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Opinion | Features
Woz not great
In this guest post Tony Prysten argues that the thousand dollar price of seeing out-of-touch Apple co-founder Steve Wozniack on his Australian tour was a waste of money.
This week, for the cost of two iPads (yep, two) I went to the Woz Live conference in Melbourne. I was not impressed.
What the hell is transmedia?
From advertising campaigns to online video series, the term ‘transmedia’ gets quite the work out. But what does it actually mean? Cathie McGinn trawls the media landscape for a definitive definition.
Transmedia, all media and multiplatform are terms often used interchangeably when referencing modern storytelling techniques. Yet, depending who you speak to, there are distinct differences between them.
According to industry experts Encore spoke to, the key elements that define transmedia can be summarised as follows: platform, time, audience, adaptation, and creative collaboration.
Innovation is the remedy for the ailing magazine industry
With magazine circulations plummeting, FHM closing and rumours rife on future ownership of ACP Magazines, Paul Merrill says the only way forward is launching new titles.Eight years ago in the UK, nearly a quarter of all magazine sales came from magazines that were less than four years old. In Australia, the figure was slightly lower, but still significant. Today, the situation is very different. For a start there are so few new magazines. Yes, Masterchef briefly flared, and Top Gear made an initial impact. But Grazia and Alpha fizzled, and now ACP has shelved their plans to launch Elle.
More than a game: broadcasting the Olympics
The 2012 London Olympics will be the biggest televised sporting event of our time. Brooke Hemphill discovers the logistical challenges and technical requirements of producing the event.
From July 27 to August 12, the Australian media will go sport crazy as the Games of the XXX Olympiad, aka the 2012 London Summer Olympics, unfold. The games will be the most televised sporting event of our time as broadcasters look to master every manner of technology at their disposal.
The Voice - Australia's best example yet of social TV
In this guest post, Sputnik’s Rodd Messent has a theory on why audiences have taken to The Voice .I am an addict of Channel Nine’s hit show The Voice. Such is the extent of my addiction I seriously think my housemate might kick me out of our apartment for the semi-frenzied yelling and tweeting that ensues in our lounge room each time the show airs.It’s the first time in almost three years that such disagreement has resulted in less than civil behaviour towards one another, and it’s made me think it might be a microcosm of the large volume of online debate about the show and, correspondingly, an explanation for its success as a social TV experience.Why brands are the US Army - and culture jammers are the Viet Cong
In this guest posting, Dave Burgess, who painted ‘No War’ on the Sydney Opera House, claims that ‘amoral’ advertisers have copied his idea.
Culture jamming is a 28-year-old term coined by the San Francisco-based band Negativland, who declared that the ‘Studio for the cultural jammer is the world at large’.
Branded content is dead. Long live branded content
In this guest posting, Anthony Freedman argues why branded content is making a comeback.
A few short years ago, probably concurrent with the advent of the PVR, a new term emerged within the marketing communications industry; branded content. This was really synonymous with advertiser funded TV shows where programming was created by brands and deals struck with networks to broadcast them.
There were varying degrees of success with this model.
Shock advertising: 30 ads that would give Australia's ad watchdog a coronary
Is shock an underused weapon in Australian advertising, asks Robin HicksToday, Sydney agency The Cabana Boys used an image of a mouth sewn together to shock people with the idea that problem gamblers lie to conceal their habit. Is it the most disturbing image ever? No. Will it get banned by the Advertising Standards Bureau? No. But it did make me wonder why shock is not used more often in Australia – and not just by charities and government bodies. (WARNING: NSFW)
The making of ratings blockbuster The Voice
Jason Mountney goes on the set of Channel Nine’s talent search series, The Voice, to see how the format, based on an international franchise, has come together. What ingredients have gone into making this certified hit that’s rated more than two million viewers on three consecutive nights?
Mike Goldman has one of the toughest jobs on the set of the Nine network’s new talent show, The Voice. He not only has to narrate the show, but also keep the audience from losing their enthusiasm as they realise shooting TV programs takes a lot longer than the one-hour bursts they see in their lounge rooms. A lot longer.
Nine problems stopping The Global Mail from getting an audience
While it’s a shame The Global Mail has failed to make an impact on the media landscape, the signs have been there for some time.I love the concept of a well resourced, philanthropically-funded independent news site. Anywhere in the world, that’s a rare and wonderful thing. In Australia even more so. So I hope that Grame Wood gets to see his investment make a difference.
And I have no inside info on whether Monica Attard’s sudden departure is linked to the site’s failure to find an audience so far.
Regardless, here are nine areas they can easily start to address:
Journalism’s new model?
Does the launch of philanthropically funded news site The Global Mail signal a new era for journalism or is the model destined to be a passing fad, asks Cathie McGinn in this article first published in Encore magazine.With little fanfare, philanthropically funded news site The Global Mail launched in February this year.
The online-only title received a generous five-year funding commitment from businessman Graeme Wood, founder of accommodation website wotif.com, who donated $15million.
Five things that make a great suit
In this guest posting, Gareth Collins argues that the role of a great account manager is to make the work betterI’m surprised at how many suits I meet who don’t know their role in the advertising business. The question ‘what does an advertising account manager or director do?’ is frequently met with answers such as project manager, relationship manager, plate spinner or go between … and those are the nice ones.
Success is judged on the ability to manage a process, be strong administratively and get stuff done. And while a good suit needs to do all of these things brilliantly, if these are the traits that define a great suit, then I’m in the wrong job.
What the hell is transmedia?
From advertising campaigns to online video series, the term ‘transmedia’ gets quite the work out. But what does it actually mean? Cathie McGinn trawls the media landscape for a definitive definition.
Transmedia, all media and multiplatform are terms often used interchangeably when referencing modern storytelling techniques. Yet, depending who you speak to, there are distinct differences between them.
The top seven...most patronising pieces of communication
Sometimes brands have big ideas. Sometimes marketers get so caught up with a grandiose idea that instead of finding engaging ways to sell breakfast cereal, they start to believe their own rhetoric. And sometimes it’s just lazy marketing. Here are my top seven inadvertently patronising pieces of communication…
1) Last night thousands of women gathered in Sydney’s Centennial Park to take part in She Runs the Night, an event created by Nike.
TV audience measurement – why big isn’t always beautiful
In this guest post, Chris Walton argues that the media industry needs to take a new approach to TV tradingThere has been a significant amount of coverage recently about how successful The Voice has been. Indeed, audience figures of 2.6m+ people are very impressive these days. Based on reports, this is apparently double the size of audience that Nine was hoping for in the lead up to the programme launching.
Qantas A380 emergency ‘biggest PR disaster of 2010′
The worst media disaster of 2010 was the Qantas A380 emergency, public relations blog PR Disasters has said.
According to the list, compiled by blogger and PR Gerry McCusker, the near-catastrophe and its aftermath was a bigger PR disaster than CommBank’s controversial interest rate hikes, Labor’s bodged mining tax and the Melbourne Storm salary cap rort.
The ten PR disasters:
- Qantas – A380 fleet consecutive engine issues and passenger delays
- Commonwealth Bank – premium interest rate hikes
- Labor Party – corporate backlash against the proposed ‘super tax’
- Melbourne Storm – salary cap scandal
- Stephanie Rice – homophobic comments posted via Twitter
- Canberra Raiders – Joel Monaghan ‘dog sex’ photo
- Virgin Blue – reservations and check-in system crash
- Matthew Newton – after alleged assault of then partner Rachel Taylor in Italy
- David Jones – CEO sexual assault scandal
- Lara Bingle – media relations following split with Michael Clark
McCusker worked with online and social media monitoring agency Cyber Chatter to analyse the blunders.
McCusker said: “We’re seeing that social media is increasing influence in determining the impact and duration of PR disasters. As citizen media clearly aids commentary and sharing of bad news stories. It’s essential to have strategies to cope with online sniping and gossip.”
December 21st, 2010 at 3:02 pm
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Comments
21 Dec 10
3:06 pm
Late entry from Nick Riewoldt and the St Kilda Football Club
21 Dec 10
3:24 pm
Not sure about Qantas taking the number one spot. Sure, the engine explosion caused massive problems for the airline and for others using the same engines. However, I thought the way Qantas handled the issue was close to textbook. They admitted the problem, grounded their fleet of A380s and made it clear they would not fly them again until the problem was identified and fixed. And, they did what they said they would do. Contrast this with Singapore Airlines (which flies the same jets with the same engines) which grounded their fleet reluctantly and probably only because they were forced to do so by the actions of Qantas. OK, perhaps it was very good crisis mangement rather than PR, but there’s a fine line between the two these days.
The rest of the list is probably about right, although the Labor Party’s performance in changing leaders then making a total hash of the election (rather than just the mining tax) deserves to be at or near the top.
21 Dec 10
4:26 pm
I would have thought the merciless axing of a serving Prime Minister by invisible dark forces of the NSW right and replacement with the robotic Gillard and a government now lurching from one pr disaster to the next – NBN, Christmas Island – would rank the highest of all.
21 Dec 10
4:42 pm
What? A Qantas crew successfully and safely lands a plane with burning engines, then grounds the fleet until the problems are resolved. How is this a PR failure? Would it have been better to keep the planes flying and risk people actually dying?
21 Dec 10
4:42 pm
Sorry Gerry, I also disagree with Qantas taking the no. 1 slot. They handled this with PR mastery worthy of a Tylenol Award. I agree with @Dan
Read this:
http://www.marketingritson.com.....210554.pdf
You should know better
21 Dec 10
4:44 pm
From the PR Disasters website:
“This year, our Public Relations Disasters blog partnered with online and social media monitoring agency Cyber Chatter to run, analyse and calculate Australia’s biggest PR blunders, using world-leading Alterian SM2 technology.”
So, Qantas is a PR disaster because a piece of software said so.
21 Dec 10
4:51 pm
I completely agree with Dan. The Qantas issue was well handled considering the complexity of the problem and how potentially damaging it could have been. Firstly, the issue was a manufacturing/design flaw with that type of Rolls Royce engine and had absolutely nothing to do with Qantas or its maintenance program. In fact, this incident illustrated that Qantas flight crews are second to none. Thankfully the explosion didn’t occur at take off when engines were at maximum RPM because the damage sustained to the aircraft meant that the flight crew had no control over the engine and lost the ability to control thrust and initiate engine shutdown. Personally, the ousting of K. Rudd came in at number one for me; closely followed by Mumbrella’s coverage of the Encore Awards… it has to be said – WTF was that?
21 Dec 10
4:52 pm
What about NAB and its crashing network?
21 Dec 10
5:08 pm
Agree that McClusker has got it wrong – Qantas handled the crisis very well. It was a PR victory not a blunder. Mark Ritson, however, should stick to marketing and not discuss PR because he just embarrasses himself.
To wit:
“The key to Tylenol’s success, and Qantas’ ambitions, is to ignore the very generic PR doctrine that tells all brands to act the same way in a crisis and to use brand positioning to guide the response in a very specific direction. For Qantas, that means reinforcing and reiterating the message behind the so-called
“Rain Man moment” when Raymond Babbitt proclaimed that he
would only fly Qantas because it was the only airline that had never crashed.”.
ER no, Mark. Qantas did not come out and say ‘dont worry everyone, we didn’t actually crash and we haven’t done so now”. Qantas simply grounded its fleet and put its CEO forward to shift blame to the lead-footed Rolls Royce who proved to be the slowest moving target in the world. There was no ‘brand positioning’ here – it’s just crisis management 101.
Aside from the fact that he then completely fails to proexplain how brand positioning guided the response, choosing instead to discuss the movie Rainman, no such ‘generic PR doctrine’ exists in theory or practice. If Ritson’s
21 Dec 10
6:54 pm
Hi all,
Thanks for the feedback; good to see everyone responding so quickly with their own opinions.
To move the evaluation of the annual PR Disasters Awards away from just ‘gut feel’, we tried a more hybrid method this year using Alterian SM2 to really ferret out digital/social media analysis. Looking at levels of negative opinion on social media is a very telling gauge of honest, direct-from-consumer feelings and opinions. The factors SM2 evaluates include; overall volume of conversations around the incident, types of media commentary (neg vs pos), duration of coverage and trends of sentiment towards the company/person re the issue. On the basis of these stats, Qantas (with more than 35,000 negative posts to the issue at hand) topped the analysis by more than three times its nearest PR disaster rival.
I totally agree that Qantas’ handling of the subsequent fallout was good (actually said so on Sky TV last night), but 35,000 angry, bitching, bitter comments still out there…
If anyone has a comparable PR disaster-analysing methodology, we’d be happy to see, consider it and make amends with the new evidence. Ta
21 Dec 10
8:47 pm
I’ll vote for the axing of Rudd as #1 PR disaster. Look who they got. It’s ongoing.
22 Dec 10
9:54 am
I agree that Qantas handled the A380 issues very well in terms of PR and communicating with the relevant people. Essential strategies to cope with online sniping and gossip? How ridiculous. Twitter is like trying to talk in a room when 1000 other people are talking at the same time. It is not a ‘strategic communication medium’ and I would think it almost impossible for anyone to respond to every little bitch session by people who just want to make any comment they feel like – correct or not. Well done Qantas – you’re still #1 in my book.
22 Dec 10
10:08 am
I don’t think measuring negative comments on the Interwebs is the best way of measuring PR success. Surely the number of negative posts on Twitter would have been even higher if Qantas had responded poorly?
I vote for the federal government not explaining the mining profits tax properly as another PR disaster.
22 Dec 10
12:45 pm
Personally I’d nominate PRDisasters.com as Australia’s worst PR disaster in trying a cheap, misguided shot at a big corporation’s crisis to get publicity in the quiet week before Christmas.
On a serious note, Gerry, I don’t think you’re helping yourself, Alteris or the credibility of social media in drawing these conclusions from such a flawed analysis.
22 Dec 10
2:19 pm
I wonder if some of the comments are slightly missing the point of what Gerry’s list is about – it’s not who handled a PR problem the worst – it’s about who was hit by a PR disaster, whether of their making or not.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
22 Dec 10
2:41 pm
@Mumbrella – fair point, you’re right of course.
But I think the conversation on this site has moved it on to the next level of the story arc, which is about the HANDLING of said PR disasters.
@Gerry made the point in his earlier post that this is quantitative analysis. I’d also like an accompanying QUALITATIVE op piece about “Best Handled” disasters …
@Sven – I’ve approached Qantas for an articulation of the official brand positioning with regards to guiding their response … Ritson may well be right.
22 Dec 10
3:09 pm
Tim – the point is Qantas was NOT hit by a PR disaster because of the way it handled the incident. As Ritson points out, the exploding engine may well have a positive outcome for Qantas.
22 Dec 10
3:53 pm
Billionaire Gerry Harvey whinging about people buying goods online from overseas was not a good look for him.
23 Dec 10
9:49 am
I think CommBank should take the no. 1 spot for worst handled PR disaster …
One, it demonstrated pure greed by hiking interest rates by almost double the amount of the official RBA rise and then whinging about “higher funding costs”
Two, the untimely nature of the rate hike on Melbourne Cup Day (y’know, the “race that stops a nation” and all that), and in the 50-day run up to Christmas!!
Three, further antagonising Treasurer Wayne Swan who referred to this action as a “cynical cash grab”, plus giving the media such good bank-bashing material
So much for “Determined to be Different” …
More like: “Determined to be Dickheads”
3 Jan 11
11:18 pm
Gerry Harvey whinging when he has no idea about online
Retail
BP (was that 2010?)
Fairfax in their letter to Mumbrella…
7 Jan 11
2:54 pm
I’ve really enjoyed reading the healthy debate above, and it’s led me to put together my own blog on the top 5 PR disasters of 2010. It identifies each one, how and why they failed, and how they could have done better. Qantas doesn’t come out particularly well, but *not* because of the handling of the A380 incident. Check it out at http://tiny.cc/r36wi or http://www.colelawson.com.au/P.....fault.aspx and let me know your thoughts. Cheers, Margaret