In the world of beer, brewing is a craft

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday September 26, 2013

We all have a sometimes wish that our hobby was our job. With some of us that does come about - certainly among that growing band, the craft brewers.

If you like an occasional beer you can't have helped but notice the growth in the range of beers available these days. There is a definite change happening in the beer market - at a time when, recently, it was declared that wine is close to overtaking beer as Australians' favourite plonk.

Today's wine drinker is more discerning about the quality and style of the wine. And in turn, it is quality that increasingly motivates the beer drinker, buying less but creating a rapid growth of mini breweries, local pub brews, and craft breweries.

It's a world-wide trend with craft brewers in the US taking some 10 per cent of the beer market. In Australia it's closer to 3 per cent but growing, as it is around the world. There are now craft breweries in Canada, Japan, China, Cambodia, Spain, New Zealand - and of course, Britain and northern Europe have had their "brewpubs" for centuries.

This growth of hand-crafted beer is also an understandable development from the beer hobbyist movement. I well remember my old dad and his interests. "Your dad's down in the cellar making beer, I don't expect to see him for a couple of hours," my mum would explain when I phoned, knowing that he would emerge safe and sound and in a very happy mood.

He was not alone, and sometimes this turns into a passion that eventually becomes a job. But when does a hobbyist turn into a craft brewer?

"It's all about the content not the brand," says Guy Greenstone. He's landlord of St Kilda's The Local Taphouse, a hotbed of beer making and savouring. "It's about having a passion for the product."

When Guy and his business partner Steve Jaffares put on a talk and sip fest called The Great Australasian Beer Spectapular in 2011 they so overfilled their pub that for the next two years it was held at the Royal Exhibition Centre, attended by fans and brewers from around the world.

"This May we got 12,000 people and 90 specially brewed beers. For next year we expect over 100 new beers - and I don't know how many people," said Guy. They have created a new event for Melbourne's calendar, turning the Exhibition Building into a big elaborate beer hall for three days.

Is there any clash with that other great beer celebration, Oktoberfest? Other than being half a year apart, Guy thinks not. He sees Oktoberfest as a celebration of beer culture and history, whereas the Spectapular is focussed on the making and quality of beer.

The rebirth of beer is not unnoticed by the big brewing companies, who are launching products that look more home-made and varied in styles. Together, they may be what saves beer - which has been steadily falling from 75% of alcohol consumption in 1962 to 41% in 2012.

Justin McPhail of Bendigo Beer said it was a sign of the times where big breweries are no longer as dominant, and that craft breweries signalled a rebirth of beer. “I think it’s the end of bland beer that’s been around since the 1970s,” he said.

New York brewer Garrett Oliver sums up the movement. "Real beer is made by people, not by machines," he says. "The difference with craft beer is that when you're talking about a brewery, you know whose beer that is. It's a very personal thing." Almost a hobby.

Your Dick Tracy moment has finally arrived - well almost

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday September 19, 2013

Dick Tracy, your time has finally come. Since Chester Gould gave his comic-strip character a phone on his wrist in 1946, generations of youngsters looked to the day when this would happen in reality. Not just youngsters.

Well, this year we now have watches that talk - a rapidly multiplying new gadget category, the smart watch. But is it Dick Tracy's phone yet?

This month Samsung released its Galaxy Gear computer on a watch band, and loudly crowed that it has beaten Apple to the punch. Certainly it was the sensation of Berlin's IFA Show and has been making headlines around the world. But is it really a smartwatch yet?

Well yes... and no.

Yes you will have a computer on your wrist that will make calls, converse, take messages, check the weather, play music, take photos, make appointments - most everything your smart phone can do. Except that it will be your smart phone that's doing the key telephony functions.

In order to operate, the Gear needs its mothership, the Galaxy Note 3 phone, within range. The actual computer in the watch needs mother to make a call, so it's not really a smartphone watch, it's a very nifty Bluetooth channel.

However if you are fed up with seeing the multitude around you - in street and bus, at work and leisure, every five minutes when they are not asleep - pulling out their mobiles and squinting at them - well that may change a little.

When you wear it, any activity will register as a buzz on the skin, and you can check for some key event with a flick of the wrist, like you just want to know the time. To further the illusion, there is a range of watch faces to choose from.

Released almost simultaneously was Sony's elegant effort, the Smartwatch 2. It's prettier but lacks some important features like voice control. As with the Gear, it relies on its mother phone.

The belle still missing from this ball is an Apple. Everybody is expecting a watch, especially after the underwhelming response to their new phone releases. Maybe they can crack the standalone phone barrier?

Now Steve Jobs - gone almost exactly two years ago - would know how to pull this rabbit out of the hat and make it look like it was his idea in the first place. Because this could herald a whole new marketing category.

Look beyond the square, clunky half-dozen models currently appearing and give them a few years to mature. The Swiss took the quartz crystal watch (they were part of the development process along with the Japanese) and revitalised their ageing watch industry. Swatch has since become the biggest-selling watch in the world.

With open-channel software like Android and a flood of apps that has already started to pour in, smart watches won't be restricted to just a few brands. Perhaps a few years from now we'll see the President having earnest conversations with his Rolex watch, or the glamorous movie stars parading the red carpet with their jewel-encrusted Cartier phone and watch.

Careful management will handle any obsolescence - just as with your computer, the updates can flow in constantly with barely a murmur.

Meanwhile that elegant watch on your wrist will respond to voice commands, write down your memos, take pictures, play pedometer when you jog, monitor your GPS position, provide an instant street directory. All that and phone calls too.

Yesterday Samsung announced the new phones’ release in Australia. The Galaxy Gear will be available in a fortnight at the Samsung Experience store. But be prepared – it’s $369 and you’ll need the Galaxy Note 3, another $999, to operate it.

Australia's world famous furry fashion statement

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday September 12, 2013 

Around the world it's Australia's best known, most recognised fashion brand. Ask the stylish from Los Angeles to Moscow, from Cape Town to Beijing about the home of their favourite footwear and you'll be told "Australia".

Except that the product is not Australian owned, or made, or always using our materials. I'm talking about the boots and shoes from UGG Australia. All that's Australian is the name.

The story is complex and is 50 years old or 2500 years old depending on where you want to start.

The piece of sheepskin sewn into a boot shape is one of mankind's oldest forms of footwear, even found on a Chinese mummy from 500 BC. But it was the surfin' seventies that gave the bogan ugg boot new charm, when they were picked up by surfers to keep their feet warm between rides, on winter days.

Soon they spread to the surfers of California and one day in 1978 an Aussie surfer called Brian Smith set up Ugg Imports to bring the boots into his adopted town of Santa Barbara.

The boots were a hit with the good vibrations crowd and by the mid eighties "Original Ugg Boot UGG Australia" was selling the boots from the ski slopes of Aspen to the night clubs of Manhattan.

They were photographed on famous feet and the celebrity magazines went mad. Popular with actors, actresses and famous-for-being-famous celebrities like Paris Hilton, Kate Moss, Jennifer Aniston, Leonardo DiCaprio and the Hollywood crowd. Then Oprah Winfrey told the world how she could not survive winter without them and sales boomed.

In 1995 Deckers Outdoor Corporation bought the company and has the name registered in 130 nations around the world.

The name UGG has been a lawyers' picnic for years. Deckers has fought a string of companies in America and Europe to keep it trademarked. In most places they have succeeded - except Australia. Here ugg is legally accepted as a generic name, it's the Australian word for a sheepskin boot. And attempts to rule otherwise have failed in the courts.

This is why every market stall and souvenir shop in the country is stuffed with sheepskin boots labelled "UGG Australia", usually followed by a brand name or manufacturer. However if you try to sell those boots overseas, by internet or mail order, you have to make it clear that this is not the "real" Deckers brand.

The problem for Australian consumers is identifying the quality shoe. There are Deckers Uggs, Aussie uggs, Chinese uggs and placky uggs. And on the web page they all look much the same. So if you are buying, make sure you have a trustworthy supplier.

With winter ending here, we prepare to store ours in moth-proof boxes for the summer, but the chilly winds are moving to the northern hemisphere. There the trendy young are hunting out the new season's range and colours to protect their toes from the coming cold.

Did I mention that they're a big business now? Last year their sales were over $1 billion. So as you'd expect, this is the time for a new big advertising campaign for the season.

Like the Nikes and Adidas and other sporty footwear they feature a handsome, famous footballer. But you won't find him at the MCG, this is Tom Brady, quarter back for the New England Patriots and a hero-worshipped three-time winner at the Super Bowl.

He is spearheading big-money moves to push UGG higher into the fashion sphere, last year opening the new Madison Avenue Ugg For Men store. His fashion credentials are well supported by his wife - supermodel Gisele Bundchen. Yes she wears Uggs too.

Saving damsels isn't healthy

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday September 9, 2013

The heroine is overtaken by a fainting spell and falls into the lake, sinking to a watery grave. Suddenly a great splash as the hero, fully clothed, dives in and raises her unconscious body to the surface. It's a key moment in the movie I was watching on DVD at the weekend, and as usual these days it was accompanied by a "making it" documentary that takes you behind the scenes.

The director and his stars remarked how expensive the filming had been. As well as the massive camera crane for the water's-edge shots, they were hit by a long list of health and safety regulations. A couple of weeks in advance they needed laboratory tests of water quality. Four frogmen stood next to the crew in case anyone got into trouble. They had an ambulance on site, with nurse and doctor. The actors wore wetsuits under their costumes, and stunt doubles stood by in case it needed a re-shoot.

My mind drifted back to the Yarra in the 70s and my first solo commercial. We needed a cheap ad for the Toppa Twosome ice cream and could only afford a cameraman, production assistant, two actors and "who's going to direct it?" "You."

The script was basic: couple in a rowing boat, young man falls in, his girlfriend dives after him and pulls him out (these were the days of women's lib), they dry off on the bank, in the sun, eating ice creams. All to the wonderful Smacka Fitzgibbon singing, "Nibble on a Twosome, Toppa Twosome, when you come out with me..." an adaptation of Tiptoe Through the Tulips that Smacka and I wrote on his kitchen table a few nights earlier.

Notice: no ambulance, doctor, nurse, frogmen, stunt doubles or wetsuits. Health and Safety Rules? What for? Ah how the world has changed.

Not that I have anything against making the workplace safer and healthier, far from it, enormous strides have been made. But with the developments a whole process has been added, a machinery that sometimes seems a little... excessive.

Already throughout this election we have seen politicians of all genders and persuasion trying hard to not look like dorks in their hair nets and safety wellies but somehow, try as they might, they do.

There's a fallacy that politicians persuade themselves, that they look more manly in hard hats and orange vests. Nope.

Earlier this year it was discovered that the new health and safety laws had overlooked Australia's overseas super-spooks, ASIS. So it was an offence for our spies to do outside work - like following villains - without their fluoro vests on. Now that's one-up on James Bond's tux.

But for true bureaucratic pettiness you can't beat the Brits. Recent times have seen sack races banned from school sports because children might fall and hurt themselves. Dodgems were forbidden from bumping each other. Remembrance Day poppies had their pins removed - in case someone stuck it into themselves rather than their lapel, presumably.

Again, let me say, it's quite right we have regulations to protect our workplaces. I remember in years past seeing very dangerous machinery - presses, guillotines, power saws and the like - with inadequate protection that would never be allowed today. Quite rightly.

But perhaps we can leave a buffer in there for some common sense. Not like a town in England where after their annual "community day", local workers would bring down the flags and bunting. This was stopped because of health and safety concerns - you wouldn't want someone falling off a ladder. The workers were the local fire brigade.

The agony and the selling lesson

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday August 29, 2013

A few months ago, losing my mobile phone turned into an agonising experience - that became a deep le

sson in selling.

Shopping for a new one, I spent hours on hours questioning the internet, visiting phone stores, talking to salespeople, asking friends, because I wanted to "get it right".

Lots pointed me to an Apple iPhone, but too often their own were patched with sticky tape over the cracked screen or looked scuffed, and I was warned they were fragile. Besides, I liked the sound of the Android system. But the HTC or Samsung felt too big and Blackberry were launching a whole new platform, and I've learned to not be the first in anything new in computing.

Can you see what my problem was? Not a lack of choice - it was having too much choice, making my head spin.

Choose: durability versus ease of use; long battery versus loud music; old faithful Nokia or born-again Blackberry? And of course every brand sported half-a-dozen model numbers.

Then there were the dealers themselves. Telsta or Optus, Vodaphone or Virgin, Dodo or Lyca or Boost? And by the way do you want broadband with that?

In the end I confounded everybody, including myself, with a Motorola Razr. It was small but strong - Gorilla Glass screen, Kevlar case - I liked the idea of a bullet-proof phone. I'd had Motorolas in the past without problems, so it ticked a lot of the boxes.

But revealing to me was the sales process. I felt that all the way from the manufacturers to the dealers to the sales staff, nobody grasped the degree of confusion in customers' minds. The vendors live with, and understand, all the maze of details - phones, systems, plans, pros and cons - so why shouldn't we?

Here's why, in a quote from the guru of marketing, Steve Jobs. The man made billions following this simple philosophy: "People don’t know what they want until you show it to them."

Forget all that you already know, wipe the slate clean and look from the position of the customer. Here I'm not just talking about mobile phones. It might be cars, or fridges, a house or an evening dress. Choice can be an agonising process, and as a good marketer your job is to help the customer handle the pain.

Don't leave them struggling through a jungle of vines and branches, gasping and confused. Find out what the customers is looking for. Take the time to listen closely, ask questions. Get them to picture what they want - giving a little guidance to the process. Don't hurry or push, a good sales assistant is never in too much of a hurry to give you full focus.

Then lead them into your grove, point and say, "This is what you need, isn't it exciting?". If you read them right, they'll say, "Yes!"

Take a lesson from Jobs. He did this again and again with the iMac, iPhone, iPod, iPad - each a basically simple product that said, "I am the answer to what you need".

If one of the many phone salespeople I met had done this with me early in the piece, I would have meekly followed and the process would have been completed in hours, not days.

It's the same when you create any marketing campaign. Think yourself into the position of the customer entering your shop (or office or web site) for the first time. What do you see? What don't you understand? From that initial point of view, you can build a campaign as big as you need.

It's your office: who cleans the cups?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday August 22, 2013.

You're the boss and you walk into the office kitchen and the sink is full of dirty cups. What do you do?

You can't call your secretary to clean things up - a) you don't have a secretary any more, you have an "administrative assistant", b) she or he is far too grand and well-educated to risk their manicured fingernails in a dirty sink.

You can't shout at the nearest employees because in this modern, post-feminist egalitarian world, the wrong words can see you in jail or sued for squillions. So what is the modern kitchen etiquette?

Once there were tea ladies who'd push their trolleys round mid-morning and afternoon bringing beverage and biscuits to your desk and whisking away the dirties. But they have long been sent to their retirement villages.

They were replaced by "café bars", with finger-burning plastic cups that did not need washing. Then people started bringing in their own mugs, but were always too busy to clean up afterwards. So the grot grew.

Nowadays you also get microwaves, stoves, elaborate espresso coffee systems - but still too few people to wash up afterwards. The cleaners blow through like dervishes in the night, changing the garbage bags and waving the back-pack vacuum wand but coffee cups aren't in the job description.

So what's the tea-room etiquette? One idea I spotted in my travels was a kitchen notice that said you were responsible for your own cup - but if there happened to be another in the sink, do that one at the same time. Not all the dirty cups, just yours plus one more. If everyone did that the area would be kept clean, with minimal anger directed at the slobs. (However many notes you pin up, there will always be slobs.)

The other problem area is the bathroom - especially in the smaller offices where men and women share. Inevitably there's the Dragon Lady who marches up and loudly declares, "OK, who used the toilet last and didn't flush properly? I know it was a man because the seat was left up." The men in the room bury their heads behind their computer monitors, muttering "It wasn't me!"

She has a point though. Look back before you exit. And don't be afraid to use the provided brush on stubborn stains, that's what it's there for. Etiquette.

Wash your hands and if you have paper towels, give the hand basin a quick wipe around. Like they used to ask you to do on aeroplanes.

Finally, notice when products are running low, whether it be the tea bags or coffee or toilet paper. Replace the empty ones from the store in the cupboard, or make sure, a few days before, that the cleaners know they have to bring in fresh supplies.

The point is, if you noticed it, take responsibility for it. Don't just ignore it thinking that "someone" or "management" or "admin" will fix it, because the chances are they won't, or they'll take a week to notice.

Where there once were office managers or department administrators, as often as not these jobs have gone with the great middle-management purges and redundancies of recent years, leaving the workers to look after their own space.

You may not be the boss, but you spend a third of your life working in your office or factory, it's as much your home as the one you pay a mortgage on. So take responsibility for it, keep it clean and tidy - own it and observe the etiquette.


ray@ebeatty.com

The hackathon: growing ideas worth millions

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday, 15 August, 2013.
Can winning ideas be pulled out of the air? Can creativity be grown? Well I've got a new word for you to learn: the Hackathon. In the decade since it was coined, the idea has started to take off, big-time.

The word is a combination of hacking, as in computers; and marathon. It's a lot of people working to solve certain computer problems, in teams, for a set period. Sometimes they tackle specific problems. Sun Microsystems invented the name for a conference that worked on applications for their Java program.

The idea spread through north America and Britain. One spawned a company called GroupMe in 2010 that was sold a year later to Skype for $85 million. (See? Suddenly you're interested.) Another created Nitobi, sold to Adobe for a secret sum.

Some run a contest for a weekend, some a week, with several groups competing and judges selecting a winner, usually presenting a prize or a development grant. If you participate, don't expect much sleep - bring your sleeping bag - and be ready to live on pizza and Coke for the duration.

Success is driving the idea into wider circuits, outside the programmer arena. In June this year the City of Palo Alto put on its Civic Hackathon and attracted 5000 participants. They called it, "An event where technology, entrepreneurship and innovation come together to help shape the future of our community." The city’s downtown was transformed into City Camp Palo Alto. Families came to view the latest in robotics, take part in art activities, enjoy food and live music.

Individual companies are looking at hackathons as a way to improve thinking and relationships, and maybe come up with some ground-shaking ideas. All for the price of a few pizzas.

A group called London Green Hackathon ran a weekend last year where they developed programs on "Energy efficiency in buildings","Real time carbon emissions", "Kindle energy dashboard", and the like. The last reprogrammed a Kindle reader to download freely available data from the active power grid, and give you a real-time analysis of energy use nationally, or within an area, or just at your home.

In June Melbourne University participated in GovHack, a 48-hour hackathon mining the vast amount of government-funded data available in the public domain. Over 900 participants hacked away for 48 hours, developing analytical programs that made sense of these databases.

So for example, we have huge quantities of information about transport, biological data, immigration, trade, tourism and more, gathered by governments and organisations over years. Only a small amount of this data is used, we could learn so much more if it was examined from different angles.

This is called "data mining" - digging fresh understanding out of these mountains of raw information. This is what they worked on in the hackathon, designing programs that found new answers from the data, by asking the right questions.

This weekend will see Melbourne's first Create 32 Hackathon, hosted by digital shop Visual Jazz Isobar. The focus will be on near field communications (NFC) applications. This is the new data transfer link you get when two mobile phones touch each other, for example. A fast-growing field itself (another you have to get your head around).

But groups with other interests can come along and participate. VJI Managing Director, Konrad Spilva, said: "These events allow brands to reach out to a different market and community to solve a business problem."

It will be held at King Street's York Butter Factory building on Saturday and Sunday, with a prize of $12,000. There may still be room, so if you're interested chase them up.

ray@ebeatty.com

Cars need their nourishing slice of pie

Melbourne Herald Sun, August 8, 2013.

"Guten tag", "guten nacht". Yes it's "g'day" and "g'night" from our friends at Opel. In less than a year the German brand made its debut into Australia with a modest advertising splash promoting a range of five models. But by the end of last week, they took their leave.

It seems the Australian public did not respond to the cars in terms of sales - just 1530 cars sold between 20 dealerships. They suffered a classic Australian marketing problem - too much competition in too small a market.

Our appetite for cars is immense - just last month Australians bought 88,000 cars. But we attract all the manufacturers from around the world. The British and Europeans, the Americans, Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, even Brazilians. Not to forget the Australians. Even the record highs in the dollar exchange rate could not stem the inflow.

But in the end, each vendor's slice of the pie left others severely undernourished. Such was Opel. Just a few months earlier, Hyundai Australia had dropped its i45 sedan, and models quietly slip off the pages of dealers' catalogues around the industry.

Much noisier is the departure of a manufacturer. We have too few of those. Ford has announced the longest farewell since Melba, telegraphing its departure in late 2016. But for all concerned it's better than a midnight flit and a note for the milkman.

Mike Devereux at Holden has also been making warning noises, about the consequences of a decline of government support. Industry Minister Kim Carr has come waving $200 million at them on top of current subsidies, but at the same time $800 million in fringe benefit tax breaks is being pulled out from under.

With the election now in swing, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is talking tough, ready to slash the $500 million in existing industry subsidies, presumably also pocketing Senator Carr's $200 million - but leaving the tax breaks in place.

Six of one, half a dozen of the other, this shell game has been played in Australia since before you were born.

Of course, through much of last century the subsidies were not so obvious as they were provided by high tariff walls. A mixture of import taxes, incentives and barriers encouraged motor manufacturers to make or assemble cars here. It was a very cosy, if at times confusing, relationship. And it made cars in Australia extremely expensive.

But it was an industry. Ford Australia had five plants. Australian Motor Industries had Standard Motor Company and Mercedes Benz, Rambler, and Fiat tractors. BMC had Austin and Morris. There were Chrysler, Peugot, International Harvester, Leyland, Renault, Rootes, Pressed Metal Corporation - most of the Land Rover was made and assembled here. Volkswagen, Willys Motors, White Trucks - the list goes on. Car and truck making on an industrial scale.

No doubt some of you, or your mums or dads, worked for one of the names mentioned here. At some time, the whole country was involved.

Of course, General Motors is still manufacturing, still demanding subsidies, as is Toyota. Will they still be doing so at the end of the decade? A lot of decisions will be made, a lot of lobbying - and no political party is immune.

Car makers were huge factories that built cities around them - think of Detroit, Dagenham, Wolfsburg, Turin, Geelong. These days they have had to be nimbler, more strategic.

So it is with Opel. Try it in a market, measure the sales, pull out if the results don't come in. If you were one of the Opel buyers, you're safe. General Motors promises that service and guarantees will be met through Holden.

ray@ebeatty.com

Who's the Richest In the World?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday August 1, 2013

I'm always fascinated by these "Richest Person in the World" lists. Let's face it, they are pretty meaningless - if someone has $1 billion or $40 billion, it does not make much difference from my perspective - or yours either, I imagine. It's still a hell of a lot more than we will ever possess.

But on the other side of the coin, imagine losing it - like Eike Batista, who lost $33 billion over the last year. Yup, this Brazilian entrepreneur was pushing towards the world's top last year, now he's down to 100 on the Forbes Richest 100 list.

Of course it's all figures in a computer, just how much anybody actually owns. Look at a character I've featured before, Ingvar Kamprad (add an E and an A to those initials and you'll know who I mean). He passed from the top of the list to the - well - lower middle. Then he was worth $42 billion and is now a mere $3.3 billion. Not that the money has gone - it is now tied up in complex trust arrangements in Luxembourg and legally not his, though I'm sure they'd provide him a room if he ever needed it.

These rich do enjoy giving their money away - and seem to end up with more than they started with. Take Bill Gates, the world's most generous philanthropist. His world-girdling Bill Gates Foundation has now given out more than $28 billion, yet Forbes reports him as the world's second-richest person at $67 billion. So you can't even throw it away.

By the way I'm quoting US dollars here because with such stellar figures, a few cents in the exchange rate won't really matter to you or me.

The richest man once again is a Mexican, Carlos Slim Helu. At a net worth of around $73 billion he has held top spot for three years and his communications empire, based in Latin America, is rapidly expanding into Europe and the United States, so expect to be hearing more of him.

In retail, do you make money out of lots of low-cost sales, or less high-cost items? Well looking at the rich list, both are true. Number three is Amancio Ortega, the Spanish grandee of Zara. His fashionable, timely, but affordable stock has generated phenomenal sales around the world. From New York to Tokyo, Sao Paolo to Sydney, it seems every smartly-dressed woman has contributed to Ortega's billions, even some well-known royals.

But the higher-priced items can also make you rich. Liliane Bettencourt stared as an apprentice mixing perfumes in her father's factory at the age of 15; now at 91 she ranks as richest woman in the world, with some $30 billion.

Her empire, L'Oreal, is the biggest cosmetics company in the world and controls brands like Yves Saint Laurent, Armani, Lancome, The Body Shop, Ralph Lauren - far from the cheap end of the market.

The truly luxurious brands also come from France. Bernard Arnault is boss of LVMH, which you have to roll out with a rich French accent: Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy. There is a little dispute about whether his wealth is $30 or $40 billion - no-one is readily offering a ledger for outside scrutiny.

The richest person in Asia is Li Ka-shing of Hong Kong. Worth $31 billion, he is the world's largest operator of container terminals.

Americans round off the list - oil and engineering brothers Charles and David Koch of Kansas; Larry Ellison of Oracle; and of course Warren Buffett, the magician who can seem to make any upward or downward stockmarket trend create him ever more billions.

ray@ebeatty.com

Raising the Dead to Make a Pitch

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday July 25,2013

In his latest TV commercial Bruce Lee looks you intently in the eyes and advises "Follow your instincts, it's the most honest path." He dips his hand into a pool of water and lets it trickle through his fingers, "Be water, my friend".

This philosophy might be a little startling - after all the 90 second ad is promoting Johnny Walker Black Whisky to a Chinese audience, and is spoken by a renown teetotaller. Even more startling for a piece shot a few months ago, Lee has been dead for 40 years.

No, this example of raising the dead is done through the magic of computer graphics - with such skill and precision that you will have to look at it a couple of times to work out that it is in fact not real.

It took Joseph Kahn nearly a year to make and he is very proud of it. Which is really saying something - Kahn has made music videos for all the greats: Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Christina Aguleira, Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson and almost every star of that magnitude.

His key piece of practice in CGI was the video for Kylie's All the Lovers. You know, the one with hoards of near-naked couples making love in the middle of New York and ending in orgy pyramid nearly as high as the surrounding skyscrapers. He's obviously not a man for simple solutions.

But computer graphics are going to bring a lot more spokespeople back to life. In Britain a superb commercial for Galaxy chocolate features Audrey Hepburn. Once again painted in CGI, this is the young, beautiful, sparkling Hepburn of Roman Holiday, as heart-melting as she was in life. Set to the music of Moon River, just in case you neglected to sob.

The animation was a long, hard process for the creative team and not surprisingly the most difficult part was getting those eyes right. But they do, which diffuses some of the anger at her ghost being brought back. It was done, incidentally, with the permission and support of her son.

Perhaps thinking about the range of colourless celebrities featuring in current boring ads, it's not surprising that directors would search back in time for interesting personalities.

For last year's J'Adore perfume campaign, Dior enlisted four of them, one living, three dead. Charlize Theron needed every ounce of her beauty and presence to match up against her co-stars: Grace Kelly, Marlene Dietrich and Marilyn Monroe. Just to add to the glitter, this over-the-top French commercial was shot in the Hall of Mirrors, in the Palace of Versailles.

But the process doesn't always work. When an American agency resurrected popcorn king Orville Redenbacher, who had spent a lifetime pitching his wares, it cost a fortune in CGI. Except... they didn't pull it off, and his attempted jollity was plain scary. It earned him the title: "Orville Deadenbacher - The Popcorn Zombie."

In fact, presenters can be a poor way to advertise your product, unless you have the right match between the speaker and what he or she is selling. Digging up a ghost adds some novelty value to the pitch, but that doesn't last long.

What you really need is an outstanding product, and a compelling reason to buy, within a clever commercial. Then whether you use a famous person or not is a factor - but it does not overwhelm the message. In fact, surveys have shown that celebrity endorsement is unimportant in whether the ad reached the viewer or not.

As researchers Ace Metrix observed in one report, "Creative components—not celebrity endorsements—drive positive responses from viewers and resonate across demographics."

ray@ebeatty.com

It's like everybody wants a baby

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday July 18, 2013
Once more the world is thinking babywards, as the prospect of a future king (or queen) rises before us. As I write the royal baby is knocking at the gates, by the time you read this the world will have its answers. Or else a lot of gamblers will have lost a lot of money because the favourite date was yesterday, July 17.

Yes, everything is bettable - the date, the sex, the name. But this is just the tip of an industry that is particularly flourishing at the moment.

Many women are hearing the alarm of their biological clock and responding to the call they may have put off throughout their twenties. A stroll through Chapel St, Toorak Rd or Chadstone reveals the number of well-heeled older mothers, who are pausing their careers to put a few years into pushing elaborate baby rigs to some very expensive baby shops.

The researchers at IBISWorld have been adding up the cost of babies, individually and in total. You won't be surprised to know it's not cheap, General Manager Karen Dobie calculated $3037 per child. Being as so many of these mothers may be returning to work after parental leave, you more than double the cost when you add childcare, to $7098 annually.

This childcare sector amounts to $6.6 billion, shelled out by working parents. No wonder all political parties have targeted it as an important election issue. Too many unhappy voters see their second income go straight out in child minding fees.

Even the word "second" is debatable in these times of single mothers, and fathers, separations and divorces, same-sex parents, all struggling to meet the bills. Without even being faced, yet, by the costs to come at them once school education starts.

Not of course that this is a problem for William and Kate, nor for those yummy mummies in their designer track suits. They don't have to be royal for their baby to command luxurious treatment.

This year Australians will be spending big for the nursery furniture and toys, nappies and clothes - but also feeding their babies a regal selection of organic foods, dietary specialties, the finest imported foods. Adding up to a considerable $11.3 billion industry, grown 15 per cent in the past five years.

Nutritious and healthy food ranks high for this well-educated segment. IBISWorld have identified a surge in premium baby food. Says Ms Dobie: "Mothers are breastfeeding for shorter periods due to their busy schedules and lifestyle pressures."

In other words, get back to work, where the money is, but ensure the baby's well-being by giving it expensive care and healthy food. "This is driving sales in alternatives, organic infant formula, milk-free and gluten-free ranges", Ms Dobie said.

The other beneficiary of these older mummies is the fertility industry. The brilliance of our researchers and surgeons has attracted a prosperous flow of patients both local and from overseas, to some of the best IVF clinics in the world.

As many as one in six couples suffer fertility problems and seek medical help, with services reaching $550 million a year - a 110 per cent increase from five years ago. Last year there were 40,000 IVF cycles performed, delivering 12,200 babies. Among women aged 40-44, 15.1 births per thousand are IFV assisted.

So far royal babies have made their way into the world without external prompting, as will Princess Kate's.

Though it's a fair bet that she will not go on to emulate her great- great- great- great- great grandmother-in-law, Victoria. On top of ruling the Empire, she delivered nine times.

ray@ebeatty.com

When the electorate bought Kevin '07, they refused to accept a substitute

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday July 11, 2013 

It's the story of the year, I can't ignore it because it is classic marketing and the biggest purchasing decision any of us will make this year. What is the marketing campaign strategy  behind the coming Federal Election?

No I'm not being cute when I call it marketing. There is a product, up against an alternative purchase; the items have been carefully crafted by hundreds of experts, every feature and offer is extensively researched. Then there are huge investments made into the promotion of the products, their presentation and distribution. And in every corner are planning teams of the very best ad-folk in the country.

You are being sold a political party through marketing just as thorough and scientific as sells your breakfast cereals or a new motor car. More so, in fact. Every few days a new factor is examined, a new poll unveiled.

So what has been happening over the past six years, why is there so much opinion and agitation about a topic that is not usually at the top of Australians' conversation list?

It was the fault of the Kevin '07 campaign. This was a very well produced and executed blitzkrieg that propelled Kevin Rudd's smiling image into every home in the country. You weren't voting for a party, you were voting for a man. And by the time polling day had arrived, his statements had become writ.

Only they weren't. The GFC clobbered the economy, threatening recession and collapse. Panicky measures were set in train and the Murphy principle came into its own. Things went wrong, rosy promises had to be scrapped. It looked like Kevin '07 was a dud and the electorate was disappointed.

Ruling factions in the ALP panicked at the falling opinions. Rudd was an undiplomatic diplomat toward his fellow members and they had no patience to re-educate him, so he was tumbled. Julia Gillard won the party room - but not the electorate.

They had bought Kevin '07. They were robbed and were angry. Fanned on by a loudly hissing and booing Opposition, they demanded that they be given back the product they had bought.

We only have to cast our minds back a couple of weeks to recollect the anger in the high street, office, workshop. I believe Gillard is one of the most intelligent women in the country, but this had nothing to do with smarts, it was pure emotion - 'We wuz robbed!'

In the end even the hard men of Labor could not withstand the battering. They crumbled and fled the party. Caucus restored Rudd - and listen, can you believe the calm? It won't last long of course, but the silence is deafening.

I've been out talking to people in the high street over the past weekend and suddenly they're not mad any more. It's almost as if the first half of this year is already being forgotten.

Now we have a level playing field again, the two main parties battling the major issues with loud noises from the cross benches. Once more the parties are up on the market shelf, offering their alternatives to the customers. This time, the selling is not going to be as emotional or irrational, and perhaps people will talk to each other and listen in turn.

Then we can make a sound marketing decision, having been sensibly thought through. Which product are you going to pick off the shelf, and will you be happy with your choice? Remember that if you get it wrong, you can't take it back for three years.

ray@ebeatty.com

In Japanese business, the samurais rule

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday July 4, 2013
A career in Australian advertising inevitably means, at some stage, working for a Japanese corporation. Be it autos, electronics, machinery, watches, graphics, audio - they have created themselves as the technical miracle of the last half-century.

But something that long puzzled me has just been revealed. Let me tell you a story.

Our huge Japanese client called us into a meeting to show their latest product. A wonderfully designed machine that the engineers were proud of.

"Lovely. Who is going to use it?" we asked.
"Everyone," was the reply.
"No," we persisted, "what was the marketing reason for this product, what do you see as its niche?"
"Oh that's what you're here for. Here's the budget allocation and all the technical specifications..."

The engineers were excited by the product, the national offices around the world were allocated quotas, and in each country we had to go out and sell them. What is the large hole in this picture?

Yes, marketing. Why does the public want it? What market opportunity does it fill? Who will use it? What is the competition? How realistic is the pricing?

But no, the marketing that you need to do before you so much as draw a plan, was still not thought through as the boxes left the factory.

A recent article by Japanese specialist Robert E. Peterson of Wickaboag Consultants, Tokyo, who has advised Japanese companies for 31 years, explained a lot to me.

As I had personally observed, many high-level executives - particularly those in Japan head office - did not understand marketing. Even now, it is not a core part of their business education. The job of marketing executive is often filled by younger executives rotating through the company for experience, rather than being a key management post in the company.

So there is little opportunity for an executive core with developed skills, knowledge and experience based on a collective memory of past experiences.

Peterson introduced me to the Japanese business caste system of shinokosho. A large Japanese manufacturing corporation is run like a fortified empire of old. They may not stride around with a katana sword strapped on their backs any more, but the corporation is commanded by the highest social group, the samurai.

These are the engineers, and if you've ever worked with a Japanese company you will immediately recognise the deferential way these lords are treated. Second come the farming peasants, who grow the food. Third, the artisans and craftsmen. These fulfill the jobs of manufacturers, process workers, drivers, clerks - all the essential jobs in the middle.

At the fourth, bottom level, are the merchants. In Confucian terms they have the lowest moral purity as they produce nothing but only sell the products to make money. And guess what - that's where the marketers are. With baskets hanging off their bamboo yokes, metaphorically speaking.

Peterson claims that Japan's university education in marketing is poor, and the corporations do not have well-provisioned training programs for their recruits.

But meanwhile Japan has been suffering, financially and socially. As its population ages, the public's willingness to embrace a constant flow of new products diminishes. Reaching outside of Japan has become an imperative for the nation's future prosperity.

They have to seek new markets out in the huge growing world. We all know the skill they have to create wonderful products. But before they can be invented, manufactured and sold to eager customers, companies have to create a need for these products. The customers have to feel a desire for them and a willingness to pay. And that is generated through marketing.

ray@ebeatty.com

To bag your Lion, you need a brave client

Melbourne Herald Sun, June 27, 2013
The champagne corks have been popping in St Kilda Road this week as the victorious news has rolled in from the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. If this were the Olympics they'd be organising the tickertape parade.

The hit of the festival was a commercial we first saw last year: Metro Transport's "Dumb way to die" animated jingle. This jolly ditty sings about decapitation, setting fire to your hair, being eaten by grizzly bears and piranhas, all to tell you lessons - obviously not known to many of our citizens - that it's pretty dozy to stand near the train track with your ear plugs in.

McCann Melbourne not only won the Grand Prix for Best Film but another four prix for PR, Direct, Radio and Integrated. An unprecedented five lions in the bag. This news has been broadcast wide now, but what caught my eye is that of the dozen gold lion and super lion awards, there was hardly any display of the "product", in the sense of a physical pack shot, in any of them.

Clemenger BBDO's Carlton Draught commercial - a very funny cops and robbers chase through the streets of Melbourne - displays the beers in every hand, as the whole cast runs, each holding a full glass of beer reverentially unspilled. But you barely glimpse the logo.

Metro Trains does not show off its gleaming trains or stations.

Dove has a wonderful commercial of women hiding their faces from candid home video shots, with the killer tag: "When did you stop thinking you're beautiful?" But no bar of soap on the bathroom sink.

Smart Car shows off what a rotten car it is for offroad driving, bogging on muddy tracks and drowning in streams. But how it comes into its own when you need to park in the city.

The point is that these advertisements worked brilliantly well, but they won because they were the very few that took risks.

I've been very critical of much of current advertising, finding it so dull and boring. And I ask, is it the clients' fault?

"Marketing teams are constantly asked to do more with less, that makes them risk averse," said Adrian Mills. He's Account Director for Metro at McCanns, so carries the duty of bringing the creatives' ideas and the client's budgets onto common ground.

Great ideas don't have to be expensive. Neither the Metro animation nor the Dove candid shots needed big budgets. But they do need strength and intelligence both from the agency and from the client. "There's a lot to be said for experienced heads in a room," said Mills. And he tipped his hat to a former rival, "Someone like Russell Howcroft knows how to work a room."

As you work with a client you develop trust in each other's teams and the good work starts to flow more easily.

One problem in recent years has been the shrinking of middle management and the way large companies move their people around so quickly.

Where once a marketing manager might have been in power for ten years, these days he is more likely to be moved on after three. With no time to develop experience, trust, and a success list.

Oh, and he has to learn the intricacies of marketing through Google and Facebook and Twitter and peer to peer and international mail order, as well as conventional TV and print. All with shrinking budgets.

Victories like Cannes show that there is no shortage of talent here. And as Mills said, "Success like this creates an appetite to be more adventurous." I hope he's right.

Flying Pigs and Supermarkets

Melbourne Herald Sun, June 20, 2013
How do you shop - are you a bulldozer driver or a hunter and gatherer? The 'dozer lowers her scoop, throws the tracks into high gear and ploughs through the supermarket in minimum time. When she says (it's usually a she) "I'm out shopping, be back in an hour," she means it. Back she comes with half a dozen stuffed bags hanging off each hand.

Me, I'm a hunter. This is my weekly adventure. I have favourite butchers, greengrocers, delicatessens, all down the shopping strip. I love the diversity that comes from these little shops, even if they do cost - occasionally, not always - a bit more than the supermarket.

Of course more than half the shop is still done in the supermarket, but this can be a slower hunt. You see I make the shop difficult because if I can possibly avoid it, I will not buy the store's own-brand merchandise.

This can be difficult because the chains are pushing more and more of their own products onto the shelf. It used to be the vegetables and the meats that were anonymous. Then milk and bread at "lost leader" pricing. Then jams, pickles, cereals, dog food and ice cream.

Currently Coles and Woolworths are being investigated by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for screwing down the prices of their suppliers. I believe it's more serious than this. In a mindless contest to own more market, they are destroying the brands we have known all our lives. And that many of us have depended on for work.

Right now the two biggies hold a 70 per cent grocery market-share between them. They wholesale, distribute, retail, and even sell the transport fuel. Once they have taken over most of the manufacturing as well, Australia will be a two-shop stop.

But sometimes they can trip over themselves, when they get so big the right foot doesn't know where the left foot's going.

Coles, no doubt wishing to give itself the appearance of a social conscience, gave support to Animals Australia's "Make it Possible" flying piglet campaign.

This highly emotional, professional advertising uses Babe-style animation to make piglets and battery hens sing, in a commercial which has drawn huge internet viewing and TV exposure. Coles put the flying piglet shopping bags on sale in 500 national supermarkets.

Only problem: Coles is also a farmer and food manufacturer (owned by Wesfarmers, remember). A campaign against factory farming of pigs, chickens and eggs involved shooting against its own side. And into its own foot.

The National Farmers Federation was furious, its leaders thundered at Coles management and its members threatened to boycott the stores. Where to turn?

Animals Australia came to Coles' aid and removed the bags. But the very action has brought a blaze of publicity to the campaign, spotlighted the factory farming problems, and has generated donations to pay for the singing commercial's return to TV.

Coles now has another misadventure. For some months Jeff Kennett has been claiming Coles' fresh bread (and for that matter Woolworths' and IGA's) is in fact frozen dough bunged into the oven - some of it brought all the way from Ireland.

ACCC chairman Rod Sim has now taken Coles to the Federal Court over its ''baked today, sold today'' claims. He calls its advertising and logos ''false, misleading and deceptive'', pointing to the independent bakeries that are often close to the supermarkets. ''That is putting those bread shops at a disadvantage, if they are themselves making their bread from scratch.''

When you get too big, it can be hard to spot the Irish dough and flying pigs.

ray@ebeatty.com

Zombie fags rise from the dead

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday June 13, 2013


  There has been a fashion flurry of vampires and werewolves in the popular media in recent times. But what I had not realised is that quietly, but rapidly, our marketing world has been invaded by a crowd of glowing zombies.
  Now, with announcements by some of the world's biggest companies, these zombies may be about to burst back onto our advertising screens. Yes, it's amazing. The cigarette is alive and smoking and back from the dead.

  Smoking seemed to have the stake through its heart over the past three decades. Not dead but ever in decline as its dwindling slaves huddled in lanes and doorways, holding packs with pictures of grotesque diseases. Meanwhile "Big Tobacco" was cut down by million-dollar lawsuits around the world. How could even the biggest businesses survive such attacks?
  But, particularly in the past year, tobacco companies have started to look very seriously at the once-gimmicky "electronic cigarettes". Originally produced by small start-up companies as smoking substitutes - like patches and chewing gum - a growing number of smokers began to transfer their addiction.
  In the United States, Lorillard bought the biggest electronic cigarette company, BluCigs, for some $135 million in 2012. They now claim 40 per cent of the US e-cigarette market.
  In Britain, Imperial Tobacco is the world's fourth-largest tobacco baron. Its chief executive, Alison Cooper, also threw its hat in the ring, stating in February that “We’re looking at opportunities and we’re actively developing in that area at the moment”.
  British American Tobacco established a company called Nicoventures in 2011 to research e-cigarettes, while R.J. Reynolds, the second-largest tobacco company in the US, launched its own brand, Vuse, a “digital vapour cigarette.”
  Next month it will begin marketing in Colorado - the first state in a planned national roll-out. This is where the advertising comes back, in print, TV and direct mail. Being Colorado, will they put a cowboy on a horse, with a cigarette in his mouth? Sounds familiar.

  There are plenty of people, especially amongst the developers and manufacturers, hailing e-cigarettes as a way to manage the nicotine habit without the dangerous tar and carcinogens. Advocates claim that it tastes and gives all the satisfaction of a cigarette without the downside.
  The cigarette itself is roughly 60 per cent battery, a small container of nicotine or other liquid, a heated atomiser pump. All within a cigarette-sized tube. Put it to your lips and draw: the liquid is vaporised and heated, forms a smoky mist which you suck in and then blow out in a plume just like Bette Davis used to do.
  Some doctors and researchers believe it is safe - certainly considerably safer than normal cigarettes. The TGA and AMA are not so sure.

  The Australian Government is not about to give the green light until their therapeutic goods credentials have been established, and that has not happened yet.
  However, perhaps if you use them not to stop smoking, but as a different way to smoke with no medical intention, does that make them permissible? While the regulators and health authorities ponder the question, the retailers are hopping in quick.
  The tobacco chain Cignall reports doing brisk business with a range of e-cigarettes. A number of different starter kits are available, they price around $10 per unit - which gives you the equivalent of 40 cigarettes.
  Supporters claim to have reduced their smoking bills to a quarter of what they paid, and with no complaints from spouses or co-workers about ash, smell and soggy butts.
  Will cigarettes return in their plastic disguise? Well it's not easy to keep a zombie dead.
ray@ebeatty.com

When I ask for help they laugh at me

Melbourne Herald Sun, June 6, 2013

There are some programs on my computer that if I ever have to call the publisher for support, I get greeted by disbelieving laughter.

This, I can smile back and live with. The real problem is finding someone in the organisation who has ever used - let alone fixed - the programs. You see, they are over 20 years old. Nearly as old as half their staff.

The prime example is Tracker, invented in Melbourne back in the 80s. I handled their advertising for a few years. To write about it I had to use it, and soon became addicted. This continued several years into their Tracker II release.

It's a contacts manager designed to look like a 200 x 150mm index card. There are places for all the names, addresses, contact details, as you'd expect, and an unlimited notes function where you can write in every discussion and meeting you have ever had with the person.

So, yes, it's just like any other contact system. Except that it is so simple and robust that it never lets you down, it just keeps going and growing. Where I've needed support is when the operating system changes and I need to find a programmer who can fit Tracker II into the newest Windows.

Now I'm not some doddering novice. I've tested lots of contact managers, even written reviews on them. It's just that Tracker is like a favourite pair of carpet slippers, moulded to your feet by time. I don't have to learn anything, I don't have to think, and in its depths are long-forgotten conversations I had twenty years ago. One click and I can relive them again.

Sometimes I'll come across someone I haven't seen for years. "Do you remember that product range we were going to promote in '96?" He'll be amazed at the clarity of my memory. If I'm really trying to impress, I won't mention that I've just scanned the notes of our dealings way back then.

The simple little card index I have, has long gone from the marketplace. Vital Software is still a successful Australian company but Contact Tracker is now a leading customer relationship manager for the world-wide automotive industry with most of its business in the US, Europe, China and Japan. Which explains why it's so difficult finding someone who remembers the original.

It's the same story with my other old favourite. Isys was also created in Melbourne. When you install it into a computer it scans all the files in all the memories and then keeps them up to date as new data comes in.

If you ever lose a file or forget a file name, enter into Isys a couple of words you can remember were in the document and instantly it will find that letter for you, however obscurely you or someone else may have placed it.

When it first came out it was unparalleled in its speed and versatility. Others thought so too, like the US Drug Enforcement Administration, Britain's Prison Service, universities through North America and Europe.

Once again success took it far from its home and now it is part of Perceptive Software, in Kansas. The dinky little home computer version has long been forgotten as it conquered vast networks - and if I ask for help, I hear sniggers of disbelief on the long-distance phone. But hey, it's a great program and still works brilliantly, why toss it aside for a jazzy successor I don't need?

One thing this reminds us of, though - Kylie, Barry and Nicole aren't the only great Aussies that conquered the world stage.

Are the experts lying about climate and vaccinations?

Melbourne Herald Sun, May 30, 2013
Is it just Australians who resist the word of "experts" and reject the facts presented to them by authorities? But come to think of it I've seen it in America, in Europe, in Britain - "Lies, lies," they cry, "they're trying to trick us."

This hit me recently, over a beer with male friends. The topic of global warming came up and to my surprise, a majority called it an invention.

"But the CSIRO has warned us" - I started to explain but was interrupted: "Ah but they're all scientists, aren't they?"
"Who else would you ask?"
"They're just trying to protect their research grants!" There was general agreement around the table.

Later, I saw a report in The Guardian, UK, that a peer review of 12,000 scientific papers found 97 per cent agreed global climate change was caused by human action. But I doubt even this would change their minds. They'll tell me only three per cent know what they are talking about.

When I speak to women, I find more rejection of experts - this time, the doctors. A campaign against vaccination has been running for some years. A particularly "scientific" report blamed infant vaccination for rates of autism, causing a sharp decline in coverage for newborns and infants. The research was proved false and the author de-registered, but the tale lives on. Somehow the dangers of vaccination are seen as greater than the diseases which once ravaged our babies.

Now we have a situation where whooping cough epidemics are spreading in parts of the world where it was almost eradicated. Washington State saw cases increase by 1300 per cent, the highest in 70 years.

In parts of Wales authorities have had to rush in immunisation programs because of an outbreak of a measles epidemic. Yet in some areas parents were still dragging their feet even as they heard the warnings.

Here in Australia there is the same problem, with large numbers of children not getting their two-month whooping cough vaccine, nor the measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox at 18 months. Warnings have gone out including the current vaccination ads on posters and TV. But the response has been slow, particularly in the wealthier, better-educated suburbs.

Ironic? Well I blame the web. When you search for data on these topics, one site looks much like another. They all boast authoritative "scientists", they all claim the latest research. The only way to identify the genuine is that they have more hesitation and less certainty. The charlatan is totally positive and totally convincing.

The web is such a wonderful magic pudding. All knowledge and information is within reach of your fingertips. But you can't be lazy with it. You have to explore thoroughly, find the 97 per cent, don't be seduced by the three per cent, even if it would be the much more comfortable position to take.

Here's an incentive: If you do the research and get a clear view of the future, you can plan your business around it.

What's the world going to do to solve its energy problems on a hotter planet? What products will be most needed? Where will we get energy that's cleaner? What sort of industries will Australia have when we no longer make cars? How can you get the most benefit out of an instantly-connected broadband network?

These aren't problems, they are opportunities. Already there are smart business people getting rich coming up with answers.

But you have to brush past the bar-room fantasies and focus on reality. Maybe even listen to what the experts are telling you. That's where the future is.

ray@ebeatty.com

A Vision Of The Future Or Something to send you mad?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday May 23, 2013
Your latest nudge towards insanity has just arrived, should you care to take it, and is already generating its waves of followers and developers. I watch these things with a mixture of excitement, curiosity, and denial, but no amount of closed eyes and head in sand will make this one go away.

This latest innovation is Google Glass. Basically it shrinks a tiny internet screen and mounts it on the corner a spectacle lens, so you can wear it all the time. Now you need never be without your computer in front of your eyes. Any breaking news, or tweets, or funny YouTube cats, can be immediately transmitted to you whatever you might be doing, wherever you might be.

Google Glass is a micro computer that you wear like spectacles. It has wi-fi, Bluetooth to your mobile phone, takes photos and videos, and transmits them through apps developed by CNN.

Yes, all the serious players are there - The New York Times, Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter are in, and through Elle you can get the latest fashion advice.

There's useful stuff like Google Maps, so as you drive your friends and partners around you can pretend you really do know where the destination is, even as you are guided by your specs.

Google are trying to differentiate this service from normal social media. At the Google I/O Developers Conference two weeks ago in San Francisco, scores of code cutters came to compare notes and wear their dinky little Glass specs. Like mobiles, before long you can expect the apps to come flooding in for any task you could mention. Google provides the developers with the app building kit, encouraging them to create lots of content and make the technology popular.

Already, Elle offers you delights like horoscopes, and a chance to see Suri Cruise and her fashionista wardrobe. Seven years old and already a celebrity supermodel. Tom and Katie must be thrilled that their daughter is the subject of a blog that attracts 100,000 views a month.

Right now all the stuff I'm describing is still in a developmental stage, with Google Glasses distributed to developers who pay $1500 for their Glass Development Kit. Nevertheless there seem to be thousands of them already out there. Certainly the conference was filled with geeks wearing the one-eyed contraptions.

And knowing the speed of the computer industry, it can only be a matter of months before they start getting into eager hands. The more optimistic might put them on Santa's list.

The one thing you are mercifully spared from is advertising. Google has set a firm "no ads" ruling into its developers' agreement. Applications must also be free to download. So at the moment it is very much a plaything.

Of course once the user base has built up, expect to see the birth of a new medium.

If you check out some of the YouTube snippets already playing, you'll see how every aspect of life and fun - from hang gliding to trapeze flying, from big dippers to birthday parties - are captured by the camera sitting on the face.

One of the I/O developers was proudly showing off a hack he has developed that takes a photo when you wink. And you don't have to wear cumbersome headphones either, to receive calls from your mobile phone. The spectacles' arms transmit sound through the bones of your skull direct to your hearing.

One internet reader commented: "OMG is anyone else disturbed by this? I think I'll just wait for Release 2.0 where Google will have direct access to my ocular nerves and brain." It's getting that way, isn't it?

ray@ebeatty.com