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.