Author: Me

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Truth told not so well

In late April of this year two young creatives from the advertising agency George Patterson/Y&R created the attached video. It’s all very funny. Their premise is that by taking an ordinary item on eBay and reselling that item on eBay but by adding ‘creativity’ they can increase profits.

So that’s what their little video proves. But we’re also asked to suspend reality because there is no way in Hell that any of the statements made in their eBay ad could be applied or translated in any way whatsoever to a real world product. And not get fined by the relative governing authorities or ridiculed by the public. Contrary to the belief of some PR hacks, controversy does NOT create cash.

Rather then demonstrating how ‘creativity’ can help sell, I think all this exercise does is to further portray advertising as a profession based on telling falsehoods; that we lie for a living. Real advertising is so much more and it’s a pity that these two kids, and their bosses at what was once the largest agency in the country, think lying is what advertising is all about.

McCann-Erickson have a great corporate motto which I have always tried to live up to in my advertising days; truth told well.

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Product review

This is a review I posted of a product on the manufacturer’s website. Will be interesting to see if they post it.Worst Product Ever

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Australian advertising creativity gets sponsored into the 21st century

Google’s creative push sees it become AWARD School’s main sponsor

With the new sponsorship arrangement between AWARD and Google there is a high probablilit that future copywriters and art directors will be taught beyond the full page ad or 60 sec TVC.

For many years these formats have been the holy grail of a creatives’ career. The effectiveness as a marketing tool however has been sliding for almost the same time.

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New Dyson Product Blows

I wish I could take credit for that headline but I’m paraphrasing a couple of sub-editors from different print and online media outlets.

In King George’s diary on July 4th 1776 he wrote, “Nothing important happened today”. Considering it took weeks or months for news from the colonies to arrive in London he was of course unaware that the American colonists had revolted against English rule and were in the process of claiming independence from his reign.

Perhaps the same could be written for 13/14th October 2009 because it appears that the biggest story of the day was that a bloke who makes vaccum cleaners is now making fans.

I woke up to this ‘breaking news’ as the lead story on SMH.com and News.com.au. It stayed the feature story for most of the day. Are you kidding me? It’s a product story. It deserves no more pixels than, well, it deserves no pixels. Are editors so stuck for content that press releases for gadgets now count as news.

And now as I wind down for the evening, Fast Company is featuring the product on their homepage. I don’t know who Sir James is paying for this PR hackery but as a news story it sux. And every editor and sub-editor who has contributed to this spin needs to have a rethink about their career and responsibility to their readers.

So very, very sad.

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Kate Miller Heidke on Social Media

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Behind the scenes with Stephen Colbert. And some dude with big ears.

So some back story. In June 09 Stephen Colbert packed up his late night political satire show, Colbert Nation,  and took it on the road to Camp Victory, Iraq. It was brilliant. Just 4 eps but each one brilliant. On night one he interviews General Raymond Odierno (Commanding General, Multi-National Force—Iraq). Watch it here from Comedy Channel. Then watch the video below. And wait to the end to see what Stephen does…

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Very rubbery figures from ANZ

In the first week of each month the ANZ Job Advertisements report is presented to the media as if it is some kind of key indicator (and predictor) of the health of the Australian economy. Two things have always struck me about this monthly event;

  1. Each and every month the news outlets jump on this data, and
  2. It is complete rubbish.

Let me explain. Anyone who has ever had anything to do with the recruitment industry knows that for numerous reasons some ads just aren’t real. They do not exist. These jobs never have existed and never will. They are creative figments of the recruiter to lure candidates into their databases. Bait to create the illusion of a talent pool to be used to further entice companies into the client list.

This is not all jobs put forward by recruiters of course but let us do some conservative assuming…

There are in this country around 10,000 recruitment consultants. Now let’s assume that just 50% of these place a bait ad every second month (50% of the time). That’s 2,500 jobs every month that never, ever existed except inside the mind of a recruiter.

Is that a big deal? 2,500 is surely not going to make any impact. Wrong. The September 2009 report had a total of 10,863 ads. That means the conservative 2,500 extra ads calculated here accounts for an error of about 25%.

I have more faith in astrology as an economic predictor than the ANZ Job Advertisement report.

For many years Reuters, one of the finest media outlets in the world, didn’t bother to even report the fiction that is the ANZ JAR.  But the Australian news media is so devoid of original thinking that they pounce on these rubbery figures and say, ‘thank you, thank you ANZ PR hack for not making me have to think today.’

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The Best of YouTube. By YouTube.

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What’s Your TweetRate?

I think a new metric needs to be added to the social media mix. Actually a slew of new metrics to better understand your own tweet/ing habbits.

Your +TweetRate is the number of tweets you average (create) in a 24 hour period. Easy to calculate and easy to compare account v account.

Next is your -TweetRate. This is the number of tweets you are receiving from the people you follow in a 24 hour period. Again, easy to calculate. I hope some geek is writing an API for this right now!

Lastly, and most importantly, your =TweetRate. This is the number of tweets in a 24 hour period that you have read and, if appropriate, clicked on the link and read the contents of that link.

All these metrics provide fascinating insight for the individual twiterer so you can easily delete followees who fill your timeline with “having coffee”, “need beer”, or “my boss is a <insert expletive here>”

My rationale for wanting to clean the timeline is simple; it’s easy to miss the gold when the stream is full of shit.

But until some geek or nerd creates the above tools it’s a manual chore that most people haven’t the time for and subsequently great tweets get lost. Cleaning your timeline may even mean unfollowing friends or colleagues who ‘tweet because they can’.

In my timeline, these are the first to go.

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The Original Home Theatre

I was reminded tonight how cool my childhood was when telling a story.

In the very early ’80’s the video recorder was a very new toy for any household. My Dad, being a complete movie buff, went out and bought the top of the line Sony C7. Dad worked at the ABC and had spoken to his more technical mates and this is the one they recommended.

wegac7

Before you laugh at Dad for investing in Beta remember that this system is still considered far superior to VHS and was used by EVERY TV station for ENG (Electronic News Gathering) in the pro format, BetaSP. My show reel is still on SP and it was THE format for production companies when shooting and editing TVCs.

2008-03-03 at 16-52-40 94375

Above is a SP camera being mounted on the front of a Porsche Boxter. This was a corporate video I was producing/directing for a hotel conglomerate. Spookily, this photo was taken on the morning of 26 July 2000, the day an Air France Concorde crashed into a hotel owned by the same conglomerate.

Anyways, no matter how good Beta was it failed in the ‘cheap to market’ category and eventually VHS won the format war with video shops gradually and then increasingly stocking more and more then only VHS movies for rent.

But before then we had a much cooler entertainment experience at our house. Dad ran the Film and Tape Library at the ABC’s Gore Hill Studios complex. The tape was mostly primarily news or BBC imports and on broadcast standard formats such as 1 and 2 inch.

But the film was mostly 16mm. Now, Dad started his working life as a projectionist at the Metro theatre in Kings Cross (that’s where he met Mum who was working as an usherette – so the story goes). So Dad would bring home from the ABC movies and series on 16mm film, throw a screen up at one end of the family room and then load up the Bell & Howell projector.

We had a home theatre before there was such a thing as home theatre. And I only just realised how cool it was.