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?

Some quick ads...

I Just wanted to post some of my fav ads over the past couple of months.
This one is my absolute favorite...The Wind Ad


And there is something about this series from Budweiser that is growing on me. and who said Ads can't be entertaining...

Mobile Ads

Some interesting developments in the mobile phone marketing platform today. From tech crunch, "Blyk, the mobile virtual network operator offering free phone call minutes and messaging in return for sending customers advertising, launches in the UK today” read more here.

Basically how this works is that you register on the website (you have to be between the ages of 16 to 24) and get a SIM from Blyk. Users get free SMS and Calls (capped) in exchange for up to six ads being delivered to the users mobile phone each day. This ain’t no Mickey Mouse project with some big advertisers already signed up, including Buena Vista, Coca-Cola, I-play Mobile Gaming, L’Oreal Paris, StepStone and Yell.

This is a pretty interesting concept. It is just a matter of time until advertising and marketing on mobile phones takes off in a big way. Also from tech crunch is the news of ThePudding, which, “provides free, PC-based phone calls to anywhere in the US or Canada. The big catch: computers in Fremont, CA will eavesdrop on and analyse every word of your conversation so they can serve up advertisements tailored to the topic at hand.” – Tech Crunch

My issue with these forms of ad supported revenue models is how they require users to opt in. Whereas when you use the Internet, where most sites are essentially ad supported, you do not have to opt in explicitly to view ads, viewing is a consequence of surfing the net. The same is true with television, radio and print. Asking users to actively view, or listen, to ads is a different kettle of fish.

I would suspect that as mobile phones, like the iphone and the yet confirmed mythical Google phone, become integrated media devices, ad content will primarily be delivered through Internet use and other online content. Will be interesting to see future developments.

Aside: I just realised I have never received a marketing message, or ad, on my mobile phone (apart from telemarketers). Could this be right?

Employee Generated Content

Doing my daily blog crawl (I love my google reader), a new term popped up on a few different blogs - Employee Generated Content (EGC) - or as some call it Employee Generated Media (EGM). Now I am all over User Generated Content (UGC), User Generated Ads (UGA), or my preferred User Created Ads (UCA) – I think this makes users feel less like tools and puppets of the corporate machine.

Although I have read a bit about Employee Generated Content – it’s nice now that we have a nice little term for it. Check out the couple of references on the blogs I read this morning, Brand Autopsy, Search Engine Guide and Brand Autopsy again.

In my opinion, I think we can probably refine EGC down a little further, possibly 2 ways, dictated by its intent.

1. Internal EGC. A key use of EGC is to foster improved employee engagement, employment efficiency and productivity. These are inward, internal focused outcomes for an organisation. Having an internal corporate blog, employee productivity competitions are great examples of engagement. Corporate and knowledge-based wiki’s and shared document spaces are areas where EGC can help improve business efficiency by promoting greater sharing, accessibility and volume of employee held knowledge.
2. External EGC. The other main use of EGC is to utilise it as a tool to engage with customers. These are outward focused outcomes that use internal EGC tools. Things like using employee blogs, employee created videos and employee buying tips, which are generated by the employees, for the consumption purposes of consumers. These messages can provide an authentic voice in a businesses conversation with customers.
   
   Bacn! Oh, and on new buzz words, seems like Bacn, which refers to "electronic messages which have been subscribed to and are therefore not unsolicited but are often unread by the recipient for a long period of time". Bacn is email you want but not right now . So it’s not as annoying as spam but still annoying. Like all the facebook messages telling you who has written on you wall or sent you a message.
   Check out Seth Godin’s views on this.
   

Even channel 10 dont want you to watch ads

During the screening of the movie Kenny this evening on channel 10 a strange thing happened. Just as they went to the break, Kenny pops up in a 10 promo screen and says "its probably a good time to duck out for a quick number 1s, or a really quick number 2s". Being that the movie is about toilets it kinda made for a funny opener to the ad break but I'm interested to know what the advertisers who have paid good money to screen their ads during the break think of it. I'm guessing they would not be overly impressed with channel 10 telling their viewers that they can stop paying attention for the next few minutes..

I'm sure these advertisers are well aware of the fact that during the screening of a movie people will often get up and do something else whilst the ads are on, but to have channel 10 actually promoting it is something I didn't expect.

Magazines Heavy in Ads

All advertising sucks, right? We should avoid ads, marketing and campaigning at all cost? A friend said this to me on the weekend, “Advertising is lame. It’s so manipulative. I hate ads, I hate being advertised to and I try to avoid seeing any ads at all if I can”

Now I don’t want to get too defensive of something that I spend a lot of time doing. An Ex girlfriend of mine stopped watching TV with me because I was constantly yelling at the TV with is dumb, lame-ass commercials (I sometimes think I am turning into an old man). So I hate Ads as much as the next guy.

Someone sent me these bunch of statistics the other day. An analysis done by Folio, a US based magazine for magazine management (what a niche), compares the percentage of content that are Ads across the top fashion magazines for the 2007 Fall season. The results are insane.

Maire Claire starts off with an average of 340 pages, of which 170 are Ad content, 50% (the remaining editorial content). Elle magazine comes in next with 67% of their page content that are Ads. Taking out the top prize, Vogue with a total of 840 pages. Of those 840 pages, 727 pages where Ad content. 727! 86%. Add that to the fact that over half of the women surveyed read fashion magazines for fashion tips and Advertisements. These magazine people are onto something. Paid advertisements that people actually enjoy viewing.

So not all commercials are bad and not all Ads are a waste of time. Think how many times you have done one of the following:

• Read a magazine that consist most of Ads.
• Watched a funny commercial that you have been forwarded by email or on youtube.
  Watched the Super bowl for the Ads.
• Seen one of those “world’s funniest Ads” TV shows

In these cases (and like youtube, best of ads website and TV shows) the advertising content is so good and entertaining and at times provides such valuable information – like showing fashion trends and new products, that it moves beyond a sales pitch and becomes the content itself.

I am just suprised that people still buy magazines in the first place, and not just read everything online!

Gen Y Marketing Podcast Now on Facebook

So apart from both Jake and myself being on facebook (hey Paulie where are you at?) the Gen Y Marketing Podcast now has its very own group that you can join. Click Here!

To tell you the truth, there are no real extra-added benefits of joining the group on facebook (we don't have any special promotions or extra post - though apparently Jake has some old white t-shirts he is keen to give away) but you can join up with other people who are jamming along to the podcast - and we all need more friends, right?

Alright, you can also post comments and discussions on the wall and discussion board, and you can also help me turn the group slowly against Jake - I tell ya I don't know why he thinks he is so smart.

Anyway, click on the picture link below (and if you haven't join facebook yet, sign up) and join the group so we can all be friends.

Peace.

Sorry NAB what did you say? I was distracted by your ad

So whilst watching the football tonight I saw a new ad from the National Australia Bank. NAB noticed a few years ago that their customers hated them and rightly so took solid bump to their bottom line. Rebranded as the NAB they came out trying to rebuild their position with strong customer service and have now launched their "smarter everyday banking" campaign.

The ad (that I would put here as an embedded video but they haven't bothered to upload it to Youtube) shows lots of people ears and talks about how they have been listening. Its one of those ads that has a post production filter applied to make it look a little more "arty" (see this would be much easier if I could just embed it). I would have paid more attention to their message too but I just couldn't get past the fact that the men in the commercial were wearing lipstick. Yes thats right, that was no typo, they are WEARING LIPSTICK!!!

So well done to the NAB for apparently listening to their customers, but lipstick?

Another Bloody Blog Post...

Just a couple of quick things today. So I have been drinking this water for the past few months and I think it’s pretty cool. I like the look of the Another Bloody Water bottle, the anti-marketing feel of the name and copy, and I must admit, I think the shape and color of the bottle and text to be pretty stylish.

Apparently, three guys started the company: one a local food distributor, a graphic designer and an ad guy.

Companies need to tread a fine line when they are going down the “anti-marketing” marketing approach. It can quite easily come off as tricky and un-authentic by a cynical audience. But in this case I think they have walked that fine line quite well and tapped into something I think a lot of us have probably thought about before - IT'S JUST BLOODY WATER!

Makes me think about what else we could apply this slogan to. Another Bloody Energy Drink. Another Bloody boutique Beer. Another Bloody Social Networking Site. Another Bloody Reality TV Show....

Who likes Riddles and Paradox's? A couple of my favorites are:

• What starts with "e" ends with "e" and contains only one letter? An envelope.
• Why is it called the 100-year war when it lasted for 116 years?

My friend Ed sent me this little paradox yesterday: according to a study from McKinsey & Co, regarding the effectiveness of TV advertising, by 2010 they predict:

• A 23 percent decline in ads viewed due to switching off.
• Nine percent loss of attention to ads due to increased multitasking.
• A 37 percent decrease in message impact due to saturation

And the real kicker: real ad spending on prime-time broadcast TV has increased over last decade by about 40 percent even as viewers have dropped almost 50 percent.

A free case of Bloody Water for anyone who can explain that one to me!

when will ManCans.com.au kick into campaign mode

So I saw the ManCans.com.au ad on TV the other night for about the 10th time and decided I would check out this viral marketing campaign and see what its all about.

For the average visitor it seems to be nothing more than a silly joke site about guys growing breasts due to nancyness. But no one in their right mind buys prime time ad slots on commercial TV just for fun, so its almost certain that there is a campaign behind it. A quick look at the Whois info shows that the site is actually registered to Cadbury Schwepps so that narrows it down a little (some kind of food or beverage product it would seem). But the question I found myself asking after checking the Alexa traffic graph is "when are they going to start trying to convert their buzz into brand recognition or sales?"..

Being that Australian marketers are usually pretty conservative when it comes to trying wacky marketing campaign, I am actually really happy to see the folks at Cadbury giving it a shot. They have got quite a few Google references from people in forum sites asking "what the hell is with this mancans thing" so from that perspective its actually working quite well. But with a downward trend in visitors since mid August, it might be time they clicked the site into gear and start getting their monies worth.

NetAlert making the internet safe for Australian families.. sort of.

It took $84 million for the Australian government to create a free internet filter for families across the country and it apparently took Tom Woods, a 16 yearold less than 30mins to hack it.

Trying to protect children from the evil side of the internet is an uphill battle, I for one would not like to be handed that task. That said spending a total of $189 million on "NetAlert – Protecting Australian Families Online" I get the impression that the money could have been better spent. There are 2 main reasons why this was always going to fail:-

1. For anyone that has children or has been a child themselves at some stage (thats pretty much all of us by my calculations) telling a kid they CAN'T do something, just makes them work harder to prove the grownups wrong.

2. Parents by and large are less computer savvy than their children. This being the case it makes perfect sense that the first thing a kid is going to do when they find out their parents have installed NetAlert is Google "how to bypass NetAlert".

By my reckoning, if the Australian government had have launched a competition at DefCon offering an $84mil prize for the best software filter they would have received thousands of entries all of which would have been far more secure than the current offering. They may have even forced the 16 yearold to spend 5 maybe 6 hours finding the work around.

Liveband.com.au set to increase CD sales..

The record industry have been complaining for years about decreased record sales due to internet piracy all the while doing nothing (other than DRM which didn't work out quite how they had hoped) to try and find a way that both consumers and labels can gain from. Well thanks to an Aussie start up LiveBand.com.au there may be away to alleviate the problem that keeps both parties smiling.

LiveBand essentially goes along to concerts (with the approval of the record company of course), records the show, does some mastering then uploads the tracks to their site for people to purchase online and burn to their own CD. So the consumers gets a copy of that "special" show they went to, the record company gets another income stream and the musician hopefully gets a few bucks from the process too. The biggest positive I can see to this though is from the marketing perspective. I am constantly bailed up by friends telling me about the "awesome show" they went to last week and, like looking though someones holiday snaps, its never quite as exciting for me as it is for them. With a service like this I can actually hear the recording, get a feel for the band and possibly become a convert.

Its a very simple concept and one that I can certainly see taking off once their list of acts starts to build up but I am honestly surprised that the record companies failed to come up with this themselves rather choosing to whine about lost sales every chance they get.

For the love of gmail

I remember when gmail launched a few years ago and people were begging those in the loop for a gmail invite. 3 years on most of us in IT land have a few gmail addresses and despite the occasional spam that gets though the filter its an amazingly good service. So it comes as no suprise that when the folks at google asked people to make a short clip involving the gmail envelope image for the purpose of creating a mashup video they sure came out of the woodwork to help. You can check out the video below (its kinda cool):-



After watching it I found myself wondering why google has so many people so prepared to get involved despite the fact there is no prize or any real recognition for their efforts and I think its actually pretty simple.

Google offer free products (for the most part) and they really do come across as the type of company that will make something cool, give it away and ask for nothing in return. Many of the Web 2.0 companies have cottoned on to this now and it seems to be working. Advertising revenue follows the most visited sites and google realised eirly on that free services are undoubtedly the best way to make this happen. So google keeps giving and users keep loving them for it.

Telstra's Handle on Truth in Advertising

Telstra, Telstra, Telstra. Can nothing go right for Telstra? Today a report in The Age, that Telstra pulled a series of advertisements about its Next G mobile telephone network after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) raised concerns regarding the validity of particular statements. The statements in question – “Everywhere you need it" and "Get the coverage you need" were of particular interest to the ACCC.

When the ACCC head, Graeme Samuel, says "when the whole of Australia is not covered and coverage is not always available where consumers need it" – it comes across not only as a critic of Telstra’s advertising, its a damning critic of Telstra’s services and products.

No matter what you are selling, a product, service or yourself - you have to be careful in what you promise that you can deliver. Nothing is worse than a “let down”, and nothing destroys integrity and authenticity like false claims and incorrect brand positioning.

On the whole “truth in advertising” topic just a couple of random points:

1. Your Consumers can handle the truth. In fact we crave it and when we don't get we are disappointed.

2. Consumers are great at taking the piss out of you brand - and in the process redefines your brands image...FOR THE WORSE! Check out these good examples from valley of the geeks…

3. The Heart Foundation Tick of approval. A friend of mine worked one of the campaigns for the Heart Foundation Tick. The original copy for the ad was "the Heart Foundation Tick - the label that can't be bought". After some due diligence, the lawyers worked out that they couldn't say this, because companies do have to purchase the right to have the tick displayed on their products packaging, even though the food also has to meet other nutritional requirements. That is the label can be bought, and in fact, is bought. So they had to revise to the new tagline: “the tick that can't just be bought". I thought this is good anecdote that highlights sometimes how fickle all this truth in advertising can be. I am sure Telstra will live and learn…well at least live!