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Opinion | Features
Q&A with Adshel's Rob Atkinson
Online trading is the next big thing says Rob Atkinson in a piece that first appeared in Encore. Who is the most powerful person in Australian media and why?
Harold Mitchell because of his influence and the footprint he has left. He’s built a huge brand in Mitchells, offloaded it into Aegis, Aegis has obviously done extremely well to be then sold on to Dentsu. So if you think about it, he is very much a father figure of the industry.
Making it overseas
Is the best way of being successful in Australia not be here at all? In a feature that first appeared in Encore, Lee Zachariah speaks to Aussies making it big abroad.I always wanted to work in New York,” says Julian Cole. “I thought it was the number one place to work in advertising; a lot of the best campaigns were coming out of there. So I moved over and was lucky enough to have a couple of interviews in the first couple of weeks.”
Cole’s story is indicative of the somewhat contentious idea that the best way to be successful in Australia is to not be in Australia any more.
Got a book in you?
From journos to ad execs and PRs, these days everyone seems to have a book in them. But what does it take to get published and will you actually make any money? In a feature that first appeared in Encore, Brooke Hemphill finds out.Attention wannabe authors. Forget big fat advance cheques and living off royalties. The reality of having a book published today is another story altogether. There are only two reasons you should even consider sitting down at your computer to bash out a manuscript – passion or profile.
Savage counsel
In an article that first appeared in Encore, Chris Savage tackles your career and agency dilemmas in his weekly advice column.Hi Chris,
My clients seem to be demanding more and more from us. At the same time, it seems many of the younger people in our industry simply don’t have the client servicing skills my generation grew up with. How do we instill in our executives some of the good old-fashioned behaviours that would keep a client happy and loyal?
Fake it til' you make it... as an ad agency receptionist
From dressing the part to playing the gatekeeper, Leo Burnett Sydney’s Susie Henry tells us how to make it as the face of adland in a piece that first appeared in Encore.What does a receptionist in an ad agency actually do?
Well, there’s the frantic every-day, all-day stuff of deliveries, courier bookings, doing expenses for directors – always challenging – plus arranging all the travel. But one of my main jobs is counselling the account service people. I also keep up with all sports information to discuss with our sports-loving clients – because who wants to be bored while they’re waiting? And I know how they like their coffee. You need to know everyone – from accounting to HR. I’m also the go-to for all catering and sending flowers.
Whose views skew the news? Media chiefs ready to vote out Labor, while reporters lean left
Most journalists lean left-of-centre, says Folker Hanusch of the University of the Sunshine Coast, in a post first published on The Conversation.Most Australian journalists describe themselves as left-wing, yet amongst those who wield the real power in the country’s newsrooms, the Coalition holds a winning lead.
But while the media’s political leanings will no doubt be debated in the lead-up to September’s federal election, our study has also found other largely unscrutinised biases remain – particularly whose views disproportionately shape the news.
It's time for a new New Wave in the film world
Government funding bodies are lazy and decadent, says industry veteran Michael Thornhill but in a piece that first appeared in Encore, Ed Gibbs begs to differ.I vividly remember the time I first saw Animal Kingdom, David Michod’s breathtaking labour-of-love feature debut. The press screening was half empty, despite the film winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance just months earlier, in 2010. Yet its superb performances, stylistic flourishes and overall polish left me speechless. Could this really be a feature debut, an Australian one at that, I wondered, almost out loud? It seemed too good to be true.
Going cold turkey on an agency addiction
Life is sweet for freelance writer Max Kitchen, but in a feature that first appeared in Encore, he admits his struggle against returning to the agency fold.I’ve never taken heroin. But I suspect if I had, the temptation to try it again would not be too dissimilar to the lure of returning to agency life.
Can sport save Ten?
First there was the Grand Prix. Next came the reported $500m bid for cricket rights, then Ten secured the 2014 winter Olympics. So, can sport save the ailing network? In a feature that first appeared in Encore, Nic Christensen investigates.The television sports rights bidding process is a bit like a game of poker.
Check, fold or bet. Those were the options for the Ten Network last week when it had to finalise its bid for the cricket rights.
Andy Lark: good for the marketing of marketing
I can still remember the first story I wrote about Andy Lark, when it emerged that he was to be the new chief marketing officer of CommBank.
It was immediately clear that Australia was about to meet an interesting marketer, one who blogged and tweeted and thanks to his time at Dell in the US was digitally savvy. Even two years ago, that was a big deal. The fact that he also had a stint in public relations gave him an absolutely intriguing background before he even arrived.
Storming the media barricades - advice for young journalists
This week Mumbrella’s Nic Christensen, who began his career four years ago, gave the keynote address to would-be journalists at the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance’s Student Day. This is an edited version of his speech.Good afternoon, I can remember distinctly the last time I was in this room.
It was 2009 and I was sitting where you are. I’d come to this event, a friend and myself — from memory we sat up the back — and I can remember at the time wondering if I’d ever get a job as a journalist.
It was only four years ago and then as now getting a job was ultra competitive but I’m not sure there was quite as much media ‘doom and gloom’ as there is now…
Paywalls will help fund campaigning journalism
In this guest post, News Limited’s group editorial director Campbell Reid responds to the views of ninemsn’s Hal Crawford that the company’s push into metered paywalls is about data rather than dollars.Hal Crawford is both right and wrong in his article which argued that our digital subscription plans are all about the data.
Fake it 'til you make it... as a features editor
Cosmo’s Kate Leaver tells us how to bluff it in her job in a feature that first appeared in Encore.What do you do, as a features editor?
Really, play with words and ideas all day. At any one time, we’re working across three issues of the mag – getting one on its way to the printers, pooling all the words together for another, and planning the issue after that. It’s busy but it’s a pretty magnificent process.
Savage counsel - JFDI
Hi Chris,I run a medium-sized agency that is doing pretty well. As the leader, I am finding my workload just seems to go up and up. I am struggling to stay motivated and particularly to tackle the bigger and tougher challenges I have to face every day. How do I keep up the energy when there just seems so much to do? How do you do it?
Productive, successful executives are those able to consistently tackle difficult and big challenges. It’s a constant struggle for me so I know how you feel. How do the successful leaders do it?
Q&A with Brett Clegg
Brett Clegg, group director – business media, Fairfax Media, in a Q&A that first appeared in Encore, on the journo who refuses to work with him – his wife.Who is the most powerful person in Australian media and why?
Hard to go past Rupert Murdoch. He controls the single largest and most diverse portfolio and is intent on leveraging its scale (and, of course, influence). He’s an innovator and his will to win is obvious to all.
Aussie marketers ‘wasting’ email medium with one in five emails going missing
A new report suggests that more than 20 per cent of emails sent by brands to consumers never make it to their target group’s inboxes.
Chairman of the US Direct Marketing Association Matt Blumberg has told Mumbrella the missing emails are hurting Australian marketers.
“Because email is relatively inexpensive people haven’t focused on this problem for a long time. But with one in five emails ‘going dark’ there is a huge opportunity cost to that,” said Blumberg, who is also the CEO of global email intelligence firm Return Path.
“It’s a waste of the customer acquisition expense, waste of email technology expense and customer service expense. So it is a significant challenge for marketers.”
The report prepared by Return Path ahead of Blumberg’s speech to the Australian Data-driven Marketing & Advertising conference this week shows that, of the missing emails, two per cent went to spam while a further 18 per cent went missing or were blocked.
By comparison in New Zealand, 92 per cent of marketing emails reach their target’s inbox, with only 8 per cent going missing.
The research also found that Dodo and Optus subscribers in Australia are the hardest to reach with only 57 per cent of legitimate email delivered to their inboxes.
The report also benchmarked which sectors had the highest read rates and which industries found that readers were deleting emails without being read or were being sent straight to spam.
Unsurprisingly utilities and media emails have some of the highest engagement ratings.
“When you look at utilities you see it has a huge read rate and almost nothing deleted without reading. When you get a bill or a news email you read it,” said Blumberg.
“People sign up to get news and they get news delivered. The product matches expectations the problem is with say real estate or daily deals is that someone was looking for a house or a special once got on a list somewhere and no they’re not in market but are still getting three things a week.”
Blumberg argues that sending too much email too often is causing a significant amount of “collateral damage” to the sector and returning engagement with email as marketing tool.
“If you send more email you usually get more back in terms of clicks, more page views and more conversions but there is a huge amount of collateral damage you cause by sending too much to people who don’t want it.”
He argues marketers need to be more intelligent about the way they send email and recognise trends like the growth of email on mobile.
“You can use big data to drive your email program and most marketers still think it is a law of large numbers. When actually you can get more by sending a lot less,” he said.
“Marketers who are using big data need to understand what device people are looking at an email on. The same person who is looking at an email on their handheld in the morning, will be at their desktop in the day, and their iPad at night and you can do an awful lot to target email if you are paying attention to usage patterns.”
Blumberg points to key trends such as the 300 per cent growth in mobile email usage as something that marketers need to take into account.
“Email went through ten or 12 years where nothing interesting happened as an industry, there was more and more of it but it hadn’t evolved,” he said.
“In the last two to three year there has been more innovation in the email sector and capital flowing into startups and creating a better consumer experience than I have seen in 15 years.”
He also argues that technologies such as movable ink which updates after the email is sent or critical email messaging will change the way the medium is used.
“There a variety of new services coming up that will make email better and better… there are products like AwayFind that helps you get email through channels when its critical.”
“Typically email is a pretty static thing. But technologies like movableink takes different elements of an email and targets them based on different variables such as geolocation, time of day and device type.”
“It makes sure the email is relevant to me.”
The study tracked the delivery, blocking and filtering rates for campaigns that used the Inbox Monitor seed list system. Return Path also looked at the read rate, spam folder placement rate, and messages deleted without reading rate across 500 Australian brands.
Nic Christensen
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Comments
27 Feb 13
12:08 pm
I’d personally say the best way to ensure an email campaign is relevant is to ensure you’re sending quality content, for example, articles that people want to read and offers that are actually enticing. Many email newsletters miss the mark simply by virtue of assuming that their subscribers simply want to hear – something, anything – from them. The consequences of sending a boring, un-engaging newsletter are by far worse than losing 1 in 5 emails to the system.
With email providers like Google training their spam filters on engagement, ie. if emails from a sender regularly get clicked or opened on the other end, it pays for marketers to focus on their content first, before splitting hairs over technical solutions to up their delivery rates.
27 Feb 13
1:46 pm
@Ros — very wise words. What’s more, since by using ‘read more’ links in an email you can track what interests people and what doesn’t, there’s really no excuse for sending them uninteresting content. After a couple of newsletter shots, you’ll know what your target public is interested in reading more about because the statistics will tell you.
B
27 Feb 13
1:53 pm
Email is soooo last decade, come on guys, at least format them for Mobile.
27 Feb 13
3:23 pm
Effective email programs need to be run by folks with an excellent understanding of the medium, the systems and infrastructure required as well as having an excellent grasp of marcomms and UX/design. In most companies, and more annoyingly media organisations, they do not seek or hire this type of skill set. There are some exceptions