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

New names at the top of the Internet

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday May 16, 2013
By the end of this year, what will New York, London, Paris, Melbourne, and Sydney have in common? Something that right now is quite impossible. Their own Internet top level domain address. That is, in our case, "xyz DOT melbourne".

Can you believe that the public Internet is only 28 years old? That's when domain suffixes were first made available outside of universities and the military. Since then we've grown used to .com, .org, .gov. There are 21 TLDs as they are called - home to 246 million domains.


The World Wide Web is even younger, released to the public by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991. How a human idea can transform the world!


Well, over the coming year the cage doors are being opened and 1400 new names will flutter out. Including .London, .Paris, .Melbourne. This hasn't been easy. Every would-be name had to go through a rigorous application process. To get into the running you have to put in $185,000, and then fill in a 360-page questionnaire. So you won't be getting your own for a long time to come.


However major corporations are already clamouring for their own presence - or at least, not to be the only company in their field who is absent. And the money for applications and lawyers have been quickly found under the whip of urgency.


Also demanding democracy are other language scripts - Chinese, Arabic and Cyrillic being obvious starters.

The international body that rules the net, ICANN, is constantly reviewing and releasing new names - there are already more applications than slots, though last week it was able to announce a guernsey for .melbourne.

It obviously has high expectations for the impact of this long debated move. ICANN's director of global media affairs, Brad White, painted an excited picture: "It will afford a possibility for innovation, creativity, branding, marketing. We know it will have tremendous impact. Nobody could predict the popularity of Skype, Facebook or Twitter. What we have done is removed a barrier to innovation."

In Australia, ARI Registry Services administers our three million .au domains, and it successfully managed the submissions, contracts and technical requirements for Melbourne and Sydney, working with a consortium of state and local governments, tourist groups and the like.

For all these, having that name is important. In Melbourne ARI expects retailers and industry to jump at the chance to use the domain.

"We're creating value for the brand 'Melbourne', like with the grand prix, tennis, footy." explained ARI Managing Director Adrian Kinderis. A business has to be based in Victoria to be eligible for the address, in fact it will be a reassurance that this is a truly Victorian business. "This will be home for anything to do with Melbourne, to take their brand on line."

You'll start to see the new names appear later this year. Companies like .Sony, .Virgin, .Canon. Interests like .golf, .shop, .rugby. Approvals trickle out from the intense consideration and are starting to be announced in batches. The most recent include .bike, .gripe and .gay.

With so many egos fighting for so few spots, you can bet that this will become a lawyers' picnic for years to come. Just the prospect of intellectual rights, copyright and patent laws raise their heads. Currently the World Intellectual Property Organisation is dealing with nearly 3000 cases - and that's just with 21 TLDs.

Expect to hear a lot about the new names later this year as they are promoted through billboards, advertising, promotions. If you think about it, having raised $360 million in application fees alone, they can afford to give it a splash.

ray@ebeatty.com

Coca Cola idea goes global

Melbourne Herald Sun, May 9, 2103


A brilliant Australian idea is moving and shaking the world's biggest soft drink on the other side of the planet.

Remember summer 2011, when Coca Cola ran a campaign with people's names on the labels of bottles and cans? Called "Share a Coke With a Friend", the company put out 150 different names on its packs, and also set up locations where those who wanted others, could have an individual name reproduced.

With the northern summer about to start, that campaign has now been adopted by Coca Cola in the UK and is about to flood the British Isles with bottles called Nicholas and Sarah - again a list of 150 names plus the opportunity of special requests at the big shopping malls.

This past summer saw the concept's first overseas trial, in New Zealand, and found that the idea worked just as well there. The Americans, of course, are watching developments very closely.

The campaign was conceived by agencies Ogilvy and Naked. Having spent a few years of my life flogging fizzy water - not Coke, but in competition with them - I know what a hard job it is. How do you generate interest? Put the kids on a surfboard, next year put them on a skateboard, next chuck them out of a plane with a parachute (one of the great Coke successes was the kids sky-surfing before opening their parachutes. Launched a whole new sport.) But then your competitors do the same thing and it gets harder to differentiate your brand.

After years of doing this, interest in the drink sinks low. It's the opportunity for the competitors to muscle in. So Red Bull and Mother, Gatorade and fruit juices, they all begin to squeeze mighty Coke on the shelves and where it matters most - in the sales.

Putting names on the cans was brilliant lateral thinking. Where soft drinks have always been personalised by the brand, here the idea was to give each bottle its own personality, making it a Mike or a Kylie. Sure enough the kids picked this up - and did the rest themselves through their mobile phones and social media. They connected with friends, swapped bottles in the schoolyard, contacted distant pals to say they had found "their" bottle. And of course they endlessly pestered Coke with "my name, my name" requests. Which there was a system set up to fulfill.

What are you trying to do when you are marketing? You are trying to create an interest in your product, awareness, start a conversation. The spark that lit this campaign - including the sacrilegious invasion of the label space by a "foreign" word - was the research discovery that some 50% of Australian teenagers had not tasted Coke. A few years back this would have been unthinkable, it needed a drastic remedy. Which is exactly what this campaign did. How can anyone resist a cold summer drink with their name on it?

In Britain the local marketers are excited by the prospects for summer. They know that in Australia, consumption was boosted seven percent. Which in a mature market like this, is huge. For years they have had nothing to excite the market. Meanwhile bovver-booted macho brands like Red Bull and even Coca Cola's own Mother have been able to flash their racing cars and motor bikes past the goody goodies in the Coke ads.

Now there will be something to get kids talking about Coke again, and tie it into the Facebook-Twitter conversations, for this summer at least. Those Aussies got some smart ideas, no wonder the Covent Garden ad agencies seem to ring with Strine accents.
ray@ebeatty.com

Losing your mobile life

Melbourne Herald Sun, May 2, 2013
There's a horrible sinking feeling when you lose your mobile phone. You search and search, running late for an appointment.

You go to the usual places: bedside table, study, kitchen bench, car. Not there, so you visit all those sites again, as if you could have overlooked a large black block of electronics.

You shake out the weekend's papers, the junk mail in the discard box, crawl under the bed, under the desk, under the couch. All sound tensely familiar? You borrow your partner's phone to ring, wondering whether your phone was properly charged last time, listening for a muffled tinkle.

Meanwhile, said partner has joined in and is offering a string of helpful advice which you take out of despair. Eventually it does turn up - in last night's suit pocket or forgotten in the children's room when you said goodnight. A huge wave of relief as you clutch the precious instrument. You are never going to do that again!

Until the next time you lose it. Only this time - after seven years in my case - it really is lost. Gone, disappeared, never to be seen again. All the hunting and panicking are to no avail.

You expect that some kind soul will find it where it dropped - perhaps while pulling a jacket on after a run in the park. Maybe they will ring a couple of numbers in memory to track down the owner. Or take it to a mobile shop where the savvy assistants will soon uncover its home.

But no, some phones just stay lost and you are faced with catastrophe. You know all the backups you have been making for years? No, you didn't back up? No-one ever showed you how?

What about the names, addresses and numbers of those important business prospects. Not the existing customers, there's plenty of data on them, but the ones you put in the phone that one time you met them. There's now a huge directory of contacts. Work, business, family, friends, clubs, members of this and that - they're all sitting in that little machine.

Oh I haven't started yet. Now you have to choose a new phone. This is exciting. There are so many new wonderful models on the market right now, as I've often reported here. But what one's right for you?

Basically, with all the plans and programs on offer, all the phones cost much the same - nothing. Point to the one you'd like and they'll give it to you. So are you finally going to cross Trendy Street to Apple? Or the new well-reviewed Galaxy? Stick to Nokia tried and trusted, swing to glamorous HTC, play corporate with BlackBerry? One thing you can be sure of - everything you learned about using a phone you'll have to learn over again.

The new phones have less buttons - you have to learn which bit of glass to tap to produce the result you want. I spent 15 minutes trying to turn off my new phone's alarm clock. Nothing I tapped would stop that brain-piercing drill. It took days to figure out basics like making and receiving calls - and the blurbs tell me of the thousands of apps available. Once I learn how to install them and use them.

I admit it, it's an age thing. The phone shop assistant looks like a schoolboy and when I explain what has been torturing me for the past week, he will tap a few keys I hadn't even noticed and fix it for me.

The moral is simple. Stick to what you know and whatever you do, don't lose that phone!

ray@ebeatty.com

Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com

How to sell more plane tickets - make a Kiwi homesick

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday April 18, 2013

It's a long jump - an expensive one - between Perth and New Zealand. So how do you sell more airline tickets? There was a very clever PR event put on last weekend with that purpose in mind. The mechanism was to gather a mass of expatriate Kiwis and drive them tearfully homesick.

Air New Zealand used a Facebook page and online media for much of the promotion, so in advertising budget terms it would have been very low cost. It's a great example of how clever PR and social media can produce spectacular results.

The 700 lonely Kiwis who responded were given a movie show at a rooftop cinema (Kiwi films only of course). Visitors received dinner, with the best New Zealand wines, cider and beers. The flight crew brought over the Tasman their favourite sweets, cheeses, chips - even a jar of boiled eggs to remind everyone of the sweet smell of Rotorua.

They also found a homesick young man whose birthday was due on the day, and with the connivance of his friends arranged to fly his mum and dad over. The whole reunion was filmed and shown on the movie night, to many a damp eye.

Homesickness is a very human condition - as was demonstrated by Chinese Hainan Airline Group earlier this year. As anyone who's visited China during its New Year knows, it feels like every individual in this massive country is going home somewhere else. The sad ones are those who can't afford the trip, and these are the ones who were courted by the airline.

A hundred young people, mostly students studying overseas or in distant provinces, were selected by the Send Love Home program and each given a return flight to their waiting family.

A typical reaction came from Peng Sijie, a violin student in the north German city of Rostock. "I made it home before Spring Festival," he said with delight on arriving in Beijing.
"Thanks HNA for helping me come home!" No doubt Dad ordered another crate of rockets and bangers (China is a very noisy place to be at new year).

Handled skilfully, programs like these can create a wide-rippling effect of goodwill. You can be sure that the grapevines of West Australia's Kiwis and China's myriad overseas students are humming with the stories and a heap of kudos for Air New Zealand and HNA.

Then there are some promotions so cool you need to carry a bucket of ice water. Since 2008 Bacardi Limited has run a world-wide PR campaign called "Champions Drink Responsibly". It is a smart way to keep themselves out of the line of fire of advancing regulators - who we talk of frequently on these pages - and also the right thing to do. It trains young adults on how to party responsibly, not be stupid, and not drive drunk.

Well this year their Champion is Spanish tennis heart-throb Rafael Nadal.  According to the promotion, he is putting on a great party in July at a luxury villa on his home island of Mallorca, Spain - called the Castell de Manresa.

All the top models and euro playboys will be there, DJs, speaker towers and a music mix selected by Rafa himself. Food and entertainment will be great and plentiful, accompanied by responsible drinking under the watchful eye of the champion himself.

Hey sounds like my kind of party - or it used to be. Only problem is that today is the last day to enter, April 18, so if you want in you'd better get to the Champions Drink Responsibly Facebook page pretty quick. I've put my entry in already.

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

Is sugar really as perilous as a gun?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday April 11, 2013


What should governments ban "for our own good"? It's always a difficult question for me, as a fundamental believer in individual responsibility. Certainly slap bans on assault rifles and Uzi machine pistols and all the other weaponry Americans like to kill each other with. But do the same life threats really apply to hamburgers, lollipops and soft drinks?

Ironically, in the US media, sugar has been described as "Public Enemy No.1." It's blamed for obesity, attention deficit disorder, even called toxic. A new book claims it's addictive. The warning for marketers is clear: sugar may be the next regulatory target, long before they get around to guns.

Former Parliamentarian for the Greens, Amanda Bresnan, wrote that the host is gathering against the sweet crystals: the AMA, the Heart Foundation, Cancer Council Victoria, Diabetes Australia, VicHealth and the World Health Organisation have all called for the banning of junk food advertising in children's tv hours. It's a formidable pack that has the cooks and confectioners rightly quaking.

In particular the righteous are attacking the "pester power" commercials. You know, the ones that spark your kids to say "Mum, Mum, Dad, Dad, gimme gimme..." every step through the shopping centre.

You can't help but feel dislike for the commercials, particularly if you've ever had your kid throw themselves on the supermarket floor in an ear-splitting tantrum. But whether that makes the ad a capital offence is another matter.

Certainly we do have an epidemic of obesity, both in children and adults, with some 25 per cent of our population being overweight. It's a serious health issue but is it a legal issue as well?

Sometimes government intervention works. The fact that we do not suffer rotted teeth to match our bursting waists is mostly thanks to the fluoride added to the water since the 1960s. But 50 years later that is still causing controversy, so legislation can prove to be a blunt health tool.

What do you do as a marketer? Well you can't ignore the threat, you must be ready to cope with it if it comes.

The big soft drink companies have been readying themselves for years - "Tab", "Diet Pepsi", "Coke Zero" are in the fridge already. If the sugared drinks are ever banned, these sugarless alternatives sit waiting.

It's harder with a hamburger, for ever branded by the documentary Super Size Me, which depicted a grossly overweight America growing fatter burger by burger.

It took an Aussie, Charlie Bell, to come up with a new direction during his brief stint as world CEO of McDonalds. He brought in healthier menu choices, juice instead of soft drinks, and created the popular McCafes. All this within a year - in January 2005 he died of bowel cancer, aged 44.

However he showed that even the biggest fast food chain can put out a healthy message, and that way of eating has been taken up wherever you look.

Asian restaurants have brought us delicious Vietnamese soups and Chinese vegetables; salad counters and juice bars dot the high streets. Joggers and cyclists are a norm these days. So we have become healthier as a society - IBISWorld research shows that today two-thirds of Australians can be considered "health conscious".

So when the right choices are available to us, most of us take them. Do we really need the arm of the law to force us to be sensible?

Think of all that money that would be spent writing new laws and taxes, which would create yet another lawyers' feast. Instead, let's use it to encourage the laggardly third of our population to be more aware of the sensible options for a healthy life.

ray@ebeatty.com

Mobile Phone Wars - A New Generation

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday March 4, 2013

Three years ago the iPhone was blasting every competitor off the field and shoving aside long-term market leaders like Nokia and BlackBerry. Apple looked unstoppable as every hand seemed to reach for the pristine white style leader.

After lengthy analysis and praise of Steve Jobs' marketing brilliance that had brought this about - and resurrected a mobile market that had been hammered by the GFC - I pointed out that his competitors were not about to leave the billions of dollars lying on the ground, they would come back with a headlong charge.

So it has been, with every mobile phone maker putting out its newer, brighter, more powerful smartphone than the last. At February's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, all the leading manufacturers showed off their dazzling wares.

They are now all lining up on the shelves of our mobile phone shops, making your fingers itchy to play with the inventive applications.

Nokia has inevitably lost its leadership crown, coming in with too little too late, in the wake of the iPhone powerboat. Now the battle for smartphones is being fought between Apple and Samsung.

But let me warn the confused follower here: there is a difference between smartphones and common or garden mobile phones. Smartphones are the clever computers like the iPhone or Galaxy or Nokia 920, with their huge power and memories and scores of internal programs. A mobile phone is the cheaper, more basic device that handles telephony but not necessarily many things more.

So while Nokia may have lost in the smartphone race, they still sold 100,000 phones last quarter, to take the lead in the overall market. And in fact they have declared that they see the huge market in the developing world as having a far greater potential that ever-fancier phones.

So many parts of the world - Africa, Asia, South America, the Middle East - missed out on centuries of infrastructure: roads, copper wires, power generation, telephones. Now with a mobile phone in hand and a base station on a mountain top, they can communicate with the world - or check the next valley to see if they require any milk today.

Taking so much for granted, we find it hard to envisage what a miracle mobile communication can be to the remote world. We smile at photos of an old bedouin on his donkey with a phone pressed to his ear. But that man's life and livelihood have been transformed.

However back in our shopping malls we can anticipate more goodies from the MWC. For the other phone companies have also been cooking stuff up in the labs. The new LG Optimus has a 13 magapixel camera. That's hard to imagine in a mobile phone, for that amount of data you would have needed a grunty SLR on a tripod, not so long ago.

Think the design of the iPhone is neat? Take a look at the new HTC One, with a machined aluminium shell and polycarbonate components, protected by a tough Gorilla Glass display.

After finally getting their act together BlackBerry have come back to life, posting a modest profit for Q4 and proving the obituaries premature. Their new Z10 phone is aggressively aimed at the iPhone - as they would say, with more of a business stance. And next month the new Q10 will even resurrect the keyboard.

There must be something in it - Samsung has already released a commercial needling BlackBerry, in addition to poking fun at the iPhone "fanboys", the commercial that supposedly played a role in putting down Big Apple and raising up the Galaxy. When your enemies attack, you're on the right track.

ray@ebeatty.com

Faces and tweets - how effective are they?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday March 21, 2013 

The great waves of social media keep rolling in - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and scores of would-be pretenders. They are part of every advertising campaign, they will flood this year's election space, and as every hand fiddles with phone and tablet and laptop, there is no way to avoid it.

So what a shock when even a sprinkle of doubt is tossed in - by one of the world's richest media gurus. "I get myself in deep doo-doo when I say this," said Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP agency group, but he believes that, "Facebook is more of a branding platform than an advertising medium."

Similarly for Twitter, "I think it’s a PR medium… it’s very effective word of mouth. But – and this is the old fart speaking – I think because it’s limited in terms of number of characters, it reduces communication to superficialities and lacks depth."

In other words, they're fine for announcing and showing off the product, but not for the hard grind of selling it. It doesn't search out the customer and the product the way Google or eBay do.

But what makes Sorrell compelling listening is the fact that he commands $50 billion in media billings world-wide and was a major force behind the ascendancy of social media in the first place.

All this is happening even as Twitter launches its new advertising API software that will automate the running of sophisticated campaigns on the medium. Added to this, rumours have it that Facebook may adopt the hash tag in its own interface (the "#" symbol in front of a group name) to bring its own advertising products into aggressive competition with Twitter.

World-wide, the Ad Knight has caused a stir of controversy as greater portions of the advertising budget are directed towards social media. Agencies in Britain and the US have been working hard to keep up with the social phenomenon, so they don't appreciate such doubt from one of their own bosses.

"It's an odd thing to say," says Kenny Hill, Melbourne MD of M&C Saachi. "These days advertising encompasses so many facets of the market."

He gave the example of their recent launch of Opel - a brand that, in Australia, is little known. "Facebook was a very important part of the communications mix. We launched the brand with a large conventional campaign - using Facebook to broaden the story."

They have an extensive team working on social media: "Everybody in the creative areas has to understand it."

Futurologist Phil Ruthven of IBISWorld thinks Sorrell might be right, "Especially Twitter because it's so short, with its 140 characters," and Facebook because it's a social medium. "We had long discussions about where the advertising is going. My conclusion is you still have to wait for it to work."

At which point Kenny Hill disagrees: "Does it work? Yes. We see response immediately, in real time." He points to their Jetstar campaign, where daily sales offers are sent out over Twitter to their followers.

Ruthven believes Facebook is growing into a tribal site rather than an advertising carrier, and he worries that Twitter is in danger of eventually becoming a pest, wearing out its welcome.

However there are many great minds, and even more great dollars, facing these very questions. Last year Facebook reported revenues of $5 billion, and Twitter now believes that the new advertising API can push it to a billion dollars this year.

With that sort of funding, new uses and novelties will be found for these social media that we do not have the wit to foresee - you'll be pushing buttons for a long time yet.

ray@ebeatty.com

Watch found, opportunity lost

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday March 14, 2013

I was so pleased to receive the message from the hire car firm in Noosa - had I lost a watch? Yes indeed, I thought it had gone missing in the sand but it turned up under the car seat. I thanked them, by text, and asked for it to be posted to me, I would pay for all expenses.

But no. They were too busy, it would take too much time, I must send a proper, stamped, self-addressed envelope and they would then post it. OK, no big deal - but it did sour, a little, what had been a warm exchange. I brooded on this. What would Winston say?

For many years, my friend Winston Marsh has lectured thousands around Australasia, and beyond, about the value of a customer. I had just spent $600 with the firm and been very contented with their car and service. How should they treat me?

"Why did they even message you?" asked Winston. "They should have returned it to you with a $10 voucher for your next visit to Noosa. They spoiled the chance to make it a great service experience." 

Warming to a favourite subject, he mused: "Where did it come from, the idea to ring you? It must be down from the top, an attitude running in the firm. It's management that has the responsibility to make policy that's then passed on by the middle managers. 

"Can you imagine what Richard Branson would do? He'd send you the watch and a voucher to make up for the time you were without it!" he smiled.

In our business you spend a lot of time communicating the obvious. Like - how much is a customer worth? It's quite simple to calculate. Just take the money you spend every year on marketing, advertising, mail outs, sales staff, rep calls, submissions and tenders - and then divide that total by the number of active customers on your books. That is, someone who has spent something in the past year. The figure is your cost per customer. Frightening, isn't it?

Of course we all know that eighty percent of the business comes from twenty percent of the customers - but that remaining eighty percent of customers still cost a massive part of your expenses.

Getting back to hire cars, what's your rule of thumb on the value of a customer, Winston? "For a big firm like Avis or Budget, who've got counters at the airport and big corporate contracts, I'd guess ten to twenty dollars a sale - probably more." 

But for a little off-site firm like I quoted? "Every customer comes through advertising or other media," he explained, making the job much harder. "For a small hire firm a customer has to be worth at least $100."

Which is pretty good justification for spending $1.20 in stamps, a padded envelope and the evening drop-off at the post office.

In return, they would have gained an advocate amongst the business community. Whenever a colleague was going north for pleasure or trade, I'd slip in my story about this car hire firm that was so honest they charged me what had been quoted, to the cent - and immediately sent back a watch I'd dropped under the seat. 

Word of mouth is the strongest form of advertising you can get. These days you can extend this to Facebook and Twitter.

The way to win - and keep - customers is by talking to them, on any excuse. A friendly note in the bubble bag, hoping I had enjoyed my stay and looking forward to my return, would have been a perfect touch. Ask Winston and Richard.

ray@ebeatty.com

What's contaminated about a horse?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday March 7, 2013

As a healthfood scare, horses have done the full circuit this past few months. In Europe horsemeat has been found in hamburgers being routinely tested in Ireland.

In response, supermarkets in the U.K., France, Germany, Sweden and Norway suddenly dumped huge quantities of frozen lasagne and burgers and other prepared meats.

Then Ikea meatballs were found to also contain horse - leading to their withdrawal from stores in 21 countries. Some may even remember in 1981 when Australian burgers sold in America were found to contain horse, and the whole meat trade was jeopardised for a time.

Well I'd like to ask a question. What is so wrong with eating horse? Now let me quickly point out that I have no desire for it myself. But I am very familiar, on my travels, to strolling up cobbled streets in Italy or China, past modern butcher shops with big pictures of horses on the windows. In fact, in much of the world it is regarded as a gourmet meat.

What brought this to mind was last week's Marketeer about 3D printers eventually producing printed "meat" for us to eat. (I've had a couple of queries: was this a send-up or was it true? Yes, it's the truth.)

So apart from manufacturing meat, what other possibilities do we have for a future with an ever-growing world population and the human body's continuing demand for protein? 

Now this is the unpopular bit. There are a great many good sources of food and protein that go to waste for purely emotional reasons, in this very country. Think of the thousands of kangaroos that need to be culled each year; the rabbits to eradicate; the camels wreaking havoc in the central Australian deserts. All much-appreciated meats in different corners of the world, just not ours.

This is where marketing can weave its magic spell. As it has been doing so for centuries. Think about the way so many of our most popular meats have been disguised through the power of language. It's not a sheep's leg you're eating but braised mutton. Not pig chops but pork medallions. Not burned cow's buttock but roast beef with the trimmings.

We have William the Conqueror to thank for this, bringing fine French phrases to the kitchen while leaving the angle-saxon farmers sloshing in the muck. An early piece of marketing that endures to this day.

Perhaps we can do the same with a new generation of foods. Pastissada di caval does sound much nicer than horsemeat stew. Canada has grown increasingly fond of its gourmet gee-gees, explained by Toronto chef Grant van Gameren: AI call horsemeat cotton candy,@ he says. AIt melts in the mouth.@ There's a Horse Meat Recipe Exchange on Facebook - and scores of other enthusiastic cookery sites.

Our kangaroos are now exported to 55 countries worldwide. Certainly there is still much controversy against the harvesting of kangaroos. But some species are in excess and need control, agree groups like the Ecological Society of Australia and the Australasian Wildlife Management Society.

They also argue that we should base more of our agriculture on native animals rather than introduced livestock. This would then protect our fragile, thin Australian soils from the damage they continue to suffer from the hooves of sheep and cows.

So let's get a host of our animals off the "contaminated meats" list and into the pot, through some smart legislation - and clever marketing. Come on, Marketeers, any ideas?

How about ravioli cavallo? Or kangaburger. Fancy hot possum pot? Or how about a basted Christmas emu? Or a feast around a beach-baked hungi wombat? Who ever said Australia doesn't have its own cuisine?

ray@ebeatty.com

The new revolution: 3D printing

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday February 28, 2013 

You know the knob that broke on your stove? Or maybe that missing queen from your ivory chess set? How about you just print yourself new ones?

Yes, print, once you're scanned or designed the replacement piece. This is the next big wave of computer hardware that has started spilling onto the world stage: the 3D printer.

Extrusion printers have been around for over a decade, in engineering and architectural offices. But for the most part they have been expensive industrial machines. Now the prices have started to fall - and it's possible to obtain a good one for $2000, some for even less.

Build you own Eiffel Tower - on your desktop

Right now these printers have gone to the technically minded, the hobbyists, the designers, and you might be thinking, "Why would I ever want one in my home or office?" But then you don't have to cast your mind too far back to recall thinking the same thing about computers or laser printers.

Some pundits have started muttering about "the new industrial revolution", but think about it. The internet gives you world-wide access to any item's picture and often its design. Your scanner can copy anything, given the right software, and there are already laser 3D scanners on the market. Your computer can handle incredibly powerful CAD design programs. You already have almost everything you need.

The 3D printer is not so different from the ink-jet you have now. Instead of ejecting ink, this deposits drops of melted plastic, layer after layer after layer, building up a three dimensional structure. It is microscopically accurate. You can print an interlinked  set of cogs that work straight out of the machine.

In the workplace they have become the quick way to recreate a missing part. No more awaiting delivery from Dusseldorf or Tokyo. Especially for those times when one broken piece can only be replaced by ordering a whole sub-section of the machine. Forget it, just print the part yourself.

In past years, working with manufacturing companies, I can remember the long delays and huge expense of preparing the prototypes, moulds, and dies. Now, with some practised skill, much of this development work can be done on the desk.

Of course, like all new technology this will also become a lawyer's picnic. Who holds the patent on a stove knob? What's the value of a statue if you can punch out a copy in minutes?

Nothing I've discussed so far has been particularly revolutionary. So how about human livers and kidneys? Part of the development work powering ahead is "bio printing". This uses an ink made of living cell structures and builds them - as with the plastics - into human tissue. They have already succeeded with simple parts like cartilage and bones.

But in a decade it may be possible to recreate functional organs. Research is well under way on regenerative medicine, with printers producing experimental skin, heart valves, knee cartilage  and bone implants. And on the non-medical side, a start-up called Modern Meadow is using bio printing technology to develop a way to print meat.

Don't know if you can print the pepper and mustard

Does this mean that one day we'll be able to read the menu and then go on to eat it? All right, don't be flippant. But it does make one's sense of wonder continue to boggle - is this where it's all leading?

But if you think about our insanely expanding world population rate, and the heedless destructiveness of our management of this planet, maybe in future the only way to feed the billions is going to be by printing their food.

ray@ebeatty.com

Are you holding on to dinosaur droppings?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday February 21, 2013

Are we coming to the end of the reading era? Is this newspaper in your hands the mere dinosaur-droppings of passing history? To listen to many pundits you would have to agree. But to my mind, the best source of research are your own eyes.

To be a good marketer you have to get out. Not in an air-conditioned Merc, but on the tram, the bus, in the supermarket, where you can watch commerce right before you.

Certainly, the morning train is no longer filled with the rustle and crumple of hundreds of newspapers. But neither are the passengers looking around them and chatting. They are all buried in their iPods, mobile phones, video games, the morning's on-air sudoku puzzle, and full-screen newspapers on their iPads.

They are reading just as fixedly as ever - some higher mathematics, some the joke pages and crosswords. The medium has changed, not the messages.

For those in the newspaper game this is reassuring news. After all those stories of print fading away, it is proving far more resilient than many thought. Just last week the figures came out giving the Audit Bureau of Circulation verdict on print sales. And yes, print circulation figures have dropped. News Limited by 5.3%, while Fairfax declined 14.8%.

But where combined figures have been obtained, it tells a different story. They are calling it the "Masthead" figure. All the publications obtained on paper, computer, iPad, phone - so long as they come under the one newspaper's title. Suddenly the figures are much more balanced. In fact the ABC was able to point to an increase in circulation. Only 0.2 per cent, but still on the positive side.

It's all changing before our eyes. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age iPad apps have already been downloaded over a million times. So the content is still being read.

News Ltd is being quiet about its new offerings (even to me). But last week CEO Kim Williams indicated that he was not happy with traditional circulation counting. "This financial year The Readership Works will launch our sector's new readership measurement system," he announced, indicating that it was a system which will count, "Media consumption across all platforms - print, online, smart phones and tablets."

In the back rooms, the publishers are hard at work refining the screen delivery of their papers. Currently what you receive on your iPad is essentially a pdf of the paper, and it stays the same all day.

What is being developed are more interactive newspapers. So the news and pictures can update with any breaking news, stock reports, sports results. Giving papers the immediacy that perhaps they had a century ago in the days of "stop press!" and "afternoon edition".

This has already happened elsewhere. Perhaps most famously with the New York Times which now has 670,000 digital subscribers, and claims to generate more revenue from its digital base than its advertising.

These choices have given newspapers a way to slow, and in some cases reverse, circulation declines, raise prices and open up a new source of revenue. Most mportantly, it allows newspapers to reduce their dependency on advertising - always a fickle flow - and rely on more stable circulation revenue.

Around the world we are seeing more and more newspapers move behind paywalls, so eventually it will become the norm. It won't be the last of the paper product though. A fancy outfit or new car just look so much better in a big coloured print spread. No little telephone device can ever match that.

ray@ebeatty.com