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I have been doing some research on how companies successfully...

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 01:19:00 -0400

I have been doing some research on how companies successfully and unsuccessfully use Web 2.0. Here’s how it should be done:

In 2005, Carlton Draught launched their new beer ad on the internet. View it on You Tube:

It’s a big ad

The ad was so successful because it coincided with the release of the final movie in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It certainly was, although computer-generated, a big ad!

It features scores of men in kaftans running towards each other on a battlefield. The scenery is reminiscent of Lord of the Rings. As the camera retreats for a bird’s eye perspective, the viewer sees that the battlefield is in fact a man drinking a schooner of Carlton Draught.

It really is a great beer ad. It has product placement, a catchy song, and appeal to men and women of all ages whether they drink beer or not because of its novelty.

However what is really different about this ad is that it was launched on the internet. Foster’s Australia emailed it to 4000 employees one Friday afternoon, who evidently forwarded it on. In about a month, around two million people worldwide had seen it, including 10,000 people in Hungary on one day!

The momentum was so great that the brewer had to scale back the ad’s television air time so not to over-expose the product.

Earlier this year, its follow up ad launched in cinemas and has recently broadcast on television. To me, it doesn’t have the same appeal. It’s blokey and doesn’t capture the zeitgeist like the 2005 ad. It is also not really uplifting or funny. It has great graphics, but that’s about it.

Check it out on You Tube: Carlton Draught Sky Troop

To me the appeal of ‘It’s a big ad’, was that it was appreciated by people who weren’t even the target audience.

Clearly, it was always going to be an extremely hard act to follow!

A cheap and dirty advertising campaign

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 22:23:00 -0400

I have been doing some research on how companies have used Web 2.0 successfully and unsuccessfully. Here’s how it shouldn’t be done:

Last year a Texas family sued Virgin Mobile Australia for using a photo of 16-year-old Alison Chang without her consent in an advertising campaign.

The slogan “Dump your pen friend” was superimposed over her image with the tagline “Free text virgin to virgin”.

The Virgin Mobile Australia campaign “Are you with us or what?” features images downloaded from Flickr and superimposed with salacious ad slogans.

These include: “There’s nothing naughty about getting callouses on your fingers”, “Novelty ring tones are the lowest form of self-expression”, and “If talk is cheap texts should be slightly slutty”

While these slogans are funny and clearly targeted at a youth market, they are damaging because the campaign was so shoddily executed.

All these images were taken gratis from Flickr accounts where users had given their images a Creative Commons attribution.

This means they consented to their images being used for creative purposes as long as they - the photographer - were credited for the photo.

The problem was, however, that Virgin Mobile Australia did not approach the photographers and inform them that they were planning to reproduce their images.

This meant that the photographers were unable to check with their subjects that they were happy for their photo to be used in this way.

In fact, the first the photographer or their subjects knew of the photos’ use, it was already plastered on billboards across Australian capital cities. It was eventually brought to their attention by fellow members of the Flickr community.

Virgin Mobile Australia has attributed the photographer in the small print of the billboard, but made no effort to notify the girl who was clearly a minor and, in fact, looked much younger than 16.

Chang’s immediate reaction to seeing her image used in this way was “I think I’m being insulted”. Of course she was. She was being portrayed as a geek.

As a result, her family issued a lawsuit. It is unclear whether they approached Virgin Mobile Australia first and were unsatisfied with their response or, as is the litigious nature of the US, jumped straight to lawsuit.

Whatever the case, they have given their daughter’s situation more airtime than if the campaign had discreetly been removed.

I was unable to find the outcome of this case so can only conclude that Virgin Mobile Australia paid an out-of-court settlement to the family and stopped running the campaign.

I think it was a very lazy, cheap and dirty campaign of Virgin’s.

Introducing LibraryThing

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 23:03:00 -0400

LibraryThing is what’s known as a social cataloguing site. Literally, it’s a way for people to organise their book collections online.

I discovered LibraryThing when doing some research on tagging. Here’s a link to a very insightful article on the LibraryThing blog. It explains why tagging works so successfully on their site but does not work successfully for the book retailer Amazon.

It found the following:

Tagging is a way of labelling/organising online content.
It works well when people tag their own content, not when they are asked to tag someone else’s.
You need numbers to make tags relevant, otherwise they can easily become distorted.
Tagging works well when it is about memory.
When you tag on LibraryThing you are putting your library of books in order and connecting with people who use the same tags.
Opinion tags in a low numbers environment like Amazon represents a commercial risk.

Quick stats on LibraryThing:

Founded by Tim Spalding and went live 29 August 2005
Team of eight
500 000 users registered
31 million books registered
40 million tags listed
500,000 book reviews on the site

Who is Tim Spalding?

Tim Spalding is an academic. He was a graduate student in Greek and Latin at the University of Michigan and went on to work for a publishing firm in Boston and as a freelance web developer and web publisher. He lists his interests as ancient history, Greek and Latin and is married to the author Lisa Carey.

Tim started the library to manage his own book collection and for his academic and bibliophile friends to use. He did not anticipate LibraryThing would grow so exponentially or the concept become so successful.

How LibraryThing works:

LibraryThing allows you to catalogue your own personal library. You add your own books by entering their titles, authors or ISBN numbers. The site then searches from the Library of Congress, five Amazon book sites, and over 250 world libraries to find what you are looking for. You can then tag your books to organise/refer to them how you want, rate them, and write reviews on them.

Business model:

Anyone can sign up and register up to 200 books for free.
For a larger library or for a group subscription, a one-off fee applies.
If you browse the site without signing in, you’ll see Google Advertising.
LibraryThing get a referral fee when books are sold from book retailers who provide the cover images of the books.

Tools and functionality:

Once you have added a book you can log into that book’s page which shows:

Its average rating;
How many people - and who - has added it to their libraries;
How many reviews it’s had;
Which users have similar libraries to you. (The idea being you can view their libraries and find other books that you might want to read).

There is also a tag cloud so that you can find other books on subjects that interest you; as well as LibraryThing recommendations and recommendations from other users.

The LibraryThing site provides html code so that you can add a feed from your library to your blog. This shows a selection of book covers from your library. When people click on the book covers this takes them to the Amazon site and LibraryThing gets a percentage fee for all book sales through this channel. When people click on the title they are directed to the LibraryThing site.

LibraryThing also provides information on book events that are happening in your area. This is pretty impressive given the site is truly international now. You can search for book-related events like upcoming writers’ festivals, and talks from authors in local book stores and libraries. This is a way of developing a real as well as virtual social network through books.

Another interesting thing you can do with LibraryThing is make a photo-mosaic of all your favourite book covers on your blog or facebook page. This is also a way of selling books on Amazon and generating revenue for LibraryThing.

You can also get LibraryThing on your mobile phone so when you are standing in the book shop trying to remember whether you already have the book say in a particular series (for me Armistead Maupin ‘Tales of the City’ series) you can check your library before making the purchase.

Another thing you can do is add an “I am currently reading” tag to your emails or to your blog. This code simply picks up the last book you added to your library, so updates automatically when you add your latest book.

Design:

The design is very boring. It looks like a cataloguing site rather than a social networking site.

The brown banner and Times New Roman font is not very appealing – to anyone! Granted the site is appealing to a broad demographic (not for instance Gen Y), but it could be a lot cleaner and more contemporary looking.

The pages are very busy and text heavy, with users often having to scroll down and across to find content. Because there is so much going on in the site, it would be better if users could customise their pages so that they could see what they want to see.

The book covers enhance the site a lot. They add colour and help bring the site to life. The profile images of the different users also have this effect and help users connect with this online community.

Despite the design limitations, I really like this site as I think the concept is brilliant and appealing to book lovers of all ages. Check it out here!

An unfortunate customer experience

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 19:33:45 -0400

At the weekend my husband and I decided to go shopping for a new bed.

As we drove down Condamine Road in Sydney, we saw a plethora of bed retailers selling at knock down prices.

Great we thought as we parked the car and decided to check out a couple of places. We visited Sleep City, Captain Snooze and Harvey Norman and had a fairly typical customer experience in two of the three places.

Our experience was a little different in the third place. There was just one sales assistant working the floor, so we had time to lie down on a few beds and figure out what we wanted — rather than being followed around with the sales spiel for each mattress as we had experienced in the other two places.

Eventually a kindly sixty-something lady wandered over and introduced herself to us. She was genuinely interested in us and in finding us the right mattress for our needs and price range.

She asked us our names and spent time chatting to us about our lives and where we came from. She was very friendly and non-pushy, so we asked her name and said we would think about it over night and return the next day.

We did come back the next day to find this sales assistant and make the purchase. But before we filled out the paperwork, I disappeared off to the bathroom leaving my husband and the lady to small talk.

When I returned I saw my husband standing rigid and looking very uncomfortable. Apparently she had said to him: “I’m not a racist” — ugh-o, here it comes — “but more people like you and your wife should be moving here” (i.e. Caucasians). She continued: “There are far too many immigrants coming from Vietnam — and not the good sort either.”

By the time I re-joined my husband her tirade was in full swing. “Australia used to be a beautiful country”, she said, “and now we are becoming like America and they’re not a very beautiful race, they’re all big teeth and fat.”

“Fat?” My husband eventually managed to counter. “What about country NSW?”

“Ah, there is no place in the world like country NSW is there?” she answered wistfully.

Where to from here? My husband and I made the sale and left the store feeling dumbfounded and rather embarrassed. “I enjoyed serving you,” she shouted after us, which of course made us feel even worse.

Perhaps I should have said: “Actually my sister-in-law is Cantonese” or “Actually we both love experiencing different cultures” or my husband could have pointed out that his whole team at work is multi-cultural, and highly skilled at that.

Or maybe I should have said that, like America, our country is built on immigration. We are all immigrants and we will depend on more people arriving to keep us relevant and influential on a world stage, and to keep our economy booming.

What’s more we also don’t exactly have an open-door policy. Australia’s immigration laws are some of the toughest in the world, and they are based not on race, but on the ability to offer the right skills.

At the end of the day, her attitudes just come from ignorance. But what I find really incredible is that she chose to share them with us when she didn’t know us from a bar of soap, and in her workplace too!

Somehow I don’t think this will be good for business. We won’t be back.

10 things I love - 10 things I hate (in no particular order)

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 01:13:20 -0400

I love:

1. Seeing the sun rise over the ocean

2. The feel of clean sheets

3. Watching a log fire

4. Nursing a big glass of red wine

5. Feeling alive after exercise

6. Hearing the dawn chorus

7. Lying in a spoon with my partner

8. Being doubled over laughing

9. The golden light of early evening

10. Exploring new places and experiences

I hate:

1. Breathing second-hand cigarette smoke

2. Commuter trains

3. J-walkers when I’m the driver

4. Sitting next to sick people on buses

5. Grammatical errors in printed material

6. Litter and graffiti

7. Rowdiness and drunkenness

8. Getting caught in the rain without an umbrella

9. Racism

10.Slow walkers drifting across my path when I’m trying to get somewhere.

A new era dawning in U.S politics

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 07:36:00 -0400

Presidential nominee Barack Obama on Capitol Hill

There’s an old saying that the darkest hour of the night is just before dawn. And I can’t help thinking that the same might be true for US politics.

I wonder if the US hadn’t reached an all time low with eight years of Bush presidency, whether the country would be ready for a black president (or woman vice president).

It is understandable that there has been a racial schism in the US over the last one hundred and fifty years or so.

This stems from the fact that most of today’s African Americans are descendants of slaves brought over in the ninetienth century to work in the cotton plantations.

The slaves were treated as animals, performing back-breaking work with no hope of emancipation.

They were also illiterate, which was probably the single most important factor in keeping them down in a rapidly industrializing nation.

This ensured that when slavery ended, African Americans remained de facto second-class citizens.

What’s surprising and frightening to know is that the majority of African Americans only got the right to vote in the 1960s.

This was as the result of many draconian and disadvantageous policies that kept African Americans from being able to exercise their right to vote.

This makes it even more amazing that today a black man is standing for presidency in the US.

It shows that a country that has been fundamentally racist towards African Americans through much of the twentieth century has come a long way.

Of course unlike Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Barack Obama does not trace his lineage back to the slave trade of West Africa.

However this scarcely matters. He is still black, and he represents the hopes of so many Americans for a fairer more inclusive America.

It shows that if a black man can ascend to the top job in the nation, then the days of a racist, divided society and deliberate social and economic disadvantage are over.

Likewise, McCain has announced his running mate to be 44-year-old Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin. And this effectively does the same thing for women as it helps to shatter the glass ceiling that exists in so many spheres of public life.

The vice president is the immediate successor should something happen to the president in office. And the vice president can go on to run for presidency should they want to.

So whatever the outcome of November’s presidential election one thing is for sure: change is coming to America.

And all I can say is thank God for that!

Longer-lasting sex billboards removed

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 06:16:37 -0400

Earlier this week the Advertising Standards Bureau upheld community complaints about billboards promising longer-lasting sex, and banned them from all capital cities.

The Advanced Medical Institute (whose product is a nasal spray for men with problems getting it up) is behind the controversial ads. CEO Jack Vaisman, says: “We need to be direct in our advertising because we’ve found men don’t respond to the message otherwise.”

And boy, have they been direct! Their thinly veiled message is on the radio every day – and countless times at that:

“Where’s that banging coming from?”

“Danny and Julie’s place”

“That can’t be right; he’s a one-minute wonder….”

You get the message.

And you can see why radio advertising is so effective for them. The adverts are cheap to make and to broadcast; and can be targeted to demographic groups relatively effectively.

But with radio – as with billboards – there is also a spam effect targeting everyone. This is clearly designed to get people talking, bring these issues out into the open, and make them ‘normal’ and nothing to be ashamed of, while offering a quick-fix solution.

However with this approach it is no wonder that many people find them irritating and/or offensive. The advantage of radio is that parents can switch channels if they don’t want their children hearing the ad. But with billboards, the AMI message is literally up in lights and, in my opinion, is quite crude.

It is also unnecessary if Vaisman’s assertion that 7000 men call AMI each week is true. To me, this sounds grossly inflated – and perhaps part of the strategy to make it seem like everyone has these issues and that they are nothing unusual at all.

But if I’m wrong then their advertising has been hugely successful (even if annoying) and having their billboards banned will do them no harm.

In fact AMI will be reveling in the publicity. Just one article, Longer sex billboards banned on ABC News generated 90 responses in just a few days and nearly 7000 words in comments!!

Suddenly, I’ve gone from thinking these are the worst ads in the world to thinking in advertising terms they are genius.

"Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well."

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 23:19:17 -0400

“Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.”

- Voltaire

Colin the whale euthanased

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 21:20:00 -0400

On Friday 22 August, Colin, a young whale calf, was euthanased by vets on Sydney’s foreshore. Read the full story: Vets decide there’s no hope for whale calf.

Colin had been abandoned by his mother and was growing hungrier and weaker by the day. His situation was so desperate he was attacked by sharks and seen suckling boats.

Without being able to feed him, his only hope was that his mother would come back or that he’d somehow be able to join another pod.

Putting Colin down was the most humane thing to do, experts from the National Parks and Wildlife Service, Taronga Zoo, Sea World, RSPCA and ORCCA agreed.

However Aboriginal “whale whisper” Bunna Lawrie, who spent time with Colin vehemently and publically disagreed. “While it’s got life it’s got hope,” he said.

And this made me think. Why would we put an animal out of their misery but not a human? Why do we choose to play God with those that don’t have free will, but ignore those who do?

What right do we have to euthanase an animal we don’t even know?

I think the answer to this is probably the right we take to release the animal from its distress, suffering and impending death.

But we can’t really know whether or not it’s the right thing to do. Colin’s death was described as “harrowing” by observers, as the calf clearly didn’t want to die.

He was dragged struggling from the water to the land, and took seven doses of anesthetic to die — a botched lethal injection by anyone’s measure. And not exactly a peaceful and dignified passing.

So if rightly or wrongly we’d do this for an animal. Why wouldn’t we do it for the terminally ill?

Obviously the important thing is that the individual remains in control and chooses the right to be euthanased. This decision can’t be made by anyone else. And they should be able to choose the time of their passing, when they are ready (unlike Colin).

I find it interesting that there is still such a debate about this. If we don’t think twice about putting an animal out of its misery, why wouldn’t we offer the same humanity to our own kind?

Names and meaning

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 02:14:00 -0400

A lot of my friends are having babies. And as I wait with anticipation for news of their arrivals, what I really want to know is the baby’s sex and name. Why, I don’t know. It would be more pertinent as a woman to want to know size and time in labour. But names are more interesting; they are a reflection of the parents and of whom they want their child to be.

People choose names on the basis of judgments they make about them. Whether it is simply they like the sound of the name, have admired someone of that name, or have looked up the meaning of the name and like what it represents.

Thanks to Google, I found out my own name has royal connotations. While I’m sure this wasn’t a factor my parents took into consideration when naming me, I’m pleased to find it doesn’t mean thief, witch or something of that ilk.

And while we don’t pay much attention to the meaning of names in the western world, other cultures certainly do. I went to a Chinese wedding earlier today and found that the bride and groom’s names translated as green and yellow, which they interpreted as a clear sign of compatibility.

At some level everyone looks for meaning in names. Some friends who found out the sex of their baby sensibly kept it to themselves, probably so they weren’t pressured into divulging their chosen name and exposing it to the critique of others. After all, everyone’s got an opinion on these things and expresses what the name means to them.

I read with interest what’s in a name by blogger Marea with an E, who observed that with baby names everyone old was new again. Marea found 100 years of baby names on an NSW Government website. Retro names like Ava, Grace, Ruby and Lily from the early 1900s had made a come back recently. I like those names; they are so pretty - just like I’d want my little girl to be. (See, judgment made already!) ;-)

Beach bums at the Olympics

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 00:44:00 -0400

Ok I might be sounding old and prudish, but check the double standard here!

Photo Credit: The Associated Press versus…

Photo Credit: The Associated Press

The men’s beach volley ball players are clad in long shorts and shirts, while the women wear the smallest, tightest bikini bottoms and sports-bra bikini tops.

Now the women don’t seem to mind. In this Today Tonight article, Aussie competitor Tamsin Barnett says: “It just feels natural to be wearing a bikini out here; it’s nice to have the feeling of not having clothes all around you actually.”

Well that might be the case, but then why is the men’s regulation apparel considerably more covering? Surely it’s most unfair if they are used to playing in a speedo?

Is their clothing more considerable to be able to accommodate sponsor brands? Or do the men prefer not to be sexualised, but rather seen as professional athletes?

Clearly sex sells and you have to wonder whether female beach volleyball would be so popular if players wore shorts and t-shirts. So it is in the sponsors’ interests to keep it as skimpy as possible.

It’s not really in the players’ interests though. Surely it’s not very comfortable to throw themselves around the courts, diving and skidding in sand and getting in stuck to their sweaty bodies?

At least they don’t need to be self-conscious about their bodies when they are as toned and tanned as they are, but what about wedges, chafing, over-exposure, not to mention the sun burn, sun spots, risk of skin cancer?

And what about the reality that the viewer’s attention is as much on their bums as it is on their game? The truth is, when you put it out there people notice and people comment.

I was at a BBQ last night and a couple of the guys were saying: “I don’t actually like their bodies — they are too ‘trunky’.” Now I feel a bit sorry for them having their bodies scrutinised like this; after all, they are sports people not models.

But maybe it’s time for them to wise up — and perhaps feel a tad exploited. They should be treated with the same respect as any other athlete representing their country. And at the moment, the sport itself isn’t given due respect. Rather it’s an ogle-fest. I think the girls need to get real and professionalise their sport. By even wearing the same as the runners, will go a long way to achieving this.

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 18:45:24 -0400

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

- Eleanor Roosevelt

In defense of Gen Y

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 08:18:00 -0400

“Gen Y are a nightmare”, my friends extol. Maybe I can’t see it as I’m borderline X and Y, but as far as I’m concerned they – or should I say ‘we’ — are just the youth of today. And, as we all know, the youth of today is never good news.

Wikipedia defines Gen Y as those born roughly between 1980 and 1994. They are extremely tech savvy, live at home longer than preceding generations, face higher costs of living, are ambitious, and have high expectations of their worth and of their careers.

And this is why they get such a bad rap. I found this article ‘Why bosses hate Gen Y’ , which says they are disloyal, impatient and demanding. But the truth is who isn’t at 21 and fresh out of uni?

I know the disillusionment I felt after spending four years at uni, getting a good class arts degree and solid work experience behind me. And finally I landed my first job off London’s trendy Leicester Square … as a receptionist.

Now I felt that I hadn’t spent four years at uni burning the midnight oil (not just in the pubs), securing a stellar degree and enviable work experience to be spending my days making tea and answering phones!

However, sorry for me, new graduates in London were ten-a-penny and without real workplace experience, I just had to ‘do my time.’

But in today’s Australia the situation is different. There’s a booming economy and a skills shortage. So bosses don’t have a choice but to hire inexperienced Gen Ys and train them up.

And if the youngsters aren’t getting the support, career development and money they want, they have the pick of the jobs and who’d blame them for shopping around for a better deal?

Incredulous, my 33-year-old husband came home from work the other day and said to me: “How’s this; Leroy at work announces that he’s had a big week: he’s started studying, bought a car and left home. That’s great, but HE’S 25! I wanted to say, ‘Mate, c’mon I did all that at 18.”

The truth is though Gen Ys live in a different time and a different environment from when myself and my friends came of age. And we’d do well to remember that times have changed.

Many Gen Xs — like my husband — are in danger of becoming inverted snobs. The sub-text of their comments is we’re better because we did it tougher. But that’s not necessarily true. Who really wants to be living with Mum and Dad well into their twenties? It’s not necessarily a choice, but an economic necessity if they want to keep their heads above water in Sydney.

For the love of chocolate!

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 05:24:07 -0400

For the love of chocolate!

"She always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day."

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 05:13:57 -0400

““She always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.””

- Mrs Dalloway

There's nothing on television

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 21:55:00 -0400

In a typical week I’m flicking television channels trying to find something half decent to watch. Usually the commercial stations present two clear options: a reality TV show or a crime series.

I decided to do a quick audit of this week’s TV guide to prove my point. And here’s what I found ─ no less that eight crime shows running simultaneously! This week, the following went to air:

1. CSI Miami

2. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

3. Law & Order: Criminal Intent

4. Law & Order: SVU

5. Criminal Minds

6. Cold Case

7. NCIS

8. City Homicide

It’s a real shame crime shows aren’t my thing. So what about reality TV? Surely there’s enough variety here to find something worth watching? Oh, that’s if you don’t count Gordon Ramsay…

Now I like him and find him entertaining, but all his shows are variations of the same theme ─ him swearing his head off at hapless amateurs. And perhaps four or so programs on this theme is a bit much.

And what’s more, they all go to air at more or less the same time. Over the past few months all of the following have been broadcast:

1. Boiling Point

2. Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares

3. Hell’s Kitchen

4. The F-Word

And when these shows aren’t back to back, they are typically interspersed with crime shows and other reality TV programs, like:

1. Border Patrol

2. Border Security – Australia’s Front Line

3. Missing Person’s Unit

4. The Force – Behind the Line

5. The Farmer Wants a Wife

6. Bondi Rescue

Now to me, this is just getting a bit boring. And what foxes me is where the saturation point is. Surely we have long-since past it? I know I have.

I can only conclude that there is so many reality shows because they are cheap to make and buy, and are therefore profitable to the stations through the advertising revenue they can generate.

But if the stations are making a good profit on them, then why not give the television buyers a bit more budget for some decent programs? After all, quality television means viewers (think Underbelly) and this drives up advertising demand, and costs, and means a more lucrative deal for the stations.

In the meantime, thank goodness for the Olympics, finally there will be something decent on the box.

Marie Claire's new look

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 01:46:00 -0400

Earlier this week I received my usual monthly subscription to Marie Claire magazine. I ripped open the cellophane with typical gusto anticipating an evening on the couch, and was surprised to find a letter.

“Dear Valued Subscriber”, it read, “Here’s your exclusive preview of the new look Marie Claire – we wanted you to be the first to see it.” Bemused, I flicked through the magazine to try and identify what was different.

The letter continued: “As one of fashion’s greatest chameleons, Coco Chanel, once said: ‘In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different.’ We’d love your feedback by email…”

Huh? I thought, what’s different? Something must be. So grabbing the previous month’s copy, I did a like for like comparison. And bingo, there it was ─ September’s edition was shorter and fatter than August’s, and the font was slightly different. Now is that radical or what?

Now, I’m not one of those people who doesn’t like change, in fact I’m all for it. But I really couldn’t see the point of firstly making these changes, and secondly soliciting feedback on them.

And this got me thinking, if I really was a ‘Valued Subscriber’, why didn’t Marie Claire ask me for my opinion in the first place? It would have been pretty easy to slip a questionnaire into one month’s mail out, and let the reader have their say on the magazine.

Really it should have been reader feedback driving the refresh. And it should have gone further than a couple of design elements to looking at the mix of stories and assessing what hits the mark.

Establishing a genuine dialogue with readers would be a good way of making the publication ‘irreplaceable’ and ‘different’. And they could do this by developing Marie Claire online a bit more.

For a monthly magazine, the relationship between print and online should be symbiotic. The magazine should direct its readers to the website, and the online dialogue should inform the content and development of the print publication. That way, readers’ opinions would matter and the magazine would differentiate itself on the strength of its offer.

In the meantime, Marie Claire should look after its ‘Valued Subscribers’ who weren’t even granted this month’s free Lancome mascara… Maybe that’s why I’m miffed.

On holiday in Fraser Island

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:20:00 -0400

The beaver ad

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 23:51:00 -0400

Television advertising for feminine hygiene is usually a cringe-fest, typically embarrassing and patronising. But the beaver ad is different… you might describe it as shocking or taboo-busting instead.

The basic gist of it is a young woman going about her daily life eating lunch, having her nails done, and sunbaking on the beach with her beaver in tow. This ‘little furry friend’ is a reference to her genitalia, and the ad is for Kotex sanitary products. The ad’s message is: ‘You’ve only got one so you might as well look after it’, i.e. buy Kotex. Check it out on You Tube.

Whilst the ad has caused a bit of a furore and is now rated M and only aired later than 8:30pm, I don’t really see a problem with it. It’s clearly pitched at a young audience and designed to make teenagers less self-conscious about their bodies. It’s taboo-busting and it’s got people talking. Perhaps it shouldn’t be aired before 8:30pm, but it’s probable children wouldn’t understand beaver connotations anyway.

I think it’s harmless, and vaguely amusing. I don’t find it degrading to women or offensive, but nor would it make me go out and buy their products. I would guess anyone older than 24 is not their target market, but it will be interesting to see whether brand awareness translates into sales.

Looking for a model advertising strategy

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 21:39:00 -0400

I can’t help thinking that Aussie supermodel Miranda Kerr isn’t the right pick for the retailing giant David Jones. Meagan Gale was always going to be a hard act to follow, but the problem with Kerr is that she’s just too darn young.

Now I understand that in modelling terms, at 24 or 25 she’s positively middle aged (while Gale at 32 is just about a geriatric), but DJs need to keep their target audience in mind with their advertising. Kerr is currently adorning bus shelters advertising Veronica Maine dresses and, to my mind, she looks ridiculous. She’s just too fresh-faced to carry them off, and ends up making them look frumpy and herself the daggiest 25-year-old ever!

Given the price tags of Maine’s clothes, I’m pretty sure she’s not going after a 20-something segment, so why use a 20-something model? Gale was so successful as the DJs pin up girl because she looked like a woman - not a girl - so had a mass market appeal. Women of all ages aspired to look like her, and surely that’s the idea. That’s what sells clothes.