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Opinion | Features
My memo to your boss
So let me guess?
You really want to come to Mumbrella360, but you’ve got to justify the time and cost to your boss?
Good news! I think I can help.
Woz not great
In this guest post Tony Prysten argues that the thousand dollar price of seeing out-of-touch Apple co-founder Steve Wozniack on his Australian tour was a waste of money.
This week, for the cost of two iPads (yep, two) I went to the Woz Live conference in Melbourne. I was not impressed.
What the hell is transmedia?
From advertising campaigns to online video series, the term ‘transmedia’ gets quite the work out. But what does it actually mean? Cathie McGinn trawls the media landscape for a definitive definition.
Transmedia, all media and multiplatform are terms often used interchangeably when referencing modern storytelling techniques. Yet, depending who you speak to, there are distinct differences between them.
According to industry experts Encore spoke to, the key elements that define transmedia can be summarised as follows: platform, time, audience, adaptation, and creative collaboration.
Innovation is the remedy for the ailing magazine industry
With magazine circulations plummeting, FHM closing and rumours rife on future ownership of ACP Magazines, Paul Merrill says the only way forward is launching new titles.Eight years ago in the UK, nearly a quarter of all magazine sales came from magazines that were less than four years old. In Australia, the figure was slightly lower, but still significant. Today, the situation is very different. For a start there are so few new magazines. Yes, Masterchef briefly flared, and Top Gear made an initial impact. But Grazia and Alpha fizzled, and now ACP has shelved their plans to launch Elle.
More than a game: broadcasting the Olympics
The 2012 London Olympics will be the biggest televised sporting event of our time. Brooke Hemphill discovers the logistical challenges and technical requirements of producing the event.
From July 27 to August 12, the Australian media will go sport crazy as the Games of the XXX Olympiad, aka the 2012 London Summer Olympics, unfold. The games will be the most televised sporting event of our time as broadcasters look to master every manner of technology at their disposal.
The Voice - Australia's best example yet of social TV
In this guest post, Sputnik’s Rodd Messent has a theory on why audiences have taken to The Voice .I am an addict of Channel Nine’s hit show The Voice. Such is the extent of my addiction I seriously think my housemate might kick me out of our apartment for the semi-frenzied yelling and tweeting that ensues in our lounge room each time the show airs.It’s the first time in almost three years that such disagreement has resulted in less than civil behaviour towards one another, and it’s made me think it might be a microcosm of the large volume of online debate about the show and, correspondingly, an explanation for its success as a social TV experience.Why brands are the US Army - and culture jammers are the Viet Cong
In this guest posting, Dave Burgess, who painted ‘No War’ on the Sydney Opera House, claims that ‘amoral’ advertisers have copied his idea.
Culture jamming is a 28-year-old term coined by the San Francisco-based band Negativland, who declared that the ‘Studio for the cultural jammer is the world at large’.
Branded content is dead. Long live branded content
In this guest posting, Anthony Freedman argues why branded content is making a comeback.
A few short years ago, probably concurrent with the advent of the PVR, a new term emerged within the marketing communications industry; branded content. This was really synonymous with advertiser funded TV shows where programming was created by brands and deals struck with networks to broadcast them.
There were varying degrees of success with this model.
Shock advertising: 30 ads that would give Australia's ad watchdog a coronary
Is shock an underused weapon in Australian advertising, asks Robin HicksToday, Sydney agency The Cabana Boys used an image of a mouth sewn together to shock people with the idea that problem gamblers lie to conceal their habit. Is it the most disturbing image ever? No. Will it get banned by the Advertising Standards Bureau? No. But it did make me wonder why shock is not used more often in Australia – and not just by charities and government bodies. (WARNING: NSFW)
The making of ratings blockbuster The Voice
Jason Mountney goes on the set of Channel Nine’s talent search series, The Voice, to see how the format, based on an international franchise, has come together. What ingredients have gone into making this certified hit that’s rated more than two million viewers on three consecutive nights?
Mike Goldman has one of the toughest jobs on the set of the Nine network’s new talent show, The Voice. He not only has to narrate the show, but also keep the audience from losing their enthusiasm as they realise shooting TV programs takes a lot longer than the one-hour bursts they see in their lounge rooms. A lot longer.
Nine problems stopping The Global Mail from getting an audience
While it’s a shame The Global Mail has failed to make an impact on the media landscape, the signs have been there for some time.I love the concept of a well resourced, philanthropically-funded independent news site. Anywhere in the world, that’s a rare and wonderful thing. In Australia even more so. So I hope that Grame Wood gets to see his investment make a difference.
And I have no inside info on whether Monica Attard’s sudden departure is linked to the site’s failure to find an audience so far.
Regardless, here are nine areas they can easily start to address:
Journalism’s new model?
Does the launch of philanthropically funded news site The Global Mail signal a new era for journalism or is the model destined to be a passing fad, asks Cathie McGinn in this article first published in Encore magazine.With little fanfare, philanthropically funded news site The Global Mail launched in February this year.
The online-only title received a generous five-year funding commitment from businessman Graeme Wood, founder of accommodation website wotif.com, who donated $15million.
Five things that make a great suit
In this guest posting, Gareth Collins argues that the role of a great account manager is to make the work betterI’m surprised at how many suits I meet who don’t know their role in the advertising business. The question ‘what does an advertising account manager or director do?’ is frequently met with answers such as project manager, relationship manager, plate spinner or go between … and those are the nice ones.
Success is judged on the ability to manage a process, be strong administratively and get stuff done. And while a good suit needs to do all of these things brilliantly, if these are the traits that define a great suit, then I’m in the wrong job.
What the hell is transmedia?
From advertising campaigns to online video series, the term ‘transmedia’ gets quite the work out. But what does it actually mean? Cathie McGinn trawls the media landscape for a definitive definition.
Transmedia, all media and multiplatform are terms often used interchangeably when referencing modern storytelling techniques. Yet, depending who you speak to, there are distinct differences between them.
The top seven...most patronising pieces of communication
Sometimes brands have big ideas. Sometimes marketers get so caught up with a grandiose idea that instead of finding engaging ways to sell breakfast cereal, they start to believe their own rhetoric. And sometimes it’s just lazy marketing. Here are my top seven inadvertently patronising pieces of communication…
1) Last night thousands of women gathered in Sydney’s Centennial Park to take part in She Runs the Night, an event created by Nike.
Agency’s cereal intruder
Staff in the Sydney office of agency The Marketing Store have finally solved a whodunnit which has stretched for weeks, Dr Mumbo can reveal.
After boss Doug Chapman kept coming into work to find the couch in his office in disarray, he became convinced it was being used by staff for illicit late night liaisons.
Meanwhile, huge quantities of cereal and milk kept vanishing from the agency’s kitchen.
Office security cameras gave nothing away, as they kept being moved, so finally staff hid a camera in a cereal box.
They discovered that a late night visitor was slipping into the Mountain Street office via a ventilation panel, helping himself to up to six bowls of cereal a night and settling in for a nap on Chapman’s couch.
But the late night visits came to an end this week, when the agency had a security guard lying in wait to greet the agency’s uninvited guest.
Chapman, who’s not pressing charges, told Mumbrella: “He was very tidy. He used to wash up the dishes and put them away. He’s better than the people that work here.
“For a few weeks there was a lot of finger pointing as we were trying to work out who was bonking on my couch.”
He added that because staff were aware there was a potential intruder, extra care was taken that sensitive documents were not left out overnight, so client confidentiality was not breached.
May 2nd, 2009 at 9:25 am
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Comments
3 May 09
10:12 am
Can’t a man get a free feed these days?
Seriously this is bloody funny
4 May 09
10:31 am
Imagine if he wasn’t just cleaner than the average creative at Marketing Store, but he also started reading client briefs and doing all-nighters (or is that all day-ers) thinking up crazy ideas and leaving them on whiteboards, ha
4 May 09
10:42 am
Lucky he wasn’t a cereal killer
4 May 09
2:51 pm
That last comment is a crack up!
4 May 09
2:59 pm
Maybe he was peeing in the butter?
4 May 09
2:59 pm
Surely if he eats the cereal he kills, it
so he is a cereal killer
4 May 09
3:19 pm
Come on, how can someone just wander into a professional office night after night without a security pass or arousing suspicion of security staff and hang around for hours on end and never be spotted by anyone???
Smells like the kick off of some sort of campaign me thinks ……
4 May 09
3:29 pm
Does anybody else call codswallop on this story? A guy that bothers to wash up his bowl but not put the cushions back on the couch? Strolls through an office into the kitchen and boss’s office, even has a shower (by the SMH article on this) but evades security cameras. Reportadely comes in at 4am (again from quotes of agency’s Asia Pacific president Doug Chapman in SMH) and sleeps on the couch (what for a full 40 minutes?) Good publicity for The Marketing Store. Made the front page of SMH.
4 May 09
3:43 pm
The Marketing Store website has an Uncle Toby’s breakfast cereal as a client.
Who would allow their office to be broken into daily for four weeks and find it bemusing. Who wouldn’t ask the guy what he was doing “he wasn’t interrogated”. Who would give a vague description about him being neat and in his 30s.
Stunt. Deceit. Lies.
4 May 09
4:02 pm
If it is a publicity stunt, then The Marketing Store should be running a PR agency – not a marketing agency.
The only reason this made it into the public domain was because I was in Doug’s office to talk about something else (Social Media Club Sydney) and he mentioned in passing what was going on.
A bit later, I asked him whether they’d caught the guy, and they just had, so I persuaded Doug to let me move this from an off-the-record chat to something on the record. He didn’t push the story to me – I pursued it.
If this is a put-on, not only is he a brilliant actor, able to dangle a story as bait for weeks without pushing it as a story, but he’s a very good judge of how to dangle a news angle without pushing it too hard.
Again, the usual PR strategy wouldn’t be to place it in the diary column of Mumbrella, in the odds-against hope that the SMH picks it up. That doesn’t happen every day!
Doug did nothing to push the Uncle Tobys angle. A lot of people have FMCG clients. I’m sure if it was chocolate in the cupboard it would have been chocolate that got nicked, and if it was beer it would have been beer.
The slightly sad story is that it sounds like the guy has been living elsewhere in the building before being caught. It strikes me that the way they responded was proportionate – stop the guy from doing it again, but not to make things any worse for somebody already down on their luck.
Doug’ll be able to confirm it, but I think the police were involved on the night. That’s not something you do for the purposes of a hoax. The cops don’t have a sense of humour about that sort of thing.
If this is a hoax, I’ll eat my… cereal.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
4 May 09
4:27 pm
In the interests of transparency and authenticity, the story is true and despite having Uncle Toby’s as a client this is not a stunt. I am amazed and surprised by the attention it has been given. There will be no YouTube follow up.
Doug
4 May 09
4:55 pm
Doug, what software did you use for the motion sensor? In the SMH it looks like OSX software & I’d be interested to know what it is.
4 May 09
5:02 pm
Cereal bowls washed up and neatly put away but cushions left willy-nilly around the place. Security and cameras thwarted for 4 weeks…..”office security cameras never managed to point in the right spot to detect anyone”.
Cameras in cereal boxes….”a moment of genius from the woman who runs the kitchen”. Cereal cam….. “showed the man slipping into the office via an overhead ventilation panel”. How does someone get into an air-con duct on the 5th floor?
Even evidence of illicit substances, …”there were some tablets lying around, and some tobacco or weed on the floor”. Laughable, tobacco is brown, weed is green! So which was it, Mr Chapman? I know you know!
Fun launch. Lets hope the ensuing campaign is half as creative.
<};o)
4 May 09
5:21 pm
Why don’t you hire him? Obviously he’s hungry. Make him do odd jobs and so at least he can make up for eating your cereals.
4 May 09
5:28 pm
@ Tim Bennet Linksys (by Cisco) WiFi Motion-Detection Cameras
4 May 09
7:10 pm
My partner has just raised a startling possibility. Perhaps Mr Chapman is telling the truth and his company of boffins really were the victims of a compulsive cereal eater and couch dosser for 4 weeks.
This raises some seriously embarrassing questions about the lack of sophistication and technical nous of “The Marketing Store”. Firstly, why were they unable to direct the security cameras in the right direction?
Secondly, and this is the clanger: why did it take the kitchen lady to come up with the “moment of genius”(Mr Chapman’s words) to suggest installing a hidden camera. Four weeks went by and this idea never crossed the bright and highly creative minds of Mr Chapman and his cohorts.
The hidden camera idea is hardly “genius”. To consider it genius shows a dramatic technological backwardness at the the very least. They have been around for decades and are a staple in security surveillance.
Furthermore, to release the offender without charge or interrogation is remiss in basic due diligence and displays scant regard for the client confidentiality.
If I was a client of “The Marketing Store” reading this front page SMH (online) story, I would be rightfully aghast and considering urgently relieving them of my account. I would also be ringing my lawyers for urgent advice.
But like I said to my partner, this is surely all a joke. Isn’t it?
<};o)
4 May 09
7:20 pm
Hi Phiafly,
They weren’t sure from the beginning that they did have an intruder. As they said, they looked internally to begin with. What would you do if someone had been taking stuff from your fridge? Call the cops immediately? I can think of plenty of offices where someone’s known to snaffle a colleague’s slice of cake “by mistake”.
In the first instance, they checked the cameras that pointed at the door. They didn’t pick up their visitor because he was coming in through a vent. The intruder also knew to avoid the visible cameras, hence the fact they got him with a hidden one.
Does it actually matter who at the agency had the idea to hide the camera? Or isn’t the person in the kitchen entitled to have that idea because she’s not a “creative”?
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
4 May 09
7:37 pm
Tim,
On the contrary! We commend the kitchen lady. She should be promoted. She is a Mossad agent in the making. Our point was the length of time (4 weeks!) the “hidden surveillance” idea took to germinate in anyone’s mind within the company.
Don’t mind us. We are just having a good laugh about this over a smooth red. Thanks for making our Monday.
<};o)
4 May 09
7:57 pm
Glad to hear it, Phiafly – you were taking it all a bit too seriously for a while there…
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
4 May 09
8:10 pm
i assure you (and Mr Chapman) we are just highly amused. My partner is a lawyer so naturally she envisages the worst possibly scenario. If our somewhat inebriated comments/observations make you uncomfortable, please feel free to delete them.
<};o)
4 May 09
8:54 pm
We’d better not see the kitchen lady showing where she put the camera with a lovely product placement shot on A Current Affair or Today Tonight.
4 May 09
10:04 pm
Strewth, no need for that, Phiafly. The debate is half of the fun…
I can offer you the next best thing, Percy. I gather you’ll see Doug on Sunrise at 7.15 tomorrow…
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
5 May 09
12:06 pm
has a ring of the Witchery jacket about it
5 May 09
1:12 pm
christ i’m/we’re cynical….retraction, i’m seeing the hand of Naked everywhere. Doug – well done for not pressing charges, sounds like the bloke has enough on his plate (aside from your cereal)
5 May 09
5:22 pm
Sounds like things are gonna get boring now that there’s no more mystery afoot.
9 May 09
12:18 pm
Not questioning the truth of this article but are we at the stage of making submissions without any pictorial or video (pls post video) evidence. If you wanted to get creative you could contact the media store security firm. Its standard practice at least report a crime so this should be on public record.
A number of weeks ago a read an article about a digital agency staffer who posted a video of a foreign object in his take away food. The large chicken chain was not notified & as a result did not have a chance to respond. At the very least the agency had the responsibility to advise the store so that future customers were not harmed.
Not questioning the legitimacy of both examples but I think we need to exercise some responsibility to the general public at the expense of promoting ourselves.