tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65713356942329575692012-02-10T12:20:52.258+11:00Ray is a marketing and advertising expert with 40 years' experience. He's a popular columnist in Australia's biggest newspaper The Melbourne Herald Sun, with one and a half million readers every day. His stories are witty, perceptive, informative, and not afraid to rattle cages. Read through the archive (below left). Any special interest? Click on any topic that looks interesting, or use the search bar above. And enjoy! (c) Ray Beatty ray@ebeatty.comRaybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.comBlogger1271100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-66100744134997817982012-02-10T12:20:00.000+11:002012-02-10T12:20:52.268+11:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday February 10 There's a florist near my place who has been on holiday most of January, just locked the doors and went away. But he's back now and will pay for his leisure time by staying open, day and night, the whole of February 13 and 14. Yes Valentine's Day is coming, the pot of gold in every florist's year. Behind them of course are acres and acres of greenhouses

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday February 3, 2012 Nigella Lawson walks into a quaint old-fashioned greengrocer's and spouts lovingly about the beautiful vegetables and fruits in their handsome cane baskets. She picks up a pair of eggplants, holds them above her ample bosom and drools about how fresh they are. Meanwhile your wife wonders why you have suddenly developed such an interest in TV

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday January 26, 2012 I hate repeating myself, but some stories keep happening again and again. Anyone with any doubts on the science of evolution only has to follow the events catalogued in the endless flow of this Business Daily. Here we see the survival of the fittest, the extinction of some of the greatest dinosaurs to ever walk the planet, replaced by the nimbler

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Melbourne Herald Sun, January 20, 2012. The name Big Brother comes from George Orwell's chilling book 1984. In it, everybody is watched and monitored. Which is why they called the TV series Big Brother. Day or night nothing is missed. Well there's good news for marketers. You can be a big brother too and know all about your customers, thanks to the latest innovation released at this year's huge

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Melbourne Herald Sun, January 13, 2012 A quote from author Colleen McCullough caught my eye, about her willingness to express unfashionable opinions: "I like Prince Charles. I don't care if the world thinks he's a dork. I don't care.'' Exactly my thoughts, I agreed. While many in the media enjoy making fun of him, I find myself approving a lot of his opinions on conservation, sustainable food

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday January 6,2012. It has become a tradition for this column to start the new year by surveying how we are progressing with what I call our “cargo cult economics”. You remember cargo cults? The natives of New Guinea watched the American planes come in during World War II and unload guns and jeeps, tools and clothes, PX Stores full of groceries. After the war the

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday December 30, 2011 If you’re taking some time off this Christmas season, my bet is that part of the time will be spent in your jeans and runners, hammer or paintbrush in your hand, doing a bit of renovating. The amount depends on whether the place is owned or rented, but this is the perfect time to get those things done that have been bugging you all year. Rest

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday December 23, 2001 How would you fancy living in the sky, a mile above the street? That's the plan for the Mile High Tower, due for completion in 2013. It will dwarf the current tallest world record holder, the kilometre-high Burj Khalifa opened in 2010. Now that's an interesting building - it started life as the Grollo Tower, remember that? When the burghers of

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday December 16, 2011 As I walk through our city’s department stores and shops this festive season, I can’t help feeling a pang of painful sympathy for all those brave folk who work in them. You see, in my student Christmas holidays I worked as an assistant in a men’s clothing retailer. It was an old fashioned store with timber product drawers and mannequins that

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday December 9, 2011 Opinion polls rule! Politicians jump at their peaks and troughs and are quick to dump candidates, even leaders, who can’t get the numbers. Products are minutely researched before they see the light of day. We know about how many of us are fat or thin, when and how we shop, what we feel about any issue from a war to a proposed traffic island, and

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday December 2, 2011 If there’s one thing the advertising industry loves it’s a war. Oh, not the “bang bang you’re dead” kind - the “my product is better than yours” kind. Once the companies don their war paint and charge into the streets, they will stop at nothing - and advertising is one of their cheaper options. As I predicted 18 months ago, the mobile phone

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Herald Sun, Friday November 25, 2011 Like the waves pounding on the Bass Strait coast, the changes in our buying patterns roll in relentlessly. It’s a natural phenomenon with no regard to the damage being wreaked on ships and shore. Great sandstone cliffs can be worn to collapse and carried away in the undertow. Just last week the Australian National Retailers Association declared it is making

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday November 18,2011 In life, and in business, you have a constant battle with the little people. Those wee folk who inhabit your head and keep nattering away at you, pushing and tugging and trying to nudge you off course. With me the most persistent imp is Prue Krastinator. It's she who says "This can wait until tomorrow" or "You've got a week before deadline, leave

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday November 11, 2011 There are certain advantages to dictatorship. Take China, where authorities have instructed TV stations to sharply cut back on shows that are "overly entertaining and of low taste," according to a spokesman with China’s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television last week. When we look at the hit list and see dating shows, talent

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday, November 4, 2011 Long ago the three jokes in marketing were: selling ice cream to Eskimos; selling sand to Saudi Arabia; and selling water in bottles. Well Eskimo ice cream really does exist. Mind you it’s made from fish, reindeer fat, berries and seal oil so it must be an acquired taste. Perth’s GMA Garnet really does sell sand to Saudi Arabia. It’s a special

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday October 28, 2011 The new world of marketing is on the wall. The subway wall. We are being hit by profound changes and five years from now your business will have to have adapted or face extinction. You’re in a fight for the survival of the fittest. I don’t have to tell you how rapidly business, media and leisure are changing. It’s as if every day we discover

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Melbourne Herald Sun, October 21, 2011 The advertising brief was simple - write a TV commercial launching new Foster Clark’s Instant Trifle, and show how easily a trifle could be made thanks to fast-setting custard and jelly. My idea was, “it’s so easy that even dad and the kids can make it”. So I wrote a script where mum is out on Saturday morning and the family decide to give her a treat -

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Melbourne Herald Sun, October 14, 2011 A million words have been written and spoken since last week’s death of Apple founder Steve Jobs. But how could I not acknowledge the passing of this column’s idol, the greatest Marketeer of all? More specifically, let’s take a look at what Jobs can teach you about your business. What did he get so right, so consistently? Back when he started as a 21

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday October 7,2011 What do you do when you’re browsing through Google, checking yourself out as you like to do every now and then, and you discover that someone has written something about you, or your company, that is untrue. Or even worse, that is true but you didn’t want anyone to know? What do you do? You call Web Dusters! Well that’s my name for them. They

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday September 30, 2011 If your business has been running a bit slow in its profits or growth, maybe you ought to look at marriage. No, I cast no aspersions on your current relationship - rather, the money to be made out of splicing the knot. Marriage seems to be one of the armour-plated, recession-proof products in this world and believe it or not, Australians are

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday September 23, 2011 Last weekend we saw a wonderful movie, The Eye of the Storm, Fred Schepisi’s interpretation of Patrick White’s novel starring Charlotte Rampling and Geoffrey Rush. And it set me off thinking about advertising creativity. I remembered, as a junior writer in one of the big agencies, when Fred learned the film business through making TV commercials.

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday September 16, 2011 One of the most important men in modern history died last week and nobody seemed to notice. There were no stop-press headlines around the world, no chance of a burial at Arlington Cemetery, only a whisper around the web and a few newspaper obituaries. Yet Michael S. Hart has changed the world, education and business forever. He also changed your

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Melbourne Herald Sun, September 9, 2011 In my experience the world divides into two camps: the nay-sayers and the yea-sayers . Which one are you in? You know a lot of nay-sayers. You may be one, or be married to one, you will certainly work with one somewhere in your life, you’ll immediately know what I mean. The nay-sayer automatically answers “nay”. “Let’s go out tonight!” “No.” “Do

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday September 2, 2011. In the advertising business the two most frequent sentences you hear are: “I need a big advertising campaign” followed by, “But we don’t have much money to spend”. You try to explain that any advertising costs lots of money, but then the client wonders what’s your worth if you can’t fix a little matter like that. Which is why I’m fascinated by

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday August 26, 2011 We all know brand advocates. Apple has built a billion-dollar industry out of them, those annoying friends who can’t hold back from showing you their latest iPhone app or iPad game that they are convinced are life-sustaining possessions - they’d be dead without them. Another company built on fanatics is Harley-Davidson. Here I’m not talking about the

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-26022522465580219892011-08-23T20:16:00.001+10:002011-09-15T13:40:10.795+10:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday August 19, 2011 It’s amazing how different things look from the other side of the world. I’m currently in Italy - hot mid-summer, but even with the holidays Europe is in turmoil. Every bar has a torrent of news coming off the big LCD screens and it never seems to be good. Politicians scurry from meeting to meeting followed by swarms of camera crews. The Greeks

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday August 12, 2011. “Good morning, Washington Post” “Bob Woodward please” “Sorry he’s out, can I take a message?” “It’s private, I can only talk to him, what’s his mobile?” “Sorry we don’t give out mobile numbers.” “His email then?” “Nor email. What is your name?” “Tell him Deep Throat called, but not to worry, I’ll call the New York Times.” All right, so they

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday July 29, 2011 Whether you’re marketing jihads or mortgages, so much depends on getting the name right. Take Osama bin Laden. Towards the end he was struggling to come to terms with modern marketing. Like many a corporate CEO he had to weigh up the value of his brand, suffering as it was from the loss of key management people, decline in market-share, and too long

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday July 22, 2011 A winter weekday in Bourke Street can be deathly quiet as shop assistants lean on the counters of fabulous department stores hoping for business. No wonder their managements are bewailing the drop in retail sales this past half year. But wait a minute. One store is bustling with customers. Young and old, women and men, dart in, check out the racks,

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday July 15, 2011 The winners have already started emerging from the carbon tax debate - and as usual, it’s the advertising agencies. The slush funds are stirring on both sides. The Say Yes coalition already made a stir recently with their commercials featuring two of our favourite actors, Cate Blanchett (right) and Michael Caton. Ironically they were attacked as being

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday July 8, 2011 It’s that time of year when winter blusters us here, yet the sun shines brightly over Burgundy and the Pyrenees. And we shivering south-landers huddle at midnight around our TV sets watching a couple of hundred madmen push their bodies through some of the cruelest torture ever devised. Yes it’s the Tour de France again. That strange hypnotic sport

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday July 1, 2011 A mystical Hindu fakir will meditate in lotus position, sitting on a bed of sharpened nails. Personally, I do much of my meditation on the edge of a razor. Mind you, the blade is well protected by Mr Gillette’s inventiveness and it’s wielded on my chin rather than on my nether regions. But the deep state of contemplation is otherwise much the same. It

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday 24, 2011 I well remember reading to my little ones the tale of Henny Penny. Poor nervous chook, she feels an acorn drop on her head and starts running around crying out that "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" These days this is known as political rhetoric, and commonly found up on the hill in Canberra. Right now we seem to have a whole farmyard of neurotic

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-4070963002867534772011-06-19T23:27:00.000+10:002011-06-19T23:27:34.889+10:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday 17 June, 2011 Living in St Kilda and shopping at Prahran Market in Commercial Road, you’d better believe that I’m aware of the “pink dollar” - which is what they call the market segment populated by gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders and other exotic variations from what the missionaries would accept. Once a taboo subject that would never have graced the pages

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday June10, 2011 This week the genius of computer marketing planted his flag on the future of human communication. No wonder ranks of cameras were there relaying the historic event around the world. The genius, of course, is Apple's Steve Jobs, looking cadaverous but still alive after his battle with cancer. The future is The Cloud - remember three years ago when I

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Melbourne Herald Sun, June 3, 2011 Somebody said a truth to me recently: "People don't quit companies, they quit managers". Stopping to think back on my own and some friends' careers, I realised this was very true. If you've been in the workforce ten years or more, particularly in the field of marketing, it's pretty likely you've experienced more than one boss. And perhaps have already made a

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday May 27, 2011 You don't have to go to Beijing to see the Great Wall of China. It flows down Collins and Pitt Streets and through the central business districts of all our cities. Whatever skyscraper you step into, you will encounter a Chinese wall. I'm talking about a metaphor, not stones and mortar here. In our legal and accounting firms, advertising and PR

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday May 20, 2011 My family is widely scattered. My mum's in Italy, while there's a daughter in Berlin and a son in Shanghai. So I discovered Skype pretty early, soon after they started in 2003. This wonderful internet phone service allowed me to talk to my kids, computer to computer, for free. At a time when the phone services were charging 50 cents a minute. These

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday May 13, 2011 Were you like me as a kid? Did you pretend to sleep till mum put the light out and left the room, then pull out a torch and read comics under the blankets? And what were our favourite comics? All those amazing superheroes of course. In a corner of your room a hefty pile of well-thumbed and swapped garish magazines: Superman, Batman, Green Lantern,

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday May 6 2011 What would you call me if I told you that you have never been richer, or better clothed and fed, or safer from war and death, than any previous generation? A fool? A pollyanna? No - it's the truth, and that's official. In the media, from the morning editions to the nightly bulletins, from the mouths of politicians and commentators, come the cries of

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday 29,2011 Do you remember Darren in Bewitched? He worked in an advertising agency, which seemed pretty cool when I was a kid. He was incredibly versatile: sometimes writing a campaign, sometimes art directing. Or he could be servicing the client and taking him to restaurants, or making the TV commercials and probably booking the media. Fortunately whenever he got

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday April 22, 2011 Can a song glue your product to the customer's heart? Is it time to get a jingle? Like everything in advertising, jingles are a fashion item. In the seventies and eighties you would automatically get a jingle written for your new commercial. By the nineties and noughties they had gone out of fashion and any music used would be a recently past hit

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Melbourne Herald Sun, April 15, 2011 For years now Bob Dylan has not been shy to point out that he never set out to lead any protest movements or become the voice of his generation. He was just a rock 'n' roll singer who drifted into folk and politics because that was where the action was at the time. The fact that little Robert Zimmerman just happened to write some of the greatest poetry of

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday April 8, 2011 These days the silvertops include Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Kim Bassinger and Olivia Newton-John. They don't look so old and doddery any more. In fact the over-55s are a powerhouse of wealth and industry and plenty of them are still pretty cool. So we all have to rethink this demographic bundle. Roy Morgan Research have been doing

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Herald Sun Friday April 1, 2011 Never one to resist a bargain, I love keeping tabs on the viral video scene, especially seeing the clever ways it has been used as a marketing tool. Currently the world's number one viral video of the month, is actually a six-minute commercial. I first saw it a couple of weeks ago, sent by one of my joke-buddies. (You know, those mates who keep sending you rude

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-27665164169403949442011-03-26T12:21:00.000+11:002011-03-26T12:21:16.052+11:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday March 25, 2011 Do you smoke? Drink and drive? Beat your spouse? If you don't, chances are that the reason why is due to advertising. The past half-century have seen the emergence of "behavioural marketing" as a major media element. That is, advertising that changes our society's behaviour. There has always been heated debate about whether advertising can be used

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-36449934793327965732011-03-18T12:57:00.000+11:002011-03-18T12:57:48.696+11:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday March 18, 2011 In the current movie The Adjustment Bureau, Matt Damon is a politician giving a concession speech after losing an election. Bitterly disappointed, he throws away the script and tells the truth. How his tie was chosen after focus group research, that his "personal beliefs" were dictated by policy committees, that so much of what he had done in politics

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-21137215633932662202011-03-11T13:22:00.001+11:002011-03-11T13:26:56.914+11:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday March 11, 2011 My favourite columns start with the words: "Remember where you first heard this". Well this is one of those, remember where you first heard the word Square, because in the future you'll hear a lot more about it. I'm sure you've stood impatiently at a supermarket checkout while the customer in front goes through all the credit card rigamarole for

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-83264619906686146732011-03-04T12:42:00.001+11:002011-03-04T12:52:46.068+11:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, March 4, 2011 Living in St Kilda means that all sorts of cool things happen in my neighbourhood. Like last month's St Kilda Festival down at the beachfront. I shuffled to the back of the crowd for the final act of the rock concert, pretending I was still 20-something. But before long my age showed through. You see this act called Muscles came on stage - a man with a

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-30264235148687670092011-02-26T12:48:00.000+11:002011-02-26T12:48:59.603+11:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, February 25, 2011 Ask anyone who has spent a few years before the mast in advertising agencies. After the second beer the stories will start to come out: of unscrupulous clients who have ripped off their ideas. The problem is with the way the ad business works. A client will ask three or four agencies to prepare a proposal for their new year's campaign. The agencies

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Melbourne Herald Sun, February 18, 2011. It was such a shock this week to hear about the threat of destruction against one of my favourite habitats. Like a panda without his bamboo forest or a chimp without his jungle, how could I survive without Borders? These wonderful shops filled with books and disks on every topic imaginable are living in the shadow of an axe. In the US they have filed

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-67763010552067666272011-02-11T11:51:00.000+11:002011-02-11T11:51:45.170+11:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday February 11,2011 February is the biggest month of the year for American television. Unlike the bulk of Americans, this week you may not have been glued to the set for the Super Bowl, after all it’s not our sport. But movies are, so it’s odds-on that you will be there at the end of the month for the Oscars. The best way to describe the Super Bowl is like the AFL

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Melbourne Herald Sun Friday February 4, 2011 We're familiar with our society having an 'Underbelly' thanks to the media's exposure of a criminal world circulating beneath our horizon. But I'm equally fascinated by the 'Underfeet' that scurry around us, and that most of us never even notice. You see the evidence when you walk down Chapel or Brunswick Streets or go to any alternative store.

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-30221034583804163292011-01-28T11:23:00.006+11:002011-01-28T12:21:13.300+11:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday January 28, 2011 Oh dear I'm going into one of my Top Gear meets Grumpy Old Men phases. A sudden loss of patience with what the rest of the world thinks of as wonderful. It started when I read about Seven Group's new "Augmented reality phone app for Kia". It seems that with this world-shaking advertising invention: "You can stream a 3D animation of the Kia Optima

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-72445797605443576892011-01-21T10:14:00.000+11:002011-01-21T10:14:28.548+11:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday January 21, 2011 There's an Australian species that is being constantly, relentlessly driven towards extinction, yet nobody seems to care or speak out. Even the victims themselves. The species is the dwindling race called Australian grocery manufacturers. The people who, for two centuries, have made what we eat and what we drink and the goods we buy. And their

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-69634465638558358162011-01-14T11:57:00.001+11:002011-01-14T12:05:17.570+11:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday January 14, 2011 The TAFE class on Customer Put-Downs 101 is in session. Our teacher watches his group of computer technicians, giving handy advice. “OK the lady does not understand why her letter is completely written in purple capitals, let’s see that quiet smirk.” The diligent student practices his smirk as he untangles the problem in four keystrokes, saying “

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-83410857582904066752011-01-07T12:33:00.000+11:002011-01-07T12:33:28.428+11:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, January 7, 2011 A new year is always a good time to stop and take stock. People are on holiday, your clients are usually quieter so you can sit back and ask yourself, and your business, some questions. Start with the basics. Why are you in business? Is it just your job, money to live on? Do you want to make a target sum in a set number of years and then cash in and get

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-29533158282591824792011-01-01T09:54:00.000+11:002011-01-01T09:54:30.095+11:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday December 31, 2010 It's a new year tomorrow, so how are things with the cargo cult economy? You might remember from past New Year Marketeer columns that I recalled how the natives of New Guinea believed that the material goods brought to them by allied troops in WWII were gifts from the gods. Food, machines, weapons, motor cars all appeared magically from the belly

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-45191958588600691382010-12-24T10:09:00.000+11:002010-12-24T10:09:23.270+11:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday December 24, 2010 Here it is, Christmas Eve and as you put this paper down and step out into the street you’ll see crowds of wild-eyed zombies swarming through the City and strips and shopping malls. In true zombie fashion they’ll brush past you with unseeing eyes, focussed on the distance and infused with panic. A disproportionate number of them will be men. They

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-83328833761170955972010-12-17T11:09:00.000+11:002010-12-17T11:09:46.354+11:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday December 17, 2010 'Tis the season to be merry, and 'tis the season to get down and dirty at one of Victoria's many summer music festivals. Being a festival promoter can be a rocky ride. You stage a hit and tens of thousands of kids charge in, tossing big money at you. Run a flop and you're the one doing the running, from your creditors. Now I've got to admit

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-71908859723460902822010-12-12T01:29:00.000+11:002010-12-12T01:29:38.882+11:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday December 10, 2010 I don’t care what they say, every business person hates cold calling. They might tell you it’s the exhilaration of the hunt, or they have the hide of a rhino, but there’s always that moment’s hesitation before picking up the phone or ringing the doorbell. If you’re in business there’s always a time when you have to be pushy and forward. Though

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-73111580893091574242010-12-03T10:20:00.000+11:002010-12-03T10:20:46.103+11:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday December 3, 2010 "Are women are the new men?" asks world marketing and advertising giant Euro RSCG. There is certainly an intertwining of the gender roles these days, particularly if you are below 40. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about baby boomers. Well now take a look at their offspring, the Gen X and Ys - the agency calls them "The Millennium Generation".

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-80923068829018671872010-11-26T11:52:00.000+11:002010-11-26T11:52:23.998+11:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday November 26, 2010 Hooray for the royal wedding. I say that not from any monarchist-versus-republican stance, but from an anything-that-helps-our-businesses stance. And there is no doubt that Will and Kate's nuptials will ring cash registers. In the UK they are already looking forward to a $1 billion boost, and though we are well away from the action, local

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-6377544049522090722010-11-19T10:38:00.001+11:002010-11-19T11:43:35.774+11:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday November 19, 2010 Baby boomers have taken an armchair ride through life. They've had everything - money, jobs, the youth revolution, drugs, rock 'n' roll, free love and lots of it. Now they want the education that they never needed to get in the first place. This dominant demographic was spawned from the loins of returning soldiers at the end of World War II and

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-48920012523190887642010-11-12T13:16:00.000+11:002010-11-12T13:16:16.621+11:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday November 12, 2010 Who can ever forget Marni Nixon? What a wonderful voice - remember her "Shall we dance" from The King and I? Or "Tonight" and "I feel pretty" in West Side Story? And how about "I could have danced all night" from My Fair Lady? That beautifully clipped English soprano voice. What's that you say? I'm thinking of Deborah Kerr, Natalie Wood and

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-43634587799644432302010-11-05T10:41:00.000+11:002010-11-06T10:42:51.901+11:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday November 5, 2010 He was the world’s greatest golfer, winner of 71 PGA tournaments, and once again the saying was proved: “The bigger they are, the harder they fall”. But if you are his sponsor, do you also fall with him? This question reared up about this time last year when Tiger Woods had his morally fatal Thanksgiving car accident, and all the truth of his

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-28341307163034811862010-10-29T12:18:00.001+11:002010-10-29T12:28:14.036+11:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday 29 October 2010 If you'd asked me eight months ago when they first came out I would have said that an Apple iPad was too limited to compete with laptops, and too cumbersome to compete with mobiles. It was an orphan with charisma but nowhere to go. Fortunately, Steve Jobs never took my call and Apple have sold 350,000 iPads in that time, which by my calculation is

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-71476562789704486982010-10-22T12:14:00.000+11:002010-10-22T12:14:59.116+11:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, 22 October 2010 Forget the Whingeing Poms, when it comes to punishing bad customer service there are few more deadly than the Icy Aussie. While the first may bleat and complain, the second will smile, turn a heel - and never return. This has been brought out in a recent report from American Express, who surveyed customer responses in 12 countries to find out how

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-4169537982550092392010-10-15T12:59:00.001+11:002010-10-15T13:08:50.350+11:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday 15 October 2010. A week ago famous British ad agency Saatchi and Saatchi celebrated its 40th birthday and the biggest surprise was the guests - brothers Charles and Maurice Saatchi, who stormed out of the agency after a boardroom coup in 1995, to found M&C Saatchi. They joined 1500 past and present staff and clients to celebrate the early days when they conquered

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Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday 8th October 2010 Automotive is no longer king of Australia’s high-tech exports. You could say their leadership has been nobbled - today’s big winner is pharmaceuticals. Yes, we export more pills and potions than Fords and Holdens. In fact IBISWorld researchers believe that in the coming year our sales will be $4.3 billion. That’s nearly half of all exports that

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Melbourne Herald Sun, 2 October 2010 How do you sell a lost dog, or a Japanese beer or a hay fever cure? There are thousands of products that don't fit the standard big-budget mass-marketed model that you see every night on TV. But sometimes being out of the mainstream calls for very clever solutions - and a number of them featured in last week's Media Federation of Australia awards. Take the

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-3317651756873122522010-09-25T20:11:00.000+10:002010-09-25T20:11:14.261+10:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, 25 September 2010 There's something about an advertising slogan. It’s a reassurance, a thought you can hang your hat on. But it's also the cause of endless debate. Do they work, are they corny, do they just interfere with the message? Slogans appeal to clients who see them as the pretty wrapping paper around a campaign. It can be hard to explain all the subtleties

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-70087053796934314412010-09-18T10:27:00.000+10:002010-09-18T10:27:23.948+10:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, 18 September 2010 Stand at the back of the State Theatre during an Opera Australia performance and your eyes will be dazzled by a sea of white - the heads of the 2000 audience members. Any colour variations come from the frequent bald pates and the ladies' expensive hair dyes. Quite obviously this audience has a use-by date and it's not that far away. Who will come to

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Melbourne Herald Sun, 11th September 2010 You want broadband fibre to the node? Then pick up a shovel and start digging a trench. This is what the Norwegians are doing to cut down the cost of their broadband network. It's true. An Internet TV provider called Altibox gives customers nearly $500 rebate if they lay the fibre between their house and the node at the end of the street. And four out

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-46779616182095241562010-09-04T12:00:00.000+10:002010-09-04T12:00:31.926+10:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, 4 September 2010 If your business is retail you will be well aware of a large hole in your calendar. The seven months between Mother's Day and Christmas when there is no reason for the public to splurge - in your shop. So was it just serendipity that dropped Father's Day right in the middle of this business desert? Or the work of a smart retailer with an eye for more

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-24486326023513035472010-08-28T19:03:00.000+10:002010-08-28T19:03:34.623+10:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, 28th August 2010 Whichever party wins government in the next few days, there is one fact that can't be denied: the Liberals won the campaigning and Labor lost. While the rest of this newspaper debates the politics, let's see if there is a marketing lesson to be learned by those of us in business. You see the seeds of defeat were planted on Monday 26th November 2007. That

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Melbourne Herald Sun, 21 August 2010 How a simple processed meat became a major marketing phenomenon - and everybody's favourite hate - would make a great comedy script, if it wasn't already a comedy script. In 1970 the Monty Python team screened a sketch that reached new standards of stupidity. Two customers sit in a café where every possible dish contains Spam, the American processed ham. It

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Melbourne Herald Sun, 14 August 2010 It was a shock, two years ago, when the national broadband network was launched. $43 billion - so much money! $2000 a head! But after some agonised questioning, I concluded we didn't have any choice. It was either fork out, or go sit on the dock to watch the world boat depart without us. Well now I've been shocked all over again. This time by the threat to

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-5256260527576204042010-08-08T09:49:00.000+10:002010-08-08T09:49:11.721+10:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, 7th August 2010. Dutifully following Herself around the twisting alleys of the Richmond Ikea between displays of bedrooms and living rooms and kitchen appliances, I though of how many times I had been in this stage set. In Shanghai, in Berlin, in London. In fact you could go to 37 countries all around the world and find the near-identical store. "It's no wonder," I

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Melbourne Herald Sun, 31 July 2010 You've got to laugh at this one: The most successful and talked-about commercial on today's TV is one that never officially ran on Australian TV. It has popped up on The Gruen Tranfer, Good News Week, even earnest and serious Q&A, and who knows how many more TV and radio talk shows. It has been called "The perfect ad", has been ripped off and copied and

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-36671953182644364922010-07-24T00:49:00.000+10:002010-07-24T00:49:32.643+10:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, 24 July 2010. Two hundred years ago your doctor's answer to most of your ailments would be to slit your vein and drain a few pints of blood out of you. The sicker you got the more blood he'd take. And if you died - well he said you were sick, didn't he? A new book claims that most of our marketing professionals have been using the same approach to diagnose our businesses

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-19890553165983158782010-07-18T23:38:00.000+10:002010-07-18T23:38:11.216+10:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, 17 July 2010 Leafing though an Officeworks catalogue I saw a good quality Hewlett-Packard colour printer for just $49. Doesn't seem so long ago that they were hundreds of dollars. Then on another page a range of HP coloured inks was selling at $85. "Ah yes," I thought, "and that's where HP get their money back". The money's not in the printers, it's in the ongoing sale

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-39920399695575649862010-07-10T23:58:00.000+10:002010-07-10T23:58:58.447+10:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, 10 July 2010. This week I'm going to teach you a new word. It's doing the rounds of academia and is popular in the New York marketing cocktail party scene, so before long it will be on everyone's lips. I know my readers will enjoy being the first kids on the block to use it, so here it is. The word is 'meme', rhymes with cream. Meme is the invention of Richard Dawkins,

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-52966500319351328182010-07-03T12:47:00.000+10:002010-07-03T12:47:43.010+10:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, 3 July, 2010. It sounded more like a marketing convention than political comment. Out of your paper, your telly, your computer came a flood of warnings: "Brand Rudd is terminally damaged", "The Kevin 07 brand has lost its lustre", "Labor's brand-damaging decisions". No wonder the cereal box had to be taken off the shelves and replaced with another one. Now we have a New!

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Herald Sun 26 June 2010 The mobile phone wars are hotting up with a new intensity of competition. The reason, of course, is the Apple iPhone. And the question is, has Steve Jobs given the sector a shot of adrenalin - or is he vampiring all of the blood for himself? You see, last year because of the Greedy Financiers' Cataclysm (GFC) the mobile phone market took a sharp dip. The junk bond

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-11334956753304129702010-06-20T10:53:00.000+10:002010-06-20T10:53:51.174+10:00

Melbourne Herald Sun 19 June, 2010 One of our busiest business trainers, Brendan Nichols, has a good story he delivers at some of his seminars. It’s called “The Big Ugly Sign Theory”. He speaks of a block of land he owned in an upmarket area. It had beautiful ocean views and he gave it to a local estate agent to sell. They put up a smart display board and waited for two months, with very

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-27960449591177351942010-06-12T12:16:00.010+10:002010-06-13T12:22:27.321+10:00

Melbourne Herald Sun 12 June, 2010 A few months ago I helped out at an agency that needed some web-page copy written urgently. The client was a manufacturer of breakfast cereals, the market was New Zealand and the promotion was all about rugby and All Blacks. So for the few days I had to think like a teenage Kiwi rugby-tragic All Blacks fanatic. It was a strain on the brain cells I can tell

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Melbourne Herald Sun, 5 June 2010 Can you believe that the United States created its first tourism board just a month ago? Before that they have always believed that tourists will come of their own accord, while local states did their own promotions. But then a survey - by a British company, Oxford Economics no less - concluded that were the yanks to stir themselves, they could attract an

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-46039940536432643122010-05-29T16:20:00.000+10:002010-05-29T16:20:01.403+10:00

Melbourne Herald Sun, 29 May 2010 “I have to promote this little product. Is there any way to get free advertising for it?” At some stage every client asks that question of their agency and you give them the stock reply: “If I knew how to get advertising for free I’d have an endless supply of clients and be much richer than I am.” The simple fact is that no, there is no free advertising,

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Melbourne Herald Sun, 22 May 2010 That great ad man (long gone before us), David Ogilvy used to preach a major commandment for his agency. “I always use my clients’ products. This is not toadyism, but elementary good manners.” His elegant words can be borne by all of us in business and marketing and advertising. In fact I would expand on them. I always use branded products. Because without

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-39572420101138150462010-05-15T11:08:00.001+10:002010-05-14T23:15:29.921+10:00

This week's Marketeer: Herald Sun, 15 May 2010 It started when I discovered that Big Pond were blocking my emails. You see I send regular newsletters to a few hundred of my clients and prospects - as any good business should. But every time my email program sent 20 out, the rest failed. When I investigated, it turned out that Big Pond, my provider, does not allow you to send out more than

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-70725855813930227132010-05-09T01:03:00.003+10:002010-05-14T13:30:08.110+10:00

Welcome to my blog! Despite 27 years on computers, I've resisted blogs and tweets, muttering "I haven't got time". But finally my mate Winston Marsh shamed me into it: "Come on Ray, this is 2010, you've got to keep up with where the world's going!" So I thought, OK, turn over a new page - I'm gonna Blog and Tweet and Twitter and get out into the world that way. Mostly I will post some of the

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Melbourne Herald Sun 8th May, 2010 Sometimes I'm a bit slow at finding things, despite my pretence to expertise in marketing and advertising. So it was that just last weekend I visited my first DFO. In case you're one of the four people out of today's million and a half readers who hasn't yet heard of them, they are Direct Factor Outlets. And they are unbelievably huge. If you've been

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Melbourne Herald Sun, 3rd January 2010 On New Year 2008 I described the state of world business as “Cargo Cult Economics”. Remember those natives of war-time New Guinea who believed that wealth was delivered by the gods? The planes would always land, bringing them food, clothing, machines - it was magic, they came out of thin air. But once the war was over, the goods stopped coming. So the

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Melbourne Herald Sun, 9th January 2010 As a thrill junkie who nevertheless likes his adventures to be comfortable and safe, I determined to see the movie Avatar in 3-D, on the huge IMAX screen. It was the right choice. Even if the story was rather predictable, the visual effects were stunning, keeping me on the edge of my seat for over two hours. Now this is the first 3-D I’ve seen in over 30

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Not published. 11 November 2009 I’m asking this question in the business pages, not the news or editorial sections, because I want to discuss this in a cool, dispassionate way rather than with the usual hysteria that surrounds the topic. There is an increasing volume of opinion that the ‘war on drugs’ has failed. In 14 US states cannabis can be legally sold for ‘medicinal purposes’. The White

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-35891662216820926212010-05-02T00:09:00.000+10:002010-05-14T11:26:00.295+10:00

Melbourne Herald Sun 24th October, 2009 Did you make love this morning? Did your neighbour? Maybe the answer is on your computer. Visit the web site ijustmadelove.com and you’ll find thousands of people from Vladivostok to Antarctica, Woi Woi to Warsaw proudly proclaiming the night’s score. As I write this the site’s counter has clicked off over 50,000 reports. This is as graphic a

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Melbourne Herald Sun 1st May, 2010 At the start of my working life, as a cadet reporter, purgatory was weeks and months covering the magistrate’s court. Forget the drama of Law and Order, a petty courtroom is a sleep-inducing atmosphere. But every few weeks things would liven up when someone would strenuously defend themselves against a speeding charge or parking offence or shoplifting

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Melbourne Herald Sun, 15th December 2009 In a world of stars and celebrities, spare a thought for the producers - the hard-working business men and women, maybe a bit like you, who have the courage to take risks and invest their meagre funds on someone’s talent. Take Seymour Stein. This legendary record producer was in a hospital bed when he heard some Madonna demos and signed her on the spot,

Raybeahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00692093054087723118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6571335694232957569.post-9805516043715813722010-04-24T23:23:00.000+10:002010-05-14T11:09:48.080+10:00

Herald Sun 24 April, 2010 A Melbourne family is fighting the Afghanistan war - through advertising. That's right. Galloping heroes, cuddly babies, billboards, press, TV and radio commercials, the whole armoury of a modern advertising campaign, without a shot being fired. The ads are the idea of the US Army's Lt Col Allen McCormick, chief of information operations in eastern Afghanistan. He

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