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Opinion | Features
How bosses can build trust by baring themselves to staff
In this guest post, Simon Rutherford, CEO of Slingshot Media, argues that bosses should be vulnerable in front of their staff.
Winston Churchill once said: “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
Fake it til you make it...as a radio newsreader
In a piece that first appeared in Encore, Emily Hoskins from ARN tells us how to do her job.
What does a radio newsreader actually do?
A radio newsreader has to be switched on from the moment they sit at their desk. At the Australian Radio Network each journalist writes, researches, edits and reads their own news bulletins under tight deadlines – every 30 minutes during the breakfast shift and every hour after 9am.
Keith Reinhard on freedom to fail, winning back Maccas and how agencies can survive
In an exclusive interview in Cannes today, advertising icon Keith Reinhard, one of the founding fathers of what is now DDB Worldwide, talked to Mumbrella’s Robin Hicks about freedom from fear, his favourite ads of all time, winning back McDonald’s and why the most important thing in advertising is passion.Savage counsel - little white lies
In a piece that first featured in Encore, Chris Savage tackles your career and agency dilemmas. This week, he talks about when it’s okay to lie to clients.
Hi Chris,
I often find myself telling little white lies at work – I tell people on the phone that I don’t want to speak to I’m about to duck into meetings. I told my colleague her new haircut was great when really it wasn’t and I praised someone’s work when actually it was kind of shit. After each of these occasions, I felt pretty terrible and wonder if you could tell me how can I speak with candour in the future – for my sake and others.
How to build a culture
How important is a company’s culture and how do you ensure you are breeding a good one? Matt Smith investigates, in a piece that first appeared in Encore.When production companies Cordell Jigsaw and Zapruder’s Other Films merged early last year, bringing the staff together within the walls of the Zapruder building proved to be something of a challenge. While the two companies weren’t strangers to each other due to six months of talks and negotiations, working together on a full-time basis was a different story.
Q&A Damian Keogh
In a piece that first featured in Encore, Val Morgan CEO Damian Keogh reveals his potential alternate career.
Who is the most powerful person in Australian media and why?
I’d say Kerry Stokes, slightly ahead of Harold Mitchell and Kim Williams. He controls the entity with the largest revenue across free-to-air, online, magazines and newspapers. On pure size alone, his influence and leverage over advertisers, media agencies and consumers is unmatched. Harold is still the king in media, slightly ahead of John Steedman, but Henry Tajer and Leigh Terry are the heirs apparent. Kim Williams controls News and that’s a big base to work from.
If a violent game is okay, then so is using a violent ad to promote it
An ad for video game Dead Island Riptide was banned by the ad watchdog. James Whitehead of online entertainment publisher IGN argues that it was the wrong call.A fortnight ago, it emerged that the Ad Standards Board had banned a television commercial for the video game Dead Island: Riptide, due to its depiction of violence – specifically suicide.
Why content makers are leaving our shores
In a piece that first featured in Encore, Craig Anderson says there simply isn’t enough opportunity for content makers in Australia, especially for those making comedy.Last year I had multiple meetings with production companies in Australia and discovered that apart from the odd commercial campaign, there’s no proliferation of paying platforms for comedy. From my own experience there’s iView, which will buy content once it’s already been made (though I live in hope that it will one day be granted the financial power to commission content). I’ve also had the odd informal commission from the SMH iPad consisting of two narrative series and a comical review show. But none of these endeavours were financially viable.
Managing your management style
In an article that first appeared in Encore, Stephanie Brown says the advertising industry often leaves people ill-equipped when it comes to managing staff, especially when they’re promoted into management roles.Managing people is hard. In fact, I actually think it’s the hardest job in the world. With no disrespect intended, I often joke that if my job didn’t involve other people to manage, it would be a walk in the park. I could get about my day’s work in a nice, linear fashion, happily checking off my to-do list as I go. I’m a process-orientated person. I get a kick out of getting things done.
Why the Facebook chase is making brands treat consumers like morons
You know how we look back at quaintly patronising ads from the 1950s and wonder what on earth the advertisers were thinking?
I’ve got a feeling that in a few years time, we’ll be looking at the behaviour of big brands on Facebook the same way.
An entire generation of marketers – or at least a sizeable proportion of them – have lost their minds.
So many have become so obsessed with generating user interactions at all costs, that all thoughts about overall brand perceptions or long term marketing goals have vanished. All that counts now, is generating likes and comments at all costs.
Blog this!
Paid content, sponsored posts and brand ambassadorships – in theory, today’s blogger can be just as valuable to brands as mainstream media. But does blogger outreach actually work? In an article that first appeared in Encore, Nic Christensen investigates.“I get approaches from PR companies constantly,” says blogger and author Kerri Sackville, with more than a hint of exasperation. “I have never done a sponsored blog, on my own site, but that doesn’t stop them from asking.”
McLennan right man for job
It’s all change at troubled broadcaster Channel Ten with new directions, new executives and a brand new CEO. Managing director of Adstream Peter Miller says Hamish McLennan is the right man for the job, in an article that first appeared in Encore.I am a bit of a schmuck when it comes to movies. I love romantic comedies. My favourite is One Fine Day with Michelle Pfeiffer and George Clooney.
Q&A with Richard Herring
In a piece that first appeared in Encore, CEO of APN Outdoor Richard Herring talks media.Who is the most powerful person in Australian media and why?
I don’t know if there is one person in particular. The fragmentation of traditional media and new entrants has made it a more level playing field with regards to major influencers. As was demonstrated with the recent media reform recommendations, together, the broader media community still has a very influential and powerful voice.
What one medium could you not live without?
Outdoor – clean, entertaining, evocative and informative.
Q&A with screenwriter Craig Pearce
Craig Pearce, screenwriter for The Great Gatsby, spoke to Encore about working with Baz and writing for 3D.
How did you get into script writing?
I always loved stories and acting and dressing up and being anything but myself and I never realised that was not something other people did. After leaving high school, I did a three year acting course at NIDA but always thought I would one day write. Baz was a good friend and he had a theatre company. He wanted to extend a 20 minute version of Strictly Ballroom. We got it to 45 minutes then he was approached by producers to turn it into a feature film. I started helping him out on the film while they were looking for a real writer but eventually Baz had to go to the producers and say, “There’s this guy who’s my best friend and he is a really good writer”. To the producers’ credit, they believed in Baz so we had two weeks to re-write it.
Savage Counsel - winning pitches
Chris Savage tackles your career and agency dilemmas in his weekly Encore advice column.
Hi Chris,
It seems we have to increasingly pitch for everything. Even with existing clients, we’re now expected to pitch ideas, competitively, for every project. We’re winning about two out of five of what we’re pitching for. It’s a huge burden on our time and budgets. What is your secret to winning a pitch presentation? How do we make sure our presentations are a knockout?
Dog sniffs at bottoms in ‘edgy’ ad for Kimberly-Clark’s ‘life changing’ toilet paper with ‘Gripples’, for a cleaner wipe
Kimberly-Clark has released a new sort of toilet paper distinguishable by ‘Gripples’, ripples on the paper that supposedly clean better.
The campaign, described in a Kimberly-Clark press release as “a little edgier” than past efforts for toilet paper, began with an unbranded teaser this week, which asked ‘Have you been grippled yet?’ The teaser claimed ‘Gripples might just change your life’.
The TV ad features a puppy that sniffs at people’s rear-ends to see whether or not they’ve been using toilet paper with Gripples.
A press release from Kimberly-Clark reads: “While a little edgier than previous Kleenex Cottonelle brand campaigns,
the aim is to attract more premium brand switchers, who represent 60% of the market, by communicating the strength of Kleenex Cottonelle as well as the softness it’s renowned for.”
Marketing manager for Kleenex Cottonelle brand, Michelle Rossier said: ‘People use personal care products to feel clean and fresh all day, however they don’t connect this feeling to the toilet tissue they buy. The new campaign positions Kleenex Cottonelle brand as the toilet tissue that provides you with a superior level of clean.”
The campaign gives the Kimberly-Clark Cottonelle brand differentiation in a homogenous category, Rossier added. “More importantly, it resonates with brand switchers who make a clear connection with the new product without alienating our Kleenex Cottonelle loyalists,” she said.
The campaign included digital, in-store, out of home and sampling to encourage consumers to ‘spread the Gripple effect’.
Credits:
Creative agency: JWT
Adrianne Nixon – Group Account Director
Mark Harricks – Executive Creative Directors
John Lam & Laurie Geddes – Creative Team
Media agency: Mindshare
Planner: Veronik Myburgh
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Comments
6 Jul 12
8:47 am
Erm. Yeah. Sure.
So is the prop: wipe your arse with Gripple (?!) bog-roll or you’ll smell like a tramp?
Even with the puppy, it’s a bit rum.
My view is that once you’re out of the sandpaper stuff, it’s all much of a muchness. Not sure ATL is the place to land this idea.
6 Jul 12
9:30 am
It’s not the ability to clean that makes most Australian toilet paper horrific. it’s the way it leaves tiny paper fibres all over the places you (or your lovers) don’t want them. (Kleenex included.)
All toilet paper manufacturers should do the ‘stubble man nose blow’ test. If a man with short stubble can blow his nose on the toilet paper, without getting mini fibres all over his pokey bits, it’s good to go.
FYI – the only mainstream toilet paper I’ve found that doesn’t do this (as badly) is Quilton.
Sorry, I’ve hijacked a poo thread.
6 Jul 12
9:53 am
wow, thats pretty gross. The cuteness was overpowered by the grossness.
Adgrunt, i dont think its smell like a tramp, its smell like poo.
6 Jul 12
9:58 am
Somebody forgot to tell Kimberly-Clark that ‘gripples’ already exist, and if you put them on your toilet paper, your backside will be worse for wear:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gripple
6 Jul 12
10:07 am
Cottonelle is the worst toilet paper I’ve ever used – it always falls apart, leaving you with little bits of toilet paper dust everywhere! As a staunch Kleenex buyer who’s been forced to buy Quilton since the launch of Cottonelle, I say fix the product before the marketing.
Not sure I want to see a toilet paper sampling campaign in Wynyard or Martin Place either…
6 Jul 12
12:24 pm
Quilton double strength wins by a finger
6 Jul 12
12:27 pm
It’s a bit worrying that they don’t want their branding to appear on their advertising.
6 Jul 12
12:28 pm
I agree with ‘Josh’ & ‘The bigger problem’… I never had a problem with toilet paper falling apart and leaving you with little bits of toilet paper dust everywhere, until I moved to Aus?
The snow beard is not a good look… I agree: fix the product!
6 Jul 12
12:35 pm
Not sure i’d be using – or repeating – the word ‘spread’ in the final seconds of this one.
6 Jul 12
2:08 pm
Political correctness gone mad.
If they were allowed to show a side-by-side comparison of two arses, one shitty and one clean, they wouldn’t need to use this puppy dog metaphor.
6 Jul 12
4:25 pm
Ummm, meanwhile a dog would be more likely to like smelling your butt if it DID smell, not the other way around. So the people it likes sniffing (ie Cottonelle users) are probably more stinky than that tradie. Unresolved concept, but would work better for those wet wipes that actually DO clean.
6 Jul 12
5:51 pm
Dear God – the unadulterated hell of working on a client/product like that.
Every discussion where faeces is the elephant in the room. Oh, the horror.
There but for the grace of God goes all.
9 Jul 12
11:58 am
“Faeces is the elephant in the room”
Try a roomful of male clients discussing sanitary napkins.
And taking it seriously. V. seriously.
And twenty years ago.
I tried for a touch of levity with the suggestion for
a “Free Trial Period”.
Subsequently castigated for being frivolous.
Them’s were the days.
Rosem’ry
11 Jul 12
4:14 pm
I think the add is quite distasteful
15 Jul 12
8:59 pm
My husband is a farmer and uses Gripples on his barbed wire fence. As a mum of 4 boys does’nt appeal to me & i buy the loo paper.
16 Jul 12
10:55 pm
this ad quite simply stinks, it is shit. makes me feel ill when i see it. would never buy this loo paper.
Mum of four.
19 Jul 12
3:29 pm
That ad stinks, its disgusting. As soon as I see it ill change the channel straight away. My whole family thinks it gross. Wont be buying this toilet paper. Get a new marketing team Kimberly-Clark .
22 Jul 12
9:43 pm
Gross, gross, gross commercial. They honestly sat around a board room and said “Yep, we’ll go with the one with the puppy sniffing bottoms.” ???
24 Jul 12
9:45 pm
Kleenex have disappointed me. I have used their products exclusively from birth into my going on 60th year. NOW I have to look for the SOFTNESS and STRENGTH and RELIABILITY that I have always known Kleenex to be known for, to be a totally different entity. Kleenex is no more. Yes, I expressed my disappointment to the Company. The response was hmmm….
Toilet paper from Kleenex now is harsh. I will not buy it again. Viva Paper Towels were my fav as well BECAUSE they had the big ripples that caught EVERYTHING.
Kleenex now employs someone it seems who thinks they need to change everything to prove themselves.
NOT!
AFTER MANY LIFETIMES AND CONVERTING OTHERS TO BUY KLEENEX, NO MORE.
WHOEVER YOU ARE, YOU ARE WRECKING, RUINING, CAUSING A REVOLT AGAINST KLEENEX!
IS THAT YOUR INTENTION PERHAPS? BECAUSE YOU ARE DOING A DAMN GOOD JOB!
24 Jul 12
9:49 pm
And what about the baby wipes that have the “cottonelle” type wee and other stuff trapping grooves. ? The new grooves are hard. Do we wipe baby bottom with hard stuff or do they stay the same, or do we go back to not soaking up so well anymore? …
27 Jul 12
2:48 pm
Well, this is rather a “first world” problem, isn’t it. That disclaimer out the way there was really something about this ad that annoyed me.
I don’t know why. I have a bum. My Poo does not come out in a plastic bag. I have never been overly sensitive about this. But that annoying little dog wandering around sniffing rectums really just turns me off. Almost as bad as the irritating little fat kid that used to do the other one.
My family used to use this product and since the change won’t be. I am sure that any Somali kids that pause in their struggle for existence long enough to read this post will share our pain.
27 Jul 12
3:27 pm
Have to agree with Josh and R swipes..
Kleenex loo paper is dreadful – it tears apart while you are wiping your bum.
I have had to switch to Quilton which works a treat. I don’t remember Kleenex loo paper being so dreadful when I grew up.
Forget the gripples Kleenex – fix your product so that it doesn’t tear in use.
28 Jul 12
2:13 pm
This ad sickens me. Kleenex, for god’s sake fire your marketing team. Think about it. A dog runs around sniffing peoples arses and detects remnant faecal matter betwixt the buttocks of some poor slob. Why pollute our lives with such a disgusting story. Do you think it is funny? Really? Perhaps you think a poo-detecting puppy is cute? Fail.
Or is your goal to insidiously afflict your consumers with unease and guilt, that they too may not pass the shitty arse test and my end up being “outed” by the neighbourhood puppy, only to be forever ostracised by their community as the freak who cant clean his own arse.
I think your ad is unfunny (and if some do find it funny it is pandering to the basest form of humour: “ooh he did a poo and now his bump stinks! haha hilarious!”). It is uncute. And worst, it is manipulative, in trying to guilt people into using your rectal wipe over your competitors (who to all accounts make a better product, anyway)
Find a less disgusting, tacky and manipulate way to sell your crappy bog roll, kleenex.
2 Aug 12
1:30 pm
two word review “shit ad”