WE HAVE MOVED!

Yes that's right, we have moved to a new site here..




We found that this one just didnt quite have the leg room we were looking for in a blog. The carpets were were a little dated and the kitchen needed to be re-tiled so head on over to blog.nudgemarketing.com.au and check out the new pad.

AFACT on fire over internet piracy

Bands are giving their music away for free, artists (with the help of the internet) are no longer begging for record deals and even Madonna has chosen to part company with her label. The record companies are starting to realise the bad publicity gained from suing single mothers using limewire isn't helping their cause and you would think that this news would have reached the Australian film and television industry right? Wrong. The "please dont take away our cash cow" pleading that has been the mantra or the recording industry has now been taken up at conciderable cost by the Australian film and television industry. The "what are you really burning" campaign released today by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft undoubtedly cost them a fair slab of cash to put together, the question is if this will have any noticeable effect on the number of movies and TV shows that are pirated in this country.

A couple of questions that come to mind are:-

1. Lets say you don't care much for animated features and would never pay to see a movie like "happy feet" at the cinema or hire it from the video store, is the fact that someone has downloaded the movie really impacting on your bottom line?

2. If less people are going to the cinema to see locally made movies, is this really an indication of the prevalence of piracy or could it be that people are finding alternative ways of spending their free time (you may have heard of something called the internet).

3. If 5 years ago I was spending 70% of my free time watching Commercial TV but now thanks to the internet I am watching exclusive web content (like diggnation or Ask a Ninja) doesn't this tell you that, given the choice I now have, I don't want to watch your crappy content?

Whilst I understand that the AFACT have a vested interest in keeping piracy to a minimum, there are bigger issues that needs to be addressed. In a time where the production tools are becoming so widely available and sites like Youtube allow people to become their own broadcasters maybe people aren't buying/watching because whats on offer just isn't that good.

Radiohead Relying on the Kindness of Strangers

On last weeks Gen Y marketing Podcast (oh yeah, that’s cross-promotion) we mentioned how Radiohead were offering their latest album, In Rainbows, online, DRM-free and users could determine how much the paid for the album. No really, it was up to the people!

I am embarrassed to say, I paid $0, but in my defense, I just wanted to see if you could pay nothing. I am not a Radiohead fan and will never listen to the album (I guess I should probably have deleted it already).

A Report from the Times in the UK, said that 1.2 million people "bought" the album, and a readers poll indicating that the average purchase price was about $9-$10 AU. That’s about $10 million that Radiohead will get in revenue, revenue that they will not have to share with a record company. I bet this has been their best payday for awhile. If contracted to a record company, the band would have had to sell 10 times that number of physical albums to collect the same profit.

Its nice to see that Radioheads faith in their fans has been rewarded. Just goes to show that if you give a little you receive a little. Ten millions dollars little.

NineMSN has no idea about web users..

This ladies and gentlemen is a story of how to alienate your web users and ensure that they never come back to your website... It goes a little somthing like this:-

Yesterday at work I was browsing around looking at stories on Australian Entrepreneurs to try and get an insight on how others have built their web businesses. I came across the NineMSN small business site and was please to find some video interviews with some Aussie entrepreneurs talking about how they went about building their online presence, but being the good employee I am I decided not to watch them at work but rather email the link home so I could watch it on my own time.

This morning I made a cup of coffee, fired up the big gray box under my desk and settled in to watch some insightful and inspiring discussion on starting your own business. Clicking on the link I headed off to the site and was gobsmacked by the following page














It turns out that to watch anything on the NineMSN (and no I'm not linking to their page cause I want to make sure no one ever goes to it ever again) you cannot be using Firefox, you must install IE6 and use MS media player to see it. To that I say F$%# YOU Microsoft and a similar F#$% YOU to the Nine Network.

In the last 12 months Firefox has increased its market share by 43% and whilst it still remains far less than IE, it is hugely popular amongst the tech crowd who tend to be the trend setter of technology.

From a marketing perspective it is often said "as long as you create a good product/content people will eventually find you", and in most cases I believe this to be true. But regardless of how good your content is it MUST be accessible. There is a reason why musicians don't release their latest album on wax cylinders and why Hollywood don't put out movies on laser disk. Its because you MUST use the most accessible medium possible to access the masses.

So thats it for me, I am never going back to that site regardless of how good their content might be.. Sorry NineMSN but its a matter of principal.

What do Vincent Chase and Apple have in common?

So Entourage's Vincent Chase (otherwise know as Adrian Grenier) has been in Australia latley promoting something or another and Sunday night saw him interviewed on Rove live. I can see why the guy was chosen for the role of Vinni Chase in Entourage as ladies seem to go weak at the knees when he flashes the pearly whites at the camera, but in the Rove interview he came across as pretty arrogant and a bit of a jerk. What does this have to do with Apples recent decision to brick hacked iPhones?



Apple is very quickly turning into the Adrian Grenier of the IT world. An asshole but so dam good looking people still love 'em no matter how much of a jerk they are. Apple has already kicked their eirly adopter customers in the guts by dropping the price 2 months after releasing the iphone and the general concesus from the Apple community "I still love my iPhone". Now they are threatening to turn a $700+ product into scap metal and STILL people talk up how much they adore Steve Job's company.

So whats the marketing lesson from all of this?

If your good looking enough you can get away with anything...

Gen Y Marketing Podcast - Episode 7

Its celebration time here at the Gen Y Marketing Podcast seeing the return of Paulie in the podcasting hot seat. To celebrate his triumphant return we have put together a show choc-a-block full of marketing news and our unique take on the world of generation Y marketing...

Don’t forget to join our facebook group, Gen Y Marketing Podcast on Facebook, where you can see everyone else who is listening to the Gen Y Marketing Podcast. Jake and Nat are there, no Paulie yet, but we are happy to be your friends :)
Peace.

Dove Pro-Age...Pro-Marketing or Anti-Marketing?

I came across this Dove ad in the Sunday Age Magazine. As much as I like Dove's approach to advertising and beauty, I am in two minds about this ad.

Right off the bat, the Ad gives off the anti-marketing message and feel that Dove Ads have now become famous for. Showing natural, beautiful, "normal", non-traditional models has become a hallmark of Doves "Attainable Beauty" Advertising.

She’s an older woman, beautiful, but with the obvious natural beauty flaws that come with aging. The photo works well with the tagline "too old to be in an anti-aging ad?” Its show natural beauty that doesn't conform to traditional marketing and media views of attractiveness and body image. It fits in great with Dove's Anti-Marketing message.

But then some idiot, some lame copywriter, has ruined the overall feel with the end tagline (below the picture) that reads, "but this isn't anti-aging. this is pro-age. a new range of skin and hair care from dove. beauty has no age limit"

Give me a break! That ruins it. That tagline treats readers like idiots. It comes across as tricky, unauthentic and lame. Don’t' come at me with an anti-marketing message, just so you can slip me the "true" marketing message. This isn't Anti-marketing, Dove. This Pro-Marketing!

Am I overreacting? Perhaps. Does dove care about my views considering that I am pretty certain that I'm not their target market? Absolutely not? Go and and see some of Dove's other Ads (which are generally great) and let me know what you think of this one in comparison?