The One Direction Is Riches

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday April 20, 2012

Here's how marketing can make you millions in a year - if you have the right ingredients.

You'd have to be locked in a padded cell to not be aware of this week's visit by One Direction. If you have teenage daughters you have probably been driving screaming kids around town. One Direction is the youthful quintet that has taken the pop world by storm - and is as artificial as a plastic chook.

Boy bands have been stirring hormones since the Osmonds and Jackson 5, but the geography-hysteria-time equation of this group marks a new communication record.

It starts with the marketing genius. Simon Cowell is known as the nasty judge, in Britain and America, on X Factor, American Idol, Britain's Got Talent and other contests. He sits at the pinnacle where he can watch all the new talent and, like some god, pick the ones he likes.

So he scrutinised the countless contestants going through the talent mill, ticking off five boys for voice, energy, and cuteness. In reverse order, come to think of it. He then contracted them to Syco, the record label he partners with Sony. He brought in big-time songwriters like American Idol 2002 winner Kelly Clarkson and Savan Kotecha - who works as A&R for Syco. Beginning to see the pattern?

Having created the product, the next job was starting the fire. They hired London ad agency Archibald Ingall Stretton, who used social sites to create a "transmedia adventure" that would excite fans.

They invented a super-dedicated fan called 1DCyberpunk who stole the band's laptop and would only give it back if fans proved they were as fanatical supporters as she was. In two months, the web site attracted 200,000 followers and ran 20 challenges; started 12 Twitter trends and played more than 2.5 million YouTube views.

The challenges included dressing up as 1DCyberpunk, copying her hairstyle, creating dolls of the One Direction boys, answering quizzes and riddles. Challenge winners got invited to an online album-listening party.

Agency creative director Richard Coggin said, "Syco had a lot of great content -- videos, merchandise, singles, signed photos, radio and TV appearances - and our brief was to glue it all together and engage the fans on a daily basis."

His team worked around the clock to reach their global audience. It paid off, when the debut single What Makes You Beautiful was released on September 11, 2011 - just seven months ago! - and went straight to the top of the UK singles chart. Two and a half months later their debut album Up All Night shot up the charts not just in the UK but also Australia, Canada, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand and Sweden, reaching the top ten in twenty countries.

The band has been involved in the marketing process - they are closer to their fans' demographics than anyone. During the quest, each dedicated three to five hours a week to creating videos, thanking fans for joining them. Their Twitter tag has three million followers.

The girls of America were by now salivating for their social media heroes. What Makes You Beautiful was released on February 14 (Valentine's Day - subtle, eh?) and went straight to No 1. Which makes them the first UK group to debut at number one with their first album.

Just two months later they are in Australia with a seething mass of teens following their every move. Mind you there's not much their mums can click their tongues at, remembering The Beatles hysteria - or even the screams that used to follow our now-respectable Minister for Education.

ray@ebeatty.com

Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com

Menial jobs aren't so menial any more

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday April 13, 2012

How do you define a "menial" job? Unskilled, short-term, unvalued, replaceable? Well those definitions have been changing for some time. These days, there are not so many menial jobs any more.

How about street sweeping? In the movies you see the sweeper with his brush and cart shuffling along the gutter. Walk down Collins Street any day and you will see a smart council employee in fluorescent jacket riding a nifty little vacuum machine, skilfully dodging pedestrians and reaching all the autumn leaves, while communicating with base on his mobile.

Or take the drudgery of stacking supermarket shelves. A closer look at the assistant sees a computer tablet in their hand, a barcode scanner in their pocket and a look of deep concentration.

What about shop assistants? The girl in Sportsgirl or the boy in Bunnings have control of a sophisticated computer system at their register where they can search the entire country for stock - and give advice about the colour of the frock or the power of the drill.

Ambulance drivers are no longer stretcher bearers, they are highly trained paramedics and MICA resuscitators.

So if your idea of menial workers pictures sad groups of drop-outs and illegal immigrants washing dishes in the kitchens of hotels, you need to know that this work segment is rapidly changing.

In modern marketing-speak this is now called "entry-level work", the first foot on the ladder of a career path. For the most part, it has not been the result of conscious foresight and planning but the social continental shift forced on society by the development of technology.

To put it simply, companies require higher technical and digital skills for almost every job, including those that previously required low knowledge and training.

And fortunately, because of all the "wasted" time spent fiddling with computers, video games, mobile phones and on-line shopping, even our traditional drop-outs emerge with surprisingly high levels of these technical skills.

The job of a new employer, then, is to point the worker to the assigned task and train them for the extra steps connecting what they need to do with what they already know.

Menial work has been rapidly disappearing in the construction industry too. The hob-nailed booted and boozy builder's labourer is fading into the past. Rather than leaning on a shovel, these days they are driving the back-hoe or dogging on the crane. And of course they need to be up to date with OH&S regulations.

It's in the interest of employers and unions to continually push them to increase their skill levels - both for their value in the workplace, and the income they can command. Through TAFEs, unions like the CFMEU, and other bodies, they are offered scores of short courses - six days or two weeks, say - in dozer driving, scaffolding, crane operation and the like. They add them like scout badges and each increases their worth.

I like to reminisce about student days and the awful jobs I would do for the few bucks they paid. Any downturn in a trading period and you'd be thrown out. This was the way for many menial workers, still is for some. But the world has changed.

A company can no longer afford to hire and fire on a whim or a month's poor returns, because these days even a menial job needs a level of skills and they still take time and training to acquire. So maybe those phones and computer games do have a value, making work more efficient - and workers less menial.

ray@ebeatty.com
Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com

You can be your own agency - you may have to

Melbourne Herald Sun, April 6, 2012

You think of advertising agencies fighting for accounts, pitching against competitors. But you may be surprised to know that they are very picky in selecting clients. It's only the big proven advertisers that get courted. A lot of prospective clients are politely shown the door.

The large agencies won't look at any company that doesn't spend at least a million a year on their advertising. The smaller agencies will take lesser accounts - so long as they can see enough of an income stream out of them. If you only run a bit of advertising, a few times a year, frankly you're just uneconomical.

No, if you're small, you have to be your own agency. But this means forcing discipline on your activities. The greatest mistake small companies make, I call "The Bowls Club Leak".

This is where a company advertises in response to a plea. The local bowls club will give you a page of their newsletter for just $500. The neighbourhood school charges even less. The local newspaper offers to put your picture in its pages. The Lions club needs a sponsor for its footy matches.

Before you are aware of it, several thousand dollars have leaked from the budget - gone to good causes which will have no use for those high quality articulated widgets you produce.

No, you need to plan your advertising like a professional. It starts with discipline.

1) Set your objective. This might be "Increase sale of widgets by 20 per cent in next six months." You nominate a target and a date.

2) Be clear on what you are selling. Is it the widget? Or its installation? Or its ongoing service? Or do you have another product which is more profitable but neglected by the sales staff? You'd be surprised at how many companies are very vague about this.

3) Identify the customer. Make a picture in your mind of who he or she is. Don't say "everybody", select a single man or woman, their age, income, personality - cut their picture out of a magazine and stick it above your desk. Aim at one and you will hit many.

4) What is special about your product, why should they prefer it over any other? Set this point of difference, invent it if you like. Think of Red Bull, Solo and Gatorade. All just flavoured water. But through marketing you would never mistake one for another - and in your mind you can see who's drinking them.

5) How will you reach this consumer in a way you can afford? This is hard because all advertising is expensive and gobbles up your budget. At this point, talk to one of the smaller media consultancies - or buy a drink for a friend in advertising.

6) Next, look at the creative, preparing the advertisements. You now have a clear brief - what you're selling, who to, what's special about it, what sort of ad can you afford.

But to get the ad produced you have to find someone with talent and skill to create an outstanding ad. These are hard to find.

Ask your friends and business associates their experiences. Look at the web, see freelance talent sites like freelancefactory.com.au or elance.com. Spend time looking at freelancers' work samples, till you find a few you like. Don't hurry this process, it's important to find the right person. And don't buy cheap.

Don't be afraid to ask spouse and friends their opinion on the ads - but in the end you are dependent on your taste and instinct, you have the final word. You are now your own advertising agency.

ray@ebeatty.com
Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com

Sometimes to get noticed you have to contaminate the product

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday March 30, 2012

You've all heard the story of "There's a fly in my soup," or "There's a finger in my pie!" Well how about, "There's a twig in my cider"?

Not only that, but the foreign body was deliberately inserted by the advertising team. It happened in New Zealand to the product Monteith's Cider. It's a nice example of out of the box thinking - or should I say "into the box"?

The brief to Colenso BBDO was to sell cider in a crowded drinks market, as usual with too little funds. But they applied their grey matter to identify what was special about their product. The client had told them that it was one of the few ciders made wholly from real apples, as opposed to concentrate and pulp.

Now, we are all aware of what happens when a foreign body is found in food. The health authorities are alerted, the papers report it, the talk-back runs hot. So our team decided to use this reflex for their marketing. They put twigs of apple tree into the product.

Oh, not into the bottle let me reassure you - that would have been illegal. They dropped a couple of twigs into each six-pack box of cider. Sure enough the complaints started coming in to the brewery's exchange. "I found twigs in my cider pack", "What are you going to do about it?", no doubt hopefully looking for some compensation for the "error".

They called the radio stations and the newspapers and soon the country was buzzing with this "contamination" story. At which point Monteith launched their newspaper and poster campaign.

Headline: "Sorry about the twigs, folks". The ads then went on to explain, "Because we use real apples in our cider, you may find real twigs in this box." And everywhere big labels, "Not from concentrate".

They're talking about this campaign as far away as London and New York. Don't you love those little brain bubbles that turn into global ideas? Of course it has to happen in the right place at the right time.

For cider the time is now. All of a sudden this little bottom-of-the-shelf drink has come into its own. Ibisworld Research reports that in the past five years Australian cider sales have jumped by 19 per cent every year.

Currently our beer consumption is at a 60-year low, yet last year cider sales increased by more than 30 per cent - which on the chart looks like the trajectory of a rocket ship.

The theory is that cider is finding its own "middle ground". Less bitter than beer, less alcoholic than wine, it has carved a refreshment niche. While it was long looked at as a girls' drink, it is now appealing increasingly to men. And the advertising campaigns are encouraging this.

Cider of course comes from olde England, it's the traditional West Country drink. Until recently their market was declining to perilous depths. Then along came Magners Irish Cider with a funny, catchy campaign running the slogan "There's method in the Magners".

It was positioned as a sophisticated drink over crushed ice and sales took off - 250 per cent in a year. Pulled in the wake came other small ciders, and the big ones too, Now cider is cool - in the UK and in Australia too.

Foster's, Lion Nathan and the other brewers are pumping out new cider brands as fast as they can grow the apples. Pubs and retailers are making more space on their shelves and among their pumps for the emerging brands. So if you find a twig in your drink, ignore it.

ray@ebeatty.com
Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com

Are you ready to market yourself? You should be prepared

Melbourne Herald Sun, March 23, 2012

When you're working you see so many jobs where you could improve your work, your pay, your position. It's like they are all beckoning to you. Then if by chance you find yourself out of your job - it's amazing how these opportunities evaporate like a morning mist.

Suddenly you're back on the market, out in the cold, and it's not so easy to get back into the warm. Ok, my marketing friend, in these times of mass redundancies and weekly announcements from yet another corporation laying off hundreds of staff - how are you going to market yourself?

The reason why companies like to poach staff from others is because they know the employee is current. The candidate knows today's business, the personalities and the deals, so they can slot straight in - often in opposition to their pervious firm.

If you're not in this position, you need to make them think you are. So keep up your contacts, go to those boring industry association monthly breakfasts. Everybody is there for the same reason - to see and be seen by someone who could be of use to them. Sit near someone who works for the type of firm you're looking for, and be chatty.

Get abreast with the new media - these days recruiters and employers look at your Facebook profile (no photos of drunken nights!) and tap in to your Twitter. Is your resume on LinkedIn? Get your blog up to date and work-oriented. Ideally make the employer think they will be hiring extra muscle for their social networking drive.

Take a hard look at your resume. Does it make you sound exciting and desirable? Is the photo friendly and professionally shot or does it look like a depressed passport pic? (What do you mean you don't have a photo on it... Do it!)

In fact write more than one resume. The one looking for a marketing post needs to be different from the one looking for the advertising agency job. If you can, put in some case histories of successes including a few figures on sales or market share - or whatever is appropriate.

Here's one for the brave - put together a clever but brief Power Point presentation of your resume, for your laptop or iPad. But only if you can make it engaging, not boring.

In any case, get your story straight and make yourself interesting. Be able to talk confidently in the interview, but don't sound arrogant. Make good use of the bathroom mirror in the morning to practice your pitch. Remember to smile and be light - but don't tell a string of jokes.

Call your girlfriend who has style and understands fashion (this applies to the boys and the girls). Get her to search through your wardrobe and put together a couple of suitable business looks.

Even in these days of relaxed clothing rules, there is still such a thing as an "acceptable" look. It's an unspoken dress code but those with an eye for fashion can read it well. As can most prospective employers, even if they don't even realise that they are making such judgements.

Your tattoos might be very cool among your mates at the night club, but they send demerit points to a prospective employer. Cover the tatts - and lose the nose ring too.

What an employer is looking for is someone who is skilled, flexible and resourceful. And the best way to prove these points is by getting your marketing pitch and materials right for each prospect.

Here it is my marketing friend - your most important client. Get to work.

ray@ebeatty.com
Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com

Mad men and motor bikes

Melbourne Herald Sun, March 16, 2011

The TV show Mad Men, on SBS, presses all my nostalgia buttons. A recent episode showed a drink-fuelled agency celebration where the client's John Deere ride-on mower was raced around the office corridors.

Which flashed me back to a drink-fuelled agency celebration at Masius in 1970. A client's promotion had as its first prize a Yamaha motorbike, which had been brought in for photos. I was a junior writer but my copy chief finally couldn't resist, threw himself on and roared several circuits of the Queens Road office corridor.

He's since left the business to become the Great Australian Novelist - Peter Carey. And the bike was then taken round the corridors by my fellow cadet, Terry Durack - who these days is one of London's leading food writers.

Oh yes, Mad Men is written out of intensive research, including consultants who lived the action at the time. What you see is real.

Here in Australia we worked very hard to emulate our heroes in Madison Avenue. I well remember the ash tray piled high with cigarette butts next to my typewriter. The after-work drinks in the board room that, after a time, I realised I would have to stop attending or turn into an alcoholic.

Ah, the legendary long lunches. Any excuse would see us visit a fine restaurant with our company-provided credit cards and disappear till late afternoon. The clients were eager accomplices who somehow always set meetings which would necessitate us going to lunch. The agency didn't worry - they saw it as cultivating the client.

The peak of the excess was the Melbourne Art Directors Club Christmas Party in 1983. Somehow they got permission to take over Gunn Island in the middle of Albert Park Lake. On it they built tents for circus acts, side shows, food and grog, very loud bands and fireworks. Guests were rowed over in boats, and at the end of the night most were rowed back. However some very expensive designer dresses and tuxedos ended sloshing to shore through the lake mud.

I'm glad to see that there is still some creativity left in advertising. Not in the ads, alas, but there's hope ahead. It took my South African friend passing me a YouTube video doing the rounds in London, to find out what's happening right here.

A writer-art director team were having no luck in getting work at the big agencies, not even interviews. So they designed a campaign. They registered the names of Melbourne's leading creative directors, as web sites. Like bencoulson.com (Pattersons), grant-rutherford.com (DDB), matgarbutt.com (FCB), and announced they had taken the sites hostage.

The ransom was - to interview the team with the possibility of a job. Should any victim fail to respond in time, their site would suffer a traumatic blow to their reputation: redirection to Justin Bieber Under the Mistletoe.

Unable to withstand the threat, seven CDs agreed. Our lads turned up with suits, lap tops, and ski masks, and pitched their credentials. The result, they report: "We met seven creative directors, freaked out nine receptionists, and found a job!"

The team are Andrew Grinter and Lee Spencer-Michaelsen, now working with Ogilvy Melbourne - ironically not one they targeted, but which heard the buzz. So the pair of RMIT 2010 grads is now on the ladder - and their site has garnered 66,000 views around the world. I think the lads will be going places.

It is with relief then, that I can report there are still some mad men working in our advertising industry. All they need now are a few mad clients.

ray@ebeatty.com
Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com

How to raise money without the vulture capitalists

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday March 9, 2012

Lightning struck when Scott Wilson saw the new-generation Apple iPod Nano music player. One of its functions is a clock face. Only four centimetres square, it would make a beautiful multi-function watch.

A designer with a small studio in Chicago, it didn't take Scott long to sketch a stunning strap to hold the watch. But how to fund such a new invention, without giving most of it away to the vulture capitalists who feed on bright ideas?

He posted it on the Kickstarter web site. It's a new marketing innovation called "crowdsourcing". Here's how it works.

Scott made his sketches into a persuasive home-shot video that explained the idea and asked for funds. This was loaded on the site, with a money target: $15,000. He also blogged a designer friend.

The friend passed the news to more friends. At eight one morning the offer went on line. Pledge $25 and you will receive a Tik Tok Watch kit, if and when it is produced. A $50 pledge gives you the classier aluminium Luna Tik kit. If the project fails to reach the target, nobody pays anything.

Well by 5:30 that evening, his wife texted that $6,000 had come in. By the time he got to bed it had reached $80,000. To date it has exceeded $942,000. And not a banker in sight.

The power of Kickstarter has now extended to Australia. Two young Melbourne designers, Rob Ward and Chris Peters, conceived a simple idea last July: an iPhone case with a built-in bottle opener, the "Opena".

They set a $15,000 target. Within days they had raised $28,000. Because Chris is an industrial designer, and Rob a toolmaker, they were able to get the product made quickly - in China of course - and into their own online store.

A few months later, another idea. The Quadlock, a kit that mounts your iPhone onto a wall, bike, desk - anywhere. (Kickstarter people are very Apple, you'll notice.)

They made a prototype and video and launched it on Kickstarter last December. By January 15 they had raised $41,000. They have now signed a contract with a US distributor.

Crowdsourcing is part of the new marketing wave made possible by the internet. It lives in the realm of blogs and facebook, email and twitter, google and eBay. To those in that world, this is the new reality - boundless creativity with no restrictions.

There are a number of crowdsourcers - IndieGoGo, ChipIn, and Australia's own Pozible. Much of their work is not technical but with creative concepts. Looking for funds to make an indie movie; mount an art exhibition; publish a CD. Singing duo The Voltaire Twins raised $6000 to go play in Canada and the US.

Half the projects don't reach their target. So there's no charge to promoter or pledger. Successful projects pay a five percent fee.

The online store developer Shopify ran a best-sales competition last year. 3000 of their clients sold more than $12 million worth of product. The winners in one category were - Rob and Chris. Another was Brad Jorgensen of My Footy Boots, also Australian.

In fact Oz, with eight percent of the 3060 participants, delivered 38 per cent of the contest winners. The Yanks are looking at us with new respect.

What the winners have in common is a fierce use of social media. They blogged and twittered and facebooked till they dropped, but got the message out.

For Rob and Chris the breakthrough came early - when Ashton Kutcher tweeted about Opena to his 7 million followers.

ray@ebeatty.com

Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com

Is there life after political death? You betcha.

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday March 3, 2012

I sometimes wonder about my colleagues issuing the big stories from the Canberra gallery - do they realise that yes, there is a life outside politics, and it starts with a little clever marketing?

Take this week's hand-wringing over the resignation of Mark Arbib. He's a powerful force in Parliament, one of the "faceless men" due for his rewards, probably a Cabinet seat. Why should he leave the levers of power and return to Sydney?

Well I'm sorry, this is where I'm a heartless cynic. You see for years I have been watching how the smart folk time their exit from politics. Think about it.

You don't want to go after an electoral defeat, when the market is awash with unemployed ministers and parliamentarians. The smart ones get out a year or two before there's the risk of it happening.

While your party is still in power, the important people take your calls and you get lots of appearances on Lateline.

Remember John Dawkins? Federal Treasurer for Paul Keating who resigned and quit Parliament two years before Howard's comeback. He ended up as a lobbyist for Government Relations Australia, and a director for the likes of Elders Rural Bank, Fortunes Fund Management and Genetic Technologies.

So yes there is a life after political death - better paid, too.

On the Liberal side there are even more waiting arms. When Peter Reith quit in 2001 he took up work with warship builder Tennix, neatly splicing his two previous jobs as Minister for Workplace Relations and Minister for Defence.

Peter Costello donned his "greatest treasurer" sash and joined some of Goldman Sachs' heaviest weights, forming corporate and government consultancy BKK Partners. As Managing Partner. Then last year he joined two former staffers in setting up ECG Advisory Solutions, a lobbyist with clients like Wesfarmers and Fortescue Metals.

Lindsay Tanner has only recently departed and is greatly missed within the ALP, we are told. However he won't feel lonely. As a senior adviser with Lazard, one of the world's great merchant banks advising corporations and treasuries around the world, he has the company of chairman Paul Keating.

Showing true bipartisanship, when Alexander Downer quit in 2008 he joined ex Labor senator Nick Bolkus and Natasha Stott Despoja's husband Ian Smith in lobby consultancy Bespoke Approach. He also warms a seat in a global merchant bank, Cappello Capital Corporation.

Now are you beginning to see that our departing ministers will not have to sit in draughty Centrelink corridors for months? This is quite apart from the very generous superannuation scheme that covers our politicians.

Of course retired pollies are invaluable to a corporation or institution. They intimately know their way around the corridors of power, they know where the bodies are buried. (Some they planted themselves.)

They understand the bureaucracies and have the private numbers of the departmental chiefs. Besides, a famous name looks good on the letterhead, especially as it is usually followed by a string of honours.

You need shed no tears for departing Senator Arbib. He has a reputation proclaimed throughout the media as a brilliant planner and plotter, a mover and shaker. Just what a major corporation wants in its leadership team. He exits applauded by the Prime Minister from the floor of Parliament. What better recommendation for the CV?

Before him he has a highly-paid new career, working nine to five with no sleepwalking early morning divisions. And he gets to spend time with his beautiful kids. If that's political death, we might see more leaping from the ramparts of Parliament House in the coming year.

ray@ebeatty.com
Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com

Welcome to television's wide wonderful land of rip-offs

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday February 24, 2012


Television has always been a land of rip-offs. For ever, producers have spotted successful shows overseas, brought them home, re-badged them and sold them to local TV.

But now, see how the world has changed, it's our ABC screaming "Thieves!" at their British cousins the BBC.

Here's the format for their latest TV show which started last week. They put together a panel game with a presenter and four guests, showed them TV commercials, and asked for their comments. Sound familiar?

No, this Pommy show is not The Gruen Tansfer, it's called the Mad Bad Ad Show. And from what little I've seen so far, they managed to not only pinch a good concept, but to screw it up.

What makes Gruen work is that it has a comedian host with four presenters who are genuine, experienced, working ad people. Whereas in Mad Bad they have put together a humorous host, with two other comedians and two ad people. So it has turned into a laughathon - with lots of unfunny jokes.

Beneath its humour, Gruen studies and analyses its subject seriously - which actually makes it a much funnier show. Its creator, Andrew Denton, says "The UK producers have taken the default position of throwing comedians at it, it's a mistake, the ad men end up looking flat." Not totally displeased that larceny has failed, he prefers to call the result "a homage" to Gruen.

Here's another TV concept for you. With the Olympics coming, a committee is gathered together to prepare this huge project. And of course every kind of chaos and catastrophe hits them week after week, making very funny reality-looking television.

Sounds like John Clarke's The Games? Actually it's a BBC series called Twenty Twelve , currently running as Britain prepares for its own Olympic Games. Interestingly, Clarke's team had offered the idea to the BBC but were turned down. Then amazingly the Beeb had the same idea themselves.

A team of London lawyers is studying the situation, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Copyright is a very tricky area. It applies to "a work" - a book, picture, tune - but not necessarily to concepts. The law likes to hold two things side by side and decide whether one is a copy of the other or not.

But the rip-offs tear in both directions. Take Britain's Never Mind the Buzzcocks - a panel show where six entertainment celebrities answer questions about music and musicians. Sounds a lot like Spicks and Specks? Well at least they don't get prickly about the similarities - one of the Buzzcocks' long-running "captains", Bill Bailey, was also a popular guest on Spicks.

Or another panel show, where the guests have a great time making fun of the week's political news from around the world? Surely that's Good News Week? Yes but it's also Have I Got News For You which has been running in Britain since 1990.

Perhaps, as in business, some of the happiest arrangements are franchises. Master Chef was UK born and has since spread around the world. The logo remains the same, but many new territories use a version developed in Australia.

The most successful franchise has been Who Wants to be a Millionaire which has travelled from the UK to 100 countries. Its long successful run in Australia ended in 2006, supposedly because Eddie McGuire became Channel 9's CEO. But I suspect it had more to do with October and November 2005, when two contestants each became millionaires.

ray@ebeatty.com

Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com

The value of work experience

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday February 17, 2012

When you see the nervous look in the client's eyes, you know he is going to ask you a favour. "Er - Ray - you know my daughter's 15 years old? She's very interested in marketing and advertising."

First time I'd heard that, I thought. Here it comes.

"Her school's having a work experience week - I don't suppose you can take her here?" Yes of course, you're friends with the client and keen to keep the business so how can you refuse. But - what on earth are we going to do with the girl?

It's a problem I'm sure has been faced by every business at some stage. The big ones can find a spot for the child in the dispatch room or let them sit with different departments over the week. For smaller firms it can be a bit of a burden.

The problem is, all too often the kid has no interest in the business and little understanding of what it does. The staff are too busy getting their jobs done to give them much attention, so our schoolie could spend much of the week keeping out of sight, playing with their iPhone.

There is a place for kids in the workplace. The evening job or holiday work can be very educational. I have seen McDonald's turn out some very hard-working, diligent students after a couple of years flipping burgers. But it can't happen in a week.

Unfortunately too many of our kids are growing up in families that, in my youth, would have been regarded as rich. Plenty of pocket money, mum and dad to taxi them around, lots of after-school activities, big presents at birthdays and Christmas.

It blunts the hunger we remember, of having to save for months to afford the second-hand camera you desperately want. (Insert your teenage desire here.) These days all they have to do is mention that a new 12-megapixel single lens reflex would be nice for Christmas and the distracted parents put it on their list.

Now it's time for "When I were a lad". In my teens, if you wanted a holiday you'd go work in a factory for a month to save up for the trip. Two of my summers were spent sweating next to the conveyor-belt ovens of a cake factory, spraying the cake tins with fat and coming home each night covered in a thick film of grease.

Another job was working in a holiday resort - as a bar porter stacking crates. While the world around you was having a ball, you were the poor peasant in the background carrying dripping empty beer bottles, shouted at by the supervisors, bar staff, everyone.

But it was a great education. I returned to my studies with fresh motivation - no way would I drop out and end up in a job like those.

In the past decade more thought has gone into the work experience field, with laws and forms, regulations and manuals to create more structure around it - and more bureaucracy of course.

Ideally, the school should have spent several weeks preparing the students for the experience, so they have some idea of what to expect - and to realise that they can't get away with insolent behaviour like they can at school.

The parents should be involved, with dinner, advice and sympathy each evening.

At your end, the company supervisors should sit down beforehand to discuss what would be the most useful lessons the child could gain.

Have a plan, have some tasks ready - but don't be shy about giving them some dirty jobs. It could be a valuable career-planning lesson for them.

ray@ebeatty.com

From roses to jerky, the gift is love

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 where careful growers plot and scheme to make sure that a million roses will open up at just the right time so as to be not too buddy and not too bloomy when they are ribboned and presented.

Valentine's Day is a great example of "occasion marketing" - when an occasion or tradition is seized upon by marketers as an opportunity to sell more of their goods. We've just been through a couple of these, called Christmas and New Year.

Truth be told, there is no reason why one person should buy a gift for another just because of a day of the year - but without these days, our retail economy would be even more dismal and subdued. Our love lives and marriages would suffer a severe downturn too, if the partners neglected to observe the occasion.

The Valentine tradition we know today can be traced back to 1797 when a London publisher put out a booklet of sentimental verses called The Young Man's Valentine Writer. The real St Valentine was martyred by the Romans in 289 AD and as a bishop, was unlikely to have had a secret lover.

The tradition has grown in size and value for two centuries, to the point where it is spreading world-wide. In recent years, relentless marketing has planted the Valentine - the gift-giving part, anyway - in Asian cultures like China, Korea, Singapore and Japan. Not always on February 14 and not always boy to girl.

In Japan girls give chocolates to their male office colleagues. In Taiwan it's men to women. All very confusing but with one essential ingredient - a massive increase in expenditure on certain products.

So, you must have wondered, how can you get your product in on this buying flood? Can you disguise your widget as a Valentine gift?

Well plenty have tried. Obviously the makers of greeting cards, chocolates and teddy bears got into the act early in the piece, as did restaurants.

You'll find this paper will do a roaring trade next Tuesday with columns of personal ads decorated with hearts and flowers as all and sundry Romeos declare their love. Your message will be seen by a million and a half readers - one of which, hopefully, will be your love.

Later sales steps were a bit of a stretch. In the '80s, American jewellers started promoting diamonds as a suitable gift. No doubt to remind the girl of her other best friend. Some may think it's a bit of a leap from an embossed gift card, but hey that's marketing.

The rule is never miss an opportunity, which is why this year Interflora have launched a campaign aimed at gay and lesbian lovers.

Then come the ideas which must have struck their creators in the middle of a sleepless night - "I've got it!"

How about a message in a bottle, delivered in a little box. Or giving her name to a star. As our own Milky Way has two hundred billion, we won’t run out of stock.

But some show real imagination. One firm is promoting beef jerky treats. No, not for the girlfriend's teeth, but to let her know you also love her dog.

ray@ebeatty.com

Nigella Versus the Supermarkets

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 cooking shows.

For the most part, though, buying fruit and veg is not such a sensuous experience. We dash into the supermarket, grab a few spuds and greens, and rush off to prepare for tonight's dinner.

Greengroceries are a staple that we cannot live without, and they represent $15 billion of our annual spending. As we know from the posters and ads that follow us from the kinder to the nursing home, we should all eat more fruit and vegetables, they are good for us and necessary for our daily health.

Not that we have been taking much notice. Surveys by researchers Morgans show that in the past eight years our spending on fresh fruit and vegetables has barely changed.

What has changed is where we buy our greens. The supermarkets have put relentless advertising pressure into pulling us into the stores, knowing that once inside we won't buy the potatoes without the meat, gravy and trimmings.

So the category becomes a "lost leader". That's where the supermarket cuts the price of goods to below cost just to drag the customers in. It's the same trick they have been using with milk.

There's a lot of this going on right now, if you leaf through the pages of this newspaper. Coles lost a lot of ground in their produce department under the relentless advertising of "Woolworths the fresh food people". Morgan's found a severe drop of Coles market share against Woolworths, from 2005 to the present day.

This week Coles launched their campaign slashing their green prices by half. What's surprising is that it took them so long to respond to the challenge.

In the fresh foods area, Woolworths sell $8.6 billion as against Coles' $6.3 billion. In greens the proportion is greater - 26 per cent versus 19.6. Coles had to fight back.

Unfortunately this battle between supermarkets makes everyone else become the tortoise in the field when the elephants fight. Already the two giants, Coles and Woolworths, own half of the business, with just one third of the nation's expenditure going to fruit shops and traditional markets.

The vicious price-slashing is easily done by the huge corporations that will just budget the losses as marketing expenses. For the little strip greengrocers it will be further pressure in their decline.

And it's no point in turning for help from governments of either colour. As far as they are concerned, cheaper grocery prices make them look good and as in the past two decades, when questions of unfair competition are raised they will look the other way.

So it comes down to us as consumers to change our buying behaviour. We are more aware of good food than in the past, thanks to shows like MasterChef and My Kitchen Rules, and celebrities like Jamie Oliver and of course Nigella.

We need to use this new enthusiasm to give support and encouragement to the Marios and Kostas and Borises of the shopping strips. They understand their vegies, know them far better than the schoolkid trimming lettuce in the supermarket.

Get talking to them to learn more about a bigger range of greens and exotic dishes. Oh, and keep your eyes open for lovely ladies and lads who take the time and care to smell the fruit.

ray@ebeatty.com

Kodak and the Death of Dinosaurs

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, more resourceful mammals.

What I'm talking about is the death of that great brontosaurus Kodak. Yes, along with many of its species, it is now under US bankruptcy protection - the palliative care ward for American businesses.

Of course we were warned well in advance, when the Australian operation closed in 2004. Already the writing was on the wall. The US operation was so much bigger, it took longer to die. But did it have to?

As always it is never just one event that causes the demise. Did they cling to their legacy business - film, paper and cheap cameras - too long? Yes. But it was, and is, still big business. What will yet rise up from the grave is still to be seen, but it surely will be a ghost of the proud 131 year old company that passed on.

Kodak were undermined on price by competitors like Fuji. Digital cameras came on with a rush - it's like everyone acquired one overnight. And the explosion of smart phones means that everyone now has a camera in pocket or purse.

How can such a giant falter? Last year we saw Borders collapse in a stack of books and in the States, American Airlines is doing its own Chapter 11 taxying right now.

The irony is that Kodak could have made it, they had all the ingredients and there's no doubting their muscle. Did you know that a Kodak engineer created the first digital camera? They invested lots of time and money into developing the technology and intellectual property still earns them huge royalties today - from other camera makers who have leapfrogged them.

But they never really believed that digital was going to overrun film so completely, so quickly.

They were like Xerox, who were developers of the key ingredients of today's computers - the graphical user interface, the mouse, the laser printer. Yet while Apple and many of the upcoming computer companies made fortunes, by 2000 Xerox were staring at bankruptcy.

Fortunately a new company president, Anne Mulcahy, who started in sales, suggested they talk to the customers - and saved the company.

This is what Kodak didn't do. Or maybe they were talking to the wrong customers. They didn't have the Apple design flair or the insight to extend their products out through web communications or social media - which is what all their competitors are doing now.

They developed the first wi-fi enabled camera, but when it didn't reach the sales targets they killed it off. Can you see the pattern here? When the going gets tough, the big run off.

Like IBM, who gave us the most successful personal computer system, but abandoned it to the clones. I always felt that the carpet bazaar haggling and trading that is the PC market never sat comfortably on those grey-suited shoulders.

When I look at the torment of these dinosaurs I see the big corporation curse: inflexibility and bureaucracy. So many of the key ingredients of today's technological revolution were not invented by Bill Gates or Steve Jobs but by Xerox and Kodak and IBM.

Where were these corporates , I wonder, when the young turks were plundering their basements? Probably in committees discussing the distribution of paperclips.

ray@ebeatty.com

Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com

Big Brother is coming to your living room

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 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

It's a TV that views the viewers. Yes, many new models will have build-in cameras so that you can be watched. Isn't that good? Or is it absolutely terrifying?

In this ever-more connected world, the new TVs will be part of your network with the outside world. They will link you straight into Facebook so you'll be in contact with your friends.

How will the TV know it's you? With built-in facial recognition, it will notice when you enter the room and say, "Hello Julie". Or whoever.

The picture will be brilliant with new Organic Light Emitting Diodes (a new world to learn: OLEDs), and just four millimetres thick. You read it right. Not much thicker than a sheet of cardboard.

What's exciting for market researchers is that they can now get a true measure of TV audiences. They can count who's in the room and recognise each viewer. No more arguments about were they having a toilet break during the commercial.

They can even tell whether you are enjoying the program or are bored, by scanning your facial expression.
Technology has even more delights for you. You don't have to feel lonely any more, even while you're watching TV. A product called DirectTV will tell you what programs or movies your friends are watching, so you can watch with them too.

Another called IntoNow will analyse the audio signal of your friends' program through an iPhone app, and share it with your friends through Facebook.

Maybe I'm the wrong generation but I can't think of any friend who'd want to watch a TV show just because I was watching it. Must be lacking in empathy.

Getting back to the commercials, the new key word is no longer viewers or audience, but "impressions". To quote Rex Harris, from advertising agency group Publicis, "If you're looking elsewhere, then you're not paying attention. We would like to know if we're getting accurate impressions."

So the advertiser wants to know the ad is being watched, but wait there's more. Having recognised you and matched you with their huge database in the internet cloud, they know what you like. So the ads shown will be chosen to appeal directly to you.

Now this is very convenient and time saving for you and - doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo - spooky.

What also came clearly out of CES was the interconnection between technologies. Quoting Rex Harris once more, "People are increasingly consuming content on their smartphones, tablets, and now through devices that bring the internet to television - converged TV."

In the book, Big Brother didn't give you any choice whether you wanted to be watched or not. So expect the next big debate: Should you opt in, or opt out?

Already in America the discussion has quietly started. The big buyers of media want an opt-out approach. That is, unless you tell them not to, they will log you on. The civil libertarians want it opt-in. If you want a camera filming your living room, you have to ask for it.

So are you in or out? I suppose it will depend on how many friends you've got - and how much you want them to see of you.


ray@ebeatty.com
Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com

Is he a dork or a millionaire businessman?

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 production, and the hideousness of so many modern buildings. If I were a gardener I'd probably talk to my tomatoes too.

So is he a twerp? I decided to take a closer look. What I found was a very successful CEO who works harder than most businessmen I know of, and then gives much of his income away.

Although I'm a republican, I must say that Charles gets a raw deal in the media. Firstly, all the talk about how many millions he costs the British public purse.

The money comes mostly from his inheritance, the Duchy of Cornwall estate. The income is his, as bequeathed by Edward III in 1337 to each monarch's Prince of Wales, but he is not allowed to touch the capital.

However he manages the billion-dollar business, generating about $26 million a year. "The Firm" (as the Royal Family calls itself) claim that he has doubled its capital value in the past decade.

The income comes from those famous organic farms, of course, but also from large numbers of rented farms, properties and commercial buildings.

Incidentally they have a very nice range of holiday cottages in England's south-west decorated in the very best Country Life chic, at around $1000 a week for a four-sleeper. Better price than most hotels.

There's a range of foods called Duchy Originals from Waitrose that sells the estate's organic products through supermarkets, and exports as far as Australia. And there is a fat investments portfolio to be managed.

But this isn't his day job. He spends much of his time tearing around the country attending meetings and opening bridges (639 engagements last year. Doesn't that make your eyes glaze?) And 73 of them were overseas, as he buzzes around the world spruiking British products and culture.

Much of this work is done at the request of the UK government and foreign ministry, so you can sympathise with his expecting them to cover the air fares and accommodation.

He helped to raise $180 million for charities, including sizable donations from his businesses.

On top of this he also funds part of the income for sons William and Harry, and now his new daughter-in-law. Luckily they have their own jobs to help out.

He pays tax like the rest of us - $6 million last year. Of course, like any businessman he has regular arguments with the taxman, and in his case Parliament, about what is deductible and what isn't.

Then there is aforementioned son and daughter-in-law. Like any father, last year's wedding cost him a fortune. Though fortunately his own mum and dad, and Kate's, paid most of the costs.

Not the police and marching bands, mind, they came out of the public purse. I remember musing at the time that if they had charged for worldwide TV rights like the Olympics, they would have come out in profit. Considerably.

Meanwhile William and Kate are getting themselves ready to take over the family business, practising their fixed smiles and staying awake. Kate has turned into a godsend for British fashion designers. When she bought a $50 skirt at Topshop, the chain sold out by the next day. Now that’s marketing power.

ray@ebeatty.com

The cargo cult is still growing strong

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 planes stopped and witch-doctors told the people they could start things up again if they built airports and conning towers and radar scanners. This they did, from bamboo and straw and coconut shells. But somehow these didn’t work.

This caused years of unrest because the villagers did not understand that behind the goods there had to be an underlying economy of funding, planning, work and building.

Well we in Australia and the western world are not so different really. We’ve seen our wealth delivered by ship and plane for half a century, from America and Europe and particularly China, and today we’re getting more than ever. All they ask for is a few shiploads of dirt from our backyards, and our signatures on some IOUs.

But lately the cargo cult has been getting a big shaky. Over in America when some of their bamboo and coconut airports collapsed three years ago, it took them a long time to recover. In fact there are still clans of natives sitting around waiting to get back to work again.

Of course this causes unrest and their leaders have been blamed and chased around the political jungle with machetes. Just this week in Iowa the bosses of several clans were arguing over who will fight to become the new chief of the tribe. Each one promised more goods, more wealth, less work.

Europe was so solid and confident but now the tribes have all fallen into argumentative conflicts over who has the most pigs and whether they will pass them on to the poorer tribes.

The Greeks are not so worried. Two and a half thousand years ago they had a very successful economy where slaves did all the work and the citizens sat around the agora arguing philosophy and creating democracy - for those who were not slaves. Old habits die hard and they still confidently expect their daily wine and olives.

The Italians are another ancient race. They have not had a strong central government since Mussolini made the trains run on time, so they don’t see much point in paying taxes. As always the gods will provide, it’s not my problem they say.

As you’d imagine, their straw and copra airports are stunningly designed and exquisitely crafted. But they are not much better at generating magic wealth.

Any suggestion that they should contribute their share of pigs and bananas to the communal kitchen is rejected with horror. Though their refusal is mild when compared to the cries of outrage from the rich Americans if asked to give the tribe more of their pigs. They’d rather cut back on their medicine men.

And so all over the world we, the wealthy tribes, sit around waiting for the cargo planes to fly in more and more goods, as our right. Where they come from doesn’t seem to trouble anyone; who will pay is a problem for later on; the fact that the sea is slowly swallowing the tropical paradise is no worry for those of us in the highlands.

Down here in Australia there’s nothing to worry about so long as there is someone willing to pay for our dirt. We don’t even have to make any goods any more so we can shut all those tiresome factories.

Instead let’s sit back, fire up the barbie, and build another grass and bamboo airport. Look, they’ve worked so far, why not for ever?

ray@ebeatty.com

Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com

This year it’s renovation throughout the nation

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 assured that you will not be alone in these tasks.

A major result to come from the astronomical house prices and the prohibitive cost of changing homes, is that renovation is back in a big way.

Take Bunnings. Their annual report was able to boast a 5.7 per cent sales growth when so many other retailers were bemoaning a declining market. And they opened a further 27 of their huge stores around the country. That’s an awful lot of hammers and nails.

Dulux also told a happy story at this month’s AGM. Home renovation has been a major factor in driving their underlying net profit close to $80 million this year.

We know that these increases were not caused by new home building because the Housing Industry Association reports a further decline in new residential work. This past year’s new housing starts were down by five percent, and the HIA predict that next year’s will be twice as bad.

This is hard to understand, at a time when existing houses are so over-priced and the need for more homes so obvious. Meanwhile, the September quarter saw renovations hit a new high of $2 billion.

Like all the rest of Australian retail, hardware is going bi-polar. Bunnings have ruled the roost for years now, squeezing the other chains like Mitre 10 and Thrifty-Link, forcing them to grow big or disappear.

But another chain of aircraft-hanger sized stores has started moving in, armed with lots of street cred.

Where Bunnings is part of Westfarmers, which owns Coles, it completes that mogul's royal flush of dominance in the marketplace from coal and fertiliser to retail chains and stationery to fuels and hardware.

Of course Woolworths wants its own toolkit, too. And now they have it. In partnership with American hardware giant Lowe's, they have started building the Masters hardware chain. The first opened recently in Braybrook in the City of Maribyrnong. Another 150 are already on the drawing boards.

This is a market where you have to be big to survive. If you've ever renovated you'll know what it's like - you desperately need an articulated gusset to fill the hole you've made in the wall but the first couple of local stores are too small to stock the range you need. You drive the extra miles to Bunnings, and that becomes a habit whenever you need something.

Mitre 10 know this and are rapidly building bigger stores, now bankrolled by grocery distributor Metcash who bought into the franchise chain this year.

The other big franchiser, Thrifty-Link, have announced the theme of their conference at the end of January: fighting back at the competition.

Even though Woolworths have committed $100 million to the Masters roll-out, they will open at most 20 a year. So it will be quite a while before they are able to stand toe to toe with Bunnings' 289 stores and trade centres.

Now finish your coffee, fold this newspaper, pick up your paintbrush and get back to work on the house. And do be sure to have a very happy - and productive - New Year.

ray@ebeatty.com
Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com

To live a mile high, you’ve got to be rich as a sheikh

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 Melbourne decided that we don't really want the world's tallest building in our front yard, the concept moved north.

But this column is not about buildings. It's about money and power. You see both these buildings are in a place we know lots about, and nothing about. Arabia and the gulf states.

The mile-high Kingdom Tower (right)is being built just north of Jeddah, on the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia. The Burj Khalifa is in Dubai, on the Persian Gulf. They are both reflections of the huge wealth and power of this region.

Who are the richest people in the world? Well at $80,000 a head the Qataris come out well ahead. And that's in a country one-sixth the size of Tasmania.

They could teach us a thing or two about sovereign wealth funds, too. Like us they have made vast incomes out of their resources. The Qatar Investment Authority fund is worth $70 billion. For a population of native citizens of 250,000. The other million and a half non-citizens do well, but they are essentially guest workers.

But what is the use of all this wealth if it does not buy you influence? Qatar showed the world how this is done when Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the Emir, set up Al Jazeera in 1996.

This Middle Eastern version of CNN has rapidly become a major news force world-wide, by maintaining high standards of journalism and relatively unbiased coverage of events. Qatar may be just a thumbnail on the world map, but it has a loud and insistent voice.

The lesson of the value of media - and opportunity of investment - has not been lost. Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal took his own plunge into social media this week by investing $300 million for a "strategic stake" in Twitter. That's an awful lot of tweets.

There's another major sale coming up next year that will have the sheikhs queuing down the corridors. Facebook is set to launch its initial public offering (IPO) and speculation on the funds gathered runs as high as $10 billion.

Remember that scene in the movie The Social Network, the story about the launch of Facebook? Mark Zuckerberg is telling his growing staff that part of their pay will be in share options, and that in time these will be worth a fortune.

Well that time has come, and the market is estimating the sale will create at least a thousand instant millionaires. The venerable founder and CEO will be all of 27 years of age.

Now don't you wish you studied harder in your computer classes?

Modern technology - the internet, smartphones, and social media that they carry - have made a profound difference to the rulers of the world, and we see its striking affects in the middle east. They have made life very hard for despots, always the world is watching, as they discovered in the Arab Spring.

Now the people and businesses of the Middle East have come to a fork in the road. Do they follow the mega-rich investors and ride sky-high into a prosperous future, facing the fact that social media will make them transparent? Or will they follow the road of the fundamentalists and lock themselves back in the middle ages?

ray@ebeatty.com

Think of those suffering Xmas Torture!

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 looked like they had been modelled on The Follies of '36.

But the owner did allow himself one touch of modernity. An eight-track audio system. No, not a multi-channel mixer, these were the bulky packs that preceded the cassette tape. They had a length of about an hour and automatically started again when set for “repeat”.

For Christmas he had two tapes, with carols and Christmas songs. And they played from opening time to final close, continuously.

After a while it became a version of the Chinese water torture. Drip drip drip - merry - drip - jingle - drip - shepherds - aargh!

So yes, my friends in the retail stores, I do know what you are going through right now, and you even have to pretend to be happy and festive in the process.

Obviously they have the same problem in Sweden. And a retailer has cleverly made a promotion out of it.

The electronics store Pause is running a promotion called “Xmas Carol Torture!” And the first prize is a stereo system. To win it, however, you have to face the music.

Their web site (xmascaroltorture.com) plays a jolly version of Jingle Bells, in English. Continuously. The winner will be the soul who lasts longest watching the screen and listening to the carol.

Oh you can’t skive off and leave the computer running. Every minute or so a santa head on the screen laughs “Ho ho ho!” and you have to quickly click it with your mouse. When I looked at the site someone had made it to over two hours. I lasted about four minutes.

This technique can be used with interactive TV, as Burger King did in the US recently, with a campaign called “Whopper Lust”.

You had to sit in front of a dedicated channel on Direct TV, which for a week showed only a flame-grilled burger slowly turning on screen. The challenge was, watch this burger for five minutes and get one free. Watch it for ten minutes and you get two.

Presumably they believe that the spinning stack of bun, meat and tomatoes will hypnotise you into an insatiable desire for the burger.

Maybe they were right - more than 50,000 burgers were won during 13,500 hours of TV advertising. Once again you had to click in response to prompts or else you would be returned to the start. Obviously some people have nothing better to do with their time.

In my supermarket the PA system continuously plays “Woolworths the fresh food people”. This is a rather lovely song. Until you have been in the store for the umpteenth time this month and you hear it wafting down the aisles even as you pick up a trolley.

My silent sympathy goes out to those poor souls who know that every morning of their working lives they will be greeted by that jolly voice - and that it won’t stop ‘till they have clocked off.

I have to plead guilty myself. One jingle I created long ago was “Food Plus your store with more”, and every time I visited one of the convenience stores it would be tinnily chirping from the ceiling. Even though it was my own baby, after a while I would have happily thrown a boot at the loudspeaker.

ray@ebeatty.com

Celebrating the birth of the polls

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 how often we have sex - and with whom. All is known to the all-seeing eye as we are pursued by armies of researchers.

But 70 years ago none of this existed. Here in Australia we may have read an occasional article about opinion polls in America, but on this quiet isle we relied on taxi driver polls.

Then in 1940 Sir Keith Murdoch (father of Rupert) sent his bright young accountant, Roy Morgan, to the US to find out about opinion polls from Dr George Gallup, founding father of the industry.

When he returned, Morgan was Australia’s leading - only - expert on the subject and immediately was put to work researching for this paper’s ancestors, the Melbourne Herald group.

In the spring of 1941, three months before Pearl Harbour, Murdoch set Morgan the task of measuring a “reader interest survey” for the Sydney Sun. It was Australia’s first “Gallup” opinion poll, measuring attitudes to equal pay for men and women.

Incidentally 60 per cent were in favour, showing that even 70 years ago, Australians were egalitarians.

However, political polling was tricky in the middle of a fierce war, but after it ended Morgan applied the Gallup method to pick the winning party for the next five federal elections from 1946 to 1954, within a margin of 1 percent.

Today of course an election would be unthinkable without its polls - and just about every other week in the year.

The Roy Morgan Research Centre became independent in 1959, though it received housing, power and postage from The Herald until 1973. But the other papers, and then television channels, were not going to take this lying down.

Since the late 60s, a number of polling companies have pushed forward. These days News Limited features within its stables the Newspoll and the Galaxy Poll.

In the early 70s Rod Cameron, whose research had guided John Cain, and then Bob Hawke, to their victories, formed ANOP. Fairfax use multi-national grocery researchers Nielsen.

What they all share is a high degree of accuracy that has grown from long practice. At the end of most modern campaigns, the postmortem shows all the major companies within a couple of percentage points of the outcome.

In both politics and consumer research they have introduced innovative methods. We are now familiar with political debates being underlined by a “worm”.

Morgans claim to have devised it, but the term “worm” has rapidly become a common noun so now it is named The Reactor . This is the squiggly lines across your TV screens as politicians debate, to show the public’s immediate reaction.

This is now available as an iPhone app from the Morgans web site so you can participate in research wherever you may be. The plan is to encourage TV viewers to comment on programs as they run - the good bits, the boring bits, the flow of interest. So if you want you can invite the all-seeing eye into your home.

Meanwhile, today, Morgans are having a 70th birthday party.

ray@ebeatty.com
Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com

Leapfrogging phone war

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 companies weren’t going to lie down and let Apple steamroll the market. They have billions of dollars of investment to protect and they have been working with fury on all fronts: the product development, bells and whistles, retail deals and of course the flood of mobile phone ads we see.

The combined marketing onslaught must be working. Despite the impression that everyone who sits near to you on a train or a café has an iPhone, these days it’s hard to tell the difference between the real Apple and the many similar fruit around.

In fact, Samsung last month proudly declared that their S2 phone had hit top spot in Australian smartphone sales. This follows a year that saw Apple knock Nokia off its perch, now they are under attack themselves.

HTC is another fast-growing phone. The Taiwanese company has startled American analysts by snatching the lead from both Apple and Samsung. Two years ago the company only sold its phones under the stickers of other companies. Now it is selling one quarter of all smartphones in the US.

This leapfrogging looks like the way of the future in the volatile market. Most of the contenders are taking advantage of Google’s Android operating software, highly praised by the critics and allowing the phones to perform new tricks.

Android is an “open code” software. In other words, it is made available to anyone who wants to use it for no fee. Apple’s code, by contrast, is strictly proprietary - and not allowed into anyone else’s hands.

Except, that is, for the bit that allows external developers to attach their applications to the iPhone. The apps market has been the secret to the phone’s success. The last figure I heard was that there are now half a million of the little programs available for iPhones.

However, the developer has to pay Apple a royalty of 30 per cent for any he sells. Whereas Android’s will be royalty-free. So you can bet that all those apps will quickly be edited to fit the Android space.

The Australian phone wars are making world news too. Determined to throw a spoke in Samsung’s wheel, Apple has tried to ban Samsung’s new tablet, the Galaxy Tab 10.1, arguing that it will take away iPad 2 sales - so far they have sold 500,000 iPads in Australia.

Then, just two days ago the Federal Court overturned an injunction and the Galaxy could be selling by next week. So expect another flood of advertising to pour out of the fortresses of the rival corporations. Their advertising agencies must be rubbing their hands in glee.

A new ad in the US is delighting in poking fun at the devoted Apple fanboys. It features a round-the-block line waiting to buy the newest iPhone release. The camera eavesdrops on the Apple corps.

"I am so amped, I could stand here for three weeks," says one.
"Only seven people stand between us and meaning," says another.
"If it looks the same, how will people know I upgraded?" wonders a third.

Doubts start creeping in - the Samsung has a bigger screen, the Apple has battery problems and isn’t 4G. But one determined fanboy sums it up:

"I could never get a Samsung. I'm creative."
His friend chips in: "Dude, you're a barista."

Expect to see a lot more fireworks from Roman candles to bangers to mortars as this war gets progressively more bang-bang.

ray@ebeatty.com

How do you get the shoppers back to the shops?

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 an effort to cling to Christmas. Together with Commercial Radio Australia they have started a campaign nominally priced at $5 million, although much of it is advertising provided by the radio stations.

Having listened to the campaign commercials and read the literature on their web site, I can only find one word to describe it: wet.

Wet as in weak and mealy-mouthed. They do not actually tell us who they need protection from. Is it the multinational invaders? The booming on-line shopping industry? The strangling, selfish supermarket giants? But no-one is targeted, which means the campaign will never hit its mark.

The commercials themselves are awful. If they are the best that the combined brains of our Australian radio industry can produce - well that confirms my sadness at the creative decline of radio in this country.

There are major problems facing the retailers and they do need help from us, their customer base. But they will not make a difference by bombarding us with figures.

They tell us there are 140,000 retailers. That’s a lot. And they employ 1.2 million people. Yep that’s a lot. But somehow these figures do not give me the need to leap for my wallet.

The bright-voiced announcer goes on that these are mums, dads, uncles, aunties, sons and daughters. Yup... most people are.

But we’re talking here about winning back the hearts and minds of a population that is drifting elsewhere. From the retail strip to the mega-mart. From the local café to the multinational chain.

Most worryingly, away from shops altogether. You might remember my column a couple of weeks ago, featuring the subway wall in Seoul which had been converted into a virtual market. Commuters can order their groceries with a click of their mobile phones.

To combat these waves of progress, we need to be more cunning. The campaign needs to give our mums and dads et cetera, a reason to want to visit shops.

Any campaign planing should start with the question: what would make people prefer the jostle of a busy street to the canned music of the supermarket? Or, the bigger threat, the comfort of their livingroom computer?

Mandy Vere, writing in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, summed it up: “They have goods for you to peruse and handle, feel and read; free p&p; the joy of serendipity; live, and often knowledgeable, staff – sometimes even with smiles and conversation.”

You can feel the cloth and put on the shoes, enjoy the variety of choice and explore shops you had never seen before. It is this physical, emotional experience that needs to be communicated, not statistics.

When New York’s Department of Commerce wanted to promote its city and state, in 1977, it hired the hottest agency in town, Wells Rich Greene, and the great graphic artist Milton Glaser.

Because they gave the job to the best they got a campaign that was brilliant in its simplicity: I Love New York -

It’s still running today, and every city in the world has picked up the graphic - just take a look at the souvenir shops in Swanston Street.

I’m sorry retail association and radio stations, I give you an F for your campaign, with the note: “Engage your hearts and start again”.

ray@ebeatty.com

The wee folk have invaded your head

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 the job ‘til Friday." Boy she's got me into trouble over the years.

If I let my guard down and neglect to write up my to-do lists for a couple of days I get rapidly landed in the soup. Has she ever come your way? From what I can see she has a lot of siblings in this town.

Another troublesome inhabitant of my cranium is Shootya Mouth, who is forever tossing dumb quips into the breech and urging me to fire indiscriminately without first engaging the brain.

Fortunately as I've got older he has become easier to control. But you can't afford to let your guard down because this one's as cunning as a cat, slipping in when you're stressed, excited or otherwise engaged - like in the middle of an important meeting.

His sister is called Weakas Water who won't say a thing until it's far too late to speak out. She worries she might offend or ask too much or otherwise sour the atmosphere.

Consequently she sets up situations where matters which were small glitches to be smoothed out, are left until they become major problems to be unravelled. She thrives on the fact that we all like a peaceful life and will keep putting off saying that most difficult word: "No".

Then there’s cousin Lazy Daisy whose favourite posture in life is stretched on the couch with a box of chocolates at the elbow and a remote control in hand.

Hours and days can drift past unnoticed until you suddenly realise that you’ve run out of customers, or the deadline's tomorrow, or the competiton’s sprinted past.

If you can keep her from stealing more than a few minutes or hours at a time, you're doing well. I know people who have let her have weeks, years - their whole lives, even.

Finally let's not forget that master contortionist, Indy Sision. Boy can he gum up the works! He's the one who keeps whispering in your ear, "Yes that looks right - but what if you’re wrong? Hadn't you better wait ‘til you're sure?"

Or "If I did this I'd get six of one, but if I did that I'd get half a dozen of the other - I can't decide." Or the real clincher - "If I leave it another week something will happen to make the decision easier."

Sure - someone else walks off with the account or the girl or the bargain or whatever it was you were indecisive about. And then isn't it amazing how clearly you can see what you should have done? Crystal clear, you were just in time to be too late.

So how do you deal with this tribe of monkeys on your back? The only way is eternal vigilance. Let your guard down and they grab the controls.

With a daily to-do list you can keep track of your activities - but make sure everything is on the list, in priority.

Though of course our friend Prue can turn writing a to-do list into an art form. So keep checking. Right now are you doing what is most productive with your life? (Of course at the moment you're reading this newspaper which I can assure you is a most virtuous, highly productive activity.)

ray@ebeatty.com

Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com