Opinion
- 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 marketing
  
  Email 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.
- How reliable are radio ratings?
  
  In this guest posting, Jason ‘Jabba’ Davis wonders how accurate radio ratings can be, since the data is collated from handwritten diaries.
  
  So, the radio ratings season gets underway tomorrow. After a well-earned break, Australia’s commercial radio stations will renew their obsession with figures to see how many of us are listening. Are they winning or losing the ratings war?
  
  The much feared radio survey is the only way to measure the success or failure of a station’s playlist, talent, promotions or even good old Black Thunder crosses. With six-figure salaries riding on the make-or-break nature of ratings, just how accurate are Australia’s radio survey results?

Bing reviewed: it doesn’t work

Well, my flirtation with Bing – the so-called Google killer – was short. One search in fact.

I just spotted a tweet from Paul Fisher of the Interactive Advertising Bureau that it was live so jumped on.

I offered it an ego search to start off with.

I ticked the box labelled “only from Australia” and Googled (oops, sorry – force of habit) Binged (bung?) the word Mumbrella.

Can you guess what web site it doesn’t list? A little clue: It begins with Mumbrella and ends in .com.au.

I think I’ll be sticking with Google, thanks very much.

Tim Burrowes

June 1st, 2009 at 6:48 pm

Comments

Nick Smith
1 Jun 09
6:59 pm

Something up with the geo-tagging? Plenty of action if you “show all”.

That aside, I’m liking the innovations to the search platform. It’s been a pretty lonely road for a few years now… Competition can only be a good thing.

Ben Shepherd
1 Jun 09
7:24 pm

this is indicative of a key issue for any search competitor … it has to be faultless at launch because you only get one shot with 99% of people.

people are much more tolerant of google serving up average results (rare but it happens) as they have built up so much trust

mumbrella
1 Jun 09
8:20 pm

And by the way, Ben. I will give it another shot.

Although I’m amused to see this result, I’m prepared to accept this is first-few-hours, still-switching-on teething problems. (it could be related to our host being US-based, but that shouldn’t impact on the searcher if the domain is .com.au)

But I know it will leave me wondering what I’m missing out on when I look for Aussie content.

Cheers,

Tim

Paul Fisher
1 Jun 09
9:26 pm

Tim,
As Shaggy sang “it wasn’t me”!! There is another Paul Fisher on twitter, nothing to do with the CEO of IAB Australia.

To deconflict, we changed @PaulFisher_IAB to @IABAustralia

Ashley Ringrose
1 Jun 09
10:13 pm

SEO bitch! hahah

Martin
1 Jun 09
10:31 pm

Hey Tim,

If you go to http://www.bing.com.au and then type in Mumbrella you are the first two results shown.

Unfortunately geotargeting is a big flaw for all search engines. I have spent a huge amount of work on SEO and even Google doesn’t show many Australian sites and in some cases and I have to manually submit them.

Cheers

Tim - Mumbrella
1 Jun 09
10:49 pm

Hi Martin,

I realise it’s visible if I click to search the whole of the web. It just strikes me that it would be something of a bonus if people checking the Australian sites option can actually see, you know, Australian sites.

Perhaps that’ll be in version 2.0.

And Paul – you mean all those insightful and intelligent tweets I’ve been following weren’t you…?

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella

OPM
2 Jun 09
8:42 am

There seems to be a pretty big difference between the Australian and US version of BING. It appears that at this stage, the US version is a lot more feature packed than the AU version.

I’ll be giving it chance.

Martin
2 Jun 09
9:12 am

Yes sadly, I don’t understand the thinking about less features available from day 1 in markets like Australia where they have almost no market share and therefore should be doing much more to differentiate from Google.

Live search only has around 3% market share in Australia so you would think that rather than launch a version which has less features than the US version and some other countries they would launch something which was on par with the US or better to try and attract users!!!

If you launch something here with less features than the US how on earth is that going to get even just a small amount of the 92% market share form Google?

More competitive markets means you need much more differentiation from the competitor, not LESS.

Anyway, that would be my strategic approach.

Tom
2 Jun 09
9:45 am

That’s what you get for going with the cheap offshore hosting, Tim.

Tom Dodson
2 Jun 09
11:34 am

I used to use AltaVista until it became unfashionable. Then there was “ask jeeves”, which never really worked.

I cant say im too impressed with this latest offer.

Quackers
2 Jun 09
1:17 pm

Well, it still is a beta version, so we have to take that into consideration. If in the future there is a “google scholar” feature, I may consider using it. But right now it just works like any ordinary search engine. Have no reason to switch just yet.

Andy Jamieson
2 Jun 09
3:20 pm

We need some good competition to Google. Lets hope Bing and the Microsoft $$ behind it can get them somewhere close to that goal!

Sheila (@stinginthetail)
3 Jun 09
12:28 pm

I think maybe Bing is like Wolfram Alpha – much hyped and not really very good unless you’re in the USA. (I blogged about Wolfram Alpha’s much-vaunted ‘only truth’ results being wrong about a week ago.)

Bing also comes pre-censored, you have to switch their censorship tool off in your preferences. If you switch your country code to India, you can avoid any sex at all, it’s automatically censored for that country. Search for “porn” with India as your location, and you get “The search porn may return sexually explicit content. To get results, change your search terms” and that’s it. lol. No results at all.

At the moment (according to articles i’ve read), Bing is stealing hits from Livesearch – who used that? People who couldn’t find their way off the nine msn website once they logged out of hotmail? Microsoft employees who were under orders? People who like microsoft? Yep, 3% of users in australia, as was said above, lol.

Lauren
3 Jun 09
12:55 pm

BING = Because Its Not Google..

John Grono
3 Jun 09
1:21 pm

First, Lauren I love the acronym.

Tim, apart from geo-coding issues, new search engines need crawlers to populate them and that can take some time. Given that “all” has you in top place I think I’d be doing so internal digging first.

Bradley Davis
5 Jun 09
1:04 am

I think they do have several points of differentiation from Google in the SERPs. Firstly they have placed related search terms in the top left corner, this maybe more useful to searchers to really help them find what they are searching for.

Secondly, the text preview of the web page can provide you a little more content so the searcher can determine relevance before leaving the search results.

You have to expect the development of the Australian bing to be behind that of the US and the UK for that matter. Australia does not have the power to pull any more attention when our entire population is the equivalent to a US city.

As mentioned by Andy, Google really does need a solid competitor and it does need to be soon. Otherwise what will happen if Google controls 100% of the worldwide market?