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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 While on Twitter I noticed someone saying that Australia’s NBN is already outdated.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.
Media agency MPG takes the blame for using ‘Abo’ search term for Tourism NT
Media agency MPG has issued a grovelling apology taking the blame for a blunder that saw client Tourism NT buying the Google paid search term “Abo”.
As Mumbrella revealed yesterday, the offensive term linked to Tourism NT’s Travel NT website.
In an apology published this afternoon, MPG said:
“MPG wish to unreservedly apologise for the inadvertent selection of the word as a search term. MPG recognise that it was a mistake, an oversight and is unacceptable.
“Tourism NT did not specifically approve this search term as part of 128,000 search words employed for their business.
“MPG recognise that this term is highly offensive and apologises for any offence caused and its search procedures have been reviewed in order to prevent such errors reoccurring.”
May 12th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
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Comments
12 May 10
1:13 pm
“Tourism NT did not specifically approve this search term as part of 128,000 search words employed for their business.” That would indicate either MPG did or no-one did. Both of those are a slight on the agencies ability at paid search.
Come on guys – sort it out
12 May 10
1:42 pm
Whilst this should not have happened in the first place, and they will need to assure the client a repeat can’t happen, good on them for doing this.
12 May 10
1:52 pm
Chris, agreed that the best policy was to stand up and be counted but within paid search the devil is in the detail and one of the most important things in managing a brand is the negative keyword selection so that they don’t appear against terms like this and also the initial keyword selection.
This should have been picked up on both counts.
but yes, fair play for hands up.
12 May 10
1:57 pm
Come on – the client also needs to take responsibility.
12 May 10
2:18 pm
The term shoud have been proposed as a negative keyword OR the client should not have signed it off…..
But fair play to MPG for c’arrying the can’
12 May 10
2:26 pm
surely you hire an agency to manage your search to prevent these things happening and the agency should have controls in place to make sure these words are not even included.
If the client is expected to trawl through 128,000 keywords and approve each surely this negates part of the reason for having someone manage the search?
12 May 10
2:31 pm
I highly doubt there are 128,000 keywords…..there is not that much to say about NT!!!
12 May 10
2:46 pm
Kind of agree. Whilst good on MPG for taking the blame, i think us clients can’t hide behind the agency when things like this happen. The agency only has as much autonomy as they are allowed, and therefore – like – all things the client is permitting that autonomy. And therefore is responsible.
Doubt MPG would get the credit for all campaign successes. We can’t have it both ways, i think!
12 May 10
2:48 pm
As an exercise in PR Crisis Management good on Media agency MPG for standing up or carrying the can depending on how you look at it.
However also feel that NT Tourism should have issued an apology or at very least a statement.
Someone at NT Tourism signed off these keywords / SEO campaign and should issue an apology on behalf of organisation.
At end of any crisis PR event you ask what damage has been done and who comes off carrying egg on their face. So far it looks a little like NT Tourism….
12 May 10
2:50 pm
Shane , have you been up here recently.. you should come up sometime..there’s plenty to say!!!
12 May 10
2:56 pm
I don’t know 128,000 different words.
I’d be shit at search marketing.
12 May 10
3:01 pm
Come on, it’s the responsiblity of the media agency to professionally represent their client. In this case, they have failed to do while being offensive along the way! A search term doesn’t just get inadvertantly selected.
12 May 10
3:04 pm
I agree Shane, I doubt there is 128,000 keywords and if there is I bet 100,000 get 0 impressions.
I also bet that not many client actually are asked to approve keywords by any agency, generally campaign ads are the only thing clients get to approve.
12 May 10
3:05 pm
128,000 this is Bad bad use of PPC campaign.
Of course client didn’t approve – Who has the time and intelligence to select 128,000 keywords?
Have your heard about negative keywords?
Too easy.
12 May 10
3:06 pm
i’m politically correct but my boyfriend isn’t. we’ve fought over this in the past, and he says that abo isn’t an offensive term, but an abbreviation. keeping an open mind, can it be interpretted as that?
btw, he’s not a racist. he’s in an interacial relationship and has aboriginie friends. the word does get to me, though.
12 May 10
3:09 pm
At least someone said sorry about something for once.
12 May 10
3:10 pm
Actually I think they missed a tricked by not issuing a statement mimicking Kevin Rudd’s sorry speech when I think about it.
12 May 10
3:14 pm
I doubt very much that NT buy 128,000 keywords, the Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use.
What a waste of money and time! You should employ an agency who is focused on your target market.
12 May 10
3:26 pm
The term keyword is deceiving as it can relate to individual words but also phrases, in the context of search marketing. So, 128,000 keywords is a lot, but nothing compared to say an airline who might have over a million keywords.
I get the feeling a lot of agencies build out search campaigns with so many keywords to justify the fees they are charging, even if the majority of keywords get zero impressions. And of course approving this many keywords is a joke, but they should definitely have approved a negative keyword list.
12 May 10
3:34 pm
This is mental.
It’s fine to use “wog boy” as the title of a movie but it’s front page news on SMH and other news sites that some random dude picked up on an agency were bidding on “abo”.
Come on Australia…sort it out.
12 May 10
3:39 pm
Let’s remember that this was brought to light by a guy who works at an agency that is likely out there looking for SEM business (and he’s done very well out of this by pointing everyone to his blog and the company’s site). So of course any errors they find they want to highlight as “incompetence” as he says. Which is fine, all competing companies try to find errors with each other, but lets not all be so critical and quick to point the finger.
I don’t think I have seen one SEM campaign that is perfect and error free or couldn’t be done better. So I suggest a few of you get off your high horse and deflate your egos as to how good you think you are 100% of the time. MPG admitted the error and I am sure they will move on and learn from it. This is a SEM process error, yes potentially a PC issue too, but it’s hardly bringing down the stock exchange is it. Move on people.
12 May 10
3:43 pm
Thumbs up to the agency for taking the fall on this – as they should. If I had time to run my own SEM campaigns I wouldn’t emolpy an agency – the responsibility sits with them.
Gem, the social connotations of ‘wog’ and ‘abo’ are entirely different. Wog can still be highly offensive if misdirected, abo is always a term of offence.
12 May 10
3:53 pm
so…are we going to the NT or what??
12 May 10
4:18 pm
Dar wins everytime
12 May 10
4:57 pm
I find it funny people think its impossible to use 128,000 keywords. I have seen clients in the past use 600,000+ keywords. I guess it sounds a bit funny for some one who does not work in the search marketing game, you must remember theirs the dictionary terms, you mix those up with keywords and then you also add in some miss spellings.
The problem is mistakes can happen, this one has been a costly lesson for MPG, yet I commend them highly for comming out and appoligising in full.
You see companies like Nestle facing a big problem and they run and hide and bring in the lawyers to remove negative comments.
12 May 10
4:58 pm
(Edited by Mumbrella)
12 May 10
5:17 pm
Have to agree with Michael – 128,000 search terms in a PPC campaign is far too many. That is like firing at a target blindfolded, hoping something hits the bullseye – a sheer waste of advertising budget.
12 May 10
5:18 pm
You don’t need 128,000 words to trigger reasons to visit the Northern Territory; just one: “Barramundi”. Mind you, you could also throw in the abbreviated version: “Barra”.
12 May 10
5:29 pm
true – 128,000 is OTT – what did they do upload a dictionary?
12 May 10
5:41 pm
@Jono ……….
“have seen clients in the past use 600,000+ keywords”
“you must remember theirs the dictionary terms, you mix those up with keywords and then you also add in some miss spellings.”
Obviously in your SEM experience you target people with webbed hands
12 May 10
7:51 pm
Seriously, 128k keywords is not that much when, as people have mentioned they are actually key phrases with multiple words and often including misspellings and their combination in the phrases.
Just the phrase “tourism in northern territory” could generate 200 misspellings.
If you understood search you would understand.
Also, for those searches with zero impressions, they may have an impression now or in the future and if you are the one with your ad there when others have ignored it then the consumer has a higher propensity to click on your ad as you’re likely the only one who is appearing.
Anyway, 128k is not the issue, in fact it is like the agency is using that as an excuse. It was a cock up, they have seen it and fixed it and admitted to the issue. It goes to show some of the issues of running a search campaign with large volumes of keywords/phrases but also shows the level of quality control that should be in place on both an agency and client side.
12 May 10
8:03 pm
Add to that if you have the exact phrase it is more cost effective than having the broad match then it makes sense to build the whole thing out to all possibilities of phraseology to give the most cost effective result.
13 May 10
8:19 am
NT Tourism is desperate to show any sort of progress or to
justify their relevance.
The ad agency would have been asked if they would like to continue with their
contract and to take One for the revenue stream…i mean team.
Do TourismNT marketing managers ever get fired?
I bet this issue, woke a lot of people on the fourth floor of Moonta House as well as the
Hon Malarndirri Barbara Anne McCarthy who says about 4 words a year.
13 May 10
8:50 am
“Gem, the social connotations of ‘wog’ and ‘abo’ are entirely different. Wog can still be highly offensive if misdirected, abo is always a term of offence:
So if I call someone an f”ing wog or f’ing abo one is more offensive than the other it? Of course this is all about context and personal interpretation.
One thing I find amazing is that every Aussie I know doesn’t think the term “paki” is offensive for example. I think it says a lot.
On the PPC 128k keywords…definately overkill – I would think there are probably 30-40 head terms that drive 90% traffic and I would be amazed if the remaining “long tail” accounted for the other 10% on a consistent basis. The perception that quantity of keywords is a huge factor to look at in a PPC campaign is prehistoric online marketing and if that is what your agency thinks, sack them immediately – My mum knows more about PPC that they do.
13 May 10
9:02 am
So in summary:
It’s not that big of a deal, it is a minor process issue between client > agency being leveraged by others for personal gain
Number of key words is irrelevant and does not incur the client additional cost – as long as the campaign is being optimised to the right metrics of course
Terms ‘Wog’ versus ‘Abo’ – far too many shades of grey/acceptability to come to a definitive conclusion
Fionn is clever and likes his giant iPhone…..
13 May 10
9:21 am
I’d like to hear from more PR professionals on your point of view on this issue. I completely agree with am’s recommendation that NT Tourism must issue an apology. By keeping quiet & letting the agency take the blame is poor PR, as publics (including media) will make a link back to NT Tourism. A statement apologising for the error is important to maintain their reputation & to diffuse the situation. This is crisis management 101.
13 May 10
9:34 am
I thought it might be that Fionn!
13 May 10
10:07 am
Well it’s not like there are that many Fionn’s out there!
And it’s not a giant iPhone, it can’t make calls
)
13 May 10
11:10 am
I just want to know how many hits they actually had on the blunder!
13 May 10
12:12 pm
Is Comment 15 trollin or stoopid?
14 May 10
4:51 pm
HAH! Love it austen tayshus (1)
Really, just how much can we Koalas bear?
Enough already mUmbrella and let the “news-cycle” go…
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