I Want Advertising – Give Me What I Want

This is really the future in my humble, consumers are smart enough to realize content costs – so why not offer the opportunity for them to nominate their advertising and more importantly, when they are ambivalent or oversaturated. I can see a consumer choosing their TV commercials in such a way – “ok I’m over [...]

Discussion of Future Capabilities/Limitations

The Institute For The Future promotes a framework for attributes that are desirable for the current zeitgeist, we have adopted and discuss these at Highway. I’m not a fan of lists, yet this is an interesting behaviour paradigm for aspiring leaders, mixed with the De Bono hats it makes a compelling toolkit for cultural revision [...]

Pseudo Battle: Creatives vs. Research – Locals Still Have No Idea

The advertising industry again this week called for market researchers to come clean on the success or otherwise of their vetting of ad campaigns. This is an incredibly interesting battle, I’ve found quantitative research is incredibly insightful after things have happened – say to measure the impact a campaign has had, and qual to discover [...]

Go The Crowdsourcing Alternative: Logo Design War

The Melbourne Herald Sun today has been banging on about wasting $240,000 of taxpayers money on an ‘awkward’ new logo design for the city. According to Tom Bullington of City communications, marketing and branding it is an example “of communities paying exorbitant amounts to come up with new city logos, and very little else to [...]

Rule 1. Always Be Communicating

The prototype of a new breed of marketers is that today’s communications don’t necessarily require a different mindset but a whole different set of skills. She blogs. She tweets. She Facebooks. She SEOs. She Teleseminars. She Podcasts. All while conducting traditional PR marketing, brand identity and strategic communications duties. These skills make a model for [...]

Retailer of the Year: Woolworths??

Aldi, Country Road, Subway and L’Occitane will compete for the title of Australian Retailer of the Year but do they? The Australian Retailers Association (ARA) announced the four businesses have each won their categories of food, drink and grocery, clothing and footwear, restaurants, cafés and takeaway and specialty retailing respectively. ARA Executive Director Russell Zimmerman [...]

ANZ Relaunch with New Logo – Hmmm..

I enjoyed Mark Hawthorne’s lead in The Age today “What do you do when you’ve trashed a brand beyond help? Time for a relaunch, of course, and that’s exactly what ANZ will spend millions on this year.” Is the mainstream able to be so brash? where do you think ANZ will spend those millions, newspaper [...]

Half the Battle: Use Dissonance, Minds Hate Confusion

Human beings rely more heavily on learning than any other species that has ever existed. Learning (scanning and assimilating) is the way we interpret new information, and this scanning always on. Memory is the way we retain that information over time, categorising information and prioritising activity. So, if memory is so important, what’s the secret [...]

Give Away $1 Million – Worst Promotion Ever?!

Outraged Tone: This has been bugging me for weeks and I can’t understand it, in the hierarchy of options marketing, brand, product and promotional managers have, where does giving away $1 millions come from? Seriously, is there nothing better to with that much money, channel incentives perhaps? Let’s look at this nonsense and if there [...]

Adding Advertising (& New Media) Tracking to Your Arsenal – 2/2

The promise of media advertising is so great. It’s an opportunity for a brand to tell its story directly to the ultimate consumer. It’s an opportunity to build awareness and project a powerful brand image. It’s an opportunity to create brand equity and circumvent competitors. In actual practice, however, the promise of media advertising is [...]