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Opinion
The keyboard warrior of Twitter
In this guest post, NBN staffer Scott Rhodie writes an unofficial, personal view on his experience with a hostile Twitter critic.Last night I had a strange incident. While on Twitter I noticed someone saying that Australia’s NBN is already outdated. I wrote a small note back explaining they were incorrect.
And their response? The lovely gentleman (whose Twitter profile says: ‘Father of 5 kids, Loving Grandfather of 10 Grandchildren,and 2 Great Granddaughters. love to give heaps to Pollies and Poofters’) said to me: “Go and lick Gillards C*** out U commie Prick”
What's in a name?
In this guest post, Moensie Rossier wonders about the power of names for brands and marketers.
Brands have been having a bit of fun with names lately, not to mention a fair bit of success. Interbrand just named a headhunting firm Cloak & Dagger. And ‘Share a Coke’ showed how much power there is in a name.
The Coke campaign effectively short-circuited the usual mechanics of communication. It undoubtedly stroked people’s egos. But, I believe, its success stems from the fact that it directly and automatically affected people’s behaviour, rather than doing so indirectly by shaping attitudes.
Best ads from Super Bowl 2012
The Super Bowl is all done and a team from North America won. But as well as some sort of sporting event, it’s the world’s biggest advertising showcase. See the best of them right here… and please tell us what you think.
How to debunk media myths
In this post, UWS’s Ullrich Ecker, John Cook and Stephen Lewandowsky argue that cognitive science can help PRs form strategies in managing media misreporting.
A growing cohort of commentators has bemoaned the descent of contemporary political “debate” into a largely fact-free zone.
How about simply focusing on what consumers want?
In this guest post, Peter Mountford argues that brands should think more about what is really going on for consumers
Who here is hoping their favourite brand of toilet paper is going to be organizing a flash mob on their way home from work today?
What the Optus web copyright victory means
In this analysis first published on The Conversation, RMIT’s Marita Shelly examines the implications of Telstra’s defeat over the online rights to the AFL broadcast deal
This week’s Federal Court ruling that Optus customers are able to view sporting matches minutes after they are streamed live without breaching copyright is a landmark decision that alters our understanding of copyright law, and has significant implications for the AFL’s broadcasting rights deal.
Does Gina Rinehart’s bite of a chunk of Fairfax make her an oligarch?
In an article that first appeared in The Conversation, Mark Rolfe wonders whether the mining magnate’s move could turn Fairfax into something resembling America’s Fox network.
Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart has moved to increase her stake in Fairfax Media, owner of The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and a number of radio stations. Rinehart has already shown her desire to play a role in public life, campaigning against former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s aborted mining tax. She has also demonstrated a willingness to make media investments to ensure her pro-business worldview is promulgated.
What does this latest move by Rinehart mean?
Gillard's Australia Day crisis
PM Julia Gillard’s media adviser Tony Hodges has been forced to resign over the Australia Day tent embassy debacle.
It came after it emerged he had revealed opposition leader Tony Abbott’s whereabouts, leading to both politicians being rescued by police in ugly scenes.
Mumbrella editor Tim Burrowes and advertising practitioner Jane Caro debate the topic on Weekend Sunrise’s masters of Spin segment:
The biggest cock-up I made in business
In this guest post, Chris Savage urges agency staff to live the brand.I still shudder when I think about how incredibly stupid I was when I made the biggest stuff up of my career. And then, 18 years later, I did it again. Do not make this mistake with your clients. Ever.
Hey Groupon. Thanks for fucking up email
In this guest post, Daniel Monheit warns that group deal overload is devaluing email marketingEmail marketing used to be fabulous. Back in the heady days of 2010, brands would work hard to build up well qualified databases, upon which they’d bestow carefully crafted correspondence filled with information, offers and incentives. The recipients, of course would be delighted: “Oh look! An email! From one of my favourite brands! And it’s 40 cents off at Woolies this week!”.
The staggering sway of Harold Mitchell
The Power Index today names Aegis Media chairman Harold Mitchell as the most powerful person in Melbourne. Andrew Crook profiles him.
Harold Mitchell takes pride in dispensing with the niceties. When The Power Index visited his South Melbourne private office before Christmas, fresh remains were scattered all over the boardroom table.
Share a Coke with… the moronic masses
The most-read story on Mumbrella last year, with not far off 100,000 page views, was a fairly humdrum yarn about the launch of Coca-Cola’s name-on-a-bottle campaign.The headline, “Coca-Cola puts people’s names on bottles in ‘Share a Coke’ campaign”, though hated by any self-respecting sub-editor, was loved by Google. And in rushed what can be politely described as the public.
Assumptions kill creativity
In this guest post, Gual Barwell disagrees that the sales success of the Old Spice social media campaign was overstated.Yesterday’s post from Cathie McGinn suggested the Old Spice campaign failed to connect with consumers. Based on the facts and figures, I disagree.
What Old Spice and Wieden + Kennedy has done and done phenomenally well is to create a franchise.
The SMH's readers (are wrong) editor
We are now about five months into the reign of Australia’s first readers’ editor. And I don’t think it is working.
It struck me at the time of Judy Prisk’s appointment to the Sydney Morning Herald that the fact that her boss was editor-in-chief Peter Fray was not going to be ideal if she was going to be the independent voice of the reader.
The emperor's new fragrance: Old Spice’s campaign failure
In this guest post, Cathie McGinn slays a sacred cow of 21st century marketing – the highly awarded Old Spice campaign.One of the biggest myths of recent times (by which I mean a story of great heroism and triumph we’d all like to believe but deep down know to be untrue) is the Old Spice social media campaign. It’s been much lauded and awarded as an example of outstanding content, a creative and collaborative way of connecting with consumers and driving a record increase in sales.
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.