Lessons from brand Gaga
In this guest post, Jaid Hulsbosch finds lessons for marketers in controversial performer Lady Gaga.
One of the leading brand innovators in global business today is a young woman called Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta – also known as Lady Gaga.
She is an artist and a brand and her team are clever marketers. They are showing businesses how to build a successful global brand in record time in today’s fragmented media environment.
Your audience is stoned
In this guest post, Tom Donald reckons advertisers should wake up to the fact that their audience is often high on marijuana.
From Cheech and Chong in the 1970s through to recent Judd Apatow films, we all recognise there’s a cinematic genre best enjoyed under the influence: “stoner movies”. And we all know that most music genres – from jazz through psychedelia, metal, hip hop, house and electronica – sound best when your mind is altered by booze, blunted by weed, or tweaked by a chemical substance.
Yet we never openly talk about ‘stoner ads’, which is curious as they are some of our industry’s most successful.
Blaming junk food TV ads for obesity is wide of the mark
In this guest post, Peter Miller argues that banning junk food advertising on TV wouldn’t make our children thinner
Late last year I attended a presentation by Roy Morgan Research entitled ‘Australia’s changing demography’. I was unsure about attending. But then I noticed there was alcohol involved, and Gary Morgan is the kind of guy who can make the world’s dullest statistic sound interesting.
My eye was caught by the significant rise in the number of Aussies enjoying a tertiary education, up from 15% in 1998 to 24% today. No wonder new recruits are so annoying.
Nine prepares for its Olympic year
So what to make of Nine’s upfronts?
First, there were few surprises. Big Brother we knew about. A new series of The Celebrity Apprentice was a no brainer.
And of course, the network’s main commercial focus will be on The Olympics.
So what was unexpected? Read more »
How Kyle Sandilands was humbled by Twitter
Kyle nearly got away with it.
Almost exactly 16 hours passed between his nasty attack on journalist Alison Stephenson and the world beyond his listeners noticing.
And the way that this eventually became a news story was slightly more random than you may realise. Here’s how it happened. Read more »
How Qantas ignored the social media warning signals
I
n this guest post Alicia Kennedy of online monitoring service Meltwater argues that Qantas failed to understand customer sentiment before launching its disastrous Twitter contest to win pyjamas.
By now, you’ve undoubtedly seen the latest social media debacle erupt over #QantasLuxury.
What started out as an act of goodwill to improve weeks of negative publicity, very quickly went south when thousands of people hijacked the hashtag to fire relentless comments about the recent Qantas grounding.
Just two hours after the competition was launched, #QantasLuxury reached ‘breaking trend’ status in Australia and was averaging approximately 130 tweets per 10 minutes. Overnight, there were over 14,700 social media mentions not just in Australia but in the US and UK too. Read more »
A grad’s guide to Australia’s top ad agencies
In this guest post, Lou Hayward, a student in the market for a job at an ad agency, says how well she thinks agencies in the Mumbrella Creative Agency Review are set up to take in new blood.
In alphabetical order, she recounts her experiences after approaching 13 of Australia’s top shops.
BMF. Take a look at the long list of ‘fun’ in the ‘join us’ section of the BMF website and you’d be forgiven for thinking you were looking at some sort of holiday resort. Pinball machines, two full-time massage therapists, pilates classes, BBQs. I’m sold!
A sexy funding solution for an age-old problem
Chris Murray proposes an ingenious plan to help fund local screen productions with the naughty dollar.
It has recently come to light that the Hungarian government has some innovative ideas for supporting their local film industry. By introducing three different taxes, our European friends plan to channel funds into local productions and ailing art house cinemas.
The first tax would apply to local porn websites; another, a three per cent tax on multiplex tickets, to funnel into art house exhibition; and finally a general 20 per cent tax break on foreign productions.
According to Variety, the latter has so far generated a US$98 million injection into the local economy via the miniseries World Without End, The Borgias and feature film 47 Ronin starring Keanu Reeves. This is on top of income from Brad Pitt’s US$125m budgeted zombie flick World War Z which is currently shooting in the Hungarian capital, Budapest. Read more »
Credit where it’s due – today’s SMH shows what it’s capable of
If you want to see why newspapers still have a point, refer to today’s Sydney Morning Herald and its report on the powerbrokers of the NSW Labor party.
First, Kate McClymont’s investigation contains the sort of detailed, legally challenging material that newspapers are among the only outlets capable of investing in researching.
And second, when I say newspapers, I mean newspapers. Read more »
Inside the celebrity boardroom bitch-fest
With the grand finale airing tonight, Nine’s end-of-year ratings push has been led five nights a week by the FremantleMedia-produced Celebrity Apprentice. Georgina Pearson visits the set during the show’s six-week Sydney shoot to find out how the series came together.
Celebrity Apprentice is an interesting concept; one that perhaps, on paper, could be deemed a marketing nightmare. For how can you take B-grade Australian celebs and replicate the hugely successful multi-billion dollar Donald Trump-helmed hit?
The crew shoot a challenge episode
For the unfamiliar, the premise is fairly simple: 12 celebrity contestants, each vying for a final prize of $100,000 for their chosen charity. Entrepreneur and founder of wealth management company Yellow Brick Road, Mark Bouris, presides as the ultimate boss. Guided by ACP Magazines’ Deborah Thomas and Bouris’ long time right-hand man Brad Seymour, Bouris puts the contestants through their paces with a series of team challenges before gradually eliminating them in a boardroom showdown.
Initially created in the US by Mark Burnett Productions and billionaire real-estate tycoon Trump, The Apprentice shot to success in 2004 and has since spawned over 20 global imitations. Down under, FremantleMedia produces the franchise as part of a larger deal with Burnett that gives them the local rights to all of the producing powerhouse’s formats.
In 2009 series one of The Apprentice Australia aired on Channel Nine concluding with Bouris hiring auctioneer Andrew Morello. While the first incarnation never managed to crack the magical million mark in the ratings, the celebrity-driven version is clearly faring better. Read more »
Guess what we’ve been up to
Thanks very much for asking. Yes, as it happens, I have been busy.
Mainly I’ve been falling back in love with print journalism.
You see, a while back, we bought a magazine called Encore. And for the last few months we’ve been moving it closer to Mumbrella world. Read more »
Meet the anonymous trolls of AdNews
For the seven people who are intensely interested in the activities of Australia’s marketing trade press, this one is just for you.
You may have noticed that there’s been something of a furore over anonymous comments this week. Read more »
We don’t want draconian reforms but the editors are disinclined to work together
Yesterday, it was reported that the Communications Council wants the trade press to ban anonymous comments. Mumbrella editor Tim Burrowes argued that appropriate moderation is a better approach. In this guest posting, Communications Council chairman Anthony Freedman argues that the issue still needs to be addressed
It seems the article that Simon Canning published in The Australian yesterday has really put the cat amongst the pigeons in suggesting the intention of The Communications Council is to outlaw all anonymous comments. Read more »
Am I ageist… or a realist?
In this guest post, Ben Lilley responds to ‘ageist’ comments made about him after he pronounced that the traditional ad agency model was dead.
I’ve recently been accused of being ageist. Again. This last happened several years ago, when I was running a younger agency with a handful of youth brands requiring, not surprisingly, young people to work on them.
I was a bit younger then myself – not too much though. I’ve still yet to hit the ripe old age of 40. But now that I’m back in the multinational agency realm, it’s been suggested I only want to populate my new agency with ‘young people’ all over again.
Moderation still seems a better choice than banning all anonymous comment
Here are some comments you haven’t read on Mumbrella in the last month:
“This guy is a douche”
“Xxxxx is a prick.”
“I think we all know what she really needs.”
“Boring work.”
“Smug little suit…a nasty performance from the pommy bastard. Self-satisfaction is the order of the day!”
“Same old shit from the Xxxxxx team.”
“He was useless in his last job. He’ll be useless in this one.”
“Moron”
“He really is a sad, abusive, supercilious twat.”
“He seems like a little worm” Read more »
The end of News Limited being led by a journo – now it’s the man who gets paid content
The character of News Limited is about to change.
The opening words used by John Hartigan when he gave the Andrew Olle Media Lecture in 2007 give the clue why:
“My name is John Kenneth Hartigan. Occupation: journalist. A journalist is what I am, who I am, and what I will always be. When you wanted to be a journalist as fervently as I did, took as long to become one as I did, and love it as much as I do – you are never anything else.”
It used to be that a key point of difference between Australia’s two behemoths was that News Limited was run by a journo and Fairfax by a suit. In almost exactly a year that has reversed. Read more »
Coke gets content
If you didn’t have time to to get along to NineMSN’s digital marketing summit today, one of the sessions you missed was from Shubu Mitra, The Coca Cola Company’s director of connections planning, effectiveness and productivity.
Instead, I recommend investing seven minutes in watching this video from the brand – as good an articulation as any of how marketers make the most of the new media landscape. Read more »
Should ad agencies advertise themselves?
In this guest post, James Welch wonders whether ad agencies should make ads about themselves.
In 2006 I was on a project at Patts Y&R Melbourne. The now-famous Russel Howcroft had just been appointed as MD. The receptionist asked me what project I was working on. I explained that I was working for Russel, helping them articulate today’s stories for the agency and to find ways to package them up for prospective clients. The receptionist’s summary was succinct: “You’re advertising the advertising agency!”
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