To get rich, take a loser and turn it around

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday February 6, 2014

The fastest way to get rich is by finding a total bargain company - and then turning it around. It can be done, it has been done. But it needs nerves of steel.

Like Scottish septuagenarian Ann Gloag. Busy with her charity work she happened to find a great buy: an airport, for £1. Bit of a change from the usual knitted tea cosies and dog-eared paperbacks.

Well, to come clean, Mrs Gloag is founder and director of UK's Stagecoach transport company, and owner of two Scottish castles.

Manston Airport in Kent has been making losses for years and she has recently acquired it for £1, declaring that it will be brought up to great success and profits.

In 1980 her career was as a nursing sister, and you know how strong-willed these nurses can be when they put their mind to it. Probably dealing with doctors and matrons is good training for dealing with aviation bureaucrats.

Turning companies around is never an easy task and even the biggest players throw down their racket and walk off the court. Like Google, which bought Motorola two years ago for $12.5 billion.

It seemed like a good fit, Motorola was successfully integrated into the Android family - but these giants aren't as nimble on their feet, in highly competitive markets like smartphones.

In the end it just got too hard and this week they sold out for $3 billion, to Chinese computer company Lenovo. Maybe they should have hired in a Scottish grandmother to do the job.

There are plenty of other bargains you could chance your hand on. Like the Big Day Out festival. Strong rumours say the events have had half their expected audiences and losses could be from $8m to $15m. Now, if you made Texas franchise owners C3 an offer, they might be happy to take it and hurry on home.

Perhaps you'd rather deal with food? The story is that Thailand, with all its institutions in a tangle, has an urgent need for revenue. Supposedly the government is offering its rice stocks at slash sale prices for cash in hand. Of course then you have to work out how to get it from the hands of the farmers, soldiers and police and into your ship. Sounds too hard to me.

Well then, how about you get healthy? Each year the Turnaround Management Association votes for Australia's most successful company turnaround. For 2013 it selected Fitness First, the chain of fitness centres that operates throughout Australia, as part of an international network. In fact it's the biggest health club in the world.

But it had lost its fitness and tone. In fact it had debts of over a billion dollars. Turnaround experts, 333 Management, were brought in for urgent repairs. Unprofitable franchises were let go, gymnasium rental contracts were renegotiated, management and staff were reviewed and reduced.

In the end, TMA judges assessed a buffed and toned Fitness First as working its way back to profitability, and pinned on the medal.

If you're as smart as Steve Jobs you can take an ailing brand, breathe new life into it, turn it around and make billions. Unfortunately, most of us aren't, as Warren Buffet pointed out:

"Both our operating and investment experience cause us to conclude that “turnarounds” seldom turn," he warns, "and that the same energies and talent are much better employed in a good business purchased at a fair price than in a poor business purchased at a bargain price." Now there's someone who knows.

Why would a company need an advertising agency?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday January 30, 2014
Do companies still need advertising agencies? Especially the big corporations, which these days control most of the food we buy in a packet, the supermarkets we shop in, the cars and petrol - just about everything we consume.

Each has a big staff of marketing people, and PR divisions, all very bright and qualified and highly paid. So why bother with an agency at all?

Modern computer graphics mean after a few months' training a bright secretary can produce an acceptable looking ad. Even TV commercials are easy - hire a freelance cameraman, pick presenters from staff, maybe even run an office competition for ad ideas.

The advertisements have already been written - by the company's sales and marketing teams during their goal-setting bonding weekend at a resort in Queensland or Bali.

You know what you want to say because you spent a whole day developing your mission statement, and that covers it all.

Your marketing manager gives the campaign to a media placement company which negotiates excellent spots on the top-rating TV shows and in the best pages in magazines and newspapers.

Just name the date, everything is done, didn't need an agency at all, it's launching on Sunday.

And the world is exposed to yet another meaningless, excruciatingly boring, totally mis-directed advertising campaign, of which we are seeing so many these days.

The trouble is that companies, with a few notable exceptions, do not understand advertising. In fact some of the big ones scarcely understand marketing. Yet they believe they can develop an advertising campaign.

Well it's all laid out for them. In the world of the board room it all comes down to the share price and stock holders' returns. If a product is doing poorly it will be axed or retired to the back of the stock cupboard.

If an innovative competitor is making inroads into their market, that's great. They buy it, making the inventor happy and rich, and add it to their stock list. They already know that the public wants the product, so they don't have to create anything new.

The alternative is to bring in a favourite from an overseas division. "This sweet is a huge hit in Brazil and taste tests show Aussie kids will love it too." And the work is done. Marketing with your eyes shut.

But those of us who aren't giants, still have to market the old fashioned way. Develop a product, cultivate a market, generate consumer desire, find distribution and sell furiously.

Here companies face a problem. Their marketing people know the product too well, they see it with all its history and problems, talking to the same people about it every day, they lose the big picture.

This is why they still need agencies. Ignorant of the history, agencies are outsiders - a team who don't know your product intimately, but they do know what the public is searching for, they know the consumer's heart.

The company knows where the product fits in their manufacturing and financial mix. But a good agency can identify a product's consumer market position. Their objective view is not always the same as the client's.

Then the agency, if it's any good and the creative process is allowed to run freely - can add that sprinkle of magic dust. The creative campaign, which will get the product noticed, tried, talked about. It has to make the product exciting, desirable. The client has lived with it for several years. The agency should see it with fresh eyes and present it as new and sexy.

Phil Ruthven Shows the More Things Change, the More They Haven't Changed At All

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday January 23, 2014.

Those were the days my friend, eh? Well, actually, no. Those supposedly great bygone days were rather crummy and if there was a very best time to choose to be alive - this is it.

I've been reminded of this in a report by one of my favourite people, economist Phil Ruthven. We are lucky to have Phil around in this land full of bull dusters and fantasists. Because when they tell us that we are working harder, earning less, struggling more, suffering bad health - Phil takes up his keyboard, punches in a century's worth of Australian Bureau of Statistics and other data, and proves that it just ain't so.

What about that hard work you're doing, and all that commuting? Well it turns out the number of hours worked in a lifetime are the same now as they were in 1800. What has changed is your lifetime - you have twice as many years to spread out those 80,000 hours, so each day's work is halved.

What about "a woman's work is never done"? They work harder than men don't they? No. Years of surveys have shown that adding up the things that men work at and those that women do - maybe one drives a truck, the other feeds the kids - give you much the same number of hours worked by each.

So have we run out of full time jobs compared to the good old days? No, the figure of 40 percent of the population in a daily job has been pretty constant for 120 years.

Gee at this rate we'll have nothing left to argue over at the pub! What about the fact that we are all getting old? Well yes, the average work participation age is around 40, whereas in 1901 it was 30. But then, what is old? It no longer makes sense to say "Life begins at 40" because most of us are still well into the swing of things at that age. Instead we hear "70 is the new 60". In just 50 years average life span has gone from 67 to 78 years, so 40 is just half way.

Much of the improvement in our lives comes from science and medicine, social flexibility, nutrition and education. And it's in these areas that politicians need to encourage, finance, allow growth - and stand back.

A half century has seen the throwing out of oppressive sex discrimination, homosexual illegality, wife bashing, child beating. Some still happen of course, but now they are not "allowed".

Trade is free almost anywhere, any time, whether it's shops opening or ships importing. There's universal superannuation. And our university population has risen from 50,000 to 1.4 million. All in just 50 years.

What have we have lost - stable marriages? No. For three hundred years marriages have averaged 20 years. It's just that living longer, we are more likely to take a second or even third pick of the cherry. 20 years at a time.

But with the growth of violence around the world we have more murders now? No. Recent figures put the homicide rate at 1.3, down from 1.9 in less than a decade. That's your chance in 100,000 of being done in. Should make you feel pretty safe.

OK here's a good one: we all have more vehicles than ever. Yes? Nope. If you count your horse, bicycle, buggy, whatever was your "personal transport", you get an average 1.6 vehicles per home - for 200 years.

We didn't have TV, computers, cheap flights - so you're living in the golden age. Enjoy it.

Why use a travel agent when you can book it yourself?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday January 16, 2014

Do you need a flight anywhere in the world? From Lagos to Vladivostok? A hotel on Copacabana beach? An hour exploring the internet will find you dozens of choices. So how can a travel agent survive in this DIY world? Aren't they all going to wither on the branches and fall away?

But wait a minute, some travel agents have never done better business. They operate flat chat. So what's their secret of survival in our changing business world?

I asked my long-time friend Anne Rogers how she did it. For three decades she has weathered the storms of the internet flood, the changes in business in her Wings Away Travel Agency in Essendon. She is still here, in fact the business is healthier than ever, even as scores of other agents disappear from the high streets. What does she know about the internet - or her business?

"The Internet will only take business from you if you are not adding value to the product you supply," she says emphatically. "If you just want a flight to London you can do it yourself," she's the first to tell the one-stop customer how to do it; in fact her agency handles very few domestic bookings - with all the bargains advertised there is no point, and very little profit.

No, the business walks in as soon as things start to get difficult. "They come to us because to organise a multi-faceted trip on the internet - well you wouldn't live long enough to get it right," she smiles. By the time you've coordinated the best fares, travel times, hotels, side trips, car hire - you're wrestling an octopus.

Years ago in London I spent a day on the phone trying to change the return flight to Australia, to no avail. Then in desperation I called my Melbourne agent and one of Anne's girls took up the battle. Lord knows what time it was around the world, but in an hour she had rung me back with the problem fixed.

This is a major lesson from the internet. Business is not just turning out the goods and punching the till. We have to offer our customers what they can't do by themselves, much of which comes from our length of practice and experience.

Cruising is growing massively these days. It has boomed as a holiday choice, and in turn the ships have become floating palaces. No more deck quoits and watching the gulls. Each ship has a dozen different restaurants, music and variety shows, gourmet food and fine wines.

The escorted tours are dazzling - just from Australia you can sail with Marina Prior, Elaine Paige, John Waters, even have a Countdown cruise with Molly Meldrum and Daryl Braithwaite. Would you prefer the tropical moonlight rockin with Jimmy Barnes or serenaded by hunky baritone Teddy Tahu Rhodes?

Anne - like the other dedicated travel agents - spends a lot of her year sampling their products. (I know it's a hard job but somebody has to do it...)

It means an agent can give you up to date advice whether from the Rockies or Himalayas, the Amazon or Siberia, African game parks or Antarctica.

And boy, aren't people getting adventurous these days? Cruising starts in the 40s, the "junior retirees", Anne calls them. The advantage of a cruise ship is that even the slow and creaky don't have to be house-bound.

"I know they make a lot of jokes about zimmer frames and wheel chairs on the ships, but a cruise makes these exotic destinations available to them." And Anne's mission is to bring the exotic to all.

We're the natives of the great Chinese cargo cult

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday January 9, 2014


Every new year I revisit the Great Australian Cargo Cult. Like the natives of post-war New Guinea we Australians await the arrival of cargo planes full of consumer goods - refrigerators, cars, shoes, clothes, cooking pots - all sent by some far-away god because we are the lucky ones.

Without great effort we receive it all and demand more. And if the flow at all falters, we cut down our leaders and find more promising ones. We want our goods and we'll do as little as possible for them.

Well this year I’m looking at the cult from the giving side. I’m writing in Yunnan, south-western China, having crossed the great Middle Kingdom that donates to our welfare. What a land! A hive of over a billion people all working feverishly. Day and night fresh skyscrapers and factories are being built. In the east, new subways are tunnelling under Shanghai and the airport boasts a 430 kph maglev magnetic train.

There are 160 cities in China with over one million population and looking at the one I visited, Kunming, these ain't populated by hungry rice planters. The cityscape is a forest of skyscrapers; freeways and rail are connecting with Bangkok, Hanoi, Mandalay and Chittagong. It's a huge manufacturing region most Australians don't even know about.

They are quite happy to keep supplying our cargo goods, and so long as we supply all the raw materials they demand and keep signing the IOUs, we are a convenient quarry. But if you look at Chinese history, they do expect strict compliance from their vassals - we pay for those toasters by doing what we’re told.

From what I saw of Kunming, they were not waiting for cargo cults. They were creating their own future. They have revived their ancient silk and tea road trading. They have huge iron and steel industries, factories, universities, and are expanding their tourism.

China is a big wide world with an even bigger one outside it. I'm afraid Australia does not even register within these circles most days, they certainly don't feel they owe us anything. Not even a bamboo plane.

Just Kunming district has five million people full of determination to prosper. There are the usual equivalents to our state and federal demands and tussles, but ultimately there is a willingness to invest and grow, both from government and private sectors.

It doesn't surprise me to see that China now has more industrial researchers than Europe, education is a national focus. The recent Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report put Shanghai at No 1 in mathematics - and Australia at No 19. We're also 16 in science and 14 in reading. Yes, Shanghai is No 1 both times.

At this rate we'll have difficulty keeping tally of our bales of straw as we work on our Cargo Cult airport. It certainly won't take us into the high-powered literacy and scientific advancement we will need to keep up with even one small Chinese province.

Allow me a final boast. My five-years old Chinese granddaughter spent two months attending a Queensland school this year. Bi-lingual, she quickly adapted with the local kids. And immediately, she was the best reader in the class. In English.

I know I've said it many times over the past nine years, but push aside the straw and bamboo and let's build a real future for this country. And have a wonderful, prosperous New Year.

Winning business between the feet of the battling elephants

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday December 12, 2013

When elephants battle, it takes caution to keep clear of their feet. But the nimble field mice can dart in and out, gathering the threshed corn and setting themselves quite a feast on the sidelines.

So it seems to be shaping up in marketing. Giants like Unilever, Procter and Gamble, Nestle and the like have their mighty contests in the supermarkets. Who themselves are fighters on the field with their growing range of home brand and increasingly glamorous private labels.

If a newly launched product does not reach the expected millions in sales by the end of the first year's sales cycle, it is ruthlessly chopped. Supermarkets in turn are cutting down the product lines on the shelf, to one or two by the majors, and the rest their own brands.

The drive for efficiency cuts deep. Just last week Unilever warned it was cutting its world marketing staff by 800 jobs and some $500 million in costs. Unproductive products will be trimmed - as will its marketing and advertising budgets.

It is all economically rational, sewing loose ends and "trimming of the tails". And it's great news for the also-rans. Because every time one of the big players cuts back, it's an opening newly created. It means the customer has less and less variety of choice. And it gives an opportunity to the small manufacturer or the startup with a good idea.

Look around, you'll see them everywhere. Some of the newest trends are also some of the oldest. Most obvious is the boom in farmers' markets, in every country town and it feels like, every city suburb. Once a week, or once a month, the chalked blackboard signs pop up on the highways and a flood of passing cars drives in. Farmers' markets don't necessarily offer better prices - our supermarkets are pretty cheap anyway - but they give us the variety and feeling of choice we demand.

The other booming market is electronic. You don't even need a table and umbrella to open an on-line shop for your goods. And you don't need to pay shopping centre rents for the shopfront - on line, every fresh browser page is a store window.

They also don't have to be in your neighbourhood. Amazon is everywhere in the world, with a growing range of products. For that matter there are thousands of small business trading through eBay.

Sometimes on-line can be aggressively competitive, like Ruslan Kogan's fast-growing electronics retailer, Kogan Technology. "Work out what your competitive advantage is and flaunt it,” he says. His advantage is not being encumbered by bricks and mortar stores or rents. He then flaunts it in the faces of Gerry Harvey and JB HiFi.

For Kogan the rational economics of the big boys give him strength. As he said last month, “We teach our staff to swim upstream, to innovate continuously, to question absolutely everything. It’s in the culture of the organisation.” His philosophy is working - he was tagged as Australia's richest person under 30, a year ago, and has set up a subsidiary in the UK that is run remotely from Australia.

Our field mice are small and agile and able to quickly change in response to customer demands or fashion whims. They jumped on social media for intimate contact with their customers, they are creating a new shopping experience. In the US they have already started to take nibbles out of market share, just one or two percent but growing rapidly. They'd better watch out.

Moving your ice cream upmarket

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday December 5, 2013

As the weather warms you start to notice the ice cream fridge in the milk bar, again. As soon as the mercury heads into the high 20s and 30s, the ice cream and soft drink companies can take deep breaths of relief before ploughing into a frantic six months of money making.

Back to the fridge - I became aware of a stunning range of products, expensive stick ice creams from Connoisseur, with names like "Kangaroo Island Honey with Pistachio" and "Murray River Salted Caramel with Macadamia". I tried one and sure enough it was first rate. "Who is this company?" I thought.

A little detective work - called "read the fine print" - revealed that this line comes from Peters. Aha - clever marketing!

The venerable company will forever carry memories of Dixie Cups, vanilla scoops and Zig and Zag. But meantime the world is getting older and tastes are moving upmarket.

When Streets introduced the premium Magnum bar in the early 90s they raised the price point, changing what the adult consumer was willing to pay. Peters responded with the me-too Heaven range. But now, by bringing in Connoisseur, they are moving the goal posts again.

They took the name from their premium tub range, but deliberately gave the product an adult, very personal treat image. You're willing to pay the extra because this is classy, it's delicious, just for you - give the kids Icy Poles, spend that extra couple of dollars on yourself.

This demonstrates how to take your product upmarket. Because just putting on a higher price tag won't do the trick. If the brand were not changed, it would retain the thought, that it's just a Dixie Cup tarted up. You have to remove the product from a lifetime of history and persuade the consumer to look at it for the first time.

So when Toyota realised they had reached the glass ceiling of perception with their cars - no-one was ever going to believe a Toyota could be as good as a Mercedes or BMW - they had to re-invent themselves. And the Lexus was born.

It had all the touches and gadgets and finish of the pricey Europeans, it had style and performance. It had a separate showroom - usually next door to Toyota's. It was different, posh. Fortunately they delivered what they promised and had a huge long-running success.

The supermarket giants, after so many years of slugging each other on price, have pushed upmarket with the Battle of the Chefs. Curtis Stone, for Coles, has done wonders for their daggy high street history. So much so that Woolworths have been forced to retaliate with their own bovva boy, Jamie Oliver. They both have that combination of kitchen expertise and boyish sex appeal.

The hardest job was McDonald's. The customers were looking for a little more than a two-minute drive-through experience, or a hasty burger and chips in the midst of a kiddie birthday party.

It took franchisee Anne Brown, in that distant outpost of the McDonald's empire, Melbourne Australia, to persuade them to let her try the idea. In 1993 she created an island of calm in her restaurant with espresso machine and easy chairs, where customers were invited to sit and chat: the McCafe was born.

It succeeded, improving revenue by 15%. Management were impressed. But they didn't open one in the US till eight years later, after 300 had opened in 17 other countries.

Moral: if you're looking for leadership, don't wait for head office.

Choice watches over the guardians' shoulders

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday 28 November, 2013

Who guards the guardians? At a time when governments, regulators and the law watch over our shoulders at everything we do, who in turn is watching over theirs?

For many years now we have looked up to Choice as the strict moral judge in our society that we can always trust. Not just for their comparisons of electric kettles or kiddie pools, but for more social matters too.

Whether it's proper regulation for free-range eggs, or forcing banks to be transparent over credit card interest rates, Choice is often the first to wave the banner on the consumer's behalf and lead yet another campaign for citizen justice.

As the Australian Consumer Association, it has 160,000 members. And we know that if they are going to join Choice, they are pretty outspoken defenders in the first place.

There is no clearer example of the social concerns than their current campaign. They will be pitting their muscle at the World Trade Organization negotiations, to be held in Bali in December.

Their complaint? That while the Trans-Pacific Partnership deals have been cobbled over the past three years, not a word has been passed to the public. The negotiators plan to show us the document once it has been signed, sealed and delivered.

Ironically this protest will pitch ACA into battle with the Abbott government. Had a few thousand votes gone differently last September, the fighting would have been just as fierce, against a Rudd government.

Governments love to keep their secrets, especially in this case, where the treaties look like making concessions which would force back-downs over our food labelling, public health, energy, copyright, import and export regulations, and most stirring, intellectual property laws.

Ironically, the parliaments of the nations involved, including US Congress and Australian MPs, have also been locked out of the room and what we now know has come from a WikiLeaks release of a draft bill this month. It seems we get freedom of information only when we can steal it.

The ACA depends on its large membership for its claim to be the voice of the Australian consumer. But like most other organisations, they have problems recruiting young members. Where once a social group could rely on a steady stream of new recruits to more than replenish the drop-outs, this does not happen as it did and the groups just get older. So I suppose that explains Choice's new advertising campaign. In step with the times, they have created a commercial they hope will go viral.

But I can only describe it as weird. A man in his mid-twenties stands baffled in an appliance store, confronted by rows of similar-looking coffee machines. He pulls out his phone, and quizzes the Choice web site, receiving instant recommendation for the unit he should buy.

This gives him the spare time to day-dream about a flying, rainbow-emitting, fortune-making goat in an alpine meadow. Yes that's what I thought too: what...? Perhaps my younger readers will understand the significance better than I - cause I'm stumped.

The best way to sell the magazine - and its services - is by getting prospects onto its web site. There they can see how many thousands of products have been closely studied and tested, and evaluated against each other.

Then if you're shopping for a new car, a new baby, or a new slimming diet - you'll find the scientifically researched, un-commercial advice you want.

Getting to know who your customers really are

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday November 20, 2013

It's the first question you ask a new client: "So who are your customers?" Invariably they respond, with wide-eyed surprise that you should need ask, "Why, everybody!"

At this point the job of marketing begins. It's not everybody, of course. It's a small group who are particularly attracted, or have need, for the product - or your competitors'. So you need to get to them first, but who are they?

In fact you do have records of who your customers are. Buried in your files and figures there are names, account addresses, warrantee forms, spending patterns, a wealth of information. Probably it is sitting in your database, unused because right now it does not have any meaning.

Last week, Roy Morgan Research CEO Michele Levine gave the pollster's annual "State of the Nation" review. She proudly displayed their new analysis product called "Helix Personas". This, it turns out, could be the answer to your problem.

The exotic name reveals a new take on psychographic segmentation of the market. In other words, they are taking a deep look into your customer base so you better understand who they are, where they live, and what is important to them.

These days our media are fragmented to a point where nobody can afford to hit at "everybody". If you spread too broadly, you will end up paying for promotional shots that hit targets who aren't interested, and totally miss the targets you need to reach.

The claim of Helix Personas is that it has broken down the market into 56 different segments. So a family from the "Leading Lifestyles" segment lives in its own house in the inner suburbs, is tertiary educated and highly paid. Now they are obviously going to be different from the "Getting By" family, not high earning, children at home, living in the outer suburbs.

Through decades of polls and research, Morgans have a vast store of information from every corner of Australia. In developing this new system they have merged it with the up to date Census data. Then the client's own data is added to the mix.

Out will come the clear knowledge of customers. Who, what, where and why.

Banks are quickly responding to the promised information. They know where their customers are - but which products will they respond to? The "On Their Way" family might want a mortgage loan; the "Bluechips" an investment, the "Family First", insurance.

The idea is to identify these groups in your database for the most effective communication.

Selling cars is expensive. Your advertising has to be closely targeted. You don't send a glossy car brochure to a "Metrotech" who is very technology oriented, but would respond well to a Twitter link to an on-line test-drive simulation.

The supermarket chain will seek out the "Career and Kids", while travel agents will look for the older, affluent "Set For Life" segment. Your approach to a "Rural Traditionalist" would differ from a "Rural Realist".

Each of the 56 "personas" helps clarify a group of your customers and their needs. Now you can produce communication that knows who you are talking to, and what needs to be said to them.

Currently the big corporates are trialing the system, but Morgans are quickly moving to make it available to smaller companies.

Confession of a silent Twitter

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday November 14, 2013

Now this is an embarrassing admission from a journalist about a medium that floated, just a few days ago, for nearly $47 billion. But the truth is, although I signed on nearly five years ago - I never really learned how to Twitter.

I know plenty of avid users: friends like Stephen Mayne, Winston Marsh, even my distant boss, Rupert Murdoch, and every politician from Barak Obama to Tony Abbott and the Pope - but I kinda never got it. Recently with all the interest of the share launch, I have been querying why some leap at Twitter and others fall back.

So what is it that has stopped me jumping into this pot, as opposed to the many I've plunged into over the years. You will need to go through this process yourself and ask: Does Twitter have a use to you?

Twitter is quick and newsy. It's loved by those who have a quick thought, rapidly jot it down and communicate it, then move on to their next train of thought. As opposed to those who think more like a steam train chugging along on a single track. Toot toot, one thought at a time.

If you haven't used it much before, the only way to find out where you fit is to jump in. It's simple enough to install, try "Download Twitter" in Google, or the app store on your phone, and follow the prompts.

A brief study of the site will quickly give you the basic information, so then find a few heroes to follow. Maybe movie stars or politicians, TV favourites or particular interests. I'll leave you to it here, there's masses of good advice on line.

The problem has passed to Dick Costolo, Twitter CEO. He now has to justify the $47 billion that has just been invested by eager share buyers, who no doubt will along the line want to see some return. In the first three-quarters of this year, it lost $143 million, so it has a way to go first.

The money will be mainly generated through advertising, and I can assure you that any business will want to see some pretty high visitor numbers to justify paying big ad budgets.

For Costolo that means getting more joiners through the door - and cutting the number that leak out the other end. Currently they have 232 million active users each month, whereas Facebook has three times as many.

So they need to widen the base of newcomers - how many more people can there be who want to know every detail about Katy Perry or Justin Bieber? (They each have 47 million already.)

Assuming that there is more in this world than the lives of pop stars, the Twitter crew have to work on ways to introduce newcomers - and even old hands - on how to expand their horizons.

Rather than random messages from celebrities, this is also an ideal medium for what old computer hands know as "chat rooms". Through your hashtags, you can gather with those of fellow interests - be it collecting porcelain or comparing pubs, or chatting about tonight's episode of Beauty and the Geek. We see this already with the stream of comments that litter the bottom of the screen in Q&A.

One chat group feeling very cosy are the creators of the phenomenon. Evan Williams is now worth $2.8 billion more; Jack Dorsey $640 million; Costello $195 million; Adam Bain $47 million. And to think he gave up a job at NewsCorp before joining the risky venture.

Getting that first agency job

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday November 7, 2013

The hardest part of an advertising career is getting into your first agency. There are hundreds of bright young people who would love an advertising job, but only a small number of vacancies each year for newcomers.

For any kind of work, you need your basic skills - a degree in English or psychology, or at least some impressive VCE results. Media and account service will look for some evidence of maths ability. Computer skills need to be more than adequate these days - so many agencies are rooms packed with hunched hackers. So you need to make yourself good - a bit of an expert. If your inclination is artistic, study graphic design and computer graphics.

But most importantly, you need a real vision and desire to get involved with marketing. Agencies have tended to value selling ability, street smarts and flair, over purely academic honours. They don't give points for meekness. And you'll never get a start-up agency job through a search site - by the time you see it on your screen, it's gone.

So your first and most important selling job will be persuading the agency's general manager or creative director, that they want to give that precious spare seat in the office to you.

Some of the most seriously determined door-knockers are those who signed up for RMIT's three-year advertising studies course. In their determination to meet the prospective employers, they now run an annual "RMIT Pitch Night", a type of speed-dating game where agency and client management meet third-year students, eat sushi and browse their portfolios. They have gained sponsorship from the likes of Greys, George Patterson Y&R, Ogilvy & Mather and marketing magazine B&T, for the most recent event.

Like speed dating the students have a limited time to speak with industry guests, impress them with their work and personality, and hopefully get that important "let's talk" phone call in the morning.

Back in the 1990s, the late Seth Prokop devised a brilliant RMIT advertising short course. It would take about 30 keen students and over the first two months they were lectured on the various components of an agency, what each job involved, and a basic understanding of marketing.

Then for the last two months they had to form themselves into "agencies" with designated titles: managing director, media manager, creative director, art director, research manager.

They were then given a brief. One was the setting up of a national pizza chain; another time it was launching a new pasta sauce - with Heinz participating as the "client". Each agency received the same brief and had to develop a full campaign, with the same allotted "budget".

The amount of work those kids put into their agency was amazing. I had delivered some of the lectures and was part of the client's judging panel. I was highly impressed by the quality of research they carried out, the creative ideas they developed, the bright media innovations, the professionalism of the documents they produced.

They learned so much, not by sitting receiving lectures but by being a functioning advertising agency. They also learned the torture of being in a competitive pitch with not very sympathetic clients and hostile competitors. And for all but one agency, there was the pain of failing to win.

Not all of the kids got their agency job, but a surprisingly large number of them did. They were able to approach the pavement-pounding, door-knocking weeks ahead with a determination and confidence that got them noticed, and often opened a door.

You want lamb leg and veggies along with your cookbook?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday October 31, 2013

Late for birthdays, gifts for interstate, seeking a title that's hard to find - bit by bit we have all come round to using Amazon a few times, if not often. But can you see it supplying the meat, Weetbix and veg?

Give it time and that day will come, is the claim, as Amazon.com looks to expand its huge retail business into more areas, across markets and around the world. Already it sells toys, electronics, computers and phones, movies, fashions, cosmetics - its growth is constant.

Last year it lost money, but that has never slowed Amazon's development - for years it continued to grow without making a cent. No it has always looked to its promise, as articulated by the boss Jeff Bezos, and he has expanded the company beyond belief.

They have now spent the past five years establishing and growing the home-delivery grocery business in the Seattle area and just expanded to Los Angeles. San Francisco is promised to follow soon. Warehouses and investments are rumoured around America and the UK has also been primed. No doubt Australia is not too far down the target list.

Of course, mail-order groceries are nothing new down here. Coles have a very sophisticated nationwide system as does Woolworths. And here we have the advantage of the stores and supply chain already fully functioning. Here all the delivery developers had to do was tap in to the supermarket giants' sophisticated existing networks.

Even this took time and a lot of lesson-learning. Groceries are a very tricky commodity. The profit margin on food is much smaller than on clothes and electronics; they have short use-by dates after which everything must be thrown out; and delivering a basket of groceries is not as simple as dropping off a parcel of books.

However they all see the lessons from overseas, to know that online groceries are a huge growth market. In the UK they are far bigger and better established.

The business is making some $10 billion in sales now, and is expected to double that by 2016. France, Germany, Netherlands and Switzerland are a little later on the wagon, but they too are expected to double their growth in the period.

World-wide researchers IGD announced the projections last week, with Britain being closely followed by France, now growing the sector. Joanne Denney-Finch, chief executive of IGD, sees the figures indicating fundamental changes to the way people shop: “Online retailing in food and consumer goods is growing at a phenomenal rate across Europe."

She points out, "Technology is empowering people, fundamentally changing the way they buy groceries. Online shoppers are becoming more demanding and the divisions between online and bricks and mortar stores are blurring."

In the US, mail order goes back to the beginnings of the young nation, so online grocery is no surprise. One of the first entrepreneurs in the country was the great Benjamin Franklin - yes the one with the kite - who sent out catalogues of scientific and academic books.

Right now, Amazon has some formidable competition before it, with equally deep pockets - especially Walmart. They have been trialing for the past two years, using their huge existing stores as regional warehouses for the service.

With so much global focus on the sector it is no longer a fringe activity, this is a market repositioning in action. So I can guarantee it will soon enough touch you and me. If it hasn't done so already.

How many clicks and tweets make a double page spread?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday October 24, 2013

So you think that designing an advertising plan for your products is a difficult business now? Well take a grip of your computer because the way things are headed, working out an advertising schedule is going to need tertiary mathematical skills.

You might remember how simple it was. "I'll have three flights of TV commercials and two press ads a week for the next three months." The ads were made by your agency and you watched closely to see if they were working or not.

Well it doesn't happen that way any more. Now there are tweets and clicks, banners and mobiles, the mechanics of a viral campaign, and the arrival of the "complex native ad ecosystem". Baffled? So is everyone, and a huge new marketing industry is being born out of it.

"Native ads" describes the vague cross-over between advertising and editorial. We are used to this in "advertorial", common enough in all newspapers, supporting the car or property pages. But here you clearly know that the display ad on the page is paying for the supporting copy up above. It probably says "advertising" at the top of the page.

Native ads are different, perhaps more subtle. With mobile media or search engines, they respond to the key topics you're looking for. They don't necessarily hit you with a bright product ad, but perhaps an answer to the question you haven't even asked yet.

It may be an article by a journalist, sounding very reasonable. This is where the card-carrying journalists raise their hackles. Most, yours truly included, were taught the 11th Commandment: "Thou shalt not mix editorial with advertising". But the intelligence of technology has made that line hard to draw.

Arif Durrani, head of media at Britain's Campaign Magazine, sees native ads as the way which will make digital media work. "Display ads, not least those large banners on most websites, have failed", he insists. "They have failed to capture the attention of readers. They have failed to generate enough revenue for publishers. They have failed to provide enough traffic for advertisers."

He points to the launch of BuzzFeed in the UK and now Australia, as an indication of trends. This on-line magazine was not taken too seriously - until it started to stack up the numbers in the US and attract the big investors, more than $46 million to date.

Just last month Forbes magazine quoted BuzzFeed's global audience at 85 million, and growing fast. That's a lot of viewers for cute cats and endless "top 20 lists". But now they have hired real journalists and started reporting political news, covering the election and the Washington shut-down.

News Corp was among the first of the major media to dip its toes into the digital sea. By erecting pay walls around The Australian and then the other papers, it had a lonely time until all the competitors came rushing to follow.

But the online dollar still doesn't cover the "rivers of gold" that the old newspaper model supplied. So are native ads the way to go? How many clicks does it take to pay for a double page spread? How does sponsored advertising retain credibility?

The younger publications have little problem bending the rules - they didn't write them in the first place. Whereas the establishment are more cautious. There's a flood of questions in the minds of the world's media execs, there are no easy answers. Just some hard maths for the rest of us.

Memory Is a High Rating Topic

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday October 17, 2013
It's not often that non-sport TV programs get seen and discussed by older men. But in the past few days I've noticed one that has become the topic of the tea-room, the boardroom and the garden fence. It has hit an underground concern that is troubling our increasingly aging population.

The program is Redesign My Brain presented by Todd Sampson on the ABC and last Thursday it shot the station to third place, with the program beating The Beauty and the Geek, Law & Order, and Big Brother. Nationally it drew 865,000 viewers.

Now why is such a minor local documentary pulling in so many over-40s men, and women too, and getting them all to talk to each other? Perhaps it is the realisation that many of us are no longer as smart and as quick as we were.

In fact both men and women decline 3.9 per cent in brain function between 45-49. And by 65-70 men have lost 9.6 per cent in mental reasoning power, women 7.4 per cent. So after the umpteenth time of misplacing the car keys or going out without the shopping list, Mum and Dad are getting a bit concerned.

Well they are not alone. The world-wide trend in "brain health" is booming. Books, software, pills and vitamins, foods and exercises; a research group called SharpBrains estimates that the brain training software alone was worth more than $1 billion in 2012 and will reach $6 billion by 2020.

It seems that after all these years of working on our abs and our biceps, our attention is shifting up to the control room. This has been spurred along by a more intense research of what happens when we do apply an exercise regime to the grey cells. And although the scientists don't all agree on quantities of improvement, they do agree that there is one.

A number of training programs have emerged, with the kind of exercises that Sampson has been demonstrating. The seriousness of the perceived market is illustrated by multi-billion dollar drug company Bayer partnering brain-trainer Cognifit, and Merck picking CogState. Like many analysts, they foresee a time when brain training exercises are as much a part of your daily health routine as taking the vitamin pills and fish oil.

Does brain training ultimately make you more intelligent? There's still a lot of debate about that, but there's no argument that it makes you better at what you train for. Sampson was taught to memorise a whole pack of playing cards. You or I could barely manage seven cards in a row. Reaction-recognition helped him rapidly spot things with his peripheral vision. Like any bodily function the rule is "use it or lose it".

It makes us wonder about our children, too. In these days of instantly-accessed information they no longer spend hours at school training their mental arithmetic. They no longer need to spell, the computer does it for them. And if you cast back to great-grandad's time, they no longer have to memorise The Boy Stood On the Burning Deck and recite it to the class.

But perhaps these redundant skills did more for the brain - and the person - than just handle a few facts and figures. Are we risking their brains going marshmallow like their fast foods and canned-laughter TV?

Redesign My Brain is on ABC tonight at 8:30, watch it and make up your own mind about your mind.

Do you have to be so boring when you speak?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday October 10, 2013
Be careful where you sit in the auditorium because if you fall asleep, the speaker will notice you from the lectern and, well, it would be awfully rude wouldn't it? But staying awake can be so hard when the speakers are so very very boring.

I've attended a lot of company briefing and capital-raising presentations in recent years, sometimes as many as a dozen companies giving their spiel, one after the other at a conference. And forever I am waiting for someone to say something interesting.

Scientists are the worst. Geologists, chemists, engineers, doctors. They seem to have homogenized their work, to reduce all talks into a 30-minute monotone.

The PowerPoint slides all look the same, the tables and charts are baffling, the information merges in your head with the presenter before and the one after. Why are they so boring?

I asked an expert. Tanya Makin of The Presentation Group has taught universities and business leaders for over 20 years and routinely breaks open the clammed-shut presentation styles we see.

"It's high anxiety," she explains. "They feel they need to say everything they know about the topic." They think they are writing an essay or delivering a lecture, and think they will be judged by the quantity of information they deliver.

The speaker needs to understand that information is taken in differently between what you see, what you hear and what you read. "If you put up dot points, they will assume you want them read - and not listen to you," says Makin.

She encourages her students to watch David Attenborough. He doesn't use PowerPoint slides. "I suggest what I've named the Documentary Model. You make your points by telling a business story."

"Most scientific presenters fail," says Gary Lewis of the Geological Society of America, "because they don’t realise that most people don’t want to be blasted with five syllable jargon, acronyms and complex charts and graphs."

His advice is to find the one message that you want your audience to take away. Make that the focus of the talk. Certainly there are other factors in the story you are telling - the documentary - but keep pulling the attention back to the main message.

As Makin puts it, "Remember the story of Lassiter's Reef. What you are imaging is a prize you are looking for."

Before writing your presentation, spend some time watching TED.com. If you don't know it, pay attention because I'm about to repair a gap in your knowledge and intelligence.

TED.com is a forum for ideas. Its web site holds thousands of talks by the smartest men and women on this planet. They are each just 18 minutes long and cover every conceivable subject - geology, astronomy, fashion, art, medicine, music, education - and speakers include Bill Gates, the late Steve Jobs, Tony Robbins, Isabel Allende. You get my drift? It's a must-see for the smart.

Then, feeling inspired, turn back to your own notes. Imagine the story you could tell, the excitement you could generate - the feeling you really have inside you. They can read the charts and tables in the take-away notes you provide. Your talk needs to create the thrill.

Practice it in front of your bedroom mirror, pace, wave your hands, tell jokes. Then after dinner, go and do it again. Try it on your spouse. Drag a few from your team into the boardroom or canteen and try them too.

Once you're confident, you'll be starting to communicate. And maybe your talk won't put anyone to sleep.

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.