price today at Woolworths," the store is a hundred metres down the road. You decide that shop might be a better place to buy the drinks.

Now I'm just supposing here, but that scenario is perfectly feasible - all the technology exists right now, and it's how shopping competition will intensify in the future.

Product numbering has been around a long time - every product now has its barcode. But it's the information technology that has grown spectacularly in recent years.

Last week Quantium Group director Tony Davis told the ADMA Direct Marketing Forum about the possibility of such a product hijack. It is already being practised in the US by the huge WalMart chain. But they have much more.

They have a huge database of the customer's spending, product preferences, finances, location - all accumulated over years. Of course here in Australia the large retailers have their own sacks of data about you, and it is being meticulously sorted right now.

From your past spending pattern they can tell where you live, what you eat, your fashion inclination; your expenditure pattern tells them what you are worth. Getting to the present, geopositioning tells them exactly where you are and what you have just put in the basket.

Never, you cry, who on earth allowed them to gather up all this data? Well you did, don't you remember? Numerous times over recent years you have bought a product or service on line or taken out a contract, and signed that little box "I have read and understand the conditions". You've given them dozens of approvals.

But don't get glum, look on the good side. In Britain they call it Omni-Channel Retailing and it's based around product information like barcodes on steroids. These are called Radio Frequency Information - RFID. They are attached to products and price tags - maybe sewn into the lining of a jacket or bag.

So for example at Burberry's beautiful London flagship the store mirrors will recognise the coat you are trying on, tell you about it, where it was made, what accessories would go best with it. ("Mirror mirror on the wall, is this mac for me at all?")

Another technology is NFC - you know, when two smartphones can exchange information just by touching - this can be built into shop shelves to flag you over to look at an accessory that will be perfect for the garment you are carrying.

Oh you can then be connected through your Facebook and Twitter accounts to ask all your friends what they think about it too.

Being a tiny device, the RFID can be left "switched on" after the purchase. For example, Italian leather company Braccialini sews its chips into its premium handbags and they retain details of the sale, authenticity and warrantee.

So even as I ponder Big Brother looking down at us, these innovations can also be beneficial - to the customer as well as the retailer.

Sybille Korrodi is a European advocate who thinks the importance is in how it's done. "Customers will appreciate if they're informed. Brands that proactively communicate, and use RFID technology for customer experience will benefit the most."

In other words, tell them the benefits, get their consent, and don't be sneaky.