Opinion | Features
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  The future of the media, and in particular journalism, requires entrepreneurial ‘hacker’ journalists argues Merja Myllylahti in this cross posting from The Conversation. The Guardian and The Washington Post have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for their work in bringing to light documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
- The Encore Score: The Logie Awards
  Ahead of Sunday night's Logie Awards, Amanda Meade looks at the numbers to see which celebrities might take out Australian television's top awards.
  
  The TV Week Logie Awards, a celebration of Australian television, is a wild and colourful beast.
- Behind the screens of the ABC’s China deal
  
  ABC International has reasons to be proud of its recent deal to provide ABC content in a long-term partnership with China’s second biggest broadcaster Shanghai Media Group writes Wanning Sun, in this cross posting from The Conversation.
  ABC International has reasons to be proud of its recent “landmark” deal to provide ABC content in China.
- Should agencies return to a full service model?
  Our current method of separating creative and media is more expensive and less effective, leaving us with the worst of both worlds, argues 303Lowe CEO Nick Cleaver. Is it time to bring media and creative back together? Who ever actually proved that separating media and creative services was a good idea; that it represented a better more effective model; one that could deliver better value outcomes? The simple truth is no one.
- Answers for Adam: Why do agencies struggle to build their own agency brands?
  You’ve heard the story about the cobbler whose kids got around in old shoes, it reminds me of the current state of agency brands. Grab hold of any creative agency brand, and barring two or three notable exceptions very little pulls them apart.
- Media agency remuneration: It's the smaller nimbler agencies which will thrive
  As huge changes blow through the Australian media agency landscape Nikki Retallick argues the smaller more collaborative companies will be the ones to thrive. It’s a great time to be in the Australian ad industry. The winds of change are blowing. With the recent launch of Department212 and the success of earlier start-ups such as Bohemia, there’s some real momentum towards the rise of the independent, performance-based media agency. The big agencies are starting to follow suit, having seen the ‘race to the bottom on price’ hit their bottom line. It’s all about delivering measurable value now and being able to move the dial on the clients’ business.
- Content marketing moves to centre stage
  Last night ANZ launched one of Australia's biggest branded content plays to date. Mumbrella's Tim Burrowes was at the launch. It took a few minutes too long last night for it to dawn on me why there was a jazz band in the corner of the room at ANZ's Melbourne conference suite. Blue Notes - gerrit? And what last night's event did make clear is that the opportunities of that developing subset of branded content, brand journalism, are beginning to dawn on local brands.
- Answers for Adam: Is reality TV the way to tackle climate change?
  Recently there was another report from the scientists of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) telling us that climate change (what used to be called global warming) is upon us and there are real changes happening now (I bet I’ve lost several readers already!) The scientists are urging us to heed their warning and change our behaviours, yet we ignoring them in droves. Even though information they are giving us is dire.
- The Tele's textbook example of how to run a winning newspaper campaign
  The Daily Telegraph has delivered a great piece of old fashioned campaigning journalism, argues Mumbrella's Tim Burrowes Back when I worked in newspapers, I was taught that if a newspaper is going to embark on a campaign, it has to pass three tests.
- Piracy: At least the Lannisters pay their debts
  Following a series of special reports on piracy on Mumbrella this week Foxtel's Bruce Meagher explains why the company is airing Game of Thrones as it is. Much has been made in the past few days of the fact that fans of Game of Thrones are unable to acquire the series through services other than Foxtel until after the final episode airs. Unfortunately, there has also been much misinformation about how Foxtel is making Game of Thrones available to the public.
- Why hard-to-win awards are good awards
  This year's Mumbrella Awards are going to be tougher to enter than ever before. Which makes winning one worth even more. As the call for entries goes live, Tim Burrowes explains the changes for this year. Please don't hate me. I hear a common complaint about some industry awards, and I'm afraid it's mostly my fault.
- Encore Score: The newsreaders
  With the battle for early evening eyeballs increasingly important for commercial TV networks Amanda Meade looks at the numbers to see if the most popular newsreaders are the most watched. Despite dramatic changes to the media landscape in the past ten years, the traditional 6pm commercial news bulletin on free-to-air television remains a key building block in a network’s schedule - get it right and you can carry big audiences over to your primetime shows. Some bulletins have even expanded from 30 minutes to an hour in the main markets of Sydney and Melbourne.
- Answers for Adam: Should PR agencies and creative agencies be combined?
  This week Adam Ferrier asks whether PR is starting to mean everything and nothing, and whether it is any different from traditional advertising. I've been thinking about the PR industry lately and where PR fits in the broader communications landscape. I've thought about it a lot, and worked with most models from integration under one roof to partner agencies, and a few things in-between.
- Australia's class system of brands
  After a rare business class flight, Mumbrella's Tim Burrowes argues that brands may miss opportunities when staff treat customers according to their perceived value. So over the weekend, I finally got to make the metaphorical left turn getting onto a Qantas flight. And it was everything I could have wanted.
- Answering Adam: Agencies need ideas as their engine
  This week in his Answers for Adam column Adam Ferrier asked whether agencies should imitate startups. Here Nic Hodges argues agencies need to focus on their ideas, but modernise processes. In his column this week Adam Ferrier asks "would your agency be doing better work if it put data, behavioural sciences, and technology up on pedestal along with creativity? Or is a single-minded focus on creativity still the answer?". Here's a secret - nobody at a startup is sitting around caring about acting more like an advertising agency.

This weekend Woolworths can’t wait to give everyone an opportunity to give them a massive kicking

Dr Mumbo is sorry to note that Woolworths has decided to kick off the weekend with a mini social media disaster in the making.

And we’re still in the first hour…

Update, February 12, 2pm (Sunday afternoon):

Happily, the thread kept on keeping on. Here’s the most recent of 470 comments:

February 10th, 2012 at 5:36 pm

Comments

DMF
10 Feb 12
5:41 pm

This will not end well…

keith
10 Feb 12
5:42 pm

Outstanding I can feel the panic from here. Reminscent of the make your own FWD ad from the US a couple of years ago.

Murf
10 Feb 12
5:45 pm

I have no idea why business perseveres with Facebook. Disaster waiting to happen at every post. Just because the ‘experts’ tell you, you must be on it doesn’t mean you should.

TC
10 Feb 12
5:46 pm

I think their Social Media Manager might be doing a bit of overtime this weekend?? Ha. Smells of the QANTAS social media fail… when will people learn?

Xander
10 Feb 12
5:48 pm

#QantasLuxury

Prakky
10 Feb 12
6:03 pm

I just hopped onto the page – there’s also a lot of innocuous comments, happy comments, weekend sharing etc.

Prepaidplans
10 Feb 12
6:08 pm

Yep, he will be working hard looking for a new job. There is a book in what not to say on twitter/Facebook when trying to promote yourself.,

AdGrunt
10 Feb 12
6:18 pm

FFS. Does no-one learn?

Stu
10 Feb 12
6:19 pm

Dunno – most of the comments on there are fairly benign along the lines of “catch up with my hubby”, “relax and do nothing” etc. Sure there are a few “shop at Coles” and the like thrown in there but nothing too drastic. Yet…

Che Boielle
10 Feb 12
6:24 pm

@DMF said it in 5 words… It’s so painful watching ‘big business’ and they’re outdated marketing departments fail and fail again at social media…

Devil's advocaat
10 Feb 12
6:54 pm

They’ve been deleting comments – follow best practice!

silne
10 Feb 12
7:09 pm

It’s even more painful watching people use they’re when they should have used their.

Grant
10 Feb 12
7:50 pm

Tim – an invitation to the social media risk management masterclass may be in order.

James
10 Feb 12
8:15 pm

Oh noes! Negative comments! It happens, you deal with it. Storm, meet teacup. Mountains, molehills etc etc

James Dellow
11 Feb 12
10:15 am

Well, this is what happens when you treat social media, particularly FB, simply as a channel for one-to-many brand marketing in the mode of promotions and competitions etc. I suppose at least they are showing some brand love by even bothering to respond…

Supermercado
12 Feb 12
1:57 pm

Debra Beecraft clearly missed the memo that you’re supposed to tee off on them.

David
12 Feb 12
2:05 pm

I agree it could have been much worse, but why would you leave such an open message on a Friday, but maybe they are ready for some open criticism?

I’m surprised there is not more trolling happening with personal attacks by now… usually you get one or two supporters onboard at this point to still things up a bit more.

So I think it’s not the best but interesting to see how they respond on Monday, my guess is they might just delete the whole post or provide a generic “thanks for your feedback”…. see how well people respond if they do that…

Hmmm...
13 Feb 12
4:48 pm

Not all that smart, but it also goes to show how awful some people can be!

MikeZed
13 Feb 12
6:47 pm

Wow – good to see another media beat-up on a well-known brand just for making the effort to engage in social media. Clearly a slow news day as this non-story has now made it into the SMH. The upside will be good fan growth for Woolies, but I’m amazed that yet another non-event becomes a “news” story. On my quick glance through of the 495 comments on the facebook thread, significantly less than 10% were negative, if that. A whole heap of them were seriously positive, and most were just people randomly engaging.

Not everyone loves every brand. That’s just the way it is. And a random selection of people pushing their own agenda isn’t a news story just because it’s on a forum owned by the brand. If you open up a discussion forum, of any sort, you’ll get negative comments.

So I’d be interested to know what all the haters above would have done differently – not engage at all ? Not open the door ? Or accept that some comments will be negative, and hope not to get noticed by a bored journo who’s having a slow day and feels like beating up on a big brand. From my perspective, the only downside of Woolies activity is that they haven’t responded at all to ANY of the comments.

Look on any brand Facebook page – it’s pretty easy to find the disgruntled customers, the brand detractors, the people recently frustrated and annoyed by life. They always existed and always will. Why beat up on the marketers that are giving it a go ? Because it makes for easy copy in blogs / newspapers – easy to find, easy to write. And we wonder why consumers in general distrust marketers.

James Norquay
14 Feb 12
1:37 pm

Same thing happened too Vodafone on Australia Day -

Screenshot here – http://jamesnorquay.com/vodafo.....ial-media/

The problem is you give your users too much power, this is social media messaging 101.